Yes i live and only play in singapore, the reason i posted in japanese is to hope that japanese players can look towards overseas players for ideas the same way all of us overseas look towards japan for decks.
polka was very fun to me back in the first set and it had a lot of potential. When quintet spectrum arrived, i knew many people will be using reine and kanata, but i personally did not want to just use the best decks to win. Polka’s biggest weakness is decks that can get rid of her in one attack like kanata and promise. When both of them got restricted, the game became slower, allowing polka to take advantage while the new decks are struggling to fight back. Reine does 210 damage which is enough to attack many 2nds that have around 200 hp, but polka has 240 hp, meaning Reine players have to use two attacks to get rid of polka. The longer the game goes on, the more fans polka has and she might even take out reine in one hit. Everyone has thought about shion as the counter to reine, after seeing the bloom cup in japan, i knew singaporeans will be playing shion to beat the reines. Polka has a very strong advantage against shion because zain does not count as yell for the shion. So in the end i picked polka because she was my favourite and most experienced deck and i felt she was strong against everything but kanata
You always want to go first, not because polka needs to, it is to prevent the opponent from going first so they cannot bloom into higher hp cards and they have lesser holopower. Polka does not really do anything whether she goes first or second in the first turn. When going first, you are looking to collab spot pekora so she can find your buzz. If you do not have spot pekora, you will collab kiara but you have to be careful if the opponent can take down kiara in their first turn. Collab polka only if you have enough polkas on the stage, because you will need a polka to be on the stage to replace the center polka if it is taken out.
When going second, you collab only pekora or polka, however it is super important to put your yell to a polka in the back. You have to assume center polka will not survive, so it is not worth giving her a yell for only 20 damage. Polka can always retreat for free and swap with the back polka who did not take any damage and have 2 yells the next turn. If the center polka went down, you now have 3 yell which allows you to possibly attack twice with zain. The most important is having your kiara sp skill available when you can bloom into buzz polka in turn 2.
Playing against kanata is always a nightmare, you always have to look out for both kanata’s oshi and SP skill. Kanata will always try to take down your polka when they go second. Try as hard as you can to stop kanata from going into 2nd bloom because she can take out 3 lives if she get the overkill on buzz polka. If possible, have buzz polka as your collab instead so the oshi skill will not work on her, but it means you will need another buzz polka to attack the next turn. Kanata’s biggest weakness is finding it’s cards, so a lot of the time it comes down to luck
Against Reineiofi, going first is a big advantage because you can get rid of the reine center before it blooms to 1st. If polka goes second, reine can bloom into a 1st with 160hp with tatang and does 70 damage which is enough to take out polka, making it very hard for polka to take it down in the second turn. When they have 2nd Reine, you want polka buzz to be full hp so reine cannot take it down in one attack, this means they have to use their iofi’s 150 damage to take out a polka with 20-30 hp left, then you can use kiara’s sp skill and continue attacking.
When playing polka, you will always want at least 2-3 polka on the stage, one pekora, one pc to find kiara, any 1st stage polka and a limited card ideally mane-chan. Drawing cards with limited is super important in polka because you are always low in hand so mane-chan is the best card. I will always redraw if i only have one polka because i could lose the game if it is taken out in turn 1-2 which is very easy. There will be times when you only have kiara debut in the center, if it happens you have to plan your ale with retreating kiara in mind
It is popular enough that we can have maximum participants for bloom cup, singapore actually has a lot of hololive fans, just that many of them do not know about the game or is not interested. Hopefully as it gets promoted more in japan and singapore, more players will be interested and join. The game is also big enough in Taiwan,Hong kong and in Korea that they have bloom cups with similar amount of participants, so be sure to check out their results and players as well!
