What's the Meta Now?

As I was preparing for my first big regional of the season, I wanted to get a more definite sense of the current meta.  My intuition told me this was still a dragon ruler game, but I wanted numbers!  To that end, I read through 16 regional reports posted on Pojo.  The regionals mentioned varied from 96 to over 1,000 doolists.  All the reports were from players that topped.  

Using these reports, I recorded the number of decks mentioned and summed them up.  I made no attempt to weight the deck rankings based on performance.  For example, I did not give higher numbers to decks that were mentioned at the top tables.  Granted, this is not a scientific sampling. Still, I think these reports represent players’ experience.   If nothing else, it shows what a daunting task side-decking can be.  

As you can see in the figure, dragon variants remain the most common. If you add dragunities to this group, you will account for nearly a quarter of the decks.  Personally, my approach to playing against both is pretty similar, at least for side deck purposes. 

Once you get past dragons, it’s really diverse.  There are a total of 29 decks in this list and 17 of them are listed more than once. The "Doublets" in this chart include Inzectors, Agents, Infernities, Chain Burn, and Geargia; the "Singletons" include Fire Kings, Psychics, Heros, Malefics, and Frog Monarchs.  There is a fairly even distribution of Constellars, Blackwings, Spellbooks, Prophecy, and Mermails between 7 and 8% each.

What to do? First of all, I would not go out of my way to side cards for decks that cause real problems but are ones that you are not likely to see.  For example, Spiritualism is a great card for Infernities and my matchup against them is pretty poor.  However, it makes little sense to put this card in when it does little against everyone else.  Second, you have to shake off losses to some of these random decks.  You can top most regionals with 2 losses.  Just make sure you win the ones you should win.  

As for me, I’m going with the following side deck:

Genex Duradark x 1                                     Evilswarms, Blackwings, Darkworlds

Ally of Justice Core Destroyer x 1                  Agents, Bujins, Constellars

Vanity’s Fiend x 2                                        Mermails, Dragons, spam happy decks

Effect Veiler x 3                                            Firefists, Machine based

MST x 2                                                      Field card decks, Skill Drain, etc

Debunk x 2                                                  Blackwings, Bujins, Mermails, Dragons

Rivalry x 2                                                   Constellars, Madolches

Gozen Match x 2                                         Dragons, Prophecy

I’ll let you know how it goes. 

PS: I did some more testing with GeargiaGear.  Yes its intoxicating and at 2 it works fairly well. I will give the full deck list after Sunday's regional.  

Gear Up

The success of Chris LeBlanc’s Geargia deck led me to rethink this archetype. As you can tell by the header of this blog, Geargias are near and dear to my heart.  I essentially abandoned them with the onslaught of the E Dragons. But now, the meta is a tad bit slower.  Maybe there is a place for them after all. 

First Gear

For those that are not familiar with the deck, the most basic play is to set Armor and protect it with a heavy trap line up.  When Armor is flipped, you add Accelerator to your hand.  From there, you can special summon Accelerator and go into GearGigant for a nice plus one. If you have access to Strategist, you can flip Armor back down, summon Strategist and use his ability to get a second Accelerator.  Special summon the race cars and then synchro for Burei and use Burei to bring out another Karakuri tuner. Before you know it, you can easily put three large monsters on the board in one turn.  

Variations on this spam theme are fairly frequent.  I can usually pull this off in about 60 to 70% of the games.  I am somewhat careful because you will get punished for overextending.  However, knowing when to go for it is the fun and skill of Yugioh. The deck’s penchant for OTKs is the reason I run Trap Stun and side Debunk. 

Second Gear

Bringing out large synchro monsters is intoxicating. So much so, you can easily forget about the other effects of the Geargia monsters.  For example, Accelerator lets you add a Geargia monster to your hand when it is sent to the graveyard.  Unfortunately, you can’t do this when you synchro summon, but you can do it when you bring it out with Call of the Haunted.  GearGigant lets you add a level three Geargia monster to your hand when it leaves the field. These minor effects can add to your hand advantage, so keep watching.  

Third Gear

The real change in Geargia play over the past several months has been the addition of GeargiaGear.  This trap card lets you summon two level three Geargiano monsters from your deck and increase their level by one.  It’s a one step Geargigant play.  Though I will be speaking against the common wisdom, it’s not a card I like. Here’s why:

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and 2 Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 67% of the time.

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and 3 Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 50% of the time.

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and 4 Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 40% of the time.

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and all 6  Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 17% of the time. 

You can do the permutations/combinations math for 2 and 3 copies of GeargiaGear, but it still has a significant possibility of being dead.  I would rather run a mini-Machina engine. 

However, testing with this card has led me to believe that little Geargiano is a better card than I first believed.  It can bring back tuners since it can target any machine monster.  More importantly, it is a target for GearGigant’s second effect.  I know that the Yugioh world favors MKII, but I hate having a 1000 point attack monster in attack position.  

I have a couple of other quirks.  I like to balance hand traps, spells, and traps.  This lowers the chance of running into problems with Decree.  I like the flexibility of Lance and I would rather run CardCar than Pot of Duality. CardCar is fodder for both Fortress and Redox. I’ve always felt the deck needs a few additional Karakuri monsters though I am never quite set on which ones.  Usually Saizan or Nishipachi can stop an attack when they are summoned with Nisamu.  In fact, you can see this is a pretty monster heavy deck.  Though I will take some hits, it tends to be very consistent.  

 Here’s my current list. I’ll be taking it to Charlotte this weekend!

Armor x 3

Accelerator x 3

Arsenal x 2

Geargiano x 2

Nisamu x 2

Nishipachi x 1

Saizan x 2

Redox x 2

Gearframe x 1

Fortress x 2

CardCar D x 2

Swift Scarecrow x 2

Maxx C x 2

Effect Veiler x 2

Forbidden Lance x 3

Shrink x 1

Dark Hole x 1

Compulse x 1

BTH x 1

Chain x 1

Trap Stun x 2

COTH x 2

Good Bye to a Good Friend

From time to time I may forgo Yugioh for other thoughts and musings.  This post is written as a tribute for our beloved dog Bridgett who died after being with us for nearly fourteen years.

In retrospect, most choices are so commonplace that they could be considered banal. You leave for college, get married, have kids, and get a dog. Our lives flow along the same well-worn paths as those around us.  Our experience is more shared than disparate; our decisions more predetermined than determined.

Yet our perception at those times of decision could not feel more different.  I chose a college after months of deliberation.  I married after years of dating, and all our pregnancies were planned.  The decision to get a dog was no less intentional. We had a six year son who needed to learn responsibility.  A dog would allow him to grow by caring for another being. His successful entry in to manhood could be fostered by this pet.  

The execution of our decision to get a dog would be no less rational.  We turned to various experts to help us choose the right animal.  After all, we only managed to get through pregnancy with the help of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”.  We would surely do the same for raising a dog.  We learned that the dog could be a Christmas present but we should not bring her home at Christmas. Check. We would have a crate for the dog to provide a safe environment. Check. We would bring her up according to the standards of the American Kennel Club. Check.  

Funny, dogs don’t read books or follow agendas.  In fact, they seem to help you find ways of forgetting yours.  At least our Bridgett did.  Within minutes of meeting her I forgot about character development and purposeful parenting.  She was friendly, a bit demure, and appeared glad to see us.  Of course, these were the traits selected over the ages to help make her and her kind the most successful parasitic species on the planet. On the other hand, her actions prompted a genuine emotional response.  I was happy, content, and pleased to rescue her from the shelter and bring her to our home. 

We did, nevertheless, follow the plan conceived before her homecoming.  Bridgett retired to her kennel at night and occasionally retreated to it during storms.  She was trained according to the AKC standards and earned her “Good Citizen” award.  She was athletic and lean and literally wore out a path around the house.  Like any long term relationship there were occasional strains.  For example, she had a penchant for chewing up any sock that was left on the floor.  Perhaps, she was just teaching me to be a little tidier.  In any case, a whole sock-full of drawers would not make up for our loss.  In fact, time is quickly erasing any memory of the strains though it has yet to erase the grief. 

Bridgett died only a few weeks after my son left for AmeriCorps.  She was his companion, tutor, and comforter.  She was with him through growth spurts, fashion fads, and broken hearts.  When the world seemed to reject him, as it does from time to time in nearly all teenage worlds, Bridgett accepted him without cost or condition.  And when her task was finished and he entered the adult world, she left us.  

Whether intentional or unintentional, mindful or accidental, whether a product of breeding, evolution, or environment, I will always be grateful for what that dog did for my son, my family, and most of all, for me. 

Thoughts on YCS Toronto

First, I should publically document the pride I have for my son.  The AmeriCorps program is not an easy one as the dropout rate will attest.  Transitioning from a life threatened by Effect Veilers to one with real world demands is difficult.  He is holding up well …

… and he is still beating me at Yugioh.  

Enough paternal musings, we have a YCS tournament to consider.  

Your Dragon Overlords still reign

It looks like I have to quickly write a number of posts so that my “Predictions” for this meta are buried deep in the archive.  Though most of my thoughts were reasonable, I clearly swung and missed on the Dragon Ruler variants.  If you add the dragunity decks, 50% of the top 16 decks were dragon variants.  

I should have known better.

A large percentage of good players were piloting E dragons last format.  Regardless of the ban list, most players will return to the decks they know.  I suspect many of these players tested and found that the deck could be tweaked and run quite well.  We saw this Wind-ups a couple of years ago.  The hand loop was gone, but the deck was revised and continued to dominate.  Kudos to the first guy who put in the plant engine in the deck.  I also really liked J Cho’s Skill Drain version shown here.

Whether this is truly the “best deck” is hard to say given the disproportionate number of good players that were using it.  Since Draccosack is no longer as critical to the decks performance, we may see a number of people taking it up.  I suspect they won’t have the same success.  Nevertheless, it’s a very good deck and one that will be around for a while. 

If the TCG wants to limit its play, it will need to adopt the OCG “Special Rule”. For those that don’t know, the rule says you can play only six E dragons per deck.  Personally, I think this rule is ingenious since it allows decks dedicated to types have their monsters while killing E dragon predominant decks.  On the other hand, the deck is vulnerable so the need to do so seems to be gone.

Truly Shocking …

There were several honorable mentions.  Christopher LeBlanc made it into the top 32 with Karakuri Geargia. David Wu also made the top 32 with Madolche’s.   This means that if fewer than 24 people entered with these decks, they outperformed the field.  On the other hand, fewer than 283 people would have needed to enter with E dragons for that deck to outperform expectations.  I suspect the biggest underperformer was Mermails.  Three of the top 16 spots went to Mermails and surely more than 142 people played it.  Of course this analysis would be more complete if we knew how many people played what deck. 

There was one group of decks that was notably absent – the rank 4 toolbox decks.  This group of decks includes Gadget variants, Harpies, and Madolches.  Geargias can be played as a rank 4 deck, but LeBlanc used to Geargia engine to make level 7 and 8 synchros.   Furthermore, Wu and LeBlanc are the exception that proves the rule.   They outperformed the field because of the experience they had with their respective decks.  Both have been playing their respective decks since Return of the Duelist.  I’m sure the other decks had experienced players as well.  Heck, Jeff Jones was playing Harpies. 

So why did we not see more rank 4 decks?  I don’t believe banning Ultimate Offering made a difference.  When you drew it, great – but most of the time it just sat in your deck. 

The real difference was banning Shockmaster.  SM’s a card similar to BLS.  It’s a great equalizer.  Take a good but not a great deck, throw in BLS, and behold, you can win some games.   SM is the same way. For example, Jeff Jones created a Gogogo Zombie deck that could put Shockmaster on the board with amazing ease.  Without it, the deck couldn’t beat a Worm deck.  With it, Spellcasters struggle. 

Personally, I would like to see Shockmaster return.  I know some people don’t like losing to a second rate deck just because SM has been summoned.   But the card is easy to beat over and it’s expensive to make.  At best it’s a neg 1 and often it’s a neg 2.  If Jeff Jones had access to Shockmaster, we’d all be talking about his deck as if he had topped with something as odd as … uh … psychics.  

By way of announcement: The next two weeks look to be pretty busy; but, have no fear.  I'll be back to posting after that.