Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer: The most common answer to Treeborn Frog is Kycoo. Eminently splashable, Kycoo stands above the other options in popularity because of its high utility. It isn’t a tribute monster, it isn’t a conditional spell or trap, and in a pinch, it can fill the role of an 1800 ATK beatstick. In return, you have to deal with the fact that Kycoo is useless against a Treeborn player who already has control of the game. You need to be able to maintain the Ghost Destroyer’s ability to hit the opponent’s life points, otherwise you can’t remove the Frog from the graveyard. That’s the whole intent of playing Kycoo as Frog tech: Kycoo’s secondary effect is useless, but if you can remove the Frog from the game, it can’t hop back onto the field.

Kycoo is also nice for its ability to counter Pot of Avarice. Using the same set of tactics, the player running Kycoo just continuously leans on the opponent in order to keep dealing damage and removing possible candidates for return to the deck with the Pot. No monsters in the graveyard means a dead Pot of Avarice. While this trick has been in circulation for quite a while, it’s surprising to see just how effective it’s been at this event.

Oh, and it fends off Chaos Sorcerer to boot. Good deal.

Disappear: This card works in much the same way, teching Pot of Avarice and Treeborn Frog. Disappear can remove the Frog from play the moment it hits the graveyard, and you don’t need to be in control of the game and capable of attacking like Kycoo demands.

Against Pot of Avarice, this thing is just mean. When the opponent declares the five cards that will be designated as Pot’s targets, any disruption to any one of those cards will nullify the Pot’s entire effect. Disappear can be chained to the activation of Pot of Avarice to remove one of the targeted monsters from their graveyard, and Pot then resolves without doing anything at all. It’s taken a lot of players by surprise today. Nobody expects their 2-for-1 drawing card to turn into an even exchange with a set card in the opponent’s spell and trap zone. This could be a popular piece of tech in the next Advanced format, where Treeborn Frog will be limited to one copy per deck and one Disappear will do the job.

You can even use Disappear to counter Call of the Haunted, stealing the opponent’s target and depriving them of their special summon. Disappear’s utility isn’t nearly as high as some of the other tech we’ve seen, but its precision makes it a surprisingly powerful option.

Book of Life: Many duelists are taking another crack at the Zombie archetype, and a big reason for that is this spell. While Book of Life’s primary reason to be included in a Zombie deck used to be its special summon effect, now duelists are running the deck itself specifically for this card’s ability to remove Treeborn Frog from play.

The cool thing about Book of Life is that, like Kycoo, its utility is pretty high. In fact, whereas Kycoo is potentially useful in two major matchups, this card is useful in every matchup, since it’s keyed towards its controller’s deck instead of the opponent’s. Book of Life is a useful card regardless of what the opponent is playing, and that makes it an attractive piece of tech.

That said, some competitors are actually trying to run it in run-of-the-mill Control variants. A deck with three copies of Spirit Reaper can, in theory, support one Book of Life. Whether or not that theory proves to be true remains to be seen.

Chain Disappearance: Chain Disappearance has been quite popular, since it can remove all the copies of an opponent’s Frog from the game. While this will be less of a concern in the next format, again due to Frog being added to the Limited list, Apprentice Magician is going to become more popular, and Magician of Faith will be played in multiples by many duelists. It might be something to look out for.

In the current environment, it can remove Magical Merchant, Old Vindictive Magician, and Spirit Reaper from the game. It can even remove Sangan, preventing the opponent from getting its search effect. Remember, Chain Disappearance removes the monster from play, it doesn’t destroy it, so it’s a nice way to take care of Sangan without wasting D. D. Warrior Lady. It also techs Scapegoat, which continues to see increased play at Shonen Jump Championships.

Airknight Parshath: While all the other Treeborn tech cards focus on removing the offending Frog from play, some duelists are looking to punish the player behind it instead. Airknight Parshath is the hands-down winner in this category: Paul Levitin is running a pair in his main deck, and it’s left him undefeated thus far.

Treeborn Frog actually makes the Airknight viable in the current format, which is more surprising than it probably should be. Most duelists were only really considering Treeborn in relation to its use with Mobius the Frost Monarch and Zaborg the Thunder Monarch because they provide obvious card advantage. But Airknight can create large swings in hand presence as well, and even though it’s less of a sure thing than Mobius or Zaborg (it can be hosed by Sakuretsu Armor before it ever gets in a single piercing shot), its ability to pressure the opponent with a constant flow of damage rewards those willing to take the extra risk. It also neatly counters the neutral tempo achieved by the use of Dekoichi and Magical Merchant. Usually the loss of either monster becomes a neutral exchange: the monster can be destroyed in battle, but it will still net its controller an additional card from their deck to balance things out. But toss Airknight into the Mix, and that neutral tempo becomes an advantageous situation for the aggressor.

Airknight will whallop any opponent playing Treeborn, because the ability of the Frog to act as a wall actually gets reversed. It becomes a sitting duck for Airknight’s pierce damage, so the opponent needs to either abandon using it, or lose advantage in both the life point and card presence departments.

Several other “solutions” to the Treeborn Frog problem exist, but these are the ones I’ve seen repeatedly today. Enemy Controller is brutal too, as you can see in our round three feature match coverage. Controller can turn a Frog to attack position and leave it vulnerable, and that’s won a lot of duels today. Controller was a popular card already, but expect it to see even more play after this weekend.