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Shonen Jump Durham couldn’t have gone worse for many of today’s hot Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG stars. Team Scoop and Team Superfriends, arguably the most consistent teams in this format, were unable to land any members in the Top 8. Taking into account the fact that Team Scoop brought a “metagame-breaking” deck to the tournament, and that three-quarters of the attending Superfriends players created versions of this deck for themselves, the struggles of both teams become even more intriguing.

The deck run by Scoop and Superfriends can be found in the Day 1 coverage of the Shonen Jump Championship in Durham. As you can see, both decks attempted to limit the opponent’s options for gaining advantage. At the same time, they relied heavily on Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Mobius the Frost Monarch, and Chaos Sorcerer to gain advantage out of battle. These cards will almost always generate positive resource swings, and also provide significant tempo control.

Zaborg the Thunder Monarch and Chaos Sorcerer will usually leave an opponent with no monsters on the field. Mobius the Frost Monarch creates a situation where your opponent’s best defensive cards are destroyed without eliminating the 2400 ATK monster that’s staring them in the face. The deck is rounded off with defensive cards, standard spells, synergistic monsters, and spells that slow the tempo and create situations where offering a monster as a tribute doesn’t cost you a card in the long run. Team Scoop’s deck list also used one Bazoo the Soul-Eater and a pair of Return from the Different Dimensions. These cards are very off-theme, so we can only assume that they were played just in case a slow-paced game couldn’t be achieved. (Return from the Different Dimension would provide some extra punch in a late-game topdecking situation.)

With such a flawless theoretical basis, how could the deck fail so completely? The answer is that both Scoop and Superfriends forgot one of the most important aspects of deckbuilding in the current format: utility. A Shonen Jump Championship is a twelve-round tournament for the two lucky competitors who make the finals. Even the most skilled players can’t afford to draw bad hands more than a couple times per tournament, and never twice a match. How do you minimize the chances of drawing poor hands? Neither deck adequately addressed this question.

The utility of a card is defined as its potential usefulness in any given situation. For example, Pot of Greed would have a very high utility, since it's useful any time on your own turn if you have enough cards left in the deck. Double Snare, on the other hand, would have a very low utility, since it would only be useful against two commonly played cards. The dangers of low-utility cards should be relatively obvious: any more than a handful will invariably lead to situations that you can’t handle.

Most cards in this format are generally used within a couple of turns, and therefore, they have a relatively high utility. But just how useful are the cards in Levitin and Bellido’s decks? Starting with Paul Levitin’s deck, we'll analyze what went wrong and why.

Monsters: 22

High-Level Monsters:

2 Mobius the Frost Monarch

2 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

Slow-Tempo Monsters:

2 Gravekeeper’s Spy

2 Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive

Common Support:

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

2 Spirit Reaper

Single Copies:

1 Bazoo the Soul-Eater

Spells: 10

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Nobleman of Crossout

Traps: 10

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Bottomless Trap Hole

2 Return from the Different Dimension

The monster lineup of Levitin’s deck appears solid enough. There are thirteen monsters that all replace themselves in some way and therefore do not lose advantage in battle. Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive trades itself for the next card in your deck. Gravekeeper’s Spy adds itself to the field, so even if it’s destroyed, you don’t lose a monster. Ice the cake with a handful of large monsters with the ability to generate resource swings both in and out of battle, and it’s clear that Paul’s monster lineup was well thought-out.

One card, Bazoo the Soul-Eater, looks misplaced to the untrained eye, but if it’s used right, it can often generate good card presence and tempo. In the mirror match (which became more likely when the deck was leaked a few days prior to the event), Bazoo could play a key role in regaining the advantage from the Monarchs. I'm willing to write this card off as a good tech card. Team Scoop may also be the most deadly players in the world when armed with a Bazoo the Soul-Eater—they know when Bazoo will bog down an opponent’s field or generate the biggest tempo swing. So, barring an extremely unlucky Merchant flip resulting in the loss of much-needed flip-effect monsters, Levitin’s monster lineup looks solid.

The spell lineup was built to provide the general support, monster removal, and power cards that every deck needs. These cards have no special synergy with the deck, but they don't detract from it either. Once again, Levitin took a risk in running a handful of spells that could become useless at any given time. In addition, very few of these spells are useful in a matchup with Flip-Flop Control, which tends to nullify an opponent’s spell board. The metagame at Durham was very slow, with lots of players setting monsters turn after turn which turned all of the face-up removal cards into dead cards. The spell lineup clearly had a Toolbox-infested metagame in mind, which just didn’t match the playing field that weekend.

Similarly, the trap lineup provides the defenses that every deck needs, including Spirit Reaper, Cyber Dragon and Mystic Swordsman LV2. However, the trend of risky cards continues here with Return from the Different Dimension. Main decking a pair of these is borderline insane in a deck that’s trying to slow the pace of play and maintain a high amount of resources. Return from the Different Dimension only really works with a deck that aims to simplify both players’ resources through many card trades (presumably to prevent your opponent from being able to stop a game-winning use of Return). In this deck, however, such forced simplification just doesn’t occur. In addition, you might lack enough strong monsters in the removed zone to make this card useful.

Levitin’s deck was well-devised, but it failed because it wasn’t centered enough. Dropping cards with low utility and potentially dead draws in each stage of the game could have salvaged the concept. The Bazoo/Return tech, as well as the three main-decked Magical Merchants, was extremely risky. Unfortunately for Levitin, the risks didn't pay off for him nearly as well as he had hoped.

Dale Bellido’s Version

Looking at the monster lineup alone, we see that Dale Bellido actually took the deck to an entirely different level. Dale has a very aggressive play style, and his version of Scoop’s deck reflected that. He aimed not only to generate advantage through his monster lineup in the same way Levitin did, but also to create situations that forced his opponent to react to his onslaught of monsters without the proper resources (a la the effects of Zaborg, Mobius, and Chaos Sorcerer). Such a fast-paced game is easy to lose if you find yourself lagging behind in resources.

While this is an excellent idea that plays to Bellido’s strengths, the deck lacked utility in the same way that Levitin’s did. With only thirteen monsters that would perform ideally when set, including five self-replacing monsters that would search out other such monsters, Bellido ran the risk of running out of field presence.

The spell lineup for Bellido’s deck similarly lacked the utility needed to keep this deck afloat. Almost all of these spells would be useless in a Flip-Flop control matchup. Even in a Toolbox matchup, few of them would regularly come in handy. Taking a look at Bellido's round 5 feature match against Jordan Savage, we see that Bellido never used any spells that aren't widely accepted as “power cards.” With dead spells in his hand, Bellido would often have raw advantage as far as card presence was concerned. But he’d actually be at a disadvantage in a larger context, since many of his cards were completely useless under the circumstances, despite their mathematical appearances.

Bellido’s deck failed because it was unable to take on the diversified field at Shonen Jump Durham. An abundance of Flip-Flop decks (as well as a number of players teching a copy of Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World) eventually led to his demise. A lack of utility in the spell department would have also let Bellido down in many of his matchups.

At the start of the format, practicality was the most important factor in deckbuilding. Almost every card was discredited for being “too inconsistent” or “always a bad topdeck.” The trend led to extremely advantageous cards, like Confiscation, eventually being ousted for more conventional cards, like Smashing Ground. It seems some of today’s top players and deck builders have forgotten this and are trying to tech their decks out more than necessary. Surviving twelve rounds in a row is still the most important thing a deck needs to succeed. Maintaining a high average utility is the best way to focus your deck and guarantee yourself a safe journey to the Top 8.