GreenRanger and DeckTech are competing in the KC Cup, and you should too! They discuss the meta of the KC Cup, with the new format and rewards. Other topics in this episode include Jesse Anderson farming, the Duel Links Pro X Tournament results, as well as Card Trader Rotation. Top Techs of the Week returns for the KC Cup.
The Duel Assessment Episode #35
November 11, 2017
- Intro
– Intro Music: “Danger Storm” by Kevin Macleod, used under Creative Commons license—thanks, Kevin!
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html
– [0:01:08]: Our weeks in the Duel World: As anticipated, this has been one hell of a week in Duel Links, with restrictions going into effect, new cards, and the return of the Kaiba Cup.
DeckTech spent the first part of the week testing decks for the Kaiba Cup, but ultimately decided that Cyber Angels was still the deck for him, even after the restrictions. He’s at Duelist Level 10 so far, having lost just one game so far.
GreenRanger did not expect to be allowed entry into the Kaiba Cup, but here we are. Went in right away with an updated Ancient Gear list, and is Duelist Level 11. Notable losses occurred against Dark Paladin/BLS and Harpies.
- News
– [0:04:25]: This week in esports
- Last Week’s Duel Links Pro X Results: Reminder: this event took place last week, right after we recorded. They brought two decks each, and the decks had to be completely different (different characters, Skills, and even archetypes) , and they used the new ban/restricted lists as well.
1st Place, Tutpup: Three-Star Demotion Ninjas and Mind Scan Cyber Angels. Both lists were pretty refined and might be called the new standard lists. After the nerfs, we are seeing more Cyber Angels players run just 4 rituals and maybe a 2/2 split on Sonic Birds and Senjus, leaving about 3 slots for tech/counterplay cards. Tutpup put 2 Nobleman of Extermination and 1 E.Con in those slots. DKayed showed this list as his example list, so it seems like it may be considered the “best” list.
2nd Place, BookWormForm: Destiny Draw Amazoness Burn with 21 cards, 15 of which are traps, including 2 Amazoness Willpower and a Jar of Avarice, to make sure he gets to the long game; this deck looks super annoying. His second deck is an interesting Balance Cyber Angels deck running Sgt. Electro and Bacon Saver as his 14th and 15th monsters, but it is important to remember that they were playing with pre-nerf Balance, so this deck might work differently now.
3rd Place, Looler: With what looks like a standard post-nerfs Red-Eyes Beatdown and very clean Mind Scan Cyber Angels. He chose to run 5 rituals, but no Sonic Birds. He put 3 E.Con into his tech slots.
4th Place, Yasser0: With Ancient Gears and a Destiny Draw Amazoness deck. His Ancient Gears deck looks like a “aggro-control” build with 2 Knight of the Heavy Flame, 2 Sgt. Electro, and a medley of counter-play spells and traps, including 3 E.Con. His Amazoness list is fairly different from BookWormForm’s, emphasizing the milling aspect, with 2 Warm Worm, instead of more stalling traps.
5th/6th Place, HarambeBae: With REBDZ Beatdown (running one Storm) and Three-Star Demotion Ninjas.
5th/6th Place, Drop: With Mind Scan Cyber Angels (nearly identical to Tutpup’s/ DuelLinkMeta’s, but with a 1:3 searcher split) and Restart Venus, including Destiny HERO-Plasma, Creature Seizure, Transmodify (to turn a late Venus into a Dunames), and TWO Anti-Magic Arrows. Though it can do both, the list looks like it is going for more of the OTK swing turns than for the long, value game.
7th/8th Place, AdoboBoy: with Mind Scan Cyber Angels (2 E.Con and a Curse of Anubis as his 3 tech slots), and and standard REBDZ.
7th/8th Place, 3k D.D.Rew: with double-Anti-Magic Arrow REBDZ and 5-searcher (Bird/Senju) Cyber Angels.
As a wrap on the tournament, we saw 0 Toon Barrel Dragon decks and perhaps more Cyber Angels and REBDZ than we might have expected right after the nerfs. 6 players in the top 8 brought Cyber Angels, whereas 4 brought REBDZ. Only one person brought Ancient Gears to the top 8. We look forward to seeing if the top Kaiba Cup meta looks anything like this.
– [0:19:40]: Jesse Anderson is in the GX World (11/6-11/15) – As we discussed last week, Jesse Anderson is here for a roaming duelist event–not yet to be added to your team. The datamined rewards were spot-on, which is cool, but slightly unfortunate because the rewards are not that good, at least as the game is right now. Still, as we always say, it is better to farm now while you can than to be missing it later. Luckily, he is fairly easy to farm. DeckTech’s been going old school with Cerb farming, using Draw Sense: Light. GreenRanger has been using Reinforcements + Blue Eyes farming, which has been rather consistent.
– [0:23:35]: Banned/Restricted List AND Skill Balance Changes Went Live 11/6: Although we have known for a while what card restrictions were going into effect, Konami has more-or-less left us in the dark about the Skill changes so players have had to investigate it on their own.
Creator: Pegasus’s Creator Skill got a buff to account for power creep since the Skill was first introduced into the game. So far, we’ve determined you can get Monster Reborn, Sakuretsu Armor, Lightning Vortex, and Harpies’ Feather Duster, depending on the board state at the time.
New Balance: These shoes were recommended by DeckTech’s podiatrist. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYVO5bUFww0) Also, the Duel Links Skill got reworked. Redditor EXdeath-EX ran a bunch of test duels and his conclusion is that the game takes your deck, divides it by 3, allocates 3 cards from your hand based on that balance, and then adds one random card from the rest of your deck. Based on that formula, you need 7 of one type of card in your 20-card deck to guarantee you get that type of card, but if you have 6, you still have a very good shot at getting it. DKayed stated in a Duel Links meta video that the deckbuilding move if you want to min/max is to have 6 of the type and take that small chance of not getting it.
Link to EXdeath-EX’s post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DuelLinks/comments/7b4n02/weighing_the_balance_the_heavy_nerf/
– [0:28:35]: New Box: Galactic Origins came 11/6/17: In light of the lengthy preview last week, the guys discuss a few cards that surprised them from the box or now stand out, a few days after release.
- Saffira: not as good in Cyber Angels as Decktech thought it might have been. You almost always would rather just summon one of the Angels, and it hurts to give up precious deck space for a gimmicky backup plan instead of running maybe protection in those slots.
- Gladiator Beasts: better than the guys expected.
- Overall power/impact level: about where GreenRanger expected; the set is not yet making a huge splash in the competitive meta. That said, Gladiator Beasts are on the precipice, so they might become the breakout hit of this Kaiba Cup.
– [0:36:50]: Duel Links Meta Updated Tiers: In congruence with all of the changes, the Duel Links Meta Discord has updated their tier list and channels.
- Tier 1 – Cyber Angels
- Tier 2 – REZ, Ninjas
- Tier 3 – Ancient Gears, Burn, Gladiator Beasts, Hazy Flame
- Tier 4 – Control, Dinosaurs, Horus, Mill, Nephthys
– [0:43:55]: Card Trader Removing Cards: On December 6, the Card Trader will be removing 17(!) cards from his inventory. Instead of listing them all here, we’ll just say that some noteable cards are in that list, including: Twin-Barrel Dragon (UR) (the former best 4-star monster in the game); Guardian Angel Joan (UR) (somewhat relevant for 3*Demotion/Mausoleum decks); Swarm of Locusts (SR); and Polymerization (SR) (if you don’t somehow have 3 already, you should probably get a set just in case).
– [0:46:35]: Take a Quick Survey to get a Free SR Ticket: You should DEFINITELY take them up on this. EZ SR ticket and you get some input on what gets added to the game in the future.
– [0:47:15]: 1.5x Experience Campaign (again) 11/5-11/12: As you’ve probably noticed during this week, we’ve had more experience! For a little while (until 11/9) we also had Bonus Duel Rewards, so it was a particularly good time to level characters.
– [0:47:30]: As promised, Paradox Brothers and Pegasus Added to Duel Gate: If you have been playing for a while, it is unlikely you need anything from them, but it’s nice to fill out collections and now newer players get that chance as well. The main takeaway: make sure you do NOT use your SR Tickets on Toon Mermaids, as you can now get them from the gate.
– [0:48:30]: Kaiba Cup Round 1 is Live!:
– Early rounds really easy, picks up a bit where GreenRanger is.
– New format for round 1, not what we expected.
– Don’t need win streaks to progress.
– Four duel-level floors (in multiples of 5).
– Tons of rewards just for playing, leveling.
- The Duel School
[0:52:20]: Top Techs of the Week
Soul Exchange – Ancient Gear decks brought something to the meta we haven’t seen in a while, tribute summoning. CA uses ritual summoning, REZ uses special summoning, and 3*D/Mausoleum use cost-reduced normal summoning. As such, a card like Soul Exchange, which is only useful for tribute summoning, hasn’t been a meta card. Ancient Gear decks typically run 2 AGG + 2 Beasts, or 1 AGG + 3 Beasts. For the 3 Beast setup, Soul Exchange is just a tempo swing on the board, where you sacrifice your opponent monster for a free 2300 attack monster. The card gets around all flip effect monsters, or monsters that need to be destroyed by battle or card effect. The tribute summon also can dispose of ritual monsters that have protection in the graveyard from spent ritual spells. In a meta where FGTH is oft-used, it helps to have another way to tribute summon outside of AG Castle, which ideally is used for AGG. AG typically loses when you’ve used up your Castle, and have a hand clogged with tribute monsters. Soul Exchange is not only good against meta monsters, but gives more plays. This helps ameliorate the downside of skipping a turn of attacks.
Nobleman of Extermination – This card has started seeing a lot of play in Cyber Angels. It works excellently with Mind Scan, and Cyber Angels usually only needs a small opening to win the game. The guys debate whether it is a core part of the deck or counts as a “tech” card.
Wrap-Up
Shoutout to Asksuyo for the review; we appreciate the help!
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