Friday, April 5, 2013

Welcome to the New Meta!

Its been a while since i posted but i've been SOOO busy with piling assignments, and cramming for uni and truthfully the meta has been quite boring until now. Im in this weird transition stage between OCG and TCG and all i can say is the TCG is really different, many cards which they run, certain playstyles which we do not understand which we question can all be answered. I may do a comparison post next time but i highly doubt it because there'll probably be more relevant stuff to talk about by then....

Anyway, today i sparked my interest back in the OCG side of the game ! It occured to me that the upcoming format is a combo and speed format. So invest in those GSCR Veilers and Maxx C people!

What i love about combo formats is how skillful they can be. I honestly don't think backrow/control/grinding formats are that skillful anymore as they can get really boring and all they do is set cards and try to grind around it (what im experiencing in the TCG). All you have to do is not misplay and after a while all this reading of cards gets really boring because they occur are so damn obvious and you get bored of making the correct reads. Sometimes you can make the correct reads but you can't do anything about it :(

So, in my last article, i talked about how good incarnates were bla bla and what konami would do if they became broke. My guess was konami would transition into a different format like what they did with wind-ups. My guess was not entirely wrong neither was it right but the upcoming meta would be a combo meta in my opinion, especially post judgment of the light.

When you think about Incarnates, the first thing you think is dragosack LADD turn 1. Well, this post is gonna discuss about current card trends, and a short discussion of cards to look out for in JOTL.

After some playtesting last time, i noticed how easy the LADD combo was played around against. The other topdecks : Evilswarm and Prophecy can both topple it if they draw the right cards, which leads us to think, is the LADD approach really the right play? In fact, i've so much doubts that i almost considered cutting LADD, and if it had not been an outright winning condition versus certain decks, i would have cut the ladd-eclipse engine for something more consistent and explosive.

The problem with LADD is that if you do not draw rejuvenation, then you would have wasted plenty of resources on a play which is only 50-50 solid vs the other meta decks. For example Verz can open Mandragora + random monster and just destroy your whole setup. Prophecy could reveal Junon as many times for her effect and destroy Ladd in the process.

Consequently, in the mirror match, breakthrough skill has been seeing alot of play in japanese builds. You can easily Breakthrough your opponent's LADD effect by chaining to it when you activate a dragon effect. Now normally, i would say that japan and SEA has different playstyles and different card choices (eg : Our windups didnt play CarCarD and tenki like theirs did), but this time, the current build of dragons is very very relevant.

Which brings us to the next topic ; Breakthrough Skill. Breakthrough skill is so versatile against every matchup. If i were you, i would invest in as many copies of this card as i can because you can.

1) destroy ladd and let you control it. If you were familiar with why Chalice was sided in most of the dragon decks in the ACQ, Skill does the very same thing.

2) gets over Jowgen the spiritualist effect.

3) gets over Evilswarm Ophion's effect (they can still chain lance though). But if you Skill their Ophion effect, there is a chance that they do not have lance unless they were lucky enough to open with it.

4) gets over the annoying Abyssgaios

5) Lets you finally destroy that damn dragosack in the mirror without having to resort to Big eye! Big eye is very risky if your opponent has Veiler, so why not use skill and suicide your dragosack into theirs!

The fact that most decks boss monsters in this format have continuous effect that restricts yours makes breakthrough skill even better, especially when it acts as a double effect veiler. So good!

Another reason why i am very hyped out about this format is how skillful the dragon mirror can be especially where timing and card choices matter the most. In the past few days i have noticed many different builds and different side/main cards which are very notable.

This format almost reminds me of Tele DAD because there is one dominating deck and your tech choices usually decided how far you would go. If im not mistaken one genius in the TCG decided to main royal oppression in their decks which was such a good tech (either Jae Kim or Jeff Jones i forgot)

Some notable cards i have seen are:

1) Vanity's Emptiness
2) Compulsory Evacuation Device
3) Breakthrough Skill
4) Metaion the Timelord (yes i just recently had time to read shriek here lol)

For example, most players would immediately remove their heavy storm and never consider siding in mst. That is a key point to be exploited as you can side in stuff like emptiness and compulsory which your opponent would definitely have no answer to !

There are so many playstyles and tech cards you can use so the mirror is always so skillful ! (unless you open shit). Like most of the time, the LADD turn 1 combo doesnt even exist anymore because who wants to make LADD which is not a solid play which can cause inconstencies with Wyvern, and can be played around with skill/chalice and everyone just sides it out. Take LADD turn 1 out of the equation, and suddenly the dragon mirror doesnt sound so bad anymore. Another notable card i would like to mention is Lava Golem which was used by Zack against Andrew in the Top 8 of Malaysia ACQ.

I have also seen Diva + infantry splashed into Incarnate dragons so that they have a good verz matchup. Seriously, with so much innovation, how can the game not be fun!

So, thats the current format in a nutshell. Now i will talk a little bit about the upcoming format post JOTL and the new Extra Pack.

Most players look at JOTL and think of firefist which gives them a chance to make blader to go past dragons. If that was all to JOTL i think konami would go bankcrupt.

In my opinion these are the 2 best cards in the set:

1) Demon palace- labyrinth of demon
The new field spell for the archetype is SO good as it helps provides the deck so much synergy. It could also be used in other fiend archetype decks.

2) Transturn.
If you haven't seen transturn you should read up on its effect. This is arguably the best card in the entire set lol because it can search any card from your deck by sending 1 monster of 1 lower level to the graveyard. EG: transturn diva into marks man.

Now some of you may not see how game breaking this card is, but it can be fairly gamebreaking for combo decks. Thank God you can only use the effect once per turn. I will not go into detail about this card or the decks it can be used in (as it is not my idea, i just literally stumbled upon it while randomly using my phone) but i expect these 2 cards to be particularly gamebreaking in the upcoming meta ;)

I am really sceptical with Konami for making crazy powerful spell cards. Last format we had extremely broke monster cards like rescue rabbit, inzektor dragonfly hornet etc and now we are getting what- Tenki, Judgment day of Spellbook, Hysteric Sign (i still reaffirm my stance that this is broke just that only 2 cards out of the whole archetype is good), and now Transturn? What Konami what.

Regarding the new extra pack, i dont think any card inside would be gamebreaking apart from abysteus. Teus will release mono mermails into the meta, but truthfully, i dont think it will be that good.... It probably cant keep up with dragons speed. Mermails would have been an incredible deck with Fishborg archer etc if dragons had not come into the format. Konami might release some other stuff but who knows! Maybe the new Blue eyes may have an impact in the meta, but i honestly dont see the deck being big because all the latest boss monsters have been quite shiddy, and
maybe the new support cards may just enhance dragons.

Anyway thats all for today have a nice day people and may you top locals tomorrow.


3 comments:

blackwingEX said...

No one wants a teledad though, not because it's not that skillfull, but it drives card prices up :(

which makes some players whine about it being a "money format"

It did kinda looked like that at first, I just hope the game shapes up better as you said it would :D

who am I kidding, I'll still play YGO :D

mike9944 said...

I dont know man i see the game in a different perspective these days. Like one deck formats are actually quite skillful (apart from frog ftk thats shit) like if you noticed goat control was pretty good. Gladiator beasts were also a good format.

One deck formats arent usually expensive. For example tele dad was dirt cheap here except for ddraw and malicious, and frog ftk was like a poor man's deck. it just so happened this time in OCG the deck which is tier 0, or close to tier 0, is expensive =( But sadly tcg may not have it off.

I didnt necessarily say the game will shape up to be better...However i can say the mirror match between incarnates will become more and more skillful as more people drop ladd..

The "new" decks that comes out/gets revived are just as wtfbbq as anything else... It is just interesting for me to review upcoming formats and look into trends before they become boring (like incarnates when everyone was hyping fifrefist) its one of the things that actually keep me interested in yugioh now..

Anonymous said...

I start to see more and more elemental Dragons deck with Stardust Assault....