A Little Stun Science

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Pretty much everyone is complaining about the new format and how Maxx “C” and Effect Veiler are completely necessary, but that’s not true. The only legitimate reason people feel they are necessary is because being looped by Wind-Ups will cost you the game if you’re not running them, but that once again is untrue. People for some reason are unwilling to build decks that can bounce back from situations such as this, and the most basic way to do this is to build a deck that can effectively maintain advantage with low hand counts as well as top-deck good cards consistently.

The first step is to maintain advantage with a small amount of cards. This is done by usually by a compact monster engine that maintains itself without much help. Some specific examples are things like Gadgets, T.G.s and Hero Beat. Gadgets are pretty obvious, they just replenish themselves with there own effects, and adding some Machina monsters in their never hurt. T.G.s maintain themselves with their own effects by “restocking” in the end phase and Hero Beat has a compact spell and trap engine that keeps monsters in hand at almost all times by moving around Neos Alius. Not so ironically, these engines are all associated with stun; a deck-type based on slowing down the game and controlling the opponent’s plays. The ability for a monster engine to run itself makes it really easy to just dump a crap ton of good spells and traps into the deck, and thus that’s why it’s associated with stun. In general, because of the nature of self-sustained engines such as these they become non-combo oriented, unlike most top decks which have specific plays, and the purpose of the deck is to counter the opponent’s plays rather than have plays of their own. (That doesn’t mean the deck can’t have plays, many decks that I would count apart of this such as Hero Beat or Inzectors have plays that they can do)

With that engine that makes advantage by itself, you couple it with a multitude of 1 for 1 spell and trap support. This is just a bunch of cards like Dimensional Prions, Mirror Force, Compulsory Evacuation Device etc. (specifically catered for the format) that in general will both net you and the opponent with one less card. Combined with a monster engine that makes advantage itself you can simplify the game state until its just the core of your deck versus the opponents. In most cases top tier decks are combo based, such as Wind-Ups who when simplified cannot do that much with singular pieces since they rely on multiple pieces, hence “combo based”. This usually means that when pitted up against each other a stun core will beat a combo based core. (This doesn’t account for just straight up good luck on the Wind-Up players part since good luck can get almost any deck out of any thing) I don’t necessarily mean stun is good against Wind-Ups either, although it does have a pretty good match-up in most cases, I mean that when simplified down to just the basic engines the odds are Stun will win since it is not reliant of specific combos.

The 1 for 1 spell and trap cards also add a very strong element of top-decking. When top-decking with a lot of cards such as these in the deck, you’ll tend to draw cards that will be of some benefit. Specifically catering these cards towards the format is always a good idea as well. (ex. Bottomless is very weak this format and Compulsory is very strong this format) I’ll use my Hero Beat deck as an example. In said deck I run a bunch of cards that just work on their own. Obviously, this gives a high element of top-decking as opposed to say Wind-Ups who will top-deck combo pieces. A Hero deck can top a power card like Miracle Fusion, Hero Blast or one of many general cards and be able to use it (at least most of the time) without any other cards in hand, while a deck like Wind-Ups can draw some of their power cards like Shark, Magician or Factory when top-decking and not be able to use it. (that’s not to say they can’t top-deck, of course they have some good top-decks like Rat and Tour Guide) I guess all that to say, because of these card choices Stun is good at top-decking which can be a vital in such a format as we’re about to go into.

One last thing, sort of off topic, but going into the next format, if you can run the cards Skill Drain in a deck, even slightly, it will be a good idea. In fact, I encourage thinking about changing a deck to incorporate it that might not usually run it. The reason behind me saying this is Skill Drain pretty much runs circles around the top teir decks out there right now, and decks like Stun in particular can usually utilize a card such as it and with minor tweaking most are almost completely unaffected by it. Just thought I’d float that idea out there.

Once again, thank you for reading my article! If you have any comments or anything else you’d like to here me talk (type) about please do not withhold such a thing since I would love to hear it.

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