Of Things to Come

So 1st ed Maxx C's have gone up again on Troll's buylist, now @ $30. They aren't buying 1st ed Tour Guides at all now. I was curious as to why this was, so I did a search on their inventory and they have 26 1st eds for sale for $190 and no Unlimited ones. I guess that pretty much explains it. $190 seems a bit high but I guess there are people that don't/aren't allowed to use eBay so I'm sure they have a market for it.

Last night I decided to hop on DGZ and check out Shriek's OCG site to try and get a feel of what we may expect to see in the post-PHSW meta. When I look for OCG lists on Shriek, I try to only look at the ones where it shows the attendance being like 100+, for obvious reasons. They sure like splashing the TG engine into whatever they can it seems like, lol. Nah, only into Agents and Gadgets. One interesting tech I saw in TG Agents was 2 copies of Elder of the Six Samurai and adding the obligatory Shi En with it, kinda like how Sabers did. I also see the tech Rush Rhino, something I tried when I first ran TG Agents but it was dismissed rather quickly by the forum folk. The unfortunate problem now with trying to look toward the OCG for meta predictions, is due to their lack of our big exclusives, namely Tour Guide and Tengu. I remember back in the day when what ever was hot in the OCG, would be hot for us like a few months later. If you kept up with the OCG, you had a better understanding of how the TCG was going to evolve. Now, it's just not as relevant due to the increasing gap in our card pools in general and our broken exclusives. I guess we get to see what good Extra deck cards we can anticipate and most likely plan to use though.

Obviously the first thing people think of when thinking about post-PHSW, is the impact of Rescue Rabbit, Laggia, and Dolkka. The deck doesn't seem to be doing all that much in OCG land, but they also don't have Tour Guide to abuse Rabbit, or Dolkka at all. I don't know if this alone will be what sets this deck apart for us. A lot of people said DW would be insane because of Tour Guide, but we didn't see much of that broken-ness out of Columbus (I highly doubt Dark Smog is going to be that "one card they need to be tier 0!" card). On paper Laggia and Dolkka are just insane. Normal monsters, however, are not. At least they have 1900 or 2000 atk (with 1700 if you run Kabazauls) depending on what kind of variant you run. If the deck does well, the problem that's going to happen is first and foremost the price. Imagine a deck with 3 Tour Guide, 2-3 Rabbit, 2 each(?) of the derkas, that alone may end up being $900-1000. On eBay Rescue Rabbit pre-orders are about 100, and Dolkka is anywhere from 60-100 (only looking at Buy-It-Nows). Oh boy I can already hear the whiners on the forums lol. But such is the cycle of YuGiOh, broken deck -> ban list -> new broken deck -> reprints of stuff in the old broken deck.

If the deck doesn't do well however, I would say our format will pretty much be what it is now until ORCS (no idea what's good in that set). I don't think anything relevant is coming out of HA05, but I may be wrong, I dunno. If Plants continue to take the next few Jumps, I could see a ban of Lonefire, Dandylion, or both in March. From a business standpoint, imagine how upset they are that no DW's topped the YCS. What reason do people have to buy the deck if it didn't even top 32? A Trag, Fader, and Bribe reprint? Doesn't seem like enough, but I dunno, maybe it is for some people. They will nerf Plants so that they can force players to buy into their newer archetypes. If I were Konami I would pay the top pros to play what I wanted them to or offer a very small commission. If they do well with it, then that gets people to buy that product.

I think Wind-Ups will largely be ignored until they get that one broken XYZ, boss monster, draw card, or something along those lines. People are scooping up Wind-Up Factories for that moment, and if it ever comes, they should be able to profit a lot from it. I'm really interested in playing Karakuri as a non-Tour Guide deck and just need 2 more Genex Neutrons for it. However, I dunno, it just seems very susceptible in game 2 and 3 with the opponent siding in Cyber Dragons. I guess you just have to play accordingly and not leave a bunch of your machines out there for your opponent to Chimera away.

So taking all this into consideration, what becomes the equalizer? I believe it to be Maxx C and also its counter, Debunk. Maxx C is going to hinder all the decks from trying to go off without the opponent taking into consideration the reprecussion of their actions. If they try to go for game, they have to consider "Will he draw into Gorz/Trag if I let him draw too many?". That is why I believe Debunk to see an increase as well, to counter their counter. We even saw a Plant player at Columbus maindeck a copy, maybe other players did too, I dunno. It's at least going to be a sidedeck staple. There are so many hand-trap monsters and things that activate in the grave that it's probably a safe bet going into a big tourney. Speaking locally, it ain't the best card since no one else owns Maxx C's, only a few have Veilers, and no one's even running Plants. Maybe they'll be running DW this weekend though, we will see.

As for this weekend, I'm still unsure what I will play. I know I said I'd play whatever did well at the YCS, but I've been drawing kinda funky with Plants. Losing to Shiggs doesn't instill any confidence in the deck (no offense Shiggs) for me as well. I guess I'll have to run some more hands and see, or playtest a little right before the tourney and make a snap decision. I'm probably just over-thinking it. I can't play DW since I don't have Raven or a 3rd Dragged Down, and I can't run Karakuri since I'm missing 2 Neutrons like I stated previously. Pretty much comes down to Agents or Plants, lol. Obviously I haven't had too much issue winning with Agents, but I'd really like to play something else. Venus into Gachi every game gets repetitive, lol.