June 2021
Top 4:
What were your tech choices?
I had carried over luna from last YTC, since I figured out it is really good. I remade my main engine which is now magician and not metalfoes due to combination ban. I suppose one could say not running white wing is unusual, but honestly that card is not good. I was on dissolver for the first time which was actually pretty cool and scored me some big damage. I tried dinomist engine which when i drew right was good, the idea was to run the minimal amount of dinomists for charge and howling to make sense, but it was still a bit too bricky. Pot of duality was an interesting tech due to how slow I planned to play, but I ended up really liking harmo into timestar t1 so it was not all that good. I also used pathfinder due to not having enough fields for set rotation anymore, which is another unusual tech though I don't think it worked out. I think this is the first time I've seen a pendulum deck run successor soul, it was usually very good except when I had already gotten both arc and pit. I have not been on prosperity till now due to wanting to keep my extra deck intact, but I now realize that was a mistake as it is actually very good even when you need your extra deck. Also now with no metalfoes I run treacherous as I do not really put traps in grave, and that also turned out very well. For extra deck techs I have ebon illusion which worked out when I summoned him though it is overall not optimal and sort of a meme, I also have samsara there for gate zero, though I did not summon it all tournament.
Would you make any changes to the deck?
Yes, drop dinomist engine as it is not worth it, drop duality, drop pathfinder as summoning it is too slow and takes too much of your turn. Drop odd-eyes fusion as it is simply dead too much and is mostly just a brick. Drop samsara as you do not actually summon it. Drop lyna, people say it is good but it does not actually come up. After that add some better ed techs. Fix up main, should probably run stuff like summoner monk and ninaruru that I do not run in this build, maybe look for another engine to go in now that dinomist is dropped, so that you still have enough pend monsters and maybe try going 60 cause duelist alliance is so good you really want to play 3
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
Eh, it's interesting that I managed to win with my deck this unoptimized, I think luna being really annoying helped a lot. YTC was pretty standard overall though. Good to know pend still works with no metalfoes
If you could change the place of any one card on the banlist, whether it's at Half-Point, One-Point, or Banned, what card would that be?
Okay so we need pendulum call to unbound obviously as is seen from the chart, but besides that I still do not understand why people are so scared of weathering soldier and fossil fusion, we had sort of a dumb fossil fusion skullgios switch, but that is totally unnecessary, I'm down for weathering soldier and Skullgios both going to unlimited with no hits in response.
Folo
Walrus
What made you choose Noble Knights for the tournament?
I chose Noble Knights because I like piloting decks with snowball-oriented playstyles, and I love the art on the cards themselves. They’re also just a very powerful deck in Trinity Format and tend to bowl over rogue strategies that cannot keep up in advantage.
What were your tech choices?
I played an Amazement splash because I thought that their synergy with Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles was cute. I’m not sure if Charles is even worth playing at one point over something like an additional Reinforcement of the Army, so I made sure to get my money’s worth by including tons of tuners and the Amazement traps.
Would you make any changes to the deck?
I would change the side deck around to focus exclusively on countering one or two specific match-ups. The trouble with a 50-card list is that I rarely see what I side in; it would have been better to have boarded into ten cards for the pendulum matchup instead of trying to cover my bases with cards such as Fragrance Storm and Cyber Dragon.
As for the main deck, I played dozens of mirror matches against myself in Dueling Book in order to test what does and doesn’t work as efficiently as I could, and I finished pretty confident in my list. The only thing I might consider is moving Mind Control and Cross Over into the main deck in favor of some disruption traps, but that swap is ultimately meta-dependent.
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
Definitely plenty of notable moments; I won game 3 of the final round by burning for game with Mahaama the Fairy Dragon, and during my semi-finals match managed to summon six times in a single turn before winning. In all though, my favorite moments were getting to face all of the creative decks people brought to the tournament. Temedun’s Metaphys Thunder Dragons and Mick’s Ogdoadics were both really unique strategies that hadn’t been on my radar going into the tournament, and both were surprisingly competitive.
If you could change the place of any one card on the banlist, whether it's at Half-Point, One-Point, or Banned, what card would that be?
Just one? I’d have to go with moving Witchcrafter Patronus off of the forbidden list, as Witchcrafters are super overhit currently. But I’d also love for Myutant ST-46 to become legal!
Guiltygear
What made you choose Dinosaurs for the tournament? What were your tech choices?
The deck has two main components, Dinosaurs and field spells and they do not search each other. Problem is you can be stranded with out 1 of the key components. So basically I took a combo deck and added a midrange option to all my key cards. Oviraptor can summon Halqifibrax for a simple 1 card disruption with some follow up elements. Fields can turn into Pacifics which can hold it's own for a little while in an early game state. You can also turn the pac tokens into dinosaurs with survival's end or use halq for riser and have a misc in gy for a potential follow up play. But you can also open every combo element and it's not too uncommon that you do. The important thing is managing follow ups, you should usually not just summon dolkka, you either want misc or ovi in hand or some kind revival like buddy force available otherwise it's usually better to take the set up of having multiple misc and a dinosaur loaded gy to banish, ideally recycling with quoatls, but that's pretty hopeful. My other engine is the fiends, they are a slow combo searcher, and enable gokipole/halq plays
Would you make any changes to the deck?
Either go back to a combo variant and high roll with rabbit lost world as an FTK, or keep midrange and tune for impactful disruptions. Pyrorex is sus. There's still a more pill targets to think about (dogoran anyone?)
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
I just want to misc handtraps, people don't bite though. Also pot of prosperity add clutch cosmic cyclone is pretty dang poggers.
If you could change the place of any one card on the banlist, whether it's at Half-Point, One-Point, or Banned, what card would that be?
Pendulums were obviously nerfed too hard and are basically unplayable now. Scullcrobat joker should go to unlimited if not unbound.
Mchalo3a
What made you choose Reptiles for the tournament? What were your tech choices?
So I actually play snakes in the TCG. One night at 3 am, I sorted monsters by type and added all the good reptiles. The next morning I removed the bad reptiles I thought were good and Snek.dek was born. As for tech choices, not really. This was my first tourney so I was just testing the waters.
Would you make any changes to the deck?
Definitely! The reptillianne engine was bad. Also, my extra deck needs a lot of work. Expect a 2.0 version next month.
How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?
It was a lot of fun, and I kept getting better at finding my lines as the games progressed.
If you could change the place of any one card on the banlist, whether it's at Half-Point, One-Point, or Banned, what card would that be?
Dandylion to a 1/2 point. It needs a cost but I think 1 is too steep.