Merry X-Mas, Tour Bus, X-Saber Analysis from Nate

Merry Christmas everyone, and if you're Jewish or celebrate Kwanzaa; well Happy Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. I'm not exactly sure when those holidays are celebrated but hey I get an A for effort right? lol. Anyways, not much is happening for me for Christmas - all I wanted was Batman Arkham City and Uncharted 3, which I bought for myself on Black Friday so I'm set. Other than that all I need is a new watch (cuz the band thing broke) and a hand vacuum since they are convenient. My wife and I are deciding to celebrate Christmas at a later date because we've just been so busy with the house that we haven't had time to do shopping for people or each other or write cards and that kinda stuff.

As everyone expected, yesterday we got the effect of Tour Bus. I'm not gonna post the effect since I'm sure everyone has heard/read about it whether from the actual Article page, Youtube, forums, or word-of-mouth. At first I was like holy crap that sucks, but like most people, I was expecting something really broken. I think the general constructive consensus with the card is: 1) it'll get played as a 1-of if Sangan gets banned and 2) it's a decent sideboard card. Everyone else is like "blah it's garbage blah". I like that it's kind of like a built-in Transmigration, you get to still XYZ with it, and it gets its effect regardless of how it ends up in the grave. Good, not broken, not bad. I'll probably do what I can to pick up a copy for myself when ORCS is released. I don't expect it to be a very expensive card. As for the SE for ORCS, there is still a lot of speculation as to what the promos may be. Lots are obviously hoping for Tour Guide and justifying that it will be in there because of Tour Bus. I completely understand this logic. On the flip side, I can't think of very many instances (then again I'm not trying hard) where we got a reprint of a certain card, let alone an exclusive, before the OCG got it in the first place. This leads me to stick to my original guess that it won't make it as one of the promos for this SE and will be used to push some other product that costs more. Why waste arguably the most sought-after card in the game on a $9.99 per-unit product, when it could go toward either a $20/$30 product like a tin or a pack of Gold Series (assuming they stick with the $30 price that Gold 4 had)?

Apparently the Northtown tournament is now the "place to play" in the area since BGN isn't running tournaments. I played against Link on DN the other day and he mentioned that they had around 20 people last Monday and people were desperate for a place to play. I'm glad that at least people have come to some kind of consensus on where people should play. I won't be able to go tomorrow but once school gets rolling again I should be able to make it out there. I'm not sure how this will affect me playing at Lightning. Danny brought up a good point when he said he'd just play at Lightning, and that was the matter of consistency. Lightning has the same people show up week after week, while it's hard to tell how often the people at Northtown may show up. I'd rather go to a tourney that has a consistent number around 10-12 than have some turnouts be 20 and the next week be 7. Not sure how likely this would be, but something to consider.

Anyways, Nate did some testing with X-Sabers on DN and wrote a mini-article/conclusion about it and I will post it below:
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Are Sabers Still an Option?

Hey, this is Nate from Team O. I’ve always enjoyed writing articles so I figured I might as well write some for Mike’s blog. [My note: to be frank, this is the whole team's blog :)]

I recently was able to get back into the game after losing all my cards in an unfortunate backpack incident. Anyway, with not that many resources I am a little limited to what I can make so I have been spending a lot of time on DN testing out decks, and I thought that I would record some of my progress with different decks. Why not start with Sabers?

After a couple games of playing with X-Sabers I realized how good they can be if you play them right. I decided in order to fully test the deck out I would have to play a total of 50 games, making any necessary changes along the way. 

Here is my starting list:

Monster: 21
2x Maxx “C”
1x Sangan
1x X-Saber Airbellum
2x X-Saber Pashuul
3x XX-Saber Boggart Knight
3x XX-Saber Darksoul
3x XX-Saber Emmersblade
3x XX-Saber Faultroll
3x XX-Saber Fulhelmknight

Spell: 9
1x Book of Moon
1x Dark Hole
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mind Control
1x Monster Reborn
2x Mystical Space Typhoon
2x Pot of Duality

Traps: 10
1x Gottoms’ Emergency Call
1x Mirror Force
2x Reinforced Truth
1x Solemn Judgement
2x Solemn Warning
1x Torrential Tribute
2x Trap Stun

With a deck made, and Pandora playing in the background, it’s time to get started. Hold on, it’s gonna be a long one.

Game 1: Lightsworn (chaos)
GOML HAND. I otk turn 2. We agree on a rematch
1-0

Game 2: Lightsworn (Chaos)
He just drew too good. Not much I could do. Sometime LS just get lucky.
1-1

Game 3: Lightsworn (Chaos)
Went back and forth, but he started out his first turn with a DAD, Catastor, Ehren, a backrow, and 3 cards in hand… He DAD’s through my backrow, and Ehrens over my sangan. I’m down 4 cards and there's not much I could do.
1-2

Game 4: Plants
I play super conservative and eventually clear the field and empty his hand. But playing him reminded me of something; Super-Nimble Mega Hamster… I decide to try it for a few games.
2-2

The New List:
Monster: 23
2x Maxx “C”
2x Super-Nimble Mega Hamster
1x Sangan
1x X-Saber Airbellum
2x X-Saber Pashuul
3x XX-Saber Boggart Knight
3x XX-Saber Darksoul
3x XX-Saber Emmersblade
3x XX-Saber Faultroll
3x XX-Saber Fulhelmknight

Spell: 9
1x Book of Moon
1x Dark Hole
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mind Control
1x Monster Reborn
2x Mystical Space Typhoon
2x Pot of Duality

Traps: 8
1x Gottoms’ Emergency Call
2x Reinforced Truth
1x Solemn Judgement
2x Solemn Warning
2x Trap Stun

Game 5: Rabbit
Not a good representation of the format. He brings out this verz card that I cant get around. Verz Ophion, its effect is that neither player can special a lvl 5 or higher monster. From then on I decided to only record TCG duels.
2-3

And after some help with the deck list this is what I came up with:
Monster: 20
1x Gorz
1x Super-Nimble Mega Hamster
1x X-Saber Airbellum
2x X-Saber Pashuul
3x XX-Saber Boggart Knight
3x XX-Saber Darksoul
3x XX-Saber Emmersblade
3x XX-Saber Faultroll
3x XX-Saber Fulhelmknight

Spell: 10
1x Book of Moon
1x Dark Hole
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mind Control
1x Monster Reborn
2x Mystical Space Typhoon
2x Pot of Duality
1x Enemy Controller

Traps: 10
2x Bottomless Trap Hole
1x Gottoms’ Emergency Call
2x Reinforced Truth
1x Solemn Judgement
2x Solemn Warning
2x Trap Stun

Game 6: Plants
He wins game 1 with some crazy tops and we decide to play best 2/3.
2-4

Game 7: Plants
I open broken and win easily
3-4

Game 8: Plants
I’m pretty sure he sides into pretty heavy anti-meta, I mind control his t-king and go for game.
4-4

Game 9: Dark World
Long game, which is when dark world is usually best. Got him down low enough to attack over a monster for game.
5-4

Game 10: Agents
I open fairly well, and win turn 4. We decide to play a match.
6-4

Game 11: Agents
Turn out this kid a fucking retard and cant take a loss so he practically cums when he wins game 2. My deck pooped on me :/
6-5

Game 12: Agents
This game is pretty close but he opens very well. I wind up losing.
6-6

…… wait what? 6-6? Turn out we don’t need 50 games. I got a good feel of how it plays against the meta and I’ve made my mind up. For me, Sabers are not an option. Lets go through some things that I noticed:

1- The deck is extremely combo based, as it always has been. In slower formats this is fine but with one card combos like Rabbit, Tour Guide and Hyperion, its just too hard to keep up.

2- Having to run so many sabers, just to get a consistent build means not much room for cards like maxx “c” or veiler, which I feel are needed.

3- Most of the time the combo isn’t enough to win. Because Darksoul only gets it’s effect once the deck really just doesn’t have the power it used to.

Some quick notes:

· Reinforced Truth was amazing. Cards too good.
· Gottoms e call didn’t help once.
· Extra deck is extremely tight. You’ll never have enough room for everything, but Landoise isn’t worth the space.
· Enemy Controller was meh.
· Hamster was good whenever I drew it. Good comeback card.
· 2 duality was the right number.

All that being said, I believe it is possible that someone else might have more success than I did. But as for me, I need to keep looking (I hate this format).