TCG DABL Metagame Tournament Report: YCS Minneapolis 2022 Let's take a look at some of the top decks from YCS Minneapolis 2022!

TCG Meta Deck Representation & Breakdown

Deck Breakdown:

  • 17 Tearlaments (5 Bystial, 2 Spright, 1 Scareclaw, 1 Despia)
  • 9 Spright (1 Runick)
  • 3 Floowandereeze
  • 1 Dragon Link
  • 1 Exosister
  • 1 Bystial Thunder Dragon

 

Deck Highlights

Spright Tearlaments

 

Christopher Leblanc is no stranger to winning YCS and achieved his 4th YCS win with Spright Tearlaments. 

Spright Tearlaments is a deck that was considered to be one of the top contenders coming into the DABL format. This deck combines some of the strongest tools of both archetypes and fuses them into a deck that creates all sorts of play from a bunch of different angles. Thougt there are a ton of cards to talk about here, as this is a brief report, we'll just review some of the most notable ones here.

Starting off, we see 3 copies of Kashtira Fenrir. Fenrir was an extremely popular card this event with many players opting to Main Deck three of them. Its main selling point was that it's basically a better Dinowrestler Pankratops. With the ability to summon itself on the 1st turn while also recycling itself and providing a powerful disruption, its no wonder why Fenrir is one of the most sought after cards from DABL. 

We can also see some of the new Tearlaments cards from DABL in Christopher's deck. Tearlaments Grief is a new Spell card that's great for tutoring or reviving a Tearlaments monster and triggering its effect. This makes it easy to summon fusion monsters or get access to Tearlaments names that you haven't yet used that turn. Tearlaments Scream and Tearlaments Heartbeat are also seen as solid 1-of utility cards. Scream is a Continuous Spell that provides additional mills while also cutting the ATK of your opponent's monsters by 500. The cool thing about this card is that the ATK cut applies to monsters summoned even after this effect resolves, which can make it difficult to get over some of your stronger monsters. Heartbeat is also good as it provides a good way to answer S/Ts. This is great for dealing with floodgates such as Mystic Mine

Spright Sprind is also here as a way to help setup quickly. Sprind is one of the new Link monsters from DABL and mills a Level 2 monster if it's Link summoned. This helps trigger the effect of Tearlaments Merrli and Nimble Angler which can both jumpstart your combo. Additionally, Sprind can also provide some disruption if the situation calls for it.

Christopher also chose to play a Bystial package in his Side Deck. Bystials are a new archetype from DABL that excel in banishing Light and Dark monsters from the GY. This makes it a powerful package to side in the mirror match or against Light and Dark decks in general. The Bystial package is also pretty consistent since Bystial Magnamhut can search for your other Bystial monsters during the End Phase that it's special summoned.

 

Floowandereeze

 

 

Michael Tamez was runner-up at YCS Minneapolis and got there with Floowandereeze.

 

For this event, Michael chose to play a pretty standard Floowandereeze deck with a bunch of going 2nd options. With Floowandereeze being a rather low resource deck, this build made sense as it had solid options both for going 1st and 2nd. If you were to go 1st, you can setup your normal Floowandereeze board and be pretty happy with it. When going 2nd, you have a variety of board breaking tools with Pot of Duality and Pot of Prosperity to help you get to them. These board breaking tools also come in handy if your opponent manages to break your board as it can help you come back into the game. Since Floowandereeze just needs one summon to stick for their engine to start back up, it wouldn't be uncommon for the game to turn after a Floowandereeze & Robina follows an Evenly Matched

Dimension Shifter and Harpie's Feather Storm also help with this as they're blowout cards that essentially stop the opponent from playing. Shifter is especially good as almost every deck needs their GY and is particularly strong this event with the heavy representation of Tearlaments and Bystial. Feather Storm is also good but better when you can guarantee it going 1st. This makes it a good Side Deck option as you can side it in when you know you'll be starting. Along with this, Michael also chose to play 2 copies of Trap Trick and 1 copy of Appointer of the Red Lotus. Trap Trick is good for helping you get to Feather Storm which cements your field when going 1st. Appointer does almost the same thing but isn't as consistent as Trap Trick which is why we only see 1. 

 

Spright Runick

 

 

Marcus Hayden placed Top 4 at YCS Minneapolis with the deck that won YCS Utrecht; Spright Runick.

 

For this event, Marcus chose to play the Runick variant of Spright. This is a near-identical list to the deck Joshua Schmidt played at YCS Utrecht with only some slight changes to the Extra Deck and Side Deck.

Spright Runick is a deck that combines the consistency and power of the Spright deck with the utility and advantage-generation of the Runick cards. The deck is very powerful as it's great at constantly generating advantage through cards like Ipiria, Capshell, and Runick Fountain. This lets the deck draw a ton of cards every turn. The Runick cards are also great for providing Level 2 extenders while also impairing your opponent's play. One of the scary things about the Runick cards is that they can really damage a deck's gameplan if they manage to banish an essential combo piece of 1-of. The Runick Fusions are also pretty good in their own right as they can help you get to Fountain; your main way of generating advantage. This makes the deck difficult to play against as it's not only extremely consistent, but also has a good grind game with a lot of resilience. 

We can also see 3 copies of Lava Golem in the Main Deck. Lava Golem is a good card for dealing with established boards as it's almost always live as long as your opponent has 2+ monsters. It also doesn't conflict with the deck much since Spright and Runicks generally don't need their normal summon. This makes Lava Golem a good way to deal with problematic monsters such as Spell Canceller and Mekk-Knight Crusadia Avramax

Another highlight of this deck is Number 29: Mannequin Cat. Mannequin Cat was one of the later innovations of last format and really shines in games 2 & 3. Its main purpose is to tutor out a monster that would be extremely troublesome to deal with in their respective matchups. For example, against Tearlaments, Mannequin Cat can summon Testudo erat Numen which shuts down almost all lines of their play. In the mirror, it can summon Thunder King Rai-Oh to prevent their various search effects. And against Floowandereeze, you can use Mannequin Cat to revive their Dimension Shifter to summon Chaos Hunter. This prevents Shifter from banishing your cards and therefore, letting you play. This makes Mannequin Cat not only an oppressive pseudo-floodgate, but also a great answer to many decks. 

 

Conclusion

Tearlaments continue to dominate the format with Spright following loosely behind. There are also a bunch of different Tearlaments variants with most players either on pure Tearlaments or the Bystial variant. However, this might change soon with the release of Magnificent Mavens and the new "Ishizu" support cards.

Kashtira Fenrir also makes a splash into the meta with many players opting to play 3 in the Main Deck. With Fenrir being such a powerful and splashable card, players may need to take some precautions to prepare for this card. 

Bystial also makes an entrance into the meta as one of the most popular engines this event. Bystial's ability to essentialy act as D.D. Crow in most matchups makes it a great asset when you're expecting to run into a lot of Tearlaments. The engine also mixes pretty well with Dragon Link and Thunder Dragon as shown by Clifton Land (Top 16) and David Erpen (Top 32).

Although this format will be short-lived due to the release of Magnificent Mavens, it is still interesting to see the effects of a set release right before a YCS. With YCS Pasadena on the horizon and being in a similar spot to YCS Minneapolis, everyone is wondering whether the "Ishizu" support will push us into a Tier 0 format, or if something will surprise everyone and stand against it.

 

References

Week of October 21st - October 28th, 2022

Tournaments:

October 22nd - 23rd, 2022

  • YCS Minneapolis 2022

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