Super Bullet Break has a whole lot going on when it comes to deck building and it can be easy to get overwhelmed with all the options and interactions available to you. Given there's no in depth guide to deck building at the moment I thought I'd put one of my own together in the hopes of making the process a little easier for folks picking up the game.

Because the game has a whole lot of RNG going on when it comes to what Bullets you have access to etc I'm going to start out with some general advice on good practice in lieu of stating definitive deck building rules.It's good to be flexible but these are broadly speaking good practice.

• Keep costs low: cheap bullets that let you build Burst counts quickly or cycle your magazine effectively for your win conditions are extremely potent in this game. If a bullets costs 2 or less it’s probably extremely worth it even if the individual effects on it aren’t spectacular on their own (you can also often reduce those cards down to 0 cost or pump up their damage significantly with cartridges or held items). Conversely any bullet that costs more than about 8 has to really justify the cost. Because of how the turn tracker works (multiple enemies with unique turns on the tracker, overflow reducing the time to the next enemy action) using a big 15 point bullet to end your turn can often just open you up to being hit by 2 enemies instead of 1 without time to throw up more shield. There are absolutely some high cost bullets that more than justify their cost but a lot of them are traps. On that note…
  
• Armour is nearly always overcosted: because armour doesn’t fall off between turns the game seems to place it at a premium. As nice as it is to have defences that build up over time the cost of bullets which just give your armour is often very high. You’ll usually get a lot more shield out of a same cost bullet than its armour giving counterpart. The best sources of armour are those that do it passively on top of other effects. Some (mostly) Princess Stage bullets will give you armour when they’re drawn or discarded, this is very potent since it basically lets you get it for free without having to spend extra resources. Speaking of discard…
  
• Discarding is often a benefit not a cost. Because you always draw to replace any bullet you use in a turn you don’t really see any downside to discarding until you’ve discarded 3-5 bullets in a turn, at which point your hand is going to be a little limited. On the other hand lots of bullets will give you perks for discarding them or build up power based on discards in a turn (this one’s less good but it can be gravy sometimes). A lot of the bullets which require a discard are under cost for what they do so they’re often a good investment. While we’re on the topic of getting rid of things…
  
• Thin your deck: the old rule of card game deck building is very much in force here. A smaller deck means more consistency. Between Scouting and battle rewards you’ll likely be filling out your magazine fairly quickly but by being picky about who you recruit and making good use of the shop block’s removal function (as a general rule I try to remove a bullet every single time I stop at a shop block, at least up to the final level of a run where my lineup is usually pretty finalized). Another method of indirect deck thinning is through the Exclusion mechanic; Bullets who remove themselves from your deck for the rest of the battle after being cast (or not cast in two cases). This can be useful to gain powerful one time effects or buffs while still getting the benefit of increased consistency that comes with a smaller deck.
  
• Drawing extra bullets can be bad sometimes because excess cards drawn when your hand is full go to the graveyard instead which can lead to you accidentally milling away important bullets if you're not careful (Thanks to Penny for bringing that up)

Generally you’ll want to build into one or two of the archetypes in a given run, potentially splashing into the others for powerful utility cards where you find them (Always take Jelly)

The game has four major archetypes for deck building as well as a handful of sub archetypes with less support. We’ll go over them here.

Monochrome
The first archetype you’ll encounter in the first level. Monochrome is actually a lot looser than the other major archetypes, being sort of a jack of all trades for the most part. Monochrome bullets tend to be fairly straightforward with mid cost cards filling out your magazine around a few key win condition cards. Generally you’ll be winning off the back of cards with the Burst (increased damage based on number of bullets played in a turn) mechanic. Monochrome on its own is honestly kind of weak. Most of its starting bullets are somewhat overcosted for what they do (Marcel is a particularly bad offender as she should be your finisher but rarely gets into double digit damage with the cost of your other cards early on). With that said there are some real all star cards in Monochrome that go well in essentially any build.

Heartsplosion
Seasons of Love Bullets have the unique mechanic Heartsplosion. When you fill your Heartsplosion Gauge to 100 all enemies get 10 delay and all Seasons Bullets have their costs halved. Some individual Seasons Bullets also gain various buffs while Heartsplosion is active. Sadly Heartsplosion is probably the weakest of the 3 unique resource mechanics in the game. For a start it’s overly parasitic; any deck can benefit from Burst or Drones but only a seasons heavy deck will benefit from it at all. It also does nothing until you fill the gauge. It’s entirely possible to clear an entire run only seeing the gauge fill up once or twice because you just kill all the enemies before it goes off, a lot of Seasons Bullets give +5 Heartsplosion, IE 1/20th of the gauge, not a lot. The last issue it has is that it only halves cost. This sounds good but because its a halving rather than reduction it can’t reduce the cost of a Bullet to 0, and anything already at 1 will not be reduced at all. This means you have to add a little extra with Shion or a Singulalady played after the Heartsplosion has started if you want to go infinite with 0 costs. With that said if you go all in on a Heartsplosion deck it can still be very powerful and satisfying to play. You just need to fully commit to a greater degree than other archetypes. You’ll probably play a Heartsplosion deck when clearing Seasons for the story and never again because it’s a lot harder to guarantee the pieces you need with out a starter deck and guaranteed copy of Shion.

Combo Beam
Bullets from Aquarhythm Deep bring this mechanic to the table, and it’s pretty good. Most Aquarhythm Bullets will increase your Combo Gauge by an amount between 1 and 5. Every 10 Combo Gauge accumulated deals 30 damage to a random enemy. Unlike Heartsplosion this is a lot easier to fill consistently and a focused Combo deck can easily trigger the effect multiple times per turn. There are also multiple ways to improve on your combo beams with buffs and Cartridges to make them even more effective. Outside of a dedicated deck there are several really strong Aquarhythm cards who’ll provide some incidental benefit from Combo Beam so you’ll see it go off on occasion as a bit of bonus damage.

Drones
The signature mechanic of Phoenix Gunner Bullets. Drones are great. Various Bullets will have the effect of spawning one of the 3 types of Drone; Attack, Shield and Healing. At the end of your turn any active Drones will trigger their effects (3 damage to a random target, 3 shield to you or healing 2hp respectively). Passive damage and mitigation is nice on its own but there’s more. You can have up to 5 Drones active at a time (this cap can be raised to 10 using various Cartridges and Bullet effects) when you spawn drones in excess of that cap the leftmost drone on your tracker will be destroyed to make room for the new one. This triggers the effect of the destroyed Drone again once before it’s destroyed. This allows you to gain a lot of passive effects very quickly, is excellent defensively and even better there are various Bullets which scale based on number of Drones destroyed. Drone centric decks are very powerful and Drone Bullets are usually pretty good in any other deck as well since it’s just free damage/mitigation/healing once the Drone is spawned.

Singulaladies
Unlocked after beating the story. The five Singulaladies are potent one time buffers who you should probably add to your deck if you have the chance. It’s also worth noting that duplicate Singulacodes stack so having multiples of the same Singulalady is great actually.



Princess Stage/Discard
The Bullets in the Princess Stage set are a little less focussed than the major archetypes, providing various flavours of utility with a general theming towards discarding. Princess Stage has the highest concentration of Bullets with effects that scale with number of discards or trigger when discarded. Most of the time you’ll be running these as utility splashes in other more supported archetypes but they’re pretty good for that role. In theory there’s a viable Princess Stage deck that doesn’t just support the others but I could never quite make it work across multiple attempts to force it.

Brawlers
The least cohesive of the supporting archetypes, Brawlers lack any real cohesive mechanical identity and also sort of clash with one another. Most of the non mascot Brawler Bullets are essentially the same Bullet with a slightly different scaling mechanism, they hit all enemies for an amount of damage that starts low but scales with a specific factor. It’s usually not a bad thing to have one in your deck for dealing with groups of enemies but they all tend to drop off compared to more focussed bombs. They have an archetype wide -2 cost Cartridge, War’s Reprieve, which is pretty good but most Brawler Bullets don’t feel strong enough to justify going all in on, they’re a support archetype not something to build your whole deck around. Especially since they only have half as many Bullets as the other games get.

Mascots
Not an official archetype tied to a specific game, Mascots appear in every game and most of them are low cost low impact deck filler. You’ll have a couple of these in every starting deck (one of the random starter decks in the last 2 stages is like 10 mascots from different archetypes and it sucks because you get buffs targeting traits that aren’t even in the deck). However, Mascots get access to two very powerful support Cartridges; Duck Golem (+2 damage for all Mascots) and Moonrabbit Treasure (-2 cost for all Mascots). These are super potent and bring a lot of Mascots up from “almost there” to actually really good. I’ll refer to Mascot synergy quite a few times in the tier list and this is what I mean by that. The power bump from these Cartridges is enough to be worth considering when evaluating all Mascot Bullets. The very first deck I cleared Brawlers with ended up being a Mascot deck with a few support cards from Princess Stage for discard synergies, because I had two Duck Golems and a Moonrabbit Treasure and that sure supercharges these little guys.

We’ll start out with a caveat: these rankings are to a degree subjective because all tier lists are. I’m providing rankings based on my own experience of playing the game a fair bit and trying to test out various potential builds. It’s entirely possible that I’m underestimating some bullets because the setup they shine in just never came together for me. A lot of power in the game comes from synergy between bullets, archetypes and cartridges and there’s a fair degree of RNG at play in any given setup. With that in mind take these with a grain of salt (Jelly is objectively OP though) and use your own judgement, this is meant as a reference point so don’t be afraid to experiment on your own. I’m also writing from the assumption that you’re playing as Nayuta, some bullets might have higher utility when on a character without access to a better version of the same (for example only Sanae and Nayuta can use Cutiecorn, which is a strictly better Fluffybuffer). With these factors in mind don’t be afraid to experiment with “bad” Bullets, this is just meant as a quick cheat sheet really.

Super powerful Bullets who it’s almost always worth it to take. Either due to raw power or unique utility these will almost always benefit any deck you throw them into.

Jelly: Jelly costs 2 less than the delay she inflicts, this means Jelly costs -2 against any enemies which don’t have Antibody (which is incredibly rare) and aren’t spread out too much. Combined with solid multi target damage she’s just incredibly good.

King Duchtoli (Costume): 1 cost for 3 draw and burst 3, she scales incredibly well with little to no effort and her low cost means you can always slot her in at the end of the turn

Merlette (Costume): Makes all enemies (without Antibody) take a turn off. They’ll do the same thing again on their next turn but she can buy you a lot of time to deal with incoming attacks.

Queen Veresov (New Years): Has Burst 10 and only costs 2, can very quickly ramp up to just delete most enemies including bosses.

Rulo: Burst 5 for cost 1. Veresov cut in half, (the fact that she’s still incredibly powerful should indicate just how nuts burst 10 is).

Whisper: premium deck filtering. Resets your hand, procs any discard effects you might have and hits everything for a small amount of damage as a bonus. All for 1 cost.

Queen Sicilian: The strongest healing Bullet in the game, scales well and even if you for whatever reason hard cast her with no burst buildup she’s still 8 healing for 2 cost.

Hirame Taiya: gives you a whole lot of armour for free. She’s also Dragon Palace, a trait shared with a lot of very strong bullets and one of the easier ones to reduce cost for (more on that later) letting you cycle her multiple times relatively easily.

Otohime: Cheap draw source who deals decent damage and half fills the combo gauge into the bargain. She also has a high chance of appearing with the Dragon Palace Casket cartridge, which massively reduces the cost of Dragon Palace Bullets. Since she’s a guaranteed encounter in any Aquarhythm stage 2s (including if the game selects that as a stage 2 in Beastly Brawlers or Princess Stage) she’s one of the most reliable sources of passive cost reduction for a strong set of bullets.

Blackcat 96 Mode: Provides a weaker version of all 4 Singulalady effects; 1 cost reduction +1 damage for all Bullets as well as 2 healing and 2 shield at the end of every turn. Even reduced compared to the other Singulaladies this is still incredibly strong.

Singulalady Nami: Gives +2 damage to all Bullets for the rest of the battle. This should be self explanatory really.

Singulalady Coco: Probably the strongest Singulalady, -2 cost to all bullets for the rest of the battle.

Elisa Koujou: Free armour. Less potent than Hirame Taiya but free is free, and she has her discard effects as well which is pretty nifty. Also part of Tragic Heart, which can potentially get a +10 attack cartridge which turns her into a solid cheap attacker on top of that.

Sara Senya (Moonlit): Gives 100 shield once per battle. In most situations this means nullifying all incoming damage for a turn. Note: unlike most other Bullets she arguably does not want cost reduction as you want to use her so that multiple enemies get their turns while the shield is up.

Mao: Negates all damage until your next turn once per battle. Largely just a better Sara because you’re guaranteed that no damage will come in while she’s active. Same caveat applies about cost reduction.

Octie: A whopping 20 shield in one Bullet with +2 combo beam heaped on top for good measure. Her mitigation output is enough to negate a lot of incoming attacks early on and even as damage ramps up she still puts in a lot of work. She’s also Dragon Palace.

King Hornslime: Cheap Burst 3 who hits all enemies. Can easily oneshot non boss encounters turn 1.

Very Strong but won’t necessarily carry you without any extra effort. A lot of A tier bullets are S tier in the right deck but are less universally applicable.

Shannon: 12 shield and burst 1 make her a solid defensive option who can also bring the damage. She’s a little on the expensive side but she tends to justify it.

Merlette: Arguably B/C depending on your deck Low cost, gives an OK passive effect (3 damage to a random enemy every time you gain armour) and then filters herself out of your deck.

Anri: 10 shield and burst 2 for half the cost of Shannon. Could make a reasonable argument for her being S tier honestly.

Luca (Moonlit): 2 cost for -8 cost to the next Monochrome Bullet. Essentially makes any Monochrome bullet up to 6 cost free.

Lanterna: Scales off both discards and Bullet usage so she can get really powerful really quickly. Not hitting all enemies means she won’t be quite as devastating as King Hornslime but she’s still up there.

Kalmia: Basically just a more expensive version of Whisper with a little more single target damage. She’s still pretty strong but the higher cost makes her less effective for filtering through your deck since she burns a reasonable chunk of your turn.

King Duchtoli: hits everything 5 times and scales by herself. What keeps her from being S tier is that she needs some effort to make truly broken. Her high cost and relatively slow burst buildup mean she can end up hitting in the 35-40 range a lot, which is still very good but doesn’t do as well in the later game. However, with the +8 damage for King Bullets cartridge (which she can come equipped with once it’s unlocked) she goes up to dealing 65 damage with no extra effort, which can let you end a lot of non boss encounters in a single attack. Similarly scales with extra damage for the first bullet cartridges.

Ruy Lopez (Swimsuit): Hits a single target 10 times. She has incredibly high potential when paired with damage boosting cartridges or Hornslime but she has no scaling of her own and using her without any buffs leads to an unimpressive 20 damage for 8 cost. Still the potential ceiling absolutely makes her worth it if you can support her.

King Duchtoli (Academy): 2 cost to make your next Monochrome Bullet free (with one exception). Do you like casting regular King Duchtoli for 0? Of course you do. This Bullet enables this, as well as plenty of the other high cost Monochrome options. Sometimes she just gets you a free Lil’ Monster and that’s absolutely still value.

Marcel (Academy): Starts out weak but gains 13 attack each use so she ramps up pretty fast.

Miyabi Kureha: “We have Ootohime at home”. Cheaper draw than Otohime but fills up less of a worse gauge. Still decent though and an auto include in Seasons decks.

Shion Ayamisawa: One of the Bullets who can make Seasons sort of playable. Cost reduction is always strong and she does the job at a reasonable startup cost. Also fills your Heartsplosion gauge.

Megumi Ajisaki: Does decent damage for her cost, gives a decent buff and then filters herself out of your deck.

Satsuki Kuroyuri: does decent damage for her (lower) cost, gives a better buff and then filters herself out of your deck.

Spiny Seahorse: Cost reduction for Aquarhythm, cheaper than Shion and in a better archetype.

Coral Turtle: Costs 5 and does bad damage but gives you a very good buff (3 damage to a random enemy whenever you gain shield) and then filters himself out of your deck. Works really well in a drone deck by turning all your shield drones into attack drones.

Eelie: Makes one enemy skip its turn once per battle. Still very potent but because it only hits one enemy the high cost can lead to you taking extra hits from other enemies that still get their turn.

Shurie: Cheap and not very powerful statwise, has a reasonable discard bonus but more importantly she’s Dragon Palace. Very easy to make free, at which point she becomes excellent for bust fuelling or even just to cantrip so you can dig out your Seahorse again faster.

Khmuna: Cheap, reasonable damage for her cost, directed discard for triggering your discard effects and then she refills your hand so you’re not reducing your options. If she were Dragon Palace or built combo meter she’d probably be S tier.

Eiwarz (Swimsuit): Heals a whole bunch for a low cost and then filters herself out of your deck. Reasonable damage as well.

Yoh: The rare buff provider who doesn’t exclude herself. Adds 30 damage to your combo beams for each stack of her buff. Also fills your combo a bit and does some reasonable damage for good measure.

Otohime (Festive): Not as versatile as regular Otohime since she only goes in combo beam decks but her buff is very potent, makes your combo beams hit every enemy, which can let you machinegun down whole encounters fairly easily. She also hits all enemies for a little damage and fills your combo a bit.

Crowe: One of the strongest armour granting Bullets, he provides 7 points of Mitigation for 4 cost off the bat, as well as extra shield each turn. Damage is nonexistent but he’s a mascot so he can benefit from the very powerful mascot buff cartridges.

Cyberbirb: Healing drones are very poweful but the sources tend to be expensive. Cyberbirb makes up for this by also providing a reasonable chunk of shield into the bargain.

Awayuki: Starts off slow but once you get your drone slots filled she scales incredibly quickly, quickly ramping up to doing 50+ damage for 2 cost. Also synergizes well with several other powerful Phoenix bullets so she’s a natural wincon for drone based decks.

Mikagura: Solid damage to all enemies combined with triggering all your drones, potentially generating a ton of armour/healing/damage on top of her own output. Because she destroys and resummons them she also synergizes extremely well with her younger self and with Awayuki.

Asagi: Do you like going infinite and playing your entire deck for 0 cost to grind out a boss from full HP on turn 1? Of course you do, that’s not a real question. Consider playing Asagi. The cost reduction Bullet for Phoenix Gunner, Asagi gives a whopping -2 cost for only 4 startup cost. As with all cost reduction Bullets her effect stacks, meaning she can in 2 casts reduce her own cost to 0, at which point you very quickly make your entire deck free. Would absolutely be S tier if she didn’t only work in one specific deck type.

Hakua (Swimsuit): good damage to 3 targets, reduces your next Bullet’s cost by 20, not restricted by any traits or games. She’s incredibly potent but her cost makes her surprisingly clunky to fit in a turn against certain enemies and she’s a dead weight in your hand if you can’t cast her without ending it.

Fio (Swimsuit): Starts out so-so (8 damage to 3 enemies for 6) but scales very well as you stack up drones, capping out at 80 damage without other modifiers (which she naturally wears very well).

Mikagura (Past): A bit on the costly side but she does OK damage to all enemies and summons 3 drones, so 3 extra damage to 1 thing, 3 shield and 2 healing at the end of turn. Without any drone cap boosts her 2nd cast reduces her cost by 1 and each subsequent cast reduces it by 3 so she can very quickly get herself to 0 cost even in a non drone deck. Naturally in drone centric decks she becomes free extremely quickly too.

Canaria (New Years): Solid damage to every enemy and poisons them all to boot. I’m not huge on poison but inflicting it on everything aint bad.

Shirley: Deals 5 damage to every enemy and then spawns 15 points of extra damage in drone form for only 5 cost. Since she also floods out your drone slots she’ll likely trigger all your destruction effects as well, which helps Mikagura (Past) and Awayuki a lot.

Singulalady Misa: She’s not as strong as the S tier Singulaladies since she gives shield, which can be easily acquired elsewhere but she’s still a more than double strength shield drone which doesn’t use a slot, which is pretty good.

Singulalady Rena: As with Misa she gives an effect which can be acquired elsewhere but she’s a double strength healing drone and those tend to be harder to get than the other types so she’s still a very good pick.

Cupcap: 4 feeble for 3 is solid mitigation, targeted discard and he’s a mascot.

Chiko Hanafusa: 5 feeble is very good and she throws in some extra shield on top of it. She’s also Tragic Heart although that’s less of a factor than for Elisa

Kaguya Tsukino: Cheap, gives you a good buff (3 damage to a random target when you heal) filters herself out of your deck afterwards. Turns all your healing drones into attack drones.

Leila Kanda: very expensive but scales super well with any discard support, also a very good discard target in her own right if you can’t build her up on that turn since she gives a lot of shield.

Marin Narumi: Inflicts Countdown, a rare and very powerful buff that outright kills non bosses when it finishes ticking down on 3 enemies. Since most bosses have adds she’ll still be reasonable in most boss fights too.

Rinko Shirayuki (Swimsuit): Gives you a decent buff (3 damage to a random enemy when you discard) then filters herself out of your deck

Rin Akatsuki (Moonlit): decent scaling with discards and almost as good a discard target as Leila.

Kuiin Heats: Hits very hard for eventually free, good discard target.

Elle Toujou (Academy): 30 armour is a lot of armour, then she filters herself out of your deck. Does a bit of damage to every enemy too.

Kaguya (White Knight): Decent healing and one of the only sources of debuff removal rather than prevention.

Ibara Kuroki: Decent damage/poison to all enemies and regen on top of it. None of her individual abilities are that impressive but she does a fair bit for 5 cost.

Riko Amari: Incredible discard target who gives 10 shield/armour when discarded.

Hikari Tenshi: 6 damage and confusion to all enemies for 4. I’m not a huge fan of confusion since it’s ultimately unreliable and might just do nothing, but confusing the entire enemy team is liable to at least prevent some damage coming your way. She also filters herself out of your deck if you don’t need her.

Romashka: scales with armour and shield which can make her a very solid option in defensive decks. Goes very well with starting shield/armour cartridges and scales very fast. Her cost can be a little on the high side but she does hit hard.

Haku: Cheap, scales with HP missing and has reasonable base attack. Penetrates shields but that’s almost never relevant. Consider removing her if your deck is one where you’re not actually taking damage.

Erika Kawasumi (Festive): Fills your Heartsplosion gauge in 2 casts on her own, makes Seasons decks a lot more viable.

Megumi Ajisaki (Bride): inflicts countdown 1 on an enemy so it just dies instantly on its turn, only hits one enemy though and she’s a bit costly. Filters herself out of your deck afterwards.

Charonia: Very cheap, gives you a decent buff (3 damage to a random enemy when you gain combo) then filters herself out of your deck afterwards.

Solid Bullets who do decent work and support their archetypes well.

Falltime Fox: OK basic healing Bullet, fills Heartsplosion a little.

Dinky Devil: reasonable damage for his cost and enables discard effects, doesn’t do much else though.

Cutiecorn: Identical to Fluffybuffer except it heals 2 more

Claude: Hits everything hard once then goes away.

Lucca: hits decently hard with Burst 1 and her Delay covers half her cost. She does still cost 10 though so it can be tricky to fit her in sometimes.

Lil’ Monster: Not great damage for her cost but she heals a little and gives you 8 armour. Good for ending off turns where an enemy is buffing itself rather than attacking you.

Natsu: Heals you for 5. Can be better with attack buffs since her healing scales but she doesn’t have a ton of easy attack buff options

Springtime Flutterby: 5 shield for 4. it’s fine, Mascot synergies apply. Also gives 5 Heartsplosion

Maki Hinaka: hits all enemies for 20 for 12, not bad. Also gives 20 Heartsplosion, which is also not bad compared to other sources. Pricey but she does a fair bit.

Ryoko Shiramune: Hits for 10 for 4 cost and gives 10 Heartsplosion, which is fine. Also adds 2 Bound but Bound is a silver bullet mechanic which is almost never relevant except maybe against the second Princess Stage boss since she’s very healing heavy.

Mizuki Shichijou: OK damage and gives you 1 shield per Bullet in your graveyard, which gives her a potentially very high ceiling. The issue is just that she’s inconsistent and it’s easy to accidentally shuffle your graveyard back into your magazine if you’re not careful, at which point the 18 shield you were counting on to not die is gone.

Erika Kawasumi: decent damage for her cost, doubles your Hearstsplosion gauge. Great if you’re committed to Heartsplosion, does absolutely nothing in any other deck.

Shion Ayamisawa (Moonlit): +20 Heartsplosion and OK damage to one enemy. Also gets a massive +30 attack while Heartsplosion is active. Does a lot in Heartsplosion decks, does very little elsewhere.

Nemu Yonaga: Decent Damage, Decent Healing, antibodies are sometimes useful. She’s too expensive to be * great * but she’s pretty alright.

Hina Yamabuki: Does 10 damage to 3 enemies and gives you 20 Heartsplosion. She also removes enemy buffs but that comes up so rarely that it’s best to consider her as if she didn’t have that ability, in which case she’s fine. Probably A tier (in Heartsplosion decks at least) against enemies that do use a lot of buffs but oftentimes that effect isn’t relevant.

Airi Sakurasaka (Sweet): Cheap, gives you a good buff and then filters herself out of your deck. You know the drill by now with these types of buffers. Her buff is actually pretty good (3 random damage when you gain Heartsplosion gauge) but she’s hard to recommend because it’s entirely possible you’ll be running decks with no Heartsplosion at all most of the time, in the decks that want her though, she actually addresses one of the mechanic’s main issues: that you don’t get anything out of filling the gauge until it fills and any extra gauge gained while it’s active is wasted.

Rainbow Fish: +2 attack to all Aquarhythm Bullets for the rest of the turn. Very good but a lot of Aquarhythm’s damage comes from the combo gauge and there’s a lack of multi-hit attacks in the set to really benefit from this buff. Gains a lot of power if you’re in the process of going infinite with Seahorses though and can get multiple stacks of his buff up.

Angie: Pretty middle of the road damage for her cost. What keeps her above C tier is being Dragon Palace, as with all the bullets with this trait she’s pretty easy to bring down to 0-1 cost.

Clownfish: Another Bullet who’s mostly just decent. 5 Shield and 7 damage for 6 is alright with a little bit of combo on top. Sadly not Dragon Palace but she’s always nice to have a copy or two of in an Aquarhythm deck.

Coral Star: Cheap-ish, gives you a decent buff, filters herself, the usual. Coral Baton only works with combo gauge gain so that’s what’s landing her in B rather than A.

Tyll: Cheap, low damage but she spawns an attack drone so her actual damage output is 5+ and she can help to fill out your drone slots/trigger drone destruction effects.

Nureha: 3 armour and a shield drone so she’s 6+ points of mitigation for 6 cost. Pretty good. Damage is whatever but that’s not why you’re casting her.

Minibirb: Healing drones are nice to have but he’s 6 cost for no damage or mitigation so you’re probably taking a hit when you cast him in the hopes that the drone will recover whatever damage you’re taking over the course of the battle. Cyberbirb is also just a strictly better version of this. Still fine though since passive healing is good. Mascot synergies apply.

Pinguin: 4 cost for a shield drone. He’s a less good Crowe but still not bad.

Tinia: Cheap-ish does 6 damage to 3 enemies and gives you a buff, filters herself. Her +1 to drone cap buff can be nice but there are also multiple ways to raise your drone cap through cartridges (a lot of the high power Phoenix Bullets frequently come with +2 drone cap by default) and the hard cap is 10 so she might end up doing nothing if you’re already hitting the cap that way. Naturally she’s also not much use in a deck that’s not big on drones.

Hakua: Hakua is just good value. OK damage, one defensive and one offensive drone, she won’t blow you away but she’s solid.

F00041: Kinda pricey, gives you a very good buff and then filters herself. Her buff makes shield drones give an extra +1 shield and this can ramp up your defensive capabilities a lot. She’s only not in A because she does absolutely nothing outside a drone heavy deck.

Canaria: OK price, hits everything for 5 and then gives you +1 to healing drone healing. This is very good but as with F00041 she’s not doing anything outside a drone deck. Healing drones are also the rarest type of drone so she might end up not doing anything even in a drone deck.

F0069: Expensive for a one use buffer but still pretty nice. 9 damage to 3 enemies for 6 isn’t bad. As you might expect her buff is +1 to attack drone damage. Same caveats apply as with the other two but she’s good.

Tinia (Swimsuit): It’s Tinia again but you’re paying 3 more for 1 extra drone cap increase. Pretty much everything that applies to her regular version applies here.

Yatagarasu: 24 damage to a single target for 3 is pretty good but she only does it once per battle.

Ruffe: A potential wincon who caps out at 60 damage. (110 if you have drone cap up) Since destroying them also triggers your drones you’ll get their effects one last time too. Personally I prefer to just keep my drones alive and 110 damage isn’t enough to kill most bosses so I don’t use her a lot but she can certainly hit hard for 5 cost.

Mochibun: Cheap, minor healing and targeted discard. Mascot synergies.

Candycheshire: Random discard is worse than targeted but he’s 8 shield for 4 and potentially triggers discard effects for more. Mascot synergies

Nutboy: unfortunate name but pretty OK. Damage is decent for his cost combined with the poison and Feeble is always strong. Mascot synergies

Rin Akatsuki: scales kind of slowly since she’s only +1 per discard but she’s cheap and a decent basic choice for discards.

Elle Toujou: one of the better costed armour only cards but still expensive per point of mitigation. Reasonable choice for discards and she’s nice for using on off turns.

Alice Fushiki: I’m probably undervaluing Alice, she does 12 damage to 3 targets but randomized discard feels questionable on a card that doesn’t guarantee some mitigation and there are other good damage multi targeters that don’t do that. Good discard target though.

Lady Mira: decent healing for her cost, OK damage, 10 poison isn’t really functionally different from 5 poison in most cases but hey, it’s upside.

Linfa: Penetrates shields and hits everything for 4+2 per bullet in your graveyard. Has the best scaling mechanic of the several Brawlers bullets that do this exact same thing. She can be very good for wearing down large groups of enemies but her ceiling isn’t super high and enemy shields are generally super puny so penetrate is whatever. Brawlers having such a small pool also makes it harder for her to benefit from cartridge synergies.

Lien (Swimsuit): Linfa with a different scaling mechanic. +7 per enemy is very good but she’s often useless against bosses and it’s very rare you actually have 5 enemies on screen at once so most of the time she’s hitting for 12 or 19, which is still nice for 5 cost of course.

Claude (Swimsuit): hits 3 enemies for 10 with burst 2 for 6. Decent damage and self scaling but she’s sharing a set with Duchtoli and King Hornslime so her role is sort of redundant. Still good but you probably want one of the others that do the same thing better (buff removal is still not super relevant).

Summery Goldfish: Sometimes you just need to hit something for 20 damage to kill it and take less damage. This does that. Actually costs 1 in Heartsplosion because its cost reduction is applied after Heartsplosion’s cost halving.

Reasonable Bullets, fill a spot in your magazine and won’t usually feel like a dead weight but probably won’t do a ton.

Haru: 6 shield for 6 cost. Pretty good but she doesn’t do anything else and she’s not in any of the stronger trait groups.

Hornslime: Gives your next Monochrome bullet in the turn +5 attack. Solid and works well with multi hit Bullets, which Monochrome has a decent number of. A good combo piece but does nothing on its own.

Spectrose: 4 armour for 8 cost isn’t great for a defensive Bullet and she has a tendency to get you hit by multiple enemies when you use her to end a turn. OK damage for the cost but as a defensive piece she leaves a bit to be desired.

Haru (Black Knight): Her high damage makes her a decent turn ender and she throws in a little shield as a bonus. The issue she has is that 66 damage isn’t actually a ton once you reach later levels. If she doesn’t kill whatever she hits her value goes down a lot and enemy HP rises fairly quickly, at which point she drops off hard. Also nombos with cost reduction bullets because her cost is still so high that even at -20 she’ll end your turn.

Airi Sakurasaka: Cheap and regen is kind of nice but she does low damage and fills 1/20th of the weakest gauge. Her impact is kind of low but she can fill a slot.

Shiho Kanna: reasonable damage and targeted discard. She’s fine but competing with bullets that do her job better. 1/20th Heartsplosion.

Lovebird: OK but 3 mitigation for 6 isn’t super good value for mitigation. Mascot

Fluffybuffer: OK basic healing Bullet. Mascot.

Yumeno Suzuya: Meh damage unless you can get a few discards off. Once you hit the 2+ discard breakpoint she’s pretty OK though. 1/10th Heartsplosion

Tsuyu Hagino: 10 damage to 3 enemies for 10 is alright on its own, scales off graveyard so has a relatively low ceiling but free extra damage is free extra damage.

Tadtune: 3 cost to make the next Aquarhythm Bullet cost 5 less. Cost reduction is always nice but Aquarhythm has a lot of powerful cards at either low costs or higher than 5 so cases where he’s actually getting you a free cast are relatively infrequent. Aquarhythm cost reduction is also generally pretty good so his value is lowered a little.

Georgia: Decent cost/damage and combo gain but penetrating doesn’t really do much most of the time.

Hawkeye: high damage and targeted discard. She’s a starter Bullet in Phoenix decks but Phoenix doesn’t have a lot of natural discard synergy, so she gets better if you can get a couple of Stage Princesses in to synergize with her. Her high cost means she’s guaranteed to end your turn in most cases though so you need to be careful about exposing yourself to extra hits.

Destructowl: +5 attack to your next Phoenix Bullet in a turn. Reasonable but Phoenix only has 2 multihitters so somewhat limited potential.

Fio: Good with Destructowl, meh the rest of the time. No scaling and no Drones mean she’s just 10 damage for 6 on her own.

Shirley (Swimsuit): Worse than her regular version in almost every way. 2 extra damage for 2 extra cost, 2 less drones and a usually irrelevant dispell effect. She’s still pretty OK though because spawning multiple drones is always nice.

Sara Senya: Reasonable cost/damage but randomized discard and there are a lot of better choices for the same role.

Rosebuck: Cheap, decent damage and incidental poison, targeted discard.

Kohaku: Probably the better of the two Swan twins she’s kind of win more though. If you’re in a position where you have enough armour to be worth doubling for 8 you’re probably doing pretty well defensively already. She also does nothing in a vacuum.

Kuon: Half the cost of her sister but doubles shield instead. Has the same issue of requiring other Bullets to build a reasonable amount of shield before she’s worth casting. Shield falling off at the end of the turn also means her impact is limited to one turn.

Luli Otonashi: OK cost/damage to every enemy, usually irrelevant dispel effect.

Lien: The same as her swimsuit version but with worse scaling for 1 extra cost.

Estella: basically just a worse Haku. Same scaling but twice the cost for a mere +3 base attack. She does exclude herself though.

Mi’ke Akiba: The usual deal for Brawler bullets, hits everything and scales with cards in hand. Caps out at 17 damage which is alright but the others have higher ceilings.

Jelly (Academy): Significantly less broken than her regular version, confusion is unreliable and she’s only single target which limits the usefulness further. Her cost/damage is OK though and she can filter herself if you just don’t cast her.

Scorpia: reasonable damage and poison, draws you some Bullets. Fine but not spectacular.

Not awful but not good either. These are usually the Bullets you remove from your starting deck when you get the chance.

Ninette: Meh damage to 3 enemies and draw 1. She’s not awful but she doesn’t really do a lot and there are far better Bullets for everything she does.

Marcel: Your basic burst outlet, she’s not awful but there are like 10 other Bullets who do her job better for less.

Queen Veresov: 15 damage to 3 enemies isn’t bad, poison is incidental but there are better ways to do what she does and she doesn’t really fit in with what Monochrome is usually trying to do, nor is she powerful enough to be a utility splash in another archetype.

Ruy Lopez: I think Ruy Lopez is a newbie trap since she’s the first boss Bullet you encounter. She’s not great though. 12 damage to a single target for 5 isn’t terrible but she doesn’t do anything else and her only attacking twice means she doesn’t benefit from attack boosts as much as other multi attackers.

Pilz: She just gives you Antibody, which is a silver bullet effect that often doesn’t do anything. If you don’t need antibody in a particular turn she’s just a dead draw.

Seina Fuyuki: Decent damage/cost but her draw 7 effect will almost never go off because you’re almost never casting her at 1 Bullet in hand. What she does is draw you up to a full hand, which is nice but there are better card draw options. Gives 1/10th Heartsplosion too so that’s nice.

Sumire Yanagida: Meh damage to 3 targets for her cost. She gets an attack buff while Heartsplosion is active but most of the time she just sits in your hand doing nothing because 10 cost is far too much for how little impact she has.

Queen of Herrings: 10 damage to 3 enemies for 10 isn’t bad but there are just a whole lot of better things you could be doing with your time in Aquarhythm so she falls into the same “sitting in your hand not doing anything” camp as Sumire without the occasional Heartsplosion use case. She is Dragon Palace but her high base cost makes it a lot harder to bring her down to being usable unless you’re going infinite with seahorses.

Lacan: OK damage and draw +combo beam but she can’t really compete with the better draw sources.

Tsumugi Morisono: I feel like there is probably a use case for Tsumugi (most likely as a turn ender who gains you a bunch of defences by discarding multiple other Princess bullets) but every time I actually attempted to make her work it just didn’t pan out. Discard 5 without extra draw is also probably the only instance of discard being an actual cost since it forces you into topdecking for the rest of your turn if she doesn’t end it, which means she’s not a great engine for Bullets who scale off number of discards.

Rowdy Rabbit: scales reasonably well with number of enemies but only being single target hurts her potential a lot. She is a Mascot though and does particularly well in those decks.

Bullets that don’t really do much of anything.

Slithermane: Confusion is weak, single target confusion is weaker, and he doesn’t remove himself without being cast like Jelly (Academy) does.

Nanoha Kisaragi: Does some damage and fills a mediocre gauge by a negligible amount, not cheap enough to be worth it for how little impact she has.

Wintry Rodents: Decent damage for its cost but randomized discard and cost 4 mean it has no real place compared to the other low cost discord engine mascots.

Littlephin: +7 attack to the next Aquarhythm is nice but there are no multi attackers in Aquarhythm, which makes him sort of whatever.

Squeaker: Squeaker is too expensive for a defensive card and her cost/damage is too low for an offensive one.

Charonia (Bride): OK damage to 3 enemies for a slightly high cost, gives you a bad buff and then filters herself out of your deck afterwards. Haughty Heart (+1 combo meter per turn) is just too slow to be impactful. It’s essentially 3 damage per turn going off every 10. Even in combo beam focussed builds your other sources of meter are so much faster to the point of rendering the buff irrelevant.

Naru: Scales with your number of drones so she caps out at 13 damage (18 with drone cap increases) to 3 enemies once you’ve spent several other cards/probably multiple turns building up your drones. If she scaled a little better she’d be good but in most cases she’s just not worth the effort for how low her ceiling is.

Suzuku Asahina: Low damage to everything for a low-ish cost but Bound is a useless debuff most of the time and she does nothing else.

Rinko Shirayuki: Cheap, gives you a bad buff and then filters herself out of your deck afterwards. Seven Superguards is barely relevant because poison is barely relevant.

Catnapper: There are better cards for everything he does. There are better Mascots for everything he does.

Beareferee: Good name for a bad Bullet. He does nothing except hit moderately hard and you have way more options for that with better synergies.

Bullets that actually harm you or are just unusable for one reason or another.

Yumeno Suzuya (Bride): She hits hard but her cost reduction being based on cards in the graveyard makes her unreliable and you almost never have her cheap enough to actually be worth casting. She’s also actively worse if you’re doing the sensible thing and keeping your deck as thin as possible, and makes any self exluding buffers slightly worse because they make her harder to cast cheaply. Basically she’s in theory decent but forces you to make bad choices elsewhere in order for her to be viable.

Vuvuzeler: +10 attack should be really solid but there are only 14 Brawler bullets so the number of target options are extremely limited and none of them have multi attack. The Brawlers that are actually worth running scale well enough by themselves (or you’re not running them for the damage in Mao’s case) that this guy doesn’t really have much of a place. Also one of the Bullets the game likes to stick in your starter deck with no other Brawlers in the extra levels.

Roo Tyson: Pretty solid cost/damage but there are plenty of other Bullets with better ratios who don’t arbitrarily deal damage to you. Arguably an engine for Haku/Estella but given he exludes himself he’s not actually very good for that either.

Buggo: This one’s deliberately bad and mostly exists to punish you for trying to scout Singulaladies at every opportunity (which you should do anyway, Buggo isn’t that bad but they are that good) since they’re also in Bullet Break. No damage and you have to pay its cost and deal self damage to filter it out. In theory can become merely bad with the “Bullet Break Bullets get +10 damage” cartridge but even then it’s not worth it and that cartridge is bad anyway since all Bullet Break Bullets only get to attack once per battle. Discard it at a shop block at the first opportunity unless you’re going for the acheivement for clearing a run with one in your deck.

Cartridges are complicated. Sort of. Because acquiring them is entirely down to RNG (where you can influence the RNG a little with Bullets through scouting, the choice of Bullets after battles etc) you only get new Cartridges equipped to new Bullets or when swapping them out at rest blocks. This means it’s a lot harder to definitively make statements about power etc because you might just never see any given Cartridge (it took me about 15 hours after beating the game just to unlock them all because the last one didn’t show up for 6 runs). As such I’ve largely avoided factoring Cartridges into Bullet evaluations too strongly unless there’s a very good reason (Mentioning Dragon Palace Casket on Otohime is fair game because she usually comes with it equipped, ditto Butterfly Buttress on Duchtoli). They’re also a lot more variably useful than Bullets, a +10 attack Cartridge might be absolutely fantastic in one deck and worthless in another because you can absolutely get Cartridges which buff Bullet traits that you don’t have. With that said here are some general rules of thumb for evaluating Cartridges

Individual Bullet Cost reduction: any Cartridge that makes a Bullet cheaper to cast is almost always good.

Trait based Cost reduction: Usually great but sometimes you’ll get duds which don’t apply to your deck at all, these can safely be swapped out but if a cost reduction Cartridge is applying to even one Bullet in your deck it’s potentially worth it.

Cost Increase: Get rid of Protogear at the first opportunity. It gives +2 attack for +1 cost and is never worth it.

Shields: The common Cartridges that give +1 shield on attack are fine but unspectacular, you can absolutely get rid of these if you want but they can be nice upside when you’ve got them on low/0 cost Bullets. Anything that gains Shield at the start of battle is probably weak because you could easily run into enemies which don’t attack on their first turn rendering the Cartridge useless. If it’s one of the higher shield increases like +20 it’s plausibly worth it despite this risk because that’s hefty shield boost. Hydrangea Wedding Cage doesn’t actually do what it says (you only lose 20 shield at end of turn instead of all) but instead lets you keep up to 20 shield if you’re above that at end of turn. Still very good.

Armour: Armour at the start of battle is better than Shield because Armour is more expensive to get hold of regularly and also won’t fall off if the enemy does nothing turn 1

Healing: Basically all the healing Cartridges are fine, heal 1 at the start of battle is kind of weak potentially since it’s not a huge number (the +5 one is pretty good though). It generally doesn’t hurt to swap out the weaker healing Cartridges for legendaries if you need something to swap.

Max HP increases: Fine but you can’t really get enough to make a huge difference unless you sacrifice multiple Cartridge slots to this and that’s generally not amazing. Works pretty well with Haku though.

Draw: usually fine but drawing isn’t quite as powerful as in other card games since you always replace what you play.

Delay: Delay on attack is pretty good as it’s pseudo cost reduction in most cases. Random delay at the start of battle is kind of so-so since it’s unreliable. Yellow Anniversary (7 delay to everything at the start of battle) Is great.

Other debuffs: Applying feeble is great, poison is whatever, bound is useless. Joltcircle, (1 random paralysis at the start of combat) is very good.

Drone Buffs: Always extremely good, keep these if you’re using any drones at all (the healing drone one might not be worth it since healingless drone decks exist and are good but otherwise).

Drone Cap: also very good if you’re running drones, lets you skip taking Tinia. Phoenix Boss characters have a decent chance of coming with this one equipped too which is nice.

Attack Buffs: These are super dependent on your deck, they can be either fantastic or completely useless. I’d recommend avoiding the +10 to Bullet Break characters one given every Bullet in that set excludes themselves so it’s functionally just +10 damage once per battle per Singulalady you’re running (similarly any effects that trigger on attacks are kind of not great on any given bullet that Excludes itself and you’re better swapping it for something more general). Red Anniversary is +2 attack to everything and you should obviously keep that if you can.

Piercing: very rarely comes up and this is usually the second thing I swap out after removing any Protogears because it does not do anything.

First/Turn 1 Attack Buffs: These increase the attack of either your first Bullet each turn or all Bullets used turn 1. This can be super powerful with multi attacks and further increases Duchtoli’s ability to just delete entire encounters.

Combo Beam Enhancements: very good if you’re playing into Combo Beam, does nothing otherwise.

Extra Giga/Shop Discounts: Very good early game but worth swapping out later on when there aren’t many shops left in a run.

Free Rests: Useful if you’re taking a lot of damage but generally you want to be using rest sites to swap Cartridges and get your healing from other sources.

Fight!!!: lets you survive lethal damage once per battle. Potentially worthwhile as insurance if you’re not tearing things up yet. There are held items that can do this for you too though.

Bullet Count Cartridges: these Cartridges will give an effect if you have enough bullets of a certain type in your Magazine at the start of the turn. These come in two flavours, 12 of a specific game’s Bullets (IE 12 Phoenix, 12 Monochrome etc) and 2 of a specific trait (2 Timid, 2 Cheery etc). These can be very potent as anything that does something without you having to cast anything is good. The 12 count ones are only worthwhile in decks that are hard committed to that game already but they’re good if you already hit/are close to the count when they come up. The 2 count are actually arguably harder to pull off since you’ll generally get more choices to specifically pick up Monochrome Bullets than specifically Cheery Bullets etc. Also worth noting that these have to be in your Magazine at the start of the turn to trigger so if your deck only has 15 Bullets in it you’ll never get the effect even if your whole deck is from one game. If you have 20 of one game on the other hand it’s probably going to go off.

Starting Hand Modifiers: There are two of these, Break energy V, which increases your hand size by 1 and is very good and Goldwing Gear, which guarantees the Bullet it’s on in your starting hand. This can be either amazing or useless depending on who it’s on. T1 Singulalady Coco or Duchtoli with first turn buffs being guaranteed can break the game in half, On the other hand you probably aren’t in dire need of Nanoha Kisaragi in your starting hand.

Mascot buffs: the aforementioned Duck Golem and Moonrabbit Treasure, these get their own section because they basically enable an entire new deck type. Pretty decent even if you’re not going all in though since you’ll usually have a Mascot or 3 hanging around.

Thanks for reading the guide, hopefully it was of some use. I've never actually made one of these before so it's entirely possible this isn't actually any good but hey, if it helps at least one person it's achieved its goal.