The Diamond Door, May 2022 [Master Duel]
This month I spent some time recording down my matches on Master Duel, which I am compiling to write a report on my climb to diamond!
Hopefully reading this will let you post 'just KOGed' in /mdg/ too. (laugh)
Personnel Stats
I played Pure Despia for 167 matches, alternating between (losing with) Altergeists early on, before slowly shelling out UR points piece by piece for the full Despia UR staples and [Number 100: Numeron Dragon].
Although you can get by with just the cards from [Ruler's Mask], you definitely want to add [Foolish Burial], [Gold Sarcaphogus] for easy one card starters by killing off [Despian Tragedy]. Despia also has severe issues with grinding, so [Number 100: Numeron Dragon] always ensures the win when you have two level 8s on the board, which you should win anyway because you are so far ahead. The only quickplay out on a loose board to this is an [Effect Veiler] in hand, so watch out!
At some point, I removed the Albaz engine in favor of the DPE engine. Albaz is fun and synergizes with Quaem for some funny plays, so long as you keep a card in hand. However, Albaz is really vulnerable to disruption, and losing a card is big for Despia, so while relevant, is also too weak. This will definitely change with [Branded Fusion] in the coming months.
Another key piece of Despia is the [Frightfur Patchwork] engine, which ensures that you never have problems with fusing creatures. The only way to truly brick is to start with no Despia creatures, and fail to fetch a single one, which by this point you are massively behind already.
A big theme in this month's matches was overloading Ash Blossom. I noticed that the reason why Despia is so strong going second is because even if your opponent has Ash, they can only take out either [Frightfur Patchwork] or Aluber, either of which will go into a fusion spell anyway. Your opponent is put in the awkward position of having to guess if you already have the materials or fusion in the hand, which most people will not get right.
Of course, there's double super-poly for all the chaotic funtimes. Super-poly + Albaz was the most fun I had in some time, but boy was it skill testing to keep your hand advantage in mind. I cut Albaz in the end beucase it became far too complex for my monkebrain.
Although I chose to start first for majority of my matches, at the near end of my run I chose to go second, always. I got really annoyed with all the times I was losing to Swordsoul, so I added [Maxx "C"], [Lava Golem], and a single kaiju. This worked tremendously better, because Despia really needs the extra card to compensate for [Branded Opening] or my own [Twin Twisters]. Pure Despia is MUCH stronger going second than going first. Double Masquarade is a funny meme, and goes into a FTK on turn 2, but is very rare compared with Quaem into Number 100 OTK. I find my opponent finding solutions to double masquarade more often than not.
Strangely, [Twin Twisters] doesn't activate [Despian Tragedy], despite having the same type of wording as [Branded Opening], goddamn inconsistencies S E N Ding me crazy.
Le Metageimu
Swordsouless
Emerging at number 1 on the metafag hitlist is... Swordsouls. Go figure. Swordsouls can put up a multi-negate board going first, and have insane recovery, a bounce from the grave, and can easily OTK you going second just by summoning Longyuan and Mo Ye. Usually 2 synchro summons = dead opponent.
This is the reason why I started running [Lava Golem], taking up a full fifth of the meta, Swordsoul is a huge threat to any deck that cannot efficiently get through a double negate board, with a potential bounce from the grave. (which is pretty much everyone) For Despians who have no omni-negate of their own, that's quite fatal.
Deck X
This month also marked the rise of bugmen bots. Anyone who's played a significant amount of duels this month has noticed the bots running the default deck and trying to wait you out. One thing I noticed is that the AFK system will sometimes kick YOU out because if you simply watch the opponent not do anything, YOU are considered the one slow playing. Konami... fix your geimu pls.
The counter to this is to click anywhere on the board repeatedly and wait for them to time out. Clicking on only one spot (e.g the mate) causes you to get a connection failure (16 this month).
I am guessing that the bots are doing something similar with an autoclicker clicking on other parts of the board. Take this time to READ your extra deck. You might find some funny insights like: Did you know that Verte can fetch Super-poly? The more you know!
The Former Kings
Drytron has fallen to a mere 5 encounters, there is a very obvious chokepoint in Diviner now; negate that schizo and it's difficult to play on. Oh, and they can't recycle Benten (limited to 1) for infinite hand advantage. HAH! I KNEW Drytron players were frauds! DUCK FRYTRON!
Tri-Brigade is mostly the same with only 5 encounters, but its variants in Tri-Bird and pure Bird if added together still amount to roughly 1X of the metagame, depending on how you count. My guess is that the lost Tri-Brigade players are really just the Swordsouless players, they just moved to the next most efficient and oppressive thing.
Eldlich is the most stable deck, still reigning at 8 encounters. The main gameplan of flipping floodgates like Skill Drain hasn't been really effected. If you can't operate under [Skill Drain], you still aren't going to be able to get past whatever is backing it up anyway.
Even combined, the former kings who made up well over half the metagame don't even match up to Swordsoul's total encounter rate now.
Last Word
Oh how the mighty have fallen. In truth, the banlist is very minor and inconveinences the former kings, but because the people who play these kinds of decks don't really like them, they'll easily ditch them for the next best thing. I estimate 25% of the population to be like this. Metafags, everybody.
Bots are a really harmful thing to the integrity of this game, hopefully Konami gets rid of them soon. Can you imagine having to fight clown bots in whatever Fes is coming out next? Not a great look!
Written 220531
