Notes & Combos

Overview

R-Ace is still good.

This list deviates from my previous early season brews in that it's extremely compact. I took a lot of notes from the 4th place R-Ace list from last season's rated duels, and made some tweaks of my own. They are as follows:

Main Deck

The main deck has all that you'd expect. Compared to the 4th place list, I added a 3rd copy of Diabellstar to boost consistency. For some reason, it opted for just 2x, and that didn't sit right with me. It absolutely helps seeing this card as often as possible with the potential bricks this deck can have, so this was the first tweak I made.

The second was initially going up to 42 cards by adding 2x Talent. This card, at this particular ratio, is both healthy and extremely effective for the deck, as I've yet to draw into both copies, and it can singlehandedly swing a game's momentum into your favor on top of boosting consistency if it's able to resolve. Moreover, in lieu of Gamma, I opted to play Evenly Matched to deal with problem matchups like Kashtira, Stun, the mirror, or other Shifter and/or backrow strats.

The most significant change in the main deck are the singleton copies of Preventer and Turbulence on top of the retention of HQ. I found that in more compact lists, 1x Turb is absolutely viable, and HQ is necessary for higher level games that can get grindy. 1x Preventer isn't fully advised, but I was experiencing pretty tough bricks with it, so reducing it to 1 has helped somewhat.

Extra Deck

The Extra Deck is about as standard as it gets. I've come around on Apollousa and Accesscode in the Extra Deck, as while they've never been bad, they just weren't my forte. Of course, I've since learned my place. Both are exceptional at closing out games, and even better in problem matchups like Stun and Mikanko, where Apollousa's non-targetting monster negation can help with Mikanko's climbing, and Accesscode solos stun boards if it hits the field. I:P always has its place, too, as it helps with dodging targetting and converts into strong link monsters. And S:P is being run at 2x to help with grind games and problem matchups.

Conclusion

R-Ace is still good. Hopefully this will stay the case forever, which is at least until Fiendsmith gets added. I've found immense success with this compact list, and I hope others will, too. I hope to update everyone soon with a similar Master 1 list!