Thursday 31 March 2011

Vala-Infernity: Kicking the meta in the face

"Infernity Archfiend"
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. After a deep analysis of the YCS Charlotte results and taking a deeper look into the metagame, I thought it would be a good time to update my Infernity deck accordingly.

For those of you who did not see the previous post, it can be found here.

Here is a quick recap of my previous build.

Previous Deck List
My build is and was pretty stable. It would take a lot to shake its foundations once the field was set up. I did encounter a few problems, however. First and foremost, I finally got to play against and with Samurais (albeit not with Infernity). From these matches, I found that the following cards could be problematic for me.

  • Gateway of the Six: This was fairly obvious from the get go. The capacity to plus exponentially is frightening. Fortunately, the card is now limited. I did need counters for its inevitable plays though.
  • Six Samurai United: This is pivotal in Samurais. Without it, their well of advantage ceases to expand. Though it is not something I would normally do, I decided I needed a counter for this card.
  • Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En: This is the source of my trouble against Samurais. The ability for them to go unstopped is a frightening prospect, more so when backed by Magatama Musakani.
I also got the opportunity to tinker with Gravekeeper's. From playing them, the following cards appear to be trouble for me.
  • Necrovalley: Once again, this is fairly obvious and is something I took into consideration quite some time ago. It shuts down the Graveyard. Clearly, this is a problem because my deck runs 11 or so cards which will be shut down by Valley alone.
  • Royal Oppression: This is more of a problem for me than Solemn Warning. Fortunately, I have counters for both.
  • Gravekeeper's Descendant: I'm sure most of you know this can cause a lot of damage. Left unchecked, it could become problematic, potentially draining my assets. Fortunately, Barrier +1s against Descendant and it becomes easy to walk over once Valley is gone.
After thinking about it, it became apparent that continuous spells and traps were the cause of most of my grief. I also noticed Traps (save for the obvious ones) were becoming more and more scarce by the minute. This is what I came up with.
New Deck List
My changes are almost unnoticeable. This is intentional as I didn't want to tamper with the ebb and flow of the deck. I dropped Trap Stun, something I was reluctant to do. It's amazing against lower tier decks. However, with most threats coming from the upper tier decks, it would be foolish to include them any further. What I included instead was a second Mystical Space Typhoon and a Dust Tornado.

Whilst the change may seem simple on the exterior, the amount of decision making that went behind it is mind boggling. What the change has managed to do is ease the danger of 5 of the 6 most dangerous meta cards to this deck. Whilst I have yet to find a practical main deck solution to Shi En, I have ridden GKs of most of their power and Samurais of their primary engine.

I am now siding the two other Trap Stuns. As aforementioned, it excels against any lower tier decks, totally ridding them of most of their defenses. Hence why I keep it at my disposal.

Whilst making the changes, I noticed how tight for space I am. In an ideal world, I'd like to make room for another Solemn Warning and a second Dust Tornado. Space constraints currently prohibit me from doing so. Current candidates for loss are Archfiend's Roar (despite how phenomenal it is) and Book of Moon (once again, the card is amazing). This will take a lot of thinking.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope I went into enough depth on this topic. Please leave any comments or questions below.

~Valafar123

7 comments:

  1. I encountered an error when I tried to preview this message, so lets hope this doesn't happen again.

    First off I'd like to say, I love seeing other serious Infernity players, so keep it up :)

    I just have a few preferences in my style of the deck, as we know for a serious Infernity player the deck is fairly standard, thus the limited room you were speaking of. It is probably one of the hardest decks to side with, and well pretty easy to side against. That said, I'm still in love with it, and can't wait to see Trishula in the TCG.

    So to start of the preferential differences. I guess my main WTF moment with your deck is the "Archfiend's Roar", its obvious why you have that tech, but for me I feel that "Escape from the Dark Dimension" is a better tech choice if you are aiming in that direction, I don't actually run it but have been looking at its potential and intend to playtest it. In this meta with Warning at 2, BTH can step in for that slack for a lot of players, but with EftDD you can get your search with archfiend, and resummon him for another search if he is BTH'd, can also be used to bring back mirages removed by hundred eyes or break, obviously you can see the combo's it can bring about.

    I completely agree with needing 2MSTs/2DTs in the GK/SS matchups(especially GK), though in your search for space, I find its probably okay side the 2 DTs until you see the match-up, depending on your Meta ofcourse, but in a match up Vs. Fish/Frognarchs, 3-5(including giant trunade) backrow hate can kind of kick you in the balls round 1, but obviously we know this.

    Another thing I find differentiates some Infernity decks is 2 or 3 either Infernity mirage and Infernity Inferno, I prefer 2 Mirage and 3 Inferno, its true the worst top deck in the world is an inferno, and nothing feels worse late game, but the early game push you can make with Inferno can be just a game winning as a Mirage, Of course they aren't mutually exclusive and my play is probably influenced by trying to work in beetles atm (Trishula incoming!) so I am playtesting the build and it seems that fear of an all monster hand is fairly misplaced with the amount of pitch you can toss out.

    Anyways this is getting quite lengthy and I don't want to get a TL;DR on this, I would just like to higlight the need for BoM real quick since I didn't believe it when I read you were looking at taking it out of your deck. BoM is an amazing card, yes its limitation helped our Deck, but it doesn't mean it hurts us to use lol. BoM is amazing against any Anti-meta or Meta that can side into Rai-Oh/DoomCal/L&DDrag(with some clever chaining). BoM is great against any deck and deserved to be limited, its a stall, its a combo breaker which can leave your opponent with his pants down for your response(Kageki into Kagemusha, Chain BoM to Kagemusha's summon, clean up the field next turn.)

    All in all like I said, its really 10 cards and the amount of them we can argue about, the next 30 are pretty set in stone for Infernity based on preference, I think any Infernity player is going to have a hell of a time changing and playtesting their deck as they encounter Monster filled hands, Dead Traps, Dead Draws, Anti-meta coming from angles not even thought of. Its an evolving process, I am positive my current deck will be changed before Trishula is even out. Heck I might even change it back once HA4 is out.

    Good article, lets get Infernity some attention one of these days! :)

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  2. 3 Inferno and 2 Warnings are staples IMO.

    It really sucks that Necrovalley and Shi En exist, otherwise this deck would be amazing.

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  3. Well truthfully Shi En isn't as much of the issue in the SS match-up, at least no more than any other deck. The real issue with SS is Gateway/United, The Hand Advantage exploits the gap Infernity already give up for their swarm ability. Shi En is icing on the cake though.

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  4. @Koga: I'm glad to see other people are still using this deck. I'm going to deviate from the Trishula hate. We can easily summon 2 or 3 of these in one shot, however, doing so would mean resorting to Beetle, something I have no intention of doing for consistency's sake. As for Mirage, think of it like BW - Blizzard or Scrap Chimera. There are plays that it can be used for outside of OTK plays, and these plays are very important to my build's success. I chose Roar over Escape because BTH is becoming rarer and Crow is no longer seen in side decks. Roar also has the benefit of setting up the Graveyard far better than Inferno.

    @Michael Bonacini: I'm inclined to agree with Warning, but I disagree fiercely with Inferno. I have and always will loathe the card. Despite its merits as an OTK enabler, the card is terrible. Netting a -2 or -3 does nothing for survivability, especially this format. Dropping 1 Inferno has given me a lot of consistency and an extra slot for 1 Solemn Warning.

    @Koga: Hopefully MST and the likes will deal with the advantage gain. DED is my theoretical solution for Shi En.

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  5. @Vala: We saw a pretty consistent main of BTH for any of the anti-meta and GKs at Charlotte, with it sided for many of the SS builds. So I don't think its going to become any more scarce, and I really don't see how Archfiend's Roar feeds your graveyard anymore than EftDD, with how much you remove with Hundred eyes, it could garner you another loop easily by summoning any monster removed for his effect. Note the special summon gets passed necrovalley, assuming it wasn't out before we could remove monsters.

    Anyways, as I said its preferential, I just don't see the benefit of it over a more versatile RFP Call of The Haunted VS. 500LP cost Archfiend specific CoTH

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  6. Also sorry for double post and midnight fuel'd YuGiOh speak, but if you want to talk about consistency I can not see how you can hate on Inferno so much, you clearly state the build doesn't work without it, if you have filled your graveyard with your 3 pieces, then I'd toss the last one if you are that afraid of the dead draw.

    The core theme of Infernity is to give up Hand Advantage(When we choose) to gain field advantage or set up our plays. Basically some of the rules are a little different for infernity, like doing a -3 play to make a barrier live and stack your graveyard is not a terrible card, its a lifesaver. Truthfully if the graveyard isn't currently being hated on, you might as well consider it an even play if you are about to start a loop.

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  7. I use something similar, but I only use:
    *1 Infernity Avenger
    *1 Trap Stun
    *2 Solemn Warning
    *1 Seven Tools of the Bandit
    *3 Infernity Inferno

    I really dislike the idea of Archfiend's Roar since Call of the Haunted and Monster Reborn is enough for cards that bring back your monsters.

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