ORCS/Ban List Conspiracy?, and Card Choices

Well I hope everyone enjoyed their New Year's celebrations and didn't do anything they'd regret (too badly) :)

The past few days I've impatiently been waiting for Turbo 7 and ORCS SE promo news. What started out as "oh we'll get the Turbo 7 news on Thursday" has turned into a "wait 5+ more days" kinda thing. I'm gonna go ahead and presume that the stores will finally have them in tomorrow, since they apparently shipped it out on Thursday and today was a day-off. I'm also being optimistic in hoping that the Konami product or article page will be updated tomorrow since the last post on the article page was the Tour Bus one, and that was over a week ago. ORCS is right around the corner so we should theoretically get the SE info soon.

A few days ago I watched underworld6667's video talking about the ban list and the significance of the upped release date for ORCS. He basically said it's most likely so they can ban-hammer Inzektors but also give the TCG time to play with (and buy into) the archetype. It wouldn't make sense to buy up the set for Inzektors if they nerfed them before the set was released to us. It seems pretty logical and who knows it may be spot on, but I'm also taking into consideration that Inzektor's dominance/prevalence happened much after the knowledge of the upped release date. What I mean is, if I remember correctly, at the point in time that we got the info for the upped release date, TG Agent was "the deck" in the OCG. So to say that it is because of Inzektors, well that doesn't seem to make sense since every top list I saw was mostly TG Agent at the time. Of course my info for all this is limited to Shriek's OCG site, and I'm going off of my not-so-great memory. Regardless, underworld6667's analysis is enough for me to not buy into the Inzektor hype. Maybe once the March list comes out, and if they don't get nerfed, establish themselves as tier 1 over here.

Lately I have been having issues with what my 40th card should be in my TGU Agent deck. It all started after I saw Evan Vargas' video where he talked about switching his 2x Tragoedia with 2x Spirit Reaper in his XYZ Chaos deck. He explained that there were many instances where he had a dead Trag in hand, no play for the turn, and just sat behind his Snowman Eater with nothing to do. He also explained that since Reaper was level 3 dark, it still stuck with his Rank-3/Chaos theme of the deck. I've always played 1 Trago in my Agent deck so this wasn't an issue at the time, but I decided I wanted to play Reaper. I think I ended up cutting 1 TKing (to go back to 2) for it. Reaper, when I drew it, put in a lot of work with the testing I've done on DN. I think one game I successfully hit 3 times with it, awesome pluses.

Back when the effect of Tour Bus was revealed, I saw a DGz post that went something like "I'd rather run Night Assailant than this garbage." I didn't think about it for quite some time, until I happened to randomly once again go over the top 16 lists for Brighton. In it I noticed Adrian Madaj play 1 copy of it in the main and also 1 copy of Possessed Dark Soul in the side. I had no clue what Possessed Dark Soul was so I wiki'd it and saw that it was basically just another Tour Guide target with a somewhat decent effect. I thought about Night Assailant (NA for short) more and more. With NA, your first Tour Guide drop can be: another Tour Guide, Sangan, or NA. Going for Sangan and immediately XYZ'ing with it has become the increasingly popular play these days, with the philosophy being: you don't want to top-deck Sangan late in the game but you also want the odds in your favor to draw into another Guide. The thing I didn't like and still don't like about this, is that I hate knowing I'll most likely never get a Sangan search off regardless of what stage in the game it is. There have been many instances where I've used it to synch with Earth, enjoy the pluses, and search for Maxx C. If you go for Tour Guide, then you only have 1 left in the deck, and the odds of drawing into that last copy and using its effect becomes much lower. Tour Guide for Tour Guide is probably the least ideal play. So, going Guide -> NA leaves me with 2 Guides left in the deck and also a Sangan. This is good for the increased probability of drawing into another Guide and also gives me the potential to Sangan search in the future. Even if you open with NA or top-deck it, it still has a relevant effect, is level 3, and Chaos food.

So my issue became "do I drop Trag to play NA?" Trag has saved me a lot of times against reckless aggressive pushes from some opponents in the past. At the same time, I agree with Evan's observation that sometimes it was just kinda useless in my hand. I also had to take into consideration playing a 2nd Reaper, as it is just so good right now. I decided I had to make a pro/con list (I like them lol) for each card. Nothing profound here, just outlining my thought process:

Tragoedia
Pros:
- A potential beater
- "Change of Heart" effect
- Level-change effect for XYZ or Synchro shenanigans
- Like Gorz, can save you from getting OTK'd
Cons:
- Can be dead in the hand
- Terrible to draw if you have no or very few cards in hand
- Forces you in a situation of choosing to set defense or not

Spirit Reaper
Pros:
- Great offensive pressure, basically forces your opponent to react to it or deal with the consequence
- Great as a defensive wall
- Level 3
- Very decent in top-decking situation
- Some decks these days only have a few outs to it
Cons:
- Destruction by being targetted


Night Assailant
Pros:
- Tour Guide target, allowing me to keep 2 Guides in the deck and potential Sangan plays open
- Level 3
- Very decent in top-decking situation
- Destruction ability
Cons:
- Once its attacked, will more than likely be dead
- Insignificant ATK

All of them are dark so that's really a non-factor. 

So, for the time being, I've decided to cut the Trag for NA and still play 1 Reaper. I tested the new build on DN a little bit, and I love being able to Guide for NA and keep my more-relevant cards in the deck. I'm also playing 1 Bottomless at the moment, and I've had a similar mental dilemma about choosing to run it, or cutting it for Trag, Reaper, or Mirror Force. I won't be going back to 41 in the main either. I can't remember the last time I've Mirror Force'd for more than 1 Monster against a good player though, so it may be something I keep in the side against rogue match-ups. I've always liked Bottomless since it deals with things like Scrap Dragon, Brionac, and Hyperion better than Mirror Force.

Tomorrow I finally get another day of wife-free freedom so I'll be testing at Danny's with Zach and maybe Alan. It'd be nice if Alan could come so we could get 2 matches going at the same time rather than having 1 person just sit around. I'll try and test these deck nuances and see what I like.