Deck Profile: Much Adil about Nothing

Here's the last one of the series! I really enjoyed going through these and received some great comments and criticisms. Just a quick reminder for all of you though:

That includes my own.

Let's get to the point regarding our 2015 North American Champion Kevin Cho's deck!

Deck Spotlight: EVERYONE, GET IN HERE

There's like no other way to describe this deck.

I'm still trying to figure out the mad scientist mind behind Austin Somers, the People's Champion.

By the way this is going to be the title image for all of these.

Deck Spotlight: Ultimate Arc

Hey guys! Trying out something new as we're getting ready for the Buddy Allstars special booster box.

North American Continentals was just a few weeks ago, and I'm really proud of both of my friends who came in top 3. So as a special event, I'm going to review their winning decks and give my $0.02 on them. Without further ado...

Let the trash talking begin.

Deck Profile - Secret Ninjas (Outdated)

Like my Devil's Era (Creation Control) deck, this is another deck that attempts to utilize a certain mechanic available to a World and take it to the extreme. This time, we'll be heading over to Katana World. While there are multiple unique builds in Katana outside of the standard Ninja and Skull Warriors decks (like Water), I've been more interested in trying to get Secret Swords to work. They cost a lot of gauge and they require a lot of forethought, but each Secret Sword is really worth its weight in gold. 3 damage and the ability to negate an effect is incredibly powerful - it all just comes down to how you build and prepare for it.

This deck not only tries to catch your opponent with Secret Swords, but also constantly reuse Secret Swords in a massive counterfest. To complement this heavy-resource strategy, the only other cards we're running are gauge-ramp and stall-related. Essentially, you burn your opponent down until they have no choice but to step on your Secret Sword landmine, where you kill them off anyways. Win-win.

I'm sure there are a lot of skeptics out there, but rest assured - I actually based this deck off a real deck I saw my friend playing with moderate success. By streamlining some of the numbers and adding more resource engines, I think I've got it to the point where it does what it wants to do best.

Deck Profile - Devil's Era (Outdated)

It's about time I created a new deck. I've been looking at Magic World a lot, since they're the wildcard world that really allows skilled players to perform well by interacting more with how a player plays and not as much deckbuilding (but that's important too!). So this article is going to try to focus on both how to build a deck to give you options and how to utilize those options during a match. Well, as best as I can present it, anyhow.

With that in mind, I decided to present a pretty extreme example of a deck because A. it's a good example of Magic World shenanigans and B. it actually works. You wouldn't think it but it does, because it's Magic World.

I love Magic World.

Deck Profile - Memento Mori (Outdated)

Darkness Dragon World has been given, ironically a new light and a new hope. Thanks to a series of fortunate cards, the Death archetype has been majorly buffed both in the form of monsters and spell support. Before, they played as a heavy rush deck with little form of recovery and field control. All they could do before was just hit face and hit face. But now, there's some really good options. From Size 0's to Size 3's, from board clear to salvage, even usable Set spells and complicated maneuvers, Death definitely got game now.

It's important to remember that the goal of Death is still death for your opponent. But there's a plethora of ways to skin a cat. Death for you opponent can now come from direct damage and Double Attack. There's other ways besides spells to clear the field, and weapons are no longer necessary as a crutch to fix the early game. You can now rush your opponents and cover your options safely without fear of too much backlash from aggro. Even beyond that, you can now create complicated maneuvers to beat your opponent at the very game they play. If you're interested in pulling off Katana World mechanics while hitting harder than Danger World, then you've come to the right place.

Deck Profile - Entaku Kaigi (Outdated)

Take a moment to think about the Hero archetype in general. What outstanding attributes do they have? The ability to link attack for bonuses and the ability to switch between a variety of weapons stands out as their defining characteristics. They bear similarity to both Dungeon World with the link attack strategy and Dragon World with the weapon variety, but they also have Legend World's very interesting spell selection. In other words, you have to approach the Hero deck a bit differently as compared to other triple formation decks like Adventurers or Thunder Knights.

So what you see here will be my take on how I envision Heroes working the best. The playstyle is moderately aggressive with a lot of control and stall options. You need to be careful about committing hand to field, since you often want to stall for tempo and the right moment to strike. By alternating between periods of stall and bursts of field clear and damage, while rocking ability negate along the way, you can weave in and out of the battle and make efficient and meaningful trades to bring you closer to victory. The winning image is a difficult but well-calculated and well-planned siege.

Deck Profile - Supercell (Outdated)

This used to be a pure Thunder Knights deck. Not anymore. Viable a year ago, I've felt that Bushiroad was moving too far away from the old Thunder Knights support that it was no longer feasible to simply depend on stuff like Thunder Formation and archetype-based love. But I also didn't want this deck to turn into some weird Armordragons toolbox. It was tough trying to figure out what to do with this, really.

Enter Japanese Regionals results. The person who topped played a Thunder-Crimson mix, weaving in the newer Hundred archetype with the old Thunder archetype. And guess what? It's not a bad idea on paper. Of course, being a Japanese player (great idea, really awkward ratios and choices) his deck was...kinda funky. So I'm more or less rebuilding it to be mathematically sound and efficient.

From Thunder Knights, we grab the plussing engine, damage pumps, and Penetrate effects. From Crimsons, the new weapons, control-based abilities, and the ridiculously good Impact. Play to the strengths of both worlds, and you find yourself able to do pretty much anything.

Now that we've overviewed the deck idea in general, let's go straight to the list.

A General Word About Decks

There is a right and wrong way to build a deck.

I don't understand why people are consistently saying that "Oh, my deck is built differently than yours, but that doesn't mean it's worse" and then attempt to justify their weird, awkward jumble of cards using pathos-based logic and circumstantial evidence. Seriously? You do realize you're playing a card game, right? You're not trying to write a literary paper or attempt to sway an audience to believing what you're saying. You're trying to build a deck that maximizes efficiency and synergy while maintaining optimal performance in all situations. This isn't something you can casually BS your way out of.