Sword Soul Tenyi

Sword Soul deck. The draw of the deck is the powerful Synchros it can make, in particularly Cheng Ying's ability to be 2ish interruptions provided you can proc him. So why Tenyis? A few reasons. Firstly, I'm partial to more tribal decks, and having a general Wyrm engine appeals to me. Secondly, I suspect it increases consistency, and it certainly increases explosiveness, playing more like the combo decks I am used to. Lastly, running this package enablers me to play more floodgates in the Extra Deck. Lastly, being far less Normal Summon reliant means the deck plays Sphere Mode quite well. This version of the deck is very good at cracking boards, even just using engine cards and the maindeck staples. The side deck particularly emphasizes this - we'd prefer to go first, but if you make us go second you might actually have a worse time in some circumstances. Let's go over the list.

Long Yuan is one of the most important Sword Souls monsters, since it by itself makes Baroness De Fleur or more importantly Cheng Ying. It also doesn't conflict with Sphere Mode. Mo Ye is powerful, getting to draw a card is great and our main extender out of the Extra Deck is a Synchro 8 that counts as an interruption, very beautiful. I think you have to run 3 of both of these. Tai A is less important, but you want to play 2 so that you're less likely to banish it with Desires, since it is a common search off of the Rota, and leads to Synchro 8 Spam. While these are normal summons, neither have to be normal summoned, and you will start your plays sometimes by resurrecting them with the Monster Reborn of the archetype, or the Shaman of the Tenyi, and yes, this is actually a lot more realistic than you might think. We play a lot of Tenyi monsters and any 2 of them into Shaman is totally believable, and in fact you'll often get some other value off of Tenyi plays in the process. The Rota is obligatory, it's the Rota, the field spell is this one card you can search to spam out 8s and is just good enough as an engine card to run 1 of it IMO. I'd consider cutting it, but the Synchro 8 Spam is a neat option that merits use in some matchups anyways, because of Dragite, and because of having a larger full combo.

For Tenyi monsters, we run 2 of the most important Tenyi monsters, Vishuda. You could honestly bump this up to 3 and be happy, it is the most valuable of the Tenyi cards. Like Alpha, this can bounce a monster, including bouncing a Kaiju back into your own hand. You can break some pretty mighty boards with this deck, because including this card you're running as many as 13 board breaking cards vs hefy boards, meaning when you know (or smell) that you're going second you come in with a great chance to actually bust some boards before making Wyrm plays. It's also an engine card. Adhara gives you access to Level 9 Synchro plays and refills your hand for Long Yuan, helping you say search it or the trap, for making those Level 9s is particularly noteworthy. Ashuna + any other Tenyi is full combo. Okay, not quite, but it's a good enough starter to combos that you want to see Ashuna. And Vessel just increases your chances of seeing the right Tenyi's, the card is either dead or a must negate generally speaking. I think it's worth it to run, because you have so many Tenyi cards, and this makes your big Tenyi combo plays way more common.

1 Gold Sarc. Hate the card, but we're on 3 Adhara, and it has other utility. In fact this and Called By The Grave are both run in this list primarily to proc Cheng Ying, hilariously enough, but obviously Called might make the cut anyways.

3 Pot of Desires. Banishes barely matter to this deck, you'll sometimes gimp yourself but more often than not it is free consistency, and you can afford to run the numbers to almost never feel this. I still struggle a little bit to understand why Pot feels better here than in some other homes, but it does, though that perception could simply be my own luck changing. The more I test the more I see, in this archetype you want the cards more than to see 1 specific engine card, so Prosperity is probably worse.

Forbidden Droplet is live often enough going first, and necessary often enough going second, and actually makes the cut on the merit of making us lose going second significantly less. Tenyi monsters actually like being in the GY sometimes, so even if you pitch 3 cards a lot of the time you'll still have solid plays to make after that to break boards. Tactics, in turn, is better going first, being either a consistency card or a way to make hand traps worse. It makes the main deck because going second against Dragoon, it is just GG for the Dragoon player, and Dragoon will be important to handle until it is banned. Solemn Strike is an amazing going first card that stays in whenever we are going first. However, like the rest of this package is is good going second as well, an actual hard negate at Spell Speed 3 that also negates summons is very good.

So, for the extra deck. 2 Chi Xiao, because this is like the archetype's Needlefibre, and it is also on of your main bosses and your main way to trigger Cheng Ying at the right time. You need 2 for your grind game. 1 Cheng Ying, you must also run this, this card is the reason to play the deck. A little bit tricky to activate its effect and time it for the right disruption, but very powerful on the face of it. 1 Draco Bersker. You're often locked into Wyrm monsters because of Ashuna, and this gives you the very important second rank 8 to make in those situations, and as a bonus it it good going first or second and trigger's Cheng Ying. 1 Yazi. You can make this with level manipulation, but you also make this with Long Yuan and a Adhara. It pops a card before summoning out Tai A and is fuel for Tai A, and is good going second, but I rarely actually make it. You need a level 7 for some boards (to not waste resources) and this is the only Wyrm, but it is pretty good in the deck. 2 Baxia - shuffling cards into the deck is good going second, even if it does target. You make this into Chaofeng in some of your combos. giving you an amazing Floodgate against Light attribute based decks. With the help of level modulation, you can occasionally make Yazi into Chaofeng locking decks out of Dark monsters, similarly if not more broken. Dragite is a generic backrow negate, but you turn him on with Mo Ye naturally and it contributes to the ability to actually put up real negates. Baroness De Fleur is a way to break boards that is also one omni-negate and a monster Reborn. I don't know if this will be legal at the same time as Sword Soul, at least right away, but for now I'm being an optimist and hoping we get it. I'm on 1 Shenshen. Not only is this a reasonably floodgate against a lot of decks, but you make it easily throughout your combos, and you make it off of Chi Xiao and then revive it in some Tenyi combos, so it isn't going without support. It seems good to have as an option. Lastly we run 1 Omega, because we need generic and powerful Synchro 8s and yeah, Omega still makes the cut. I find myself never making this, but it is strictly better than any of the alternatives. Lastly we have some Tenyi monsters, these make the Tenyi engine go Brr, and Shaman makes Sphere Mode kind of a breeze.

So the side deck. The deck seems powerful enough at putting up interruptions and pressure going first that I wanted to lean on a side deck built around breaking boards. The idea is that if we can pretty consistently break even the beefiest of boards we can decide to go second, maybe shake up somebody's siding plan, but also I don't think the deck needs a lot more going first. You're usually siding out some number of the pots, as well as TTT (which stays in over Sphere Mode in matchups that swing down to Dragoon). So here are the numbers. 3 Sphere Mode. Yes this eats up your normal summons, but this isn't as relevant as you might think. It also immediately solves a lot of problem boards, and again helps enable us to eat even really beefy boards. Because it can't be targeted you can't return this to your hand with Vishuda, but you can with Alpha, meaning this + Alpha if they have a 6 monster board, but in practice if they do they have an interruption to prevent this anyways, so it isn't as relevant as it is with the Kaijus. Speaking of 2 Gadarla, 2 Alpha. Gadarla tributes over Wind Barrier Statue and is level 8, and you can bounce it with Alpha or Vishuda to get an extra tribute. Did I mention this deck was good at breaking boards? Alpha is Alpha, it is the new Pankratops, and is just as broken. 1 Pankratops because even though it doesn't play into the loops, it doubles as spell and trap removal, making it still slightly more valuable than Alpha despite lacking the synergy. Also the more different names we run the more of these effects, again you're bringing in whichever 13 board breakers are most relevant including many different names and effects that synergize. You also aren't obligated to bring them in. If Sphere Mode is bad, leave in Tactics, it is as simple as that. I wanted some ways to handle backrow beside Pankratops, so I went with Twintwister. I just noticed that a lot of the decks you would bring it in against getting the banish isn't as relevant as getting that second set card. Then Red Reboot, because it is Red Reboot. Goodbye trap deck. For my last option I had space to play going first cards, and I tested a lot of Solemn Judgement. But in thinking about the meta, both now and in the future, I'm expecting the top decks in the current meta will stay powerful, and that this deck and Flundereeze become contenders, and I'm seeing a lot of overlap in the decks that are weak to this card. Against Flundereeze it stops tributing, against Drytron it stops ritual summoning, against Rokkets it stops seal, it stops Romulus, it stops Darkness Metal, it basically neuters a lot of plays. Sure in the mirror and against Prank Kids it does nothing, but in Tribrigade it shuts down their whole mechanic, against any Isolde abuse no Isolde. So you've got like Phantom Knights, the Mirror, Prank Kids, and Sky Striker, and a myriad of decks this doesn't hit that hard, but it does hit a whole swath of them a lot harder than it hits you, especially going first. Now game 3 they have to side in that backrow removal and you might've already pulled em out if you're going second. It basically lets me hit a swath of decks, including some of the threats I expect to still be relevant and some newcomers, so for theorycrafting it seems like a good place to start, since it just hits all the best decks but the mirror, with a couple notable exceptions, and there wasn't space to have 3 specific hand traps to bring in for every random combo matchup. Against a lot of those decks Sphere Mode is fine, Desires is fine, or Tactics is fine, and will generally be higher impact than any hand trap.