Notes & Combos

S37: Fiendsmith waiting room edition. I tried climbing with other decks this season, including Snake-Eye Melodious and Chimera, but ran into too many pre-banlist Tenpai andies and Secret Village turbo piles after M5. So I decided to switch to the ol' reliable for quicker rank-ups.

Not much else needs to be said about Ritual Beast: it remains one of the top decks in this format with core strengths that play well into the rest of the meta. I'd argue that the Pure build is even better than Nemeses at this point — Protos loses a large selling point with the incoming Tenpai hits, while having space for 12 HT's and more utility in the Extra Deck actually made a big difference in practice. The ED mix worked out well — funnily enough, the most cuttable card to me is Apollousa, who rarely comes up in turn 1 combos in the Pure variant and ended up as a niche Masquerena target in certain game states. Might explore adding back a link-1 like Anima/Almiraj, and even something like Accesscode for flexible removal options.

Other notable mentions include the 1-of handtraps in Droll + Nib, as well as Small World. Not only do these tech options synergize well to maximize consistency (Droll-Nib-Shield Bearer all as bridges), but they also add much-needed insurance in going 2nd vs. the combo piles still running around (Cyberse, Pendulum, Tearorist).

Going forward, I expect RB to be meta-relevant for a while, even as Tenpai usage drops and the Mulcharmies & Fiendsmith get introduced. Game plan into Fuwalos or Purulia remains the same as vs. Maxx "C" (Bagooska turbo), and the matchup vs. Fiendsmith decks seem favorable on paper with Shifter and Ulti-Rei being an in-engine counter to Requiem, for example.