The 2021 Tin of Ancient Battles' dust has settled - quite quickly, honestly. With all the hype from Burst of Destiny and Synchro Storm, we all expected that. As predicted in my last article, a group of meta decks have been cut down in price. And to me, there is one clear presence that towers above everything else - Virtual World.

Budget Warriors

Yu-Gi-Oh! has always been pretty expensive to be competitive in. With all the hundred-dollar staples and pricey cores, it could be difficult to hop in the game and be able to compete on a budget. Virtual World is the key to this problem.

The deck has been around since Phantom Rage (PHRA) and has always been competitive since. Not everyone picked the deck up on release, not believing the OCG hype. Virtual World was competitive since day 1. The best part about it? The cost! It cost next to nothing due to the secret rare being usually a one-of (Shenshen). Lulu was the only pricey part of the deck. Now that everything's been reprinted, the deck is even cheaper than ever!

My Virtual World Experience

Before we go further, let me preface this a bit with my credibility. If you've read my previous articles then you probably know these.

I bought the deck on release, and heavily play-tested several variants. You can even look up my very first article on this site! The title is "Virtual World: Datascaping into the Metagame." It was January of 2021 and I was already mentioning Crystal Wing and Dragoon as alternatives (and obviously Shenshen).

Virtual World Destroys Locals

Now onto how I did with the deck. Being in an OCG region, we didn't really have much of a shot at events.
However, the pandemic saved me. Official Tournament Stores started holding Remote Duel tournaments. There was a specific one where a "sponsor" would pay for tournament entries. The sponsor kept the OTS packs and left whatever we won to us. That was my golden ticket. I started with literally just the Virtual World core and hand traps. After a month of grinding events, I built up enough store credit to purchase two copies of Triple Tactics Talent, a Lightning Storm, and an AA-Zeus.

MY Virtual World on a Bigger Stage

My competitive hunger was not really satiated. When Konami announced Extravaganzas, I knew I had to take part.

Again... being in an OCG region, I had never really experienced an event with a player count of more than 50. All the more 300. That's what the May 2021 Extravaganza Main Event got as a total. That was literally my very first big event, and I got Top 5. After that, I got 17th in the following RDIQ.

Anyways, I only got to play a few win-a-mats (and won a bunch of them) but was not able to play bigger events due to work. Haven't played in a while as I've been focusing on work since, but this is basically my Virtual World experience.

The Ultimate Budget Option

In a sea of disgustingly expensive meta decks, Virtual World is the clear-cut strongest option. It would've been Tri-Brigade had it not been for Accesscode and potential Pot of Prosperity. But we work with what we currently have.

I've already proven it to myself. Other people have also proven it to themselves. Virtual World can go up against the best decks, and come out successful, even without expensive staples. You have a gorgeously powerful boss monster in Shenshen. A half-Macro Cosmos on legs that revives itself every turn is always going to be good against a wide variety of decks.

In addition to a strong boss monster, you have a trap-Drident in Chuche. Having the luxury of not keeping your eggs in one basket has recently become the defining attribute of a good board. Monster floodgate backed with a trap that can pop anytime? Sign me up!

Diversity for Boredom

Beatrice is a hell of a drug, and she enables a lot for Virtual World strategies. If you ever get bored of the usual competitive style, there's a lot of other things to try out.

Necroworld Banshee-Zombie World and Token Collector are a couple of extremely cool things to run to completely shut off certain decks (like Tri-Brigade and Swordsoul).

Pairen works extremely well with Beatrice as well. You can send any monster you want to the grave (like Pachycephalo or Artifact Scythe) and revive that on the Standby Phase. This is easily done with the help of Destiny Hero - Malicious.

Lastly is Gottoms. It's an extremely gimmicky strategy but can definitely run your opponents out of resources! Beast of the Pharaoh can aid you to more fodder to achieve this, but be careful of Shaddoll and Eldlich decks!

Conclusion

Overall, a deck that was already cheap got even cheaper. If you wanted to get into the competitive scene on a relatively low budget, Virtual World is the deck for you. You could even pay a little extra to play 2 Triple Tactics Talent, a card that is extremely good in this deck. VW is probably the deck best suited to play TTT. Hand size is extremely important to the deck and having a card that usually draws you names as extenders be cheap now is an amazing incentive to get the deck.

All of that being said, don't expect to get results just by playing the deck. It's a very skill-intensive strategy that requires a lot of knowledge and experience to get some dubs! The key is always to work hard - harder than all your opponents - but Virtual may just be the weapon you need to win your battles!