The Great Resoot Is Happening! [Master Duel]
What We Have Now
"Is the game ded?"
"No." - Solemn Old Man Under the Duel Field
Just as everyone is going full Despia about not having any major update to the MD client for months, Konami hits us with an update outtanowhere!
Master Duel has always been a game slow with updates, many people say that it released half-baked but I think that's really crazy because you have over a hundred archetypes to play around with, if you play a singular deck autistically of course you're going to get bored eventually after crafting all those handtraps and staples you need. On one hand the huge amount of archetypes is great because of the variety, and on the other it feels like there's nothing to do after you run out of gems. (but what about having fun with the decks?)
In fact, I think that's what happened to me last month. A combo of me hating syncro and wanting to take it easy to work on [/Conspiracy/ Girls] made me slow down and stay in Gold for the longest time. I think I missed out about 400-600 gems just not playing the last few days of the month because I really couldn't be bothered until I finished the battlepass.
There's a whole bunch of things to look forward to now; new banlist, new cards, new cosmetics and all that jazz.
Minor Banlist Thoughts
A couple of things that have been confirmed before: a small and humble banlist targetting Tri-brigade, Eldlich and Drytron, good because FUCK DRYTRON! (tm) I think I speak for a majority of players when I say I am tired of facing the same old deck over and over again with little variation inbetween, Drytron in particular because their turns take ridiculously long and they can generate a ridiculous amount of hand advantage if you don't have handtraps.
Interestingly most people think that the banlist won't shake the meta much. It probably won't do drastic changes to the meta ala kill off multiple decks at once; a new archetype in SPLights is already doing a good job there in the OCG eradicating every single archetype in existence.
The hits are probably more to hit consistency and reduce the probability of a comeback after getting handtrapped. One of the more annoying things about the decks above is that you could hit the Fraktall correctly, but if your opponent just has ANOTHER Fraktall in hand, they just go through the combo anyway. I can negate a Rugal, negate an Accesscode from a Tri-Brigade player, and they STILL can discard a Fraktall to go into Shurag anyway. So... FUCK TRI-BRIGADE!, I hope Clown Pope gets them good.
There is a minor nerf to Tri-Bird in that mixing both is probably not a great idea.
Same with Benten's infinite recursion, it's a little silly that a Benten/Eva loop ends you with more cards in hand than you started with.
In general, the banlist seems to shy away from UR bans, and seems to be following the OCG (prebanning Fusion Destiny to 2). My hypothesis is that MD and OCG will eventually coincide on banlists, even though that might take sometime to get there. A really big marker would be when [Verte Anaconda] gets banned, that's when we know that Konami won't shy away from banning URs, even those with animations. Another big marker might be if Multifaker gets unlimited like in the OCG, so I'll look out for that too.
New Cards, New Meta?
Konami has been showing off some new cards which are getting animations, one the waifu side of things, I am going to like Trouble Sunny a lot. Evil Twins is a good deck, but I really feel awkward because even if you summon both evil twins at once, it always feels like you are on the back foot because the twins can't go over many threats, and their main phase only quick effect sometimes trips me up. For now, I'm putting Evil Twins down to go back to Altergeists so I can go up to Diamond more comfortably.
Metawise, will there be any big changes through the banlist? Probably not. Individually, the banlist hits most of the top decks, but so long as they keep winning, people are still going to keep playing them.
That's of course, until two new engines in Dark Pheonix Enforcer and the Adventure engine shake up the meta.
[Dark Pheonix Enforcer] is a new fusion card which potentially can go +2 when you use Verte to search out [Fusion Destiny] and fusion summon from the deck. Fusion summons from the deck are always broken (see Red Eyes Fusion and Red Eyes Dark Dragoon), so a small compact engine might push some decks up, but I'm not expecting Heroes as an archetype to come up anytime soon.
What might see a lot of play is the Adventure package, which just goes into a free omni-negate quite easily. One might say that a small glimpse into the future from roadoftheking shows that
I reckon that the Adventure package will come into existence after the current Despia selection pack goes away. I think I'll try and make some decks I've been neglicting (Gravekeepers, Marincess, Relinquished) work with them and see what happens. I also will definitely be trying out DPE to see how it works.
One thing that is troubling is that in April, the Adventure package was limited, so it becomes less splash-able in other decks. Will MD follow the same route? Again, I have the hypothesis that eventually MD will look very similar to the OCG, so I'll be keeping an eye on that.
Last Word
As I am still working on my book, I won't be playing much MD, maybe on and off, but I always come back to it when there is a problem with my VN that I cannot completely solve (laugh). Between WWIII and DPE dominating the meta, I think I'll choose DPE thank you very much. Leave my electronics alone, I haven't collected all the waifu decks yet!
I'm still in the middle of writing my book, refinement is a slow, long and steady process, but I'm still at it. I really wanna make the August date, so I have to work hard! The three months since the prototype came out really feel like a dream, I've solidified the first six episodes, a story is out, and I am slowly commissioning art. Progress!
One thing I would like to do is study roadoftheking meta analysis to see if I can make any useful predictions for Master Duel.
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