Post by goldensandslash on Mar 4, 2019 19:21:13 GMT
Ah, Yugioh. It's a bad game. Like, fundamentally so. And yet, I have lately found myself enthralled by their new "Speed Duel" format that no one really plays.
If you've never heard of it, here's how it works:
* 4000 LP.
* 20-30 cards in the deck.
* 0-5 cards in the extra deck.
* Each player gets one Skill Card that they can use at any time.
* Four cards in opening hand.
* There are three monster zones and three spell/trap zones on each side (and one field zone). (Note: the missing s/t zones are the first and fifth, therefore pendulum summoning is impossible.)
* There is no Main Phase 2.
* Only cards that have a "Speed Duel" watermark can be used. Here is a (currently) complete list.
As far as I can tell... no one plays this format. You can go onto Dueling Book and start up a game of Advanced Format and just self-enforce the rules yourself if you want, but there is no way to actually play it there.
Obviously, the primary format is Advanced, but there's also Traditional format (which is just Advanced except anything banned is Limited instead) and the fan-made Goat Format (which is literally just "Advanced, but as it was during Summer 2005). Both of these receive far more support than Speed Duels currently do.
This means the metagame is still completely unexplored, and we can theorycraft what we think the best deck is. This is actually easy to do with such a small card pool, only 113 cards.
Now, the place to get these cards is in preconstructed starter decks. I got all six such decks, but they're still lacking because even with a full set of six, you only get 1-2 copies of each card. But we're gonna ignore that and pretend we have a full playset of every card legal in this format. From there, let's see what the best deck we can make is.
So yeah, let's do this.
-------------------------
Let's start by analyzing the gameplay here. This format is REALLY fast. Yeah, you don't have crazy turn-one combos like you do in Advanced format, but with 4000 LP to work with instead of 8000, you basically start the game out in the late-game. Furthermore, with a deck size of only 20, the decks built here are going to be very consistent. Combos are a lot easier to get out and fusion summoning is actually viable for once. On that note, btw, with only three Fusion monsters in the format right now, there's literally no reason not to run all three, even if your deck is incapable of fusion summoning. So just assume that all decklists presented here have those fusions in them. Aggro is limited only in the sense that three monster zones are harder to work with than five. But that's a small limitation to overcome, given everything listed above about how much aggro has going for it. On the topic of small field size, stalling the game with a lot of traps is not viable either, because of the fact that you only have three s/t spaces.
Let's start by looking at card draw, the most important aspect of any TCG. There are exactly two draw effects in this format: Wonder Wand and Shard of Greed. The former is only good if we have a Spellcaster, but it is something to keep in mind: at this point, being a Spellcaster is an upside.
Now we move on to the next big thing: removal. Unfortunately, this format currently lacks a lot of it. There's very little monster removal beyond combat and as for spell/trap removal, it all seems to be conditional (such as Stamping Destruction or Triangle Ecstasy Spark). In terms of spell/trap negation, pretty much all you have is Magic Jammer and Seven Tools of the Bandit.
Noncombat monster removal seems to be virtually nonexistent. The only real "removal card" that there is seems to be Riryoku. Take away half their ATK, add it to yours, and then attack. You can also try to make a copy of their monster using either Copycat or The Golden Apples and then suicide-attack into it. But all of these still involve combat. Finally, for monsters with high ATK but low DEF, you can force them into Defense Position with either Kunai with Chain or Windstorm of Etaqua.
Other than that, there's pretty much nothing. Interestingly, there is one card that is semi-immune to removal: Twin-Headed Behemoth. It may be worth taking a look at for this reason alone.
Now let's take a look at some decklists. With very little removal, high ATK is going to be what we're looking for first and foremost, and the highest ATK in the format is Blue-Eyes White Dragon (3000) and Tyrant Dragon (2900). How to summon them? Well, there is a skill called Dragon Caller that lets you easily get a Lord of D.+The Flute of Summoning Dragon combo to get this out. And with only 4000 LP, this can easily be a first-turn kill. Lord of D. isn't a dead card on its own either. Even without the flute, it stops Dragons from being targeted. Not only that, but it's also a Spellcaster and thus is easily able to use Wonder Wand. Want to know what else is a Spellcaster? Blue Dragon Summoner. This card combos with Wonder Wand so much, since its death will let you find a Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and the Wonder Wand lets you draw two cards. Additionally, by being a Dragon deck, we can use Stamping Destruction for spell/trap removal.
With that in mind, we have our first deck, a Dragon deck. I fiddled around with it a bit, experimenting with not only Tyrant Dragon but also Luster Dragon #2 and Red-Eyes B. Dragon, but in the end, I ended up going exclusively with Blue-Eyes White Dragons. The deck has enough consistency that you don't really need more than three "finisher" cards.
SKILL: Dragon Caller
3x Blue-Eyes White Dragon
3x Blue Dragon Summoner
3x Lord of D.
2x Kaibaman
2x The Flute of Summoning Dragon
2x Wonder Wand
2x Windstorm of Etaqua
3x Champion's Vigilance
So that's one deck built. Let's see what else we can work with.
My next instinct is to go for an Amazoness deck. It seems like the most powerful archetype in the format (Dragons are more powerful, but that's a type and not an archetype), primarily due to the existence of Amazoness Village. If Amazoness Village stays in play and isn't hit by s/t removal, then an Amazoness deck can use Amazoness Sage for some s/t removal of their own, Amazoness Swords Woman to stall out the game, or Amazoness Chain Master to steal vital pieces of the opponent's deck. They also get access to monster removal in the form of Amazoness Heirloom and can even force the opponent to do an OTK against themselves via Amazoness Archers. The deck practically builds itself! The only question is which Skill to use. My initial instinct was Destiny Draw, because you can use Amazoness Archers to force the opponent to do the damage necessary to trigger it. I like this better than Tribal Synergy, as the latter would require you to put Harpie cards in the deck which are otherwise dead draws.
SKILL: Destiny Draw
3x Amazoness Chain Master
3x Amazoness Sage
3x Amazoness Swords Woman
2x Amazoness Village
3x Amazoness Heirloom
2x Legendary Sword
1x Graceful Dice
3x Amazoness Archers
I mentioned Harpies above, so let's take a look at them. They honestly have the potential to become the best deck in the format, given their insane s/t removal and aggro beatdown with Harpies' Hunting Ground and Triangle Ecstasy Spark. Unfortunately, they are suffering from a severe lack of monster cards. Harpie Lady Sisters can only be special summoned with an Elegant Egotist, and so that's just gonna be a dead draw half the time. The only other cards are Harpie Lady 1, Harpiie Lady 2, and Harpie Lady 3, which sounds like enough options to work with until you note that all of them have a name condition: their name is always treated as Harpie Lady. This means that the three-per-deck rule applies to them COLLECTIVELY. You can only have a total of three of these. That's just not enough to work with. So I'm afraid there is no suitable Harpie deck in the format.
Luckily, that doesn't mean we're out of options. We may not be able to do pure Harpie, but we can do a hybrid of Harpie/Something Else. Looking at the skill Tribal Synergy, it becomes clear that Amazoness cards are the ones that work best with Harpie cards. However, this comes at a huge detriment: the inability to use the Flight of the Harpies skill. And I'm not convinced that the deck you'd end up with would be anything other than just "a worse version of an Amazoness deck". And the more I think about it, that would apply to any Harpie deck that you make with a hybrid theme. You're just making a worse version of the thing you're hybriding it with. So you're gonna need to go pure Harpie. From there, I think you end up with something like this:
SKILL: Flight of the Harpies
3x Birdface
2x Harpie Lady 1
1x Harpie Lady 3
3x Harpie Lady Sisters
3x Elegant Egotist
2x Harpies' Hunting Ground
1x Cyber Shield
3x Triangle Ecstasy Spark
2x Windstorm of Etaqua
Note that I am not too confident in this deck, but it's just the best I could do with "pure Harpie".
The next archetype to look at is Gravekeepers. The gravekeepers are arguably the most versatile archetype out there right now, featuring a whopping ten different monsters! They even have their own skill card: Gravekeeper's Lot. Furthermore, being Spellcaster-type monsters, they have access to support cards like Wonder Wand and Magician's Circle. There is one small problem with this: the ultimate Gravekeepers support card, Necrovalley, isn't in this format. Luckily, we do have an alternative version available in the form of Gravekeeper's Priestess, and I think that's honestly our best bet. With this card out, we can use things like Hidden Temples of Necrovalley to be a control deck and lock the opponent out of the game. Gravekeeper's Assassin also works for this purpose, and was in the deck originally, but ultimately ended up getting cut in favor of other cards.
SKILL: Gravekeeper's Lot
1x Gravekeeper's Oracle
2x Gravekeeper's Chief
3x Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier
3x Gravekeeper's Recruiter
2x Gravekeeper's Priestess
1x Riryoku
3x Wonder Wand
2x Hidden Temples of Necrovalley
2x Windstorm of Etaqua
There is one last archetype in the format: Toons. Toons have a unique card in the form of Toon Table of Contents, which lets you search your deck for a Toon card and put it into your hand. The best part? You can search for another Toon Table of Contents. Then another! And then find the toon you want! This deck-thinning is currently not found anywhere else in the format. And the final Toon card you find? Toon Rollback. This lets a Toon monster attack twice in a single turn. That doesn't sound too great at first glance, until you realize that Toon monsters are able to attack directly. This turns Toon Summoned Skull into an OTK all on its own, and even Toon Mermaid or Toon Masked Sorcerer will still do a lot of damage. The downside? The deck is incredibly fragile. All it takes is a single spell/trap removal card to get rid of your Toon World and then the whole thing falls apart. Additionally, your own life points will start to take a toll, because it costs 1000 LP to activate Toon World and then 500 LP to attack with a Toon monster. In a format where the starting LP is only 4000, you really can't afford that. Luckily, the skill card It's a Toon World! lets you start with a Toon World on the field for free without having to lose life points, but again, it is vulnerable to removal. Even if you use this skill, I recommend having an extra 1-2 copies of Toon World in the deck anyways, so that you can recover from this.
With that in mind, the decklist that I came up with is:
SKILL: It's a Toon World!
3x Toon Masked Sorcerer
3x Toon Mermaid
3x Toon Summoned Skull
3x Mimicat
1x Toon Rollback
1x Toon World
3x Toon Table of Contents
3x Kunai with Chain
Finally, I also toyed around with a Dark Magician deck. It revolves around getting a Dark Magician out as fast as possible (with a Tribute Doll, Sage's Stone, etc.) and then using Dark Magic Attack and/or Thousand Knives to clear the opponent's board. But I ultimately couldn't get it to come together. I just don't think all the pieces are there yet.
-------------------------
Now, of course, there is one thing I want to examine in more detail: Skill cards. All of the other cards have already been examined in-depth when they first came to Advanced/Traditional format. But the skills are new. And I'd like to take a look at all 18 of them and see where they stand.
Power of Dark / Peak Performance / Beatdown! - These are garbage. They increase ATK, but other cards can increase it in a much more substantial way.
Aroma Strategy / Prescience - These are garbage too. The information gained here isn't really anything worthwhile.
Grit - This is pretty terrible because it has a chance of doing nothing.
Last Gamble - This is awful since not only does it sometimes do nothing, it sometimes is even detrimental!
Tribal Synergy / Flight of the Harpies / Dragon Caller / Gravekeeper's Lot / It's a Toon World! - These ones are the ones that are worth using, provided that you're using an archetype that they help out.
Pal-O'-Mine-zation! / Destiny Draw / Final Draw - These have potential. They're meant for combo decks that the format currently lacks, but depending on what gets added to the format in the future, I could see these working.
Millennium Necklace / Millennium Eye - Adding to what I just said, if combo decks become viable, then these skills will be good at countering those combo decks.
Mind Scan - This one is a giant question mark. Currently, I don't think it's any good, because there aren't enough traps in the format to worry about. If more traps get added in the future? Sure, but then you need to look at the other aspect of this card: it requires you to maintain your LP at 3000 or above. How hard is that to do? Or rather, how hard will it be to do in the future once we have more traps so that the skill becomes worth using? Honestly, that's an unsolvable question in the moment.
-------------------------
Overall, I do enjoy this format. There's a lot of variety of decks that you can build, and that's just off of six precons alone! I'm very curious where this format goes in the future. They have already announced a booster set called Arena of Lost Souls which will bring 50 new cards to the format (45 normal + 5 skill) due out by the end of March, and another one called Attack from the Deep, giving us another 50 (45 normal + 5 skill) by the end of May. I plan to keep this thread updated based on what gets added to the format, because this has definitely peaked my curiosity.
If you've never heard of it, here's how it works:
* 4000 LP.
* 20-30 cards in the deck.
* 0-5 cards in the extra deck.
* Each player gets one Skill Card that they can use at any time.
* Four cards in opening hand.
* There are three monster zones and three spell/trap zones on each side (and one field zone). (Note: the missing s/t zones are the first and fifth, therefore pendulum summoning is impossible.)
* There is no Main Phase 2.
* Only cards that have a "Speed Duel" watermark can be used. Here is a (currently) complete list.
As far as I can tell... no one plays this format. You can go onto Dueling Book and start up a game of Advanced Format and just self-enforce the rules yourself if you want, but there is no way to actually play it there.
Obviously, the primary format is Advanced, but there's also Traditional format (which is just Advanced except anything banned is Limited instead) and the fan-made Goat Format (which is literally just "Advanced, but as it was during Summer 2005). Both of these receive far more support than Speed Duels currently do.
This means the metagame is still completely unexplored, and we can theorycraft what we think the best deck is. This is actually easy to do with such a small card pool, only 113 cards.
Now, the place to get these cards is in preconstructed starter decks. I got all six such decks, but they're still lacking because even with a full set of six, you only get 1-2 copies of each card. But we're gonna ignore that and pretend we have a full playset of every card legal in this format. From there, let's see what the best deck we can make is.
So yeah, let's do this.
-------------------------
Let's start by analyzing the gameplay here. This format is REALLY fast. Yeah, you don't have crazy turn-one combos like you do in Advanced format, but with 4000 LP to work with instead of 8000, you basically start the game out in the late-game. Furthermore, with a deck size of only 20, the decks built here are going to be very consistent. Combos are a lot easier to get out and fusion summoning is actually viable for once. On that note, btw, with only three Fusion monsters in the format right now, there's literally no reason not to run all three, even if your deck is incapable of fusion summoning. So just assume that all decklists presented here have those fusions in them. Aggro is limited only in the sense that three monster zones are harder to work with than five. But that's a small limitation to overcome, given everything listed above about how much aggro has going for it. On the topic of small field size, stalling the game with a lot of traps is not viable either, because of the fact that you only have three s/t spaces.
Let's start by looking at card draw, the most important aspect of any TCG. There are exactly two draw effects in this format: Wonder Wand and Shard of Greed. The former is only good if we have a Spellcaster, but it is something to keep in mind: at this point, being a Spellcaster is an upside.
Now we move on to the next big thing: removal. Unfortunately, this format currently lacks a lot of it. There's very little monster removal beyond combat and as for spell/trap removal, it all seems to be conditional (such as Stamping Destruction or Triangle Ecstasy Spark). In terms of spell/trap negation, pretty much all you have is Magic Jammer and Seven Tools of the Bandit.
Noncombat monster removal seems to be virtually nonexistent. The only real "removal card" that there is seems to be Riryoku. Take away half their ATK, add it to yours, and then attack. You can also try to make a copy of their monster using either Copycat or The Golden Apples and then suicide-attack into it. But all of these still involve combat. Finally, for monsters with high ATK but low DEF, you can force them into Defense Position with either Kunai with Chain or Windstorm of Etaqua.
Other than that, there's pretty much nothing. Interestingly, there is one card that is semi-immune to removal: Twin-Headed Behemoth. It may be worth taking a look at for this reason alone.
Now let's take a look at some decklists. With very little removal, high ATK is going to be what we're looking for first and foremost, and the highest ATK in the format is Blue-Eyes White Dragon (3000) and Tyrant Dragon (2900). How to summon them? Well, there is a skill called Dragon Caller that lets you easily get a Lord of D.+The Flute of Summoning Dragon combo to get this out. And with only 4000 LP, this can easily be a first-turn kill. Lord of D. isn't a dead card on its own either. Even without the flute, it stops Dragons from being targeted. Not only that, but it's also a Spellcaster and thus is easily able to use Wonder Wand. Want to know what else is a Spellcaster? Blue Dragon Summoner. This card combos with Wonder Wand so much, since its death will let you find a Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and the Wonder Wand lets you draw two cards. Additionally, by being a Dragon deck, we can use Stamping Destruction for spell/trap removal.
With that in mind, we have our first deck, a Dragon deck. I fiddled around with it a bit, experimenting with not only Tyrant Dragon but also Luster Dragon #2 and Red-Eyes B. Dragon, but in the end, I ended up going exclusively with Blue-Eyes White Dragons. The deck has enough consistency that you don't really need more than three "finisher" cards.
SKILL: Dragon Caller
3x Blue-Eyes White Dragon
3x Blue Dragon Summoner
3x Lord of D.
2x Kaibaman
2x The Flute of Summoning Dragon
2x Wonder Wand
2x Windstorm of Etaqua
3x Champion's Vigilance
So that's one deck built. Let's see what else we can work with.
My next instinct is to go for an Amazoness deck. It seems like the most powerful archetype in the format (Dragons are more powerful, but that's a type and not an archetype), primarily due to the existence of Amazoness Village. If Amazoness Village stays in play and isn't hit by s/t removal, then an Amazoness deck can use Amazoness Sage for some s/t removal of their own, Amazoness Swords Woman to stall out the game, or Amazoness Chain Master to steal vital pieces of the opponent's deck. They also get access to monster removal in the form of Amazoness Heirloom and can even force the opponent to do an OTK against themselves via Amazoness Archers. The deck practically builds itself! The only question is which Skill to use. My initial instinct was Destiny Draw, because you can use Amazoness Archers to force the opponent to do the damage necessary to trigger it. I like this better than Tribal Synergy, as the latter would require you to put Harpie cards in the deck which are otherwise dead draws.
SKILL: Destiny Draw
3x Amazoness Chain Master
3x Amazoness Sage
3x Amazoness Swords Woman
2x Amazoness Village
3x Amazoness Heirloom
2x Legendary Sword
1x Graceful Dice
3x Amazoness Archers
I mentioned Harpies above, so let's take a look at them. They honestly have the potential to become the best deck in the format, given their insane s/t removal and aggro beatdown with Harpies' Hunting Ground and Triangle Ecstasy Spark. Unfortunately, they are suffering from a severe lack of monster cards. Harpie Lady Sisters can only be special summoned with an Elegant Egotist, and so that's just gonna be a dead draw half the time. The only other cards are Harpie Lady 1, Harpiie Lady 2, and Harpie Lady 3, which sounds like enough options to work with until you note that all of them have a name condition: their name is always treated as Harpie Lady. This means that the three-per-deck rule applies to them COLLECTIVELY. You can only have a total of three of these. That's just not enough to work with. So I'm afraid there is no suitable Harpie deck in the format.
Luckily, that doesn't mean we're out of options. We may not be able to do pure Harpie, but we can do a hybrid of Harpie/Something Else. Looking at the skill Tribal Synergy, it becomes clear that Amazoness cards are the ones that work best with Harpie cards. However, this comes at a huge detriment: the inability to use the Flight of the Harpies skill. And I'm not convinced that the deck you'd end up with would be anything other than just "a worse version of an Amazoness deck". And the more I think about it, that would apply to any Harpie deck that you make with a hybrid theme. You're just making a worse version of the thing you're hybriding it with. So you're gonna need to go pure Harpie. From there, I think you end up with something like this:
SKILL: Flight of the Harpies
3x Birdface
2x Harpie Lady 1
1x Harpie Lady 3
3x Harpie Lady Sisters
3x Elegant Egotist
2x Harpies' Hunting Ground
1x Cyber Shield
3x Triangle Ecstasy Spark
2x Windstorm of Etaqua
Note that I am not too confident in this deck, but it's just the best I could do with "pure Harpie".
The next archetype to look at is Gravekeepers. The gravekeepers are arguably the most versatile archetype out there right now, featuring a whopping ten different monsters! They even have their own skill card: Gravekeeper's Lot. Furthermore, being Spellcaster-type monsters, they have access to support cards like Wonder Wand and Magician's Circle. There is one small problem with this: the ultimate Gravekeepers support card, Necrovalley, isn't in this format. Luckily, we do have an alternative version available in the form of Gravekeeper's Priestess, and I think that's honestly our best bet. With this card out, we can use things like Hidden Temples of Necrovalley to be a control deck and lock the opponent out of the game. Gravekeeper's Assassin also works for this purpose, and was in the deck originally, but ultimately ended up getting cut in favor of other cards.
SKILL: Gravekeeper's Lot
1x Gravekeeper's Oracle
2x Gravekeeper's Chief
3x Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier
3x Gravekeeper's Recruiter
2x Gravekeeper's Priestess
1x Riryoku
3x Wonder Wand
2x Hidden Temples of Necrovalley
2x Windstorm of Etaqua
There is one last archetype in the format: Toons. Toons have a unique card in the form of Toon Table of Contents, which lets you search your deck for a Toon card and put it into your hand. The best part? You can search for another Toon Table of Contents. Then another! And then find the toon you want! This deck-thinning is currently not found anywhere else in the format. And the final Toon card you find? Toon Rollback. This lets a Toon monster attack twice in a single turn. That doesn't sound too great at first glance, until you realize that Toon monsters are able to attack directly. This turns Toon Summoned Skull into an OTK all on its own, and even Toon Mermaid or Toon Masked Sorcerer will still do a lot of damage. The downside? The deck is incredibly fragile. All it takes is a single spell/trap removal card to get rid of your Toon World and then the whole thing falls apart. Additionally, your own life points will start to take a toll, because it costs 1000 LP to activate Toon World and then 500 LP to attack with a Toon monster. In a format where the starting LP is only 4000, you really can't afford that. Luckily, the skill card It's a Toon World! lets you start with a Toon World on the field for free without having to lose life points, but again, it is vulnerable to removal. Even if you use this skill, I recommend having an extra 1-2 copies of Toon World in the deck anyways, so that you can recover from this.
With that in mind, the decklist that I came up with is:
SKILL: It's a Toon World!
3x Toon Masked Sorcerer
3x Toon Mermaid
3x Toon Summoned Skull
3x Mimicat
1x Toon Rollback
1x Toon World
3x Toon Table of Contents
3x Kunai with Chain
Finally, I also toyed around with a Dark Magician deck. It revolves around getting a Dark Magician out as fast as possible (with a Tribute Doll, Sage's Stone, etc.) and then using Dark Magic Attack and/or Thousand Knives to clear the opponent's board. But I ultimately couldn't get it to come together. I just don't think all the pieces are there yet.
-------------------------
Now, of course, there is one thing I want to examine in more detail: Skill cards. All of the other cards have already been examined in-depth when they first came to Advanced/Traditional format. But the skills are new. And I'd like to take a look at all 18 of them and see where they stand.
Power of Dark / Peak Performance / Beatdown! - These are garbage. They increase ATK, but other cards can increase it in a much more substantial way.
Aroma Strategy / Prescience - These are garbage too. The information gained here isn't really anything worthwhile.
Grit - This is pretty terrible because it has a chance of doing nothing.
Last Gamble - This is awful since not only does it sometimes do nothing, it sometimes is even detrimental!
Tribal Synergy / Flight of the Harpies / Dragon Caller / Gravekeeper's Lot / It's a Toon World! - These ones are the ones that are worth using, provided that you're using an archetype that they help out.
Pal-O'-Mine-zation! / Destiny Draw / Final Draw - These have potential. They're meant for combo decks that the format currently lacks, but depending on what gets added to the format in the future, I could see these working.
Millennium Necklace / Millennium Eye - Adding to what I just said, if combo decks become viable, then these skills will be good at countering those combo decks.
Mind Scan - This one is a giant question mark. Currently, I don't think it's any good, because there aren't enough traps in the format to worry about. If more traps get added in the future? Sure, but then you need to look at the other aspect of this card: it requires you to maintain your LP at 3000 or above. How hard is that to do? Or rather, how hard will it be to do in the future once we have more traps so that the skill becomes worth using? Honestly, that's an unsolvable question in the moment.
-------------------------
Overall, I do enjoy this format. There's a lot of variety of decks that you can build, and that's just off of six precons alone! I'm very curious where this format goes in the future. They have already announced a booster set called Arena of Lost Souls which will bring 50 new cards to the format (45 normal + 5 skill) due out by the end of March, and another one called Attack from the Deep, giving us another 50 (45 normal + 5 skill) by the end of May. I plan to keep this thread updated based on what gets added to the format, because this has definitely peaked my curiosity.