Sylvan Deck Profile, October 2014

I’m putting Lightsworn Rulers on the backburner for a bit, now Sylvans take the spotlight.

Basically, the deck I’ve been pouring the majority of my deck building interest into is Sylvans. It’s kind of strange considering they where inadvertently hit on the ban list by the limiting of Soul Charge. At the same time, I had begun testing and found Sylvans incredibly powerful long before Soul Charge was even released, so I’d like to think of that as a small departure from true Sylvans and we’re now brought back to making actual plays with the deck rather than auto-pilot wins (which I prefer and find more interesting). In a way I think this will make the deck stronger because it won’t use the overpowered plays as a crutch.

Here’s the deck list I’ve started off with. Keep in mind I don’t think it is complete, meaning it will be changing as I test new stuff:

Monsters (23):

• 3 Sylvan Hermitree
• 1 Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos
• 3 Sylvan Sagequoia
• 2 Fallen Angel of Roses
• 3 Sylvan Marshalleaf
• 2 Lonefire Blossom
• 3 Sylvan Komushroomo
• 1 Spore
• 1 Sylvan Peaskeeper
• 1 Sylvan Cherubsprout
• 3 Sylvan Princessprout

Spells (12):

• 1 Soul Charge
• 2 Terraforming
• 1 Foolish Burial
• 3 Sylvan Charity
• 3 Miracle Fertilizer
• 2 Mount Sylvania

Traps (5):

• 2 Vanity’s Emptiness
• 3 Call of the Haunted

Extra Deck (15):

Synchros:

• 1 Scrap Dragon
• 1 Stardust Dragon
• 1 Stardust Spark Dragon
• 1 Black Rose Dragon
• 1 Armory Arm

XYZs:

• 1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis
• 2 Divine Dragon Knight Felgrand
• 1 Alsei, the Sylvan High Protector
• 2 Orea, the Sylvan High Arbiter
• 1 Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack
• 1 Number 11: Big Eye
• 1 Evilswarm Exciton Knight
• 1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn

So, without Soul Charge, what do we have here? Honestly still a very similar deck, with 2 extra card slots. The ban list gave the deck access to Glow-Up Bulb, which is certainly interesting, but I’m not all too sure about it yet, which I’ll talk about later. Other than that, no changes other than theoretical ones to the play style of the deck.

The Changes:

As for changes since I last posted a deck list, there are many. I’ve cut both Copy Plant, Royal Decree, Kuribandit and Debris Dragon. I in effect, swapped Princessprouts for Peaskeepers. I now run 3 Marshalleaf. Then there’s the addition of Blaster, Foolish Burial, Terraforming, Vanity’s Emptiness and Call of the Haunted. Notably, I don’t run Dandylion, One for One or Glow-Up Bulb. The Extra Deck is mostly the same, but with a few tweaks.

The reason for the cuts: Kuribandit makes me angry in every deck now. The setup is nice, but it practically burns your entire turn, and people like to Breakthrough Skill it anyways, meaning you burn a turn for literally nothing.

I still like Copy Plant, I’ve been thinking of running 1, but it’s hard to find space for it. I’ll add it to the list of things I’m thinking about later.

Decree is nice, but I really wanted to run Call of the Haunted. Certainly I will be siding Decree, but it’s not nearly as a relevant a choice as it was during Hand format long past.

Debris Dragon is just not the monster I want to be summoning. It does give me an easy seven or a Black Rose in a pinch, but it doesn’t move my strategy forward at all. I tested it again when I tested the newly unbanned plant engine, and I didn’t like the plant engine so the Debris Dragon left with it.

Blaster, Foolish, Terraforming and Emptiness are all results of Patrick Hoban. I would be naive to ignore a duelist like his’ opinion of the deck, and although there are quite a few haters out there, I very much respect his opinions and ability as a duelist. Hoban was running Sylvans all through Hand format and you can read his article for more in depth thoughts on these choices, but here’s the brief version: Blaster is good in general for the deck and in hand is an out to many things and also can pitch Hermitree from hand. Foolish goes along with Blaster but is also set up for Soul Charge, Miracle Fertilizer and Call of the Haunted and can also send Spore. Emptiness is game ending card for the deck; make a Orea, use its effect to look at the top 8 cards and search for Emptiness and put a plant then Emptiness on top. Then use Hermitree to excavate the plant then draw the Emptiness and make a powerful board backed by Emptiness. This is furthered after siding into powerful floodgates. Terraforming is a numbers game and also deck thinning theory. Even if you mess up and don’t have targets for Terraforming you can put a Sylvania back into the deck with Charity.

Call of the Haunted is a new choice of my own. It’s functionally similar to Soul Charge ala Call of the Haunted Lonefire Blossom plays, but is also a little more versatile for defense and Battle Phase tricks. The fact that you can still enter the Battle  Phase with it is a huge advantage over Soul Charge, but not to say Soul Charge isn’t still amazing. You can also make a beeline to Orea and start recycling Call of the Haunted using Orea’s effect, along with your copies of Miracle Fertilizer.

As for the change to Princessprout, Princess is simply a more reliable card than Peaskeeper. Peaskeeper runs on the fact that Lonefire is already in the graveyard, and if it is, then it’s better than Princess. Without a Lonefire in the grave though, it’s pretty much dead weight. Princess is a little more underwhelming, but is always live when excavated.

The Extra Deck changes are pretty simple. The Rank 7 and 8 XYZ are the same. I’ve added Stardust Spark Dragon to go with the Vanity’s Emptiness, for the soft lock. Scrap Dragon for general removal and synergy with Call of the Haunted. Exciton and Temtempo are simply there to be outs for Evilswarm Ophion. Exciton can be made by excavating a Cherubsprout with Marshalleaf. Cherub summons Spore, synchro for Armory Arm. Spore banish Marshalleaf to revive as level 4, XYZ for Exciton (or Synchro for an 8). Temtempo is Marshalleaf plus Spore banishing Komushroomo to make it level 3.

Ideas For What to Run:

Copy Plant:

As I said earlier, I still would really like to run 1 copy of Copy Plant. It’s the most movable Level 7 and 8 monster the deck has. You can summon it from hand, the deck with Cherubsprout and the graveyard with Peaskeeper. It combos very nicely with Fallen Angel of Roses as well, to make easy Rank 7 XYZ when you open rather poorly. It also is another way to make Temtempo.

The “Plant Engine”:

I tested out the “plant engine” aka:

• 1 Spore
• 1 Dandylion
• 1 Glow-Up Bulb
• 2 Lonefire Blossom
• 1 Debris Dragon
• 1 One For One
• 1 Foolish Burial

First thing, it takes up a ton of extra deck space for Formula Synchrons, Level 5 Synchros and other shenanigans because it has such level versatility. A large portion of the extra deck is filled, so it’s hard to make that space to begin with.

Second, other than plays strictly within the engine, meaning with no Sylvan interaction, do Dandylion and Glow-Up Bulb have any interaction. What I mean by that is that Dandylion provides absolutely nothing to the Sylvan half of the deck. You have no reason to revive it, discarding it with Sylvania only gets you tokens you can’t use, and excavating it does the same thing. Glow-Up Bulb is similar. You don’t want to draw it because it’s useless in hand, summoning it is like ending your turn unless you’re already winning, in which case it still might as well be a better card in hand. You’re never going to specifically excavate it unless it’s on accident, and in most cases you excavating specific cards using Charity and Sylvania, meaning you’re just waiting to draw it most of the time. When it does happen to be excavated, it’s incredibly lackluster. There’s plenty of other monsters that when excavated, they do far better things, like Princessprout or Cherubsprout. If I really needed to excavate into free Level 1 tuners, then I’d run more Cherubsprout.

The only card I’m rather tentative on is One For One. It does let you summon Spore or Cherubsprout from the deck. Spore for obvious reasons and Cherubsprout for excavating 2 when you’re in trouble. It would also make a lot of sense if I was running Copy Plant. One For One can also pitch Hermitrees to the graveyard, where you usually want them. At the same time it’s pretty dead pretty often.

Fiendish Chain:

I really wanted to run 3 copies of Fiendish Chain, but it’s so hard to find space for it. It’s the closest to an all purpose defense card the deck could ask for and is also amazing in combination with Orea because you can bounce to recycle it. Fiendish Chain also acts as a huge MST bait, and that’s helpful because the deck is vulnerable to MST at a lot of different points. The deck also severely lacks defense, and while a big 2700 beater is scary, it’s not that bad when backed with no defensive cards. A 2700 beater with effect negation and attacking stopping is quite a bit more threatening.

Sylvan Blessing:

This card is one of those cards where people “this card is really bad, why would anyone ever use it?” and then some famous Yu-Gi-Oh! player tops while running it and everyone’s like “I knew it was amazing all along! Everybody though I was bad for running it!” The card at face value is a huge neg. It loses a lot of advantage for setup and plays. At the same time, Mount Sylvania is pretty terrible in terms of advantage, but it’s so powerful in the deck. I think that Sylvan Blessing is really similar, it revives your Hermitrees while ntop decking specific things for it to excavate. In addition, your opponent literally cannot respond to the play because blessing makes the monster unaffected. Blessing is also recurrable by Sagequoia, as an added bonus.

Malefic Stardust Dragon:

This card is really simple. It lets you sit on Mount Sylvania, which is typically vulnerable to MST and just excavate to your hearts content. Backed with Vanity’s Emptiness it’s actually quite annoying. The obvious benefit though is that it’s a Level 8 monster so you can make really easy Rank 8 XYZ using it. The downsides are that it’s not a plant, and that it forces you to run extra Stardust Dragons, which isn’t terrible.

QOTW? Question of the Week:

Now that the Pendulum mechanic is a little more settled and we’re starting to see what it has to offer, what do you think about it? Is it still stupid or are you mostly okay with it? Are you perhaps interested in it, and what ideas do you have for Pendulums?

Written by; Kyle Oliver