After only having played Master Duel my entire life i went to locals for the first time this week. First time around i played a relativly standard Branded CyDra MD style list, always going blind 2nd. However, while catching people off guard with the PB OTK won me 2 out of 3 game 1s - game 2 they just forced me first and without Verte drawing into your CyDra engine is completely worthless. Game 3 they'd play fully prepared for going first as they know i had no option but to blind 2nd making games incredibly difficult without the factor of suprise.
Going back to the drawing board after this experience i decided i'll try a complete smokescreen approach to combat this weakness in a Bo3 environment.
For context in my first locals i went 1-3:
Match 1 - D.Link (OXX) - PB OTK game 1, forced first game 2, fully prepared for blind 2nd game 3
Match 2 - Agents (OXX) - PB OTK game 1, forced first game 2, close lose in time by 500 LP
Match 3 - Scrap Dinos (**) - Couldn't quite OTK game 1 (missplayed too), completely pop off game 2
Match 4 (Bye)
The 2nd time around with this deck i was able to go 3-1:
Match 1 - Runick Fur Hire (OXO) - (Megafleet helped me close out the first game a turn earlier but it was mostly Dragoon + Masq who did all the heavy lifting, didn't actually side in the CyDra cards game 2 & 3 as i think running over combo Runick variants is incredibly difficult.)
Match 2 - Ishizu Tearlament (XOO) - (Game 2 was just Branded but i was able to steal game 3 with a cheeky Twin Dragon OTK)
Match 3 - Floowandereeze (**) - (Match was over in 5 minutes as my best play both games was Edge Imp Chain pass due to complete bricks, would've sided the CyDras here if i had won a game though)
Match 4 - LiveTwin Runick Spright (OXO) - (Same story as Match 1 were it was really just Dragoon doing the heavy lifting)
So due to 2 Runick matches and one quick 0-2 the funny part of the deck didn't actually come up too often, but it DID at least have some positive impact and was incredibly hilarious in the moments it did make an appearance.
For the main deck itself -
Magnamut - Would play it but sadly the seller i bought it from cancelled them on me last second so i had to make due (same thing for Fusion Deployment)
1-off targets for Crossout - Trying to maximize the impact the card has, as i am still not familiar with the meta game of the TCG there is def room for improvement here. Specifically the 1 Evenly & Droll seemed very good though.
50 cards - This can definitely be improved but as siding in itself is something completely new to me playing more cards and giving myself more leeway seemed like a reasonable thing to do even if the end result looks very ugly. Trimming it down to 40-45 is most definitely something i would work on if i am able to return to real life yugioh in the future.
Missing Branded/Despia cards - obv playing standard is better than whatever this is, but due to the side being funny smokescreen you kinda run out of space for non-engine. In practice this leads to games like i had vs Floo were you just draw going 2nd cards you main instead of your missing ways to get to your Branded lines buuut funny.
In the ED i wasn't playing Dragostapelia due to not seeing a single Fusion deck my first time there and while Garura & Mud do take care of the same things Starving Venom does the simple fact it can run over cards they can't would've come up if i had played it in my original list. Alba-Lenatus is kind of similiar were i wish i had taken it over Fortress due to seeing 0 Machine decks but multiple Dragon decks. Rindbrumm i also figured could come up vs Floo etc, in the end it didn't help at all but i think it was a solid idea.
In conclusion to make this potentially a lot less silly - You'd probably only want to smokescreen the part of CyDra i was main decking (OG+Herz+Megafleet+Rampage+Twin) in a normal Branded list w/o 50 card main deck running going 2nd cards. This would give you the normal meta strenght of Branded while not clogging your side for the funny too much. And i think as a going 2nd engine that part actually is solid, def not the BEST option but something spicy to bring to locals for a laugh for sure.