Who wants to see Joe Whittaker and Dexter Dalit thrown into the Duel Dome and forced to battle it out?

I know I do.

Joe Whittaker shocked the world five weeks ago today, when he took second place at the United Kingdom National Championships with a heavily-metagamed Gadget / Royal Decree deck. In a global metagame that had all but forgotten Gadgets as a top competitor in major tournaments, Whittaker’s uncanny ability to tap into ongoing play trends paid off in the form of a deck that could take on virtually every popular deck in the format. It earned him a silver medal, and an invite to today’s event.

Then, three weeks later, Dexter Dalit did almost exactly the same thing, and took things up a notch. With visible inspiration from Whittaker’s achievement, Dalit used a few different monsters and a varied spell lineup to capture the Canadian Championship for an unprecedented second time, again prevailing with Gadgets when most others believed them to be past their competitive prime. The ante had clearly been upped.

So today, Joe Whittaker is running yet another Gadget build and, just as Dalit borrowed from him, he too seems to be influenced by his across-the-pond contemporary. While Dalit adapted Whittaker’s monster lineup by dropping the three Hydrogeddon and adding three Banisher of the Radiance and Snipe Hunter, Whittaker has made similar additions, main decking three Banisher but dropping Drillroid, which both he and Dalit originally ran a pair of. The two Nobleman of Extermination (which Dalit didn’t use) are still present, but Limiter Removal and Ring of Destruction have been removed to make room for a pair of Lightning Vortex. “They just kept appearing at the wrong times,” explained Whittaker, who took great pains to remove dead draws from this version of the deck. He’s leaving nothing up to chance here today.

The Hammer Shots still remain, albeit they’ve been paired down to just two copies from Whittaker’s original three. While Dalit ran Future Fusion, Overload Fusion, and Premature Burial, Whittaker has stuck with the reliable monster removal engine that made him so successful in his National Championships, and has expanded upon it to add more mass removal. Here’s what Joejoe’s latest build looks like . . .

Biggy Hax — 45 Cards

Seriously. He named it “Biggy Hax.”

I took some time to sit down with Whittaker and discuss his changes to the deck, and we started with the most drastic ones: the monsters. “Basically, I’ve reverted to a Banisher and Hydrogeddon monster lineup, as that is definitely more efficient at tackling the metagame,” explained Whittaker. “I was going to run Snipe Hunter, but I realized I’m just too unlucky for it. The spell and trap lineup I've kept largely the same: I strongly dislike the Future Fusion / Overload Fusion version of the deck that many people (including Dex) are now playing. I tested it and it seems way too inconsistent to me.” It’s the kind of calculated reasoning we’ve come to expect from Whittaker.

Other players had input to give as well. James Pennicott remarked that “Joe’s got the most robotic deck of anyone here. It’s simple and reliable, and he’s going to make fewer misplays than anyone else today. His opponents are going to make mistakes and he won’t.” Strong sentiment from a strong player.

As much as I’m giving away already though, the best will have to wait: “The side deck is what I've been working on the most,” remarked Whittaker with a grin. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say, the British innovator has a lot of tricks up his sleeve.

The deck’s main strength lies in its use of what many players here today are predicting to be the defining cards of the event. Royal Decree shuts down all the big traps that are seeing play, especially Trap Dustshoot, which, after American Nationals, will probably be a number-one choice for a lot of duelists this weekend. Both it and Pulling the Rug can cause problems for Whittaker, but Decree holds those threats and many more at bay, allowing him to consistently over-extend beyond the field commitment of his opponent. It’s one thing to play an unyielding stream of monsters, but it’s another to do so without offering your opponent a single avenue of recourse.

The other big card seeing a lot of attention heading into this event? Banisher of the Radiance. Again, while Banisher is in no way new tech, it just continues to become more and more popular across the globe. Stopping Destiny Heroes, Treeborn Frog, Card Trooper, and Recruiters, it negates and utterly ruins four influential strategies that are fundamental pillars of this format’s top decks.

In fact, that’s one of the most interesting things about this deck: it’s one of the few that doesn’t have a weakness to Banisher or Royal Decree. Whittaker isn’t the only major duelist banking on those two cards today, so his ability to glide through a field focusing on these two hot tech choices may be the strategic gambit that takes him all the way to the Top 8. We’ll have a look at a few other duelists banking on similar philosophies later on in the day.

With the exclusion of Future Fusion, Overload Fusion, Limiter Removal, and Ring of Destruction from his main deck build, Whittaker’s demonstrated that he knows what it takes to make it in a fifteen-round tournament: consistency. There are no fancy tricks: only a solid game plan that’s reflected in every single card he chose to implement. Focus makes champions folks, there’s just no two ways about it.

A strong metagame read, sharp wits, and the discipline to ignore strategic distractions: these are the three forces that make Joe Whittaker a shoe-in for Day 2.