By popular demand, here is another set of Monsters, Spells, and Traps that are trending upwards and heading down in the new format.

Trending Upward:

Thunder King Rai-Oh: While I am not yet entirely sold on this card, a few factors contribute to strengthening the Thunder King. The ban of Crush Card Virus is one factor. The limit of Gale along with TKR’s own effect makes it extremely difficult to find a Gale to swing over Rai-Oh for card advantage. TKR’s ability to negate bigger monsters than it basically means you will (once again) be locking down the field and exercising control.

TKR currently stops a number of commonly played cards in the game. He can disrupt the opponent’s searches and disrupt their flow. You can even protect Rai-Oh! with Honest as back-up. I would imagine a 3 Honest/3 TKR/3 Banisher of the Radiance lineup supported by defensive traps makes it very difficult for Lightsworn to win.

I predict most of the anti-meta strategies will focus on Rai-Oh and Doomcaliber Knight. How far they will get is another matter entirely.

Gold Sarcophagus: Gold Sarcophagus is a beneficiary of the slower format. Since many decks rely on combos of cards, I would imagine certain decks (and perhaps, eventually, all decks) will end up main-decking one or two copies of Sarcophagus.

Lightsworn decks have been given far more breathing room to set up due to the lack of DSF and OTK capabilities in the new format. Two Sarcophagus being able to search Charge of the Light Brigade or Solar Recharge seems far too good not to run.

Burial from a Different Dimension decks, as well, may be running any combination of cards such as Destiny Draw, Allure of Darkness, Return from the Different Dimension, and such that lend themselves well to being Sarced out. Blackwing decks may eventually morph into complete control, meaning Sarcing for a Black Whirlwind would be a legitimate play.

The point is that the format has become a lot slower. Games should be reaching the five turn (per player) mark rather consistently. I would not be surprised if Sarcophagus ends up finding its way into every top tier deck of the new format.

Trap Dustshoot: While many top players chose to main-deck this card in the last format, a larger majority of “pros” decided Dustshoot’s unplayability in the mid to late game made the card too dangerous to run. I personally didn’t play Dustshoot in any main-deck for the entirety of the format because of such fears.

In this slower, more uncertain format where players cannot set as much without Solemn Judgment and your own Airbellums and such can’t remove so many cards, Trap Dustshoot is basically a staple. I believe rather strongly that every good deck will eventually end up main-decking it.

Trending Downwards

Black Salvo/Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive: This Machiney combination anchored the famous Adam Corn Dark Valley build originally created by Mario Matheu and T. In the previous format, the deck used multiple Mind Control in conjunction with Cyber Valley to generate card advantage while blocking game pushes through Threatening Roar.

All of these cards are weakened considerably in the next format. Black Salvo, when fetching Dekoichi, can only lead into an Urbellum or Black Rose Dragon. With players presumably committing less to the field in this format (less OTK pushes to worry about), it will be difficult to generate more than two cards of advantage through a timely Black Rose Dragon. Doing so would require your opponent commit three cards to the field versus your zero card commitment.

So the entire premise of the deck, which featured Salvo into Dark Strike Fighter (or possibly Black Rose Dragon) to anchor as a large pusher is negated. Now Salvo gets a bunch of underwhelming options while Dekoichi remains vulnerable to 1400 recruiters, War Chariot, Gyzarus, Celestia, Raiza, and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast. This is not a good combination.

Machine Duplication: This card works in conjunction with Cyber Valley to generate lots of card advantage. Unfortunately, it was a lot better in Summoner Monk based decks such as Jerry Wang’s build because it allowed the player to pitch the dead spell for an effect in bad situations. This let Synchro Cat decks effectively toolbox certain low utility spells.

Unfortunately for Cyber Valley, it should see less play in this format with the limit of Mind Control. So Machine Duplication should trend downward.

Threatening Roar: The drastic slow-down of the game has made this card much less appetizing. Whereas Threatening Roar previously blocked game shots and chained against multiple copies of Cold Wave, both threats are gone now so the roar seems to have left the building.

Lightsworn decks which mained two copies of Threatening Roar in previous formats can easily convert to Bottomless Trap Hole or some other option with no loss of effectiveness. Defensive traps in general, with the exception of Torrential Tribute and Bottomless Trap Hole, seem to have grown rather difficult to support.