The Game Today

I have heard a bit of chatter over the last few days of people hating the current format.  I think there comes a time during many formats, where participants pine for it to come to an end, and for a change in scenery to occur.  This is actually the first format I have enjoyed since the Dragon Ravine Dragon Ruler format, so maybe I am among the minority, but I happen to kind of like the format.  It is not even close to a one-deck format, which is not a plus in my view, as they are widely seen as the most skillful of formats.  Simply put, this is because you know what 75-80% of your matchups will be going into a tournament and you really only prepare for that one matchup, because the “one deck” usually smashes rogue matchups anyways.  I am not entirely certain what it is that I enjoy about the current metagame, but I find it quite interesting.  I think all the decks have flaws and that none are perfect.  Shaddolls or Burning Abyss is probably the best deck, in my opinion, but Qliphorts are clearly still in the race.  The entire format seems like one gigantic game of rock, paper, and scissors.  Qliphorts have a poor matchup versus Burning Abyss, but a good matchup against Shaddolls, Shaddolls have a decent Burning Abyss matchup but a bad Qliphorts matchup, and Burning Abyss has a good matchup against Qliphorts and not as good against Shaddolls.

After playing Qliphorts at YCS Anaheim, I decided to try something different when I came home, and since I had played Shaddolls for most of the previous format, I selected Burning Abyss.  While playing Qliphorts, is quite fun, and you get to kill the opponent quickly a lot, which was great, because I often did not have to worry about time to go eat after the round; it is very linear.  You are playing a game of protect the castle, usually from start to finish (finish being you kill them or they broke your board and kill you).  You simply drop your board, search the correct combo pieces with Scout and make your plays.  After going over my losses while playing Qliphorts, it was often apparent that there was little that I could have done differently, and it came down to draws, etc.  This is probably not what you want if you are about to play through an 11-round event, since the odds will be stacked against you.  The other two top tier decks of the format, allow for many more lines of play and you will often lose because of a poor decision and not because your opponent simply had “the out”.

Some of what I am writing here is evidenced by what happened in both YCS Anaheim and ARG Chicago over the past two weekends.  In YCS Anaheim, there were a total of 11 Burning Abyss in top 32, 10 Qliphorts, 9 Shaddolls, and 2 Satellarknights.  At ARG Chicago, there were 10 Burning Abyss in the top 16, 3 Shaddolls, 2 Qliphorts, and 1 Satellarknight.  Keep in mind of course that YCS Anaheim had roughly 1600 participants and ARG Chicago had just over 200.  Unfortunately for us, we cannot pinpoint the deck that won out the YCS outright, since they draft after top 16, however we can look at the ARG coverage to discover what happened there.  By top 4, only Burning Abyss decks were left in the field.  I am not certain that we can simply deduct that it is the “best” deck from this analysis; after all, ARG Chicago did only have the same amount of players as an average regionals qualifier.  However, it is certainly something to consider.

It is not my opinion that Qliphorts simply lost favor within the community, but that a majority of the “best” players were deciding between Burning Abyss and Shaddolls.  ARG events attract mostly competitive players, making the field consist mostly of tier decks, fewer rogue decks, and a lot of Shaddolls and Burning Abyss if my previous statement rings true.  Qliphorts can simply dominate games against rogue matchups, and if their sideboard is well equipped and the opposing player does not draw quite well, the Qliphort player can often blowout the opponent.  Since there are more casual players at YCS events, this could be a simple explanation for the low amount of Qliphort decks in the top cut of Chicago when comparing it against Anaheim. Allowing a Qliphort player to board a monster and keep it there with a Saqlifice can be quite dangerous, because on the next turn it can be used as a tribute for Disk and will allow combos to occur.  An opposing player can prevent this by getting rid of the monster as fast as they can.  This will prevent the opponent from triggering Saqlifice and getting the search.  If Qliphorts have gone first, and gotten set up, dealing with Saqlifice and the monster are probably the best courses of action.  There are many times when I will hold my Typhoon for their Skill Drain/Emptiness (depends on the deck you are playing) rather than playing it on Qliphort Scout.  This often depends on the type of hand that you have and the type of answers you have for your opponent’s summons.

Personally if you want to have fun this format, I would suggest playing either Shaddolls or Burning Abyss, as there are many more lines of play, whereas with Qliphorts, you either just win or lose based on the answers the opponent has.  All of the mirrors are a bit rough, but it has been a lot worse.  That said the people that despise the format will not have to wait long for a change, because over the next fortnight we should have some form of information on the new ban list from Konami.  As per usual, I will have an article up shortly detailing the latest wishlist of changes.