Contents
· Introduction
· How to Play
· History of Thegrea
· BT05 (v 4.8)
· First Promo
· BT08 (v 11.3)
· BT11 (v 16.0) 
· Second Promo
· Divinez (v 18.8, 20.8, 21.4)
· Current Thegrea (v 22.4)
· What does Thegrea mean to me

Introduction

With a sword burning with justice, a heart yearning for revenge, and a desire to avenge her fallen mentor, Thegrea is a character from the Cray Cross Epic lore who received her own deck in D-BT05: Triumphant Return of the Brave Heroes.

An integral captain of Keter Sanctuary's Second Knight Order squad, Thegrea seeks vengeance against Obscudeid, a now defected knight from the Fourth Shadow Paladin army, for slaying her former mentor whom she deeply admired and inherited her Blaster Armament from, Girard.

As such, Thegrea is in a constant battle with herself, swaying between the light and dark, good and evil, and justice and revenge. She knows she must uphold the morals of being a captain, but what society expects of her conflicts with the ill desire in her heart that could lead her to ruin, walking down a path she can never return from.

How to Play Thegrea

Thegrea's duality is represented in how her deck functions. Revolving around the Persona Ride mechanic, Thegrea has two main forms: "One Who Walks the Path of Light, Thegrea" and "One Who Blooms in Darkness, Thegrea". Her core gameplay loop is switching between these two forms and stacking Persona Ride via her special attack form, "Epee De Justice, Thegrea", to create large columns and bulldoze through the opponent with as much power as possible.

History of Thegrea

D-BT05: Triumphant Return of the Brave Heroes

Introduced in D-BT05: Triumphant Return of the Brave Heroes, Thegrea was considered the second best CCE deck at the time, just behind Tamayura, for her strong consistency, large hands, and powerful turn 4. However, despite having a turn 4 that was comparable with other grade 4 decks at the time, she unfortunately didn't make much of an impact on the metagame, as her non-existent turn 3 was enough to keep her at rogue status at best.

Version 4.8

This was the list I settled on during this meta. Aside from the straightforward game plan of riding between Light and Dark Thegrea, the deck had a mini resource loop that helped Thegrea build the massive hand she was known for – this interaction was a combo between Painkiller Angel (who henceforth shall be Spain or Spainkiller) and Atrocious? Moth Girl, Maple. At the end of the battle Spain boosted Maple's attack, you would use Maple's skill to put one of the cards in your soul back to hand, then use Spain to soulblast her out and draw 1. This effectively netted you a delayed +1, as while the two girls replaced themselves, Maple could revive herself on your next turn (it was guaranteed because you would use Maple to add back Persona Ride most of the time), turning the initial wash into a hard plus at the start of your next turn.

In general, Maple was incredible for Thegrea, helping the deck go a long way thanks to the multiple little synergies she has with the rest of the deck. Firstly, because she was able to self-revive from drop, she made for an excellent discard target in Thegrea, helping you conserve key pieces in hand, such as Persona Ride, Spain, or Refuerzos. This also made her a semi-permanent 5k shield for Thegrea, helping you to guard pokes as you had a free body to intercept with each turn (although, this fact has been abused heavily outside of Thegrea, and is the main reason why she's splashed in so many Ket decks as a 1-of). Secondly, because of her ability to grab anything from soul, she effectively turned Thegrea's soul into a second hand for her.

This made Drilling Angel (who henceforth shall be Yung Driller) an excellent card to use in Thegrea as he could put cards from drop to soul, simultaneously increasing the options of what you could pull out with Maple while also extending your reach to the drop zone, giving the deck another layer of recursion and another zone you could toolbox from. This led to the popular play of putting Sentinels from drop to soul, and having Maple recycle them. Outside of this, Yung Driller also enabled Light to call 2 units from her first skill on turn 3 by putting a Dark from drop into soul early. And, in a pinch, you could use his skill to try and dig for a missing piece – I've called many a Spain/Refuerzos off his skill before since the deck could do some light thinning.

While most lists chose to run 4 Maple, 4 Refuerzos, and 3 Felicida, I opted to cut one from each respectively. For Maple, it was a matter of minimising obsoletion, as once you find one Maple, the rest become essentially vanilla cards. As for Refuerzos and Felicida, their reasonings are slightly different.

One of Thegrea's biggest weakness at the time is a syndrome known as Ket hand – being unable to guard because your hand was filled to the brim with shieldless grade 3s. In the early days of D era, Keter Sanctuary's main gimmick was being mostly made up of Grade 3s, a result of Bastion being the face of the nation. This meant the pool of usable grade 2s and 1s was very low, forcing Thegrea to pad out the rest of the deck with grade 3s that benefitted her game plan, since there was a severe lack of other options at the time.

The two grade 3s that worked best with her were Heavenly Bow of Edifying Guidancce, Refuerzos and Heavenly Shield of Encompassment, Felicida. Refuerzos (who henceforth shall be Ref) was a restanding booster, something highly valued in Thegrea as her primary payoff was restanding either herself or a rear-guard. The end goal was to have two Refs in your back row, one behind Vanguard, and one behind rear-guard, leaving the last lane open for Spain to perform the resource loop with Maple.

Felicida (who henceforth shall be Feli) was a late addition to the deck, mainly because her effect wasn't an obvious nor essential component to Thegrea's main game plan. All she did was give the Vanguard an additional drive at the steep price of two counterblast. While this doesn't look particularly appealing at first glance, finding Feli on a Dark turn considerably raised the deck's ceiling and kill potential, as being a restanding vanguard, Dark could turn that single additional drive into two additional drives, essentially giving herself pentatuple drive. This helped immensely in building the sizable hand that Thegrea was known for, as well as flipping more triggers, which back in early D era, could swing the game considerably in your favour when checked. The cost wasn't an issue either, as the only counterblast users in the deck were Light and Dark – everything else was either free or costed soul. This also helped punish rushers, as the damage accumulated early would turn into fuel for Feli's skill, since the Dark + Feli turn costed a hefty three counterblast. If not respected, the additional cards and potential triggers would greatly snowball the advantage the Thegrea player has over the opponent (assuming the additional cards didn't cause Ket hand).

Ket hand is also the main reason why I opted to run Ampoule Scatterer Angel in the slots where the extra copies of Maple, Ref, and Feli would usually be. A large part of Thegrea's defence was intercepting, as Maple could revive herself and Yung Driller became a vanilla after you used his on call skill. As such, you would usually commit at least one card from hand each turn to front row to fill your ranks, with Maple covering the other circle through her revive. However, even with this ability to near infinitely intercept, we still struggled with defence due to Ket hand, so I mainly looked for cards with additional shield to test out. The one I liked most was Ampoule since he gained +10k shield and could also intercept, fitting our usual way of guarding. In the low shield format of D era, a card like this helped considerably with surviving the aggressive pushes decks could make turn 4 multi-attacking under Persona Ride, something that had become standard for all decks right from the gate. Together with Maple, intercepting with these two created a 20k shield, something that could comfortably block at least one large attack from the opponent.

The more common grade 2 people ran in Thegrea was Arthen – or as I like to call him, the strongest bait in history. Because that's essentially what Arthen was, as people ran him in Thegrea purely because he looked like he synergised with the deck. At first glance, this is understandable, as firstly, Ket had few better options at the time, and secondly, he had a skill that also revolved around Persona Ride, which made him suitable for Thegrea as she was the only deck in Keter Sanctuary that could secure it every turn. So, even though Arthen was technically a generic card, he seemed best used in Thegrea – it probably also didn't help that he was printed in the same set as her, and as a RR to boot. However, once you start playing him in the deck, you soon quickly realise that he doesn't work at all. While his first skill is solid protection, there's not many rear-guards in Thegrea you particularly want to protect. Half of them mirage themselves, like Maple and Spain, and half are dead cards after they've been called, like Yung Driller. The only one that might be worth protecting from spot retire is Ref, but you can still play the game without him, so it's not like he's a key piece you need on field. As for his second effect, it's just too slow for what it does. Despite being turn 4 locked, all it does is give him 5k – needless to say, it was very weak payoff for managing to get Persona Ride. And that 5k didn't even make him a good beater, since the better alternative for that job was unironically Blaster Dark, as he could get 5k as early as turn 2, and he also had built in spot retire to deal with any pesky rear-guards you may encounter. In fact, I was on Blaster Dark as the third grade 2 for a long time before switching over to Ampoule as I valued surviving to turn 4 more than the extra power and retire.

If there was one weakness that Thegrea couldn't fix (except crippling Ket hand and her nation severely lacking in good generic options thanks to Bastion), it would be her ride line. Compared to what existed at the time, it was of acceptable quality – it wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst either. The main problem with this ride line was how RNG heavy it was – even though it was completely free and provided a slight consistency bump in finding Thegrea copies, there was no way to guarantee any of the plusses offered. This felt especially bad in the grade 2, where if you found nothing in your top 5, you whiffed and didn't get any compensation for it. At the very least, the grade 1 let you keep the card on top of your deck if you didn't want to call it, essentially turning her effect into a scry – a relative huge dub since Fort Stay Night of Bastion's ride line could never. This was something I appreciated a lot, as even though the better effect was hitting a Thegrea name off the grade 2's skill, 99.99% of the time I would find a trigger on top of the deck, so not being forced to call it was easily the best part of the ride line for me.

Through and through, Thegrea was a tank and spank deck in her debut on BT05. Not only did her large hands and mini resource loop let her survive deep late into the game, but she could also dish out a threatening damage of power via consistent Persona Riding.

First Promo

Between D-BT05 and Thegrea's next major wave of support in D-BT08, a set of Order promos for the CCE decks were released. The promo for Thegrea was a grade 3 set order called Oath of Vengeance, Thegrea.

On reveal, this Order felt pretty underwhelming when compared to the quality of the other promos that the other CCE ride lines got. While Eva, Rorowa, Tamayura, and Kheios all received Orders that were considered must-includes in their decks, Oath of Vengeance (which henceforth shall be Oath) didn't at all drastically change the way Thegrea played or was built.

Don't get me wrong, Oath was a great card, and you were always happy to find it so you could get extra cards in hand. However, if you didn't see it, it wasn't a big deal either, since the deck still functioned perfectly fine even without it. As such, you could easily slot in 2 copies into the existing deck and call it day. For me, I removed 3 Ampoule to include 2 Oath and 1 Maple.

In fact, due to how lax it was to run this card, you could get away with not including it at all. And to be honest, running it at 0 at this point of time could be justified. Oath has two major issues: the first and biggest issue was the fact the card only functioned on turn 4 but could only be played at turn 3. This meant drawing it early was extremely detrimental, as it was a brick that couldn't even be used for anything. The only way you could convert it from a dead card and find use of it was by discarding it for Thegrea's cost. The second issue of Oath was the fact that it was an Order – Thegrea suffered from Ket hand enough, so adding another card that had no shield value was a huge risk that some people chose not to take.

I begrudgingly kept the card in, since seeing it did feel really nice for the extra draw, but beig able to leave Oath out of the deck's core strategy wouldn't last for very long...

D-BT08: Minerva Rising

Thegrea received her second wave of support in D-BT08: Minerva Rising. This set included only two major support cards for her, mainly because she had to share set space with the headlining unit of the set, Minerva, as they belonged to the same nation. There were cards that technically supported her by virtue of requiring a Glitter unit, rather than her name, but all those cards (except Universal Angel, who is semi-passable at best) are so bad, we won't be touching on them. Instead, we'll be focusing on Pink Moth Girl, Maple (who henceforth shall be G1 Maple) and Dark Magenta of Blooming Hatred (who henceforth shall be Magenta).

The headlining star of D-BT08 for Thegrea was no doubt G1 Maple, who was essentially Ref but as a self-reviving unit, much like her G2 counterpart. Because they shared the same functionality, Ref was cut from the deck and replaced by her, alleviating some of the Ket hand issues we had. At first, most people tested her out by putting 2 copies of her in the main deck, but later on, that slowly changed to putting her in the Ride Deck instead, as G1 Thegrea wasn't that strong to begin with, and having G1 Maple in soul made it infinitely easier to get her in drop before turn 4, as all you needed to do was soulblast it out. As a result, one of the key foundations for Thegrea's deck building became running 4-6 cards that could soulblast, as it was crucial to put G1 Maple into rotation to make your restanding columns more threatening late game. While it's impact for the deck was massive, there were still some negative parts of G1 Maple – her revival was the most finnicky part, as unlike G2 Maple, she could only revive if you Persona Rode. This wasn't a dealbreaker or anything, but it was slightly annoying, since it removed some of Thegrea's potential early game recursion, as you couldn't call her for a free body on turn 3. If you could, she + G2 Maple would be a really easy way to form a column while preserving our hand, which would've been really useful since one of the things Thegrea struggles with most is operating in the early game. But alas, that's not how the card works, so we can only dream. Nevertheless, G1 Maple was a great addition to the deck, and the slots it opened up allowed us to play better cards that would help the strategy in other ways.

The same can't be said for Magenta though – while the card reads fairly strong on paper, with the first skill replacing itself to prevent it from being a minus when played (something other Order based decks would kill for) and the second allowing us to perform Dark's restand on turn 3 (fixing the issue of not doing anything on turn 3) or even chaining Dark turns for back-to-back Vanguard restanding, this card unfortunately fails to deliver or execute on either of those benefits. The first problem is that it's an Order card – you typically don't want to run many of these in your deck as they can brick your hand, but paradoxically you are also encouraged to run multiple copies so you can find this card early and play it on turn 2 so you can do Dark plays on turn 3. Now, while you can theoretically also play this on turn 3 and go from there, the main issue here is that it conflicts with Oath, which, while a turn 4 card, needs to set up on turn 3 for maximum payoff (i.e. drawing 2 on your first Persona). Otherwise, there is little point in running it, since Oath's extra +5k isn't exactly stealing you games you shouldn't be winning. This causes the second problem of Magenta, which is the fact the window of opportunity to play it is so slim. While yes, its still a usable card past turn 4 in being able to chain Darks, it feels like a waste not to have it on turn 2 since that means you wouldn't be enabling any turn 3 plays, which is arguably the main reason why anybody would want to run this card. Furthermore, by including this additional order in your deck, you're dampening your early game even harder, as if you have both Magenta and Oath in hand early, you are essentially holding two dead cards until you can play them, leaving you susceptible to rush which is the deck's biggest weakness. Basically, Magenta isn't a very good card – it's one with tons of potential, especially thanks to its unique function and payoffs that no other cards in Thegrea can replicate, but every time I give this card another chance to prove its worth in my builds, I'm just always underwhelmed by its performance and think that the deck can function perfectly fine even without it. And usually, the deck ends up better that way as well.

Version 11.3

The other major brand-new cards for Thegrea came in D-BT07: Raging Flames Against Emerald Storm, that being Divine Sister, Languedechat and Wayward Therapy Angel.

Languedechat (who henceforth shall be Langue) was an amazing card for Thegrea in this build, as fulfilling the conditions to make her a 15k attacker/booster was part of the innate strategy of the deck and could be done as early as turn 3 thanks to Yung Driller. While you wanted to G1 Maple to boost your restanding columns, you wanted to put Langue behind your other columns to add another stage of guard to your already beefy attackers. Combined with Oath, you were essentially giving your front row +30k, which was nothing to scoff at. Plus, if you needed her to be an attacker, you could just push her up and she was a 15k beater to receive your 15k Persona Ride. No matter where she was on the field, she would get power and be useful.

Then, there's Wayward Therapy Angel (who henceforth shall be Wayward) who was run primarily to turn discard costs into break evens and to have another solid booster that could stick around since both Spain and G1 Maple miraged themselves for their skills. While the ratio of how many Wayward to be used can be debated, if you ran between the amount of 2 and 4, you were probably fine. The main drawback of Wayward was being locked to turn 3, so I personally opted to run only 2 since you only really needed her once you started Persona Riding. Her soulblast cost was also handy in getting G1 Maple out of soul, though this play was only really useful on turn 3 specifically – if you did this on turn 4, you'd have to wait for your next turn to be able to revive her.

While the new cards did help strengthen Thegrea, it still wasn't enough to fix her, as she still had the same glaring weaknesses as before in the lack of early game and being susceptible to rush. As such, Thegrea barely made a dent in the set 8 meta, and barely saw any play from me either. I tried out other new generic cards Ket received such as Cairbre and Cadwalla, but they just didn't really fit in the deck or meshed with the other cards that well – Cairbre was just a bit too expensive for what he did and his call targets weren't the best, and while I liked Cadwalla, fulfilling his skill's condition was difficult at times, especially if you wanted to use him early game to dig. It finally felt like Thegrea's growth was stagnant and that she would need more than just a spoonful of cards to support her.

Little would I know that the next wave of Thegrea support would revolutionise the deck forever...

D-BT11: Clash of the Heroes

Oh boy. Where do I even begin with this.

Easily the most impactful wave of direct support Thegrea has received so far despite it only two cards, D-BT11: Clash of the Heroes drastically changed the deck's strategy while also raising the ceiling even higher on its win-con, all with a single card—Epee De Justice, Thegrea.

Epee De Justice, Thegrea (who henceforth shall be Justice) is Thegrea's blazing third form, a fiery special attack that enables a brand-new, never-before-seen mechanic in any Vanguard deck: Double Persona Ride.

It makes sense, considering Thegrea is the Persona Ride deck, and the concept of doing it twice is genuinely unique and interesting. While a simple idea, it's extremely powerful in execution, especially in conjunction with Oath, turning what is normally a +20k and draw 2 into a devastating +30k and draw 4. This gave Thegrea one of the strongest late games out of all Vanguard decks, as if she could survive until turn 4, she could unleash one of the most lethal and deadliest payoffs ever seen in this game.

At the same time, the draw 4 was also a brand-new problem for Thegrea, as it essentially put you on a five-turn timer to kill, otherwise you would lose via deck out. The pace at which you'd go through your deck was extremely fast, to the point that it was in your favour to only put Dark from deck to soul once and use the rest as discard fodder, as even though it was more "correct" to keep putting excess Darks to thin the deck, you would only just be speeding up towards your own demise if you did.

Justice's introduction also meant that the number of grade 3s Thegrea had to run was considerably cut down – it was entirely possible to play the deck with just 4 Justice and 1 of each Light and Dark, since Justice acted as a bridge between your forms to ride them from soul. Of course, this strategy wasn't recommended since losing that single copy of Dark would ruin your entire game plan, but the general sentiment was that Thegrea didn't have to play so many bricks anymore... or so you'd think.

See, while this gimmick is very strong, a lot of its payoff is also dependent on Oath. This is easily the biggest weak point of the card, as not only did it mean you were still essentially running 8 grade 3s (4 Justice, 2 Dark, 2 Oath at bare minimum – you could go down to 1 Dark, 1 Oath but that's just playing with fire), but not finding Oath severely weakened the deck's strength and efficacy. Suddenly, it became a priority to play Oath in your deck and find it by turn 3 so you could reap the full benefits of Double Persona Ride. Part of this necessity was due to Justice's skill, as it costed a discard, meaning the only way you could plus off it was by getting an extra card off Oath's skill, otherwise you were only breaking even. Luckily, Bushiroad had the foresight to see how important this Order would become for her deck, and printed Thegrea a dedicated searcher that could tutor both Oath and Magenta: Retrospective Dragon.

But we won't talk about him now. He'll get his own separate section. Later.

I have opinions about this card.

Anyways, back to Justice – another downside of the card is that it binds itself after you Persona Ride using her skill. This was detrimental to Thegrea as it essentially removed your ability to loop with Maple and Spain since you no longer had grade 3s in soul to switch in and out. Before, it was fine since you could use excess copies of Light and Dark, but now that you were only running 1 Light, you had to keep it in soul, meaning the only way you could loop was either finding multiple Yung Drillers or on turn 5 after you put two Dark into soul via Justice. But even then, it would be too little too late, as your deck would slowly be bleeding out to death, so it was mostly pointless. As a result, Maple's value in Thegrea greatly diminished, reducing her role to basically a free recursive grade 2, much like in other Ket decks that used her. Occasionally the second skill would pop up if the opportunity struck for it, but generally you continued playing her just for the free body.

It's honestly quite a shame that Bushiroad designed Justice this way. While I understand that binding itself was to follow the theming of the other new CCE grade 3s, as they all bound their original versions for cost (inverted for Thegrea as she still used her original versions), the deck would've run so much smoother if Maple could grab Justice from soul, since that would keep Maple's usage intact while also making Persona Riding far more consistent. Even with draw for turn, a subsequent draw 4 off Double Persona, and even 2 (or 3 if on Dark) drive checks, sometimes you'll still just randomly miss finding 1 of your potential 7 Persona Ride targets and die because of it since this deck completely hinges on getting it off. And to be honest, I don't even think it would be necessarily broken if Maple could fetch Justice either, as Thegrea is still a turn 4 deck even after all this time.

That's right, the deck still had no form of early game. This support only made her late game better, but it didn't fix either of Thegrea's problems, that being: firstly, getting a proper Persona Ride searcher (I'm looking at you, Freiheit), and secondly, her non-existent early game. If you were bum-rushed, there was very little you could do about it except guard for your life and pray you won't die – alternatively, you could lose the dice roll and are forced to go second, eating a disgusting turn 4 while your hand was on like 5 cards. The best you could do in terms of early game for Thegrea was call down her grade 2s like Maple and Retro for an early push, but even then, one trigger would shut it all down, and your grade 3 turn was still the same as ever, and it was still just as pathetically vanilla as before.

Unfortunately, while Justice had some real potential promise in giving Thegrea an actual turn 3 by activating Persona Ride, either by riding a Thegrea put into soul via Yung Driller or using Magenta to put Justice over Light, the idea fell through hard in actual playtesting as it was just far too resource intensive. Not to mention, due to its reliance on finding a specific combination of pieces, it was an extremely high roll play to get off too. You had to open the nuts to get it off without feeling like you crippled yourself, especially since the deck was now plastered in discard costs – put a pin in that, we'll get back to it later.

I think Bushi half expected us to not care about this because of how big our hand gets late game, but what they failed to realise was all the cards that ask for discarding work best or only before we can Double Persona Ride and draw 4. And considering how many pieces Thegrea now wants to see to pop off, the deck became a combo deck where drawing into a god hand was more bricky than drawing into a bad hand on purpose since it meant you had actual discard targets. Nothing hurts more than having to discard a PG since you needed better offence (something I've unfortunately had to do on multiple occasions just so I could field a card that wasn't a trigger on board).

Version 16.0

For once, a version that ends in a clean zero.

The game plan is simple – it's Thegrea as she's been so far, except you can now Double Persona Ride via Justice, making her your main ride target, and your main soulblast outlets for G1 Maple are now Wayward and Spiral Cutie Angel (who henceforth shall be Spiral Cutie/Soltriel).

Being introduced in just the set prior, D-BT10: Dragon Masquerade, Spiral Cutie helped the deck massively by being able to refund herself when you discarded her for Ride Deck cost with a single soulblast. Since the deck had suddenly gained a huge amount of discard costs via Justice and Retro, being able to relieve some of that burden while setting up G1 Maple in drop made the deck feel less taxing to play. In addition, her second skill was also deceptively good in Thegrea, especially since the deck doesn't counterblast that much. The condition to Persona Ride was basically non-existent since that was Thegrea's entire gimmick, so you could freely use any excess damage for Spiral Cutie's skill to plus your hand (at the risk of bringing yourself closer to deck out, mind you), but more importantly, stack the deck with triggers. Stacking triggers is actually insane in Thegrea, since due to how big her columns get, you could outright steal games by confirming a crit on top and then ripping it, putting it on your strongest column (which usually was around ~53k thanks to G1 Maple) to essentially demand a PG or die from your opponent.

We're on Idosfaro (who henceforth shall be Blue oT) because he's an over glorified critical trigger, and flipping yellows win you the game. Grabbing PGs from drop too is nice, and considering how much the deck can fill the drop with random crap due to the sheer amount of discarding we have to do, being able to randomly salvage a piece is very useful.

Admittedly, when going back to look at my different builds, it was hard to find a "best" version of the deck from this era. Part of this was because I was heavily on the G1 Maple-G2 Maple ride line back then, which I now disagree with, and part of this was because of Retrospective (who shall henceforth be Retro).

This version felt the most accurate as to what I'd consider the best version of the deck from this time – there's a few contenders for other cards that can be included, such as Spain, Feli, Cairbre, Cadwalla, Transphere, and even Mine as Your Country's Foundation (a Blitz Order that Ket got in the same set) as a 1-of. However, just because this is what's arguably most optimal, it honestly wasn't the way how I played Thegrea, mainly because... sigh.

I guess its time to address the dragon shaped elephant in the room.

For a lot of my testing, I simply preferred running 3 Oath and 0 Retro. Call me crazy, but I swear there is logic to this madness. Let's systematically dissect just how bad of a card Retro is for Thegrea.

In theory, Retro's first skill should be everything that Thegrea wants: a SB outlet to put G1 Maple in drop and a way to search Orders to reduce the amount we need to run. While it is true he can achieve both, the real issue comes from the discard cost attached to it. While it's meant to prevent Thegrea from plussing by making it a wash, it severely weakens her early game by worsening your hand if you choose to call him on turn 2. Most of the time, you're probably going to be adding Oath to hand since it's an integral part of Thegrea's strategy, but by doing so, you are essentially telling the opponent that you have a brick in your hand that can't be played until your next turn. If you choose Magenta, you can get around this, but to not go minus, you'll have to pay an additional CB1, making the total cost CB1 and SB1 all for a wash. In addition, because of the piece heavy nature of Thegrea, you're most likely discarding a trigger for this, putting you down by 15k shield. Your defence that was already thin is spread even thinner, so while Retro fixes one issue of the deck, he massively exacerbates another issue elsewhere.

That's not all though – the other issue of Retro's first skill is that all excess copies of him become completely dead cards the moment you have Oath in hand. Of course, this can vary depending on the deck build, with some players opting to run one Magenta as a tech that can be searched out by him, but in general most decks just ran the two Oath, as that was all you really needed. This mean that, once you used his skill, Retro just became an over glorified vanilla everywhere. On field, he was just a 10k body to carry Thegrea's Double Persona Ride and nothing else. In hand, you were encouraged to discard him for Justice since he added nothing else to your game plan past this point. In deck, drawing him or finding him in your drive checks felt like the worst thing in the world because he was a dead card. Technically, he does have a second skill, but it's so laughably bad, it might as well not be there, especially considering it only gets any sort of value during Light turns by restanding him to attack twice (and thus proc the skill twice), but even then you only go back to her on turn 5, which is super late game. There's a good chance either you or the opponent is dead by then. This almost paradoxical existence of Retro is my biggest issue of him – due to how important Oath is to the deck now thanks to Justice, you're encouraged to run four Retro to maximise consistency of getting the Order, but the moment you have it in hand, all extra copies of him become dead on arrival. Your deck is actively bricked by a unit that does nothing for your game plan whatsoever except adding the Order and putting G1 Maple in drop, a job that can also be achieved by a variety of cards like Spain, Spiral Cutie, or Wayward. This self-expiration date that was baked into Retro's kit was especially infuriating in play testing, since the number of times I opened Oath naturally in my starting hand when running this card is genuinely astounding. And obviously, because Oath is so pivotal to your game plan, you're not going to shuffle it back just to use Retro, so the only way you can get any use of him is to ditch the Order to grab your second copy, deck thinning in the process. But even then, it's a somewhat questionable play, since having one less card in deck is probably something you don't really want when you can so easily deck yourself out by literally just breathing. I've played hundreds, if not thousands, games with Thegrea, and like a bad omen, whenever I give Retro a chance to prove his worth, I just open Oath and he becomes rendered completely useless. I am totally aware that this is technically anecdotal evidence, and that I have been extremely lucky in opening a 2-of, but even when I did manage to get his skill off, the same issue just persisted for the other 3 copies of him – they became worthless to me. The only benefit to this is that it made Retro a great discard fodder for Justice, but in general it just doesn't feel good to use a card with no purpose or skill, especially when it's designed with planned obsoletion the moment it finishes its sole job. This was the main reason why I cut Retro completely and started running a slightly higher Order count, since there's actually a decent chance I can naturally draw into Oath by running it at 3 copies without a need for a searcher, and getting rid of Retro also freed up slots to run better cards that are active at different points of the game, rather than be a one and done pump chump.

This issue of Retro's uselessness after being placed could've been avoided if his second skill was any good, but it is complete and utter ass. It stinks. It's awful. You can tell from its design alone that Bushi has zero clue what Thegrea needs or wants. Honestly, it's the type of skill you'd expect on a pack filler card, so I have no idea how it ended up on Retro, who is a god damn RR. The skill is question is at the end of battle he attacks you can retire one rear-guard to give 5k to a unit with Glitter. It's so unbelievably weak and doesn't help Thegrea achieve anything – it doesn't make up for any discard cost or plus you in any way, instead it encourages you to lose more cards by retiring your rear-guards (something we weren't even doing anyways under Dark unless we were dire to snipe a key rear-guard), it doesn't give himself power but instead to only a handful of legible units (i.e. just Thegrea and Maple), and the amount he gives out is a measly 5k despite the fact it's a -1 – you'd think it would at least be 10k if you're going to go minus on it. The cost is terrible, and the payoff is somehow even worse. He could've at least did something else for such a steep cost, like drawing 1 to convert field to board like Spain. Hell, I would've even taken selective removal, botdeck or hard retire. Now, I am aware that the point of the skill is to remove Maples on board so you can recur them, but it's honestly completely unnecessary and pointless to do it with Retro because you'd rather intercept with the G2 Maple to make use of her 5k shield, and G1 Maple retires herself at the end of turn anyways if you use her restand skill. The only time this second skill ever becomes useful is exactly on turn 5 when you go into Light, as you can restand him to use his skill twice – once on the G1 Maple to make her an 18k booster to buff his column is a very roundabout way (but only on the second swing since this an end of battle skill), and once more on the G2 Maple that should be in your other front row, turning her from 40k (which is a 2 trigger block) to a 45k swing (which forces an extra card at minimum). Admittedly, when using the skill this way, it's quite nice, but needing to reach such a ridiculous turn requirement just to use it is still a kick in the teeth. Retro has a second skill – it's not a good one by any means – but he has one that may occasionally see use if you go deep enough into the late game for it. And that's if you even still have him in hand by turn 5, since there's a good chance you would've guarded with him earlier just so you could reach that turn in the first place.

All of this is to say, Retro sucks. He sucks to the point I had a better time cutting him from deck and just praying to God to draw the Order rather than use him to search it out. He sucks so much I actively fear the thought of having to run another Cosmo Dragon in Thegrea.

With everything considered, even with all the problems I picked out from the deck, I do think Thegrea is in a much, much way better position than she was in D-BT08 thanks to this new support. While she's still not meta, with just a single card, she has managed to expand her win-con so much that there's a real argument to be made that she has the best late game out of any D era deck. Justice is awesome, and a much-welcomed addition to the deck, giving us a signature mechanic that no other decks have, making Double Persona Ride uniquely Thegrea's playstyle. Despite all my moaning about the issues in the deck, like Justice binding herself, or my never-ending beef with Retro, or how I find it annoying that Oath has become an essential component for the deck's game plan, the core gameplay loop of Thegrea is genuinely fun and stronger than ever, meaning that the current issues can fixed through other means in the future. And yes, drawing 4 each turn is a drug – assuming no triggers, of course. (But let's be real, there's a good chance 3/4 of those cards will be triggers, and your Twin Drive will just come up with blanks, making you wonder what the hell happened here.)

Now, can we get that Persona Ride searcher already? If Welstra can get one, so can we!

Second Promo

Huh, looks like we got that searcher already. Kind of. With a very big caveat...

Oh boy, where do I even begin with this one too?

Knight of Evil Slash, Meyrig (also known as Meyrigby or just Rig) is part of the second wave of promos for the CCE units, this time centred around activating their new forms on turn 3, as currently they were all turn 4 locked (except for Thegrea, but we'll get to that). Meyrig as a standalone card is great – she helps with getting to Justice more consistently, can be played as early as turn 1 for rushing or a Vanguard booster before using her skill (assuming you're not fighting a deck that has removal), and most importantly, allows us to use Justice on turn 3 without overcommitting. While she does suffer the same problem as Retro – essentially being a vanilla card outside of turn 3 – her skill still has use cases beyond turn 2/3, such as after doing Double Persona, you can use Meyrig's skill to put both a Dark and Justice in soul, enabling Maple to use her skill to secure Justice that way. While this is a very roundabout way of doing things, its essentially the closest thing Thegrea has to a Persona Ride searcher which is one of the biggest things I've wanted since the deck was made. Plus, considering grade 1 options for Thegrea don't stretch beyond Spain, Wayward, and maybe Solda, its super easy to find space to include Meyrig, especially since she doesn't conflict with the grade 2s, which is where most of Thegrea's card quality lies.

Meyrig has two issues – the first is more minor, that being her cost is binding herself instead of going to soul like the other CCE promos. This isn't crippling or anything, it's just annoying since we lose out on gaining one of Thegrea's main resources (soul) and the fact it's anti-synergistic with Maple. If Meyrig could go to soul, you could soulblast it via Maple to add back a G1 put into soul via Yung Driller (most likely a PG), or, if you have multiple copies of Meyrig there, soulblast one out to add the other to hand so you had a constant stream of superior riders. (I guess we'll just overlook the fact that Eva can literally loop her promo because it revives itself like a rip-off G1 Maple, but whatever, Meyrig was made before the immigrant officer, so Bushi must've changed their tune real quick on decks abusing their superior rider.) While it's an inconvenience at most, the anti-synergy does sting, especially considering Bushi seems pretty adamant of putting Maple out of a job in Thegrea. I mean, Justice also binds herself when she would have been just fine staying in soul too. To be honest, it's almost like they don't want this deck to have consistency, which I find weird and nonsensical. Maple is a Thegrea support card, let her... oh I don't know, use the skill made to make Persona Riding easier? However, this problem pales in comparison to the real issue with Meyrig.

It's the fact she needs your opponent to be on a grade 3 vanguard. Considering the promos are meant to let the CCE decks access their special attack forms on turn 3, Meyrig essentially fails at this function at least 50% of the time by virtue of needing you to go second. This hurts Thegrea a lot, as this forces her – an already slow deck – to blind second, otherwise you risk locking yourself out of doing anything meaningful on turn 3, a problem that has constantly plagued the deck since its inception. This also makes the deck far more volatile to the whims of the dice roll, so even if you do win and get to go second, it still feels rough as you're giving your opponent the ability to go first –a huge advantage as they're now able to burst on turn 3 against a G2 vanguard or get to Persona Ride first, allowing them to start pushing for game before we have a chance to really play.

However, while there are considerable downsides to this, being forced to go second or bust isn't the complete end of the world – Stride and Masque decks also prefer to go second due to the advantage they gain from their opponents being on grade 3, and quite famously three Stride decks have been meta despite this inherent drawback. Of course, I acknowledge Messiah and most Masque decks aren't that great either, but the point is that you can still be a good deck even when forced to go second – you just need to massively shore up your early game to make up for that glaring weakness instead. Similarly, going second has one huge benefit – being aggressive straight from the get-go. Another famous example of a blind second deck is Luticia, who preferred it so she could rush down the opponent and punish other decks for having a slower tempo than her. With all this mind, Meyrig's major weakness doesn't sound that bad, right?

Well... that seems to be the case until you read the other promos the CCE units received. Put simply, Meyrig is a black sheep when compared to her peers. Firstly, she's the only one with only one skill, with the others having at least one extra skill that gives them some form of utility outside their superior ride function. Secondly, she's the only one who has this opponent must be on grade 3 restriction. It's ridiculous that Thegrea doesn't even get the same quality promos as the others – and for what reason? At the very least, if Bushi's fear was giving Thegrea bigger columns, they could have made her get shield like Rorowa's promo (who was released at the same time) to help us guard in the early game. Now, while I think this is a completely unfair situation, there is a line of logic as to why Meyrig was made this way compared to the rest – I don't agree with said logic, but it's enough to make me believe this is why Bushi decided to shaft Thegrea like this.

One reason could be because Thegrea's entire gimmick is Persona Ride, and Bushi has made it resoundingly clear that they don't want anyone Persona Riding turn 3 outside of going second, like the Masque decks. As such, to keep Thegrea in line with this design philosophy, they locked Meyrig behind the same conditions. This seems plausible due because one of the caveats that all the other promos have (except Meyrig) is that they prevent you activating the special attack form's Persona Ride if you went first. They likely realised that slapping the same condition would be useless to Thegrea, since all Justice does if you ride her during the main phase is facilitate Persona Ride (after all, her other skill only procs in the ride phase) – and at that point, it would've just been better to make Meyrig a Magenta but as a rear-guard, so you could use Dark on turn 3 but without the Persona Ride power.

However, I am sceptical of this reasoning for one main reason: Thegrea already had the ability to Persona Ride turn 3 going first. I had alluded to this earlier, so allow me to explain. There are two ways you can Persona Ride turn 3 – the first is putting Justice in Ride Deck and putting a Thegrea (Light or Dark, doesn't matter) into soul via Yung Driller – or blind soulcharge if you're a gambling freak – and using Justice's skill to Persona Ride it from soul. The second is utilising Magenta – you find it turn 2 with Retro, play it, and on turn 3, after using Light's skill to get some board advantage, fire off Magenta and ride Justice from hand. From there, you use Justice to Persona Ride Light from soul, allowing you to use her skill again (and probably whiff, let's be honest). However, both these plays are extremely highroll in their nature, as you need to see a lot of specific pieces moving into the right place to pull it off. And for all that hard work, you get to draw 2 cards and give your front row 15k going first, a payoff which isn't just strong enough to justify it. While it does give you a good push on turn 3 (25k attacks against a 10k Vanguard is magic numbers to be fair), it leaves you extremely vulnerable due to the number of resources you need to invest to pull it off.

However, it is for exactly this reason – Thegrea already being able to use her special attack form on turn 3 going first – that I think Bushi elected to design Meyrig the way she is. I think, in Bushi's mind, the way you build Thegrea is to run 4 Retro and play 1 copy of each Order to play on turn 2 and 3 respectively (the number of pieces you discard for these shieldless bricks be damned). From there, if you're going first, you can fire off Magenta to do your turn 3 Persona Ride (blatantly ignoring the fact this means you need to find another Justice or Meyrig to follow up Persona Ride otherwise your deck dies – again, this could be easily solved if Maple could add back Justice from soul) or, if you're going second, you can use Meyrig to turn 3 Persona Ride instead, saving Magenta for turn 4 so you can do a back-to-back Dark play (again, blatantly ignoring you need a copy of Dark in hand, which in turn implies that you've diluted your hand with at least two G3s – one Justice for Double Persona and Dark to chain – even though you need defence to survive until this point).

When put this way, it just seems obvious why Meyrig was handled so differently compared to the other promos – not only is Bushi afraid of Persona Ride turn 3 going first (something that Thegrea already established isn't even that strong due to all the investment you need in her deck for it) but they're also using it as reasoning to lock Meyrig behind this vitriolic restriction. Once again, Thegrea can't have nice things apparently.

Now, putting aside of all my problems with her (or rather, the other CCE promos) for a second, I do appreciate what Meyrig brings to the deck quite a lot. While she could be much better – like being on par with her peers for a start – working going second definitely fixes one of Thegrea's major weaknesses... that being, well, going second. As a turn 4 deck – especially one that wants to Persona Ride – going second was like a death sentence for us since we needed to fire off Persona Ride as soon as possible to do anything. However, with Meyrig in deck, this has completely flipped our priority, making us actively want to go second. This is a double-edged sword, as while it completely erases one issue, it certainly makes us weaker in another. However, I'd rather be weaker going first (since we can still Persona Ride quicker) than going second, especially in a slow deck like Thegrea.

Divinez

Now, I am not lying when I say Thegrea has gotten the biggest glow up she has ever had from the Divinez era. It's genuinely crazy how much she's grown as a deck just from just two and a half sets and a festival booster – this is partially because of the higher frequency of generic cards that Bushi has been printing recently as part of their cycle series in each nation, and partially because she is one of the few decks with a strong enough late game that is capable of burning through the extra-large hands that the brand new Divinez decks can produce. This strength in her core game plan, along with the fact her main gameplay loop is self-contained, means you can boil down the main cards that facilitate her deck to a "package" and fill the rest of the slots with these powerful generics, allowing Thegrea to vulture cards that help cover up her weaknesses.

In fact, for the first time in a very long time, Thegrea has gotten tops in Japan in the Divinez format – while these aren't impressive top 8 finishes – they are pretty damn close, with the highest placement being 11th place. So, the potential of Thegrea's status as rogue is definitely there, and with the addition of cards in DZ-SS01 and DZ-BT03, there's a real chance that she could become a legitimate meta contender.

While I would go ahead and show the deck as it is currently, the deck has changed so much between even the main sets that I feel it's worth talking through all of them to show just how much of an impact Divinez has had on Thegrea. There are more choices than ever before, and each version highlights the advantages of everything I've tested out for her.

Version 18.8

Coming right off the heels of the Shiranui and Luard meta, DZ-BT01: Fated Clash marks the first and small step that Thegrea takes in her slow evolution to become a legitimate threat in the meta. Even though we only use one new card from the set – Divine Sister, Biscotti – it's the changes that have happened to the game rules itself starting from Divinez that have helped Thegrea reclaim a potential spot in the meta.

The change in question is the increase to deck size – instead of having the Ride Deck count towards the 50 cards total, it is now counted separately, bumping the main deck from 46 to 50 cards. While a difference of 4 cards may seem small or even insignificant at first, the extra cards help in preventing us from decking out as fast. By having more cards to work with, the burden of potentially hitting deck out via Double Persona, Dark drives, and Light thinning is severely reduced too, plus it also reduces our likelihood of us hard drawing into Dark, a true Garnet in Thegrea – she becomes a dead card outside of deck (unless you're desperate to ride her or tactically doing so) as you to put copies of her into soul via Justice. You also gain extra space to play cards that can assist our early game too. Previously, you would find it difficult to make room for non-engine, since the core package is now quite large, but these extra slots give us that much needed breathing room to fit in any cards that can provide a more solid foundation for our game plan.

For example, our early game has improved massively thanks to a mixture of cards – the biggest addition to the deck is Cerrgaon, a promo that is basically a nation-wide buff to all Keter Sanctuary decks. Cerrgaon (who henceforth shall be Doggo) is absolutely cracked, busted beyond relief, able to become a 13k booster early to prevent easy trigger guarding and converting itself from field to hand through selective draw to both make sure you have defence after aggroing, as well as to dig through your deck deeper for any pieces you might be missing. Sometimes, you can just straight up win games off the back of resolving as many Doggos as possible early since the opponent just doesn't have the same power and resources you gain from using so many of him on turn 1-2. Doggo's condition of needing more rear-guards than your opponent can also be met fairly easily thanks to Spain and Cairbre. In fact, turn 1 going second, putting down any number of Spain, Doggo, and Meyrig to rush the opponent and converting them back into hand is a super powerful play for Thegrea. In particular, the Doggo-Spain combo is very powerful, earning itself the nickname of Mastiff, named after the Spanish dog. What you typically do is call down a column of Spain in front and Doggo behind it turn 1, attack with them, use Doggo's skill to convert it, then next turn, move Spain back, call something in front of her, and do the same thing. While this does leave Spain vulnerable to being attacked before turn 2, its honestly to your benefit if they go after her to deny you a draw (and a way to SB G1 Maple) since it basically acts like a taunt – drawing aggro away from your Vanguard, which in turn dissuades your opponent from attacking you, helping you survive to turn 3/4. After all, Thegrea doesn't want to be rushed, so being able to take off some of that pressure is always appreciated.

And, if they do decide to aggro you, making you have no other choice but to take excess damage, you can punish your opponent with Cairbre. Before, he wasn't very good in Thegrea since a lot of your previous targets weren't that good, but since we're now running better units, Cairbre's functionality has greatly improved. You can much easier build a board on turn 2, and finding either Spain or Doggo off his skill is just straight gas for the deck. Not to mention, if you find Oath off his top 3, you can add it to hand, meaning there is almost no wasted searches using his skill. Still, his cost is a bit steep, but thanks to G1 Maple, the first time you use his SB cost is essentially a write off, as you can use his skill to put her into rotation, giving you a delayed plus. This also means that he and Spain are your main SB outlets in the deck, so its highly recommended to try and mull for either of them in your starting hand. Of course, his value diminishes when you're on Light as they both superior call, so I only run him at 3 copies – you mainly want to have Cairbre for your turn 2 push/counter or when you're on Dark and need ways to refill board.

The real star of the show is Biscotti (who henceforth shall be Brisket). Brisket is an incredible card for Thegrea as she's basically Spiral Cutie but uses Energy instead. Energy is a brand-new resource introduced in Divinez, and as such, none of the cards we currently run cost it, meaning that whenever you use Brisket's skill, it's basically free. And, if you do find yourself inexplicably short on energy, you can always just use counterblast instead, which is another resource that Thegrea rarely uses to proc her skills. Like Spiral Cutie, her ability to replace herself after discarding her for Ride Deck cost helps a lot in reducing the burden of discard, and since it also procs when you guard with her, it extends her longevity beyond those initial 3 turns. However, most of Brisket's value actually lies in her other skill, which is basically Cairbre's skill fused with Spiral Cutie's, letting you scry 3 to either call a rear-guard or stack your deck with one of those cards. So, not only do you have more ways to fill board on Dark turns, letting you preserve hand cards and thin deck a bit more to hit triggers, but she can also guarantee triggers or even PGs by putting them on top. Like I explained before with Spiral Cutie, securing triggers in Thegrea is devastating for your opponent as her columns get so big. In addition, because of the increased grade 1 count, your columns go beyond 40k more often, so that extra 8k (or 13k if you're boosting with Doggo) becomes quite impactful, as it demands an extra 10k shield from the opponent when they're guarding the attack. A single trigger will increase that demand by another 15k, so you can see why this can get out of hand very quickly.

Finally, we're using one Bracing Angel Ladder – a Regalis Piece. This is of course to counter Shiranui so you have an actual chance of possibly winning, but it's also neat in other ways outside of that match up. It gives you more soul, a resource that can run out very quickly since you now essentially only have 3 of it (G0, G1, and G2) and if you're running Maple, you can soulblast it out to add a Light/Dark to hand (thought that will also depend on what your build looks like). Although, I personally don't think I would use this outside of Shiranui meta, but it's nice that it has ways to be used outside it, like the +5k to Vanguard making Dark turns more dangerous to navigate if the opponent doesn't have PGs.

Version 20.8

Once more, the deck has changed starting with DZ-BT02: Illusionary Strife. The card that has updated the deck this time is Obligator Dragon— wait, is that a Cosmo Dragon?

So, as you can tell, seeing another Cosmo Dragon that searches for Orders by discarding one definitely gave me a jump scare, but it's another way of finding Oath that wasn't Retro, so I (begrudgingly) had to give it a try. In this variation, I replaced Spain with Obligator, and to make up the number of soulblasters in this deck, I slotted back in Spiral Cutie (now Soltriel, the alt art version of her). In Japan, using 8 cyclers in Thegrea is popular, and I've also done it myself a couple times – yes, admittedly, it does feel good to have so much consistency in turning all the discards into washes, but I think in general 8 cyclers (in any deck) is a little over excessive. These are great cards, don't get me wrong, but using 8 slots for this effect in specific feels like a waste, especially as the SB ones, as they're only active for a small portion of the game. However, I think it's more justifiable in this version since we do need a way to get G1 Maple out early, which Soltriel can cover, and another discard cost has been added to the deck via Obligator.

Okay, the real question is, why am I recommending Obligator? The card basically reads as Retro but as a G1, and is arguably worse considering he only works from hand, making finding him off Light or Cairbre a rough time, and he can't even clear himself off the board like Retro can via Intercept after he becomes a vanilla. And yes, all the above is true. However, there's one small reason why I prefer Obligator to Retro – and it's the fact he's a Grade 1.

Now, this might sound silly, but it genuinely makes a huge difference in the deck that he's not Grade 2. As established earlier, one of the best ways to have early game in Thegrea is through spamming Doggo, so being able to meet the requirement of having more rear-guards is very important. Sometimes, you just need to throw down another body turn 1 to get it going, so Obligator's grade makes him a suitable call choice here, even if you can't use his effect. Plus, because he's a vanilla, it's safe to throw him up front, as if the opponent attacks into him, you don't care whether he lives or dies. If the opponent goes after him, that's fine – he just got use there being a taunt protecting you from getting your face beat in with rush. And, if you do use him as intended – which is calling him turn 3 to dump Oath and play it – he just becomes a body that sticks around, which can both contribute to the number of rear-guards you have for Doggo, or, in a match against another Ket deck, force your opponent to commit more to board so they can make their Doggo active. Furthermore, Thegrea has a metric crap ton of good grade 2 options she could run – whittling down your choices and choosing which are the best to use without making it look like a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck with a bunch of 3-ofs is very difficult, so Obligator takes out a lot of that stress just from his grade. Plus, with him in deck, it makes it easy to knock out Retro from the competition, allowing you to run the 8 cyclers + Cairbre, which is a much stronger line up in my opinion. Finally, his most simple yet deceptively important function, is the fact he's a booster that sticks around. Both Doggo and Meyrig remove themselves for their cost, meaning you can't really use them reliably for this role, and like I mentioned earlier, the extra 8k forces out another 10k shield from the opponent, so I've started valuing having boosters more in Thegrea than just front row, as even though it's a small amount of power they're contributing, it makes a huge difference at shredding hand, especially in this format.

And, well... there's one more reason why Obligator is superior in Thegrea. But I wouldn't realise it until the next major build of the deck.

Version 21.4

Technically, while this deck does use a package from D-SS01: Festival Booster 2024, I would consider this still as a DZ-BT02 deck, as the cards I swapped out for it were 2 Soltriel and 1 Obligator (though technically its 4 Soltriel, as I was on a 4-2 split between her and Biscotti, but as the soulblast count was fulfilled by the new G2s, I put Biscotti back to 4). I'm just showing off this decklist because I also wanted to go over what potential applications of Divine Sister, Financier and A Chant of Charity that Fills the Church (also known as What a Friend We Have in the Lord) could have in Thegrea.

The biggest change in the deck is the inclusion of the Keter Order package in Thegrea for better early game. However, while this package would normally be 4 Forefront Knight, Teithfallt and 4 Wisdom of Beginning That Cleared the World (or Thaat), as you can see, we are only using 1 Wisdom. This is because using this card outside of turn 2 is basically suicide in Thegrea – not only is it bricky for your hand but burning through 6 cards from deck in one turn is just asking to be decked out. You just handing your opponent the win. However, thanks to Obligator, we can get away with just running one Wisdom, as he can be called on turn 2 and search for it, giving us access to that powerful early game push without bricking our deck. This is the real reason why Obligator is so good in Thegrea – not only does he grab us a key piece of our deck, Oath, but he also raises the ceiling of our turn 2 massively by letting us use Wisdom without any drawback. In addition, being able to use Wisdom this way means we can now use Teithfallt (who henceforth shall be Teith) in Thegrea, a card I wanted to use for a long time due to her skill to get +10k power to make Persona Ride turn 3 even more deadly, but I couldn't exactly justify using since she would be a vanilla outside of that. However, now that I'm using a Normal Order in Wisdom, I can now also use Teith's first skill, which is essentially just a better Cairbre since you scry 5 as opposed to 3. Also, because this skill costs a soulblast, she's another great outlet to dump G1 Maple into drop. I also must stress just how strong and easy her +10k skill is for Thegrea – getting 4 units on board is easy, since you'll have at minimum a full front row to take advantage of Double Persona, and G1 Maple to revive herself as a booster, which is the exact number of units you need. The additional 10k, combined with an 8k/13k booster, is simply unguardable for most decks, as it will make her column 58k/63k, which demands for 50k shield at minimum (not even including triggers). The sheer amount of power she generates also makes her an excellent restand target for Light, and swinging 63k twice when the opponent is at 4 or 5 damage is usually way more than enough to kill them. Teith is just good at all stages of the game, and her little synergies make her feel amazing to play in Thegrea – and all of this could only be enabled by Obligator being able to search more than just set orders.

This unfortunately does hinge on opening or finding Obligator by turn 2, so it's quite easy to potentially whiff and not soulblast. That's why I had 4 Soltriel in the original build, as she was my back up soulblast outlet. You might also be wondering, if Obligator is so crucial for your early game, then why not run it at 4? Or alternatively, why only run it at 2 copies? The explanation for this is quite simple – 4 is just too much. Because of his vanilla nature after you call him down, you don't want to get flooded by multiple copies of it. Plus, at minimum, you only need to see him on turn 3, so you don't need to max him out either. And, because the Wisdom play is entirely hand dependent – if you have two units ready to call for it, then you should go ahead and use it, especially if you have Teith as well – but if your hand is mostly triggers or you'd be betting on drawing into normal units to call via Wisdom, then it's better to just pass on the play and keep him in hand to search out Oath on turn 3. Now, running 3 copies is the sweet spot for cards like this, but due to his nature of being a searcher, there's always a chance you can randomly draw said Orders (a lesson I am well aware of thanks to Retro). As such, his "third" copies are the Orders themselves. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to find these cards through natural drawing, so only running 2 is a comfortable number for me – you see him enough that he bridges your consistency, but you don't see him so often that he inundates your hand with a bunch of dead cards.

Now, Financier and What a Friend We Have in the Lord are an intriguing set of cards. When they were revealed, I was really excited to include them as Financer was a soulblast outlet that worked anywhere without any conditions from where she was called from and had a solid effect that could justify her inclusion. The Set Order she came with was also interesting, as it was searchable with Retro (potentially giving him a second lease in life) but more excitingly, it was a defensive option, allowing us to have better ways to protect ourselves from rush, as well as a way to take make use of any low roll superior calls where you had no other choice but to bring out a trigger or PG. In specific, moving a PG to guard was extremely powerful, as it also got around any glory, sentinel, or Battledore restrictions that your opponent might try to impose on you. It also gave you a cushion to land back on if you took a risk with the Wisdom play too, as you could now gamble on drawing into another normal unit if you had at least one in hand to call already – if you got one, then that's great, but if not, and you could call a trigger and have What a Friend convert it into shield later, minimising a potential loss without sacrificing aggro. In general, there was little to no downsides when it comes to these cards, and I really like them – but if they're so useful for the deck, why did I choose to talk about them here instead of later along with the other Festival Booster cards?

Well, it was because they somehow didn't make it into the final cut of the deck. Surprising, I know. I thought for sure thought they were going to be a main stay too – but, little did I know, DZ-SS01 was about to contain even stronger cards for Thegrea...

And beyond the edge of that horizon line, was her final form.

Current Thegrea

Version 22.4

This is where we are today.

Twenty-two point three versions later, I finally have it.

In my hands.

The strongest Thegrea has ever been.

All my blood, sweat, and tears, all for this moment.

Let the klaxons sound out—

Thegrea has been solved.

As you can see, this deck looks nothing like how it did in 21.4 – it's been completely overhauled from top to bottom, starting from the Ride Deck all the way to its Grade 2 line up.

To be honest, this was far from how I imagined what the deck would look (and play!) like either, but honestly, after going through so many games with this version, I'm more than happy with how it turned out.

The way the deck works now is so vastly different from all previous incarnations of Thegrea in the past, it's almost like a complete 180 of her usual game plan. Instead of passively playing from turns 1 to 3 before being able to Double Persona Ride, we now play a super aggressive early game enabled by the brand-new additions to the deck: Rising Radiance Dragon, Blediarc, Cavalry Machine Impetuous Streak, Waltrossa and Laiel, and Exalted Dragon (technically Exalted is from D-BT03, but he's so good in Thegrea I have to include him here). This proactive approach of rushing down your opponent both not only takes advantage of needing to go second because of Meyrig, but it also pushes the opponent to higher damage early, which eases the necessity of finding Oath for draw power, since you won't really need to worry about late game if you can just win on your initial turn 3 Persona Ride. You can now legitimately threaten game that early, especially if your opponent is on 3-4 damage, as they'll have an exceedingly rough time guarding against not only against high-powered columns but a restanding Vanguard too. And, if they do try to guard early instead, it will come at a hefty cost to their hand, as the deck can create columns as early as turn 2 extremely easily, flooding the whole board with units while also keeping a healthy hand. This prevents the opponent from having easy 1 card guards to stop your attacks and can potentially force key pieces out of their hand if they want to survive, as against Thegrea, you'd rather eat the 40k+ columns on turn 4 than the 18k-23k columns turn 2.

The main star from all of this has got to be Rising Radiance Dragon, Blediarc (who henceforth shall be Jormal). Jormal is absolutely cracked and certified busted in Thegrea, being singlehandedly the best piece of support that we have ever received. Jormal is such an incredible card for a multitude of reasons, but the main one is the fact he turns all your discards into tax returns by removing himself from game with Energy (again, a resource we don't use, essentially making it free) to give you back the card you discarded. This is straight up broken in Thegrea due to the sheer amount of discarding we do, so being able to pay it off in other ways without losing any pieces is incredible – in the past, we would have to choose between sacrificing a piece or defence just to activate our skills, but in the age of Jormal, this painful choice is eliminated entirely. We can now freely discard anything for cost without fear of losing it, which is just an amazing feeling. In turn, this flexibility allows us to then play those cards we would've had to toss, leading to strong pushes that we weren't capable of before. Plus, if you discard him early, Jormal basically acts as a two-in-one discard, as he pays for the first discard with himself, then pays for another discard by removing himself again. However, if you go second – the exact thing Thegrea is trying to do – this isn't even the most optimal use for him, as if your grade is equal to or less than your opponent, he becomes 10k the turn he's called, allowing him to be a beater against a grade 2 vanguard, encouraging the rush playstyle. In addition, he lets you scry 1 and either top or botdeck it – while this seems like a small benefit, it's a huge boost for the deck's aggro, as you can now try to dig for a trigger and leave it on top to check early, which can be super punishing for your opponent since you're also tri-laning them. And because the skill is free, if you have multiple Jormals in hand, it's in your favour to call them all down for both this and the rush. Finding the trigger will also help push your attacks through even if your opponent hits defensives, and if you can find a crit, it near guarantees putting the opponent to 3-4 turn 1, and at that position, it's extremely hard for them to come back from that. This punishes your opponent if they discard a trigger for Ride Deck cost, since they have nothing good to guard with, and if they do, you shred their hand earlier so you can force your way through on your grade 3 turn. Not to mention, his tax return skill also works on rear-guard, so in a pinch, you can just remove him from field if you somehow don't have any good discard targets – and sometimes, you just want to do this on purpose, since it opens circles for you to call other cards or to get open circles for Waltrossa and Laiel's skill. Needless to say, this card is insane, and you'll want to try and mull for as many copies of him (and Doggo) in your opening hand as possible so you can tri-lane your opponent as early as turn 1. Now, while I would like to joke about how he's another Cosmo Dragon and how I had the fear of God put in me because of that, I can't help but feel like me testing out Obligator was somehow foreshadowing this – like the world forced me to mend my relationship with Cosmo Dragons through him before giving me the most busted Cosmo Dragon imaginable as a reward for getting over my cosmic sized trauma. And you know what, if that's the case, then I'm glad. Because Jormal is one of my favourite cards in this entire game.

The next insane card that Thegrea got is Waltrossa and Laiel (who henceforth shall be Valtrossa because I think its prettier that way), a dual nation card for Keter Sanctuary and Brandt Gate. It's kind of ironic she's using this combo, since Thegrea's mortal enemy Obscudeid uses the same nations, but the Keter Sanctuary and Stoicheia dual nation card is so laughably bad and near unusable in Thegrea it makes me think there really is an agenda against her or something. Anyways, the main reason we use Valtrossa is because she's basically Cairbre on steroids – not only does she scry 5 instead of 3, but she also costs less than him and lets you botdeck a card in drop as well, which is useful for sending back any stray Dark that have left the deck (which is the main reason we can now get away with only running 2 Dark now) or for increasing your deck size to prevent deck out. Plus, since we cut G1 Maple, the need for soulblast outlets is entirely unnecessary now, so Valtrossa's cheaper cost is very much welcomed, especially since it uses one of our expendable resources. Like how Cairbre worked in the deck, Valtrossa is here to build board early and to punish counter rush or aggression towards Thegrea by making use of any damage we take. One of the easiest ways we can create a board while maintaining hand is through Valtrossa, as you can convert any damage you ate into advantage, building a strong field presence that's facilitated by finding cards like Doggo, Jormal, and Maple off the top to build columns and rush with. This makes having multiple Valtrossa in hand very powerful too, since if your opponent tri-lanes you, you can take the three damage and then double Valtrossa them, keeping one damage open for Dark while also aggroing back without sacrificing hand. Unless the opponent has ways to build board without expending hand early, they'll usually have no choice but to take the damage, since they threw up most of their hand onto the field to get to that position. In addition, Valtrossa's skill also allows her to add any Orders she finds, making her our soft Oath searcher, since if we find it off the top, we can grab it through her. Although, sometimes, the better play is to just forgo Oath and call a unit to go harder on aggression, since the extra draw won't matter if you have a whole field, and the opponent is on their last legs anyways. Plus, with the rise of Hostage type decks which try to stall out the game by spamming PGs and being defensively bulky, Oath can become your own undoing due to the speed at which you're going through the deck. Valtrossa can also be an easy interceptor once you're done with her skill, similar to Yung Driller, so combined with Maple, you have at least 10k worth of shield on board to stop pokes and to help survive until turn 3/4.

Finally, the card that helped round out the deck is Exalted Dragon, a card from DZ-BT03: Dimensional Transcendence, and... another Cosmo Dragon with an effect that could help Thegrea? Once again, the fear of God was put in me. Now yes, I know, technically I'm cheating a little bit by putting him in since DZ-BT03 isn't technically out yet, but since the card was already revealed, I think its fine to talk about him. And wow, I was not expecting for this card to also work so well in this deck – I was genuinely impressed with Exalted's performance, especially since I was expecting him to be too clunky due to the grade 2 or greater restriction on his skill. After all, one of the reasons Wayward got cut despite mitigating discard costs was for a similar reason – she was a dead card up until turn 3, where by then you could finally call her. Exalted is different, as despite having the same skill, being live a turn earlier makes a huge difference, especially since we're starting to be more aggressive on turn 2 with Thegrea. Obviously, the biggest plus is the fact you can use him for Ride Deck cost starting from turn 2, since you now mitigate the cost with a soulblast while also fielding the card. Calling him on turn 2 also makes building your board for early game easier, as he can either act as a 10k poke or a 10k booster depending on your needs in the moment. Plus, fulfilling his condition to become a booster is super easy too, as Valtrossa (who you usually call turn 2 anyways) can turn it on with her superior call skill. In fact, Thegrea's core gameplay loop innately enables it, as the skills you usually do every turn such as Maple reviving herself, Light calling from top 5, and Justice riding a Light/Dark from soul, all satisfy his conditions, making him an extremely flexible card to keep on board. One of my favourite things to do is have him behind Maple, as if you intercept with her and your other front row rear-guard, you can revive Maple to the other column next turn and move Exalted up, refilling your front row without having to use any cards from hand. Exalted is also your best discard fodder for Light/Dark, as you can call him behind the restanding unit to give them a new booster. This is important because we don't use G1 Maple anymore, so when swinging with the restand target, unless you checked a trigger and put it on them, the number will be smaller than when you first attacked. Exalted gets around this, keeping your columns big without any sacrifice. This feels especially good if you boosted with either Doggo or Jormal, as Doggo removes himself to open the circle and Jormal doesn't mind being called over since you can still use his skill from drop. Now, I only run Exalted at 3 copies since seeing too many of him early can feel bricky (you don't discard as much as you do late game) and soul has become a limited resource now for Thegrea. The only way you can get it back in this deck is by using Justice to put excess any Thegreas from deck into soul, but typically you skip on that because you don't want to bring yourself closer to deck out.

The main reason why Thegrea is short on soul now is because of the brand-new ride line we're running for her – Player of the Lovely Harp, Adorphas and Player of the Beautiful Chord, Elegenia. This is also why we're not on G1 Maple anymore, as we're no longer using her in the ride line and finding space for her in the main deck is difficult – if you did want to include her, I would probably run a 3-1 split between G2 and G1 Maple (even then I'd rather run a fourth Meyrig using that slot), but honestly, with how much more consistently the deck can kill on turn 3 now, I don't really miss G1 Maple as much as I thought I would, especially because she's only live on turn 4. Plus, even if you wanted to keep her in, you wouldn't want to run too many copies of her in main deck anyways, but doing so would also make it harder to get her into rotation, so I just don't think it's worth running the 1-of just for a bit more ceiling. Anyways, as for why we're using Liael's ride line, the answer is quite simple – Adorphas is insane for this deck. While yes, Elegenia is a vanilla in Thegrea, so was G2 Thegrea if you whiffed the top 5 check – and while I do occasionally miss that random consistency bump, what Adorphas offers is way more valuable and concrete than a potential +1. Following the philosophy of going aggressive in the early game, Adorphas' draw 2 is essentially Wisdom's draw 2 but baked into the ride line – this is extremely powerful, as it means we don't have to run Obligator or any bricky orders for the play, but we still get the same payoff, and at a better rate, since Adorphas just asks for discard 1 rather than calling two units. However, thanks to the sheer number of cards we run to get around discard costs, Adorphas' drawback becomes non-existent in Thegrea as we were already using these cards anyways, and this can even turn into a positive if we have Exalted in hand. The real cost of Adorphas is the initial soulblast, since it means any Exalted you use later will turn off Maple, but you can get around it slightly by soulblasting the G0 and using Maple's skill before Exalted's skill since both Adorphas and Elegenia will be in soul to loop back a G3. Though, this play is unlikely to happen, since if you have Exalted, you'd get more advantage just by calling him, but it's something you can consider if you need to secure a G3 for next turn. Plus, using Maple would make her go to soul, and in that case, Exalted would be your main way to get her back into drop. Now, the reason why Adorphas' draw 2 skill is so good is because it digs deeper into your deck, helping you find more pieces to rush with on turn 2. The number of times I randomly draw into a Valtrossa or Doggo off her skill when I didn't have one in hand makes a huge impact on the aggro we can put out, and if you end up drawing triggers, you can use those pieces to protect yourself from counter rush or your opponent's initial grade 3 turn. In any case, regardless of whatever you get from Pot of Greed on legs, you can always make some use out of it – yes, even Dark, as she's the freest of free discards in the deck, since you want her in drop so you can return it back to deck with Valtrossa. Now, some people prefer to use Tranquilia and G2 Thegrea as the Ride Deck (also cutting G1 Maple altogether), which is fair since Tranquilia's skill can let you fetch a Doggo who is extremely powerful early game. While I get the vision and can respect it, I think the requirements for it is just too harsh (holding 3 cards with different grades will impact your ability to throw up hand and rush from turn 1) and if you don't call anything, your only way to make up for it by calling him from soul, which isn't ideal if you want to use Maple's skill. At least with Adorphas, even though it's a blind plus, you'll get more cards out of it, and there's zero chance of whiffing it or needing to reveal information to your opponent. Also, admittedly, one of the other reasons I like the Liael ride line in Thegrea is because I get to stare at Elegenia, and her art makes me feel things.

In general, this philosophy of using cards that will always be useful at any point of the game has really helped Thegrea out. The deck used to be extremely fragile due to its piece heavy nature, where you had to see full combo otherwise you would do nothing and lose. But now that we've made the switch to a main deck filled with cards that can operate on varying levels of the game, you feel like you're not wasting a single turn waiting around and sitting on your hands before popping off and exploding on turn 4 – something that all previous incarnations of Thegrea really struggled with. At the same time, this new version of Thegrea isn't so straightforward that playing it becomes repetitive, something I find is very common in other D decks – you rinse and repeat the same couple of steps, which just isn't fun to me. Due to there being no straightforward way to play Thegrea, I've had to innovate and come up with a way that best works with what tools we have available to us, meaning there's a lot of moving pieces we need to juggle, consider, and take care of when navigating the early game with just the cards you open with. It's super fun, plus the deck does become helmet eventually once you start Persona Riding (Persona Justice, revive Maple, Persona from soul, restand your attacker, repeat ad nauseum until everyone is dead and you have achieved vengeance) so you're not burning through brain cells every game, but it's nice being able to have a bit of both since I enjoy the stimulation that comes from figuring out what's the best board I can make with the cards I've been given. And if that hand is full of triggers, then it's a rough day.

Now, as for the weaknesses of the deck... it's first and main weakness is the fact you can deck out super easily, something that Thegrea has always struggled with since getting Double Persona Ride. Of course, you can limit this by not playing Oath, but it feels super rough since Double Persona essentially makes Oath give out +10k as opposed to +5k, which is quite a huge difference in terms of shield value needed to guard your swings. Not to mention, while the draw 4 will push you to the brink of death quickly, it's kind of a necessity to keep your hand healthy – the deck doesn't really have any other ways to draw cards outside of Doggo, since Oath does all that work for you. Remove it, and Thegrea's hand is significantly smaller. This ties into her second weakness, that being stall decks are her worst enemy – with the rise of Hostage decks, Thegrea's main win-con is severely neutered as all your ridiculously high-powered attacks get countered by a single PG. As such, you're basically playing on a timer where you will either win through sheer brute force (such as exhausting your opponent's PGs and other defensive options) or you will lose by decking yourself out. Valtrossa helps with this slightly, buying you another turn with her skill, but against a deck like Rezael or Luard, you kind of have no choice but to take the L since there's nothing much you can do except pray you'll catch them without a PG in hand. It's not impossible to win, but it's just not in your favour. While on the topic of bad matchups, Thegrea's only other bad one is Prison, since Purelight can just rip Light/Dark out of your soul and prevent you from bouncing between Persona Rides. You can get around this initially by just not using Exalted to soulblast Adorphas and Elegenia, then getting rid of them on the first Purelight proc, but beyond that you'll have to start relying on Justice putting excess Thegreas into soul to get around it. Likewise, winning isn't impossible, since you can still Double Persona Ride, but it does become significantly harder since you can no longer make a fourth attack – you're essentially the Ket version of Bavsargra, except with no fancy guard restrict. And lastly, Thegrea's third weakness is going first. It's super ironic, considering that in the past, Thegrea desperately wanted to go first since as her early game was abysmal, but with how strong Meyrig's skill is in giving the deck a real turn 3, going first can be quite detrimental to your game plan. You'll have to spend turn 3 as you have been before, and it's on those days you start reconsidering Magenta, which then leads you to start reconsidering Retro, which then leads to existential crises about Cosmo Dragons that search Orders at 4am. You can still win going first, but it just gives your opponent a major window of opportunity to kill or cripple you before you can. However, going first does have a few advantages – the first is being able to Persona Ride before your opponent. It may seem obvious, but being the prime Persona Ride spammers, we'll obviously get the most value out of being able to do it before our opponents. After all, we'll be able to Double Persona Ride straight from the bat, meaning all your attacks will hurt that little bit harder, especially if your opponent's sitting at 4-5 damage from all your aggro earlier. The second is Meyrig basically becomes a free card to discard early as you don't need her going first at all. The only times you'll need her going first is if you run into the emergency nightmare scenario of seeing no Justice, making it so you need her skill to bail you out, and if that happens, you were just unlucky. While it's no longer completely crippling to lose the dice roll, you'd still prefer to go second since being able to Dark on turn 3 is far more impactful for you – otherwise, you'll be spending turn 3 doing Light CB1 whiff which isn't fun for anyone.

Now, before I conclude this extremely detailed and longwinded Idiot's Guide on my favourite Vanguard deck, instead of doing a summary on what Thegrea can do, all her strengths, why you should play her, why she'll become queen of the meta, and proclaiming her as the next tier 0 deck of the format... I think I'd rather end this guide by going over why Thegrea means so much to me, as it seems more fitting and heartfelt for a deck that's been so important to me and so integral in my life as a Vanguard player.

What does Thegrea mean to me

To me, Thegrea is a unit that has a very special place in my heart. She's both my favourite unit and my favourite deck in D format, and she's been my main deck for the good part of 2 years now.

At first, I was drawn to Thegrea because of her design: from the moment I first saw her, I knew she would be my waifu. She was exactly my type too, a voluptuous and caring older woman who was a strong female knight who could protect me. And before coming out as trans, one of the ways I dealt with my dysmorphia was by using female avatars, as I felt more comfortable imagining myself that way since it let me pretend I was a girl at least for a little bit. However, beyond those traits, what sealed the deal for me was when I saw her dark side. I think without that, I wouldn't nearly be as invested in Thegrea as I am now.

In previous formats, my main clan was Shadow Paladin, and my favourite unit was Claret Sword Dragon, who in V Series received a retrain that made him a vanguard restander. When D Series first started, there was nothing to scratch that same itch in my heart, so I was relegated to playing Bastion who represented the United Sanctuary expy, Keter Sanctuary. And while Bushiroad did release a Shadow Paladin Encounter deck in D-BT02, it just didn't feel the same – in a brand-new format, a brand-new world, I didn't want to be stuck playing a nostalgia bait deck – part of the appeal of D Series was the fact there were new decks and new faces to get attached to.

And for me, Thegrea finally fulfilled that desire in my heart.

There are three reasons why I like Dark Thegrea so much. The first is because it gave her a Shadow Paladin aesthetic – not only was she awash in fierce purple, but her first skill also incorporated two staple mechanics of the clan that perfectly represented its identity across both eras, something that I enjoyed because retiring my rear-guards for cost is a playstyle that I love, and I was super happy to see it on Thegrea. The second is because, just like Claret Sword, she was a Vanguard restander – she had the same payoff as my favourite unit, which made me feel like I was at home, even if I wasn't trying to turbo out seven grade 1s in drop. And third, which is also the main reason why I like Thegrea so much, is because – just like me – she wanted to get revenge.

It's no secret that I love exploring the concept of revenge. Most of my favourite media has some kind of plot thread about revenge, and it's one of the main themes I explore in my own creative works. And, during that time, I also wanted to get revenge someday. That resonance – the shared darkness between me and Thegrea – genuinely spoke out to me in a way no other unit ever has.

Even though we've had our ups and downs, and some real rough patches here and there, I'm both glad and happy that I stuck with Thegrea all this time. I feel super proud to see her thrive so much in the current format now despite all the challenges in the past we've faced to get here, but things are only looking up for us – here's to even better support for her in the future. People do truly underestimate Thegrea and what she's capable of, but not only is her future incredibly bright, but it's also incredibly exciting too!

Until next time.

That's all, Fox out!

Thank you, Thegrea. May you one day reach happiness too.