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Meta List (July format edition!)


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Meta List

 

Tier 1

 

Burning Abyss

Towers turbo (Qli)

Nekroz 

 

------------------------- 

 

Ritual Beasts

 

Tier 2

 

Shaddoll

 

Tellars

 

Volcanics

 

Tier 3 (the lower end of Tier 2)

 

Yosenju - Im skeptical of putting them tier 2 because of bad RB, Nekroz, qli and knights matchup.

 

HERO - They have crab king and dank law. I guess they should be on the list.

 

Infernoid

 

Blackwing - They are getting more stuff and have stable Towers Outs, im putting this here as an experiment.

 

Noble Knights - Again, an experiment but Galla + Caliburn turns anything into a Towers bulldozer so why not. (Bad nekroz matchup though, bear it in mind!)

 
 
Ive seen quite a bit on DN today and towers turbo has been VERY dominant, droll and lock bird techs absolutely wiping the floors with nekroz. Some tests and stuff etc. Help from people who actually know stuff about IRL aswell would be very welcome!
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Ritual Beasts have severe consistency issues. They can't be tier 1.

Ive found it hard to place them. Ba and RB are more like tier 1.5 ive got to be honest, they both have pretty awful Nekroz/Qli matches and other flaws.

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.....Knights are relevant again?

Blackwing and knights are definitely experimental, but towers outs seem important this format, and they definitely have them. They arent hurt tooooo much by droll and lock bird Qli techs either so meh.

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Also, where's Yosenju?

They laugh in the face of nearly every single floodgate that isn't named Skill Drain, they are consistent, and are apt at getting threats off the board. Not exactly tier 1-status, but they do at least deserve to be somewhere on here.

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Also, where's Yosenju?

They laugh in the face of nearly every single floodgate that isn't named Skill Drain, they are consistent, and are apt at getting threats off the board. Not exactly tier 1-status, but they do at least deserve to be somewhere on here.

Again, hard placing them. 

Knights have a good matchup against them, but mainly qli and nekroz even RB to an extent.

Maybe higher end of Tier 3.

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Also, every deck has a Towers out if you put your mind to it. Nekroz have Trish+Decisive (really easy), Tellars have Crab King, Shaddoll have Star Eater, BA struggle but can Nightmare Shark + Barbar, Ritual Beasts have Apelio+Gaiapelio (kinda tough). It's not that big a deal.

 

edit: @above: Heroes are total shite if they can't keep Dark Law out whereas Volcanics are actually a semi-decent deck on their own merit.

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As far as I can tell, Diamond Crab King's ATK should become 3000, despite Towers, because modifying ATK to a set value after a Continuous Effect has applied will not reapply the stat change from the Continuous Effect. If Diamond Crab changed its original ATK to 3000, then Towers would still reduce it by 500, but changing the current ATK to something overrides all previously resolved modifications.

 

This is different from Continuous Effects that constantly recalculate, like Wicked Avatar. Towers is a Continuous Effect that applies to all monsters once. Altering the ATK after the monster has been affected by Towers should not make the -500 reapply.

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A lot of this is purely speculation, so yeah the upper tier areas are going to be a lot of gray as Shaddolls, Qli's, Tellars, and Nekroz work out who's top dog against post-banlist. I suspect we might be having another Triforce Meta on our hands, but I won't know until we actually get some tournament results.

 

That being said, Ritual Beasts don't deserve anything above Tier 3. The banlist hasn't made nearly enough room for them to move in, and no new cards have been released that fix any of the issues the deck had before the banlist (mainly the fact that it bricks more easily than any deck on that list). Considering they were quite, quite low on the tournament results last format and that there are no changes that directly affecting them in any way, or anything that absolutely changes the other decks, they won't be going any higher on the list.

 

And putting a deck on the list just because it has a towers out isn't good enough reasoning for me. Qliphorts have never proven themselves to be top-dog, and even when they were tier 1 they still played second fiddle to other decks. That said, having a beatstick option may be an in-deck solution to one problem, it still neglects the other upper-tier decks and their match-ups as well as the problems the deck has already (Noble Arms being cloggy, Blackwings being a glass cannon, etc.)

 

If you want my opinion, the upper tiers (tier 1 and tier 2) will consist of Nekroz, Burning Abyss, Qliphorts, Shaddolls, and Tellars with the possibility of HEROs. In what order I cannot say. Tier 3 and below will consist of the other decks listed. Volcanics have not been able to place themselves in any significant position, and with the same reasons that Ritual Beasts did not receive any boon towards them in terms of new cards or the banlist, I do not see them placing any higher than the rogue position they currently are in now.

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3 out of 8 spots at US nats were Ritual Beasts, as well as 3 out of the top 64 of Columbus. They've achieved more than Yosenju, Volcanics, HEROes and Infernoids combined, they're definitely worthy of a placement way ahead of any of those decks. They might not be quite as "tier 1" as Nekroz, Burning Abyss and Qliphort (which are all a cut above the rest), but they're more at home with moderately successful decks like Shaddoll and Tellars. I do agree with your point about Towers though, it's likely Towers will diminish once people realise it's not an autowin anymore, and in the case of Noble Knights you just can't polish a turd (Blackwings are cool, and near the top of the "everything else" I mentioned, but they're nowhere near the level of, say, Infernoids or Yosenju).

 

edit: And the deck's not much less likely to brick than, say, HEROes or Tellars

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The other good thing about RBs is that because it generates most of its advantage in a single turn it's not as prone to outs to the card a deck is reliant on creating advantage with, unlike Tellars or Qli which have a bad time if they somehow lose access to Deneb/Scout. All RBs need is to top a non-Elder tamer lategame and they still have a more than realistic chance of winning, unlike Tellars which fall further behind with every turn they can't access Deneb.

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The other good thing about RBs is that because it generates most of its advantage in a single turn it's not as prone to outs to the card a deck is reliant on creating advantage with, unlike Tellars or Qli which have a bad time if they somehow lose access to Deneb/Scout. All RBs need is to top a non-Elder tamer lategame and they still have a more than realistic chance of winning, unlike Tellars which fall further behind with every turn they can't access Deneb.

Yeah. If you can't answer Tellar/Qli turn, they will get 1 search off it, 1 Xyz at best. Ritual Beasts, in one turn, can gran multiple Raigekis and Infernity Launchers for themselves. It's ridiculous.

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But that's the problem. You can cite two tournaments, but the fact of the matter lies that Ritual Beasts have not been able to do that well consistently. I'm sure the trend will continue that they'll earn their good placements here and there, but I really do not think the deck will be able to make it really high in the big leagues. To say that they'll do better than decks that are able to play consistently (Shaddolls, Tellars) is a really big stretch, and even if they can do really good when they get going, the problem still lies in their very troublesome consistency.

 

I stand by what I said. Nothing has directly changed to Ritual Beasts, and considering that overall in the past format they did not do very well, I can't see them doing any better than near the bottom of tier 2.

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The difference is that Shaddolls and Tellars have been consistently mediocre whereas RBs have been sporadically fantastic (I mean, any deck that takes up 3 of the top 8 at US nats is worth its salt). Shaddolls as a deck are about as inconsistent as RBs anyway, and are also WAY better represented on the whole - the proportion of Ritual Beast decks that top must be way higher than the proportion of Shaddoll decks. They also have the disadvantage of being somewhat shunned by superstar players who don't consider it to be anywhere near as good as something like Nekroz or Qli (I mean, after all, it isn't), whereas Shaddolls have at least had some hype around them.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by Tier 2 - do you mean decks like Shaddolls and Tellars, because I will accept they are probably no better than either of those two decks, but they have been largely more successful than any other deck in the "big 5".

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As I said in my other post; I'm not going to take any direct stance over what will be the clearly defined tiers and 1 and 2, but it will be up in the air between The Big 5 (Tellars, Qli, Shaddolls, Nekroz, BA). I take this stance because we've just entered a new format where anything can happen between those decks.

 

Unfortunately, the representation argument doesn't quite hold up. The competitive portion of the game pays very close attention to what decks are actually winning, and what has the potential to win. With the case of Towers Turbo, that deck has shown, despite representation, that it can do very well in the meta and this won't go unnoticed. If Ritual Beasts were able to play as consistently as the other decks, I'm sure we'd be seeing a lot more of them on the top 8/16/whatever placements. The meta, and its competitive players, aren't all just dumb sheep picking hyped decks; the good players will and are paying attention to how well each deck is doing, what they're running, and what could beat them.

 

Having the potential to be very strong isn't good enough in massive tournaments where you're playing 5+ rounds of swiss. Every game counts, and a competitive player will always consider a deck that can do okay consistently over a deck that can do amazing sporadically. These are big tournaments with little room for mistakes or bad luck.

 

As well, Shaddolls have not proven themselves to be as inconsistent as Ritual Beasts. If that were the case, they wouldn't be doing as well as they have in formats past against arguably more consistent decks.

 

But I will clarify again: I do not think Ritual Beasts are weak or unable to make good plays. I acknowledge how good they can be when they get going; but that doesn't mean I can just ignore how often they can't get going when the opponent's deck has already started. So as I said before; because the banlist has not directly affected them (offered new cards to use or significantly hit better decks) and because they have no received any new cards that change how the deck is played, I cannot see them doing any better than how they have now, which has not been as good as others here have played them up to be.

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