Top Cut Meta Analysis
Machines! Machines! Machines! Eighteen Playoff slots went to a single card typing: ten to Wind-Ups and the remaining eight to various combinations of Karakuri, Machina, and/or Geargia. Clearly, Wind-Up has established itself as the front-runner for this format and “Not Wind-Ups” machine decks have a solid bid for second place. The third place slot went to Chaos Dragons, which returned from the obscurity of the Forbidden/Limited list in a big way.

Speaking of obscurity, the once mighty Dino Rabbit had its worse Premier performance in history this weekend, even worse than its debut at YCS Kansas last November. This is quite shocking, as Rabbit, from YCS Brighton in December until WCQ: Oceania Championship in July, had maintained a statistical dominance of 40-60% of most Premier playoff metagames. Moreover, Rabbit was the least visibly affected deck by the list that changed the format. However, the loss of 1 “Rescue Rabbit” and 1 “Tour Guide From the Underworld” appear to be talking a great toll.

However, Rabbit’s lack of success may be attributed to more external factors. Formats, and the metagames that make up the formats, and the metagames make up those metagames are very intricate processes. The slightest changes to cardpools and pool limitations can have astronomical effects. For example, last format, “Effect Veiler” was heavily mained to stop the advances of Inzektor and to slow down Rabbit. You saw Inzektor come to a halt, Rabbit shrugged off the effects, and you saw a rise in the sucess of HERO and Dark World, as “Effect Veiler” is a dead card against it. Then as the format went on, various tech changes in most decks caused HERO and Dark World to return to the abyss.

The rest of the Top 32 consisted of 2 Dark World and various one-offs of other decks. It is clear from the lack of HERO success following Toronto, that is it is the new standard “go-to” for new format. Although, moving forward, we are again faced with the same dilemma that we faced following YCS Guatemala. The metagame has both gotten a more diverse spread of equal deck strength and the seeds of a typical three-deck have been further routed. The only difference is the third deck is now Dragons and no longer Rabbit. However, that may not be the case at all come YCS Providence in Rhode Island.

YCS Indianapolis just leaves you feeling very uncertain about how the format is developing. Only time with tell if this format ever decides what it wants to do. Although, even it is does, the Realm of the Sea Emperor Structure Deck released prior to that event may just be the reset button for the entire thing.

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