Notes & Combos

I played Sinful Labrynth Midrange and piloted it to a quick Max. The deck is roughly the same as what I already had success with in ranked this season, so if you're unfamiliar with this deck, its approach, and its concepts I highly suggest you read here.

While I tried various other builds of Lab post Return of The King, this one just kept outperforming in testing. Divine Temple is still such a nasty card for any deck trying to grind against you, making midrange wars much more manageable and Diabellstar is just wonderful here; A swiss-army knife of value and utility that's often a magnet for one of the most powerful normal traps in the meta - Silvera. There's little doubt that Sinful Spoils and Snake-Eye are some of the best - and very arguably are the best - supporting engines and cards on a whole in the game right now so it was a big plus in my book to have access to that in some capacity, as the average card quality from them was a clear cut above the alternatives Lab usually pairs up with.

However, what ended up tipping the scales for me to run with this deck again was that this build didn't have to make concessions in its defensive options, which was huge. Almost every Lab I tried had to give up noticeable ground somewhere as the room for non-engine was often just mild. Despite how good SE is, there's actually a decent enough assortment of decks being run currently to the extent that you just can't lock in on it - so being on a bigger frame that can accommodate a wider pool of interaction and thus, take on more matchups without being shorthanded, paid a lot of dividends and ended up being a pretty good call for this event.

Notes

Transaction Rollback is essentially the only real card to note this time around, quickly becoming the primary new addition to Lab, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a very adaptable normal trap that has the potential upside of being more advantageous than the original card that it's copying as it bypasses norms, and to add crushed Oreos to this sundae - it can be a clean answer to some of Lab's typical weaknesses (Ash / Belle). With all of its glory, it's commonly landed itself as a routine 3-of in paper, however, I don't believe that quantity is correct for most Labs in Master Duel and especially for the one I played today.

As good as Rollback is, it's not inherently a starter, an extender, or even a piece of interaction: It's important to keep in mind that Rollback is only these conditionally, and in a vacuum, the card's value is actually shockingly low to such a degree that it can easily contribute to bricking. Roll's worth directly scales with the options on tap in grave, but not all options are created equally (ex. Rolling an Imperm or regular Welcome is generally weaker than something like a Daruma or Big) so in reality, seeing an impactful target with it tends to be statistically unfavorable, as the average Lab isn't on a high enough volume of them. This situation only complicates itself further as the means to actually grave Rollback to use in the first place are less than desirable in its math as well given the particular hits to the furniture MD has.

With that said, I found it disadvantageous in this deck to go out of the way to artificially make Rollback better by trying to improve its key metrics (ex. adding more discard outlets like Ariane or forcing a larger amount of traps in the main that have higher impact for it to copy), as the opportunity cost associated with including Rollback starts to become more than just "3 cards in your deck" and starts negatively affecting other areas as you have to give up more space and options to accommodate it.

Furthermore, if playing correctly, you rarely need to resolve more than 1 Rollback to begin with to win a game, so I was just fine with going with the single copy (Lady was able to grab that when need be) and feel that 0-1 copies were ideal here overall (and 1-2 in most other Lab lists for the record). There were a lot more games in this event where I didn't play Rollback whatsoever than those that I did, as I valued having other tech over it that was more readily available when drawn and had less strings attached to actually make a difference on board. I didn't miss Rollback in those games, but I still wanted to show where it was when I did play it so I included it in the deck profile for those who were curious.