Wednesday 13 April 2011

The Ignored Metagame - A premature prediction

Hello there, members of the Yu-Gi-Oh! blogosphere, today I will be covering a topic most people pay little attention to. What I am referring to is in fact the Video Game side of the World Championship. For those of you who don't know, the VGWC are held every year at around the same time as the normal WC. They are held on that year's DS game, in this case Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2011 - Over the Nexus.

The ban list should closely resemble the March 2011 ban list (the one that we are currently in). The game is played in the OCG and includes everything up to and including Storm of Ragnarok and Duel Terminal - Judgment of Omega!!. Last year's top 3 consisted of LIGHT/Hero Beat coming first, Frog Monarchs coming second and the former omnipresent Blackwings coming third.

Here are my candidates for top 3 this year.

Elemental Hero The Shining
LIGHT/Hero Beat
I have a strong feeling that this deck will continue on its path to victory this year also. With the addition of Solemn Warning and Pot of Duality to their arsenal, Heros have the potential to top (if not, win) the VGWC again. My main concern for them are Samurais. Sams should theoretically hold an advantage over heroes once Shi En hits the field. Kinetic Soldier could also become a problem if its usage increases. The limitation of Honest could also cause problems.

Archlord Kristya
Hyperion Angels
(Herald included)
Having used this deck before, I am well aware of its potency. Though it can suffer some consistency problems, Hyperion Angels are still a force to be reckoned with. The ability to remove threats and shut down your opponent's options is a daunting prospect if you are on the receiving end. Once again, the limitation of Honest could have hurt this deck more than I first anticipated.

Gateway of the Six
Six Samurais
This is a bit of a given. The deck is still powerful and will continue to be successful. The ability to make a swarm at a moments notice and the capacity to shut down more than 50% of people's decks with one card has the potential to drive the deck to success once more.

Caius the Shadow Monarch
Monarchs
With all the new support they've received since the last game, it wouldn't surprise me if they topped again. My main concern is their weakness to Solemn Warning, something that will be a deciding factor in the VGWC. However, Battle Fader is an invaluable weapon to Monarchs, and is one of the few cards capable of defending against a swarm of Samurais or Heros. The deck may lose catastrophically to Hyperion though. This deck has very few mained outs to Kristya.

Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
Anti-Meta
Without GKs around, I have a feeling that more generalized anti-meta will be successful. I'm not certain how anti-meta will fair against LIGHT/Hero Beat, but against the rest of the meta I can see it being viable. Cutting off Venus, Hyperion, Treebrorn, Kizan, Kageki, etc. really helps for a deck's survivability. Especially when you don't have to fear Royal Tribute crushing your hand or a group of 2000 attackers rendering your defenses useless.


So, those are my candidates for Top 3 in the VGWC. Tell me what you think and leave a comment below.

2 comments:

  1. I think Monarchs have a many outs to Kristia.

    Triple Soul Exchange, and if your running the Formula variant (which you are most likely to!) , you will be running 3 enemny controller too so no problem with kristia here ^^

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  2. @mike: Very good point. However, Kristya will take an entire turn away from a monarch player once you factor in Warning and Orange Herald. It gets even worse once when you consider Hyperion normally drops Trishula turn two or 3. It could go either way.

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