September 2022

Stephen

What made you choose your deck? What were some tech choices you made?

I chose this deck because it’s similar to what I’ve been playing for the past 3 months and I wanted to get a top with the strategy. It’s a super fun deck for me because I got to theorize a lot about how to build it and so I felt obligated to play it after building it for so long. The playstyle is pretty great for me too since it usually auto wins, which means I don’t have to play well. It's probably the best deck of this format and it's only held back by me being absolute garbage at the game and nobody else playing it.

One change I made to the old build was adding the newly released Runick cards, which have crazy synergy with Monster Gate and Reasoning. They give a body to tribute, without adding suboptimal cards like Photon Thrasher, and the Runick Spells can be milled and then shuffled back to draw cards and dig for Reasoning or cycle infinitely if I milled my entire deck.

Because the new Runicks were able to put a body on the field, I couldn’t justify keeping Infernoids in if I wanted to play an optimal build since that was the only benefit to playing them over Drytrons. I decided to shelve the Infernoids and go back to them later, since I wanted to see if the “optimal” version could do well.

I tested the Drytrons a bit with a heavier Ritual focus before cutting it down to Nekroz of Trishula and Megalith Och. I ended up cutting that and going for Extra Deck beats because the Rituals bricked too much. It also went against the theory of Drytrons being less high-roll than Infernoids, since the Rituals are bricks that are only good if you mill them, just like Infernoids.

I was a little hesitant to play the Drytron stuff like Fafnir, Cyber Emergency, and Nova, but they ended up being good extenders to make Union Carrier and to find names I needed if I didn’t mill them.

A tech card I played was Union Carrier, which I threw in at the last minute. The theory behind it was that if I drew a Runick and a way to get a Drytron, I could make it and equip Drytron Delta Altais to set up draws or Outstanding Dog mary to rig my mills. It ended up being pretty good all tourney and came up a ton.

I also decided to play Red Screen even thoughbattle floodgates were bad in testing. It was good this YTC, since it came up when my opponent didn’t have easy ways to remove it, but I’ll have to think about that for next time I play this.

Would you make any changes to the list moving forward?

I would cut Drytron Beta Rastaban since returning banished Drytrons for Chaos Nephthys never came up.

I would also play a DARK Machine in the main for extra Chaos Nephthys fodder since not having fodder came up a lot. It really punished me for adding the wrong card off Laundry Trap or not milling the right cards since I had to go out of my way to put a DARK in GY like in game 2 vs folo. It would have to be Meklord Emperor Wisel or Malefic Cyber End Dragon, but I’m leaning toward Cyber End since I have a lot of ways to find a field spell and it is a body for Monster Gate. The reason it has to be a Machine is so I can equip it to Union Carrier.

I would change up the Extra Deck a bit. Munin the Runick Wings never came up, and Paleozoic Opabinia and Lyna the Light Charmer, Lustrous only came up once and didn’t do much in that situation. I would probably play Berserker of the Tenyi since I don’t have a big body in the Extra, and I would need to play Cyber End Dragon if I go the Malefic route.

Lilypod was on a Sky Striker engine, which was really interesting. I didn’t consider adding to the deck, but if I added that it would give the deck some removal tools, a body for Monster Gate, and a blocker. The only problem is Extra Deck space, but I can probably find that.

Lilypod was also on a 50 card deck, which I considered but decided wasn’t worth it since I have to cut good cards like Mirage of Nightmare. I also considered 55, but that only increases consistency by 4%, so it’s not worth cutting Titanocider and Runick Tip.
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I can't play this deck next month because impy is making me play something else for topcut diversity (I will lose and someone else will top). I also can't play it the month after that because DABL is that month and I want to play something from there. Maybe I'll think of something in that time.
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How did your tournament experience go? Any notable moments?

It was fun but I threw every single game 2 I played. My matchups were extremely lucky because I didn't face many decks that could kill me before I got to a mill card. I was scared of Code Talkers, Rocks, Swordsoul, and Agents since those decks can all do big damage and set up Spell negates, but I didn't end up playing those too much. The RNG was super nice to me all tourney since most of my mills were great and nobody drew Ash.

Round 1 was a mirror which was funny. I had never talked or played with Lilypod before so I was not expecting that at all. Our builds were super different and it was cool seeing some of the choices they made. I got to bounce Mirage of Nightmare a couple of times with Vivid Tail, so that was fun.

Round 2 I played Agents. Game 1 I milled terribly off Monster Gate and misplayed my backrow but was probably cooked anyway since the backrow would have gotten me 1 more turn. Game 2 I didn’t draw a mill card. This was probably the best matchup to have bad luck since Agents are already pretty good against this deck.

Round 3 I played Salamangreat. Game 2 I threw super hard by not playing around Cynet Conflict and got super punished for it. Game 3 I drew 2 Reasoning and Monster Gate, fired Reasoning, put Mary back, and then decided to go for a second Reasoning in that turn. I almost threw that one because Mary is a hard once per turn and so I was relying on Spirit Burner to not deck out. Anim had Overroot set, which would have won the game, but he targeted my Backup team which I reset, banishing it and not resolving Overroot to set Spirit Burner. I feel bad for winning on that.

Round 4 I played Plant Insect Vernalizer Punk. Nothing special really happened except me forgetting that Traptrix monsters are immune to Hole trap cards.

In top cut I played Pendulum. I was pretty confident about the matchup since I sided a lot of anti-pend cards, but I lost game 1 because I didn't draw a mill card and never saw any of the anti-pend cards game 2. I ended up losing game 2 because I had to waste a turn putting the Grinder Golem I added off of Laundry Trap back in the GY and wasn’t able to trigger Chaos Nephthys because of that.

What are some changes you would like to see to the banlist and why?

I want a plant buff since I played a lot against Jaden on plants and the deck was really bad. I also use the plant Therion deck that got 2nd in the YTC to playtest with myself, so I kind of have an idea of what they do. Discolosseum to 1p is probably fine.

I would also like Runick Tip unhit so people (me) can play pure Runick. The deck is bad and as an engine it’s subpar unless you play exactly Reasoning Pile.

A HERO buff would be nice since the deck is kind of bad. I don't see a problem with Vyon to 1p. I tested the new Neos stuff, and it is not good or synergistic enough, so HERO should get something.

Why did you start playing Trinity and how did you find it?

I actually joined the format this year in march because I was super bored over March break and decided to play an alt format. A friend, Liquidloan, had been talking about Trinity, so when I saw the server in the list of public servers I joined the server.