Of Tongue Twisters and Format Change

When I first started keeping up with the OCG, the decks had just started playing breakthrough skill and vanity emptiness, because breakthrough was the best answer to a delteros summoned from the star seraph monsters and emptiness was a insane vs any deck relying on star seraph as an engine.

But as Heroes were introduced into the format, people decided that breakthough was subpar and they rather just dealt with the monsters themselves with cards like bottomless/ torrential/ prison. Vanity still stays as a staple card (although quite a number of the decks have reduced from 3 to 2 ) because it isn't terrible against heroes and is overall a very solid card in the current meta. 

As of now, more and more japanese players on devpro are siding gorz as an out to heroes because having 2 monsters is incredibly hard for heroes or any beatdown deck to deal with. 

Just this afternoon, a friend of mine asked me to read up on Qliphoth, a new archetype which will be introduced in the next set (i think). It took me a while to read through every single card and till now I have no idea how to pronounce the name. 

So, first an introduction to qlipot: 

Qlipots are the first deck that revolves around pendulum summoning to be considered competitive. Each and every single monster is a pendulum monster between the scales of 1-9. Most of its monsters are of level 5-8 so they all fall perfectly in between the scale ranges of the qlipot monsters. 

Each of the qlipots have a special clause in the pendulum zone which is : Only Qlipot monsters can be special summoned. This is a good restriction clause because if you could summon anything else, as you read on on, it would be totally insane. 

They also have additional clauses which increases your monsters attack points or your opponents monsters depending on which card you have.

The first card to think of when it comes to pendulum would be odd eyes dragon. This card acts as a ROTA for any pendulum monster, however it is slightly slow because you have to wait till the ep which is sorta like kuribandit. Odd eye's main flaw all this time was never its design - its insane , but that no pendulum monster was worth playing and the overall mechanic just sucked badly. 

Qlipots have a themed odd eyes, known as qlipot tool. This is the best card in the deck ATM because you can pay 800 to add any qlipot card (including s/t) to your hand. The best thing? Its a rota not a kuribandit and you dont have to wait until the ep to use its effect. 

The whole point of these monsters is that they toolbox themselves, and they get effects based on tribute summoning. 

The rest of the qlipots that have been introduced are level 6,7,8 respectively. Both the level 6 monsters act like atlanteans. These are the 2 main qlipots you want to pendulum summon out. When tributed, these monsters return a monster to their owner's hand or destroy a spell/ trap. Both of these monster have 2400 attack. 

Then there are the other 2 qlipot monsters. One is a level 7 monster which has an effect whereby if you tribute summon at least 1 qlipot monster to summon him, you can summon any 2 qlipots from the deck (but they will be destroyed in the ep). The 2nd one is just a random beatstick which has an attack twice effect and piercing damage. 

So, lets debunk each qlipot card one by one.

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Qliphoth_Archive

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Qliphoth_Genome

Archive and genome are the level 6 monsters. These monsters let you get effects based on the pendulum summoning methods. Being 2400 attack and 1000 defence is also extremely handy because both these monsters resemble monarch's special effects.

Take note that you can tribute them for anything like caius also and they still resolve. 

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Qliphoth_Disk

Qlipot disk is your level 7 2800 attack monster and the otk monster in the deck. By tributing at least 1 qlipot, you can summon 2 out. Luckily you cant special summon any other monsters besides qlipot if any of your pendulum scales are qlipot monsters. If not you can easily just use this as a rescue rabbit and summon 2 monsters to xyz summon a felgrand/ dragosack etc.

There are people trying to run entermate purple cat to bounce a pendulum monster to the hand. So the idea would be to have maybe a cat and a qlipot, and after pendulum summoning and resolving disk, you can bounce the qlipot in the pendulum zone to bypass the restriction clause. This lets you summon felgrand/dragosack at will. By running cat and odd eyes, its also possible to have those 2 cards in your pendulum scale and not have to use a qlipot (although that would take a god hand)

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Qliphoth_Shell

Shell is the last revealed qlipot and seems to be the worst among the other qlipots. However being able to inflict huge amounts of damage is pretty gamebreaking. However, having qlipot disk summon 2 shells to otk, doesnt seem so bad does it, considering the shells will just go to the extra deck and return after your next pendulum summons. 

Overall, these cards are incredibly insane as they just tutor each and every single copy and have good otk capabilities. 

But wait!, theres an additional clause which lets each monster become level 4 and to be normal summoned as an 1800 vanilla (which still gets sent to extra deck when destroyed). This gives the deck extra leverage when you brick without being able to pendulum summon. 

And as icing on the cake, each qlipot cant be affected by monster effects which have lower levels/ ranks. 

Support cards in the deck include return of the monarch. It was clear that qlipots were meant to be abused with the card as they fit the stats on the return perfectly. 

You could also play storm forth monarchs to clear annoying monsters and make sure your level 6-s arent dead. Heck, if you tribute a level 6, and then tribute 1 of your opponents monsters for disk, you can just summon another 2 monsters from deck and potentially otk. 

And the best thing about pendulum summoning? The pendulum monsters are like dragon rulers ! They recur ery turn as long as they arent BTH-ed/ wing blast/ space time trap holed (insane pendulum stopper card).

This leads us to think why cards like vanity emptiness will become obsolete. It would seem pretty good considering emptiness can stop pendulums.

1) Vanity stops the special summoning but nothing is actually done to the monsters, they remain in hand/ extra deck and doesnt cause any economical card loss. In TCG dragon ruler format post rejuv, people started cutting emptiness because it doesnt deal with an established field, and if you had emptiness, any other trap would do the exact same thing, with the ability to actually deal with the monster summoned (such as warning, compuls/ BTH/ torrential)

2) storm forthof the monarchs, With this card in qlipoth, it seems extremely easy to just tribute whatever monsterthey were protecting with vanity and just summon a caius/ qlipoth level 6 etc and deal with the board.

3) last but not least, when pendulum becomes a thing, and odd eyes/ qlipot tools being the toolboxers of the deck, you can bet your ass everyone and his dog will run 3 mst to slow down the deck. And MST is the best answer to emptiness. 

The worst part is that pendulum is a new mechanic introduced by Konami, you will definitely see more support for the mechanic to make it more imbal. ATM, KOnami is on the right track as they are introducing more rotas as it seems to be the best way to make pendulums a thing. Qlipots are just the tip of the iceberg, and lets not forget that the cards we know are only the ones leaked, we dont know any of their themed spell traps and there is a chance that there are more qlipot monsters in the set.

DISCLAIMER: EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE IS JUST A PREDICTION, AND A META CALL. I WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY TRADE LOSSES YOU MAKE DUE TO FOLLOWING THIS ARTICLE AS IT DOES NOT IN ANY WAY, REPRESENT PROFESSIONAL ADVICE WITH THE INTENTION OF AIDING BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS.