Shadowverse Evolve Master
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Set 2 Roach Guide
🕑 Added 2025-08-04 05:15:14 +0000 UTCIntroduction
In my opinion, Roach Forest is one of the highest skill ceiling decks in the game that will reward you proportionally to the amount of time you put into learning it. It is a deck with few poor matchups and an essential deck to learn for tournament play. In set 2, it has a few more lopsided matchups than before (Ward Haven is a hard counter, whilst Aggro Abyss can be quite difficult) with actual counterplay options like Odin being in existence. Nevertheless, most of these problems can be navigated against with proper planning and adequate matchup knowledge.
Decklist
Roach: Your main lethal tool. If you draw two in hand, you don't need Godwood Staff bounce for lethal. Likewise, if you have Godwood Staff, consider finding opportunities to use the first Roach to chunk face and then the second for lethal (with godwood bounce)
May, Journey Elf: One of your most broken cards that allows you to break most boards. Most useful on turn 3 to gain board control but can be utilised at all points of the game. Consider recycling if the hand allows for it (like with Bug Alert)
Godwood Staff: Perma cards in hand plus bounce effect to enable Roach bounce for 0pp. With Odin in the game, defending this card requires you to have multiple threats on the board or for their life to be low enough that they can't Odin and banish Godwood.
Lambert Cairn: Versatile card. Worth noting that on Lethal turns, if you're missing 1pp cards, this card is on-rate as two 1pp cards even when hardcast for 2 (potentially bouncing this from field). So, for example, if this card is on field, it’s a good target to bounce with Carbuncle as you will be able to expend 3pp to play 3 cards.
Bayle, Luxglaive: Best used for the lethal turn but gauge when you need to use this card to regain the board. Note that sometimes, the opponent will have to extend very heavily to clear him as he is a 4/4, allowing you to potentially gain an evo point advantage.
Glade: No longer a must-have 3-of due to the addition of Ambush From Above to control the board and Garden's Allure to regain hand size. Nevertheless, there will be many situations where Glade will be your only answer to an enemy board. Also, he draws two cards!
Garden's Allure: Your ultimate hand management tool. Excess copies of cards like Godwood Staff, Glade, Carbuncle etc can be easily removed. Note that you can fuse once per turn per copy of Allure. You can also fuse more than one card at a time. Finally, when you have too few cards, you can fuse tokens to regain hand size and attempt to draw into your other card draw.
Fairy Convocation: Excellent at all stages of the game. With less (no) copies of Fairy Tamer, keeping this in mulligan is great to enable early tempo plays. This card is exceptionally versatile in allowing you to cost-effectively clear board or build combo.
Titania, Queen of Fairies: The crest effect to add a Fairy to hand is very strong and sets you up for infinite resources. Assists hand management for Roach OTK or setting up removal cause you always get a 1pp Fairy at start of turn without the need to spend pp to generate them. Additionally, the stats aren't too bad to tempo this out, and the transform effect lets you clear a lot of threats, including cards like Anne and Grea.
Bug Alert: Flexible card for clearing board. Note that it works very well with bouncing Lambert Cairn on lethal turns where you lack 1pp plays. Priority targets usually include cards like Elf Child May (so you can reuse her for future turns to preserve evo points), Lily (good vs decks where you expect them to constantly play high hp followers), and Roach (for when you want to poke their face then end with Bug Alert to bring Roach back to hand.
Lily: All of her effects are good, including her stats. She is not even that bad to curve out on turn 2 vs decks that have few outs to it. Obviously, she lets you clear otherwise unclearable followers by putting them to 1 hp. Ideally, you save evo point, but you can also use her evo to ping for 1. You don't always need to play this at Combo (3), sometimes you can already clear the board with just her 1-damage ping on evo. This can come up sometimes when you need to conserve certain cards in your hand or use the combo (3) effect on something else. In some game states, you will prioritise Lily's draw on evo to keep your hand size up, such as in games without Glade/Godwood.
Ambush from Above: Very strong removal spell with a particularly nasty combo on turn 3 with 2 Fairies. However, I note that this can be rather awkward against cards like Bonemancer in particular. Notably, it CAN hit the same target twice when using Combo (3), so sequence your trades correctly.
Baby Carbuncle: You can either curve this out on turn 2 if necessary or use it to bounce cards like May when you have excess Carbuncles in hand. The Super Evo is usually used to extend lethal damage, which you can look at the formulas later in the guide. However, you should also identify situations where you can simply play for board tempo. The fact that this card gives you 3pp on Super Evo means you can just clear their board, build a big one, then demand an answer from the opponent.
Fairy Fencer: Just a very solid 2pp 2/2 with some scaling into late game with SEV discount that makes your hand easier to manage. Helps fill in a lot of curves and gives you with more early game board control. Doesn’t fully set you up for Combo (3) like Tamer, but a 2/2 that comes with a Fairy is higher immediate tempo.
Good Fairy of the Pond/Water Fairy: One of the best 1-drops in the game and sees a return due to its strong applications vs aggressive decks and almost guaranteed damage against slower decks.
Super Evo Alternatives: Forest has some of the best super-evo targets in the game. The only problem is that the amount of space you have to run them is limited, so you can only pick a few. Notably, I think that with the addition of our new hand-management spell, Garden's Allure, it is possible to run more of these than before, if one should so choose. However, in most games, you want to allocate one super evo to Carbuncle, which means we don't really benefit from adding more Super Evo targets if we can only use two per game anyways.
Lymaga: Surprisingly strong against a number of matchups (mid-sword is a huge one), where locking their board can ensure your survival, Also acts as a one card out against Amelia + Luminous Mage Super Evo (you board lock them one turn then kill them on the following turn - they also take around 5 damage)
Aria: Weaker in the current environment, but very strong going second in the very specific scenario where Super Evo'd Aria cleanly trades with rest of Fairies going face. The most cuttable option at the moment.
Olivia: Still one of the best options on Turn 7, made even better with Garden's Allure allowing you to manipulate hand size. Mainly used for the tempo to buy you an extra turn and heal/chip for 2, but extremely strong when low in hand size or if they left a Fairy on board that you can evo to face.
Main deck alternatives:
Fairy Tamer: One of the best turn 2 plays, where the slight tempo loss doesn't result in a significant health trade. Sets up Combo (3) for Turn 3 with cards like May, so you will regain tempo.
Fay Twinkletoes: It doesn’t really see play this set but can be good for the element of surprise. Having 3 2/2s on the board is potentially game ending but deck space is tight and card can be clunky outside of its best use cases.
Odin: It’s playable/good in every deck.
Roach Maths
I can provide a few frameworks and formulas that can all help calculate lethal:
Method 1:
With Super Evo:
If you have Carbuncle, 7pp is 10 damage.
If you don't have Carbuncle 7pp is 8 damage.
From there you can just add +2 per 0pp in your hand OR for each pp above 7pp. If you don't have 2 Roach in hand OR Godwood on field, then you lose 2 points of damage. If you have Lambert Cairn on field, +1 (obviously). If you have nothing to kill with Super Evo, then minus one damage.
In addition, this assumes that each of your cards cost only 1pp.
Method 2:
This is what I shared on my Youtube video.
Method 3:
This is just logical reasoning. Your two roaches will cost 6pp. So the number of cards you can play is whatever your max pp is, minus the 6pp of two roach, PLUS your 0pp cards.
Then from there, you can just add the numbers together. Example, you have 8pp, 1 0pp card in hand and two roach in hand. Therefore, you have 3 cards to be played before Roach, then you play Roach as 4th Card, then Roach as 5th card, so your overall damage is 9 + evo damage (3) = 12.
Carbuncle is effectively considered TWO 0pp cards. So in the same situation, except with Carbuncle available, you have the 0pp card, Carbuncle, 3 1pp cards and 2x Roach to be played. Or, to use the method described, you have Carbuncle, which is Two 0pp cards, an actual 0pp card, 2 1pp cards, and then two roach. So your 6th card is Roach and your 7th card is Roach. Then one damage from super evo, so 14 damage.
Roach Lethal
There are certain pre-requisites before going for lethal.
Your opponent actually has to be in lethal range.
It sounds really obvious but a lot of Roach players don't consider this. You need to actively consider how to put yourself in a position to OTK your opponent dependent on the matchup. In most matchups, healing is relatively limited, so you can set up a 2-turn lethal by poking them with Roach on the first turn then doing the full-combo on the second.
For example, against Rune, setting up a 2-turn lethal is harder because of Norman's existence. They can heal 8 or put down two difficult wards to clear. This will severely impact your ability to OTK. While against Forest, the outcome of the game is almost always decided through 2-turn lethals, as you cannot realistically poke them down with any card other than Roach.
2. You generally need a way to play two Roach on the same turn
Of course, sometime you can kill them with a single Roach and super evo it to face for lethal. However, in most situations, you need to be able to play two Roach on the same turn to secure lethal.
To do this, you will need either need two Roach in hand or Godwood Staff on the board from a previous turn (which turns one roach in your hand into "two"). Let's call this the optimal or max damage line.
The situation where you don't have two Roach or Godwood Staff in play results in one less damage. For this, you simply need one roach and Bug Alert/Carbuncle.
For the Carbuncle line, you play Roach when you have 5pp remaining, attack enemy leader, play Carbuncle, bounce Roach, super evo, recover 3pp, play Roach again. For the Bug Alert line, you have to play Roach at 7pp.
3. All the cards you're playing while going for lethal, outside of Roach, should be 0pp or 1pp
For each card that costs more than 1pp, you're losing 2 points of damage. What this means is that you do need to plan ahead and ensure you have enough 1pp cards to play on the turn. Also note that Lambert Cairn is on-rate, that is, if you play it for 2pp from hand and it gives you the 0pp spell, it is effectively 2x 1pp cards for 2pp.
4. Once you're committed to lethal, complete your sequencing quickly
If you've done the maths already and made sure that you're not board locked/have sufficient targets to trade in, the rest of your turn should be executed quickly. The reality is that once you're committed, there's no longer any room to deviate. The worst thing that can happen is that you time out and miss lethal.
Another addendum to this is that if it looks like you're dead next turn no matter what, and you haven't yet figured out if you have lethal, just go for the line anyway. When I was new to the deck, that is what I would do and sometimes it would end up being lethal (maybe you forgot to add Carbuncle super evo damage or one of the Lambert Cairn buffs).
Basic Gameplan
Your general checklist in every game:
Establish Godwood Staff on the board (against non-aggro mus)
Draw into Roach throughout the course of the game
Survive
Put your opponent into a position where they can be lethalled by Roach (accumulate 0pp cards to enable lethal and poke with excess Roach/bounce comboes)
The way you do this in every matchup may be a little different but you can typically follow this basic game plan and find success. The matchup sections will discuss this in more detail.
General Mulligan: Water Fairy, Fairy Tamer (if you run it), Fairy Fencer (if you run it), Godwood Staff, Glade, Bayle. Try to mulligan for a balance between early game board control and one source of card draw.
Concept: Roach Poking
This will come up in a number of matchups where the amount of healing from the opponent is limited or if they're capable of outing your board every single turn (key example being the mirror match). In these matchups, by poking them on a prior turn, you no longer have to aim for a perfect 20->0 OTK, it can be something much easier to achieve like 14->0.
You can often consider these types of plays when you have excess Roaches in hand, or bounces like Bug Alert/Carbuncle.
Concept: Invisible Pressure
The easiest way to explain this concept is how everyone plays against Swordcraft. 12 is the magic number that everyone knows they can't drop below against Sword. The moment you're below 12, think about how most decks are forced to play around turn 9. They have to start putting down wards above 3 HP, they have to heal themselves so they can get out of range, etc.
Naturally, this concept applies with Roach too. In fact, Roach might have the most "invisible pressure" in the game. After all, there's no way for your opponent to know how many 0pp Bayles are in your hand, but in most cases, they will assume you have at least one in the late game, irrespective of whether or not you have it. As a result, opponents are frequently incentivised to play around it every single turn instead of fully developing their own game plan. Even worse for the opponent, is that with each successive turn, you get an extra play point (effectively increasing lethal range by +2) and you also become more likely of drawing into the lethal or poking them down.
Matchups
Roach vs Sword (favoured)
With the addition of Ambush from Above, it's quite difficult for Sword to gain lasting and meaningful damage onto you. Even the Turn 6 Ambush Valse has become significantly harder to pull off, with up to 9 sources of non-target damage that the Forest player has access to, making it fairly risky for the Sword player to attempt. Odin's existence can be played around simply by going wide, try to put them in a position where if they have to Odin, they need to trade into your board regardless (then you can reestablish Godwood easily as they expended 7pp). And Yurius is just a meme. In most game states, it's easily answered by Lily, and they often need to expend an evo point in order to play it in the first place, which is bad news for them. In case it ever comes up, you can also bounce the soldiers and they are 0pp in hand.
Your general game plan is to avoid taking significant early game poke and fully out their board every turn (except on the turn you drop Godstaff). In Sword, they will eventually leak turns where you can push small amounts of face damage. It's worth noting that against Sword, it's a legitimate win condition to run them out of evo points, at which point they won't be able to properly threaten lethal and you gain full control over the board. For example, cards like Bayle can be very good at forcing responses from Sword, as they have limited outs to multiple well statted followers at the same time.
Mulligan
General Keeps: Water Fairy/Fairy Tamer/Fairy Fencer/Godwood Staff/Glade/Bayle/Elf Child May/Ambush from Above (don't overkeep early game unless you already have Glade/Godwood as a mulligan select)
Early Game:
Generally speaking, opening Water Fairy + Fairy Fencer will secure the first few turns for you against Sword. It's not very easy for them to ignore the board or play around it meaningfully. If they're going second, you want to prevent them from getting any value from their Zirconia evo, i.e. don't leave any cards on their field. Elf Child May is a bit of a cheat card here, if you play it on turn 3 with 2x Fairies, Sword is not doing anything to you for the next few turns.
I also like setting up Godwood Staff if the opponent has a relatively weak start and I have a meaningful way to recover the board. Examples include Glade/May/Lily. Taking 2 damage to set up Godwood is totally worth it, but you can't do this if they're about to evo Zirconia and buff existing board vs you.
There is also one specific line that is rather nightmarish for Sword to deal with, and that's going second, coin out Lily, then buff Lily with Lambert Cairn as a 2/4, which outs practically every board, forces out Valse/Dog as an out (both of which are inherently outted by the board state, Valse by the Fairy from Cairn). In addition, they still have to contend with the threat of a May/Ambush line. You won't see this one too often as you don't ever keep these in a mulligan.
Mid Game
Supposing you weren't able to set up Godwood earlier, turn 5 is often a great turn for this. You can play Godwood -> Fairy -> May, which clears a lot of boards. Again, if you're only letting them get a small amount of chip damage in, it's ok, just assess your hand and see how easy it is to fully out their board in upcoming turns.
Otherwise, Glade Evo is usually very strong vs Sword and outs everything early game. In addition, if it's 5/5, it limits their range of plays significantly, as practically nothing is a clean out. Even if they use Valse to save evo, they ultimately leave behind a 1 hp follower which is easily cleared by a fairy. In practice, it often forces out an evo point from the opponent, which is what you want to be seeing out of Sword.
In this part of the game, you really just want to clear the enemy board as efficiently as you can, while incentivising them to burn evos to prevent chip damage. If they take chip damage, you can look towards setting up two-turn lethals if you have Bayle/Carbuncle/Roach/Godwood setup.
Late Game
In general, you want to consider two distinct game plans. 1) Is to outlast Sword. If you can force them to run out of their evo points first, you will win. The amount of damage and the way they clear boards will be severely restricted, which will allow you to setup lethal much more freely. A common setup that can win the game against Sword is when they're on only 1 SEV point left, and you do something like Olivia, Bayle, Lily, SEV Olivia Lily full clear board. There's not that much Sword can do to clear that without drawing all their Ignominous Samurais or with a perfect Gildaria setup, so in most situations, you can expect that they will burn last SEV, not even full-clear board, then take damage from board the following turn. Once their SEVs are out, and they don't even have Albert, you will feel the pressure from Sword significantly diminish. Notably, this setup can be done with most of your strong SEV turns. Another example is where you go Carbuncle, Bayle, Roach swing face (keep roach on field). Sword has issues outing "Tall and Wide" boards at the same time in the turn 6-8 range. It's worth noting that at Turn 8, your main threat is likely the manual Gildaria Evo + Ignominous Samurai.
Game plan 2) is to simply look for imminent 2-turn lethals. One of Sword's major weaknesses is a lack of healing. Their two main forms of counterplay are to use wards (SEV Amelia + Luminous) or to threaten lethal. While a few points of chip damage are usually not issues against Sword, you must be careful not to let them drop you below 13 hp without having a lethal of your own. Their main way of doing this type of chip damage will be via Odin or Albert (5pp) chip face, but both are actually quite inefficient against Forest as you will rarely have boards that give full value to Odin, or, in the case of Albert, you should just be able to punish them severely on tempo. In practice, the Albert poke is rare, as they won't consider this unless they have 2 Albert in hand and they had no better board play.
With this in mind, you should look at the makeup of your hand and see if there's opportunities to do any Roach poking (see above section). Roach poking in this matchup can be important to restrict the Sword Player's ability to ignore your board and evo an Odin to face, setting up a turn 9 Albert SEV lethal. To play around this, if you manage to either keep your health high from the earlier stages of the game, even Forest's low healing from Olivia/Lambert can be sufficient to survive. However, the other way is by simply dropping the opponent's health down to something like 13-15. They won't have the courage to Super Evo Odin to face if they have to deal with the potential of you OTKing them the next turn, especially if you have a board on the field already.
Notably, one common game state you will see is that of the Amelia + Luminous Mage SEV. This is actually not that big of a deal. First of all, it is possible to OTK through this with the right hand components (Bayle/Carbuncle SEV/Ambush from above etc). However, if you have sufficient health, you can also board lock them and build a wide board, then go for a guaranteed OTK the following turn. If you run Lymaga, she is a one card-out that board locks them and ensures lethal.
Vs Mirror
Mulligan: Godwood Staff/1 early game fairy generator/Roach/Bayle/Lambert
While this type of mulligan is a little suspect for every other matchup, with the way this matchup degenerates, you are generally able to full clear every board after the first few turns. What's important is having the ability to OTK the opponent first, or, more specifically, being the first player to poke them with Roach and then lethalling the turn after with Double Roach.
As a result, I believe we only need one early game fairy generator to prevent the opponent from doing excessive chip damage, while the rest should be focused on our combo or the ablity to draw into it.
Early Game:
Focus on preventing chip damage from the opponent and, where possible, getting your own in. Godwood Staff is ideal to setup early, due to minimal punish and wanting to set up card draw and 0pp bounce for later.
Mid game:
You want to clear the opponent's board every turn: don't leave even a single follower alive. Likewise, if they leave a follower alive on your board, evo it to enemy face if possible (clear their board first, obviously).
Your other priority should be to generate combo pieces, whether it's discounting Bayle to 0pp or making 0pp tokens from Lambert Cairn.
Late game:
When going second, you might even consider dropping a Roach on turn 6 with Carbuncle Super Evo, depending on the makeup of your hand.
Going first, you'll typically look at a turn 7 poke. Keep in mind that you want your poke damage to actually be meaningful - that is, it actually does enough damage where the opponent can't heal out of lethal. You will need to bounce your Roach through Godwood/Carbuncle/Bug Alert depending on the composition of your hand if you do not have multiple in hand already. Prioritise saving Carbuncle if it's your only one, as you will get more damage from it when going for a 2x Roach lethal
Count your opponent's lethal range and see if you can play around it. In some cases, they may be board locked if your HP is high enough, even if they would otherwise have an OTK through multiple Bayles.
There is almost no need to conserve evo points in this matchup. Your first roach to face should use an evo point, and your last evo point (if you even get to that) should be to secure lethal.
It is no exaggeration to say that in this matchup, the first person to be in a position to poke with Roach will be the winner. And granted, sometimes a player may have Roach but not the means to play it, hence why I've specified "the first person to be in a position to do so".
Vs Spellboost (favoured)
Mulligan
General Keeps: Water Fairy/Fairy Tamer/Fairy Fencer/Godwood Staff/Bayle/Glade
*Note that we assume by default that this is the hybrid list with Norman, as regular Spellboost is effectively an effortless matchup.
This matchup is actually a lot harder than last set due to Norman's existence, as they can burst heal to 20 out of nowhere or put out two 3/3 wards with Barrier that can situationally be tough to break through. However, you are ultimately still favoured by piloting the matchup correctly.
There are three key phases in this matchup to be aware of:
The early game: Generally speaking, this is where the Spellboost player is weakest. At best, they may have 2/2s in the early game or single target removal. You can typically go wide with no threat of punishment and swing face with the expectation that they will be the ones to trade their 2/2s into your Fairies. This is because despite the fact that they have a lot of healing, their lethal reach is quite low until Turn 10 with Kuon Enhance. If they open with no 2/2, this will allow you to get in a very decent amount of poke damage, necessitating them to spend at least one source of "heal 4", which represents 3pp later on OR at least one of Norman's effects. When going second, I do not recommend using evo point aggressively to push 2 damage, as your board will be answered effortlessly the turn afterwards.
The mid game: Turn 5 is where you can generally expect your entire board to be cleared by Anne & Grea or Bergent Evo. This is why on turn 4, it's generally not worth overcommitting, instead, spending time to setup Godwood Staff is often a better strategy. You will generally want an answer to Anne & Grea set up before turn 5, usually in the form of Lily or Glade. Even though Rune has limited reach, they can quickly snowball an evolved Anne & Grea behind a second Anne & Grea or Norman evo for double Guardian Golem. Frankly, the mid-game is a repetition of these cards being seen on every turn, and both players will be trading evo points to take control of the board.
Late game: You are generally on a hard-timer against Spellboost at around turn 10, where they can look at Kuon/Cocytus OTK. From around Turn 7, you will want to start thinking about how you want to lethal them. Whether you have that extra turn or not depends on if who has the coin as well.
You need to put special effort into conserving Carbuncle Super Evolve in this matchup. Not only is it because this card maximises your OTK damage, but it's also crucial for pushing through the wards that the Rune player will definitely throw out leading up to turn 10. Anne and Grea will push out a 5/5 ward, whilst Norman will push out 3/3 barrier wards.
To be honest, these wards are not that difficult to deal with as long as you save your removal for them. For example, two 3/3 barrier wards are easily outted by cards like Bayle, May, Fairies etc. As such, if your hand is able to accumulate many 0pp cards, it can often be better to go for a clean 20 -> 0 OTK around turn 9 instead of risking them healing + warding out of lethal range.
It can be okay to soften them up with Roach poke before the turn you actually intend to go for lethal as this will limit their range of movements. However, make sure you don't do it in such a way that you can no longer OTK or out their board on the following turn.
An important concept to note is that for them, they usually won't know how many Bayle are in your hand, this means that they will always play around lethal within reason. For example, if you're going into an 8pp turn, they're going to try very hard to be outside of the 16 health range as you can potentially double Bayle, Carbuncle SEV, 3x 1pp > double Roach for 16 damage, which means you can assume their next turn will either involve Norman or Sagelight for healing.
If you are second, you will have access to 20 damage OTK with 9+1pp on turn 9 with Carbuncle SEV and 2 0pp cards in hand. You can work backwards from there to determine if you can kill them earlier or whether this is even achievable given your current hand. For example, if you're on turn 8 and you don't have Lambert Cairn anywhere to be seen, then you're obviously not going to generate any extra 0pp cards. In these situations, you will need to shift gears from "20->0" to "kill them over two turns" instead. The key issue with spreading lethal over two turns is the potential for the Rune player to evo Norman to heal 8, so you need to consider how you can kill them irrespective of their potential healing.
For this reason, it is better to decide on this gameplan earlier rather than later, that is, to look at determining your game plan from as early as Turn 6 and then executing on it from Turn 7. Poking them on turn 7 forces them to commit to Norman before their D-Climb is discounted sufficiently to afford them a large tempo boost. This will give you a lot more leeway to respond to their response. The reality is, if you chunk them sufficiently on any turn with Roach, they will play defensively and heal regardless of what your hand actually is. It will also make them play inefficiently, because at the end of the day, "them being alive" is better than "saving efficiency".
To summarise the late game:
Determine at around turn 6-7 if you will be aiming for a 20->0 OTK or a two-turn OTK
If two-turn OTK, pressure their life early to limit their range of movement before D-Climb is available
Don't overcommit into a Norman that you cannot answer
You need to finish the game before they get access to their 10pp play, you will usually lose if they resolve 10pp Kuon or Cocytus + Shift
Vs Aggro Abyss (unfavoured)
Mulligan
General Keeps: Water Fairy/Fairy Tamer/Fairy Fencer/Glade (if other early game cards already in hand)/Elf Child May/Ambush from Above (esp with Water Fairy going first)
The reason this matchup is unfavoured is because the healing you have available is very limited in this matchup. It's not hard for them to find close to 20 storm/effect damage to your face before you can OTK them with Roach, and if you fail to answer their early board you will be dead far before that point.
Nevertheless, with a build that runs Water Fairy/Fairy Fencer, this matchup improves significantly. In general, you want to minimise the "avoidable" damage as much as you can. Basically, you don't want to let any of their followers stick around on the board to hit your face if you can help it. Build up your board incrementally and chip their face until there is an opportunity to kill them with Roach. Because of how their deck self-damages themselves, you can randomly find opportunities to kill them with SEVO Carbuncle into Roach around turn 7.
In the early game, you will often run into situations like: They play a 1/1, you have Water Fairy and Ambush from Above. You should play Water Fairy rather than Ambush From Above, even if you take 1 damage as a result. The key concepts to understand are as follows:
Sometimes, even if you remove the damage this turn, you may end up taking more damage later on
Gaining control over the board will put the Abyss player in an uncomfortable position
The first is simple. If you play Water Fairy, you can kill their 1/1 next turn, and even if they played a 2/2, you can then shoot it with Ambush from Above. However, if you do it the other way around, that is, if you used Ambush to clear the 1/1, then on turn 2, you won't have it available to clear the 2/2, so by saving 1 hp, you actually ended up losing 2. In addition, Water Fairy sets up the Combo (3) effects of Ambush from Above and May, which will allow you to clear their entire board in a following turn while establishing your own, thereby saving you more hp in the long run.
As for why gaining control over the board puts the Abyss player in an uncomfortable position - Abyss wants to clear your board but they also want to hit your face. This means that anything you stick on the board will be able to pressure their life/board. They don't have that many clean outs apart from Turn 3 Vuella/Turn 5 Aragavy. This means that if you manage to stick a board, you may be able to threaten lethal ahead of schedule and force them to play defensively (which is the same as you winning the game).
Turn 2 is actually interesting for certain reasons as well - the fact that they can drop a 3/3 on you. It's a nightmare to out when you go first and they coin it out. In many cases, you're just going to have to accept that you're taking 3 damage. The only real out to this is Water Fairy/Fairy Convocation turn 1 and then using ambush from above, which ultimately depends on your mulligan and initial draw.
As for turn 3 (or turn 2 with coin), this is where you will be able to squeeze the most advantage with cards like Elf Child May or Ambush from Above to full clear their board.
To be honest, after the early game, the amount of interesting decisions decrease significantly. Notable cards to play around include Aragavy from turn 5 onwards, but I don't think it's worth playing around him more than "I can out it if he has it." Your gameplan in the mid-late game should be focused on outting every board while building a small board that can force chip damage if they decide to go evo + face. It will ultimately reach a point around turn 7 where they'll be looking for lethal and Super Evoing Odin to face. You should be aiming to clap back with Roach for lethal, if all goes well. The only thing I'd be wary of is playing too deep into an Olivia tempo play and having no outs to clear the board, but this shouldn't come up too often.
Artifact Portal (evenish)
Mulligan: Water Fairy/Glade/Bayle/Godwood Staff
Glade is a very important mulligan target so that Artifact can't bully you with Alouette tempo, though drawing Lily in time will also be sufficient.
In general, this is a matchup where the onus is heavily on the Artifact Player to pilot their deck correctly. If they don't do this, you're favoured. You should generally track which Artifacts they've put into hand over the course of the game. In particular, you need to pay attention to the number of wards they have in hand. Their key strategy in the late game will be to create an endless wall of wards with cards like Ralmia, and trying to force you into overcommitting your resources, with you losing the ability to OTK in the process.
By understanding their game plan, and how their deck operates, you will be able to determine weaknesses in their various setups. For example, Artifact doesn't have much burst damage from hand. Their best forms of burst are Orchis, Artifact Beta, and Omega (turn 10 only). As such, you will sometimes need to identify whether or not, in the late game, you actually need to clear their board immediately or if you can wait until the next turn to kill them instead.
Early game
Artifact's early game is not particularly strong. It's basically 2/2s on turn 2, Miriam on turn 3, and no real turn 4 play. Therefore, it's good to take the opportunity to clear their board early and setup Godwood Staff.
Mid game
You want to save Glade/Lily for their Alouette play. It's their single strongest tempo swing card prior to turn 8, and this is the only turn where you'll have any real issues with outing it. Therefore, you should mull/play around this turn in particular. Aside from that, you will force the Artifact player into a difficult position by always leaving low-committal Fairies on board, forcing them to expend evo point or slamming down a gamma (which they don't want to do)
Late game
The real late game technically starts around turn 8 when Ralmia starts coming down. Before that point, it's not infrequent to see the Forest player find some chip damage and take relatively little damage themselves. As discussed earlier, this is around about when the Artifact player will start slamming down wards (if they don't, that's cool, you just pilot as if this is vs any other deck and kill them turn 9 before they can slam gundam). To be honest, the first Ralmia is fairly difficult to out if you can't outright OTK them as a response. If they're dropping gamma/beta/alphas, you just need to clear them ASAP and build board. If they're dropping all Fortifier (1/5 wards), then you need to decide how urgent it is to clear these cards in the first place. Even if Ralmia Super Evos and buffs them to 2/6s, that isn't actually a real threat, so you can take your time to lower their health and go for an OTK on turn 9 instead.
I don't personally find this to be a very challenging matchup, as Artifact has limited lethal threat (and if they do go for beta line, they leave themselves vulnerable to, well, dying). I think the main thing is to be prepared for their defensive line of play (it's Roach players that get caught off guard that lose to this type of strategy IMO).
Vs Midrange/Control Abyss (favoured)
Mulligan: Water Fairy/Glade/Bayle/Godwood Staff/Fairy Fencer/Fairy Tamer
Despite the name of the deck, it has a surprisingly large amount of direct damage from hand, particularly in the late game. As a result, you do not want to take any unnecessary damage in the early game or you will be paying the price later on.
Indeed, this deck's best out to you is literally by trying to kill you. Obviously, it does have some healing through cards like Olivia or Cerberus, and some survivability/burst ward via Ginsetsu, but all of these can be dealt with fairly easily when actually going for lethal.
Early Game: Frankly, it's often somewhat difficult to determine what deck they're on because sometimes they even run the 2pp 3/3. In addition, because you can't afford to take damage from Aggro OR Midrange Abyss, you should follow the same guidelines as the Aggro Abyss matchup. That said, you will often see them play Ghostly Soiree, which will create a 2/2 with last words, summon a 2/2. This will usually need to be cleared as you see it pop up, but there will be situations where you can take two damage to set up a godwood and then utilise an Elf Child May play the following turn to retake the board.
Mid game: One of the issues is that Midrange Abyss will continually slam boards that are difficult to fully out. Cards like Charon and Undead Soldier will go very wide and you will find it challenging to kill everything. This will inevitably chunk your health total in the mid game as a result
Late game: You will generally start to stabilise around this part of the game. However, this is also when they will start making powerplays like Olivia + Lesser Mummy or Cerberus Super Evo to chunk your HP. This is why it's important to prevent yourself from taking too much avoidable damage in the early and midgame. There is a significant difference in how the opponent will play if they are able to threaten lethal against you vs if they cannot. If you are healthy, consider bouncing Lily as this will out all of their major threats (Ginsetsu/olivia/cerb etc.) without the neccesity of burning evo points. At some point, you will find an opportunity to poke with Roach on one turn and then finish with Roach OTK the turn after.
With all this being said, my general advice in this matchup is to try and setup Godwood around the Turn 4 mark if possible, use Bayle if you are fortunate enough to get it early to clear boards that would otherwise be impossible to clear and then from there, establish a two turn lethal the moment the opponent gives you an opening. The amount of healing and wards in the deck is quite limited and you are generally at the advantage in the late game because having more play points typically means you can threaten higher-range lethals which your opponent will be forced to respect, limiting their range of plays.
Vs Ward Haven (extremely unfavoured)
Pray they don't have Aether -> Jeanne on curve.
I don't really think there's much point writing about this matchup, it's terrible for Roach and relies on them bricking to win.
Vs Puppet/Ramp Dragon/Misc Favoured Decks
These matchups are all too free. They don't do enough to threaten Roach's health and have no way to realistically defend against the common Roach OTK setups.
Against Puppet: Just clear their board every turn, then they will literally not have enough storm damage to kill you. Their only ward before Liam is Orchis, which you easily punch through and lethal them.
Against Ramp Dragon: Don't let them Fennie for free (go wide). If they don't have a discounted deck, they can't win vs you.
Against Control Haven: Don't overcommit, hard mull for Godwood for infinite resources, go for two-turn lethal setups as the deck has limited healing (ironically)
Against Storm Haven: Protect your health total and take zero unnecessary damage. Force them to swing face and take damage from your pre-existing board, and search for Roach lethal around turn 7/8. This matchup is probably around 50-50.
Against Face Dragon: Intimidate doesn't work against Roach now that the deck got even more removal in the form of Ambush from Above (which is also tempo efficient removal). In essence, this is actually just Aggro Abyss matchup but more manageable. They also have a gap between turn 4-5 which is quite weak which you can abuse to build a big board. On turn 6 onwards, build a board so that if they want to Forte your face, they risk taking your board's worth in damage and having Forte outted, at which point they are basically dead.
Final Thoughts
Roach remains one of the strongest decks in the current metagame owing to its overall strong matchup spread and limited hard counters. While Ward Haven is a terrible matchup, the impact is minimised due to Ward Haven's otherwise poor position in the overall metagame.
For ladder and tournament players alike, I certainly recommend Roach Haven as a deck to pick up and master. It is a deck that will reward you increasingly more with the amount of time you put into it and other decks will not feel the same once you've tasted its forbidden power. I wish everyone the best of luck in set 2. Skreech on!
