Discussion Topics

This gets asked a lot, and the simple answer is that Small World is superior to the other two, but you don’t really need any of the three at lower deck sizes since the deck is already extremely consistent.
● Small World is especially nice to have if you play a variety of Attributes that makes Wynn worse, like a Crossout Designator handtrap spread, but practically all of the available paths get filled naturally regardless of your deck’s composition. It not going -2 for cost and being able to search any monster off of any other monster, including searching or using handtraps, are very large points in its favor. Banishing is worse than discarding, but situations where the distinction actually matters are quite few and far between. 

If you can’t use Small World for whatever reason, the best option is often to simply not run any of the searchers because they trade badly into disruption and you’ll often wish they were simply a generic extender instead. If Wynn or Scratch gets negated, you're left with 3 cards in hand; if you can still play at that point, then you could have been running a generic extender instead and it would have helped just as much, if not more since they're better to see when going 2nd*. Additionally, there's a very narrow range or "good" discards: Piper, Daiko, and Dice are the only things you actually want to have in the GY, unless you opened Yoyo or Recovery. Discarding a Marble or Taketomborg for cost with no idea whether you'll recoup that loss is not a great idea. If you are dead set on running one or the other, the optimal choice depends on the rest of your deck:
● Wynn is better to run if you’re just running some WIND generics like Droll & Lock Bird or extenders like Wandering Gryphon Rider, since she’s able to search and/or discard them in addition to your Speedroid monsters.
● Scratch is better if you play an incredibly pure build with no generics, as it will have more available discards in the form of Dupligate compared to Wynn (being able to discard Wheel is essentially a non-point, as doing so is practically never good unless you drew 2+ copies).
A mix of these two is also an option; some run 2 Wynn + 1 Scratch due to the latter’s searchability off Cork. 

* The same point can be applied to Wheel; however, Wheel can be and is primarily used as an extender for after you get interrupted or have already ensured you have a setup, whereas Wynn and Scratch are far better off being used as starters and as such are more vulnerable.

Yes, Unicorn is objectively the best Level 7 extender, but for this piece I'll be comparing Wandering Gryphon Rider to Harpie's Pet Dragon - Fearsome Fire Blast because it's more about the fundamental concept and I see a lot of people fixating on surface-level analyses without looking into them further. Let's start with the basic facts:

● The main point of running a Level 7 is to make an early Baronne to insulate your plays
● Gryphon conflicts with Terrortop
● FFB requires you to commit something before it can summon itself 

Then some math:
● You have a 23.72% chance to hard open Top in 40 cards; this decreases the higher you go
● Assuming 3 copies of [Level 7 extender], this means there is a 6.81% chance to see both Top and at least 1 copy of [Level 7 extender]. 

Thus, the Gryphon-Top conflict will only matter in 6.81% percent of your games at most, since Gryphon doesn't conflict with pseudo-copies of Top like Wynn or Small World as it can be used to facilitate them. Even if you do open Gryphon and Top, you can special Gryphon and use Top as a NS, still getting the benefit of early Baronne and continuing to play onwards.

FFB synergizes more with Top, but again, refer to the above: this will be relevant in 6.81% of games. It could be argued that pseudo-copies of Top should be counted here as well, but even so, 5 copies of Top to 3 [Level 7] only comes out to 15.02% - still not exactly something worth building around. 

Now, on to the major points: FFB requires you to commit something before it can summon itself, and the entire point of running a Level 7 is to make an early Baronne to insulate your plays.
Assuming 3 [Level 7] 2 Top 3 Marble 3 Hound 3 Car 3 Tak, you have a 9.62% chance to see [Level 7] + NS + extender. In this scenario, Gryphon allows you to make Baronne without committing to the NS while FFB does not.
The only cases where FFB lets Baronne protect the NS is when you open it + Top + either a NS or an extender. 3 [Level 7], 2 Top, 12 NS/extender gives you 4.83%.

So, in conclusion, Gryphon generally allows Baronne to be able to protect more than FFB does.

Routing lines with Dice in hand is quite easy to do with little practice and practically always gets you the same endboard as you could have made without seeing Dice at the cost of losing that extra card in hand, so running a second "in order to always have 1 in deck" is incorrect. Additionally, here's some math:

• With 1 copy of Dice in a 40 card deck, you will see it in 12.5% of games; with 2, you will see a Dice in 23.72% of games. 

• The odds of having a game where you roll exactly a 2 off Wheel are slightly higher than 5.62%, as you only open Wheel in 33.76% of games but there are times where you want to search it off Cork, and resolving multiple is a fairly rare occurrence. 

This means that by putting a second copy of Dice in your deck, you are taking a 11.22% decrease in the deck's overall power to gain around a 5.62% boost to Wheel's consistency, which itself barely matters since the deck is already super consistent. The majority of the time, rolling a 2 off Wheel will not immediately lose you the game, so this is overall not a great trade.

The one benefit to running 2 copies of Dice is that it can make combo lines slightly simpler, but this isn't necessary unless you're just learning the deck.

 In a vacuum, Recovery is a really good card - monster reborn that gives you followup is solid design. However, the game is not played in a vacuum; your opponent will be interacting with you, and that's what causes Recovery's usefulness to be more limited. 

If they hit RBS or Cork, all the extenders are pretty much equal; on average, there's not much you can do from that point without multiple. However, if they hit your NS, Recovery doesn't do anything since you don't have names in GY. You need some other superior extender to keep playing. 

So basically, Recovery just has a slightly worse spread than several of the other available options; its recycling effect is very good but if your opponent is letting you resolve things on turn 3 then you already have an advantage.

Although one might consider running Windwitches here because they put out a Crystal Wing in time to protect you from Nibiru, they're very much not worth it.

• Providing insulation from Nibiru can be solved by simply running a Lv7 extender to make Baronne, and you can run more copies of Unicorn than Ice Bell.

• Ice Bell's lock is one of the most detrimental things you can put yourself under. 

  • You remove your access to Rubber Band Shooter, so you can't turn "any 2 WINDs" into some semblance of an endboard now. 

  • Playing without Cork kills easy access to Hagoita, weakening your turn 1 endboard and followup. 

You have to invest more cards from hand in order to put up a similar endboard to what a pure deck can do with less - Ice Bell + NS needs at least one extender in order to put up Crystal + Baronne because you can't make RBS and Cork. Compare this to literally any generic extender + NS, which guarantees Crystal + Baronne at minimum due to the availability of the deck's two best cards.

There is no justifiable reason to mix the two archetypes.

Contrary to popular belief, if you scale up your ratios for starters/extenders along with your deck size, you can go over 40 cards without any loss in consistency – even getting a boost in some areas.

If you have enough cards to be able to scale up (this deck does), the only real drawback to going over 40 is that you see specific names less (which can be important post-siding or with power cards like Crossout Designator that you always want to see, but also reduces your chances of drawing bricks).

If you do run over 45 cards, it's generally recommended to run one of the searchers mentioned in the previous section, as the deck lacks other starters that don't use the Normal Summon and running 9+ NS is definitely too much.

Overall, it's a calculation of tradeoffs; do you value overall consistency and flexibility more, or being able to see specific power cards more?

In the end, like a lot of other things in the deck, it mostly comes down to personal preference as many people have seen success running 45 or more. Here’s a calculator if you want to do some math yourself; messing around with it can give you some new insights. 

Additionally, here's some basic numbers to illustrate the point: