Skills and Techniqes Thursday

Top Decks Part 1 : Top decks of the new format

By Seamus Allen

Today we’ll examine the top decks of this format, find out there weaknesses in both play style and decks they have a bad match up to.

This format is all about speed. Dark armed dragon decks (DaD decks for short )Shadow priestess otk ,diamond dude turbo, magical explosion, Exodia now, and six samurai to name a few. Gadgets are also around the top. All beside six sam and gadgets those decks all use allure and destiny draw..

Notice something? Last format it was LADD monarchs mixed with destiny hero that was at the top this time its DAD mixed with destiny heroes. Basically DAD gets darks in the grave and either using DAD itself or strike ninjas etc. it removes monsters from the grave for cool effects before using return from the different dimension or dimension fusion and winning.

They also use lots of graveyard abuse like dasher and disk commander. Due to 3 allure , 3 destiny draw and mostly 3 cyber valley they have all the speed they need to draw the cards they want. These decks often win in 3 or 4 turns some times 2.

What can stop them? Macro cosmos might jump into your head but that only makes it worse when your opponent plays return or escape from the different dimension. However it’s a possibility. Protector/oppression gadgets can also stand to DAD. A play style of beating DAD is said to be to just push, push , push with big monsters and win quickly. This because you don’t want to face DaD or game winning returns and dimension fusions or even a card crush virus. But what are the chances of these cards being drawn? Quite high thanks to the allures and D draws.

Now lets take a look at diamond dude turbo, exodia now, shadow priestess OTK and magical explosion. Each use huge amounts of draw power more so than DAD. Hand destruction, dark world dealings, trade in and even upstart goblin in exodia now and shadow priestess otk.

Diamond dude turbo uses lots of spells and very few monsters however lots of its spells search out monsters like reinforcements of the army (shortened to ROTA) monster gate, reasoning etc.

Magical explosion also runs those spells and six sam uses reasoning as well. Magical explosion works similar to diamond dude turbo but is even faster. Its based on getting out one of its 3 copies of magical explosion a trap which does 300 damage for each spell in your grave. They get lots of spells in to the grave and then use magical explosion to win. Some times they can even win before the opponent gets a single turn(highly fluky but does happen).However it fairly occasionly gets realy band hands.

For magical explosion macro cosmos can stop it or protector of the sanctuary and banisher in gadgets Spell canceller would work with a slight bit of protection . With magical explosion it is fairly obvious that push and aggressive play is what you need.

Exodia now is similar. It is based around drawing out exodia as soon as possible. It is completely based around drawing. Again protector of the sanctuary can shut this deck down, almost completely this time (its fairly hard to imagine an exodia piece attacking a protector)although a stratos could destroy if protector was in attack position. Morphing jar and card destruction can also shut the deck down completely .Spell canceller with a slight bit of protection shuts it down too. Again against this deck its push ,push aggressively That seems to be the answer to all these fast OTK decks doesn’t it?

Shadow priestess is another very ,very fast deck possibly slightly faster than magical explosion. Its main win condition and the one it gets its name from is having shadow priestess of ohm and dark magician of chaos(shortened to dmoc) on your field with dimension fusion and the continues spell card spell economics in your hand. Activate spell economics then tribute dmoc for shadow priestesses effect to do 800 damage to your opponent.

Because of dmocs effect he is now removed. You can then play dimension fusion and thanks to spell economics you don’t have to pay 2000 LP to activate it. You then return Dmoc who returns dimension fusion thanks to his effect. You can then tribute dmoc for shadowpreistess to do 800 use dimension fusion return dmoc who return dimension fusion and then you can do another 800 and so on until you win. Macro cosmos or banisher of the radiance will stop this combo both of witch are in macro decks and gadgets run banisher. Royal oppression can stop the combo as can solem judgement 2 more cards commonly used in gadgets and dark bribe can also stop it.

However the deck can win without that exact combo and like all the speedy draw decks protector of the sanctuary can stop it winning too fast. Spell canceller is again a good side deck choice. And once again the play style to use is aggressive pushing.
Now on to six sam. It’s a swarm deck that is really fast. Lightening vortex and royal oppression are cards that will be handy for a six sam match up.

Now on to gadgets. Slowest of all decks. That doesn’t mean there bad. A decks speed doesn’t mean how good it is. Gadgets can slow down other decks and are highly stable. They can break down other decks that are less stable and are very steady. The best and only card to use is some thing most duellists side deck – pulling the rug. There is another card coming out in the next booster light of destruction that will be great against gadgets. I’ll go in to light of destruction some other week.

The play style that hurts gadgets the most is having a swarm of monsters on your field. The deck uses cards like shrink and dimensional prison to protect its weak monsters and if you get enough monsters out you can over whelm your opponent. However most gadget decks max on vortex so you’ll want some protection from it. Also swarm decks can be stopped by gadgets that main royal oppression meaning you take ages to build up a swarm. However gadget decks are very different from other gadget decks and there are a couple of types of gadget decks and many don’t max on vortex or use royal oppression.

Another weakness to gadgets is defensive monsters with high defence or things like marshmallon. However most gadget decks now main 3 drillroid to deal with that problem.

That’s it for now. Next week I’ll take a look deeper in to tech and side deck choices against these decks. I listed ideas briefly here but next week I’ll go in to more detail. See you then!

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