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The First Hogake on Naruto

Naruto's 5 Element Balance in the Metagame
December 5, 2007
 

Quest for Power came out at the latter end of October, and now, I think I will share my thoughts on the breakdown of each of the 5 elements Naruto has to offer, which ones are stronger for a base, and which element is more for support. With that said, I shall begin:

Water: Water has always been a strong element in Naruto. It seems to be the most balanced between all sets. It has nice ninja cards for almost every single turn except for 0. Just to go through a few, we have Orochimaru, Kabuto, the Sound 4 mainly Tayuya, and Aoi Rokusho leading the front. The Missions that water has are also really nice as well, cards like Appearance of Unknown Rivals allows you to draw a card every time your opponent deploys and ninja for 3 turns. End of the Demon sacrifices one of your Chunin or higher ranks to get rid of a huge threat on the field. Jutsus like Water Style: Giant Vortex Jutsu are solid, but are not a "huge" part of the meta right now since it costs a lot of chakra to use. Overall, you can run a Mono Water build without any worries as its one of the two deck types that can.

Fire: Fire used to be the strongest element out there to use. Utilizing deck types such as Freedori for instant success. Most of the Fire ninjas are very solid like Sasuke AoC, Kakashi[ES], Hayate[DaP], and the Third Hokage to name a few along with everyone's favorite character Itachi Uchiha. Fire's Jutsus have an array of things they can do like 8 Trigram Spell Divination Seal Formula or Fire Style: FIre Ball Jutsu. They used to have an amazing mission card called The One Who Inherits and Intrusts the will, but the effect was errata'd, and it hurt fire. Fire used to be able to go Mono, but I see more as a Duel Deck type with Wind or Earth more ofthen than not.

Wind: This element always seems to be left out, it doesn't get near enough support, but it has some very strong Ninjas namely Tsunade and Gaara. Wind has amazing negation jutsus right now such as Gigantic Fan and the olds school Wind Scythe Jutsu. Both are very solid at negating, but Gigantic Fan makes Wind more of a support deck type to the power house deck types of Fire, Lightning, and Earth.

Lightning: This element finally got some power that it deserved. Naruto, the main character is Lightning, but Lightning has always never really been competitive until recently with Quest for Power. New Rasengan cards along with a fresh array of drawing Mission cards help Lightning become stronger. And of course, Lightning has everyone's favorite Jutsu: Release of Chakra where you charge 3 cards in your hand for 1 Lightning chakra in order to draw 4 cards from your deck. I think it's kind of cheap, but Lightning definitely needed it. However, lots of people are teching Release into other deck types to abust the drawing effect of it. Lightning is definitely one of the top deck types out there, but it's mostly used as Lightning/Wind.

Earth: This element is always on the outside looking in. R&R gave it the support that it needed to support power house decks like the big 3; Lightning, Fire, and Water. Earth has Mental Power on its side with Shikamaru. It also has abusive Mission cards such as Caged Bird or even Cursed Fate to use to give you the edge when you need it. The Formation cards from Eternal Rivalry gave Earth a huge boost as well. And with The First Hokage finally becoming an Earth card over Water, decks like Deep Forest Creation are possible for a nice victory.

Overall, compared to earlier this year the shift in elements has happened.
Fire lost some of its edge while elements like Lightning got a huge boost and water remains strong. Earth and Wind are both strong support options for the more powerful deck types.

Until Next Time! - The First Hokage -