FusionFes was actually... fun?
"STOP HAVING FUN!"
"NO!"
Fusion Festival will be ending soon, and boy what a trip it was! By far, it is the most fun event Master Duel has ever held and it's not just because I have a ton of fusion cards. The overall gameplay was good, the loaner decks were decent, and there are a great variety of decks in play!
Gravekeeper Fun
Of course, I start out every event playing a fun deck, I chose Gravekeepers with a Relinquished core, because I assumed that Despia and all their graveyard shennanigans would be present the whole event. And was I right! One thing about Despia is that NOBODY runs spell removal, so once [Necrovalley] hits the field, nothing gets out. One of the finer moments of the event was locking both Aluber and Ecclesia from escaping the grave, seeing the double negates at turn's end and the self-explode was quite funny.
Superpoly, Superpoly, Fusion Destiny, Everywhere
Pretty much every deck runs superpoly for the fusion event, even the loaner decks! Konami in their infinite wisdom have made it so that EVERYONE gets access to it to even the playing field. One thing I liked about the event was that hand advantage is back! You have to be careful when your opponent leaves a suspicious card in hand to discard to superpoly, and since not every card goes into FULL ADVANTAGE mode when you cast it, you have to mind how and when you use your cards. The lack of negates and a subtle shift to managing resources made me quite happy.
Well, everything except DPE, which I really hated. It's like the Twin's package in one card, which slots in every deck. Sure, it'll steal games off you, but you always feel like the Villain cheated.
Clownville Civil War
Later on, I switched to a meta deck. You can't talk about FusionFes without talking about Despia. It seemed like EVERYONE was running clowns in the event, myself included. It's not a really big surprise, since Despia's recursion is pretty substantial, Aluber and Dramaturge WILL keep popping up from the grave so long as you have Theater, and most people aren't running spell removal except for duster.
Also, this is not even Despia's ceiling, with the [Albaz Strike] structure deck far away, and most people too poor to run [Foolish Burial] or [Golden Sarcophagus], we haven't even seen the limits of Despia yet. I think I'll write more about clowns next season when I try to ladder with them with my newly minted URs. This season I just want to reach the Diamond periphery with Altergeists again.
One other small thing I wanted to note about Despia is the card [Despian Tragedy], which has a great effect when banished or sent to the grave by a card effect. Apparently it has a special ruling that it doesn't work on costs, which is weird. A very minor thing which always has me searching for the semicolon in cards. (i.e superpoly doesn't let you get the effect but twin twister does, weird huh)
Last Word
A really fast note on FusionFes before I go back to work, because I've been rushing episode 2 of my book, making improvements to the scenes as I go along. At this pace, I might be done with Episode 2 completely in 2 weeks. It's a good pacing, and the release is in sight.
