Notes & Combos

Finally, I've come across a synchro deck that's more control than midrangey, but admittedly not pure control like runick nat for example. Still, it has more of a control playstyle compared to something like swordsoul, and is fairly competent.

To build this deck I took inspiration from 3 different builds: bystial runick, branded synchro, and bystial warcrime. The first involves using mainly quem and cartesia alongside runicks which trigger quem, the second is branded good stuff that focuses on sycnhro plays rather than brafu turbo, and the third is a link control deck that uses many engines like scareclaw, kash, bystials, and handtraps, but no synchro plays. So I initially started with a small engine for purely synchro plays, but I'd brick a ton; introducing verte turbo was the syntactic sugar to keep the deck together and be able to play even when you opened suboptimally. This made it so that I'd make my synchro plays usually, but when I opened 4 handtraps and a bystial, i could still end on 2 interrupts in the form of mirrorjade, allowing me to keep the engine small unlike most branded variants, and play as close to handtrap synchro control as possible. Also BIHS is there for consistency as a 40th card fyi.

Speaking on HTs, I run 14, and then 20 including bystials. So even if bystials are dead you can still play going second if you open well. In terms of engines, I'm running 3 quem, 3 cartesia, some one offs which aren't necessarily bricks but aren't as nice to draw, then the branded engine including the albaz, and finally a full bystial engine, rest are handtraps. You have easy synchro 10/ 8 access, and are also able to turbo link 2s, so SP will be a welcome inclusion although space is tight.

In terms of how to play, there are a lot of lines. But your main 1.5 card combos: quem: quem + albaz/ branded S/T. Send shrouded, shrouded eff to special by sending from hand, make verte. for bystial: 1 light or dark handtrap into almiraj, bystial, into verte. Your most efficient power play is quem + saronir (or better yet lubellion). quem dump merc, saronir, search cartesia, dispater, send aluber, cartesia ss, pater res merc, chaos ruler, have fun. Combos are fairly intuitive, but priority is to end on verte unless you hard draw brafu, then make seals instead. This deck is recovery focused, so always try set up regained, beast, retribution to reuse brafu; expect your board to get broken, but they'll never otk, then get them next turn with branded recursion.