Tackling Malaysian Asian Qualifiers

" The best way to enter a tournament is to bring a rogue deck, which no one has any experience against. To bring the best deck to tournament is risky, because you will lose to mirror matches which are very luck based. "

The above sentence was posted by Roy St Clair on FB which i saw a while back. (these werent his exact words, i cant remember, but its synonymous to what he said.

And that itself has alot of meaning, and is ESPECIALLY relatable to the Malaysian meta. 

Everyone knows that Malaysians have very little originality (in general), and they tend to copy the meta of a previous tournament, and do not take note of other successful decks until they have topped a tourney. 

I will quote Msian Open when nobody thought Verz was a deck, and Sam destroyed the whole tournament with Verz, with half of the Top 8 not knowing what Ophion does, or how to counter it. 

Coupled with the fact that verz just won Singapore Top Shop a while ago, and it has been topping several tourneys in Japan. 

Of course, as smart players, most people chose to ignore the Verz matchup because they also are aware of how the community acts. Why prepare for a matchup when nobody is even playing the deck or cares about it, and the odds are like 1/50 or what shit. The scenario resembles a chain reaction as every player also develops the above mentality and doesnt give a shit about deck X. It just so happened that the 1/50 was sam 

As im not playing ACQ (i will be in Sydney), of course i will share my insight which i've been stingy with last year because who shares info with potential opponents?

So, lets analyze Malaysia. 

The general meta would be:

1) Verz

2) Mermail

3) Hero

4) Rogue (cheap) like Dark world agents machina

5) and a small population of firefist with a majority playing the Rabbit build and not the Chicken built.

6) Windup (also small numbers) because few dare to play it. 

7) Previous format decks like hieratic inzektor

Furthermore, after the banlist, which we assume will hit mermail and windup, who will play windup? (assuming konami hits the right card which is fact and mage.)

Mermail is still very playable if dragoons and diva gets hit abit, as there is still the pure mermail build without undine, utilizing abyssgunde and is still a beast (tested), and people can just run 3 Infantry, multiple salvages, and more traps. 

What many people dont know is Gunde abuse is very good at stopping slow control decks like Hero (first hand experience at top store) because abysslinde too good.

So, what decks are plausible to play ?

The obvious choice to me would be to run tier 1 decks which would not be expected. 

In my opinion, these decks would be:

1) Chicken Fire Fist with Panther and the Night Beam-ish fire formation card.

2) Mermail with abyssgunde build

3) Harpie

4) Prophecy

5) Arrive Hero with mask change

6) fire king

In my opinion the last 2 decks would be very unfamiliar for the players here, because i do not expect harpies to appear much in japanese meta so not many netdeckers either. A good build would definitely catch people off guard as majority are verz (everyone finding verz on fb). I will talk about Harpies next time as they're only good once the new promo is out. Harpie Hunting Ground too strong against Verz. 

Since Asia is right after the March banlist, you can expect quite abit of the players to still linger with past format decks as ACQ will be the first tourney to shape the meta right after the banlist.

I dont think many people know how to play fire fist with chicken and spirit, although it is very obvious, and not many will be prepared for it, as its much faster. It has an almost auto win vs verz, and the chicken build doesnt die to Hero like a dog, and evens the matchup. 

I believe Prophecy will be popular in time to come as Japan will surely abuse the hell out of the deck. I mean judgment resolved means you win the game and you'll end up with like full s/t zone, max hand, and priestess and something else on the field. Somemore judgment searchable wtf. And no one will know how to side against it. 

Next up is arrive hero with mask change. I saw the deck on shriek once, and it was very interesting. It proves to be less consistent than the previous alias build, since mask change replaces gemini spark, but you end up with trash like ocean, voltic or bubbleman in hand. If you draw something like Voltic mst 2 mask change 1 call of haunted 1 solemn warning, and just set the warning then your just asking to die as its a fragile setup lol compared to drawing alias which is at least solid beatstick.

But arrive hero is explosive and when you draw the right hand you can win. Maybe the old build? Mask Change is still good against Prophecy, fire fist and any backrow deck since resolving one is an auto win and sending bubbleman or whatever hero to grave is not a cost. 

Mermail with gunde is decent good as nobody will be prepared for it. You can go something like discard gunde for abyspike, search marksman, revive another pike discard searched marksman, and search another one, then overlay for bahamut shark. In a beatstick format, its wise to max out the infantry, also since infantry + diva into marksman, then overlay for armor kappa to clear field then use marksman direct summon effect is very good too. Salvage to abuse infantry and marksman because this build runs out of ammo (atlantean) very fast since you dont search undine and it would be unwise to run moulinglacia. 

Although i post about this, i doubt even a small percentage of malaysian read blogs, so they wont take heed of the advice. Half of the rest who do read this will stick to a deck that they're comfy with so owells hahahaha

As for predictions: what do i think will happen? 

Sam is gonna walk in and destroy the whole competition with fire fist.

Thats all for today.