It’s been quite the bust week, and I haven’t had any time to sit down and write an article. Also, since a majority of my Yugioh time is spent thinking about Regionals, since it’ll be coming up this weekend, I figured I’d just share some of my thoughts very quickly
Regionals for Washingtonians is on the 20th, this Saturday, so I’ve been revving up my HERO deck to hopefully get into the best condition possible. Laughably though I’ve only gotten the uncanny ability to draw the worst possible hands multiple games in a row. I’ve gotten Cyber Dragon + Spells and Traps so many times recently in the past few days it brings up a few issues, since that’s really hard to play out of. It seems similar to a concept I’ve seen before in decks I’ve used, and for Matt as well, after playing a deck for a very long while and making little to no changes. The deck seemingly randomly decides to give up and present the same horrible hands consistently to its user, thus I call it when a deck “gives up”. This occurs even though the deck has performed in a stellar way with the exact same deck list on a consistent basis. I’m not really sure why this happens, but I’ve noticed it happens to a deck you’ve been playing for a long time and I assume it has something to do with sleeves and inadvertent stacking. With your shuffling style and consistent playing of cards in specific orders plus consistently putting similar cards near one another due to how the deck runs it appears that decks slowly develop patterns of card movement that at one point will peak with an ultimately consistent deck that can never get bad hands and then later falling to the inability to get a good hand ever. Hopefully I’ll be able to remedy this with some new sleeves; if not I will likely be trying out Heraldic Ninjas, which’ll be a real trip to run on a regional circuit.
So right now I’ve got these two deck lists, first is the Last HERO deck list:
[LINK]
Then I’ve got my Heraldic Ninja deck:
[LINK]
So, I’ve got my HERO deck which has been ground to probably its finest state. Not much editing can be done to it at this point, not a single card am I un-confident in and not a single card have I thought of adding. It randomly loses to anything maining continuous spells that stall and has bad match-ups against some weird rouge decks. Heraldics is really fun and will catch people really far off guard since most people don’t know what any of the monsters in the deck do. It’s kind of bad vs. Mermails, but it can wreck house against anything that sets a lot of cards. It’s not nearly as fine tuned though. I feel I’ll have more fun with it, but I’ll probably lose more with it as well.
As for the minor edits I’ve made to the HERO deck since last time: Return From a Different Dimension is meant to be, I’ve won every game I’ve flipped it over. MST has continually tested bad, and Lance extremely well. I want Lance in every case except vs. decks that run Macro or similar continuous cards. I took out The Warrior Returning Alive and went to 40 cards because at a tournament I continually dead drew it when I needed to Special Summon, already having a lot of monsters to Normal Summon in hand, which made me unhappy (gasp!). I did at least add back BLS once and got game, so it did its duty. I decided on Karbonala over Darkfire and replaced the ladder with a second Chimeratech for machine decks since I run 2 Calls and Reborn. In testing against Gadgets I always wanted the second one. Lavalval Chain wont be out before Regionals or it would take Papilloperative’s spot.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the side deck too. Obviously for both I’d side in the 3 MSTs because of sided and mained opposing Macro Cosmos/Gozen/Rivarly etc. The Heraldic Beast deck is in a real pickle if they flip Macro on me game one and I don’t have an ample hand. (I have to use Chidori or Snipe Hunter to kill it) For the HERO deck I was going to side Skill Drains since it’s good against Fire Fist, Macro Rabbit, Wind-Ups, Agents, Dragons and just about everything, even Mono Mermail, (maybe I should main a copy, what do you think?) and my deck can play around it quite well. The only monsters that get hurt really bad under it are the Chaos twins, Dark Armed and Tour Guide and I usually side out DAD anyways since I expect graveyard hate and that makes him hard to setup. Skill Drain is kind of funny with Zombyra too. For Mermails I also have Maxx “C” and Mind Crush, which work for a bunch of other decks. I was thinking of 2 Puppet Plants, since I don’t like playing HEROs with HEROs so I just might put one heavy side card for them. That and I get the randy Six Sam player almost every Regionals.
In brew mode I have Volcanics and a really wonky Vayu Turbo deck and the beginnings of a 3 Axis Fire Fist build. If desperate I may fall back on one of those. Curse my indecision!
My thoughts are all kind of jumbled, but tell me if you have any thoughts.
I am confused, you said regional is on the 20th but I thought HA07 comes out on the 17th.
Good luck at regionals bro
The release of Hidden Arsenal 7 got pushed back to the 26th.
hey guys: about regionals this weekend im working on my side and i know the spokane meta very well but this wont be in spokane, the last few seattle regionals ive gone too ive found the randomness of decks insane i went x-3 in feb & the only remotely meta stuff i played was 1 inzektor & 1 DW the rest was jank. whats the seattle/tacoma area meta like? i dont wana waste side deck space on decks i wont see.
It’s relatively the same as Spokane. Lots of randomness. I tend to see a fair amount of HERO decks every regional I go to here though, so you can probably bet on those, other than that anything that’s remotely a good deck has a good chance of getting played.
thanks ill toss in some hero hate, & zombie world of course just for spellbooks lol. we should be having a regional on the west side this fall after nationals are over & the new season starts up, i encourage u guys to come over & have a good time. you guys should do a live video from regionals that would be awsome inverview some players & stuff like that.
Sweet decks Kyle! Best of luck at regionals 🙂
Why only 2 Call? What make 3 too many of this card?
Thanks!
Jessie
I only run 2 in my HERO build because I don’t have any monsters worth summoning if it gets MST’d. Stratos will miss the timing in that instance.
It’s also not particularly powerful in this deck either.
I also never want to open with 2+ of it, and it’s very unlikely when I only run 2 copies.
Cool thanks for replying! I’m trying Call in my Fire Fist with Raven being the target when it’s MST’d. I’m bouncing back and forth between 2 or 3 Call, trying to decide what I like best. I have a pretty low monster count so in leaning towards 2 because I draw it before there is a beneficial target for it.
I’d be inclined to agree with running 2 of it in that deck’s case.
Thanks man appreciate the advice!
I tweeted @ the YCG Podcast earlier about this, but I think it would be fun if you guys tweet updates about your progress throughout the Regionals this weekend! Good luck and have fun
The Skill Drain idea sounds really appealing. If you were to add it in, would you drop one of your other cards or play it as a 41st?
On another note, I’m really curious as to how well Avarice functions in the Hero deck. How often does it resolve when you’re holding it? Does it make a huge difference when you do resolve it?
I’ve noticed a few times when playing you that your graveyard doesn’t fill beyond 3-6 monsters until you begin pushing, at which point your deck relies on having those cards in the graveyard to summon your boss monsters and either OTK or cripple your opponent. In that way, it seems like when you can activate avarice you don’t really need to and it becomes nothing more than a win-more card. Taking into account the fact that many decks are maining Macro, Avarice seems like a risky choice with little to no benefit.
That being said, I think replacing a win-more card like Avarice with a powerful stun card like Skill Drain could be really helpful. Skill Drain seems like a really good meta call right now taking into account many of the decks quietly gaining popularity. There are two in particular that come to mind, both I could see your deck having issues with. Those two are Macro Watts and Hunders. If our locals can act as a somewhat accurate test sample of the Seattle area meta (which I think it can to a degree) there’s a pretty notable chance that you’ll run into one of these two Thunder decks, both of which get pooped on by skill drain. Watts for example depend on the effects of cards like Watt Cobra to keep moving towards their win condition, something your deck doesn’t have too much to stop. Hunders depend on the ignition effects of otherwise small, useless monsters to win, something that absent Skill Drain your deck can’t do much to stop. While it is only a change of 1 card, I think this change could be largely beneficial.
I’ll be the first one to say that you know more about this deck (as it is your creation), so I’d really like to hear your opinion on this change in more depth. Thanks for your time!
Avarice is usually for Tour Guide, it gives me an opportunity to waste it early in a sense. I don’t really play like I’m running it until I draw it, it’s just an incentive to go in if I do draw it. So I guess the point of the card is to waste my opponent’s resources without using my own. Also, it helps a lot for hands with no boss monsters since I usually try to apply a lot of pressure with my Rank 4s using the small HERO engine since that reliably gets 5 monsters in grave very quickly. (Stratos into Prisma, Prisma sent Zombyra, XYZ makes 4 monsters)
As far as getting hurt by graveyard hate an the like, I usually side out Avarice and Dark Armed game 2 and three if I think it’ll be an issue.
If you really feel that your shuffling is causing your cards to clump together in a way that causes bad hands, wouldn’t trying different shuffling techniques (pile shuffling, etc.) mitigate that problem?