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.
Related posts:
Nice articles as always, Jae. Quick question: Do you think Dimensional Prison will be played over Bottomless Trap Hole this format? Or if it will become more popular?
kycoo/TKR combo is ideal,kycoo is quite the beast this format with double sorc,LS,and even well timmed against GB kycoo can just wreck combos,along side king you can lock charge most importantly,but also rota and proving ground,its a light and dark combo so obv chaos comes into play here.
thunder king has played extremly well for me.
‘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.’
Banisher doesnt work with Honest, but yeah…
One card you didn’t mention is Kycoo – it’s fantastic against pretty much everything this format.
Why would Prison be played over Bottomless? LS will be the dominant deck, so there’ll be Breaker and Lyla running around. In fact, mostly for that reason, I’d rather play regular Trap Hole than Prison.
Great article Jae ^_^ I agree completely with Ice-eyes about Kycoo. I think you should add him to the article, but otherwise it is very good
One problem with the 3 TKR/Honest/Banisher lineup is that you can’t protect Banisher with Honest since they conflict with each other. Other than that, good article mate
PS: I know you love reading my reports, so here’s another one for you, http://theirishduelist.blogspot.com
Banisher doesnt work with Honest, but yeah…
I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Jae implied that Honest would work with Banisher.
I think he meant that a deck running Banishers/Thunder King Raioh/Honests/Light Monsters would be a rather strong pick where honest would support all the light monsters except banisher (obviously), which would be protected by defensive traps instead.
The concept would work on the basis that if he opens with Banisher against LS, that is still an incredibly powerful opening that can’t be broken unless the opponent opens with s/t removal and a Lyla/Garoth/Jain/Ryko (with Charge broken too). If they don’t open with both of these the LS player must take damage until they gain a reasonable out to the situation. At the same time the anti-meta player also gains more defence. In the case that the opponent does in fact open with Storm + one of the monsters listed above, then although the combo is broken, they lose the ability to open Lumina + X anyway, slowing the opponent’s deck down anyway (worst case scenario mind you). Next turn you get the opportunity to set up again. It doesn’t really matter that honest doesn’t work when your opponent probably loses utility on over half his hand.
The deck’s probably pretty solid even without Banisher + Honest working together, and I think this is what Jae meant by his article. Obviously Raioh accomplishes a similar task in slowing down LS by making its cards more dead as well (as well as being compatible with honest). Interestingly enough, I think the deck might suffer when it comes to dealing with the LS player setting honest to stall for outs but that’s a different story.
Hey, when are the new posts coming? You said in a previous post that you would do 3 posts that week, but it has been a looong time with nothing since then. Not trying to rush, just curious.
I too am curious as why the site has been inactive for the last couple weeks.
hey Jae where the heck are the posts cuz. It’s been a minute man. Where the heck are you?
…
lol?
I enjoy these ‘Card Market Watch’ articles very much, and really like your website Jae, but its been a really long time since your last article. Are any more coming soon? Sorry, I don’t want to sound pushy.
Might be preparing for Orlando?
He obv. died or jsut gave up/doesnt care bout us anymore
Jae is a rather busy guy with a life outside of yugioh. His content is of good quality so we can cut him a little slack. Of course why have a blog and not update it?
So… another Jae Kim endeavor cut down in its prime?
That’s what happens when only one person runs a whole site.
3 weeks and not a single blog entry… wonder what’s up :/
at least an update or something:(
I guess this project has stalled out for the time being?
I just dont think he can be botherd.
he ditched us XD
I bet he is deck testing or something finding interesting things to write about the current Meta.
We miss you, Jae…
Please come back
How do you go MIA on your own blog without any explanation?
I think he died…
So JAE LUV IS DONE AGAIN………….
Probably busy with the law school. He disappeared for a while in pojo as well. I hope he publish more article soon before he loses his fanbase.
i’m hoping he’s waiting for the next sjc so he can write about a more “confirmed” meta. but most like this was a project started when free time was plentiful and now that there’s something else occuping his time this site has died. regardless come back jae. i think its safe to say i speak for everyone when i say we all miss articles from an intelligent yugi player as oppossed to the bs u find on other sites.
thx
Wow its been more then a month since his last article. I hope to see you make your return soon Jae.
hey i read this and immediately blogged about it you have skill at blogging and if you would check out my blog instead of giving cool card tips i give card strategies