The TCG Meta Snapshot is a project by some of the writers at YGOPRODeck that aims to encapsulate the state of the meta for a given 1-2 week period.
The TCG Meta Snapshot also aims to rank decks in a somewhat looser tier system. The tiers that we will use are as follows:
Tier 1: Highly Competitive Meta Decks. 10% or more of tops, as ranked by Pojo. This will roughly correspond to Pojo’s Tier 1, with some overlap from Pojo’s Tier 2.
Tier 2: Semi-Competitive Meta Decks. Less than 10% of tops, as ranked by Pojo. Corresponds to the rest of Pojo’s Tier 2, Pojo’s Tier 3, and Rogue.
Tier 3: Semi-Competitive non-Meta/Rogue decks. 1-2 tops. Specifically includes decks that only top small events or get lower rankings at medium events. It can also include decks that can potentially beat but have not yet in a given format.
Tier 4: Casually Competitive non-Meta decks. Decks that can compete at the local level, but cannot top an event.
Archetype Explanation
Spright continues to be a potent force in the metagame, as its high consistency, variants, and near-unparalleled versatility puts it a cut above the rest. For those unfamiliar with the deck, it focuses on Level 2, Rank 2, and Link 2 monsters to overwhelm opponents! Thanks to Gigantic Spright, they have a bevy of options to choose from to bolster their ranks.
Spright can leverage the compactness of its engine to good effect! It's even come to the point where they make full use of all of their powerful Spell and Trap cards and create nasty setups for opponents to deal with. Since it has a high generic count and decent going second tools in the Extra Deck, losing the die roll isn't the end of the world either.
In this article, we'll be going over three popular versions of the deck, Melffy Spright, Adventurer Spright, and Spright Tri-Brigade respectively. Other variants like Runick, Synchro, or Evil Twin exist which are also decent, but haven't been explored or utilized as much.
Tier Ranking
The banning of Spright Elf was a devastating hit that made the deck's fate uncertain for a while. Losing out on your targeting protection, insane grind, and hand trap resilience is no easy pill to swallow. Despite that though, the deck has been able to make use of other engines to help shore up Elf's absence. While its talents can never be truly replicated, the deck is able to adapt. Because of this, it actually remains a Tier 1 contender, surviving the massive meta shift and performing well in the February-March PHHY regional season. Not only that, but it also managed to win YCS Lima!
Without further ado, let's take a look at some of the most successful Spright variants so far.
Deck Lists
Adventurer Spright
Jhon Guerrero managed to win YCS Lima with none other than Adventurer Spright! This version exploded in popularity ever since, and it has a lot of unique takes on the deck that have become standard. Before that, let's go over what the Adventurer engine has to offer.
Since Spright did lose a good amount of its grind and extension, the Adventurer engine helps fill in some of the gaping holes left by Elf's ban. Water Enchantress of the Temple is great at baiting the likes of Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring or Ghost Belle & Haunted Mansion, and Wandering Gryphon Rider is a very beefy negate, being able to help back up Spright Red and Spright Carrot quite well, or help secure a Toadally Awesome to the field.
Fateful Adventure is also great at pitching hard drawn copies of Nimble Angler, letting you flood the board with Nimble Beavers and save your Dracoback, the Rideable Dragon for next turn, which is also great at forcing or outing problematic cards when going second.
Swap Frog remains a pivotal part of the deck, even though Jhon decided to only run 1 copy. Upon hitting the field, it dumps Testudo erat Numen to the GY, as it's a Level 2 or lower Aqua monster. While not being Level 2 itself, it'll come into play later. In fact, the 1-card combo with just Spright Starter actually sets up a pretty mean board! Ironically, this uses up your Normal Summon, but stronger hands with the Adventurer package can still get to this no sweat.
Activate Spright Starter to SS Spright Blue from the deck, which then adds Spright Jet. SS Jet to add Spright Double Cross to your hand. Now make Spright Sprind to dump angler from the deck, which summons out two Beavers. Use one Beaver and Sprind to Xyz Summon Gigantic Spright! Use its effect to summon out Swap Frog directly from the deck, dumping our turtle friend to the GY. Use Swap Frog's second effect, bouncing a Nimble Beaver to your hand as cost. You should then Normal that Beaver and use its effect to revive a Nimble monster from the GY. Make sure to keep or summon a Nimble below any of the two Extra Monster Zones. Now, make Reprodocus and turn one of the Nimble monsters into an Aqua. Bring out Toadally Awesome by overlaying Swap Frog and the changed Nimble.
This gives you Toad and Double Cross, but that's not all. Use Toad's effect in the Standby Phase to summon out Dupe Frog from the deck, which insulates from attacks. You can then use the trap to revive the Turtle, which can utterly devastate matchups such as Branded or Kashtira, as they are unable to summon their key monsters to the field. Should Kash draw Kashtira Birth and attempt to play with a NS'd Kash, Dupe blocks their attempts in running over Testudo. Toad also shields from the likes of Evenly Matched, Book of Moon or Book of Eclipse to shut this down. The lessened popularity of Dark Ruler No More is also good news for most, if not all Spright variants.
Lastly, the Adventure engine gives you some extra kick by either providing extra 4000 damage on board, or giving you two more bodies to burn with Number 2: Ninja Shadow Mosquito. It's a solid version of Spright, just be extra careful of Evenly Matched. Shoutouts to Jinzo for being a Number 29: Mannequin Cat target!
Melffy Spright
Dinh Khang Pham handily won the Dutch Open with Melffy Spright! This build has become the most popular yet, as the discovery of a small but efficient Melffy engine has given the deck a whole new layer of depth. Unlike most versions of Spright, this one can often afford to have Gigantic not resolve! Why is that? Enter Melffy of the Forest which just so happens to be a generic Rank 2. Alongside two maindeck Melffys, these friendly critters can create massive headaches for your opponents.
Forest is able to add Melffy Catty which translates to a Melffy Pinny on the opponent's turn, allowing you a Quick Synchro into either Herald of the Arc Light or Merry Melffys both of which are incredible pieces of disruption. If Catty returns to the hand, the Melffy Xyz acts as a hard hitting negate that also prevents the monster from attacking, notably shutting down a lot of Kashtira plays. Double Cross is extremely effective here as well, since all of its three modes are useful and can stop the opponent in their tracks. You can even revive Arc Light to negate a second time! Should you ever draw Pinny, Catty can add a Nimble Beaver for some great followup. Spright Gamma Burst has become a mainstay in more and more builds to help with facilitating OTKs and running over troublesome monsters.
Soul Scissors is a great option that Gigantic can summon if you already have access to your combo pieces, as it strengthens the board and makes it much harder for your opponent to crack through your setup. It's decent when you're the one who has to power through boards as well, and acts as an extra body for Mosquito lethal pushes. The uninterrupted Spright Starter combo ends on Sprind, Forest, Double Cross, Soul Scissors in GY alongside a bevy of hand cards. Don't forget about Sprind's second effect!
Additionally, it's been seeing more play over Ipiria due to the Pot of Prosperity conflict and being more useful overall when behind. When playing this deck, it's a good idea to bring out Spright Carrot if you already have the other pieces, as it can face some difficulties vs the popular Spell and Trap breakers commonly floating around such as Book of Eclipse and Evenly Matched. Still, you can often survive most of them and be ready for the crackback.
PSY-Framegear Gamma alongside Emergency Teleport is featured as one of the strongest hand traps that can double up as extenders thanks to the Quick-Play, or even summoning of the Level 4 Synchros on your turn if needed. The added extension is nice when people have been using the likes of other QP spells to shut opponent's down, such as the aforementioned Books and say Enemy Controller.
All in all, Melffy Spright is an excellent deck and is in contention to be the strongest iteration of Spright this format due to all the reasons stated above, so keep an eye on it!
Spright Tri-Brigade
Quite the fan favorite, Dylan Fox won the Duluth WCQ Regional with Spright Tri-Brigade! Definitely not as popular as the other variants, but it's a promising one for sure and has been seeing regional success here and there. So how is the deck after Elf's passing? The answer is, surprisingly decent! While Elf was an incredible piece of the deck and honestly the deck focused around it a lot, players have adapted and instead tapped into the power of both Sprind and Gigantic to facilitate Tri-Brigade plays.
One of the best reasons to play this over the other variants of Spright is the power of Tri-Brigade Revolt, which remains as one of the most powerful archetypal Trap cards in the modern era. Tri-Brigade Shuraig the Ominous Omen is an absolute unit and is still a force to be reckoned with. So how does Spright Tri operate exactly? The deck has two major lines it can go for, depending on the openers and what you want to play around.
A conservative setup of I:P Masquerena, Pitknight Earlie and Tri-Brigade Revolt (sometimes with Double Cross post-side) is surprisingly difficult to crack and actually plays nicely into most breakers and decks right now, with the exception of Kaijus and Lava Golem, which have often been a thorn in Spright decks anyway. IP + Pit can often contest vs most engine openers, and the threat of a protected Apollousa, Bow of the Goddess backed up by Shuraig and Revolt is as timeless as it is effective. The IP + Pit + Revolt board is achievable off Starter and also keeps another Starter for next turn, or a Smasher to help power through turn 3. Deceptively threatening when backed up by hand traps too. If facing someone who has Kaijus though, it may be better to go for the beefy board as this setup clumsily falls vs it, or bring in the Double Cross to recover.
Even the best generic card in the current format, Evenly Matched trades rather poorly into this conservative setup. Should the opponent attempt to go BP, you can go for Revolt to make Shuraig and add a Tri-Brigade in your hand as followup. You can then proceed to make a 3 material Apollousa and get another search off Omen. Apo is effective against a lot of the rogue decks of the format, meanwhile Kashtira can struggle against Pitknight's negation and ATK drop + Omen getting rid of their key bodies.
Dylan's list didn't include it, but a good option to consider is maining 1 D.D. Crow thanks to the popularity of the non-Kashtira decks right now, it actually performs well vs Branded, Mathmech, and the rest of the rogues gallery such as Dark World. Crow can even save you from an Expulsion attempt, and gives you an additional disruption into Evenly by linking off Shuraig.
On the flip side, beefy boards are also very much doable off combos such as Tri-Brigade Kitt + Spright Blue. Having Sprind's bounce paired with access to both negations in Spright Red and Carrot is a real option you can go for. Sure, the zones may be clogged for Revolt, but Red and Carrot can tribute for cost to free up slots all while preventing the opponent from making much progress.
Fraktall wasn't ran in Dylan's list either, but you can run 1 copy as Kitt access matters a lot in this deck. The trimming down of the Tri engine to the bare minimum opens up a lot of slots for generics. You can also consider playing a Link-3 such as Hraesvelgr, the Desperate Doom Eagle or Rugal + Accesscode Talker to further take advantage of the Tri-Brigade monsters, giving you huge pushes out of nowhere. Lastly, it's a good idea to conserve Ancient Warriors Oath - Double Dragon Lords when going second or for turn 3 as opposed to making it turn 1 due to how potent it is at breaking through boards and acting as disruption later on. This version of the deck may be the hardest to play as it takes some time getting used to the locks and the not so intuitive combos at first, but it's a very rewarding variant when pulled off well.
Conclusion
Spright remains an effective force in the metagame and has a lot of possibilities when it comes to deckbuildng. Provided it doesn't suffer any more hits, the deck will continue to thrive and has managed to place itself well in this chaotic metagame of Kashtira being at the top, with many others fighting for their place in the meta. Its ability to run a huge number of generics and access to built-in going second tools thanks to the R2NK pool is fantastic and it's proven to be resilient to metagame shifts. Elf would be super proud, and one could even argue it'd be the best deck had it survived. Until next time folks, Renren out!
