Regs

Deck List Updates

My updates on my Ghostrick, Noble Knights and Sylvan deck lists.

Usually I simply post decklists and leave them be (bar decks I’m using in real life), but I decided since after their posting I usually use the decks a lot more and hone the builds over time, I should update you with my newer takes on the decks since some of the deck builds have changed quite a bit. Rather than do them individually I figured I could upload them in bulk. I’m going to omit the literal deck lists and suffice with only pictures for visual and spacial reasons, I hope that’s not an issue.

I’ll start off with Ghostricks:

I’ve changed the monster line-up quite a bit since last time. I’ve completely dropped Ghostrick Mummy in favor of more Trap cards since Ghostricks thrive when in control of the game state. I’ve also made two new additions brought on by my testing and Justen’s insight as well: Effect Veiler and Caius the Shadow Monarch.

Caius is pretty much a boss monster for this deck. The deck really lacks spot removal for specific threats that violate your strategy and Caius can easily deal with almost all of these threats and is almost always easily summoned because of how Ghostricks work using their ability to constantly maintain a field presence allows for tribute summoning. (hence the creation of decks such as Ghostrick Monarchs) The deck can sometimes struggle dealing with resilient monsters such as Zenmaines or Garunix and Caius is a blanket answer to those. The deck also really lacks any form of raw attacking stats to do damage with. Justen felt this weaknesses pretty impressively with his 4 ties at regionals due to the deck’s inherent inability to finish games quickly. Caius’ 2400 ATK attempts to give the deck the ability to finish the game more quickly, which comes into play a lot. The brute force and omnipresent threat of Caius are greatly welcomed.

Effect Veiler is simply a card that fits the deck like a glove. Ghostricks in combination with Effect Veilers make playing against Ghostricks very frustrating since so much defensive cards can be kept in hand making your capabilities hard to read and making it extremely hard to make offensive moves without a very well thought out plan. If someone plays against this deck casually the chances are they aren’t prepared to invest as much mental planning as it takes to get through your hand trap defenses to play as effectively as they ought. It’s very common that you’ll have layers of Ghostrick hand traps and Veiler in addition which can be very strategically used to manipulate your opponent’s actions in a manner that goes almost unnoticed a lot.

For a while I was running Mystic Piper with the Veilers and it was really nice, but it really lacked offensive pressure and lost by doing nothing until the end of the game a lot, similar to Justen’s regionals struggle. I ran Chaos Sorcerers and Black Luster Soldier, but the offensive pressure just wasn’t enough. The engine took the place of the Mummies and the Steins and I decided that Stein was far to integral to the deck’s success to be removed and rather than focusing on level ones, a better strategy would be to focus on Stein’s effect and pressure the opponent with that. Also, a bit of theory Justen presented me swayed me quite in favor of Stein. He said that without another monster in the deck with more than 1500 ATK that Alucard was just massive Bottomless Trap Hole bait, and the first Alucard you summon is almost always victim to one because he’s the only card in your deck affected by it if you don’t run enough high ATK monsters.

This build is designed to as effectively as possible get off Stein’s effect and then search Ghostrick-Go-Round and or Ghostrick Vanish and use that to maintain almost complete control of the field. To go along with that I have a random copy of Seven Tools of the Bandit. This ensures that plays go off without a hitch and is quite nice with Caius as well. For a while I ran two seven tools, but it only made sense to be running a Ghostrick Vanish instead of one of the copies just because of its search-ability and revivability. I left in one Book of Life for reviving Stein, I dropped it from three because it clogged early game and sometimes opponent’s don’t get monsters into the graveyard until you aggress them, and this deck isn’t aggressive enough to elicit that in my opinion, at least not in a consistent manner.

I took out the Field Spell because it is mostly unecissary. I want my monsters attacked in most cases because this can allow me to make plays. The halved damage was certainly nice, but in most instances the Field Spell just felt like a neg-one. I’ve toyed with the idea of running 1 copy just so I can search it with Stein, but I really don’t know what to take out for it. If anything it would be Book of Life or the 3rd Effect Veiler, but I really like both of them.

The traps have gotten a big overhaul with what I consider to be the most effective traps of the format. Breakthrough Skill is becoming a massively important trap as more monster effects are viable for negating on your turn as well as most people maining 3 MSTs making Fiendish Chain less viable.  I run Mirror Force over Dimensional Prison because I usually only stop attacks in that fashion if I want to kill more than one monster, if I need to stop singular attacks I have the Ghostrick monsters and Go-Round. I think Black Horn of Heaven should be a standard for any heavy back row decks right now. You can’t rely on cards like Compulsory Evacuation Device and Book of Moon nearly as much to stop XYZ and Synchros because of the heavy presence of Forbidden Lance and Quick Effects like Exciton Knight, so Black Horn essentially replaces the two in the standard Spell and Trap line-up.

Noble Knights:

This list hasn’t changed all that much since last time, so I’ll be quick. The changes exactly are this:

  • +2 Breakthrough Skill
  • +1 Bujintei Tsukuyomi
  • -1 Noble Knight Gawayn
  • -1 Lady of the Lake
  • -1 HTS Psyhemuth

I had a yearning for more Traps in this deck so I slimmed the fat to make room for Breakthrough Skill. I did this specifically with Artifacts in mind for next format, since this deck really doesn’t like playing into the first turn Artifact set 5 deal. Breakthrough Skill is a fantastic main deck choice against that deck and works nicely with Noble Knights because it likely will not sit around not being activated like other Traps such as Mirror Force or Dimensional Prison which might get stuck in your Spell and Trap zones if your start establishing a board, which is a problem in a deck like this where back row clogging is an issue. In almost every situation an opponent is going to be trying to use monster effects giving you ample opportunity to play them to un-clog oneself. That plus it really is a nuisance for the opponent if they have to play through 3 Veiler and 3 Breakthrough Skill in an effect based deck. During my online testing with different traps in place of the Breakthroughs I had a lot more trouble with super aggro decks such as Lightsworn so I felt I’d rather have them as opposed to other traps that are also viable.

I took out Lady of the Lake. As I said in my previous profile it’s really crappy to draw and its only real play is with Foolish Burial which usually ends up sending Gwen anyways. That means its only purpose is a really inconsistent play. While it is a good play that it provides, I don’t build decks like that so I cut it for cards more to my liking. I’ll probably try a Normal build using Artorigus and Rescue Rabbit because I like Lady of the lake so much, but not right now.

Bujintei Tsukuyomi is an interesting addition that Rob from my locals mentioned to me that I really liked. It requires two Level 4 LIGHT monsters to make. His effect discards your hand (minimum 1 card) to draw two cards. In cases where you have a bad hand, you can set all your cards and make it using Gawayn or defensive play with Traps and use it to get cards from your deck more quickly. Then, if it survives you do his effect again on the next turn and make some good healthy plusses. I don’t expect the play to happen often, but the extra deck is pretty open so any addition to help bad hands is welcome.

Sylvans:

This deck is pretty monstrous. I randomly decided to start playing this deck and honing it one day and I kind of got addicted to it and played with it a lot for a whole week. Because of this “honing”, I came to this build and have obtained a lot of experience with the deck and how to go about my plays with specific hands. There’s lots of OTKs available in this deck that I wasn’t utilizing before that make this deck far more threatening than I thought. Once Primal Origin comes around I suggest looking out for this deck because it certainly is a threat!

This build is based around making the Sylvan Rank 7 XYZ from Primal Origin as fast and as many times as possible. Mentally making that changes is more important than the decklist changes themselves because it’s very easy to get side tracked with this deck into making lots of other plays because it provides so many options. The easiest thing to get side tracked with is Sylvan Hermitree. Frequently you can aim for him just to make advantage, which is great in some instances, but when making the Rank 7 XYZ plays you get OTKs. The most simple way to do this is by using Miracle Fertilizer with Oreia, Sylvan High Arbiter (The Rank 7 XYZ). Oreia can bounce potentially 3 cards on the field to the hand once per turn, depending on the number of plants excavated from the top of the deck. This bounces cards from your opponent’s field for OTKs or bounces Miracle Fertilizer to revive one of Oreia’s XYZ material to potentially go for another XYZ play, maybe even another Oreia to bounce the Miracle Fertilizer twice. If you have two Miracle Fertilizers on the field you can almost always confirm an OTK because you can simply bounce them both with Oreia and then revive any two of the Trees (Hermitree or Sagequoia) making a minimum of exactly 8000 damage into an open field.

To aid in the summoning of Rank 7 XYZ and also to aid with bad hands we have the addition of Fallen Angel of Roses. It came out in the 2012 Premium Collection Tin. It had a pack in it with a bunch of random Secret and Super Rares. It’s a Level 7 Plant that you can Special Summon it from your hand by returning a Plant from the field to the hand ala Birdman. In general, when I would normally send a Plant monster from the field to the graveyard to activate Mount Sylvania, I can instead bounce it to the hand for Fallen Angel of Roses and then discard it from the hand for Mount Sylvania instead. So, say I have a used Komushroomo I can bounce it to the hand and re-set it, discard it for Mount Sylvania or top deck it with Sylvan Charity. You can also try to get out of bad hands by summoning a monster like Peaskeeper or Marshawnleaf and excavate some cards to special summon Sagequoia then bounce the Marshawn or Peas for Fallen Angel of Roses and make a Rank 7.  If you excavate a Cherubsprout you can get a Copy Plant from your deck for a Rank 7, if you get nothing you can just try to protect Roses until next turn and then use Copy Plant or attempt to special summon a Sagequoia net turn for a Rank 7.

I only run 1 Marshawn as opposed to 3 which I see most people running online simply because the card doesn’t provide anything you need. It’s a really bad card to have in hand because its excavation effect isn’t that great. When excavated it only kills monsters, which the two Sylvan XYZ already do exceedingly well, so it’s only providing you with something your already have most of the time. I would probably run none, except for the fact that you can top deck the one copy in a pinch.

QOTW? Question of the Week:

Now that we have the new ban list, what do you think the big three decks for the next format will be and why?

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