Something I've noticed recently

The competitive scene is probably going to change rapidly now and there are a couple root causes of the sudden shifts coming up. The Main Cause is the sheer uselessness of Backrow versus Tengu sans Solemn Warning... and the Newest Cause is Agents... A deck that mains 2 Kristya and can do nearly anything with nearly equal consistency of Six Samurai... In July (Late July) we will receive Xyz. Which will cause another shift thanks to the focus on a more useful Extra Deck (Meaning little to no room for much else sans the necessities.) Read More for the Article


Think of the Main Cause like this... You have a backrow of Solemn Warning, Seven Tools of the Bandit, and a bluff Six Samurai United... Your opponent summons Tengu... You have absolutely no choice but to Warning it or face a bad situation... meaning that if your opponent has a follow up play you will take a lot of damage. Or even Gravekeepers backrow: Solemn Warning, Compulsory Evacuation Device, and Dimensional Prison... Tengu can't be safely compulsed or prison'd so you have no choice but to Warning which could mean you aren't negating something more dangerous down the road.

Tengu single-handedly makes short work of Backrow's... If you have no Solemn Warning to stop it you will probably either take 1700 or a synchro swarm followed up with a Pot of Avarice. In one duel I was in Tengu was Bottomlessed and then Bottomlessed and then Prison'd ... That means your entire backrow was just dedicated to Tengu... Meaning your opponent just gained 3 imaginary pluses from your 1 for 1's (You no longer have 1 Prison and no more Bottomless... My Attacks and summons are that much safer and I lost 2 cards from my deck that were all free... and I thinned by 2 cards)

The new Structure deck is already showing it's strength... at providence it was ran by 3 of the top I think 32 decks. Which is pretty good for a deck that came out a few days beforehand so most people who ran it weren't running necessarily final builds. So the results of the deck are going to improve by the next major (Nats). The strength of the structure lies in not Mid-Game but rather early Trishula (It rarely has shine balls mid-game to Trish with but Early game Trish is rather common... If Earth lives for one turn hope you can stop Venus's summon.) I've been playing with a Non-Kristya build and even Barrier Statue of the Heavens is enough to stop most deck's dead (In this meta for every non-Light deck it's a Kristya with 1800 less power but can be Normal Summoned easier than Kristya.).

The Major plays made by the TCG Agent deck are mostly centered around Miraculous Descent or Hyperion summons. The Most Important play the deck makes though is that Random Trishula. The sheer amount of chances the deck has to Summon Trishula is terrifying. If Earth stays on the field for one turn expect either Trish or an equally terrifying Synchro Summon for the situation.

Thanks to such things decks like Gravekeepers which have a traditionally bad match-up against Six Samurai which is still very popular though it hasn't won for a few YCS's have just as bad match-up's against Agents (Which are basically Fairy Samurai plus gayer cards like Kristya)... The Fact that Gravekeepers also can't quite keep Tengu based decks in Check any longer also hurts them....

So right now the Tier 1 looks something like this (In no particular order)
Tier 1:
Six Samurai
Planets (What Konami calls Agent Angels lol)
Tengu Synchro
Gravekeepers
X-Sabers (They don't show up much due to difficulty but when they do they do rather well)

This is a very large Tier 1 line-up the problem lies though in Tier 2 being so obscenely close to Tier 1 that Side-Decking became a lot more difficult so that you only now can side for decks you often have bad-match-ups with and still not have enough.

Tier 2 is looking something like this (Hard to determine due to sheer amount of variations and decks used):
Tier 2:
Fish
Frog Monarchs
Debris Variants
Herald/Hyperion
Anti-Meta (Yes it gets it's own spot on a Tier list)
Gladiator Beasts
T.G. Hybrids
Scraps
Blackwings

Can you adequetly prepare for all of those varied decks? Of course not but which decks have better match-ups against those decks? NONE The reason those are all Tier 2 is because they have slightly worse match-up's with Tier 1 than other Tier 1 decks. But normally these Tier 2 decks end up doing very well because Tier 1 decks cannot feasibly side-deck for all of the possible Tier 2 decks.

Bringing up the Xyz point will bring a shift to the meta as is though.

First off the decks that benefit heavily from Xyz...
Planets
Herald/Hyperion
Blackwings
Six Samurai
Gravekeepers
X-Sabers
Gladiator Beasts
Frog Monarchs (Rank 2 and 1 aren't hard)
(Note how I didn't mention Tengu Synchro)

Out of those though the ones I believe will emerge Tier 1 are:
Planets
Six Samurai
Gravekeepers
Gladiator Beasts
Tengu Variant Synchro
X-Sabers

Think of it like this though. We only added 1 deck to the Tier 1... but Tier 2 wise there will be a lot of changes so many I won't list them. But the most important change is the Planet Match-up with Tengu Synchro... Tengu Synchro with the release of T.G. Hyper Librarian will become one of the most dangerous decks of the format... It actually has a good match-up against Planets even after they get Gachi Gachi Gantetsu. Look at the OCG and how Doppel builds are destroying about as often as you see Blackwings and Planets and Sams... Imagine a Doppel build now with Tengu instead of Quickdraw? (Only running 1-2 Xyz)

So with Librarian and the change to the format from Xyz the above list becomes a lot more viable. (The reason Glad's are on there is because the deck got a large boost from Essedarii.)

Here are the match-ups IMO from the above list post GENF.
Planets>X-Sabers and Six Samurai
Planets= Gravekeepers, Gladiator Beasts

Six Samurai> Gladiator Beasts and Gravekeepers
Six Samurai= Tengu Synchro, X-Sabers

Gravekeepers> Tengu Synchro
Gravekeepers= Planets, X-Sabers, Gladiator Beasts,

X-Sabers> Nothing
X-Sabers= Six Samurai, Gravekeepers, Gladiator Beasts

Gladiator Beasts> Nothing
Gladiator Beasts= Gravekeepers, X-Sabers, Tengu Synchro

Tengu Synchro> Planets, X-Sabers
Tengu Synchro= Gladiator Beasts, Six Samurai

In short the order for this list would be
1. Tengu Synchro (Beats Planets)
2. Planets (Beats Samurai)
3. Six Samurai (Beats Gravekeepers who have the only good match-up with Tengu)
3. Gravekeepers (Destroys Tengu and is even with everything but Six Samurai)
4. Gladiator Beasts and X-Sabers (Beat nothing Tier 1 but have enough fair matches to stay strong choices)
*Six Samurai and Gravekeepers are tied due to Keepers having a better Tengu match-up albeit only slightly but also by matching Planets who Beat Samurai.

These are possibly flawed observations but it's just my thoughts on the matter. Believe them or take them with a grain of salt your call.