Florsheim Metagame Analysis : 125th YCS Turin

Hi guys,

Well, it's already a long time since I used this "Metagame Analysis" header. I may miss the target with this analysis since I'm not dueling in a competitive scene anymore. So I'm open to critism, feel free to correct me in the comment section. Anyway, this post is still in english because I want to learn formal writing in english. If you can spot any mistake in grammar, vocabulary, or inappropriate use of language, please tell me in the comment.

Last weekend, 30 November - 1 December 2013, the 125th YCS was held in Turin, Italy. Like the 100th YCS, there are awesome mats for participating, which is Artorigus the Noble Knight. The greatest thing about European YCS is, as always, the coverage. Thanks to PJ Tierney and his coverage team, we can get the information accurate and almost real-time, sometimes even faster than Alter Reality Games facebook page. The American coverage team really need to learn from them.

In the coverage, we can see that the metagame was swarmed with Dragon Rulers. The YCS was attended by 521 Dragon Ruler players and 803 non-Dragon Ruler players. At the start of second day, 150 Dragon Rulers and 99 other decks were remaining. Dragon Ruler players were undoubtedly winning, but this statistics was not final yet. In the Top 32 (or 31 because they are missing 1 player), the reign of Dragon Rulers became clearer. It was 21 Dragon Ruler players versus 10 others. Dragon Ruler seems unstoppable by then.

With the domination of those Dragon Ruler players, the winning deck was unexpected. From all non-Dragon Ruler deck, Sam Pedigo, the winner, was using Geargia. This is surprising since Geargia was an underrated deck, but if you take a look at his decklist, it is evident why he won. He wittedly used almost all anti-Dragon Ruler at maximum number each in his Main Deck. This includes Maxx "C", Imperial Iron Wall, Gozen Match, Soul Drain and even his tech, Seven Tools of the Bandits. In the side deck, you can see the anti of any other big contender maxed out, like DNA Surgery for Noble Knights and Spellbooks, Light-Imprisoning Mirror for Constellars, Rivalry of Warlords for Evilwarms and Mermails, and Mystical Space Typhoon for replacing any main decked anti-card that does not match with the opponent he was facing.

The result of YCS may dictate where the metagame will go until the next banlist, which will be effective at 1 January 2014. Dragon Ruler is still the best deck overall, reflected by the increase in percentage from the deck breakdown of day one (~40%), day two (~60%), and the top 32 (~70%). Sam Pedigo may win because he teched heavily against the oversaturated Dragon Rulers in that metagame. So as he played against Dragon Rulers, which at least half of the participant, he got an upper hand. The problem is how can deck like Sam's win in another match up? The explosive but controlling nature should help Geargia players to play defensively and then followed by a one turn kill without using any spell and trap. But when playing against a well-rounded deck, he is still in a disadvantage since there are dead cards in his deck.

In Indonesian competitive scene, this anti-Dragon Ruler strategy may flop tragically, just like how Alvi failed in the Grand Tournament Bandung for using this kind of deck. The main reason is only small percentage of players will use Dragon Ruler as his or her choice for the tournament and also more player will bring a rogue decks. Regardless, Dragon Ruler is definitely the best deck, so there is a high probability that competitive players will choose them as the primary deck among others. This brings us to three options which relationship is alike of those paper-rock-scissors: using a Dragon Ruler deck; or using a well-rounded non-Dragon Ruler deck; or using non-Dragon Ruler that teched heavily against Dragon Rulers. Whatever you choose, please consider and match it with your own metagame at your own community.

Okay that's all for now,
Vandy

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