January 2022

What made you choose Despia Trickstar for the tournament? What were your tech choices?

I wanted to play a deck with Protecting Spirit Loagaeth as well as Stained Glass of Light & Dark and Trickstar/Despia are by far the best fairy archetypes available. Also ended up as an excellent deck to try Sauge de Fleur in, who has a very neat synergy with Trickstar Lycoris. I also ran a small Mathmech package of lv4 extenders to make use of spare Candinas or Alubers to make Light Dragon or Geomathmech Magma.

Would you make any changes to the deck?

I threw the deck together pretty hastily the weekend before the YTC started and in the process I cut the high level Despia monsters since I was worried of bricking. In hindsight I would atleast include Dramaturge, just having him as a float option on Despian Quaeritis would have helped me alot. In my more recent builds of the deck I've also included a Neos Fusion package in place of the non-tuner Mathmechs as well as the Future Fusion I somehow forgot to put into this build.

How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?

Went 4-1 in swiss before being knocked out in top 4 due to some very silly misplays against KrasherV. Starting out with pendulum when I first joined the format left me with a habit of putting my monsters under the EMZs (as to not screw over potential Lanph/Sky Striker Ace/Gravity Controller arrows) and it keeps getting me in trouble vs Relinquished Anima >:(. My favorite game of the tourney was G1 against Erika in round 3 - I made a very dubious Tornado Dragon pass play going first, and it ended up going perfectly since they had to set 4 and I managed to snipe the one trap they really really needed to deal with Trickstar Lightstage.

Any general thoughts on the tournament, the ban list, or the format in general?

In an ideal world I'd like a massive crackdown on all the 1 card snowbally strategies we have available. Not drawing some kind of effect negation or other way to nip them in the bud makes it very hard to contend with strategies like Altergeist, Trickstar or @Ignister, who can play an entire grindgame off of a single starter card, without playing similiar strategies yourself. Even then alot of games end up decided by the opening hands in a similiar way to the TCG. Whoever gets an inch takes a mile and then proceeds to roll over their opponent with some unfair setup or a sheer volume of advantage.

My wrists stop me from playing and testing as much Trinity as I'd need to get a proper perspective though so maybe I'm just dooming. Player skill is certainly still a decently big factor. Banlist revolutions aside, some concrete changes I'd like to see are some hits to the currently most prominent (or obvious but just unplayed) snowbally and/or unfair strategies as well as some stray floodgates that are actually good. Main suspects include Altergeist, Unchained, Plunder Patroll, @Ignister, and Trickstar. Sky Striker is probably still very strong even sans Widow Anchor. D/D/D could use some adjustments with the coming support, Witchcrafter Haine + Witchcrafter Bystreet is still a pretty bs setup (also lets please not forget Aruru this banlist). Stuff like Floowandereeze, Leo Utopia Ray turbo and Magikey aren't necessarily the strongest strategies due to bricking or frailty concerns but make for the worst kind of games. Reborn back to 0.5. Floodgates I alluded to earlier are Koa'ki Meiru Doom/Drago, Rai-Oh, Amorphages, maybe the Testudo monsters. Been very frustrated with Twin Twisters lately too. It's a great tool for strategies like ritual that folds hard vs backrow but it's an even greater tool for the decks that only need to get a single starter past the backrow to then go ham.

Would also like to see some excessively potent side deck cards like Kongreat or Fairy Wind/Spell Shattering Arrow/Wavering Eyes get some attention.