Notes & Combos

Early M1 - Dinomorphia Kashtira Labrynth

A lot of the bigger touchpoints noted in October that made this shell strong last season carried over to this one; Dinomorphia Kashtira Labrynth still offers a sharp toolkit of flexible interaction, top-shelf defensive options, and a threat base that’s much more potent and active than what Lab is usually associated with. Its specific mix gives it good chances to stabilize games even against over-eager, aggressive piles, however, it’s still explosive enough to create short clocks to close out quickly if need be against control matchups.

It's also the only relevant Lab variant with floods that are actually in-engine, and thus, you're not heavily dependent on hard drawing your most potent options to pinning down a game like other Labs are. Combine that with the fact that this variant offers the best framework and reward for using counter traps - coming at a time where they're particularly valuable to be on as Lab - and this was an appealing pick to go back-to-back seasons with.

Notes

Trap Lab has gained a ton of popularity so it's worth noting why it wasn't opted for specifically. The reason is the deck basically did what I was already doing here conceptually but just at lower percentages: Notably, there were fewer chances to flood, less powerful floods at that and the rate to see engine was blatantly smaller in popular builds. However, the biggest reason I steered away from it centered around Trap Lab's ability to go second - which can often be pretty poor and way too frequent for my taste in the current meta.

60-card piles and other high-octane combo decks can often be the end of you the moment you lose the coin flip. You have to see a very precise combination of non-engine cards to have a chance and even then that's not a guarantee. And the issue didn't just end with combo decks; Going second against tenacious control decks like Voice can be a hard struggle too for this variant as its grind game isn't all that great given it's usually not on maids, furniture, or any additional engine to pick up the slack - and it's not proactive enough to immediately push through those boards either to stop them before they get going.

Ultimately, it's easier to get away with a lack of turn zero interaction and faint ability to go second on a whole in a mode like Rated, where I felt Trap Lab was a good choice. There, loses only lose a handful of points and there's nothing as negative to your progress as losing a demotion game - and thus, it's safer and more affordable on average to click out of a game where your opponent wombo combo’ed and you're going second with nothing relevant. But in ranked it's a different story. Demotion exists and you can only take a few losses before getting there. So if you're looking to climb quickly and smoothly it's of course a big help to at least have decent capacity to interact when you lose the flip. This variant really didn't so I skipped out on it this season.

The choice to still be on handtraps is a bit of a standout and worth the mention as a bunch of Labs lately have gotten away from it or are really thin here at best. As suggested in the previous note above, I valued having the capacity to operate on turn zero and insurance against decks that aimed to play way above my ceiling. The usual staple-ish suspects at the HT position did a solid job at fulfilling that role in conjuction with the other choices in this area.

Wannabe makes an appearance here, being a particularly useful hand trap as it works well under the deck’s choice of floods, isn't limited to only NTs (grabbing counters was rather strong this run), and can act as a consistency piece in a pinch while still contributing to the deck's overall ability to go second.

Continuing to remain favorable, the Dinomorphia package has only increased from last season by a few cards. Rexterm is just so strong right now given the concentration of Tenpai in the meta that seeing it more often has become desirable, and the cost of doing so is still very favorable in the list as Domain is yet another starter flood hybrid. Another bright spot, Dinomorphia Intact was a clear winner in this environment and quite strong towards the end of the run.