Hello everybody! Renren here back with another competitive article. It's been a while, but the new format coinciding with the release of Phantom Nightmare is a great opportunity to look at the metagame. Today we'll be looking at various Latin American regionals held last weekend. Let's blaze right in!
Featured Products and Events
[PHNI] Phantom Nightmare - February 8th 2024
Quito WCQ Regional & Asuncion WCQ Regional - February 10th 2024
Santo Domingo WCQ Regional & Lima WCQ Regional - February 11th 2024
Overview
Diabellstar Snake-Eye / Fire King appear as the most prominent decks in the scene, albeit less so compared to North America and Europe, at least on the regional level. This is because most players understandably get priced out of the engine. However, those who do have them can make use of FIRE's incredible power.
However, some decks are better at keeping up with the FIRE decks than others. Branded Despia is seeing a resurgence thanks to them not caring too much about Fire King's interactions and can somewhat go toe-to-toe with Snake-Eye variants. Kashtira and Floowandereeze are potent wielders of Dimension Shifter, which can cut off huge plays and resources from Fire King and Snake-Eye.
Voiceless Voice, another new showing from PHNI has also been garnering decent results as a consistent deck with a lot of space for generics and has good matchups all around. Meanwhile, some people have been sticking with reliable comfort picks that can still perform if piloted well such as Purrely, Rescue-ACE, Mannadium, and many others!
Deck Highlights
Dogmatika Stun
Stun, affectionately referred to as Anti-Meta by the LATAM community, is a fan-favorite strategy that occasionally sneaks its way into tournament placements. The deck's game plan is exceedingly simple: prevent your opponent from playing the game with floodgates. Either monster-based such as Jowgen the Spiritualist and Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo, or classic Spell and Trap ones like Skill Drain. Gregor Garcia managed to place Top 8 in the Asuncion Regional. He teched his list to help check popular GY-reliant strategies like Fire King by making use of Necrovalley to shut off their recursion.
The Dogmatika package isn't new Stun technology by any means, but the recent addition of an innocuous Albaz lore card has become quite the powerhouse in this deck and provides a bridge to it. Decisive Battle of Golgonda is an excellent card in protecting both your backrow and monsters from being destroyed by battle or card effects. Being able to shield both at the same time all in one card is valuable role compression. That's not all it does, as it can send a Fusion monster that mentions Fallen of Albaz to boot to get your engine rolling!
Titaniklad the Ash Dragon is the obvious choice, letting you add Dogmatika Ecclesia, the Virtuous to your hand during the End Phase. Ecclesia can then add Dogmatika Punishment to further protect your floodgate monsters and repeat the cycle by sending more Titaniklads. It has extra utility as well, being able to dump a variety of Extra Deck targets to get more removal or card advantage. Time-Tearing Morganite helps accelerate the game plan and accrue lost card advantage trying to stabilize the field.
All in all, it's impressive to see non-Runick Stun still exist in this modern day and age. It's no dominant threat or anything, but it is an extremely cheap option that can occasionally get a few wins here and there. Going second is still the deck's bane of existence, after all.
Branded Voiceless Voice
Giancarlo Valdez brought an interesting take on Voiceless Voice to the Santo Domingo WCQ Regional, piloting it to a 2nd Place finish! Unlike most lists who have opted to play Pure or Dogmatika, he decided to augment the deck with the Branded engine! So what does the power of Albaz and friends provide the deck? Let's check it out.
Branded Fusion is an absurd card on its own and often demands an answer in the form of Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring. This is especially potent in Game 1, as you can masquerade as a Branded player to bait the hand trap. Should it resolve, you're able to take advantage of its ability to send a LIGHT monster from the Deck to the GY alongside Albaz to fusion summon Albion the Branded Dragon. If Diviner of the Herald's effect is negated, you can send Trias Hierarchia to still proceed with your plays. Saffira, Dragon Queen of the Voiceless Voice, Skull Guardian, Protector of the Voiceless Voice, and Lo, the Prayers of the Voiceless Voice are all valid options as well depending on your hand and how the opponent interacted with your starters.
Alongside the free dump which the Voiceless monsters appreciate, you're also getting a free Mirrorjade the Iceblade Dragon to boot. Skull Guardian backed up by Lo and Barrier of the Voiceless Voice is plenty strong enough, but Mirrorjade adds a considerable amount to the board. Especially useful when a non-targeting banish is a premium against the likes of Fire King, Snake-Eye, or even the Voiceless mirror match.
Branded Fusion also provides considerable push going second, a nice bonus. The lock that it has is often not a big issue, as you will not be going for your Link plays either way if you decide to use the card and Voiceless can perform its key combos without touching the Extra Deck.
While it's hard to say if this variant will catch on as Pure can fit a lot more defensive cards, it's something to keep an eye out on.
Floowandereeze
Andreé Chávez Curioso, who is a renowned player in the LATAM competitive scene, got into the Top 4 with Floowandereeze at the Lima WCQ Regional. Not much has changed for the deck outside of one new powerful card from Phantom Nightmare, but the current metagame has extremely favorable altitudes for these rogue birds to roost in. Let's see what's new with the deck.
Swallow's Cowrie provides a nice consistency boost and further resistance against targeted removal or negation by letting you trade Winged Beasts for the ones you need in the current situation, similar to Floowandereeze and the Advent of Adventure. You're able to use it in the Draw Phase, further giving you some insulation against the dastardly Droll & Lock Bird. Curioso opted to increase his monster count to make the Quick-Play Spell more reliable in getting to Robina, Eglen, and Empen. It's worth noting it can also search non-archetypal monsters such as D.D. Crow as some other lists have been doing.
Ultimate Slayer proves to be a decent choice in this format due to the plethora of endboard Extra Deck monsters running around, and it can also be fetched by Triple Tactics Thrust whenever needed. Because Floowandereeze has a lot of space in its Extra Deck, you can run a full suite to cover all types of monsters to shuffle away and get extra bonuses. Elder Entity N'tss for Fusions, Golden Cloud Beast - Malong for Synchros, Mereologic Aggregator for Xyz, and any of the various Tri-Brigades for Link monsters. Do note that you cannot use it under Dimension Shifter so there is some slight conflict, but it's otherwise manageable.
As for the current meta, Floowandereeze can shut down the plethora of Link monsters FIRE vomits onto the field with Floowandereeze & Empen. The deck is also notorious for its great matchup against Kashtira, the other prominent deck that makes use of Dimension Shifter to shut down Fire Kings and slow down Snake-Eye. All of these factors contribute to its solid rogue placement in the format.
Diabellstar Snake-Eye Fire King
Cesar Wiese is a creative duelist who placed Top 4 at the Lima WCQ Regional with a budget version of Diabellstar Snake-Eye Fire King! Cesar admits that he is currently unable to afford the necessary but expensive cards such as WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils and Bonfire so he had to opt for a suboptimal version to try and make up for the reduced consistency and gas those two provide. Despite these drawbacks, he managed to pull it off with aplomb!
An additional copy of Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye, Legendary Fire King Ponix, and Fire King Island were added to help maintain consistency between either part of the deck, letting you access your key playmakers such as Snake-Eye Ash. Not only that, he made use of two interesting techs to further his plays: Parallel eXceed and Fire King Avatar Kirin!
Parallel eXceed provides either 2 free Link Materials or an instant Rank 4 upon Link summoning a monster! Infernal Flame Banshee is the R4NK of choice and it gives the deck more ways to access Snake-Eyes Poplar, which jumpstarts further plays. Miscellaneousaurus alongside Jurrac Aeolo is a compact package that gives you access to a Level 1 Fire Tuner, allowing plays with Formula Synchron into Baronne de Fleur. Cesar can utilize Sacred Fire King Garunix to get to them by destroying small Kirin from the deck to send Misc to the GY.
Even without Wanted and Bonfire, the deck's key playmakers are still able to generate a huge amount of bodies, leading to impressive boards paired with a solid grind game, thanks to the essential cards such as Promethean Princess, Bestower of Flames still being available to him. Quite the feat for sure, even if it isn't the most optimal version of the best deck in the format.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed the metagame breakdown on the LATAM competitive scene! Look forward to the back-to-back Team YCS 3v3 events coming up this weekend and the next. Until next time folks, Renren out!
