Nouvelles, Fall of Empire (Genesys Nouvelles)

A Different Deck Philosophy

As an opener to this deck primer I'm gonna go ahead and give a huge huge amount of credit goes to AmethystGenix, aka "the guy who keeps getting Onomat pointed", who ran into me on the Dueling Book ladder and decided to not only cook with me on this list, but also generally mentor me in my journey getting into yugioh. The biggest changes on this list vs the last are the removal of Emperor Tanuki (Hence the name of this list), and more importantly the removal of super poly and all related extra deck packages. This was to free up the points space for the new star of the show, Cyber Angel Benten. This comes from his philosophy of picking a card that an entire deck can revolve around, and building up from there in the points list. This has entirely changed the setup and lines of the deck so drastically that I decided it was time for an update in a new link with a new primer. So I'll be retreading the ground I did in the last for those who don't want to have to read both.

So, without further ado!

Main Deck

The Nouvelles

Nouvelles first and foremost, are a deck that begs you opponent to try and go 1 for 1 with it. This deck absolutely thrives in a Metagame like Genesys where the best endboards have layered but shallow interaction, endboards that have a single monster negate, a spell/trap, maybe a couple of pops on board at most. Into these kind of boards the overwhelming advantage of some of our best cards will absolutely bury opponents in +1s while tributing off their board and making them pay the bill all the way.

For ratios we are on 2 copies of Buerillabaisse de Nouvelles, which is pretty standard for Nouvelles build. This is our starter of choice, as well as the only target in the main deck for preprep. This brings up that we are not playing Confiras de Nouvelles in the maindeck. To put it frankly, its only any good into extremely heavy backrow decks, and its paired ritual spell is also the worse of your two primary ritual spells, with its effect to put creatures in attack being entirely suplanted by the printing of Nouvelles Recipe Book "Recettes de Nouvellez". As such we keep one in the sidedeck, for use against the afformentioned backrow heavy decks, but you will almost never find yourself missing him. On the subject of ritual spells a ratio of 2 to 1 for Recette de Poisson (Fish Recipe) and Recette de Viande (Meat Recipe) respectively is to keep us from bricking on rituals in hand, while still letting us grab meat off the effect of fish.

Poeltis de Nouvelles has been cut to 1 copy, as a way of shaving down the deck for better ratios as she is largely here to function as a target for Buerillabaisse that also draws us a card. She is also a backup send off Voici la Carte (Today's Menu) to make sure we pick up our fish recipe if we happen to already have one of the other two of Buerillabaisse or Balameuniere in hand or on field. Foie Glasya de Nouvelles is played at 2 copies as the shuffle back effect makes the deck capable of a grind game unlike many others, shuffling back Impcantations, Fairy targets, Benten, hand traps or additional Nouvelles to restock the pantry for a followup round of special summons. She is also an extremely desired piece of our endboard due to her flexibility. Being able to tribute into either Balameuniere or Baelgrill using your opponents monsters, as well as triggering off Final Bringer, Staff Recipe, Recipe Book, discards of Ruin, or our opponents targeting any monster on either board with an effect means triggering her effect is almost comically easy.

Balameuniere de Nouvelles is an strange case, while you will often want to hard ritual summon her early in your turn to take advantage of her search (often to grab the field which then grabs recipe book), any hard summoned copy of her does not come with the quick effect to tribute an opponents monser baked in. As such we are on two copies of her, so that in boards where the hard ritual summoned copy doesn't make it back into deck, she can still be a legal target from deck off Poeltis or Foie for the second copy to go and find Bael on a quick effect while also searching for us.

Baelgrill de Nouvelles is in a similar boat to Balameuniere, but less due to any restictions on his effect (The head chef simply couldn't care how exactly he was summoned) and more due to how you may intend to use him. Often on an endboard that includes a way to trigger Foie Glasya and a special summoned copy of Bala you will want the flexibility to be able to use one to get Bael onto field, without triggering his effect to negate and tribute right then. As such you can simply bring him out, and sit on his additional quick tribute for burger while still camping on your second summon of him to drop the full board negate followed by tribute. Also keep in mind for the effect of Recette de Personnel (Staff Recipe), that a ritual summoned copy of Bael does still negate the entire board, even if he doesn't tribute them after. Overall he is an excellent boss monster, but much like any kitchen, he is only as good as the other cooks working with him.

Nouvelles Restaurant "At Table" is our most consistant advantage engine in the deck, and our most desired target off both Buer and Bala. Being able to bottom rituals from hand to draw, and bottoming any one card and a recipe on end to draw, gives us an unbelievable amount of advantage on the followup, and lets us recycle the omni-negate as well as ritual spells, and everything else we need for a followup turn. Oftentimes when activating the field spell our search target with its effect to get a recipe will be Nouvelles Recipe Book "Recettes de Nouvellez, the newest card for this strategy that the deck is running.This is run at 2 copies, as additional copies after the first are straight up bricks, but pulling it in the opener is still excellent.

Frankly Nouvelles Recipe Book "Recettes de Nouvellez" fixes just about every problem the deck had before this. It allows you to target a ritual monster anytime one is special summoned to your field (Not just a Nouvelles ritual monster) to search either a Nouvelles or Recipe card. This gets you follow-up, the omni, triggers the effects of Buer, Foie, and Poeltis to tribute and ss another Nouvelles from deck, and in a worst case scenario where you already have all of that? It can just grab you a ritual monster to bottom off the field spell and draw a card. And thats just one of its 3 effects. Additionally anytime a monster is tributed by the effect of a ritual monster, your opponent has to pay 850LP. Thats right, they pay the bill. AND, anytime you control a Nouvelles monster all your opponents monsters are changed to attack mode. Absolutely A+ second wave of support card, helps the deck with its main gameplan in every single way. This card is mission critical to grab every single game.

So why are we only running it at 1 copy? Because if you ever see a second copy, its entirely useless. Even second copies of the field spell can theoretically be activated on a follow-up turn to grab a recipe from deck. This thing? If you were to ever draw two copies the psychic damage inflicted on you would be worse than simply loosing the duel.

Chef's Special Recipe and Recette de Personnel (Staff Recipe) are your two forms of searchable interaction on your opponents turn. On some endboards you'll have managed to grab both. On others you'll only be getting the 1. In almost all scenarios where you are ending on one of these, you want to grab the Omni-Negate of Chef's Special Recipe, not only due to its versitility but also its grave effect to tribute the entire board on a summon of Angry Burger from deck. Recette De Personnel is a bit of an odd duck in a lot of ways, its effect to create a token will finish resolving after the tribute effects of either Foie or Poeltis, and the hard ritual summon off its second effect is probably the most skill testing effect in the deck for assembling an endboard. However when both effects go off this card can be an easy +3 or more. Theoretically being able to tribute off an opponents monster on its target, turn a token into a nouvelles from hand, which can then go into even more tributes or negates or searches.

So, I've avoided it long enough, why just the one burger? Angry Burger is a bad card. It just is. But wait "Doesn't it search any Nouvelle in the deck?" you say. "Well yes of course!" I reply. "So how in the hell is it a bad card??" you ask incredulously. Well, because it isn't a Nouvelles monster. This means it is not a legal target off any of your searches. Bala? No. Buer Excavate? Burger is just another miss. Voici la Carte (Today's Menu)? Nope, not a Nouvelles. Honestly this is what drags this card down. Do you ever want to pitch it for another ritual? No, because you need to search it for the effect of Baelgrill and the grave of Chef's Special Recipe. The only thing keeping it in the deck is that it can shuffle itself back in to get a card you actually want. But it is still a brick. Nothing in the world will feel worse than shuffling this back to grab a Nouvelles card early in your turn, and then later drawing it off Poeltis or the field spell.

The Ritual Package

Pre-Preparation of Rites , Preparation of Rites , and Voici la Carte (Today's Menu) are all making the same dish in the end, but their way of getting there varries. The reasoning behind running all three at 2 a piece is so that we don't brick on them nearly as much, as you can cast all three in the same turn, but only Preperation (Either the strongest or weakest of the three) can be cast at multiple copies. These are also a solid chunk of our points, with preprep sitting at 10 apiece, and prep at 5 each. Prep is useful to go get things like Cyber Angel Benten or Impcantation Chalislime or even Ruin, Angel of Oblivion in rare cases, while also giving us access to any of the Nouvelles. Preprep can only get us exactly Buerillabaisse de Nouvelles and Recette de Poisson (Fish Recipe), but these are absolutely amazing and turn preprep into esentially a +2 at a minimum if Buer hits on its excavate. Voici la Carte (Today's Menu) is theoretically better than preprep, but in practice is often worse. As a clever opponent will realize in games 2 and 3 what they should and shouldn't be giving you. Whenever revealing for La Carte never put out anything but Beast-Warriors unless you already have both copies of Recette De Poisson in rotation, so reveals of Bala, Poeltis, and Buer are almost always what you will be choosing.

Our Impcantation package is fairly standard. 2 copies each of Impcantation Bookstone and Impcantation Penciplume give us the highest chance possible to activate a Impcantation off a ritual monster in hand and get us the immense value that comes from these cards. Neither are our prefered targets for the ss, so we run them at 2 to give us the highest likelyhood of being able to activate both in hand in a single turn. If you are not familiar with standard Impcantation combos you should read up on them before playing this deck as these are absolutely some of the greatest advntage engines in the entire deck. Being able to bridge us cleanly between Nouvelles and our Benten angel package and into our normal summon searchers as well as providing a massive number of bodies on board for ritual plays and Nouvelles tributes. One each of Impcantation Candoll and Impcantation Talismandra are here as our desired SS targets off other impcantations, as Candoll will often be searched to grab Impcantation Inception for standard Impcantation combo lines to further extend our plays, and Talismandra being able to grab a Slime for further extension, a Ruin to trigger a Nouvelles, Benten to go get a fairy for normal or followup, or any Nouvelles we may need at the time. Impcantation Chalislime at one may seem odd, but it is not inherently a +2 for the deck as all the other Impcantations are, and is actually just nuetral in card advantage. Combine this with the extreme ease of searching him with other Impcantations for extension, or with Prep, and 1 copy is more than sufficient for this card.

Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands and his kid brother Senju of the Thousand Hands are here as both the final act of our ritual package, as well as the first of our fairy package. Both being light fairies makes them searchable off Benten, who being searchable off the impcatations as well as prep allows us to bridge into these, our only four normals in the deck, with extreme ease. They've been a staple in ritual decks for decades for a reason.

The Fairies

So, 40 points on Cyber Angel Benten? Is she worth it? In short. Yeah. Benten is the heart that keeps this deck pumping, shoring up all of our weaknesses in one singular card. Deck has issues with consistently seeing normal summons? Pitch Benten go get Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands. Deck has an issue going first with playing through board breakers? Pitch Benten go grab Herald of Green Light. Deck sometimes has trouble triggering Nouvelles effects on its own terms? Pitch Benten and search up Ruin, Angel of Oblivion. This woman does it all, and she isn't even a once per turn. You can pitch her, go grab Ruin, Penciplume her back, pitch her again, go grab Green Light all in the same line. The strength of this card simply cannot be understated, pray her points cost never gets increased.

On the subject of the other Fairies there are the obvious, the Manju and Senju listed above, as well as two copies each of Herald of Green Light and Herald of Orange Light. These are played to give us a ratio of 11 straight up fairies in the main to maximize our relative odds of seeing 2 in a hand of 5 without significant droppoff in effective return. With 11 in 48 we sit at a 1 in 3 to see two of them in an opening 5, with 12 in 49 this only goes from a 33% to a 35%. Additionally in a going first scenario nearly any ritual searcher can be used to get Benten, who can be used to get Green for board breaker insulation, which brings us all the way up to equivalent to 21 Fairies in deck. Meaning being able to get to a insulating copy of Green (its whole purpose in the deck) is almost a garuntee.

Ruin, Angel of Oblivion is almost unquestionably the strangest card we are running in this deck. She is a complete fusion of the efforts of myself and AmethystGenix, as in my prior build I was running Demise, Agent of Armegedon. The Demise version of this card, which has a similar effect and I had been affectionately calling "Mini-Demise". When Amethyst suddenly realized that the Ruin counterpart just so happened to be a Light Fairy monster, which is when he hit upon Benten in the deckbuilding process and it all sorta spawned from there. Princess Ruin, as I've taken to calling her, really serves exactly one purpose. She is a searchable way to trigger your Nouvelles. When sent to the graveyard (from hand, field, wherever) she targets one ritual monster. The second part of the effect is largely fluff. So she can be sent to pay for the ritual summon of any ritual monster and then immediately target Buerillabaisse de Nouvelles or Poeltis de Nouvelles or Foie Glasya de Nouvelles and cause any number or multiple of them to trigger. This works even when used for the ritual summon of those monsters in question, as you can arrange your chain to go Cl1 On summon Effect, CL2 Princess Ruin, Cl3 Nouvelles targeted tribute trigger.

The Final Drops of Flavor

Excusing my above pun, Final Bringer of the End Times is the best removal we have available to us in this deck. Yes you can trigger a Nouvelles off this targeting effect. Yes you can tribute the monster you targeted and Final Bringer will still resolve. This quick play also means it functions equally well going first or second in game 1. Forbidden Droplet is much of the remainder of our points, but serves an important purpose as a general board breaker and also onboard trick for an Endboard if we are going first. You can also do cute things like pitching Princess Ruin off the effect to trigger a Nouvelles on a new chain after resolution. But really this is here to focus on the things that absolutely stop us dead. The likes of Exciton Knight, F0: Utopic Future Zexal, and similar such cards that just completely board wipe or hose our strategy.

Side Board

The Contents of the Sideboard

The sideboard here is fairly straightforward and is designed to hate out a few specific decks. Obviously the sideboard copy of Confiras de Nouvelles is here to facilitate his use in the few matchups where he is quite useful (Man with the Mark, Argostars, Lab, and the rare stun or MM player for example). Herald of Purple Light is an easy swap for orange in the man for similar matchups. And to round out our backrow deck hate we are on 2 copies of Ritual Buster . This amount of backrow hate feels excessive but honestly its just not an axis our deck easily competes on out of the main. As the only cards in the main that even begin to deal with the issue are Final Bringer and Green Light.

Dark Ruler No More takes up the remaining 6 points not in the maindeck, and has been chosen over something like darkhole or similar simply because it leaves the bodies on board and cannot be responded to by monster effects. In many going second matchups Dark Ruler will function as largely an auto win card, as you can easily bait out all manner of spell negates in their backrow using the first half of your opener, before firing off Dark Ruler and using their now dead board as fodder for your Nouvelles. Artifact Lancea happens to be a light fairy, letting us easily fetch it off Benten. But in an opener against Monarch or Ghoti, Lancea feels as strong as firing off a droll against our deck would be. Lava Golem rounds out our extra as simply the kaiju of choice due to its excessively large number of stars and being able to tribute off 2 monsters.

Sideboard Guide

To make sideboarding simple these are some pretty common swaps you will be making:

- Going second into game 2/3 against a backrow deck: Side out two copies of Herald of Orange Light for 2 copies of Herald of Purple Light. Additionally side out 1 copy of Baelgrill de Nouvelles for your single copy of Confiras de Nouvelles.

- Going first into a game 2/3 against a backrow deck: Same as above, but additionally side out 1 copy of Nouvelles Restaurant "At Table" and 1 copy of Ruin, Angel of Oblivion. Then put in both copies of Ritual Buster. If you are on this gameplan, remember that Recette de Personnel (Staff Recipe) is your only way to ritual summon on your opponents turn, and you should fire it off in their SP.

- Going first into a game 2 against a deck packing board breakers: Side out 1 copy each of Ruin, Angel of Oblivion, Baelgrill de Nouvelles to side in both copies of Ritual Buster. Same notice as above about Staff Recipe.

- Going Second into a Board Building deck: Side out both copies of Herald of Green Light and Herald of Orange Light as well as 1 copy of Ruin, Angel of Oblivion. Board in both Lava Golem copies and all three Dark Ruler No More copies. Between these, your nouvelles, Forbidden Droplet, and Final Bringer, you should be able to disassemble even the stickiest of boards. Additonally consider putting in either copies of Gamceil if it suits you.

- Going first or second into Ghoti or Monarch: Side out one copy each of Senju of the Thousand Hands, Ruin, Angel of Oblivion and finally Baelgrill de Nouvelles and bring in all 3 copies of Artifact Lancea.

The Extra Deck

............ What?

If you ever find yourself with both Baelgrill de Nouvelles and Angry Burger on field at the start of your turn, and you have no way to lethal, and your opponent doesn't either, and its gonna grind out, and you are running out of time in the match.......

You can always suggest that perhaps you two resolve the match in the funniest, completely legal, doesn't technically count as a coin flip way, that is the minigame tied to Musical Sumo Dice Games. Simply summon them onto this terrible board, and then merely suggest to your opponent "With this little time left in the match, if we just keep letting this effect resolve, one of us will win. And we'll be able to claim we won from the funniest effect currently legal in the game."

And if your opponent has any soul at all, they will take this divine gamble with you, and you will get to play the funniest, most stressful, most hilarious, most likely to draw the attention of anyone waiting around on the round to end, minigame of your life.

Realistically you should just fill your extra deck with cards that aren't pointed and can hose the random dogmatika player who thinks you are running like, real extradeck monsters. Skull-Wagon, Skull Knight, Wind Pegasus@ignister, Packbit, ect ect.

Replays and Results

Genesys Weekly Tournament
(5 round Swiss, cut to top 4)

Round one matchup'd up into Mikanko, won the match 2-0 after a bit of technical difficulties as OP queued up as a single instead of a match.
- Game 1 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/e907a534-3fab-4edf-9e39-64e0d30ee8f5)
- Game 2 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/c4e09654-b7a1-45b9-bd7e-c41e61a02917)

Round 2 managed to take 2 off a Six Samurai list playing what I can only call "Nat Beast Turbo" in game 2. Game 2 was a closer one than it appears, as I did have the one out to Mask of Restrict and Naturia Beast in hand. But a Blizzard on my Forbidden Droplet sealed the game for me. Nouvelles won the round 2-1
- Game 1 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/238ed566-31c1-4d3a-a33b-b4bf2cad0957)
- Game 2 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/2a979d81-8718-4260-93d7-a70d04c0aed1)
- Game 3 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/506f7656-fa45-4a1d-b3c8-41fce01e0f48)

Round 3 was the only loss before Semifinals. Game 1 I decided to try and "Make em have it" by negating the Quem immediately, and unfortunately they had Albaz in hand. Lowered the ceiling on the turn a bit but my hand had very little it could do into a couple of negates after that. Game 2 I missclicked and turned down a search from Bala on summon, however my opponent had Herald of the Orange Light in hand so I think it all comes out in the wash to a loss regardless. Quick 0-2 for this round.
- Game 1 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/7773cf38-ade1-46a9-a655-05698090fb9b)
- Game 2 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/95a7b610-5e5e-45d0-b452-0ca110c130be)

Round 4 was where I really felt like I started picking up speed. Ended up winning the round 2-0 against Fire King. First game I managed to identify the choke point and wait on the Ponix activation to Herald of Orange Light it. Then managed to show off this decks ability to simply eat interaction for breakfast and continue to go off. Game 2 I managed to force the Jurrac Meteor by threatening to shuffle back the Jurrac in grave with Foie, while tributing Benten for his summon. This allowed me to grab Herald of the Orange light on stack and hold it to negate the Meteor effect and destroy it. Overall this round was an amazing spotlight of this decks ability to go 2nd into an established board.
- Game 1 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/39609e64-f1fc-4854-8faa-5810b07f722f)
- Game 2 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/480e63a5-d19f-4d96-b173-7409b9b6e342)

Round 5 was against one of our scarier matchups, Magnetwarrior. But we ended up going 2-0 once again. Game 1 we got to show off the strength of Cyberangel Benten, by using it twice in the turn to grab both Herald of the Green Light and Princess Ruin to insulate our endboard. We ended up finishing on an endboard of the field spell, recipe book, Buer, 2 copies of Bala, Forbidden Droplet, Chef's Special Recipe, and a Princess Ruin and Herald of the Green Light in hand. Allowing us to fairly handily clean up our opponents attempts to build a board. Game 2 our opponent unfortunately started with double Duosion and double Magnet Bonding (the search target for Duosion) into our Lancea in hand, plus Bala, Omni, Herald+Ruin combo, and Foie. I do not envy his position this game.
- Game 1 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/0e6686d5-1b62-4baf-a1d9-32d77608f036)
- Game 2 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/78cf9c95-cd97-448e-b995-8702369765bd)

Semi Finals

We went into top cut to 4 at position #1 in the rankings. But unfortunately our semi-final match wasn't much to show. Game 1 we queue into the legendary double brick from both ourselves and our opponent on Unchained. They drew gas before we did, simple as that. Game 2 we had a semi-brick, with a single way out. We NEEDED to hit absolutely any Nouvelles card except recipe book off Buer's excavate trigger. We did not. A tragic way to bow out of top 4, but thats how YGO goes sometimes.
- Game 1 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/4e3ce84f-5f56-4a13-a8e0-f959a6ff693f)
- Game 2 (https://duelingnexus.com/replay/475d75fe-d66c-4b5a-8581-74d290b4c1f9)

Overall I think the deck performed extremely well into the meta, being able to deal with both a couple of the bigger threats (Fire King and Magnets) as well as handling more Rogue decks (Six Sam and Mikanko). And while the issues seem largely to be with the occasional brick or earnest missplay from the pilot.