What’s up Yugioh nerds, sorry I didn’t post much in the lead up nor during my YCS this past weekend. I’ll admit, I was a liiitttllee bummed out about my performance, but it could’ve been worse I suppose~
I’ll do a breakdown of the whole day below the cut, but, as you’ve likely noticed, I managed to get a feature match at this YCS! I was 3 wins and 1 loss at this stage of the day, so feeling pretty good but alas, things went downhill from here on. I hate to attribute my losses to bad luck, but you’ll see in the video that I definitely got dealt a sub-optimal hand twice in a row and, it’s worth noting also that, throughout the day, I OPENED Gem-Knight Lazuli ten times and DREW Brilliant Fusion twice. I unfortunately, didn’t get to showcase the potential of the SPYRAL deck on stream, but had a bunch of other good games throughout the day that did. Here’s hoping that RATE gives us some really excellent cards to work with that’ll mean I don’t have to run cards like Brilliant Fusion to supplement the deck and can finally be a meta contender.
Until then, he’s how my deck went: I went 4 wins 3 losses, which is the worst I’ve done at a YCS so far, but the day before I had won 3-0 in a win a mat, which was fun. I think I made my deck the best I could, so I’m not disappointed in that respect and I have RATE to look forward to. Match breakdowns below!
Round 1 vs Paleozoic Frogs
Game 1: I went first and had a very grindy game. I believe my opening board was something decent, enough to ensure he couldn’t make a Toad. The duration of the game was sniping away resources with Agent and Drone while maintaining tempo with Resort until I summoned Trishula, had it returned to the deck with Drowning Mirror Force, then summoned Trishula AGAIN and wiped away all of his resources and took the game.
Game 2: He opens Toad and a bunch of backrow and I know my hand isn’t strong enough to challenge that let alone deal with it, so I go to game 3.
Game 3: Similar to the first game, I won when I summoned Trishula and blew away all their resources and also sniped away their other cards with Agent and PSY-Framelord Omega.
Round 2 vs Darklords
Game 1: My opponent had lost his deck last round and didn’t find it until five minutes into the round, meaning he got a game loss.
Game 2: He opens pretty meh with nothing but a lot of draw power and a Terrortop, when he finally goes to make a play I use D.D. Crow and stop his plays. On my turn, I make Omega + Drone and Agent and start looping Drone to ensure he doesn’t get any cards that can bring him out of the simplified gamestate and win.
Round 3 vs Atlantean/Mermails (played against a friend, never fun to do that)
Game 1: I bricked this game, and he OTKed with Diva and stuff.
Game 2: I think I open double Omega or something that good and then turn 2 resolve Trishula and the game’s over.
Game 3: A really intense game, my friend went first and opened Gaios and Toad and a couple other cards. I had the resources to get around the Gaios and Toad, but not without losing a bunch of my own resources. A combination of Book of Eclipse, Fairy Tail Snow, Brilliant Fusion and I think Raigeki managed to do it and also establish a rudimentary field that kept me in the game for a little longer, but because I had to use Eclipse on the board and couldn’t clear ALL of the monsters, my friend got out another two cards, including Dimensional Barrier. I had a Trishula play the next turn that would’ve probably won me the game, but the Dimensional Barrier sealed the game in a loss for me.
Round 4 vs ABC
Game 1: My opponent makes a mistake by setting a Union Hangar to his spell/trap zone instead of field zone before using Tsukuyomi which resulted in a judge having to fix the gamestate and alter a bunch of things, severely impeded my opponent’s focus for the remainder of the duel. I outed his board and made my own consisting of Omega, Hi-Speedroid Hagoita and used Omega to put a Fairy Tail Snow I’d banished off Desires into the graveyard. He had no way to out the board nor any resources left so went to game 2.
Game 2: My opponent opened Anti-Spell Fragrance, but I used D.D. Crow to stop a Buster Dragon. Despite Anti-Spell locking down a bunch of my plays, I was able to make some plays anyway and clear away some of the backrow. He start assembling some pieces of ABC but he made a disappointed face after using Pot of Desires, making me think he’d banished some of his pieces. I flipped a set System Down the next turn to clear out 2 Bs and 2 Cs he had in grave and one of his As I had hit with D.D. Crow earlier, so I was pretty confident he wouldn’t be able to make Buster this game. His Anti-Spell also started to work against him as he drew Hangar later in the duel but couldn’t play it. Eventually, I got out Omega and used Agent and Drone to clear out the rest of his field and stack his deck, which was when he then conceded.
Round 5 vs ABC
You can watch this in the video! Drawing Lazuli sucks, but I also drew virtually the same hand both games which was pretty frustrating, coupled with the fact that my opponent drew the stones both games.
Round 6 vs Paleozoics
Forgot to write this one down, but I went 1-2 a loss, I’m sure there was a Lazuli hand here somewhere that contributed to the loss.
Round 7 vs Odd-Eyes Magicians
Game 1: He lets me go first but, surprise surprise, I open Lazuli and it contributes to a bricky hand and I lose.
Game 2: I go first, open Omega and Dimensional Barrier with Resort on the field so winning is no problem.
Game 3: I Twin Twister his scales and use Drone and Agent so he has no plays for a quick win.
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the invasion: vengeance (inov) metagame was largely defined by three key cards and decks designed to summon them on turn 1: toadally awesome, majespecter unicorn - kirin, and abc-dragon buster. paleozoic frogs got 2nd to abc at anaheim in november, then to kirin at bochum in december, so it is safe to say that it is the best toad deck, but the mermail and hero versions remain respectable as well.
with 3 bunbuku and 1 kirin in deck, metalfoes can perform some combo ending in kirin going first around 42.71% of the time. while they can draw many different 2 or 3-card combos, they cannot summon kirin on turn 1 without drawing either it or a bunbuku.
the turn 1 combo for abc requires union hangar and a tertiary card that can be any one of the following:
photon thrasher/reinforcement of the army
gold/silver gadget
foolish burial (w/trick clown in deck)
brilliant fusion (w/garnet in deck)
empowerment/terraforming (w/dragodies in deck)
maxing on thrashers and gadgets alone, you can make an abc-dragon buster going first around 42.51% of the time. with 3 brilliant fusion and 1 foolish burial, the chance increases to 50%; with 3 empowerment and 1 dragodies, 51.60%.
paleo frogs can make a toadally awesome on turn 1 with a swap frog and a dupe frog or a ronintoadin. i believe the odds of making a toadally awesome on turn 1 for this deck are something like 19.4%.
we can use turn 1 combo probabilities to determine rough floors for win rates in each matchup between these three decks, but we would be shrewd not to make the mistake of taking these percentages themselves as the win rates.
suppose abc goes even with metalfoes in game 1, but metalfoes wins 60-40 postboard. metalfoes wins the matchup 55-45 (2-1 30% of the time / 2-0 25% of the time).
when questioned, players often simplify playing against abc to siding as many copies of system downs and ghost reapers as possible. abc has counterplay in the form of magnet reverse, pot of acquisitiveness, and union scramble, but these cards do not solve the problem altogether.
when we side on the draw, we look for cards that make winnable games out of those games in which the opponent “goes off” on turn 1. the odds of summoning abc-dragon buster on turn 1 (with brilliant fusions in deck) drop from 50% to 33.12% when the opponent has 3 ghost reaper in deck. system down serves a similar purpose with the added benefit of being live as a sixth card.
silver bullets like these exist for each of the three decks discussed so far. after sideboarding, metalfoes faces retaliating “c” and forbidden chalices going first and anti-spell fragrances going second; paleozoics must respect denko sekka regardless of who goes first; and so on.
blue-eyes would still be a power player in this deadlock had dimensional barrier not been printed. dimensional barrier was a silver bullet against blue-eyes while simultaneously playable if not outright good against every other deck in the format. most of the tier 1 decks have at least some hands that lose to dimensional barrier going second, but for each one there’s probably a blue-eyes hand that could take three extra turns going first and starting at 20000 LP and still lose to a dimensional barrier.
d/d/d’s silver bullets are d.d. crow, kaijus, lava golem, and winged dragon of ra - sphere mode. d/d/d responds to kaiju-style cards by taking alternate lines of play on turn 1 in a remarkably intricate rps system: crystal wing and harbinger with no siegfried beats sphere mode and some hands with kaijus but loses to lava golem, crystal wing with both harbinger and siegfried beats lava golem and kaijus but loses to sphere mode, etc.
when this post is published, day 1 of arg hartford will have concluded; i suspect that out of the available silver bullets for d/d/d, sphere mode and crow will have performed the best.
