An introduction no one wanted but that I'm still going to do
Because, indeed, this blog is not dead.
To all of the 3 people that might still be waiting for an update: thank you for not forgetting about this little blog. At times, some real life obligations and other hobbies or interests get in the way of writing, and sometimes, specially for a dedicated blog like this, my own lack of interest gets in that topic can also get in the way of putting my thoughts into words.
Rush Duels is a format I have fun with, definetely, but when it comes to writing I seem to falter at it given the lack of interesting things the format offers to write about, and the pace at which it is developing. Both things are understandable: The format is not yet one year old, and the card pool has not quite reached 500 cards yet, and we are still in the middle of the flower virus outbreak that is indeed halting the sales of physical card games. As such, it is natural to not be in any hurry to push out product. However, this has resulted in that the format has remained stale for too long now. Essentially, the main deck has remained the best with no contest up until now, and everything else feels hasn't quite rised past ''underwhelming'' in terms of how well it squares up against the menace of Dragoncasters.
I can't deny that the simplicity of the format, which is in principle, its main allure, proves to be one of the main factors for not being able to write about it. I'm sure you can figure out what to play in a deck just by reading. No, I'm not going to make a joke about Yu-Gi-Oh players and reading, though I think I might just have.
The thing is, I like to write, or more accurately, I like to ramble. I've always though it's better to write my thoughts here as opposed to just scattering them through the same 4 or so Discord servers with a lot of overlapping members between them. At least I hope that by gathering them here, they won't be lost so easily.
Why do I tell you all this, you may ask? Surely you think that this resembles a Tumblr entry rather than a Yu-Gi-Oh blog already. I once made a joke about this blog trying to be educational, and I might've made it in the first place to do exactly that. I'm not the only writer, and thus, I'm not the only one who has contributed to all 5 of the entries of this blog, but I am personally going to allow myself to be less uptight about how I narrate my entries. I should also say that I'm sorry for having 2 other people, 9th and Gift2, invited to this blog just to let it die barely some weeks after it.
Okay, that was far too long of a prelude. So let's kick it off as we should:
Hello everyone, this is Liri from Boku no Road. For this, as well as the following entries, I'll allow myself to ramble about the highlights of the most recent Rush Duel main set: Destined Power Destruction.
In this first part the featured decks, I'll talk about what's probably the 2 most prevalent decks that have come out of this pack. Representing Yuga's and Asana's ace monsters from the anime, we have [Steeltek Deity, Mirror Innovator] and [Build Dragon, the Mythical Sword Dragon], which are the faces of the strongest anti-meta deck at the moment, and the first introduction to the wyrm-type of monsters to the Rush Duel format respectively.
[Steeltek Deity, Mirror Innovator] and [Build Dragon, the Mythic Sword Dragon] are this set's Rush Rares alongside [Jinzo] which is the featured legend card for this expansion. ''Build Dragon'' is a boss monster that can revive some integrants of the newly introduced Wyrm type of monsters used by the titular Asana from the Sevens anime. Wyrms were introduced with a strong lineup of Spells and Traps, including their field spell, [The Insurmountable Summit of Spectral Shangri-La] that allows for a continuous 400 ATK increase to all Wyrm monsters with the downside of also lowering their DEF in exchange, and 2 traps that fall under the ''Mythic Sword'' series of cards. These trap cards have strong payoffs that result in either massive attack debuffs or completely preventing your opponent from declaring attacks, but with steeper requirements that make them not always live to use.
The Innovation of Machines.
''Mirror Innovator'' is a monster that will be used presumably by Yuga as part of his schizophrenic boss monster lineup. This LIGHT machine monster has the potential of reaching the highest ATK values a non maximum monster can reach in the game while also offering the versatility of reshuffling important pieces back to your deck, or also compromising its ATK gain in exchange for the ability to pierce through defenses. As a card, it is extremely well-rounded by itself, and its Machine typing gives it advantage under the closest thing we have to an anti-meta card, the field spell from KP02, [Beast Gear World].
This anti-meta topic is what I wanted to get at. You see, while the ''Mythic Sword'' series was heavily hyped the moment they were revealed, the truth quickly hit everyone as they turned out to be more at the level of fiends and psychics from CP01, and less at the level of dragoncasters. Their powerful backrow can give them a bit of a boost only if they can highroll and get every single one of their pieces live, and they were also tested with [Reward of Tyranny], a trap from the very first Main Set that is essentially a [Dark Liberation] answer if the dreaded trap were to fulminate 2 or more Normal Monsters with its effect, a condition that, while possible to archieve in a deck dedicated to ''Build Dragon'', simply added to the clunkyness of the trap lineup. As a result, while the deck is not completely dead on arrival, it is just completely outmatched by the casters' best threats.
Though Wyrms and Machines aren't really the only builds introduced to us by this new Main Set (and Machines isn't exactly ''introduced'' in this set, but it is in this expansion that we can fully fledge it since now it has a lot of great cards all around), it is Machines that really turned out as a deck tailored to take on the dreaded best decks in the format thus far.
Part of it is their sinergy with [Beast Gear World], but also, the fact that the type already has a lot of cards that are made to counter Spellcasters and ''Dark Liberation''.
[Reporter Soul] as a card that compliments ''Toughroid'' as a full-fledged package. It allows any one of your monsters to essentially float into a 2300 monster that turns 2600 under the influence of [Beast Gear World]. This trap, much like [1 Up] from the first Deck Modification Pack, also allows its effect to occur after an effect destruction takes place. That is to say, with [Reporter Soul] you can reduce the impact you take from an opposing [Dark Liberation], as you will still have a fairly big body on the field that will allow you to remain contesting the board. You could run into two Liberations back to back, or revive Toughroid to have it crash into Dragears after running at [Curtain of Sparks], but both scenarios are fairly unlikely. If you think about it, getting rid of two Liberations in one battle phase is huge unless you're going to be losing because of that.
And those not quite the only tools you have at your disposal to combat the prevalent variations of spellcasters!
[Ancient Barrier] Is another card that caused lots of excitement when it was revealed. It essentially turns Dark Liberation off for the turn you use without any real cost. It is absolutely generic, contrary to what its artwork might suggest, so if you have room for it, you can definetely try it out, though by itself it is just not enough unless you're finall going for the kill.
[Triangle Reborn] and [Beast Gear World Secret Technique - Fist of the Beast] are two of the trap cards released in Destined Power Destruction that also work as either big recovery so you're at least not completely open after a [Dark Liberation], or to give you a bit of an edge in certain situations where you don't open any meaningful boss monsters. ''Fist of the Beast'' is a battle trap that will protect exclusively Beast-Warriors, Machines and Fiends whose levels range from 7 to 9 by switching an attacking monster into defense position. That by itself is extremely meaningful, since it turns off the menacing Dragears and completely prevents it from multi-attacking, and can also shield you from the huge damage output offered by [Sevens Road Magician]. However, by changing a Spellcaster, Dragon or Fairy (as if we had any of those), to defense through this effect, you can also destroy any Spell/Trap of your opponents. Essentially, this battle trap doubles as backrow removal if you're facing the right matchups!
Each one of these doesn't do too much by themselves. You see, [Ancient Barrier] is merely a one turn patch that doesn't really get rid of the threat for good. [Triangle Reborn] is situation and summoning a body that will be 2700 tops with the field spell active, and 2400 at any other point (in terms of the Machine deck) can give you some leniance, but unless you can back it up with something else, it's just going to be a big meat shield. Sometimes that is all you need though. [Fist of the Beast] is strong by itself, but it truly shines given its huge power and multi-porpose.
Lastly but not least important, there is two more key pieces that just add to the blowout factor:
[Super Magitek Deity - Magnum Over Road] is one of the first two monster to introduce the Maximum mechanic to the Rush Duel format. It is a fairly straightforward one: Play it and win. Its OTK potential is off the charts since given the correct LP balance it can end any duel in one swing, and on top of being such a threat it is also immune to trap cards, as all Maximum Monsters are. With the introduction of ''Mirror Innovator'' you can freely use its pieces as fodder for discards or tributes as you see fit and then return them to the deck. This way, you can have the potential of a blowout play in this deck without sacrificing the consistency of your plays. Right now, this is the best build to include a Maximum in.
[Jinzo] or [Psycho Shocker] as Japan calls it is the LEGEND card featured in this expansion. Not much else to say here. Put it down to go for the kill, be careful it doesn't lock your own traps when you need them, recycle it with Mirror Innovator, yada yada.
By sticking all these pieces together we can arrive at a decklist that kind of looks like this. Feel free to tinker with the ratios, but generally you'll have to run a lot of high level monsters depending on your preferences or if you don't want to run ''Over Road'' at all. If you choose not to run him, you can also skip on [Heavenly Protection] and [10sion Max] to instead max out Beast Gear World, your trap line-up, and run some ammount of [Hammer Crush]. You could also play [Ancient Barrier] given that it is another counter to the strongest card of the format, but undoubtedly, I'd rather play that as a side deck option.
Machines truly feel like a breath of fresh air, but it is worrisome that this level of Spellcaster and Dragon hate was required to make another deck that could compete against them. I'd rather not repeat what I said in my Dark Liberation post, but pretty much everything said there is still valid. That trap needs to go away.
This deck does well all around, with no bad matchups and some excelent ones. I'm sure you can tell which ones it does specially great against.
Building Blocks
Now, I don't have quite as much to say for Wyrms as I did for Machines. That is, I'd rather present something a bit spicier than a pure wyrm decklist.
If this is too ugly for those of you who like to play their decks pure, then I'm sorry but I refuse to share a decklist that anyone can come up with just by slapping all the monotype cards together. Anyways, that bit of bias aside, I decided to go a step ahead of just what a plain Mythical Sword deck would do for this one.
[Royal Demon's Heavymetal] amd [Gargoyle of the Palace] are both the protagonists of what is essentially a 2 card package that we can include in any deck. This 2 card combo allows us to play a strong boss monster in the form of Heavymetal when we feel like adding a bit of an extra punch.
The impact of Heavymetal is somewhat underestimated in a format where Maximum monsters exist, since those are basically unreachable by the powerful Fiend. However, against anything else, Heavymetal is our own blowout card. Resolving it ends usually in huge ammounts of damage output. Given the strength's of [Build Dragon] allowing us to constantly revive a vanilla wyrm so long as we have a Field Spell up, we can revive ''Void Soldier'' as tribute fodder for Heavymetal.
Some points to highligh:
[Sevens Road Mage] is overall a good monster. The debuff can come in handy, though we won't get to kill Maximum Monsters with it anytime soon.
[Beast Gear World] Is included as a one-of to round up our number of field spells. Running more is not advised as high ammounts of them can clog up your hand and you have no effective means of making use of their extra copies. If you ran something like [Hammer Crush] or a small package with [Trick Pigeon] you could consider to run more.
[Flute of Summoning Daemon] Is another means of getting to Heavymetal by using it to bring back ''Void Soldier'' and then tribute it for an easy Royal Demon's play.
[Royal Demon's Death Voice] is a card I'd love to run more copies of, sadly it does compromise space and you need to run either 2 or 3 of Void Soldier.
We only run 2 of the battle traps because they're the good ones, and none of Blockade since this build in particular doesn't leave so many disposable wyrms on the field.
This is a more straightforward deck, but it is one that makes best use of the mechanics of both packages at the moment.
What's next?
This post is already lengthy. I feel like I've mostly covered the two of the most interesting decks to come out of this expansion. There're still some other decks that can be built from this set's releases, and some that can be updated. Next entry I'll go in depth about other (moderately) good things to come out of Destined Power Destruction.
Thank you for reading until the end if you reached this far. Please consider leaving a comment. Until next entry~
