The Upstart Goblin Conundrum

Its late now so i'll keep this short.

A few days ago, dgz dragon ruler thread had a very heated discussion about Upstart Goblin in standard dragon rulers TCG.

The idea was that you would run 37 cards thus making it easier for you to get to your key cards.

You would mostly use upstart after you thinned your deck though dragon searches/ravine mills or only when you need to, or when you could deal your opponent some damage to mitigate upstarts costs.

The pros of upstarts are:

1) 37 cards - cool stuff.
2) Easier to get to your key cards
3) Most standard rulers will cut consonance for this (which is probably better)
4) Implied consistency

The cons are:

1) 40 is tight space. Playing upstart cuts you from 3 other cards which could be useful combo cards or relevant traps for mirror.
2) 1000 life points gain sucks balls.
3) Having it in your hand when you wish it was a trap is worse.
4) Using it and drawing another dragon.
5) Much more

So, i was pretty against the card cos it sounds terrible and 1000 lp means its harder to kill your opponent.

But i was very wrong when i started testing some hands. The card did give the deck consistency and you saw sword, colours, maxx c etc more often than you should.

So, with both sides of the theory being equally convincing, the last thing you had to do is test the theory. So, from my deck i cut 3 cards which i found unneeded which are terraforming (to add consistency for ravine. Being at 37 means you will see ravine more), and 1 trap and 1 mst.

I tested a number of games with a friend. I found out my loss rate increased by 30% (from 30% on average from past scores to a whopping 60%) after testing with upstart.

Here are my conclusions:

upstart goblin is definitely not worth maining as the cons outweigh the pros. The reasons are as follows:

1) Holding upstart after you can thin down the deck sounds like it would work. However it doesnt work that way, You need to activate it immediately alot of times and it will just brick. This is not goat control where you can wait for a card to be good. You need cards you can use immediately effectively.

2) The 1000 lp cost matters alot more.

3) The 1000 lp cost after they resolve the ancient fairy combo turn 1 will make it worse. At that point even if you drew into 6 sense it wont necessarily help you. In that position, in 1 of the games, i found that if i had a trap instead of upstart, i would have grinded the game out and probably won.

4) After i took out upstart, and he continued using them, i went up to 12k lp in 1 game and took no damage lol

5) Increasing your trap count will let you see more traps compared to reducing your trap count and reducing deck count. Eg: running 8 defensive cards in a deck of 40 nets you a 20% chance of drawing the defensive cards after 1 draw- im not counting opening hand cz the math would be different there) If i were to run 37, the chances of drawing a defensive card , provided you cut 2 defensive card (and 1 other card) is 16.2%. Why run upstart if it only decreases your chance of seeing traps. You can argue "oh but theres swords too". Lets add sword to a pool of cards you wanna open with including maxx c. Thats 8 defensive cards 3 swords, 3 maxx c, so 14- 35% without upstart, and 32.4% if you cut 2 defensive cards for the upstarts.

6) drawing upstart after upstart sucks or opening with 2.

Overall i wouldnt run upstart. However, according to your playstyle, if you feel that you need more draw power and feel like consonance is being a drag, id much recommend upstart over consonance from testing (prefer uostart over consonance).

However i just prefer card trooper and traps.

Was my sample space (from testing) large enough to warrant an accurate conclusion? (approximately only 10 games). Maybe not since as sample size increases your results differ and variance decreases. Although i think if i tested more, i would just be more disappointed. Upstart is not a card you can throw in any deck just to reduce your deck size.

 Standard dragons are definitely not suitable and even in dragunity im not a fan of it because although you are increasing consistency, you are sacrificing many important comboes and plays and disrupting synergy in the deck. Overall i think the dragunity build in TCG is very weak because they spend too much space on upstarts and stuff and disregard comboes with zephryos, redmd and garuda. Their average strong play is set up 1 rank 8 with backrow which is so easy to do in dragon ruler also. I think if dragunity are to become strong again, they need to take a different approach. Their strongest play needs to have mysteltain to get a combo off and even the end product doesnt seem all that appealing.

Thats all for today.