Orcust Guide

THE COMBOS
Bread and Butter
This is the combo you will ideally do every game you go first. While that may sound kind of lame, remember that is what half the meta decks are doing, and this has the advantage of not taking 10 minutes. It's also not so debilitating that your opponent literally doesn't get the chance to play. The goal is to just make a board of Topologic(in the right EMZ), Longirsu(in the middle MMZ), and Babel(it's a field spell so you put it in the field spell zone). And that's it. It's very difficult to make the deck put out something stronger. If you do manage to get an extra summon, or draw something like soul charge, your board will just have a Orcustrion on the board. All you need to start is Armageddon or some equivalent, and harp/skeleton. Or harp and anything that can special itself. Or Armageddon and another extender(Crown, Succession, Reborn). Or brass and harp.
  1. Normal Armageddon, send brass(if harp is in hand) or harp(if skeleton is in hand). If you have neither send harp.
2. Banish the card you sent to either special harp from hand or special brass from deck. Link for Galatea. If you had not target in hand
3. Activate the card you now have in graveyard, this will put skeleton on the field. So you have galatea and cymbal skeleton. Link for Summon Sorc.
4. Special back galatea with cymbal skeleton to a zone pointed at by summon sorc. Now use her effect, send back either Brass Bombard or Cymbal Skeleton to set Babel. DO NOT SEND BACK HARP HORROR if you do you will have a bad time.
5. Use Summon Sorc effect to special World wand from deck. Link World Wand and Galatea for Longirsu in the center MMZ.
6. Banish World Wand to summon Harp Horror. Link Harp Horror and Summon Sorc for Topologic Bomber Dragon. Don't forget to activate Babel. You now have 2 banished machines, and Harp in grave for at least 2 Topologic nukes. Not to bad for just two cards. Now if you drew some kind of extra extender, or somehow got an extra summon, just us that card to link with longrisu, and make Orcustrion directly beneath Topologic. Though sometimes I just save resources for next turn when I can and have Longirsu on field and ready to go.
  Oh god my hand is terrible somebody kill me
I do this when I only have Armageddon and nothing else, it's not pretty but it will at least let you draw two cards and hopefully hit something not terrible.
1. Normal Armageddon and send Harp Horror.
2.Use harp to special skeleton. Link for Galatea.
3. Set Orcust Return with Galatea's effect. Send Galatea to grave to draw 2.
4. Special Galatea back with skeleton, I usually do the center monster zone but it doesn't really matter, if your opponent reads your cards they won't use the linked zone so Galatea isn't protected from battle.
You won't do this play that much but I think this is what you have to do if you literally draw nothing else.
The I can't Go into Summon Sorc For Some Reason
1. Just copy over the same play from the bread and butter up to the end of step three were you make Summon Sorc and instead make Longirsu in the Left EMZ.
2. Summon Galatea in the center MMZ with cymbal skeleton, use her effect for Babel.
That's it, you don't get the Topologic out but at least you will have linked your opponent's EMZ and will be able to send a card with Longirsu. If you drew Babel/Einsatz, you can link galatea and longrisu for Topologic, then when your opponent summons a monster you will be able to send Harp to graveyard, enabling essentially the same play as if you had already opened Summon Sorc.
  Possible Variants World Legacy
This option is pretty budget friendly, and a good choice if you don't have access to a lot of handtraps. The engine utilizes World Legacy Survivor to excavate 5 cards from your deck, grab a world legacy card and then mill the rest. As for what cards to run, start my maxing out World Wand and Crown. Lance is kind of like an honest for link monsters, so it's pretty good. Chalice can search out another World Legacy by banishing from grave, but you have to wait a turn. Armor is kind of snowbally since if you special summon it( possibly with Wand or Succession) you will get another world legacy card. Shield is dog turds.

Phantom Knights
I have the least experience with this variant. I feel like it will be better when/if Cherbuini( the BA link monster) is released but for now I guess the goal is to utilize Phantom Knight's to plus/mill and get out Phantom Knights of Rusty Bardiche as an alternative boss monster. Shade Brigandine fulfills the same requirements as most of the other extenders you run, and it's a dark, so the potential is there. You can also incorporate Isolde and more dark warriors to make Summon Sorc off of your phantom knight cards, but at that point I would ask why you don't just play dark warrior link instead of orcusts. I need to play this build more but it seems like it has potential.

Danger!
Danger! cards have pretty obvious synergy with Orcusts since they put a card on the field without losing you cards. Being all darks is fantastic, and they really shine in this deck since it struggles to hold on to advantage. Of course the engine is very pricey, and you are potentially opening yourself up to the will of RNGesus, but I think it's the strongest and most fun build of Orcust to play. What is cool is that you could start by just tossing in 3 Danger!? Snakes for the free summon, then add Jackalopes, and then Nessies. Though you can actually play as many danger! cards as you want, since Bigfoot and Thunderbird can be awesome go second cards. Even Mothman could be an option for players on a budget. I do think Chupacabra and Dogman can be skipped since they have potential to do nothing.

Meta Matchups Sky Strikers
Still the deck to beat, while Danger! FTK may be stronger sadly theres all together very little you can do to outplay an ftk besides drawing multiple handtraps or cheating. Sky Striker are interesting since they are almost unaffected by Topologic Bomber Dragon, so you'll want to forgo making it in this matchup. Instead, you can opt for just making Orcustrion turn one. Prioritize Triple burst dragon to deal with rei. Core can be pretty good here since widow anchor can hurt pretty bad. They main deck a lot of stuff that can really hurt like Twin Twisters, Shark Cannon, and I've even seen builds play imperial iron wall. Side in mistakes or shared rides to try and inhibit their searching.

Warrior Extra Link Nonsense
Can't add too much here, if they go off you'll probably lose. While you may get some effects when they gumblar you with either dangers or orcust it's still an uphill battle. Midbreaker and Infinite Impermanence can stop topologic, but you'll still have longrisu to hopefully cut their plays short.

Altergeist Geists are pretty tough, they have soft removal options to deal with your link monsters, tons of recursion, and negates to slow your deck down to a halt. Rivalry is brutal against Armageddon knight(I'm thinking about using Shaddol Dragon to get around this) and secret village stops your draw cards. If the game reaches and advanced state and neither player has their full engine going I think you have an advantage since you can just keep throwing out huge monsters.

Thunder Dragon
So either I've only played against awful Thunder Dragon players online or we may have a pretty decent matchup here. Colossus only really stops Survivor and Rota, meaning titan is really the only card you have to worry about. Babel can make it very interesting since you can chain to their effects in hand to prevent Titan from working, and even then it won't beat Longrisu or Orchustrion. If they have Summoner out you can simply just Resolve Orcustrion and win.

Trickstar
Trickstar aren't too bad to play into. Again, just be mindful of the Droll+Reincarnation combo and try and play mindfully when using stuff like Allure and Return. If they banish your orchusts it's really just more fuel for effects. You don't really play backrow so Lightstage isn't that oppressive, just don't use Galatea on your opponent's turn. If they are playing the Sky Striker variant you will have to worry about Widow Anchor and Afterburners, but less handtraps and backrow. Just make sure to have an answer for Inspector Boarder game 2 and 3.

 
Final Thoughts: SAST and Beyond
So Savage Strike introduces two cards to the archetype. However, the new trap card is terrible and I have yet to find a justification for running it so I'm just going to skip it. The other card Orcust Knightmare is very interesting because it opens up a new strategy for the deck.

As a knightmare card, it can be special summoned off of Knightmare Mermaid, which means you could hypothetically just normal summon Knightmare Iblee, link for mermaid, summon the new card, then link for galatea. Use Orcust Knightmare to send Harp Horror to grave, Harp summons Skeleton, and from there you do the same Summon Sorceress combo as before. Not only do you get to summon ib to your opponent's field, turning off sky striker spells, kaijus, infinite impermanence, and lots of other annoying cards, you also now have a new card that you can essentially banish at will. You can get a free extra banished card at almost every opportunity, making Orcustrion and Longirsu much easier to resolve. And the attack boost is nice, potentially making Orcustrion bigger than Thunder Dragon Titan and even Super Conductor Tyranno. Of course, much of this rings hollow for OCG players, who will have to survive without Summon Sorceress. But they have grass so i'm not wasting tears on them.
Thanks so much for reading, there's no way I hit everything so feel free to add ideas, builds, cool techs, and so forth. And don't forget to kick it into #SAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

/r/u_foogers Thread Parent