The "Tier 2" Trio

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

 

 

These three cards go without need of introduction. All three of which are limited in OCG for their incredible power, two of which were deemed so powerful that TCG outright banned them.

 

The reason for bringing up these cards is a trend that's been floating around in OCG this format. A polarization of the tiers so to speak. The tier 1 decks, Pepe/m&m's, BA, and Monarchs basically never use any of these cards even when something like Avarice or Soul Charge in BA seems like a no brainer.

 

What is striking, is that the tier 2 decks, like say Heroes or even Nekroz do run these card as a sort of glue to create cohesion in their deck to attempt to match the level of cohesion between in the top decks.

 

This speaks to two points of worry. One would be the powercreep in the game has reached the point where +1's are no longer enough. And two the polarization between the tier 1 and 2 is potentially at an all time high when it NEEDS cards like these to even give the decks a chance

 

I thought I'd discuss this here since TCG is getting PEPE and Monarchs soon and just got done with BA.

 

Harpie's Feather Duster and Dark Hole arguably can be added to the list of "Tier 2 staples" but enough T1 decks run them that I don't think the game has been creeped to that point

[evilfusion]

I think it has less to do with powercreep in the tiers so much as the top Decks are Pendulum-oriented. Reborn, Avarice, and Charge utilize the Graveyard, where Pendulums typically don't end up going as often. That makes Reborn, Charge, and Avarice less consistent for those Decks, whereas BA use them quite often, since Burning Abyss throw their stuff into the Graveyard constantly. Lower-tier Decks that existed prior to Pendulums won't use Pendulums, hence the "reliance" on these cards, as they're VERY powerful cards, but not useful to Pendulum Decks.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

I think it has less to do with powercreep in the tiers so much as the top Decks are Pendulum-oriented. Reborn, Avarice, and Charge utilize the Graveyard, where Pendulums typically don't end up going as often. That makes Reborn, Charge, and Avarice less consistent for those Decks, whereas BA use them quite often, since Burning Abyss throw their stuff into the Graveyard constantly. Lower-tier Decks that existed prior to Pendulums won't use Pendulums, hence the "reliance" on these cards, as they're VERY powerful cards, but not useful to Pendulum Decks.

That would make sense Evil, except seeing Avarice in BA is a rare sight. It happens sure, maybe 1 out of 10 tops decklists. That's not good odds for a deck that so clearly benefits off Avarice. Monarchs aren't a pendulum deck, they certainly use the grave, reborning a Kuraz can net you a draw 2. Why would you NOT run that?

[evilfusion]

That would make sense Evil, except seeing Avarice in BA is a rare sight. It happens sure, maybe 1 out of 10 tops decklists. That's not good odds for a deck that so clearly benefits off Avarice. Monarchs aren't a pendulum deck, they certainly use the grave, reborning a Kuraz can net you a draw 2. Why would you NOT run that?

 

I'm not super-familiar with Burning Abyss and their typical cards/strategy. Don't they want to keep their monsters in the Graveyard for later? Like aren't there BA cards that SS from the Graveyard? If so, they probably wouldn't necessarily need Avarice because it risks ruining their setup.

 

Monarchs don't run Reborn? That's nonsensical to me. It's an ideal card to provide Tribute fodder, unless Monarchs now have enough S/T support that work better.

 

Soul Charge can probably be explained away as being very high-risk, high reward. I only use it in my Galaxy Deck, because Soul Charge is pure evil with Galaxy. It revives Wizard, which can search almost anything. Revives Soldier, triggering its search effect. Revives Level 8s. Can revive Xyz for Argent Chaos Force or Full-Armor/Dark Matter/whatever. But it's costly and can be dead early and late game. With other Decks that don't specialize in such high Rank Xyz, Soul Charge is often overkill.

[Sleepy]

They might release Pot of Avarice when they try to push Synchros back. They are the mechanic that made it easy to use up to 3 copies of it turn 1 relatively consistently back in the day after all.

 

Monster Reborn I'd like to see back. It is still a big powerplay, but I'd like to see how TCG turns out (and besides, I have a few ultra rare copies that could sell well mwahaha).

 

As for Soul Charge once you are past the requirement of using the Graveyard consistently, you need to ask your deck if it can get by that turn with the effects of what it revives and avoid losing from lowering LP too much. If the answer is no and it does need the Battle Phase otherwise it is purely a wall, then yeah, no good. I can also see people being turned off by the situations when they either don't have enough LP to pay for what they need with it late game, or not have enough to revive to make it worthwhile early game. At least while it is a sacky 1-of because if consistency was added to it then it'd find more places to be.