The Diamond Door, Duelist Cup Edition [August]

"It's been a long time..."

This month was the Duelist Cup in Master Duel, it's the first of it's kind of online tournament; divided into two stages, the first part is a ranked-like ladder where you have to get enough positive wins to get to stage 2, and once you are there, it changes to a MMR system over three days.

It's an interesting system...! The first half is perfectly achievable for anyone who wants to grind (going six positive is not THAT hard), and the second half looks deceptively grindy, but the 50% cutoff is probably at around the 10k mark where the point reward and loss are mostly the same and everyone will be stuck in that quagmire.

But in order to get to Stage 2 of the World Series of Master Duel... I have to get past Stage 1.

Rank 17 Hell

FUN FACTS: A full 32/97 decks saw use of some combination of Adventurer, DPE or Sneedfiber/Aurarodon. That's not even counting the games where it wasn't shown and I have strong suspicions they were present, just not drawn. That's almost the hitrate of the entire meta, combined!

Since I ended in platinum last season, I started at R10. I played 54 games from R10 to R17, and 97 games to get to stage 2, for a total of 152. That's about how much I play in a month...!

It should go without saying that I played Swordsouless (yes, yes, evil slant eyed wyrms etc etc) for the first half of the event. Eventually I swapped to CLOWNS! to finish the job.

The ranks 10, 15, 17 and 20 are the cutoff points. You cannot go lower than those ranks once you achieve them. There's nothing spectacular from ranks 10-17, it's mostly off-meta decks that occasionally can eke out a win over you, but I mostly used Swordsouless and ran people over as usual.

SHAMEFUR DISPRAY: The weirdest game I had was of a Swordsouless player suddenly pulling Eldlich outta nowhere. Damnit mang, you may have no soul, but did you have to lose your tamashi too?

Now, rank 17 is where the Metal Gear Revengeance music starts blasting and everyone gets all hot and sweaty Brazilian style. Anyone who has played Stage 1 can tell you: R17 is hell. You keep bouncing back and forth because you are up against one Swordsouless after the other, you might get away with ashing a Sneedfiber one game, only to lose it all the next. I really can't complain, since I am doing mostly the same thing.

It's also at this point that the menace of the adventure engine really rears its head. Being able to get out an omni-negate and bounce is more deck efficient and powerful than the entire Altergeist archetype combined, which kinda ticked me off. There's something about the consistency of Adventurer, and the amount of leverage it has over average hands that makes me think that it shouldn't be THAT consistent.

I ran the really old Coltwing/Resonator/ Cupid Pitch combo, which bricks quite often. There's a far superior version in Adventurer Tenyi where they sacrifice a Tenyi and the free Gryphonback into Galaxy Tomahawk for the Aurarodon-like token spam. The first time I saw it, I was like "whaaa? why did they throw away a negate on the board?", it turns out they wanted to go for THREE negates! There's something ridiculous about this setup that deserves a whole writeup.

Bouncing Up and Down

The story of the Duelist Cup can really be summed up as the battle of the engines, for most decks the Adventure engine coming online, or just a single DPE will win you the game. You definitely can go up against it, as I tried to do with Swordsouless, packing Called By the Graves, Ghost Ogres and Nibirus (lol), but eventually you have to realize you can't win them all.

Eventually I had to admit that going into the golden Yang Zing, tedious as it may be, is the superior play. Sometimes resonator/coltwing bricks your hand, but Yang Zings are also wyrms, so they don't (mostly).

I really hate the idea of Aurarodon saccing itself to get O-Lion in order to go into Baronne, something always feels wrong with this play but I can't really put my finger on why.

So, eventually I played enough Swordsouless that I have enough games in R17/18 hell as I have from 10-17, and the games were way tougher too.

Time to bring out my secret weapon.

ENTER: CLOWNWORLD

“They hated Dramaturge because he told the truth!”

I pulled out a deck I haven't seen in a very long time, my old friends, Le Pierrots del Despia. Nothing much has changed, except I swapped out the twin twisters for Kaijus because I want to make every solo negate opener (which is adventurer) a thin line of defense. Clowns got slightly more powerful with [Guardian Chimera], and the justification for putting in [Frightfur Patchwork] is more solid now.

Mostly. This is subverted in Stage 2 though.

The extra card is pretty important for fusion decks, since it gives you the chance to have two big fusions on board instead of one, and Despia's (and fusion decks in general) want to minus to get an advantage. Packing [Golden Sarcophagus], [Foolish Burial], [Frightfur patchwork] gives me multiple ways to start without Aluber, which is pretty cool. (people are stilly going to ash tragedy and Aluber anyway)

I've also been thinking about the viability of running two Dramaturges, which is something I did for a while and am considering again. Dramaturge is so important to the Despia strategy that I would like to hard draw him sometimes. Deck space is always the problem here, since I really was cutting it close running the extra Comedy for the Despia hit, and cutting away backrow removal is really sus, considering that Eldlich is meta.

Also a new addition is [Despian Comedy], which I finally found a use for when [Despian Theater] is active. During combat, you can pull away [Despian Quaeritis] to take a hit, and Theater will bring back Quaeritis because a fairy died while it is active. It's an interesting combination to keep Quaem's effect safe from way to remove it from the field without triggering it.

Going Second... Permanently!

“Do it, Akane. Play Despia, but ALWAYS go second, even if you win the coinflip!”

Eventually I got fed up with all the times I go first and still lose spectacularly. Even opening well with Despia, Despia's going first board is really weak even with Quaem and Dramaturge. Comparatively speaking of course, when the average meta decks ends on multiple negates (which is discard by a different name), Despia's starting board is a joke. Even double Masquarade takes everything out of you, and is easily dodgable by negating one, and ignoring the other, going about the usual gameplan until you kill the clowns.

I had to relearn a lesson I learnt the hard way the last time I brought Despia to high ranks: Despia works better as a going second board. I still had pretty mid results until I remember this lesson and just went hard going second once I crafted my three Niburus. Now [Max C] turns into a real game ender with a high chance of hitting a random Nib, and they still have to deal with a potential [Super Polymerization] outta nowhere too.

So I cut the called, cut the crossouts, and added Nib, and went full going second. I guess it scared a bunch of players because they put me on Numeron and started setting their adventure stuff in defense position. It's a lovely comedy.

The final few fights were against two prank kids, and a Speedroid. Boy those were tough. Both Prank Kids pulled out their DPEs, and I guess I should be really glad that they didn't pull out their Adventurer engine as well. That's kinda scuffed up if your fail state is DPE and multiple prankpedos. Coincidentally, my final game in Stage 2 was also a Speedroid player who I Witch Striked, but that's a story for another day.

Final Scene

R17-R20 was tough. There's no going about it. I didn't do too well or play as much as I wanted to for Stage 2 due to personal stuff, and Stage 2 was even tougher. I had some of my toughest matches in Stage 1, but I really still hate the one card engines.

It's not that nobody is using them to boost unused decks (they do), it's more the tedium of seeing Dracoback AGAIN when you didn't ash the rite; or having to blind ash a Gryphon search and allowing the other part of the deck to come online, be it DPE or whatever cancer is being run. Certainly it was tough, and frustrating when I bounced up and down, but it really did feel like I accomplished something when I got there. (apparently not everyone did)

Duelist Cup pt 2? Probably will be a children's card game design related writeup.

Ah, don’t worry, book is progressing fine, most of it is art-related. If the Steam page goes up around the end of the month or early Sept you know I am on track. See you on release!

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