Aggression Is The New Black

While the last format featured many aggressive decks at several points, the last three months from Durham onwards were dominated by conservative play. Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive, Magical Merchant, and Spirit Reaper were the driving force of many local and regional metagames, and the result was a slow format. While Shonen Jump Long Beach saw the breakthrough use of piercing monsters, the aggressive trends that were brewing at that event have come to a head here in Baltimore.

Lots of attacks, lots of face up normal summons, and plenty of beatsticks have been the orders of the day. Not only are Nobleman of Crossout and the removal of Dark Hole responsible, but the influx of Monarchs have forced most players to run fewer reactive monster destruction cards like Sakuretsu Armor in favor of point-of-summon destruction like Bottomless Trap Hole. The result is that despite Mirror Force rotating back into the format, most duelists are still only running three traps that destroy attacking monsters specifically, compared to the five that many were using before (three Sakuretsu and two Widespread Ruin). Duelists aren’t willing to burn Bottomless Trap Holes on the average attacker: most reserve them for tribute monsters under certain conditions, making it actually safer to attack more frequently on a turn-by-turn basis.

Dark World Fails to Appear

After a huge amount of enthusiasm expressed by top players at Shonen Jump Long Beach, none of them played it. While proponents of the deck like Robert Pace and Mexican Champion Jorge Pina Lizzaraga insist that it can be run consistently, the amount of time that finding a consistent build takes isn’t something the average duelist is willing to commit to. There are so many different ways to use Dark World: Beatdown, Field Control, Hand Control, and Strike Ninja are just four of the possibilities, and each takes time to test. More creative builds, like Dark World Skill Drain, take the average duelist forever to learn how to play, since the decks often revolve around cards that many players aren’t familiar with. Sang Bui’s complete lack of knowledge about Skill Drain is a perfect example.

Dark World has been run today, quite a bit, but as play peters out to a defined group of competitors at the top tables there isn’t much of a presence representing dedicated Dark World. While everyone had plans to run Dark World at this Shonen Jump Championship, it seems like a near-equal number of duelists chickened out at the last second. Whether or not that was a good decision will remain to be seen.

Jinzo’s Return?

Jinzo is indeed back. People care more about attacking in this format, and that means Jinzo is often preferable to Zaborg or Mobius. In addition, because Return is now so much more viable than it was for the past four months, people are looking for ways to protect their momentum. Jinzo was addressed in the mid-day tech update, so I’m keeping this short, but in a nutshell, everyone’s favorite android is back and it looks like he’s here to stay.

Pacman’s First Major Appearance

Sadly, very few camels munched on very few duelists today, “noobs” or otherwise. While many competitors were playing the deck, most, if not all of them, are looking at X-2 or worse records, meaning that the chance for a Pacman deck to make Day 2 is slim to nil.

One factor working against the deck? Side decking. Not knowing what they’d be facing, some duelists side decked absolutely random cards in order to be prepared for unexpected threats.

Players echoed that sentiment. “After my second loss, I talked to the guy who beat me, and he said that when he read I was coming he built a side deck just for me,” commented the deck’s creator, Andrew Bollinger. Still, Bollinger will be retooling the deck tonight, and will be testing it out in tomorrow’s regionals. Pacman is in no way down and out.

Spirit Reaper Seeing Less Use

Yup! Sure enough, the threat of Dark World and an endless stream of tech and innovation pushed Spirit Reaper out of this event. It’s still seeing play, but it seemed like many duelists who once ran three dropped to two, and others who ran two have dropped to one. With the lack of Dark World though, this could be easily reversed. Time will tell, and if the tech-users drop their tech after this event, we could see Reaper making a big impact yet again at Shonen Jump Columbus a month from now.

While a few other trends have also emerged, these are definitely the main ones. Round 7 is about to kick off, and Shane Scurry is facing down Robert Ackerman at table 4, so get ready for some feature match action!