The Rise and Fall of Maxx C

The one thing about Yugioh that has always fascinated me is the ever-changing trends that occur as the meta changes. A card that may be considered a staple in one format can be completely irrelevant or sometimes "bad" in the next, and then by the end of the same format it's good again. Likewise, a card that never saw much play (like 7 Tools), can suddenly become very viable. As these kinds of trends occur and new techs are found alongside it, the viability of certain decks can swing in one direction to the other as well.

I was listening to the ARG stream the other day, and one thing that stuck out to me was when Alistar Albans talked about how bad it sucks to go 2nd, your opponent opens Laggia + backrow, and your sixth card is Maxx C. This has happened to me, and I'm sure to you all that own C's, more times than I can count and it's not always a first-turn issue. When my opponent nutty swarms and sets up a ridiculous field, I think to myself "I'm gonna draw Maxx C", it is, and am like "well that woulda been nice last turn" as I sit there with a dead card in my hand and trying to figure out how to break up the opponent's field. This exact thing happened when I played against Shiggs' Samurai in the box tourney game 1. I don't open C, he sets up a dominating field first turn, I draw C, basically screwed. Unfortunately, as it was also commented in the stream, the game has gotten to the point where hand traps are almost a necessity to some extent, since without them, you risk getting blown up. If you do have it, you will most likely end your opponent's turn to give you a chance to break up what they started and re-claim control. It's almost like "screwed if I do, screwed if I don't". With 3 MST in the game, relying solely on conventional traps may not be the most feasible option as well. Or, you play the "protect the Skill Drain" game as evident in Hero and DW.

When the ban list first came out, a lot of people basically had a "oh gawd wind-up format" mentality, which I believe was the main reason for Maxx C's and Wind-Up Rabbit's price spike. Rescue Rabbit and Dolkka didn't see their price spikes until after Atlanta. Many then considered C to be a 3-of staple, and I think anyone that owned three, ran them all. I know I did. Moving forward a few weeks, I believe it was Frazier Smith and Alistar that basically said "wait maybe Maxx C isn't that good". This resulted in a pretty divided crowd, with some people agreeing with them and some basically saying it's blasphemy. I admit I thought it was kinda preposterous as well, but I also have to consider that I occasionally play against people that let me draw 6-10 cards off a C and then I just outright win next turn so I have a biased view lol.

At the present time, the declining use of mained Maxx C's has caught on. The general consensus is that it is only "good" against Wind-Up, which is seeing less play overall, "OK" against Dino Rabbit, and "bad" against Inzektors, Heroes, and DW. I personally think conventional Wind-Up has been knocked off the "big 3" and Heroes have taken it's place. I don't know enough about Wilson Tsang's Beast build or Alex Vansant's Monster Mash variants to make any further assessment. Looking at the top 4 of Long Beach consisting of DW, Rabbit, Piper, and Hero, in 3 out of those 4, Maxx C isn't that great against. Against DW, C will most likely be a 1-1 at best (ignoring a crazy Card Destruction play), Piper and Chaos in general are inherent special summon-based and thus makes it hard to C against it, and you can 1-1 it on a Miracle Fusion/Reborn/Road against Hero. Not that great. Because of this trend, Maxx C has been declining in value, with eBay Completeds showing around the 70-80 mark. Still expensive, don't get me wrong, but it's still a big decrease from the 95-100+ it was around Atlanta time. Trollandtoad aren't even buying them at the moment, and ARG will give a whole ~50 bucks for either version.

It's hard to tell what will happen as time progresses because of this teetering-like pattern the game has. One may theorize that Wind-Ups will come back because people have dropped their C's or moved them to the sidedeck. Games 2 and 3 they can smokescreen into/out of the Beast build to make the opponent's sided-in C's less useful, theoretically. Veiler is becoming an increasingly played card to deal with Inzektors, is fairly good against Wind-Up, but not that great against Rabbit, and terrible against Heroes and DW.

My prediction is that C will experience a little more price-dropping because of the results of Long Beach and stabilize around the $50 range, especially if this trend is apparent in YCS Dallas. Dino Rabbit will still be heavily played especially with the re-emergence of the Forbidden Chalice tech to deal with Snowmans/Gellenduos. Heroes are solid overall and music to a budget player's ears. Inzektors aren't quite as budget as Heroes, but not nearly expensive as Rabbit, and they can OTK out of nowhere and obviously wreck a field. Band-wagoners will hop on DW's win, with budget players probably replacing the 2 Tour Guides with Sillvas or something. I wouldn't expect DW to win in Dallas, because people will be more prepared for it via their sidedeck since the deck just won. Basically a repeat of that first YCS where DW debuted. Anyways, all of these instances point to a continual decline in main deck Maxx C usage. It's still a great card against certain decks, but in the meta that may shift because of Long Beach, maybe not so much.


On a side note, looking very forward to playing in locals again starting Monday in an effort to be prepared for regionals :) I think the last time I played any in-person Yugz was the box tourney, but having the couple weeks off was refreshing since I just felt so drained from all the drama and BS that was apparent around that time. Hate being 10 years out of high school and yet having to deal with high school-like drama, especially over a children's card game lol.