What made you choose Plunder Patroll Unchained for the tournament? What were your tech choices?
I chose the deck because it's extremely consistent and interactive. I never draw a hand with the deck and feel like it's completely unplayable, and similarly most matches seem winnable to some extent. It feels very powerful because it has the ability to stop others from going off, can out grind slower control decks, and has insane bombs where if a Moerk or a Sarama sticks a turn the game can just end on the spot. The deck is fairly standard to what I've been running with some minor changes like main decking chalice because effect negation is so powerful right now. I put mimicking man eater into the main for this tournament and it performed really well, the card is removal that becomes a big beater with battle and effect protection and feels really bad for your opponent to waste a card to out.
Would you make any changes to the deck?
Me. Plunder is a deck that takes like a quantum supercomputer to play 100% correctly or at least someone with basic reading comprehension skills, so not me. But actually I think I would make a more specific side for the format. I play a lot of good stuff cards in the side like dimensional barrier and meister that never really get sided in instead of blowout bombs in more specific matchups. Also I could cut the graydles, unchained's, and plunders if I want everyone to stop hating me.
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
The tournament was pretty standard, most matches went according to plan except for an unchained mirror against Temedun that featured pretty much 0 unchained cards.
Any general thoughts on the tournament, the ban list, or the format in general?
I think the format is in a pretty good place right now. There’s a lot of very powerful decks in the format that aren’t being piloted but a lot of decks can be competitive and do well if piloted correctly. However, the format is seeing a lot of power creep, even with the hits they incur older decks just can’t compete with the advantage even the worse newer decks create. Decks like these snowball a ton of advantage with just a few summons and cards and a lot of combo decks just can't keep up.
Sparky
Anju
What made you choose Despia for the tournament?
I couldn't decide on what deck to play, so I put together this deck last minute.
Would you make any changes to the deck?
My extra deck choices were terrible so my TGU fiend package was often sided out for Graydles. Neos and blue-eyes are great when you don't draw the normals. 2x Predaplanning + Trap Trick worked quite well in this deck. Incredible Ecclesia, the Virtuous was not that great since I only ran 1 Fallen of Albaz for it. There's a lot of engines that could go well together with despia basically any light/dark monsters work, so I'll probably experiment with those for the next ytc.
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
Was definitely not expecting to top after bricking horrendously 0-2 in my first match.
Any general thoughts on the tournament, the ban list, or the format in general?
The format seems pretty okay, not really too much to complain about.
What made you choose Unchained Altergeist for the tournament? What were your tech choices?
Been mildly interested in Altergeist for a while and since people were dooming about the newly unlimited Meluseek I figured this was as good a time as any to try it out while getting some good testing done. I didn’t feel like sitting down to lab the deck properly so to fill it out I decided to just toss in Unchained with an accompanying TGU package.
Would you make any changes to the deck?
I’d maybe cut Kunquery, it didn’t come up all that often and can be pretty bricky if drawn. Another remedy to the Kunquery problem would be going down to 40 with something untaxed instead of Unchained or adding more Altergeist trinities, in the process also increasing the odds of seeing Meluseek or Multifaker + good traps and snowballing from there. Maybe add a bunch of other spellcasters to then capitalize on Witchcrafter Golem Aruru being unlimited. Adding Pookuery for Primebanshee or Memorygant plays or just to make easier Hexstias could be a consideration.
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
Unlimited Meluseek really do be. Swiss went very well, ended with a 5-0 score, beating both of the eventual finals participants on the way to top cut. Got outmuscled by Despia (feat. Phantazmay) in top cut however, only winning game 1 due to Tamamo going into Exciton instead of gaming me with Despian Quaeritis. Also resolved a 3 draw Maxx “C” during my own turn in that same game.
Any general thoughts on the tournament, the ban list, or the format in general?
Unlimited Meluseek is kinda over the top IMO, I was playing a very barebones and even slightly anti-synergistic (Can’t resolve Unchained Twins and Multifaker during the same turn) Altergeist deck this ytc and did very well despite little practice with the deck. With 2 Meluseeks in the deck any one Meluseek or Multifaker can snowball into literally every Altergeist card in the deck. Unchained still kinda cracked too. Only other decks I had to really sweat against this YTC were Despia and Plunder, which also fall into the same category of super snowbally and/or floaty. Orcust Machina was also pretty resilient. To be fair they were good and enjoyable matches for the most part, when fighting fire with fire, but these decks do really push out alot of other strategies when it comes to performance.
Temedun
