Distracted by Card Games

Holy moly I have not updated here in a very long time. I’ll keep this short and let the tournament report do the talking, but hot damn I’ve been playing this deck for what I think is six years now and finally topped at a premier event with it. Anyway! If any of you are still following me and reading my posts, enjoy!

Regionals Report - Finished 5th place, 5 Wins, 1 loss, 1 draw. 90+ people, forget exactly how many people. 

 Round 1 - 2-0 win vs Danger!Kaiju, lost die roll, went first 

This guy pretty much opened the game with “I’m gonna scrub so hard, pretty much gonna lose to everyone” and then I saw him start using Danger stuff and feared for my life but then this happened.  Game 1: I open usual stuff, resolve a Borz with two traps in grave along with Isolde, he clears Borz with a Kaiju and then Soul Charges where I start fearing for my life, but he just ends on Borrelguard, Witch and Bigfoot. So y’know, next turn I make King Custennin, bounce,  then OTK. Game 2: I have Borz, Brothers and Isolde on field, Excalibur and Gwen and two set MSTs in the Spell/Trap zone along with a set Once Again. He throws Evenly Matched on me, but I just activate Once Again at start of the BP and then MST my own equips so they don’t get banished. He then ends on Hope Harbinger and Wee Witch, after popping Isolde, but I end phase summon something with Once Again, go into King Custennin and then OTK as you do. 

 Round 2 - 2-0 win vs TD, won die roll, went first 

This was against my friend who I played in the online tournament and lost to the other week, so it was good to get some payback! Game 1: Opened Morgan and then a resolved Borz + Isolde, Morgan is so damn good in this matchup. They use their normal summon usually on Batteryman Solar and then, when they go Dragonhawk or Dragonroar to summon from deck/grave/banished, you negate it with Morgan, chain Once Again to summon Drystan, then pop the Solar. Which is what I did here and he couldn’t play beyond that, so I outresourced him. I think he could’ve actually made game though, since I had Isolde and King at one point and exactly 6k life, and if he’d made Borrelsword he could’ve won but didn’t, so y’know.  Game 2: He makes me go first, outs my board, but am able to go Custennin > Crash > rank 5 Artorigus, clear his field, summon Eachtar, do wombo combos. Bedwyr is vital to ensuring I resolve Borz this game, as I have to use Borz as material to make the Custennin, then when I crash to make rank 5 Artorigus, I summon Eachtar from grave to use both as material for Isolde, the equips fall off King onto Isolde, then I revive Borz with King, summon Bedwyr off Isolde and use his effect to equip to Borz. We then got into time, I’m sitting on 8300 and he’s on 7400, I’ve got Isolde and three Noble Knights in defence, including Drystan, he’s low on resources but summons the 2800 Thunder Dragon guy and searches Matrix to buff its atk to 3600, he goes into battle phase expecting to attack Isolde until I remind him that he can only attack Drystan. We get into time and I win.

Round 3 - 1-1 Draw, lose die roll, go 2nd Game 1: I suck at die rolls, also bricked with 5 Noble Knights and no equips, so wasn’t able to out ‘Summon Kagari, Set 4 with Multi-Role, pass’ Game 2: Super grindy, opened 2 Traps in grave, Borz, Isolde, King on field, on his turn he has to literally consume all of his resources to out King and Borz but leaves Isolde, only manages to get one Widow Anchor set with Multi-Role. On my turn, I bait it with Arfeudutyr, he steals Isolde, then I summon Medraut off Once Again and then through some combo-combo shenanigans draw about 4 cards with multiple Bros, break what’s left of his field just in case, then put an Iyvanne on board along with the token, another Isolde, King and Drystan and manage to OTK through a Kagari. I used Drystan and Rank 5 Artorigus to kill the Shizuku he left on board and then Drystan to force the Raye out, so Artorigus had 4000 attack, attacked over the 2000 Kagari for 2000, Isolde did 2100, Iyvanne for 1700, Token for 1500 and Drystan for the rest. Game 3: We started siding with about a minute of time left, so the game tied.

Round 4 - 2-1 win vs Danger FTK, lost die roll, went 2nd 

Game 1: FTKed Game 2: Resolved Borz, made King and had Morgan in hand, used it to negate an Armageddon Knight and that sorta heavily hampered his combos, as did some correct Danger hits. He resolved Soul Charge, but wasn’t able to FTK, and then next turn I just had to make King Custennin, bounce what was on his field, then rank up into King to OTK (he paid 4000 with Soul Charge and used Zephyros) Game 3: He opens garbo, I open Droll & Lock Bird but also opens Called by the Grave, but still can’t FTK, but does hit me for 1000 with Cannon Soldier before passing. This game really sucked, because for my turn I had literally 1 and a half minutes until time would be called, but I’ve opened the stones and summon four monsters from my hand, make Isolde, he lets it resolve but then bounces it with Firewall, then I summon Artorigus, use Caliburn twice and then it got a little gross, ‘cause I said “Battle phase” just as time was called and he had just Mermaid, Firewall and Cerberus on field. He started disputing it, but didn’t press too much so he allowed the Battle Phase and I won, but it still felt dirty. If he didn’t it would’ve been a draw. 

Round 5 - 2-0 win vs Altergeist, lost die roll, went 2nd 

Game 1: He opens double Silquitous, a dud trap, Marionetter and Secret Village. I open pretty awesome but also have lots of Spells I need to play, so I resolve the problem the best way possible: SUMMON THE CHIN. I beat over Marionetter with Gawayn and he doesn’t have Manifestation set or Faker in hand, so I can now activate Instant Fusion, Heritage and my Equip Spells, as well as the Shade Brigandine so I make a really solid board with Artorigus and a resolved Borz. He’s not able to come back from that in the slightest. Game 2: He opens double Silquitous AGAIN. He did manage to wall me for a little bit with Secret Village and a Kunquery in hand along with the Silquitous, but without Faker and with MST to destroy Protocol, he isn’t able to keep up.

Round 6 - 2-0 win vs Sky Striker, lost die roll, went 2nd 

Game 1: He doesn’t get Multi-Role off, so after a super grindy game with me having no Noble Arms, I survive through 3 Widow Anchors, thanks to being able to summon Eachtar every turn and using Custennin from hand to gain additional normal summons and force him to use all his backrow. Eventually we get to a point where he makes Bomber with Hornet and Anchor set, I MST the Anchor, he then Bombs me when I go for a play with the Hornet Drones, he ends his turn with Raye, no backrow but Multi-Role (forgot to use effect) and the Bomber. I summon Eachtar to Bomber’s zone which forces him to use its effect and blows up his Raye, so then I’m able to make Sacred Custennin and then rank up into rank 5 King and since he’s so out of resources, he scoops despite being ahead by like, 7000 life. Game 2: He opens subpar with 3 sets and a Multi-Role. I start my plays but he flips Shared Ride in response to Isolde. I summoned Borz with Isolde and had Drystan on field, but decided not to use Borz since it would give him another draw, but I had Arfeudutyr to pop the remaining backrow and Destiny to give to Drystan to pop Multi-Role. Next turn I take down most of the board he makes, bring him down to 1100 and then we’re close to time, but for his turn he goes nuts and goes Engage, search/draw, draws Engage, searches, draws THE THIRD ENGAGE and then draws ROTA off the last Engage! I absolutely should have lost this one, but he misplayed and made Ningirsu to send Sacred King to the grave (after stealing 3/4 of my board with Widow Anchors and Shark Cannons), had Ghost Belle and Ash Blossom to negate Artorigus and Once Again, but was only able to hit for 5700 damage when he needed to do 6000 to win. Which is…how much Borrelsword would’ve done if he’d just gone for that instead.

Finals - 1-2 loss vs Sky Striker, lost die roll, went 2nd 

This was such a chill game, haha, we were both just so stoked to be in the finals and guaranteed a top, so this game was super fun despite the loss. We also got deck-checked after we drew our opening hands, and mine was awesome and my opponent’s was awful, so kinda wish that didn’t happen but EH 

As anon pointed out in that ask a moment ago, getting the deck to work with 40 cards is proving very difficult. The SPYRAL deck can’t function purely on SPYRAL cards: they don’t alone have any means of getting cards into the grave to maintain Resort nor set up for Sleeper, they are excellent at clearing away boards going second but not exemplar at consistently setting up boards going first and they have some important normal summons spread between them all that usually one or the other card takes up.

So! It’s looking necessary to do one of two things: run a 60 card build or run Sleeper Turbo.

The latter build incorporates the former, but with the added benefit of the Zoodiac engine which synergises nicely with a whole lot of your SPYRAL cards and allows you to run Master Plan and the MISSIONs, as well as make full use of Foolish Burial Goods. As for the Sleeper combo itself, I didn’t come up with it, so I’ll link it here to save me typing it out and attribute it to the source I got it from. The combo is quite strong and only requires two cards - either Instant Fusion or Gofu and either Resort or Terraforming - and has potential to get even stronger with some more development. I just know we can use that extra special summon from Ancient Fairy Dragon for something great, like a tuner to make Crystal Wing or a Zoodiac to make a Drident, or even just an Agent that you called wrong so your Utility Wire can work.

There are a whole heap of cards that start off your combos in the sixty card deck - The Predaplant engine, Terrortop, Barrage, Resort, Machine Duplication, Ratpier - so while it does have a higher chance of bricking, the potential power output is drastically higher. With the right combination of cards, I’ve gone from five cards in hand to 11 cards on field with 3 or 4 still in hand. The Sleeper build trades off this power for consistency of a strong play that your opponent simultaneously will have difficulty removing but also threatens their board severely. The new cards have added a destructive boss monster, an incredibly protection/finisher card, non-targeting removal and a quick effect retrieval/revival card, all of which are searchable.

With regard to the upcoming meta, True Dracos are by far going to be the most threatening deck to compete against. Master Peace is difficult for this deck to overcome, it essentially requires you to either resolve a Drone on an Agent/Sleeper or make a rank4 out to it, with them likely destroying the first attempt you make at outing it. True Kings will also be something to contend with, as VFD will make completing your plays quite difficult, but not impossible. Zoodiacs and Zoodiac variants will still be around, especially with the addition of Lyca, but I feel now that SPYRALs will be able to contend with pure variants without too much issue.

Images from Konami’s own Facebook page

Sorry I’m so late! Konami unveiled the new SPYRAL cards a week or so ago and I’ve been hard at work testing them all, because they’re all quite good!

First up is SPYRAL Sleeper, a true behemoth of a card with an incredibly destructive effect and a relatively easy to access summoning procedure. Destroying two cards on either player’s turn is incredibly powerful, and destroying your own SPYRAL cards is usually beneficial to you as well! The SPYRAL MISSIONs all have great graveyard effects, and SPYRAL Master Plan will get her effect to search Resort and another SPYRAL monster when sent to the graveyard too! As for his self-destruct effect, although dangerous, I have yet to have it ever go off. It’s a matter of playing this card with the right support cards, namely SPYRAL Resort and the next card on the list:

SPYRAL Last Resort is a monster akin to Gwenhwyfar, in that it can equip from the hand to any SPYRAL monster and protect it from being destroyed by battle, and destroyed or targeted by card effects (mind you, the targeting is only from your opponent’s card effects, so you can still use cards like Drone or Sleeper on your SPYRALs). This card is most powerful when equipped to Sleeper, who can then target himself for his effect to destroy two cards and safely avoid nuking your own field. It also means your opponent will have a really hard time getting rid of your SPYRAL monsters, as usually you will also have SPYRAL Resort up on the field as well, protecting Last Resort from being targeted as well. It has one final effect, allowing you to send another face-up card you control to the graveyard in order to allow the equipped monster to attack directly. This is great for two reasons: the first is that, with Drone and the next equip card, your SPYRALs can reach pretty phenomenal levels of attack, so a direct attack can be lethal pretty quickly. The second is that it means, like Sleeper, you can send your SPYRAL cards to the graveyard in order to trigger their effects. You can also send an opponent’s monster you’ve taken with Recapture to the graveyard, which is very nice indeed.

The next card is SPYRAL GEAR - Fully Armed, an equip Spell only for Super Agent or Tough, granting a 1000 boost, banishing anything it destroys in battle along with 1 other card your opponent controls and floating into Agent when it’s destroyed. The card is pretty good, allowing Agent to beat over a great number of things, and non-targeting, non-destroying removal is always a great thing. Given it’s high searchability via Quik-Fix, the card is a definite good addition to the deck.

The final card is SPYRAL MISSION - Rescue, which I underestimated at first but definitely provides a lot of utility to the deck and enables some pretty fun plays. The on-field effect is a tremendous resource engine, adding back a SPYRAL monster each turn, including your opponent’s. It’ll be hard for you to ever be without cards in your hand with you adding back cards like Agent or Quik-Fix or Sleeper each turn, meaning you’ll have plenty to summon or even just use as discard fodder for Quik-Fix. The grave effect is where it really shines, however, allowing you to special summon SPYRAL monsters on your opponent’s turn. This allows you to summon Agent and destroy spells/traps during your opponent’s turn, as well as trigger Recapture and take an opponent’s monster before they can get any use out of it.

Comin’ right up! I was gonna make a big post unveiling the new SPYRAL cards when they came out, but I got pretty sidetracked trying to test them, along with work and such, haha~

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PW4KGGDoUs)

Guess who just got top 8 at a Regional with his SPYRALs~? Hoo boy you better believe it was me.

The deck list is up there for you all to look at, but I’ll go into my tournament report below. Also at some point I’ll probably make a deck profile with my friends which might be enjoyable to watch and I can explain all the card choices and stuff~

Right now, Madolche and Noble Knights aren’t terribly viable. Madolche are the better of the two because they gain some advantage through the Zoodiac engine, allowing them to output more Rank 4s, bait more plays before you commence a Tiaramisu play and set the graveyard up for Hootcake. It kinda has to lean on its OTK potential to do any good, however, since it can’t make threatening boards that rival meta decks nor does it have the sheer consistency of other decks to let it thrive in the meta.

Noble Knights still suffer rather heavily from their xenophobic effects (Brothers and Merlin lock you into Noble Knight summons the turn you use their effects and Medraut requires an empty field, meaning he has to be your first play of the turn) so they haven’t really gotten any stronger with any of the newer sets. Ties of the Brethren and Brilliant Fusion have really been the only cards since the Noble Knight Box Set to effectively give them any support. You can run Zoodiacs in Noble Knights as a supplementary engine, but the synergy is rather lacking and it’s effectively just “I’m running Noble Knights and Zoodiacs together because Zoodiacs make any deck they’re splashed in better”. But because of the lack of any outside support making the deck any stronger, the deck still suffers from a horrendous dependence on the normal summon which cards like Drident just obliterate, is still too slow in the early game compared to literally every other current meta deck, and simply can’t make any threatening boards that would rival the boards that other decks can make.

We in the TCG have at the very least, six months until this new mechanic is implemented. That’s half a year that you still get to play your decks with our current mechanics and half a year that you can still follow your standard deck building thought processes.

But as I’ve said before, all your Extra Deck based decks will not be ruined. Especially not Masked HEROs, I mean, Dark Law + Traps is already a formidable enough board and it only takes up one Extra Deck slot. I dunno if you’re going for something different than that, but that’s a solid HERO playstyle anyway. If you’re concerned about not getting out multiple HERO Extra deck monsters - or just extra deck monsters in general - consider this:

-Everyone is gonna have a similar experience and the game in general will slow down. Dark Law REALLY likes the game to be slowed down because he’s an exceptional floodgate monster and can buy you the turns you need to set up for your further extra deck plays.

-Form Change and your Mask Change spells allow you to change out your HEROs using your existing HERO extra deck cards, meaning you’ve got plenty of options for versatility regardless of whether or not you summon a Link Monster first. Your utility is still there.

-HERO decks traditionally use plenty of backrow to defend their plays. Stopping a Link summon of your opponent’s is gonna put you well ahead of them and Trap cards are very effective at that.

Toad HEROs will be harder, of course, but that’s entirely dependent on the types of Link Monsters we get in future. It’s too soon to tell how certain decks and archetypes will function post-Link mechanics, but already I’m seeing decks like Synchron-Quasar and Zoodiac function just fine with the limited amount of Link Monsters and support already.

If a Field Spell (thus searchable by Terraforming) that didn’t do basically the same thing but just for Link Monsters wasn’t also being released in Code of the Duelist :P

Now ruling questions mostly can’t be answered if they haven’t already been answered on the page linked in the first ask because Konami has yet to fully explain the functions of the new mechanic.

However, it seems to indicate that the Pendulum Summoning mechanic is unchanged with respect to summoning from hand, since those monsters are not extra deck monsters. They’re from your hand and, subsequently, your main deck, so they’d go in the main deck monster zones and you’d be able to Pendulum Summon 4, like you suggested.

After sent to the extra deck though, I’m not 100% because Konami’s yet to confirm the mechanic to that extent, but the implication is that if it’s from the extra deck, it has to go to an Extra Deck Zone.

It’s hard to say at this stage, not knowing what kind of effects, Link Level, Link Arrows or Materials new Link Monsters will have. A decent conclusion would be that decks that don’t already use the extra deck or use it much will have an advantage in that Link Monsters seem to be the most generic extra deck monsters to date (Decode Talker, for example, just needs 2-3 Effect Monsters to make it), so those decks can get an upgrade by virtue of the fact that their deck now has easy access to extra deck support.

But of course, lots of decks that already focus on the extra deck, provided they can put out monsters pretty easily, get bolstered by the inclusion of Link Monster. Now they have the added versatility of Link Monsters in addition to their regular (for example, I’ve already seen a combo of a Zoodiac player doing their usual plays of Drident + Emeral but with the addition of Decode Talker in the Extra Zone).

For those unsure of what’s being talked about, Konami revealed the new summoning mechanic, extra deck monster type and a large change to the way you summon monsters from the extra deck.

I think the new rule change is cool and I don’t understand why people are freaking out.

All extra deck focused decks are slowed down but can still play fine. Link monsters are the easiest extra deck monster to get out ever, so putting one up to have access to more Extra Zones is not a problem. It’ll be a shift in the entire mode of playing the game, but it doesn’t kill decks nor make them unplayable. We:

A) Don’t have full info about the mechanic yet, some little details will change how some things/decks/cards work 

B) Have a grand total of like, four Link Monsters revealed. Who’s to say decks in the future won’t get ones that really help them and only them? 

 In a general sense, Link Monsters and the alterations to Extra Deck Summoning will slow down the game, which is something people have been crying about for ages. You’ve gotta be mindful of when and where you summon your monsters and spamming stuff from the extra deck to make busted boards isn’t impossible but it is more difficult or slower in some decks. Like, everyone has this happen to their deck, so it’s not like some decks were maybe super uber powerful and the rest are dead. Like, you can still play DDDs and Quasar decks, you just gotta either get some Link Monster(s) out first or be more main-deck monster focused.Don’t forget cards that move your Link Monster around too. There’s a field spell that got revealed that shifts the location of your Link monster, putting it into the Main Monster Zone. Not only does that free up your existing Extra Monster Zone, but you’ve also now got potentially two more Extra Monster Zones on either side of your Link Monster. 

So the first thing you can probably notice here is that I sure am siding a Zoodiac engine. My logic was that I wouldn’t win every die roll and there would be games where I’d go second, thus I built the deck to go second since the Kaijus and SPYRALs are both really good at playing through fields. Then, if I lost a game, I’d side the Kaijus out for the much stronger Zoodiac engine and opt to go first, meaning I’d have an engine that is much more synergistic with the SPYRALs and also a powerful engine in general that was guaranteed to get its plays off because I was going first (well, more likely, plenty of handtraps still exist.)

I felt this logic  was quite sound, however, my problem lay with the fact that I only own one Zoodiac Barrage (and I borrowed the second Barrage, Drident and Bull off a friend, although having tested I believe I only need 1 Bull anyway). Having only one Barrage meant that I only saw it once the whole day (I opened Rat a couple of times) but Barrage really makes the whole combo come together and having only two in the deck hindered the consistency a fair bit. The rest of my side deck I didn’t use that much, the Lancea’s I used once to good effect against ABC but otherwise didn’t come up against any Infernoids and the Twin Twisters and Ghost Ogres were very effective against Metalfoes and Metalfoe variants, as was Ghost Ogre, D.D. Crow and Veiler nice to use against D/D/Ds (although I only ever got to resolve a Ghost Ogre against D/D/Ds, the theory was good.) Solemn Warning was my choice for a replacement to Barrage because, while it couldn’t do what Barrage did, it did put an effective stop to a single play of the opponent’s turn. If I owned a third Dimensional Barrier, I’d have probably used that instead though. Thinking back on it I probably should’ve gone with Vanity’s Emptiness, but it ultimately didn’t really matter because what I’d really want would be a third Barrage.

The extra deck is solid, the only thing I’d change is the second Broadbull for something else, maybe an Abyss Dweller? There are heaps of good rank 4 options so I’m not too fussy and I’m sure I’ll come to the optimal decision soon enough. SPYRAL Resort is really exceptional in this variant for putting back your extra deck monsters or the Zoodiac monsters not shuffled back by Emeral, meaning that it can repeatedly make use of the Zoodiac engine, as well as Drident comboeing really nicely with SPYRAL MISSION - Assault and SPYRAL Master Plan.

As for the main deck, I was actually really impressed with the effectiveness of the Kaiju engine, however, I did struggle sometimes with heavy Kaiju hands, even going second. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I might flip the two engines; main the Zoodiacs and side the Kaijus, with more main-decked protection cards like My Body as a Shield to counter cards like Zoodiac Drident. The SPYRAL cards, notably Misty, Tough and Super Agent, are all actually very effective at playing through fields themselves, meaning that I should be able to still play through fields provided I have some cards like the aforementioned Shield. I’m not 100% on what ratios I should have with the new build, since the Kaiju engine and the Zoodiac engine are both 7 cards. I may go over 40, but I don’t want to get any higher than 42 really, or I start to run into consistency issues (and this variant had a fairly large amount of consistency). Summoner Monk is really powerful in this deck, and so long as I run him I can’t afford to cut cards like Dark Magic Veil nor cut down on the Assaults, but perhaps I’ll do some experimenting.