March 2020
Top 4:
What deck did you play and why?
SPYRAL HERO DM. It was the last list I sent to Pandor from the previous tournament I played (a locals), and I didn’t have the time to build a deck for the Cup. Oddly, I lost both matches I played on that locals with this deck, while I finished undefeated the YTC.
What tech choices did you play?
I decided to play Apprentice Illusion Magician and Dark Magician as my secondary Soul targets. Magicalized Fusion was also here, with the intention of using Dark Magician and any Spellcaster from GY to make The Dark Magicians, but the idea did’t work – I ended up siding out the card every match (Though I did Fusion Summon it a few times with Polymerization). Additionally, I also played SPYRAL MISSION – Recapture because I think it’s actually good. Recapture both protects the SPYRAL Sleeper Summon from some common backrow cards like Torrential Tribute or Bottomless Trap Hole. I was playing a lot of revival, so the effect to steal a monster was not that rare.
How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?
I’ll 100% cut Magicalized Fusion for Oasis of Dragon Souls. I would also cut Apprentice, since 2 Soul targets are enough. (Editor’s note: The most recent features Elemental HERO Liquid Soldier and SPYRAL Sleeper Forbidden.)
How were your matchups?
In Swiss:
First Round, I played against Labcoat’s Unchained Traptrix.
It was very difficult because the Unchained big guy has non-targeting destruction, to the point I thought I was going to lose, but I managed to win since Sleeper is that strong.
Second Round was against Jmax’s Machines.
Sleeper did most of the work here.
Third Round was vs WTrain’s Unchained Shaddoll HERO.
I opened really good both games. I won G1 thanks to Sleeper and G2 thanks to Fully Armed banishing both Construct and Winda.
Fourth Round, my opponent was Tactic Lu. They opened badly both games.
Finally, I was vs GuiltyGearxx’s Chaos HERO Shaddoll. G1 I open badly and he opens really good so I lose. In G2 I win thanks to Fully armed banishing Winda. G3 I summon Sleeper on my 1st turn and enters uninterrupted.
Top 8:
Top 8 was vs Spiderking on Synchro Traptrix.
G1 I went for a T1 Sleeper that got BTH’d, but since I was ahead on resources and I had enough responses I managed to summon Sleeper a second time. G2 he opened badly and I opened Vyon.
Top 4 was vs Wtrain again. G1 I lose since he has more responses than I had starters. G2 I manage to outresource him. G3 it’s literally Super Agent Beatdown, since he bricked and I summoned both Super Agent and Tough to use their effects and attacked.
Finals was vs Tactic Lu. G1 I summoned Sleeper but got outed, and in the end my opponent attacking with Sera into Tough (It was set to avoid the trap Holes) and equipping Fully armed to him won me the game. G2 I could play through the interruptions my opponent had and I negated his Vyon. In the end I won by attacking into a timelord and activating Forbidden Chalice on it for exact lethal.
KrasherV
Luh
What deck did you play and why?
I played Shaddoll HERO Traptrix Cyber Dragon, a kind of 4-way meta mash. HERO Shaddolls were not hit since last cup, and they were clearly the best deck. I did pretty well last cup for my standards. Additionally, Traptrix added another engine that wouldn’t allow me to run out of gas. Simply put, my general idea was to add a goal for all the HEROdoll advantage. Traptrix gave them interruption: If my opponent didn’t play into the Traptrix stuff, then I could play HEROdolls with extra backrow. However, an issue I had was a lack of light monsters. Because of this, I played Cyber Dragon as a LIGHT engine to send off of Shaddoll Fusion for Construct, since I heard not abusing Construct was playing the deck wrong. Despite this, I found Construct to be mostly useless.
What tech choices did you play?
I mostly picked my tech choices from an article Mika made on the most impactful side-deck and tech cards for this format. However, most of the spice is on the side deck, and it’s mostly different Trap Holes for different decks. I guess running 3 Traptrix Myrmelio is kind of a tech, simple because I didn’t want to run the other bad Traptrix Monsters.
How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?
I didn’t prepare for the meta more than reading the article mentioned above and implementing Traptrix as another way to never lose momentum. In retrospect, 1 of the Traptrix Myrmelio I was running could have been another Elemental HERO Shadow Mist so I could play with the HERO part of the deck more often.
How were your matchups?
Second game was Mekk HERO, which was really strong. Third game was pure Traptrix. The match was fun, but since I was playing Traptrix too, I managed to steal Myrmelio and make Sera. Fourth game was Spyral HERO and I got completely and utterly destroyed; Sleeper destroys this deck! It beats over Winda, pops Construct/Sunriser, immune to Elemental HERO Absolute Zero, and nobody would summon it to a Sera board. 5th game was against Traptrix Synchro and it was a tug of war. The game was really fun, but I was never in a losing position due to my card advantage.
In the top 8 I re-matched Mekk HERO and got a win via a topdeck war, which this deck seems to be adept at. Then I was paired against Gem-Knight, which were sadly demolished by convenient hand traps, and lastly was defeated by Spyral in a very interactive Duel!
Most of these games I was safety netted by my deck just being strong and my luck being incredibly generous (except for the Spyral games).
Wtrain
What deck did you play and why?
I played Shaddoll Hero ABC Chaos, because the deck seemed broken. Although I hadn’t played Trinity in a bit, but luckily my friend, Anim7ed, had an amazing list.
What tech choices did you play?
Two tweaks I made to Anim7ed’s deck were to add in Danger Bigfoot and Abominable Unchained Soul. Understandably, my Danger Bigfoot worked out pretty well. After all, this deck has a lot of discard and Bigfoot often was the best discard since you get to destroy a card. Abominable Unchained was amazing. Because he was easy to summon, whenever I summoned him, he swung the game in my favor.
How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?
I did not prep for the meta. Nevertheless, Anim7ed’s deck was so strong that it plowed through other decks. There are two things I would change about the deck. The first change is I would add more chaos elements to the deck to which would trigger Eclipse Wyvern more. Another change would be to take out the equip sub-theme. The only good equip in the deck was premature burial and it wasn’t good enough to warrant 2 bad equips and 2 equip searchers.
How were your matchups?
I generated a lot of insane value. Because of this, I could beat most decks. Regardless, two decks I struggled with were Mika’s Zoodiacs and KrasherV’s Spyrals. Mika’s Zoos banished a lot of my cards with Zoodiac Whiptail‘s effect which hurt my recursion and had a lot of disruption. KrasherV’s Spyrals established threats early and then ended the game by setting up SPYRAL Sleeper + SPYRAL GEAR – Last Resort, which never leaves room for the dawdling of my deck.
Ricape
What deck did you play and why?
I played Gem-Knight, because it’s my favorite deck!
What tech choices did you play?
I didn’t have any new techs besides lightning storm. My old techs are the usual Hey Trunade, Contract with the Don Thousand, Magical Mid-Breaker Field, etc.
How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?
I didn’t really prepare for the meta. In hindsight, this wasn’t a good choice for the tournament, because my deck gets absolutely manhandled by HERO and Shaddoll. However, I guess i got lucky, since I didn’t face many of either of those decks. I’m currently in the process of making a good MR5 decklist.
How were your matchups?
Firstly, I was against 60 card dragons. After that, I was against Unchained. Next up, I was against Hero Shaddoll (this match and my top 4 one are good examples of this deck getting destroyed by Heroes and/or Shaddolls). In Round 4, was against Dino Pacifis. Finally, I was against Traptrix.
My top 8 match was against Hero Shaddoll again. I kinda got lucky in this one – Black Garden really saved me. And my last match was in top 4 against Hero Shaddoll Traptrix in which i got absolutely destroyed.