Since I tend to be a huge jinx to Paul Levitin, I’m taking a look at Carlos Santiago’s deck today instead. Technically Carlos, Paul, and Jeff Ogarro are all playing the same thing today, but we’ll call this Carlos’s deck, and then if Paul misses the Top 8 again, he can’t blame me. Good deal.
Team Scoop’s newest deck is based around the expectation that virtually every duelist will be running two copies of Nobleman of Crossout. It’s a pretty safe trend to anticipate, and an early look around the tournament hall today revealed that sure enough, everyone and their grandma was definitely running a pair. While most competitors are reacting to this by building aggressive decks that are less reliant on flip effect monsters, Scoop is taking it one step further. They’ve created an aggressive deck that also loves to be hit with Nobleman.
The idea? If the opponent doesn’t hit you with Nobleman of Crossout, awesome! Free cards from Dekoichi and free 2400 ATK Slate Warriors. If he or she does hit a set monster, they run the risk of removing all three copies of Dekoichi or all three Slate Warriors from the deck. If that happens, the result is a speed-loaded removed zone that’s filled with attackers that can be brought to the field with Return from the Different Dimension.
In fact, this deck will sometimes use Nobleman of Crossout on its own monster just to build up a huge push with Return. Nobleman of Crossout on Dekoichi adds 4200 ATK to the removed zone, while three Slate Warriors total a whopping 5700 ATK. In a late-game situation, either is probably enough to win the duel.
Other than that plan, the deck is pretty average. It runs Bazoo the Soul-Eater to remove monsters from play, Jinzo to protect the overextended field that Return creates, and Cyber Dragon to capitalize on its own tendency to lose monsters. D. D. Assailant and D. D. Warrior Lady are all that’s left of the classic Return engine’s D. D. spread, thanks to the newly-limited status of Assailant, but D. D. Warrior fills in for some of the lost ground.
The use of only a single Spirit Reaper is highly indicative of the metagame here today. Many duelists are now viewing Reaper unfavorably, running only one copy or not using any at all, and the influx of Reaper-specific tech is only partly to blame. While Blowback Dragon, Rush Recklessly, and a ton of monsters that can deal piercing damage through defense position Reapers have become popular, the main reason for the lack of Spirit Reaper in the current metagame may be Dark World. Though it’s currently being viewed as a somewhat inconsistent Gamble by top duelists, that hasn’t stopped a lot of people from running it, and an attack position Reaper is an exceedingly easy mark for Goldd and his buddies. Whether or not Reaper will rebound will be dependent on the how the Top 8 plays out today. If Reaper doesn’t make the cut, its reign of terror may well be over.
All members of Team Scoop that played this deck in Round 1 managed to win. Levitin was actually the first person to claim a match win today. In just minutes, he was able to run his opponent down with 2400 ATK Slate Warriors. That massive ATK value just can’t be understated in this format. Mobius the Frost Monarch, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, and Jinzo are all seeing heavy play, and the ability to either kamikaze them in battle, or to reduce their ATK to 1900, is incredibly valuable. Apart from that, big bodies are king in an aggressive format, and the limitation of D. D. Assailant has made it easy to keep a Slate on the table once it flips and gains its bonus. With Slate Warrior swinging for 2400, and Bazoo often swinging for 2500, this deck can end games blazingly fast.
Carlos Santiago went up against one of the metagame’s more challenging decks in his Round 1 match: Pacman. If you’ve seen the deck before, you know what it’s capable of. If you’ve never heard of it, it uses a ton of field control combined with monsters like Swarm of Scarabs, Swarm of Locusts, and Des Lacooda to create a ton of field and card advantage (we’ll take a look at the latest version of the deck in a profile later today). Santiago lost his first duel, but side decked carefully for games 2 and 3 and managed to take the win. It’s a good omen: Pacman is a deck to watch in this format, but its primary weakness is speed. If it’s knocked off balance early before it can gain control, its heavy count of cards with delayed utility can quickly lead to a loss. Santiago’s deck can produce that kind of speed, and it’s going to be an asset what is often a speed-oriented metagame.
I’ve been testing Return variants myself, and I’ve been playing with the Slate Warrior / Nobleman of Crossout combo in a lot of different builds. This is by far the best I’ve ever seen, and if Scoop manages to put one of their Return players into the Top 8, this could easily become the next standard build of the archetype.