Notes & Combos

I played Sinful Labrynth Midrange, a deck similar in ideals to those that I piloted in the recent past. On that note, this deck is once again a blend of orderly answers, prime value engines, and productive threats - with the key difference being how robust it is in the grind. Of the Sinful decks, this one had the best late-game; Its particular composition allowed it to have an edge in attrition while accumulating value in more ways than its individual components could otherwise accomplish - making it hard to out-trade and distinctly favorable as the game dragged on.

On top of that, it was also trickier to defend and approach, given it is on a much wider interaction suite that has access to real traps to account for while a lot of the common defensive options right now get less mileage into it than elsewhere. All in all it was well aligned for the midrange dominant meta we find ourselves in and ended up offering me a very fast M1 to finish the season.

Notes:

• The SE cards as a value engine rather than combo pieces, is a core stance of this list and a large departure from how the vast majority of players on these cards use them. There's no Flamberge, no Oak, we're not doing the typical turn 1 combo lines here. Rather, we're concerned with setting up Divine Temple, banking the advantage, and snowballing CA out of control from there, and for that, this list is on the full 3 copies - a hallmark of this approach in its own right.

• Divine Temple is an excellent value engine with all the tools you want from it; It compounds nicely, acts as a delayed-starter, has hard-to-avoid triggers, leads to solid interaction or follow-up and its initial returns are lush from a value sense. Equally as important, Divine Temple also runs interference on Pure SE as you can summon their monsters too, giving it good defensive value as well in the meta's premier MU. The card is a strong partner to the way Lab likes to play for CA and smart temple use was often a sizeable asset in tilting games to favorable. This package was great all run.

• Silvera shined brightly along with the rest of the Sinful lineup. I already wrote about the merits of running the Sinful engine in Lab on MDM, but it's worth briefly reiterating how good it is for the deck. Diabellstar is a scalable, sticky threat that lets you progress board states proactively while also offering a bunch of utility to mend the gaps in Lab's toolkit. And Silvera of course, is easily one of the most powerful normal traps at Lab's disposal, not only granting it a loopable omni negate - but one that is permanent in that negation too. This build is heavier than others here notably opting for maximum Chase, giving our Dia much more longevity than the opponent's to ensure another advantage in later states while also being a general check against any deck trying to outgrind.

• Rounding it out I'm on a lot of the usual mainstays of Lab-Midrange builds: Kash package still brings Unicorn and Birth which remain well positioned in the meta and top-shelf threats like Arise-Heart are even more consistent now given how high the level 7 access is. A fat 6 copies of Daruma are in stock as it's about as effective as it gets from answering everything from SE to stun, and the HT lineup brightly pushes back against SE even further with full Belles, Mourners, and more. Bystials still find slots as a tweener pick - hedging well against Branded while being sneakily sturdy into Snake.