Notes & Combos

First time reaching Master 1. Pure blind 2nd Striker!

Notes:

• Initially I ran just 1 T-Roar (For Tenpai of course) and figured 3 thrust and 3 upstart would make it consistent enough to find considering you're almost always getting hand-trapped...but in practice:

  • You open thrust but no way to make them hand trap you or they have imperm
  • You banish T-roar while desperately digging with desires
  • Your Thrust gets ashed, and the only other way to it is hard-drawing it
  • You DO open it but can't OTK them and need to buy one more turn

• Second most common matchup was Centurion, and the matchup is almost unwinnable if they get to Blazar, so ran max cyclone/droplet to stop the field spell/Crimson Dragon. Those two are also just generically good in most matchups whereas something like Lava Golem or Ultimate Slayer are not

• I generally don't like Evenly, but it's a much better board wipe vs Centurion because of how resilient they are to Duster/Heavy Storm and most decks have enough GY recursion that the face down banish really allows you win in the grind game

• The upside to T-roar in non-tenpai games is that if they Maxx C you and you hard open T-roar, there are times you can just set it, Shizuku Pass, and take on the board next turn with extra Engages in hand

• Most common lose conditions:

  • Opening too many of Raye (this feels like a lot still but any less than this and you really run the risk of opening no way to your links)
  • Literal FTKs or hand looping for 4+ because you run no hand traps (plz ban Aero Shark, and also I hate Omega)
  • Secret Village (we have almost no outs but it's not run commonly enough to account for it in deck building)
  • Blazar
  • Go first against Tenpai w/o T-Roar

• Everything else, no matter how crazy the end board, felt very winnable

• I went for Breakers over Hand Traps, and there's definitely ups/downs to either approach. Breakers I think are better but it can be boring to watch your opponent go fullllll combo everytime, and if Maxx C ever resolves you often just win automatically

• Final Note: There is a LEGIT case to run pot of avarice. Your grind game is great but you run out Link monsters FAST, especially with upstart giving them LP and evenly skipping your battle phase