Steps of Evolution: Wind-ups – Part 1

December 5, 2012

Categories: YuGiOh!

Tags: Thomas Balaban Alter Reality Games ARG Yugioh yu-gi-oh card games windup windups wind-up

by Thomas Balaban

Hello! My name is Thomas Balaban, and I have been a article writer for a while now but have never had a chance to submit a article, I hope from now on to be able to be a productive member of the Yugioh community and hope I can support other players to step up their game! Since this is my first article, I will talk a little bit about myself. I am majoring in Web Development, and absolutely enjoy doing what I do, and I hope one day to be an interactive developer, or be renowned for mobile development. I have been playing Yugioh since it has begun, and as a kid (about 8 years ago) I went to my first local and won! I loved the experience and knew I wanted to take it further but never had a chance. I got back into the game 2 years ago and have been to a couple events since, one YCS and two regional events, and I got top 4 at my second regional hosted by ARG. I do not claim to be as good as many of the other writers on this site, but I hope one day I can claim to be! I am going to talk today about the progression of wind-ups as time has went on through-out the past formats. The deck has been seen to have a huge Meta impact, and holds a special place in my heart, and we will hopefully get an idea on how they have progressed!
Order of chaos became legal on January 24, 2012 which made this deck relevant in the Meta. A lot of people argued how big of an impact it would make, but most of the well known players were already preparing a side deck for it. The hand loop was called inconsistent or at best weak by many. I will not be covering side decks for this article. Let’s see the build that got 5th place at the first YCS it had a chance at, YCS Guadalajara!

Barrett Arthur Keys (5th Place| YCS Guadalajara) – Wind-Ups
Main Deck: 40
Monsters: 21
[3] Maxx “C”
[1] Tour Bus From the Underworld
[3] Tour Guide From the Underworld
[1] Wind-Up Kitten
[1] Wind-Up Hunter
[3] Wind-Up Magician
[3] Wind-Up Rabbit
[3] Wind-Up Rat
[3] Wind-Up Shark

Spells: 12
[1] Book of Moon
[1] Dark Hole
[1] Heavy Storm
[1] Mind Control
[1] Monster Reborn
[3] Mystical Space Typhoon
[1] Pot of Avarice
[3] Wind-Up Factory

Traps: 7
[3] Fiendish Chain
[1] Mirror Force
[1] Solemn Judgment
[2] Solemn Warning

Extra Deck: 15
[1] Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
[1] Adreus, Keeper of Armageddon
[1] Leviair the Sea Dragon
[1] Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
[1] Number 20: Giga-Brilliant
[1] Number 34: Terror-Byte
[1] Number 39: Utopia
[1] Steelswarm Roach
[1] Tiras, Keeper of Genesis
[1] Wind-Up Arsenal Zenmaioh
[2] Wind-Up Zenmaines
[3] Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity

The first thing you would notice is that the deck was using the hunter loop at the time, for anyone that may be newer and not know about the hunter loop, it was a loop created by the 3 Zenmaighty to discard 3-5 cards from their hand on your first turn, and that is what made the deck famous. The next thing that stood out to me at the time was the single wind-up kitten, wind-up kitten is a card considered sub-par these days because it is not quite as useful against a lot of the main decks right now. It was a single card answer to boss monsters and had some reusability. I love the idea behind it; I just don’t think it has a place in today’s Meta. Tour bus was another interesting option for this tournament, this person removed Sangan to play it. I think at the time this was a good option because tour bus allowed the loop to press on more, and a combination of decks made it a weird option at the time. I would have personally still used it, but I am supportive of his idea to use it at that time. With tour guide at two tour bus would probably not be the best option. Fiendish chain made a really big showing at this particular event because of inzektors. Inzektors took two of top 4 places, and a lot of people opted to run fiendish for that event because they knew from the OCG power they had that they would be relevant.

The next YCS I will talk about is a few months into the future, it started March 24, 2012 and had an award breaking record amount of people at 4,364 participants. I am talking about YCS Long Beach. There was a very interesting build that got top 8, but I am not covering it because it had a very unusual strategy, but it was really well thought out for this event.

Jose Badillo (Top 16| YCS Long Beach) – Wind-Ups
Main Deck: 40
Monsters: 20
[3] Maxx “C”
[1] Gorz the Emissary of Darkness
[3] Tour Guide From the Underworld
[1] Sangan
[1] Wind-Up Hunter
[2] Wind-Up Magician
[3] Wind-Up Rabbit
[3] Wind-Up Rat
[3] Wind-Up Shark

Spells: 11
[2] Wind-Up Factory
[3] Mystical Space Typhoon
[1] Book of Moon
[1] Dark Hole
[1] Heavy Storm
[1] Mind Control
[1] Monster Reborn
[1] Pot of Avarice

Traps: 9
[1] Solemn Judgment
[2] Solemn Warning
[2] Fiendish Chain
[2]Torrential Tribute
[2]Dimensional Prison

Extra Deck: 15
[1] Wind-Up Zenmaines
[3] Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity
[1] Leviair the Sea Dragon
[1] Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
[1] Number 20: Giga-Brilliant
[1] Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
[2] Number 39: Utopia
[1] Number C39: Utopia Ray
[1] Tiras, Keeper of Genesis
[1] Wind-Up Arsenal Zenmaioh
[1] Adreus, Keeper of Armageddon
[1] Chimeratech Fortress Dragon

The main things I will cover on this one are the use of more traps along with the main decked gorz. Gorz was a card that was always speculated heavily in Windups. The use of Factory and Fiendish Chain left it a really iffy option that paid out for him in the long run because it was unexpected. Gorz is usually a option I turn to in Windups whenever I use 2 Factory, I find it extremely weird to use it with 3, but it barely ever clashes with two. The double torrential was also a really good option that did not show up until this event, when people started to realize the power of rabbit. Rabbit became a powerful force since this event as people realized how strong ability rabbits really was. Entire games started to be won with that single card with many traps.

Part two of the article will cover worlds, YCS Toronto, and today’s most popular build of windups along with many tech options that are now floating around. It’s important to realize the evolution of a deck, because at any new set, it might be a great idea to pull ideas from the past.

Thank you for reading part one of this article! If you have any suggestions for part two please let me know.