Rappers

## Overview

*The Rappers love to dish out sick rhymes and sick beats, coming up with new material on the spot in their fast-paced rap battles. Will you be able to keep up with their rhythm and poetry?*

Use duels as a means to play more cards and speed up your turns. Winning a duel means more when you do so with your smaller minions, and other players are incentivized to attempt to win your duels instead of cancelling them, meaning your victories will be more efficient than it may seem when you start your turns.

### Details

#### General

* Name: Rappers
* Author: Berryl
* Complexity: 2.5/5
* Version: 1.2
* Last updated: March 21, 2022

#### Special details

This faction is part of the Downtown Smashopolis expansion (expansion page pending).

### Breakdown

This faction has the standard 10 minions and 10 actions and the standard 30 total minion power, or an average minion power of 3. Among their actions, they have:

* 1 play-on-base actions: Rap House
* 9 standard actions, 3 of which directly affect one or minions (in **bold**): **2x Sick Rhymes,** 2x Rap Battle, Dance-Off, **Sick Beats,** Diss Track, Sick Burns, On a Roll

### Minions (10)

* **1x Rap God (5):** Special: Before this base scores, one of your minions here duels another player’s minion here. The winner may play an extra minion.
* **2x Producer (4):** One of your other minions here may duel another player’s minion here. The winning minion’s controller may play an extra non-Producer minion here. Special: Your action for this duel may be played off the top of your deck instead of from your hand.
* **3x Young Star (3):** Play an action off the top of your deck as an extra action OR look at the top four cards of your deck, and return them in any order.
* **4x M.C. (2):** Ongoing: When this minion duels, the winner may play an extra action off the top of their deck.

### Actions (10)

* **2x Rap Battle:** One of your minions duels another player’s minion at the same base. The winning minion’s controller may draw two cards OR play an extra minion at the dueling minions’ base.
* **2x Sick Rhymes:** Place two +1 power counters on one of your minions. Place this card on the bottom of your deck. Special: If this card is played off the top of your deck, that minion also gains +2 power until the end of the turn.
* **1x Dance-Off:** One of your minions duels another player’s minion at the same base. The winning minion’s controller may place an action from their discard pile on the top of their deck. Special: Dueling actions for this duel may be played off the top of players’ decks instead of from their hands.
* **1x Sick Burns:** Draw a card and play an extra action. Place this card on the bottom of your deck. Special: If this card is played off the top of your deck, when a minion wins a duel this turn, its controller may move any number of their minions to that minion’s base.
* **1x Rap House:** Play on a base. Ongoing: If one of your minions here has dueled this turn or is currently in a duel, your minions here have +2 power. After you play an action off the top of your deck, you may draw a card.
* **1x On a Roll:** Play an extra action off the top of your deck. Place this card on the bottom of your deck. Special: If this card is played off the top of your deck, you may also play an extra action from your hand.
* **1x Sick Beats:** One of your minions gains +1 power until the end of the turn. Place this card on top of your deck. Special: If this action is played off the top of your deck, that minion gains an additional +4 power until the end of the turn, then place this card on the bottom of your deck instead of the top of your deck.
* **1x Diss Track:** Choose two actions in your discard pile. Place one on top of your deck and one on the bottom of your deck.

### Bases

* **(18) Recording Studio (3 1 1):** On your turn, if you have a minion here, you may play an action off the top of your deck instead of from your hand.
* **(21) Top of the Charts (4 2 1):** Before this base scores, a minion controlled by the active player may duel another player’s minion here. The winner may play an extra action off the top of their deck.

## Clarifications

* **M.C.:** The action is played after the duel fully finishes resolving.
* **Rap House:** The power boost starts as soon as the duel is initiated. If a minion duels on another base and then later moves to the Rap House base, the power boost still applies. If a minion duels on its base and then moves off, the power boost stops applying.

## Strategy

### General

Rappers are a dueling faction, but unlike Cowboys, their duels are aimed at advancing bases more quickly rather than slowing them down. To help entice other players to compete in the duels, the minion Rappers want to duel with is their smallest and most common minion, the M.C., who rewards the winner with the ability to play an action off the top of their deck. Of course, Rappers have big power-boosting cards to make the M.C. large enough to reasonably duel most minions.

Many of Rappers' actions are self-recurring, placing themselves on the bottom of your deck after being played. All of them gain special benefits for being played off the top of your deck, and there are several mechanisms for accomplishing this: All of the minions except for Rap God have the potential to play actions off the top, and On a Roll or Dance-Off facilitate this from an action play. If you align your hand and deck correctly, cards like Young Star and Producer can create massive chains of card plays resulting in extremely high power boosts. Eventually, you can whittle your deck down to just the self-recurring actions and constantly get their enhanced effects. However, most of the plays off the top are tied to duels (M.C., Producer, and Dance-Off). If you end up discarding some of the self-recurring actions due to hand size limits, Diss Track can get them back and stack them right on top, potentially to be played right away.

### Partner Suggestions

Rappers will greatly appreciate a partner with good midgame minion plays, which they themselves mostly lack, especially if you save Young Stars for their action play instead of their deck foresight. Similarly, a partner with easy-to-play actions won't have to fear accidentally playing something off the top prematurely. Someone with passive deck foresight or manipulation will also greatly assist the Rappers in pulling off their chain combos.

#### Published

* **Fairies:** Obviously Young Star is an excellent OR to double with Spirit of the Forest, but there's more here than that. Fairies have similar burst capabilities to Rappers with Titania and Glymmer, meaning you can burn through the game at an incredible pace.
* **Wizards:** Arcane Protector will be extremely easy to play in this deck. The two copies of Summon to play multiple Young Stars in a turn without relying on duels from Rap Battle, and the ability to get them back with Diss Track, will accelerate your game tremendously.
* **Beauty and the Beast:** Petals of the Rose is exactly the sort of deck manipulation that Rappers want. Enchanted Objects play very well with Rap House.

## Author Notes

This is a comparatively old faction, and looking back at it in 2023 it's definitely starting to show its age. Despite this, I think it still holds up as a dueling faction that really makes the mechanic shine. It was mechanically inspired by the Shounen Bros featured on Crank it Up in the first Custom Faction Month, augmented by the mechanical subtheme of playing actions off the top to represent improvising lines in a rap battle.