Sakura Kasugano is a character from Capcom's long-running Street Fighter franchise. One of the most popular characters of the series, she is most famously (or infamously) known in UFS for her promotional character card, which allows players to reduce block modifiers, play multiple Reversal attacks, and utilise and give any attack in hand the Reversal keyword.
Sakura decktypes range in style from aggro Water decks revolving around the use of Furiko Upper and Batobi Punch, to strict Order or Void control decks that recur powerful attacks to be used against the opponent during their turn, or hybrid decks that use her great defensive abilities in conjunction with a balance of offense and board control.
Promo Sakura, designated ***Sakura***.
Overview[]
Sakura first saw release in the UFS arena with her promotional 3-dot version (see right), released during the third set of Street Fighter prize support (SF3P), along with characters such as ***Chun-Li***, ***Adon***, ***R.Mika***, ***Ken*** and ***Hugo***. Her resources of Order, Void and Water granted her access to the game's best Reversal attacks, as well as the ability to turn "beatsticks" such as Shadow Banishment and Ryu's Tatsumaki/Messatsu Go Rasen into Reversal attacks, giving her great offensive capability during any turn.
Ultra-Rare Sakura, designated *Sakura*.
Rare Sakura, designated **Sakura**.
Come the release of the 4th Street Fighter set, "The Dark Path", Sakura received an 18-card support set, including two new character cards; the ultra-rare *Sakura* and the rare **Sakura**. These cards included:
- *Sakura*, a character
- **Sakura**, a character
- Justice Always Prevails, an action
- That Was Cool, Do It Again!, an action
- Agohani Geri, an attack
- Batobi Punch, an attack
- Furiko Upper, an attack
- Genkotsu Stamp, an attack
- Jumping Shotei, an attack
- Midare Zakura, an attack
- Sakura's Hadoken, an attack
- Shagami Jab, an attack
- Sho-Oh-Ken, an attack
- Shunpu Kyaku, an attack
- Shotokan, a foundation
- Getting an Education, a foundation
- Repeat Techniques, a foundation
- Well-Travelled, a foundation
Sakura's card support is designed around recurring and re-using attacks played into the card pool, through the abilities of Getting an Education, Shotokan and That Was Cool, Do It Again!. Her attacks, namely Batobi Punch and Furiko Upper give damage bonuses and reduce progressive difficulty for consecutive punch attacks in the card pool. Shunpu Kyaku is renowned as a devastating finishing attack, with a possible Multiple:5 when used by Sakura, dealing up to 32 damage by itself if not entirely blocked.
Fighting Against Sakura[]
Coming Soon. Feel free to add any of your experiences here.
The-J's experience: Sakura can be annoying especially when you've been ignoring all those little 1-3 damage attacks this whole time while taking her blocks. Shotokan training however can reduce those pesky one damage attacks to zero. Using ground fighter/aerial combatant/ Quick can alter an attack zone to a zone you can block her with since many of her attacks have upper and lower zones as opposed to the more common mid.
The key to attacking through a seemingly impenetrable wall of blocks is making it so you can either skip the block phase entirely or erode her card advantage. You Are Not a Warrior and Too Fast to See among other cards grant unblockable bonuses. Combined with cards like Someone in Your Corner or a Shadow Banishment, a Sakura player can suddenly find themselves with no blocks to play.
If you are Sakura[]
The usual Sakura deck is built around ***Sakura***. The standard ***Sakura*** deck relies heavily on mind games to win. The basic approach is to show the opponent a card they will be intimidated by to delay their attempts at pushing through attacks, giving the player time to set-up sufficiently that they can then win on their own turn. Even if a ***Sakura*** player has found themselves in the rare situation where they are want for a block, the act of showing a reversal gives the impression this is not the case and can buy time. Knowing which cards are best to reveal and how many to reveal is key to playing ***Sakura*** correctly.
As a consequence of the nature of her playstyle, Order and Void are more common symbols for ***Sakura*** to be run off - they have a wider range of "scare cards", specifically access to Leaping Commando Kick, and as the game drags on they establish much firmer board control than Water could. Water plays a very different game to the lock-down strategy employed by Void and Order, relying more on its unique tricks, playing out reversals and less on manipulating the opponent's game plan. Off all three resources ***Sakura*** does have to deal with counter-cards, and of those three, Void normally copes best due to the strength of its board control, which can be pro-active as well as reactive.
Less common than ***Sakura***, both **Sakura** and *Sakura* tie in closely to her set support. They emphasise recursion and playing out several cards with the same name or keyword. **Sakura** is focussed on the latter, with her E designed specifically to let her play out multiple cards that share a keyword and her F to allow her to regain her hand to continue or to maintain a decent handsize going into the opponent's turn. *Sakura* can recur an attack before it is discarded in addition to making each of her Fire cards a threat and potential kill card. Both tend to use Shunpu Kyaku as their "true" win condition. Due to their lower level of play, neither of these versions of Sakura are ever specifically planned against, but they suffer badly to counter-cards because their ideal resource tends not to be Void, which would provide them with answers to their opponent's answers.