I decided to attend an Illionis Yu-Gi-Oh! regionals last week, hosted by Xtreme Games. To be honest, I had grown quite tired of Infernities by this point. It’s never very fun to see the shocked and even sad expressions on players faces when they lose both duels in 3 turns, combined. Regionals are generally a time for me to experiment with tier 2/tier 1.5 decks as well.
My goal was to use a version of Vayu Turbo that I had seen Sang Bui play at the first Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship series. Unfortunately, his experience with the deck wasn’t very good and he told me not to run it. Without other cards to have access to, I ended up throwing together a Blackwing deck at the last minute (7 A.M. at a McDonald’s, to be precise).
This is what I took to a tenth place finish at the small regional (it would have been a top four if the last match was taken more seriously. Long story short, I thought I was fine on tiebreakers so ended up tributing an Armor Master for Sirocco, attempting to go for game with Icarus set and Black Whirlwind active versus Colossal Fighter. I estimate it was a 60% chance or so of winning outright and an 85%+ chance of winning if I had waited.)
20 Monsters
3 Blackwing – Sirocco the Dawn
3 Blackwing – Shura the Blue Flame
2 Blackwing – Bora the Spear
3 Blackwing – Kalut the Moon Shadow
2 Blackwing – Blizzard the Far North
1 Blackwing – Gale the Whirlwind
2 Blackwing – Vayu the Emblem of Honor
1 Dark Armed Dragon
1 Sangan
2 D.D. Crow
8 Spells
2 Black Whirlwind
1 Allure of Darkness
2 Cards for Black Feathers
1 Brain Control
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Heavy Storm
12 Traps
3 Icarus Attack
2 Royal Oppression
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Trap Dustshoot
2 Dust Tornado
When Ryan Drake (head judge of the regional) asked me if he could post the deck list on DuelistGroundz, I said “sure but the deck is bad.” Then, I took a second look. And I came to the conclusion that I had accidentally stumbled upon a near-perfect build of Blackwings (I think perhaps 1-2 cards are debatable but probably not).
The deck begins with a few core concepts that should explain the evolution of Black Feather. If you plan on playing Blackwings at a regionals, premier event, or even your Nationals, hopefully this may help.
The Evolution of Blackwings
The professional players I have talked to are unsure of whether Blackwings can still be classified as tier one. Most players I know agree that Infernities and X-Sabers occupy their own tier, with Gladiator Beasts also remaining relevant. The question is whether Caliber Cat, Blackwings, Quickdraw, Frog Monarchs, and Gadgets still occupy this tier with them.
I think the results of the YCS pretty clearly show that these decks are on the decline. By my count, Infernities, X-Sabers, and Gladiator Beasts occupied 19 of the possibly 32 slots in the top 32. Infernities and X-Sabers took 75% of the top four spots (and should have likely been 100% as discussed HERE)
Blackwings only took one spot. I think we have to reassess Blackwings. This venerable deck has to evolve by capitalizing on its strengths and discarding the weaknesses. When building my version, I focused on a few key strengths that are extremely important in the metagame.
1. Blackwings integrate anti-meta keys such as Royal Oppression, D.D Crow, and Skill Drain with little to no loss in efficiency
Other decks are also using D.D Crow. However, they can’t merge D.D. Crow as efficiently as Blackwings can. Blackwings have four outlets to dump a D.D Crow (3 Icarus Attack and Allure of Darkness). They also can use a Dark Armed Dragon.
Every deck except Blackwings needs to make significant changes to its architecture to fit Royal Oppression in. Skill Drain is even more difficult to merge. However, Blackwings can do it.
2. Blackwings have more draw power than every other meta deck, enabling them to hit key cards in each matchup faster
This is why I ended up cutting the Book of Moons. I personally feel Book of Moon has become vastly overrated in this metagame. Decks that should be focusing on forced simplification (such as Gadgets and Gladiator Beasts) are running Book of Moon en masse. I try to follow a few golden rules with Book.
1) If you don’t run flip effects, what are you doing?
2) If you don’t run Firedogs/Shuras, what are you doing?
I realize my Blackwing approach contradicts this because the Shuras are present. However, the draw cards I am using are far more important to the strategy. They let me consistently hit D.D Crow, Royal Oppression, or Trap Dustshoot to avert the frighteningly explosive plays that Infernities and X-Sabers can make.
Based off these key strengths, I’ve come to the conclusion that the old way isn’t working any more for Blackwings. The new goal is to put an anti-meta spin on the deck and use draw power to hit those cards as soon as possible. The Blackwing deck has an immensely solid match-up against Gladiator Beasts, Infernities, Gadgets, and Quickdraw. It may require some help against X-Sabers, but as of now I would put near-perfect conceptual builds such as mine solidly into the top tier.
No related posts.
Re: Book of Moon – Fullhelmknight!!!!!!!!
Hey,
gratz to your satisfying experience with this kinda BW built.
Can u post your Side and Extra deck to? I suppose you ran a third crow, Smashing, Skill Drain, Wanghu maybe?
Greetz,
kumpii
PS: Always a nice reea though.
I’m curious, isn’t it still hard to pull off the big combos in the blackwing deck with oppression active? I mean, isn’t the deck’s win condition to swarm with multiple boras/gale and push through large amounts of damage in one turn? Also the deck’s synchro threats (armed wing and armor master) can only come out (with oppression active) by way of vayu, and they lose their killer effects….
thank god, i’ve been running 0 book and the occasional sangan in bw since forever, everyone said it was terrible
sangan is really good in bw right now. it lets you “stretch” your hand count which helps you with cfbf draws, getting gale/kalut/blizz
on that note, the only thing I don’t like about your deck is 2 blizzard instead of 3. with cfbf, the downsides of blizzard (drawing it early) is mitigated
Greetings Mr. Kim, it’s always nice to read your articles, I enjoy them a lot. I learned a lot of your articles, and I agree totally on Book being overstimated (I myself dropped it from my Machina Gadget, dropping Solidarity too and focusing on 1 for 1 removal, resulting in multiple top 4 and higher in my locals).
To the point, and answering the previous poster: The beauty of a Blackwing Deck is that you can be aggressive and swarm, or control the game through card effects. It is, without any doubt, the most consistent Deck in the top tier at this moment. It is the only build which has a consistent draw engine, a consistent search engine, the ability to incorporate the best anti-meta tech in the game at this moment without altering its structure, has low level monsters with good base ATK, a lot of Synergy, yet can work pretty well at topdecking, are capable of mass-removal and they have damage step modifiers. Blackwings have all you can wish.
A Blackwing Deck doesn’t HAVE to swarm to win the game, nor it has to Synchro Summon either. It has a wide array of monster effects, but can survive without trouble if the build loses those. The fact that it can do with OR without is what makes Blackwings awesome.
Mr. Kim, your presented build is very interesting. The mained Dust Tornados catched my attention, as they allow various answers to different threats while avoiding the dependance on Icarus Attack to hit the backrow. It’s certainly something I will test myself. I’ve been including Dust in nearly all my builds because of its usefulness these days, but Blackwings I never tried, will do so.
On the flip side of the coin, I’m not sure about Sangan here. I’d probably have ran another Bora, or probable given Breeze the Zephyr a try. I think Breeze came out a format too late, since Armor Master is easier to get rid of thanks to Infernities’ Mist Wurm and the Dimensional Prisons everyone are running. Still, I consider Breeze a good card, so I think you could give it a try. More Shura targets should be a good thing, and if you ever need it, you can do Kalut into Armed Wing, thanks to Whirlwind.
Against the Saber matchup, probably Book of Moon could help. I can say by experience, I’ve stopped multiple Saber tricks with Book of Moon, either preventing Saber Hole when Spell/Trap removal isn’t at hand, or making their multi-Special Summon plays useless, as I prevent Faultroll. It’s also useful to pass through Fullhelmknight.
For now, that’s all. I hope you keep these articles coming, thanks for the good read and for your time!
Whats intersting is I’ve been debating making a blackwing deck for some time now and this is almost EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for. I’ve never been to big on Siccoro the dawn, i never understand why people would run 3, even though he has cyber dragons effect.
I may wait till Gold Series 3 since most of the BW cards are reprinted. Not to mention who DOESNT want a Gold Gale.
Congrats on your 10th place finish, and inovating a deck I’ve secretly loved since before it even came out.
As for the arguement on Book of moon, yeah most decks play it because of its power. Blackwings dont really need it because they have so many ways to get around cards like Icarus Attack. Or they may even WANT cards in the grave (vayu) so i can see why you freed up the extra space for more useful anti meta cards.
I must admit I may want to use this build for my own means, but i would probably only run 2 siccro, not sure what to put in its place though.
Wow, I would think that Oppresion would be bad seeing as blackwings special summon a fairly decent amount.
Is icarus attack still as effective as it used to be? Due to the massing of starlight roads at my locals, I’ve been kind of iffy about using it.
What are your thoughts on swallows nest? It’s a neg 1 but you can chain it and it can always be used as a save against destruction or something.
Deck looks interesting for sure. My only concern is the lack of playable monsters, combined with the 2 CFBF and triple Icarus. Did you find yourself running out of monsters quickly?
Good job, and nice article.
Nice article!
I have been exclusively playing blackwings for almost 5 months now. Dropped book on my 3rd month. You totally nailed the point, from how I see it, for blackwing players, if you want to play BoM, Compulsory is almost identical in many areas except slightly better.
I think anti-meta at this point for blackwing is the way to go. I personally found with 2 cards for black feathers, more blackwing monsters to remove along with it is important.
My build is fairly similar to yours, except I run slightly more bw monsters with no sangan and 1 less crow. I replaced the tornados with NoE, which I liked better. I’m still not sure how strong/useful brain control would be in blackwings.
Anyways, thanks for posting the build, which reassure my build.
BoM is definitely overrated.
If you want, you can try “Ultimate Offering” to continue using the same swarm tactic. I’m going to be building a “Blackwing” variant that I call “UltimateOppression Wings” by using both “Ultimate Offering” and “Royal Oppression”. All it takes is one “Blackwing – Sirocco the Dawn” to start a cascade of other “Blackwing” monsters.
I do run “X-Sabers”, and on the thought of “Book of Moon” being “overrated”, it really depends on your Deck. “Quickdraw Dandywarrior/Plants” can use it to abuse “Super-Nimble Mega Hamster” and “Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter”. “X-Sabers” use it to abuse “XX-Saber Fulhelmknight”. It’s not exactly an “overrated” card, just misused. Most powerful monsters have lower DEF, so they can be easily beaten by switching them to defense position. This works especially well with “Blackwing – Bora the Spear” combined with “Blackwing – Sirocco the Dawn”, which can help against monsters like the aforementioned “XX-Saber Fulhelmknight” and “Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter”, not to mention getting around “Gravekeeper’s Spy” and “Doomcaliber Knight”. “Book of Moon” also helps to stall attacks.
No love for Breeze? At least one copy is bound to be useful.
Breeze is orange.
Your article highlights a great opening for a new anti-meta deck. However, there are several problems with it.
The deck may appear to hold its own against saberfernities but its consistencies are nothing in comparison to a good turn for infernities. You can’t hope to survive staring down the barrel of stardust, goyo and mist wurm with 3 cards in hand. Of course the deck is playable, moreso than a traditional BW deck in this format, but it relies too much on the draw cards, and less on big hitters. A cleverly timed magic drain/ solemn will screw you.
The oppressions will be hit by the numerous dust tornados being played in both tier 0 decks, and will be devastating bad draws against slower decks like black garden. Triple Icarus attack is also just ASKING for starlight road.
I like getting rid of the book of moons. They’re too linear and aren’t that playable anymore. I admit fully that this deck is somewhat of a perfect blackwing build for this format, but the thing is, in this format, even a perfect blackwing build can’t match up.
The deck is a wonderful idea, a way to re-inspire blackwing players to pick up their cards and try again. After a horrible ban list, this is one of the most interesting blackwing hybrids I’ve seen and I like it. I just feel like maybe, just maybe, it isn’t going to work until the september ban list hits cards like darksoul, archfiend and launcher.
So has anyone besides Jae tried out this build? Looks interesting, I’ll probably try it out once gold 3 comes out since i sold all my bw stuff.
I made some changes:
- Sangan
+ Bora
+ Mirror force
and tried it out at locals,ending up with a 7-1 record. I realy like this build and I think I will take it to bigger events.
@keboses
What deck do u run??
nice build mines almost same cept i run breeze and ghibli is testing well..if anything he is icarus tribute or cfbf material a free search from any bw…and little otk stopper…i triple bora and side my dd crows…
it may seem like a bad decision running one more bora and breeze ghibli but it adds consitency to the deck….triple icarus and two cfbf i love having bw’s to dispose
@Thats me
I run 3 seperate decks, one being blackwings (pretty much never use it anymore), quickdraw dandy and simorgh lockdown.
Why?
Triple Pot of Duality would break this deck. Trust me.
Wow, after all the articles I have read from you, it still keeps suprising me every time.
Keep up the good work.
Obviously, I have just read your article. I’m impressed with your writing, but not really impressed with your reasoning. Book of moon is a very strategical card that involves knowing when to activate and what to target. Although not very effective against infernities, it holds a lot of power over x-sabers and quickdraw IF you know what you’re doing.
Another thing i was saddened by was the number of situational cards you’re using. Blackwings do fine with maintaining DAD, icarus, allure, and the occasional trap dustshoot. But when you throw in more situational cards like cfbf into an aggro deck with enough situational cards, you’re going to have problems. Let me explain. Cfbf was purposely changed to the point at which it becomes more harmful to the deck than good when run in multiples. You can only activate 1 per turn, you remove the monster first, and you can’t special summon. It’s a card that was designed to only be effective first turn. It’s not a card that can turn the game around very easily without a little luck. I’ve done the tests with this card many times and have been sure to play against only decks that can really be considered tournament worthy. The end result became clear that the card tends to slow the deck down at many key moments where draw is everything. As i saw it, the bad outweighed the good tremendously. Throwing it in with other cards like allure(requires you remove a monster from hand after draw), icarus attack(requires you tribute a wing beast to activate), black whirlwind(requires a monster with enough attack to search before effective), DAD(requires exactly 3 darks in the grave), and trap dustshoot(requires your opponent have at least 4 cards in hand) means you’re adding more cards that require you use another card or have a specific situation occurring.
Speaking of dustshoot, i should remind you of something. Although it can save you at times, I want you to take note that getting rid of a monster from your opponent’s hand can make it all the more easier for infernities to pull off their combo. Monsters are the only cards in their hand that they can only set or play 1 of per turn. Also, you better hope you go first since infernities like to drop their hand as quickly as possible. It’s because of this that dustshoot lost a lot of play among main decks.
I understand that you through in the dust tornadoes to get an edge over x-sabers and infernities. I’m alright with this. But you’re going to have some issues when you start running into decks where they run less backfield or you start drawing into multiple backfield destruction cards and no monsters. My advice is to main 1 and side the other.
The deck has potential, but needs to run a bit more defensive in its strategy especially if you’re going to keep cards for black feathers in. one of the best cards to look for in holding defense is dimensional prison. It does alot of damage against other aggro decks and protects your monster exceptionally well in my experience. You also have to take in mind that the card doesn’t destroy, and is therefore unaffected by cards like my body as a shield and stardust dragon.
You seem to be a smart duelist and i wish you alot of luck in your search for a more top tier worthy blackwing deck. Remember that the best way to perfect a deck is to TEST IT CONTINUOUSLY and always try new things. Also, remember that the deck only attributes to maybe 50% of your chance of winning. The other 50% is goes to your knowledge of the strategy and how you play the deck. The smart player knows when to wait, when to bait, and when to strike.
This last note is strictly out of my own curiousity. Have you tested this thing against a typical blackwing deck of this format? I’ll post mine solely for example of what i mean by “typical”:
monsters: 20
3 Blackwing – Kalut the Moon Shadow
3 Blackwing – Shura the Blue Flame
3 Blackwing – Sirocco the Dawn
3 Blackwing – Bora the Spear
2 Blackwing – Vayu the Emblem of Honor
2 Blackwing – Blizzard the Far North
1 Blackwing – Breeze the Zephyr
1 Blackwing – Gale the Whirlwind
1 Dark Armed Dragon
1 Dark Grepher
spells: 8
2 Black Whirlwind
2 Book of Moon
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Brain Control
1 Heavy Storm
traps: 12
3 Dimensional Prison
3 Icarus Attack
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Royal Oppression
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Torrential Tribute
There are some that run 2 thunder king rai-ohs instead of the grepher and breeze. I personally like it better this way.
Good article lazy boy, understandable but jae way of running BW is better. The COTBF is a way to speed up the deck to draw royal oppression and having just one on the field kill most tier 1 decks now. Oh btw jae someone ran an exact copy minus and plus a few cards and went 8-0 last SJ. Good job man!
Rate/Fix my blackwing please.
Monsters: 20
3x Sirroco
3x Bora
3x Shura
3x kalut
2x blizzard
2x vayu
1x breeze
1x gale
1x DAD
1x Sangan
Spells:5
2x Black Whirlwind
1x Heavy Storm
1x Allure of Darkness
1x MST
Traps:15
2x Icarus Attack
2x Bottomless Traphole
2x Skill Drain
2x Royal Oppression
1x Cloak and Dagger
1x Dust Tornado
1x Starlight Road
1x Solemn of Judgement
1x Dimensional Prison
1x Mirror Force
1x Delta Crow
Side Deck: 12
1x Gorz
2x Book of Moon
2x Solidarity
1x Swords of Revealing Light
1x Smashing Ground
1x Cards for Black Feathers
1x Gold Sarcophagus
1x Brain Control
1x Lightning Vortex
1x Torrential Tribute
Okay I know very well that this is a really different Blackwing build and there obvious things that go against any other blackwing deck. But I also believe that this may be one of the only way for blackwings to stay strong. They have cards that have effects before they hit the field so skill drains are still effective. you can now use breeze as a synchro for something other than a blackwing. Vayu can be used to synch for 5stars. at anytime you can MST your own skill drain. And attack for game. use sangan to search for monsters from from deck. its effect is resolved from grave unaffected by skill drain. side book of moon not necessarily needed unless facing x saber. really want to add solidarity to give all my monsters a major boost if i will be trying to beat decks with out the use of high level monsters. if i know what deck im facing cloak and dagger can save me. by naming archfiend or fulhelmknight or hearald. even subsitoad.
Sorry for organization of explanation and analysis. i would really like to see what people have to say about this build. it seems like something that will utilize blackwings strength. keep the basic synergy and still take down many of the decks that have moved into their own tier of decks that blackwings can no longer play with.