Now I don’t know if many of you know me but I will introduce myself. My name is Kevin Brown. I have been a competitive Yugioh player since 2006. I Have multiple Regional T8's and consider myself to be a very competitive player. Now I wasn't always like this and started out like many of us have and didn't know what I was doing. I would always find myself checking websites to see what decks were topping regional’s and what decks were topping YCS tournaments. Now many players use websites like this to do what a lot of players call "net decking". Now this is a very popular thing to do as a player who does not have experience with what different cards that are in the game. The easiest thing to do is obviously look at a decklist and say "hey this did good so it must be good". Now this isn't always true as players need to make meta calls. What a meta call is, is when you take a look at all the decks that are topping all the events and break them down and say "hey what can I do in my main deck to beat these decks". Now these are the type of things you need to look into when making a deck and looking for what decks to play. Lets say there are 550-600 players at the next YCS tournament. Your waiting for those top 16 decklists to be posted on the website. Now finally the decklists come up and what's the first thing a lot of players do they check the top 8-10 decks and say hey there were 3 of this deck and 2 of that deck and that means these must be the best decks in the format. Now this is where your wrong. Yes there might be more of a certain deck in the top 8 but what you have to do is weigh in the number of people who actually played that deck in the tournament. If there are 550 players playing in the tournament and 50% of the players are playing the same type of deck yes the odds are those are going to be the decks you are going to see the majority of in your top decks. Now here is the fun part which is what I like to do. I like to go through the decks and look for the decks that were a good pick for the meta. Now what is the meta you say. It is exactly what I had just mentioned. The meta are the decks that the majority of the players are playing in the tournament. Now lets go back to the example of a large 550 player tournament and you are looking at the top 16 decks. Take a look at the decks that are unlike any of the other ones. Take a look at the decks that when you look at them you say "hey how did this deck do so well". What is the reason why these decks do so well its because they are a great meta call. They are the decks that no one had expected to be playing in the tournament and that no one had placed any cards in their side deck to or main deck to counter. But the main part of these decks are to play cards directly in the main board that completely destroy the metagame. To figure out what decks are good meta calls take a look at the side decks of everyone in the top 16 of a large event. Look at what cards are common and what cards are uncommon. This can help you to figure out what deck you can play that players will have no cards in their side deck to hurt you with.
---To help with what I am trying to say I am going to post a "ANTI META" deck and show how a well built maindeck can completely shut down the decks in a certain metagame.
Monsters
2 Karakuri Ninja mdl 339 “Sazank”
2 Banisher of the Radiance
3 Thunder King Rai-Oh
3 D. D. Warrior Lady
3 Breaker the Magical Warrior
2 Guardian Eatos
2 Doomcaliber Knight
Spells
3 Pot of Duality
3 Book of Moon
3 Dimensional Fissure
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Dark Hole
1 Monster Reborn
1 Reinforcement of the Army
Traps
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Mirror Force
2 Solemn Warning
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
3 Dimensional Prison
1 Starlight Road
---Now this deck is a perfect example of a great meta call for the format. The current format consists of ( Fish OTK, Formula Monarchs, Plant Synchro, X-Sabers and Gravekeepers.) Now I know that I left a lot of decks out but these are the decks that you see being played in large numbers at events.
---Lets take a look at the deck above also known as Dimensional Eatos. The way the deck works is it creates advantage by removing players' graveyards from the equation. Now if you think of the decks in the current meta the majority of them rely heavily on activating and targeting cards in graveyards. Dimensional Eatos plays Dimensional Fissure, Macro Cosmos, and Banisher of the Radiance in the Main deck. These cards themselves eliminate graveyards with their effects.
---Now that you have the graveyard taken care of you have to be able to deal with threats on the playing field. This is where cards such as Thunder King Rai-oh, Doomcaliber Knight, D.D Warrior Lady, and Karkuri Ninja mdl 339 "Sazank" come into effect in your monster lineup. Each one deals with separate threats dealing with your opponents monsters. Now all you have to do is protect these creatures which is why the deck runs a full defensive trap lineup as you can see above to assure that each creature is able to be protected while its on the field. Now that you have your opponents graveyard and creatures taken care of whets the last piece of the puzzle. SPELL AND TRAPS
---Now we all know the deck can create a large amount of control by eliminating your opponents graveyard from the game but now like every other deck you have to deal 8000 damage in order to win the game. The deck maindecks (3) Breaker the Magical Warrior, (2) Mystical Space Typhoon, Starlight Road, and Solemn Judgment to assure that your creatures can attack and deal damage to your opponent.
---Now the whole point of me writing this article is to show you that just because a deck doesn’t come in first or second place doesn't mean that it isn't a great deck. What I want you guys to do is take a look at the decks that just seem unusual and uncanny and look at them and read the text on the cards that are in them and decide why the deck was so successful. As I said earlier if you have 550 players in a event and 50% of them are playing one single type of deck then yes you would expect to see that deck in majority in the top decks. Now what I want you to think of is what if you have 550 players and two people decide to build a deck that is completely unusual and unique and doesn't fit into the meta. Now what if those two people even though not coming in the top 8 of the tourney both top 16'd the tourney. Now you have two people playing a certain type of deck and both players making it into the top 16. This means that the deck has placed 100% of its representation into the top decks. Now this is much better then lets say out of 550 players, 200 players are playing a Plant Synchrony deck and only 5 People make the top 16.
What I want you to do when building a deck is decide what is best for you and what fits your play style and that is your meta don’t worry about what everyone else is playing. And as always have fun.
---What I want everyone to know is this is my first article and I want to continue to help everyone out. I want to hear input on what you want to hear by leaving comments. It doesn’t matter whether you are a new player or someone who has been playing for a while. I want to hear input as to what you guys want to read and what decks you want to see lists for. Like I said I consider myself a very good deck builder and I want to post deck lists weekly for you guys to read and comment on. If you have a deck in mind I will post a list and go into as much depth and detail about what each card does and why I chose to place the cards in the deck. I think a neat idea would be to do Deck of the Week and post lists of any decks you want to see.
Latest posts by Kevin Brown (see all)
- Deciding What is the Right Meta Call - January 26, 2011
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