Notes & Combos

I bet you were expecting me to climb with Rollback. To be fair, so was I! Until I ran into Labrynth decks playing it... turns out they can copy your Ghost Meets Girl in the graveyard and lock you out on turn 3. Whoops! I gave up on Rollback late yesterday evening after demoting to Master 5 TWICE from Master 3...

Pure VW is still the best way to climb ladder. Rollback is more consistent, has a ridiculous payoff, and has a better gameplan if Maxx C'd, but has to give up several hand traps and going-second power.

I'm finishing a VW guide to be submitted to this website soon. I've had to rewrite large portions of it after realizing Rollback VW isn't that great in Master Duel though, so it'll be a few days.

This decklist in particular is an experiment. No E-tele, no Called By, just hand traps and gas. Mila (aka Thetys, top 15 last Duelist Cup) ran a very similar VW list last month and reached Master 1 in one day, so I felt compelled to try it.

Is it better than playing my list from the last two seasons? Not sure. I climbed way faster with a high win rate. I lost only 1 game in Master 2, 1 in Master 5, 0 in Master 4, and only encountered difficulty in Master 3, where I needed 30-ish games to climb out.

But how much of it is due to increasing familiarity with the Snake-Eye matchup and luck, rather than additional hand trap percentage, isn't clear. I certainly some lost going-first games that I otherwise wouldn't have if I'd kept Called By, but it was offset by my substantially better going-second results.

Some flex spots: Jiujiu / Cicada could be Dragon Drive and Gossip Shadow instead. Gossip is actually relevant now, there's lots of Nibiru due to how strong it is against Snake-Eye.

To maximize your results with this list, use a Small World visualizer like [this](invalid url The link already has this list's monster lineup plugged in. Follow the lines to know what bridges to what, but generally, revealing a card in hand to bridge to Lili / Jiji / Nibiru / Gamma / Ash in the Deck gets you a Lulu in hand.

If your opponent gets a prompt on an empty board in response to a Pot card or Small World, consider using SW to search a response to Maxx C (Ash, a Maxx C of your own, or even Nibiru).

Anyway, good luck in your climb! Check out #virtual-world in the MDM discord server if you want to say hi.