What deck did you play and why?
I played Generaid Traptrix. I played this deck initially cause I wanted to throw this YTC, as to have more time testing “Phantom Fish”, so I made a simple-to-make deck. But life doesn’t happen as you expect it to, and I struck gold with this deck!
What tech choices did you play?
There are none. I prepared for this YTC by playing against Grimm, a lot. This didn’t help me learn the meta; it helped me more as to just learn basic Trinity.
How did you prepare for the January 2020 meta, and would you change anything going forward?
In this list I played too much s/t hate, because I was not considering Traptrix Sera summoning Traptrix Myrmeleo. I also didn’t play set rotation as I believed I had enough copies of Generaider Boss Stage. I am still torn if that was the right call. This deck was so surprisingly good, that my only loss was in swiss against Dark Magician, just because I had no idea how to fight that deck. I later re-matched vs it in finals, and with the experience from my swiss match I won.
Matt
Wtrain
What tech choices did you play?
I played DM, because drawing cards is fun. Also, because Palladium Oracle Mahad is a cute boi.
What tech choices did you play?
The DM deck pretty builds itself. The only real choice in building it is whether you play fusion turbo or control. I preferred control, so I played control.
How did you prepare for the January 2020 meta, and would you change anything going forward?
I did not prepare for the meta. I just wanted to see how many cards I could draw in a game and sometimes at the end of drawing, I would win games. Most of my match ups deck-wise were bad, but people not knowing how my deck functioned let me win games I had no business winning.
What deck did you play and why?
I played Zombies, because I told Burrito I would play them if I could not top the previous cup (and I couldn’t). They were really popular when I first started playing Trinity, but since lost its power. I didn’t play them back then because I was trying to be a hipster, but I have played against it and also watched some replays so it was fine.
What tech choices did you play?
Absorouter Dragon and Rokket Synchron. Many people were playing them. These really feel bad to play, but are also really rewarding when you can actually use them. I have often considered siding them out, but usually did not. There is also Danger! Bigfoot, which is the best discard fodder! Nothing unusual really, the list is very similar to Burrito’s and he knows what he is doing.
How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?
All the good S/T Hate and it still is not enough, right? Pendulum is also a deck. Zombies are actually pretty refined at this point, being an old deck. All the combos, all the gimmicks. What changed is the players in tournaments and they were not ready to out Vampire Fraulein. I don’t think I will play this deck again anytime soon, so I don’t really know how it’s going to adapt the meta (but it certainly will).
Sunshine
What deck did you play and why?
Have you ever taken an idea that you know is bad, transform it into reality, then find out it actually works really well? Well, that’s basically what I did this YTC. I took Thunder Dragons, an archetype that I’ve been experimenting with as of late, and Monarchs, an archetype that I’ve never touched before, and created Monarch Thundra. Take that and throw in some spice like Synchro monsters and a Hieratic engine, and voila, you’ve got a deck!
What tech choices did you play?
It was 35 cards, and outside of the necessary cards to make the deck function, I wasn’t given much maindeck space to work with. The only techs I managed to maindeck were a Hieratic engine of 2 Hieratic Dragon of Tefnuit, 1 Hieratic Seal of Convocation, and 1 Galaxy Serpent. This gave me access to synchro monsters, tribute fodder, and some niche combos (like tribute summoning Thunder Dragondark and making Scrap Archfiend to search Thunder Dragonduo with 1 summon left to bring it out). Outside of the Synchros, the main niche techs came in my Side Deck. Of the cards I included, my favorites were Dark Armed Dragon, Odd-Eyes Advance Dragon, Big Burn, and Dark Advance. Of the 4, I only managed to draw Dark Advance, but the others were all there because they worked surprisingly well with the deck in testing.
How did you prepare for the January 2020 meta, and would you change anything going forward?
Mainly, my meta preparation consisted of the Synchros and my sidedeck, because I didn’t have enough Main Deck space to include cards like handtraps and Cosmic Cyclone. Outside of the normal stuff that’s sided, I included Delg The Dark Monarch & Big Burn for GY matchups, with Mistaken Accusation for Generaider. In the future, I would definitely look into expanding the decksize to 40 in order to allow me to side in/out more cards, because some matchups can’t be won purely off of player skill.
How were your matchups?
Overall, they were rather good. The only 2 that really stood out were the matchups vs Dark Magicians and vs Traptrix Generaider. Overall vs Dark Magician, the matchup isn’t terrible. It shifts in favor of DM a little because of Soul Servant, but the deck has more than enough ways to answer all the card advantage and their backrow. Traptrix Generaider, on the other hand, is unfortunately terrible. Since Monarchs rely on tribute fodder, they can get shafted super hard by the Traptrix portion of that deck. Besides that, the rest were fine. The mixture of Monarchs and Synchro monsters gave the deck a massive amount of flexibility to deal with threats and bring out niche answers, like Crimson Blader for HERO/Shaddolls and such.
Burrito
