Living When Killed – 3 – Log Horizon Perfect Board

The Log Horizon perfect board can both stall and do massive damage. This makes it important to learn about how to beat it!

What is the Log Horizon Perfect board

An alternative to simply beating over the opponent in Weiß Schwarz is to stall out the game with walls. Using large stat lines that are near impossible to get over and minimizing the damage you take can drain all of an opponent’s resources. Log Horizon’s perfect board excels at this, with its massive attack points and anti-burn. The perfect board is two Lord’s Ninja, Akatsuki on the left and right side of Center Stage with Guardian, Naotsugu in the centre, and two Log Horizon’s Representative Shiroe in the back line (see image below)

How much should I be expecting to take?

The Log Horizon perfect board is different from most other ending combos because it does not have too much going for it in terms of landing a kill. If you use the Climax “Waltz for Two” you can boost all your characters by an additional soul, and the Akatsukis will be getting 4000 power and burn one damage when they reverse an opponents’ character making the damage total only 3+1+3+1+3 which is only eleven damage. If the opponent has been compressing well it will most likely be blocked.

How does it kill then?

The Log Horizon perfect board has the Shiroes in the backline to account for their lack of damage. Shiroe makes it so that all characters in front of him get an additional 1000 power multiplied by their level. This boost means all your Level 3 characters are getting +3000 before the climax. Shiroe also provides the effect of when your character downs an opponents’ character, pay one stock and rest Shiroe to give the character who downed the ability “The character facing this card gets -2 soul.”  Level 3s with a few rare exceptions have 2 soul. The Double Shiroe backline will block anything that is not boosted by a climax or trigger. Guardian, Naotsugu also provides a taunt effect, named “Great Performance” in Weiß Schwarz forcing all characters to attack him. With the double Shiroe backline he gains +3000 for each, with and additional +2000 coming for having a full board bringing him up to, 9500+6000+2000 for a beefy statline of 17500. Most decks physically cannot get over that statline and are forced to kill their characters in an attempt to do minimal damage. The empty board then leaves it easy for Log Horizon to clean up and end the game.

What about Burns

While I have explained why attacks don’t work, Log Horizon is even better at dealing with burns due to Shiroe’s first effect, “You cannot take damage from your opponents’ AUTO effects. This is huge for the deck as it means with just Shiroe on the board, you can block Birdcage, or Megumin decks off of having just Shiroe. This drops many other decks ability to fight Log Horizon if the Perfect board is set up.

When to be Scared?

As the perfect board is the strongest thing Log Horizon can put out, expect it when playing against a proper Log Horizon deck. The issue is outside of Perfect Board, Log Horizon is not that strong of a set. In EN especially there is only one brainstormer effect and it only allows a player to draw a card for each Climax hit. This makes the decks consistency fall way down. This is not even mentioning how expensive it is to make the perfect board. All five Level 3s cost 2 stock each so a Log Horizon player has the struggle of assembling 10 stock, while putting all five Level 3s into their hand, and praying they hit Level 3. The only time to really be afraid of Log Horizon’s perfect board is when it was successfully assembled and is staring you down.

Tips and Tricks to Live Another Turn

1. Compression no matter how strong the board if you manage to get a triple block with an empty board, Log Horizon cannot give the -2 soul effects making it possible to kill your units for game.
2. Kill from Level 2, The deck is quite weak outside of the endgame so it will not be difficult to end them earlier.

While incredibly scary a player can use the difficulty Log Horizon has setting up their board in order to find a victory. One must be aware however, though statistics and probability make sense in theory, in practice all one can do is bow down and pray to RNGsus to reach for a victory.