Hello, this is Liri from Boku no Road again with another entry.
In which we cover a little talk about the infamous card that has ruled over the meta environment for the past 6 or so months. If you play Rush Duels you know it. [Dark Liberation]
Essentially a Mirror Force with a condition. This card debuted in the Yuga Starter Deck released on April of 2020 at 3 copies, and if you've played more than a few games it should go without saying that there's no need for introductions when it comes to the most fearsome card in the format.
Its power is locked behind a condition, ''Shuffle 4 Spellcaster monsters from your GY into your deck''. Everyone knows what this condition entails, but let's still go over its implications: this is not so much of a cost as it is a requirement that ensures that you'll have to run a decent number of spellcasters in your deck in order to successfully utilize this card when needed. However, this also means that any deck can use it as long as you have the room to utilize Spellcasters.
The Road taken by Competitive Decks
On the topic of the ''Spellcaster'' type, it is second only to the ''Dragon'' type in terms of how many monsters have been introduced that feature its type. Naturally, as it is the class used by Ohdo Yuga in the Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens anime. It ought to be noted that, from the beginning of the format to this day, Spellcasters have been the only deck that's been featured in a competitive light. There's a few reasons behind this, and we can also extract the characteristics of what makes a successful deck for the Rush Format:
1.- A deck that's capable of utilizing enough cards from the Spellcaster-type in order to incorporate Dark Liberation. This card is, as you get now, beyond insane. There's no effective countermeasure besides a few select choices that we'll go over soon, and, in a format where there's no Main Phase 2 and most of the removal and board contesting is done through battle instead of effect removal, most of the time you have no choice but to run into this card. The result is an oppressive state in which any comebacks are denied and you're left wide open for your opponent to finish you off with massive ammouns of damage.
2.- A deck that can carry at least one of the type-specific Spell/Trap removal cards, such as [Magical Strream], [Psychic Divergence], [Fire Dragon's Heatflash], etc. besides [Hammer Crush]. This is the only reliable answer to Dark Liberation, and I'm stretching the meaning of ''Reliable'' a little bit here. Why? Because there's nothing reliable about trying to snipe Dark Liberation in most situations where your opponent has 3 face-downs. In those cases, either you're really lucky with your one shot, you have enough removal to wipe all 3 of them, or the situation was right to make an accurate read of where it is. This last part can come up and I'm sure there's gonna be a clown out there willing to debate that you can do mind games with that, but please, even if I sound a bit aggressive with what I'm saying here, keep those theories of ''huh he set this one first and then this one so clearly it's-'' to yourself because the read for a set Dark Liberation is either water-clear or pure luck, no in-between.
3.- A deck that either has super strong boss monsters of their own, or, has the space to include a Dragon Package (Phoenix Dragon + Dragears, Shocklead, Blue-Eyes, etc.) This is to say, bosses that can turn the tables on monsters that are stronger, or that can deal in massive amounts of damage through their buffing/debuffing effects or their offensive abilities. This is mostly in terms of cutting down boss monsters such as those featured in ''Beastgear'' and ''Aqua'' builds, to name a few, which, though they are supported by their deck's playstyle, lack any remarkable capabilities of their own.
If we take into consideration the above mentioned points and try to build a list to the best of our competitive capabilities, we probably end up with something similar to this:
This is an example of the most competitive decklist utilized in the land of the rising sun, made by カーナベル㈱様, or Kanaberu-sama. It's greatly unchanged from KP01, only seeing the introduction of [Seven Roads Mage] during KP02, and currently during KP03 [Sparkhearts Girl] is probably still being experimented with. This is the competitive Rush Duel deck that most people are familiar with, featuring both Spellcasters as well as a small Dragon Package just as mentioned above. It includes 3 of each [Magical Stream] and [Fire Dragon's Heatflash].
Now, this is not me saying that pure dragons don't have a space in the competitive enviroment. Sure, Pure Dragons have [Dragonic Slayer] and other advantages that this hybrid build might lack, but all of those pale in comparison to the sheer power of Dark Liberation. However, it is not an impossible matchup, or at least not as sweltering as it is for everyone else.
And the issue is?
Now that you get how majority of lists look like, you might wonder ''well, what's the problem? a meta environment being warped around a few types or cards is how yugioh is''. And you're right. Yugioh has always turned around a few powerful cards, and we've always considered a players skillful when they can use those powerful cards in very efficient ways while also playing around their opponent's power cards.
If I had to pinpoint a few problems, it'd be:
1.- Rush Dueling has been made around the battle interactions. Most (respectable) boss monsters have battle and stat related effects. The dynamic goes in that ''I hit over you, then you hit over me, until one falls''. And this is not the direction in which one or two decks were taken, it's literally the intended design of most cards in the format. [Dark Liberation] just ''doesn't care''. It denies any form of battling and board contesting and instead punishes it, when that's your one and only option in this game. There's no playing around it besides being lucky with your removal or running some ''outs'' and hoping they come up, talking about it:
2.- Outs to Dark Liberation? If they exist then you should play them! Well, the issue is: they are both Spellcasters. Yeah, another reason why there's no other playable option besides Spellcasters and maybe Dragons. [Whispering Fairy] and [Defensive Dragon Mage] are both cards that can allow you some breathing room against opposing Dark Liberations.
The former one can disrupt them early in the game, but it becomes pretty much dead for that purpose into the late game. Defensive Dragon Mage only protects one of your monsters from Dark Liberation, but sometimes that can be all you need to close out a game, contest board, or perhaps, make your opponent not want to waste a Dark Liberation if he can't get full value out of it. But in either case, one of these outs is locked to Spellcasters/Dragons and the other needs to be drawn early or it becomes a dead draw. You can tell that none of these work well as universal outs. I guess one of the new dragons from KP03 works the same as Whispering Fairy, just for Dragons exclusively, so what I said about her applies to [Clear Ice Dragon] as well.
3.- No innovations. Spellcasters as a deck has remained roughly the same through the course of 3 main sets. After KP02 and CP01 some builds that included [Royal Demon's Heaymetal] and [Gargoyle of the Palace] instead of the Dragon Package popped up and had a lot of success. But besides this, no other deck has been able to join the fray of competition. Psychic, Fiend and Warrior decks all debuted on CP01, Aquas and Beastgears got further support on KP03 alongside a few other strategies, but none of them has managed to scratch the top of the format. Monster Mash is a concept that our fellow writer @Gift2 made a reality and had a lot of success with. However, it is not yet a very popular idea, specially in Japan, which is where we can gather most of the results data.
In other words. The format is stale. It's stale, luck-based in terms of outs and strategies to play around and fairly swingy. When a game remains roughly the same in the competitive aspect for half a year or more it tends to get boring, and, I suppose that's my main issue from a personal point of view. I wanted to be more objective, I'd say something like ''it's not healthy for this kind of format-wrapping card to be left unchecked and unchanged for so long''.
However!
Boku no Road pretends to be slightly educative (lol), and most of this post has felt mostly like me ranting. I've said that the outs are not yet reliable, but we can try to tinker around with what we have now. For now, the one thing we can do is to adapt. I didn't mention this, but the best answer to Dark Liberation is your own Dark Liberation. So, try to incorporate the following Spellcaster package in your new decks to try them out:
-Sevens Road Mage
-Mystic Dealer
-Light/Dark Sorcerer
-Defensive Dragon Mage
-Whispering Fairy
In whatever rations you desire. All of this will give you access to Dark Liberation and Magical Stream, and also, these are just overall really good cards that can fit in anything you want to build. Try to tinker around with them if you want to play something that has yet to be fully fleshed out in terms of support instead of trying to force it with whatever shambles of support you have.
Alternatively, if you're playing a deck that has a strong field spell like [Big Ocean] or [Beastgear Worlds], you could try to include cards like [Rear Misfire] or [Gust] in order to punish the 6 MSTs that the hybrid build runs.
Similar to this, you can try to tinker around with options to fight off Dark Liberation! It's better to try than to just sit there and keep losing to it.
I hope you found it insightful, or just a fun read. Boku no Road will keep bringing articles for as long as this format keeps us engaged. Until the next entry!
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