Skills and Techniqes Thursday

Top Decks Part 2 : Tech and side deck

By Seamus Allen

Knowing different types of decks well does that make you far better...
Learning what play style to use to defeat them what cards they use to make better reads as well as helping with side decking. Each type of deck will always have variations on how they do things yet have the same goals.

For example monarchs: there are apprentice spy monarchs, Spy hydro monarchs and destiny hero monarchs and even more. They all have the same properties, which are to build up tribute fodder and are normally very defensive decks. They all have a weakness to royal oppression mask of restrict and drillroid etc..

Knowing the different variants of deck types will also help to take down the opponent. Most cards that can be sided against a type of deck can normally be sided against any of the variants of that type of deck. And some cards that can be side decked against certain decks can be sided against other decks too.

When building a side deck you have to have a side deck of 15 cards and no more. It can be difficult to decide what to put in a side deck but you can use these rules to help you:

1.How many times will I come across certain types of decks?
Will there be few people playing them? Side more for decks that will be seen a lot.

2.Are there types of decks that can ruin the strategy of your type of deck? Are there types of decks you have a weakness to? Side heavily for them. This will include mirror matches or when you play the same type of deck as yours.

3. Cards that can be sided against more than one type of deck are useful as your side deck can counter more with less cards.

Also a point worth mentioning is some decks can side deck things that other decks can’t and some decks can’t side what other decks can. For example zombies can’t possibly side royal oppression as they’d destroy there own strategy.

And for example gadgets can side deck cyber phoenix against other gadget decks. Obvious decks to side against are: DAD, burn, maco cosmos ,FTKs ,gadgets and more. Protector of the sanctuary, spell canceller, royal oppression, (if it doesn’t hurt your deck) prime material dragon, mobius, snipe hunter, shadow imprisoning mirror, (if it again doesn’t hurt your deck) kinetic solider, and pulling the rug are all great cards to side deck. There are many more cards which are great to side too.

To Tech:
Teching is when you main deck cards to counter certain decks. Most of the time they’re useful in lots of situation or in lots of match ups. Here are some great tech cards: kykoo the ghost destroyer can remove what you want and you can control what you remove so don’t remove things you don’t need to in DAD match ups. Also he can stop the effects of strike ninja, promethius, bazoos, d.d crows and with some protection from attacks dark armed dragon itself.

Another great card is the transmigration prophecy. It will get rid of things you don’t want in your opponent’s grave but send them back to the deck rather than remove them stopping those returns and dimension fusions. Like D.D crow it can also negate the effects of cards targeting a card in the graveyard like monster reborn. It can also return card’s in your grave back to your deck things like grave keeper spy apprentice, hydrogedons, gadgets or any other card you can search from your deck with an effect. It’s a great card.

Book of moon can stop dark armed dragon from using its effect and you can then destroy it. Its 1000 def only! It can stop shadow priestess of ohm from using her effect as well as D.D survivor and great shogun sheen as well as many more monsters .Right now I’d advise it over enemy controller!

Lastly seeing as people who are scared of DAD are even maining wabokus as crazy as that sounds I’d prefer scape goat. Sure if your opponent plays return from the different dimension you’ll probably take one direct attack but scape goat can be used in more situations and can be abused with cyber valleys, enemy controllers and any thing else you imagination can come up with. That’s it for today!

I won’t unfortunately be able to type up another article till the 24th when I report back on nats. However next week I’ll try to edit all of my articles so far. Talking bout nationals it’s a perfect time to look over the articles. See you then!