Leveling Up for Limited Formats #3: Interview with IWishIWasDead

Welcome back, limited fans. I had the opportunity recently to sit down with IWishIWasDead, a popular deckbuilder who seems to be everywhere when it comes to limited formats on YugiTube. He’s made decks for MBT’s Progression Playoffs, Hardleg Gaming’s Chaos Draft, and even Cimo’s original Progression Series. He’s also topped multiple installments of the Master Circuit Series, a  collection of premier level Master Duel tournaments. So without further ado, here’s the interview.

Leah (L): Thanks for sitting down with me for this interview. Could you state your gamer tag and share a bit about who you are and your expertise/experience with limited in Yugioh?

IWishIWasDead (IWIWD): Well thank you for having me here. My name is IWishIWasDead, and I’m the bum who builds decks for various YugiTubing series. I’m most known for doing limited deck building for Joseph Rothschild's series Progression Playoffs and building for Gage in Cimo's Progression series.

For limited experience, I’ve had it in several different TCG games such Yugioh, MTG, Heroclix and Pokemon. I’ve playing in sealed, cubes and drafts.

L: The decks you've made for Progression Playoffs and for the original Progression series have been incredible. How did you get involved with deck building for content creators?

IWIWD: This is a weird one. Originally I saw a Ten Minute Testing from MBT's channel for a Gren Maju deck and liked the style of teaching, so I watched other MBT content.

 

 

I have no idea if this helped at all, but when MBT launched Reaper Format I joined in the server, performed well in the first tournament, and through Reaper became online friends with MBT's friend Spenser by complete coincidence. I had no idea Spenser was friends with Joe.

Then I had noticed Progression Playoffs was around Lord of Tachyon Galaxy, which was the format I have played the most of out of any format. I saw MBT asking the discord for a deck to run, and I remembered a friend of mine back in the day was able to compete in Dragon Ruler format by using commons and rares from Lord of Tachyon Galaxy. He could win against full power Dragon Ruler decks by running cards like Battlin' Boxer Lead Yoke and Mind Drain. I built the deck for Joe. He took it and performed well.

For the next set, I built another deck from my memory of what kicked my ass at locals. Joe loved it and then after that Joe just got me to directly build for him every set. I think my name got established a bit more into the Yugioh community around ARC-V FINALE - Progression Playoff as Joe started to name drop me a lot in multiple videos. From there I had other YugiTubers reach out and talk. Eventually Joe convinced Gage to run with my decks which really established my name within the community.

 

 

L: That's so interesting. So your experience of playing constructed in those formats and seeing what was good in budget decks informed the deckbuilding you were doing for Playoffs?

IWIWD: A lot of the decks from Playoffs were strategies used against me at locals or things my friends and I had tested against each other. There was a period of time where we ended up playing every deck under the sun in the silliest of combinations, like Superheavy Volcanics, Heraldic Beast Dragon Rulers, and Spyral Aliens.

L: That makes a lot of sense. I feel like in Yugioh limited, you often wind up having to smash together two or more archetypes that don't really fit great just to find something playable. It sounds like what you were playing with your friends was not so different lol. Speaking of wacky decks, do you have a favorite deck you’ve made that’s been shown off on YugiTube?

IWIWD: If I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be the Progression Playoffs Zexale Finale deck.

 

 

The deck was a combination of five different players’ decks at my locals who had kicked my ass with some adjustment for meta calls. It felt really cool to see so many cards that my friends had used work togther.

L: I remember that deck! That deck was siiiiiick. That was one of the first times I remember thinking, “Wow, I don't think I could beat this” lol. That deck had a very unique strategy. In general, when you are making a deck for a limited format, what’s your strategy? What are the most important factors you consider?

IWIWD: For Yugioh, consistency is the number 1 thing you can be doing to win games. In the modern constructed metagame, most meta decks have one-card full combo starters. Yugioh limited is unique in that the extra deck acts as a 15-card extra hand. In Magic: The Gathering, the Companion mechanic, which is essentially a one card extra deck with larger restrictions, had to have the entire mechanic nerfed and four of the cards were banned in various formats even after the nerfs. Any limited strategy using the extra deck will be infinitely better than a non-extra deck strategy. This is the case for synchro, xyzs, links and contact fusions. If you look at a deck like Monarchs, it is known as a bricky mess despite its power level.

Another large interaction in Yugioh limited is tempo card advantage. Cards like Cold Wave, Giant Trunade and Compulsory Evacuation Device, while good in the TCG, provide a very huge negative tempo in card advantage during early Yugioh. It is usually incorrect to run them. In Reaper Format all three of those cards are at three and most decks run zero, as you will lose in the tempo war. The tempo war matters way less when generic extra deck cards exist from the xyz era onward. 

As such, cards that cheat the game’s card economy such as one-card xyzs, one-card pendulum scales, and one-card synchros tend to be the best thing you can be doing. For example, in the Arc-V TCG pendulum decks that got tops had one-card scale producers, which broke the scale drawback (e.g., Performapal Monkeyboard, Qliphort Scout, hell, even Dinomists Howling lead to a few Dinomist tops). In addition, cards that gain advantage when dying or search on summon will be the best main deck build arounds. Recruiters like Giant Rat and Pyramid Turtle created an entire meta archtype in reaper format. Cards that eat a card then force your opponent to use a card to eat it also break the card economy rule. An example is Eater of Millions, which almost always is a 2-for-1. 

 

 

Yugioh is unique in that all monster cards can act as removal spells. As such, cards that provide reoccurablility while having large enough stats to trade for other cards, such as pendulums, T.G.’s, and Gizmek Orochi, the Serpentron Sky Slasher, are usally the best strategy in almost any limited environment. There are some limits though. While Gadgets are infinite monsters, they do not have the stats to actually act as removal. However, cards such as Treeborn Frog, which can become fodder for more powerful cards, are great in limited. Another example are the Melffys, which are able to make more powerful links, xyzs and synchros to compensate for their stats, unlike Gadgets.

Floodgates are also like inverse advantage cards, where they invalidate any advantage your opponent has incurred. This is is why floodgate burn is so good in Duel Monsters era; it invalidates 99% of decks. This is why a Towers (an unaffected boss monster), like The Arrival Cyberse @Ignister or Psychic End Punisher, is good - it can invalidate an entire deck by itself.

 

 

L: Speaking of The Arrival Cyberse @Ignister, you recently placed Top 4 at a large Master Duel Tournament, Master Series Circuit #1, with an innovative and awesome Mathmech @Ignister list. Do you think there’s a difference between deckbuilding for limited and for constructed, and if so, what is it?

IWIWD: Constructed is an entirely different beast from limited as it can be hard to judge how many different meta threats there can be. But from what I can gather, Yugioh is now defined by the one-card combo. Most decks, in order to compete, need to only be able to open one card to combo.

In order to build for constructed, I would gather data and see what decks are the meta and what decks are rouge and have had tops. Then, pick a strategy you feel comfortable with. Let me explain why I went with Mathmech @Ignister. I had played 2 games in paper with pure @Ignister before I decided to test with it a week before the MCS. I decided to try playing the deck because looking at topping lists for decks in full power Tear format, there were actually a fair few Mathmech @Ignister tops despite the deck being nowhere on the competitive map.

 

The final descison for choosing Mathmech @Ignister was that I wanted a deck that could answer the Maxx "C" challenge. I looked at all the topping lists and noticed none of them had outs for a 6000 attack The Arrival Cyberse @Ignister, so I could let someone draw 20 cards from Maxx "C" and be ok with it, as they wouldnt be able to kill me.  Mathmech @Ignister was a meta call similar to the 4th MCS where Floowandereeze, a deck that completely ignores Maxx "C" and benefits from the #1 meta deck being Spright Runick, won the event. For TCG constructed play, I think it’s important to ask questions when you lose in testing, like "What card in my hand could’ve been different?” or “What could I have done differently to win the game?" instead of saying "Oh, they drew the one-of."

I also just topped in another MCS and I think a huge thing about constructed is planning on how your deck wins against the meta if you do not win the die roll. Yugioh contains decks that if you go first you just win, so going second is an issue. Once your opponent establishes a board, how do you plan to deal with it? For example, how do you beat a Spright board of I:P Masquerena into Knightmare Unicorn’s shuffle + Spright Carrot as a spell/trap negate + Spright Smashers + Spright Elf to revive? I topped 8ed with Labyrinth (pre-good cards) because The Winged Dragon of Ra - Sphere Mode tributing an entire Spright board is good.

 

 

L: One very helpful piece of advice you gave me during the run of Progression Playoffs was to test on an automated sim, like EDOPro, rather than on a manual sim, such as Duelingbook. I know you test quite a bit for the decks you build. What’s your process for testing for limited, and what do you see as the advantages of using an automated simulator?

IWIWD: I 100% like to use an automated simulator for the testing process. This can lead to you finding interactions you didn’t realize existed in your deck, or realizing cards are worse then they seem.  In addition, in the time it takes to play one Duelingbook game you could have played 3-5 games in EDOPro.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you’ve never played a deck before, ask people what the deck does since Yugioh is a very complex game where it’s easy to miss a key interaction. An example of a key interaction I found just in the testing process for the Progression Playoff Sevens Live Show was Prufinesse, the Tactical Trapper being able to become level 6 to make Chaos Angel. I was able to let Joe know about that only because of testing. Another example is from the frog FTK episode of Cimoo's Progression. I requested help from some of the well know frog FTK players, such as Cameron, to get insight on the inner workings of deck.

 

 

In the simulator, click the randomize deck and look at every 5 cards as an in-theory opening hand. Ask questions like, “Which card is the worst card in this hand?” and “What card would the worst card need to be for this hand to be good?” 

For the deck building process, you need to be abusing the strongest advantage cards of the format, but also keep in mind the relevant threats you have to be able to out in the format. You need to ask, “If my opponent played this strategy, do I have an out in my deck?” This is where you make consistency concessions to have outs. 

One of the best things you can do to get better at Yugioh is to a) test against multiple people, as more people seeing the deck will let you gain different insights and see different interactions, and b) play against people who are better at Yugioh than you, as there’s no better way to get good at Yugioh than to get your butt kicked.

L: Very good advice all around. Okay, one final question. I’ve always been curious (and worried) about your gamer tag. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you come to use that name? I hope you’re okay.

IWIWD: I only WishIWasDead as much as any other fulltime math student would lol. So, the naming scheme was an combination of two different inside jokes among my friends. All my friends mostly use self depricating humour so thats why IWishIWasDead stuck. I’ve considered rebranding into IWish though as to not make light of a serious issue.

I do appreciate the sentiment asking if I’m okay. I was in a dark period of my life a few years ago, like 2017 or 2018ish, but I am doing good now.

L: I'm glad to hear you're doing well now. Thanks so much for your time and your insight. Would you like to plug any social media or upcoming projects you have?

IWIWD: Thank you for having me. I would like to try YugiTubing eventually, but I just don't have the time/funds to start as a university student. So even stuff like this is cool getting my name out there. I guess I have a Twitter if you want to see the worst opinions on the internet. I do not have any big projects, but I would love to give a huge thank you to Blackacre, Honeycomb, Kalti, VerdammterTyp, cocobird, Reduxk, Megamaw, Panda, Pasta, Austinck, and Keirandall Chikage for all the times kicking my butt and playing Yugioh. Without their help, a lot of my decks would be peepeepoopoo.

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Thanks so much to IWishIWasDead for his time and all his tips! That’s a wrap for today. Next time on Leveling Up For Limited Formats, I’ll be interviewing another prolific deckbuilder, the one and only Cocobird.