Metagame Report – April 2018 by Adrian Dursun
Hello everybody. I am Adrian Dursun and in the following article, I will provide you with information about the metagame in April.
Lair of Darkness release – 19th & 20th April.
With the release of Lair of Darkness, we got a new powerful field spell which allows the controller of the field spell to tribute a monster the opponent controls for the cost to activate a cards effect. This field spell could be useful in combination with Share the Pain or Enemy Controller. A different kind of synergy appears in decks like Infernoid by tributing opponent monsters to banish a card in their grave or to negate an effect of a card. To get more information about the structure deck, you can read our Metagame Impact #2 – Structure Deck: Lair of Darkness
YCS Memphis – 23th. April:
In Memphis we saw the metagame slowly change from the highly dominant deck Pendulum Magician, into a balanced metagame with more different decks. As we can see, dracos and trickstar gained more attention at that event compared to YCS Atlanta and YCS Bochum. Also something to mention is that Gem-Knight FTK showed up for the first time in a YCS , piloted by Jesse Flores. At this event we saw some change in True Draco. Most of the True Draco duelists changed from The Monarchs Erupt, to a variant with an Extra Deck. This is mostly to prevent the opponent from getting information that they are playing True Draco, as the opponent would start a first turn board with Abyss Dweller.
True Draco wasn’t the only deck which was divided by different variants, besides the FTK and the normal Pendulum variant we also saw Pendulum magician which relies on Number S0: Utopic Zexal. There’s also a Pendulum Link variant which can establish boards with 3 Negates and Firewall Dragon + Ib the World Chalice Priestess. add
In addition to this, people played Pendulum Magician builds with Magical Abductor to have access
to Droll & Lockbird, or to search more pendulum cards . The YCS winner Kamal Crooks piloted a Pendulum Magician build which contained 6 handtraps in the main, to have a better matchup against the FTK Build.
[Our member Galileo de Obaldia from Panama made Top 32 w/ True Draco]
CSL Berlin – 23th . April
On the same weekend as YCS Memphis, the CSL Major Stop was held in Berlin- Germany. If we look at the Top 16 Breakdown, we can see that the 60 Cards – Grass deck is more represented and there were zero Trickstars in the Topcut. The 2 most represented decks are still True Draco and Pendulum Magicians. One deck topped, which was more or less pretty unexpected: Mermails piloted by Alexander Hultzsch.
That list was built and focused to break the opponents board with Evenly Matched and Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju. Alexander played three copies of XYZ-Encore in his side deck, to have an advantage to a first turn Abyss Dweller or a Number F0.
[Our member Adrian Dursun from germany made top 16]
This Event and YCS Memphis were both held 2 Days after the release of the Structure Deck Lair of Darkness, but no decks topped with new cards from that Structure Deck.
At this event, True Draco gained more Popularity in the top32 bracket, but there was still a high percentage of Pendulum Magicians. At this event, trickstar was the third most represented deck, which is pretty similar to the deck breakdown at YCS Memphis. This event had the first deck which topped including the new cards of Lair of Darkness. Juan Pablo Perez managed to top8 with his 60cards-Infernoid-BA deck. He managed to do this without the fieldspell, but with Lilith, Lady of Lament in the sidedeck. Lilith can tribute a dark monster as cost and reveals 3 Trap cards from the deck. 1 of these gets randomly added to the hand, which seems strong when going first, as the card acts as extra copies of any normal trap you need, like Void Feast, Dimensional Barrier or Mind Crush.
This event was won by Hector Perez with Zexal Pendulum Magicians.
[Our Member Galileo De Obaldia from panama made top 32 and Juan S. Andrade ended up 4th place both piloting True Draco]
New Products:
Sneak-Peek Flames Of Destruction – 28th April.
On this day, we got access to the new Set. In that set we gained a new archetype – Knightmares, which will play a big role in the future. These are link 1 to link 4 monsters, which need monsters with different names for their link material. All of these monsters include an effect to discard 1 card, to gain effects and if they are co-linked they can draw 1 card. This archetype will help decks like ABC, Spyral and World Chalice to extend their combos and give them a greater chance to make a big board.
For new generic cards, we got Ghost Bell & Haunted Mansion – a new handtrap which negates cards or effects which will move cards from the graveyard to a different place, for example SPYRAL – Double Helix.
Last but not least we got 2 real handtraps, Infinite Impermanence and Red Reboot. Infinite Impermanence is a good card for the True Draco deck. It negates one effect of a monster until the end of the turn. If you do not control cards, it can be activated from the hand. Also, if this card is set and gets activated , cards can’t be used in the same column for the rest of the turn. True Draco players do finally have a handtrap that is fine to draw with card of demise, as it can just be set if needed. This presents the deck with a card similar to Effect Veiler.
Red Reboot negates the activation of a trap card and the opponent is allowed to set a new trap from the deck, but until the end of that turn traps cannot be activated. Red reboot can be used from the hand by paying half of your lifepoints. This card will be a strong card against True Draco and Paleozoic. If playing a deck which can OTK, this card will help vs any other deck with a lot of backrow.
Last but not least, we got Altergeist support. Altergeist Multifaker – If a trap card is activated, you can special multifaker and a monster from the deck, to have more interruptions in the opponents turn.
That was my article about the metagame in April, thanks for reading it, I hope you enjoyed it :)
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