Howdy gamers, hope you're having a lovely day and are looking forward to many days of Kashtira format. While i've been sparce between locals I've been taking a good look at Gold Pride and the cards surrounding it ever since they're release in Photon Hypernova and boy are these cards strong. Flexible search effects, strong spell and trap lineup and of course free special summons from the hand. This archtype was primed for success until we started getting a better look at the monster effects and low and behold we found that lovely text "if your life points are lower than your opponents" and theorycrafting was off to the races.
Everyones first thought process when going into deckbuilding was including PUNK in the lineup. The PUNK engine not only lines up perfectly with your synchro levels of your Gold Prides, but as they combo they are actively draining your life points as you play the game. This works in tandem with Gold Pride so well that it felt silly not running them with the PUNKs. There was a bit of pushback though, as people thought that including the PUNKs really just made it into a PUNK deck with a splash of GP, and in Photon Hypernova I would agree.
Then Cyberstorm Access dropped and we were introduced to some of the best support the deck could of gotten in its 2nd release. Roller allowing for quick fusion into Pin Baller allowed for uninterrupted interaction in the form of equipping your opponent's monsters, Better Luck allowing for easy LP loss and a search for any GP monster and a draw 1, and Chariot Carrie, a generic rank 3 and the bread and butter of getting your engines rolling allowing you to search a GP spell and dump a GP monster. These cards immediately peaked the interest of anyone theorycrafting the deck, including me, and allowed for some interesting lines of interactions that most decks aren't readt to deal with.
So where does this all lead? Well if you took a look at the image accompanying this thread you'll see what monstrosity i've been looking into, let me present you with "51 card Gold Pride PUNK".
I know it's terrifying, but come on a little journey with me as I explain my madness.
To start off, I think no matter what support we may see in the future (unless it's double helix levels of broken) I think the PUNK engine is integral to GP's overall strategy. While i said I would agree that the iteration before would be more classified as a PUNK deck, I think the cards we've gathered in Cyberstorm Access has propelled the deck past having to fully rely on just the punk engine. I don't see a reason why we wouldn't unless we are coping about Ascendant of Thunder that hard.
Two, lets talk about 51 cards in the main. Some people would call me blasphemous for ever passing the 40 card minimum and while at first I tried and tried to get a sustainable 40 card build it just wasn't sticking. Too much had to go right in order to see a playable hand, but with this we can see a playable hand 90% of the time. "How so" I hear you asking. Let me tell you the three strongest attributes of this deck.
1.) Draw power up the wazoo.
2.) Strong, targetted searching.
3.) Powerful one card starters.
This deck is able to play any hand efficiently due to these 3 key factors, allowing the deck to see 2-3 starters in a hand while not clogging your hand full of non-bos.
A few interesting techs thay i've seen literally no one talk about is the inclusion of cards such as instant fusion and upstart goblin. Upstart can either be amazing bait for hand traps or turn on your GP monster's special summon effects and Instant fusion allows for you to lose 1000 LP, turning on your GPs as well as summoning a free level 3 for easy access to chariot carrier or a millennium-eyes restrict to deal with hand traps. In my personal opinion, going forward both instant and upstart are staples to the deck in any capacity.
There's also the inclusion of both "Pedal To The Metal" and "That Came Out Of Nowhere" that act as singular, searchable spells that can help with certain aspects of the strategy. Pedal allows Chariot Carrier to become a 2400 unaffected, undestroyable body that allows for zeus afterwards (She can also search it by detaching so it's perfect for zeus plays). Nowhere is a more suspect card and could probably leave the deck, but as a searchable monster reborn that gives you targets for Nytro head and Pin Baller while summoning any GP from the grave at instant speed allows for more play on your opponent's turn.
All in all this deck continues to be an interesting beast to contend with, I believe it's strong in it's own rights and seeing some of its match ups in the current meta i think it deserves an even scrupulous 3rd look as we blast past the 40 deck minimum.
If you're looking for a tl;dr: deck strong, 40+ card master race, droll scary.
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