Tanooki

Tanooki is an archetype of EARTH Monster Cards in HCCG. All of its members were made by Hippocampus and are included in Collection of Memories and Signal from the Depths.

The "Tanookis" comprise one of the first cohesive archetypes in HCCG, and they are still a prominent deck in the HCCG metagame today, even after a few of their cards have been deemed illegal. Many "Tanooki" monsters, such as Tanooki Merchant and Tanooki Decoy, manipulate the cards in their controller's possession, while others such as Tanooki Cub return fallen cards from the Graveyard back into the deck to be accessed once again. The most powerful aspect of "Tanookis", however, is their Spell Cards, which all generate considerable advantage to the player and can be recycled by the effect of Tanooki Mage.

The goal of a "Tanooki" deck is to swarm the field with "Tanooki" monsters, either through the effects of the aforementioned Spell Cards, or through their boss monster Tanook the Great (who ironically is not a "Tanooki" monster itself). In Signal from the Depths, a new monster called Tanooki Vitality was released, calling for a different kind of "Tanooki" strategy involving the use of Normal Monsters and Fusion Monsters. Being all EARTH monsters, "Tanookis" have access to standard EARTH support cards in HCCG, and they also are all Beast-Type, with the exception of Tanooki Mage, who is a Spellcaster.

The following is a list of various "Tanooki" deck strategies used in the metagame.

Basic Tanooki Deck
This deck revolves around using the effects of Tanooki Decoy, Tanooki Merchant, Tanooki Feeding Garden, and Tanooki Buddha Statue to rapidly thin the deck and control the cards in the hand, then swarm the field with the powerful Spell card Tales of the Tanooki for a possible OTK.

Vitality Tanookis
This deck revolves around using the speed of the "Tanooki" engine to quickly Fusion Summon Tanooki Vitality and swarm the field with its effect. It also utilizes some Normal monster support.

Aussa's Tanookis
This deck revolves around quickly sending "Tanooki" monsters to the Graveyard, then using the effect of Archfiend Marmot - Familiar to swarm the field with them, allowing for large Synchro plays.

Trivia

 * The word "Tanooki" comes from a corruption of the word tanuki, and all of the "Tanooki" monsters are in fact tanukis.
 * Much of the artwork of "Tanooki" cards are pictures of real-life tanukis. Many other artworks are screencaps from the anime film Pom Poko, whose plot surrounds the mythology of the tanuki.