Variety in Meta decks

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

There have been Ulrike discussions on whether tier 0 metagame are a good thing, and how many tier 1 decks are optimal, blah blah.

 

Discuss.

[Draconus297]

I'm up for as much variety as possible. It's frankly boring to see a Deck more than 3 times on one tournament ladder, and I am personally of the opinion that any and every Deck should have some sort of fighting chance.

 

But hey.

[IQuitDolphin]

Three decks is an optimal number, as long as each deck is able to compete with each other respectively and not auto-lose due to bad matchups. A tier 0 format is nice for Side Deck decisions, but it ultimately isn't as fun as there will be little to no innovation in the meta. Having 3 top decks gives a healthy amount of competition between decks.

 

---

 

Note: Personally, this format appears to be a 4-deck format, consisting of

 

1) Kozmo

2) Monarch

3) Dracopals

4) Atlantean

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Personally, I prefer 3. It allows you to have a specialized side deck, but most of these cards don't end up in the main deck.

[GarlandChaos]

More than 4.

 

Personally, if all I see in a tournament is just 4 decks and nothing else, I'll probably get bored to death. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

[Maeriberii Haan]

1 is ideal but boring as hell.

2 is not quite 1, and just plain awkward.

3 is nice variety, but usually ends up as a rock-paper-scissor matchup-heavy format.

4...is kinda way too much. A big pain for sidedecking.

 

Ideally a metagame should consist of 1 absolute best deck, but with other decks in T2 being similarly viable to a degree with little gap between the top and the others be as small as possible. This allows you to just dedicate a side deck against the T1+counterside of cards that kill your deck+stuff to deal with a bad matchup. It has variety without sacrificing too much predictability so you can plan better for tournaments.

 

So pretty much I'm talking about something akin to July 15 TCG format.

[Blake]

More than 3 decks in a game with single decks/side decks isn't going to end well most of the time.

 

You need to be able to realistically side against people. To remove that ability is to create a clusterfuck of a gamestate.

[IQuitDolphin]

If only side decks could be like

 

 

 

3 Generic Negate Spells

3 Generic Negate Traps

3 Generic Negate Monsters

3 Generic Negate Effects in Grave

3 Generic Prevent Searching

[Slinky]

I mean, We had a good solid format for a year consisting of 7 top decks, and it was a really balanced format.

 

So.. something like that maybe?

[Blake]

I mean, We had a good solid format for a year consisting of 7 top decks, and it was a really balanced format.

 

So.. something like that maybe?

No we didn't.

 

We had 3~ top decks and a bunch of rogues that could compete. It's not the same thing, because the rogues had to side for the top, but could easily lose to other rogues, which made a Tier 1 RPS and a Tier 2 cycle similarly.

[Slinky]

Satellars, Shaddolls, Qliphorts, Ritual Beasts, Nekroz, and I forgot the other 2.

[Blake]

Satellars, Shaddolls, Qliphorts, Ritual Beasts, Nekroz, and I forgot the other 2.

... Yes, I know what you meant. You were just not quite on point.

 

Infernoid and Burning Abyss were the others.

 

For most of the time, Shaddoll/BA/Nekroz were the best decks. RB, Qli, Tellars, and Infernoid were T2.

 

There were never more than 3 decks that outperformed the other 4 by a significant margin.

I think it later became Qli/Shaddoll/Nekroz or Qli/BA/Nekroz, but still. Shaddoll actually rose back up to best deck right before it died.

[ihop]

I think people are overstating the difficulty of sidedecking in a format with a bunch of viable decks. Realistically it shouldn't be hard to find enough cards that are good vs multiple decks and tbh I think having a bunch of those cards is actually better for the game than having people side one card which is an absolute blowout against 1 specific deck because then the games 2 and 3 against that specific deck become heavily reliant on opening that card. I'd much rather people diluted their side deck choices and sided cards which were good but not amazing against a whole bunch of different decks. I honestly think the format before the whenever it was banlist that banned Construct and stuff was one of the best ever because there were just so many viable decks and even more when you threw pre-Destroyer Kozmo into the mix. It really wasn't as hard to side as people seem to be making out and it made it necessary to test much more rigirously, which IMO is a good thing and just gave a bunch more variety. Maybe I'm biased from Hearthstone too where there are like 20 viable decks but tbh I really don't see many disadvantages to having a format with as many top decks as possible.

[Blake]

I think people are overstating the difficulty of sidedecking in a format with a bunch of viable decks. Realistically it shouldn't be hard to find enough cards that are good vs multiple decks and tbh I think having a bunch of those cards is actually better for the game than having people side one card which is an absolute blowout against 1 specific deck because then the games 2 and 3 against that specific deck become heavily reliant on opening that card. I'd much rather people diluted their side deck choices and sided cards which were good but not amazing against a whole bunch of different decks. I honestly think the format before the whenever it was banlist that banned Construct and stuff was one of the best ever because there were just so many viable decks and even more when you threw pre-Destroyer Kozmo into the mix. It really wasn't as hard to side as people seem to be making out and it made it necessary to test much more rigirously, which IMO is a good thing and just gave a bunch more variety. Maybe I'm biased from Hearthstone too where there are like 20 viable decks but tbh I really don't see many disadvantages to having a format with as many top decks as possible.

FTR, this is why I stated Single Deck/Side Deck.

 

HS' format lends it to having more viable/top decks than a game with the system YGO works on.

[ihop]

I agree HS is more suited to that but even regardless of that the main body is my post is explaining why even in a single deck/side deck format it's fine and IMO even desirable to have many top decks.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

3 Top Decks, 2-3 more tier 1.5 Decks, anywhere to about 6 more Tier 2 deck.

 

Both Formats have this now.

 

OCG:

 

Dracopals, BA, Monarchs

Infernoids, Blue Eyes, Nekroz

Shaddolls, RR, Qli, Heros, Atlanteans

 

TCG

 

Dracopals, Monarch, Kozmo

BA, Magicans, Infernoid

[Toffee.]

Best decks shouldn't be played.

You know why?

 

The list won't touch them :^)

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Best decks shouldn't be played.

You know why?

 

The list won't touch them :^)

That was before TCG's Sept 2013 list

[VCR_CAT]

3 is the magic number. Small enough that it's not too match-up dependent and siding isn't a nightmare; but big enough that there's some decent variety in playstyles. Some of my favorite formats have been "Trinity" formats.

[ihop]

Putting theory aside for a minute if you look at some of the many-deck formats of the past they've generally been well-liked and balanced formats that people look back on and say "that was a good format" i.e. post-Ruler limit format and post-Djinn format. Formats with 3 decks have historically often been quite bad, for example Ruler+Prophecy+Evilswarm or Infernity+X-Saber+FrogTK or Loop-Up+Rabbit+Chaos Dragon. This might well just be coincidence because those decks happened to be either not very fun or in the case of Rulers overwhelmingly broken so that no decks other than those 3 stood a chance. Blackwing+Lightsworn+Zombies is the only really good trinity format that springs to mind. The most popular formats have always been either those where one deck is so dominant that you expect to play against it most of the time which then means mirror matches become very intricate and there's a lot of skill in deckbuilding for the mirror match and you basically have to win by outplaying your opponent (see: goats, TeleDAD, plants, Ravine Rulers) or very varied formats where there's always a chance of seeing everything.

 

edit: Also, to be honest post-Djinn format was not 3 top decks, it was one deck which was every so slightly ahead of everything else and then a good 6-7 decks which were almost as good as eachother all of which had realistic chances of success in any other matchup (apart from Satellarknight vs Infernoid). It was to all intents and purposes a balanced format in which the top deck of the chasing pack changed literally every event just due to minor things.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Putting theory aside for a minute if you look at some of the many-deck formats of the past they've generally been well-liked and balanced formats that people look back on and say "that was a good format" i.e. post-Ruler limit format and post-Djinn format. Formats with 3 decks have historically often been quite bad, for example Ruler+Prophecy+Evilswarm or Infernity+X-Saber+FrogTK or Loop-Up+Rabbit+Chaos Dragon. This might well just be coincidence because those decks happened to be either not very fun or in the case of Rulers overwhelmingly broken so that no decks other than those 3 stood a chance. Blackwing+Lightsworn+Zombies is the only really good trinity format that springs to mind. The most popular formats have always been either those where one deck is so dominant that you expect to play against it most of the time which then means mirror matches become very intricate and there's a lot of skill in deckbuilding for the mirror match and you basically have to win by outplaying your opponent (see: goats, TeleDAD, plants, Ravine Rulers) or very varied formats where there's always a chance of seeing everything.

 

edit: Also, to be honest post-Djinn format was not 3 top decks, it was one deck which was every so slightly ahead of everything else and then a good 6-7 decks which were almost as good as eachother all of which had realistic chances of success in any other matchup (apart from Satellarknight vs Infernoid). It was to all intents and purposes a balanced format in which the top deck of the chasing pack changed literally every event just due to minor things.

And this is where looking only at TCG gives a rather narrow sense of the game.

 

Verz-Ruler-Book format was really popular though, maybe not as much as September Rulers, but nearly so. So I think that's an incorrect statement.

 

Chaos Dragon Format as long as the player didn't open FuFu or fully resolve the handloop wasn't nearly as bad a people make it out to be, and what about the format afterwards? WU, Rabbit, and the occasional Chaos Dragon?

 

 

September 2013 TCG - Mermail was a contender was it not? Hardly a 1 deck format

September 2013 OCG- Mermail, Verz, Ruler - very popular 

January 2014 TCG - Mythic Ruler, Fire Fist, Mermail

February 2014 OCG - Ruler, Chronofact, Verz - the MOST popular

April/July 2014 TCG - Geargia, HAT

April 2014 OCG Rulers, Shaddolls, HERO, Chronofact

July OCG - Star Seraph Format - HATED, Staple Engine

October 2014 TCG - BA, Doll, Tellar, Qli

October 2014 OCG - Doll, Nekroz, Qli, Hero, Tellar format

January 2015 OCG - Nekroz, Doll, DMD Ruler, Qli format

January 2015 TCG - Dolls, Qlis, BA, Tellar

April 2015 OCG - Nekroz, Hero - Disliked, very polarizing top 2 decks

April 2015 TCG - Djinn Nekroz, very clear top deck - Disliked

July 2015 OCG - Heros, Atlantean, Nekroz, Magican - Tolerable, but disliked for Heros CDI-LAW lock

July 2015 TCG - Nekroz, Dolls, Qli, BA - very popular

October 2015 OCG - PEPE, BA, Monarch, -Disliked since pepe had such an edge

November 2015 TCG - Kozmo, PEPE, other clown varients

January 2016 OCG Dracopals, BA, Monarch - Very popular, vibrant tier 2 and 1.5

 

You want a pyramid for the tier 1, one top deck, but 2-3 other that can pretty easily give it a good fight and win a good potion of the times, ie. why something like Djinn Nekroz was disliked. And why the OCG February 2014 Format was so beloved among those who played it

 

If you want to look at 1 deck format that sucked? Stein FTK, Mag Sci FTK, Return DAD, Yata Lock to name a few

[VCR_CAT]

Putting theory aside for a minute if you look at some of the many-deck formats of the past they've generally been well-liked and balanced formats that people look back on and say "that was a good format" i.e. post-Ruler limit format and post-Djinn format. Formats with 3 decks have historically often been quite bad, for example Ruler+Prophecy+Evilswarm or Infernity+X-Saber+FrogTK or Loop-Up+Rabbit+Chaos Dragon. This might well just be coincidence because those decks happened to be either not very fun or in the case of Rulers overwhelmingly broken so that no decks other than those 3 stood a chance. Blackwing+Lightsworn+Zombies is the only really good trinity format that springs to mind. The most popular formats have always been either those where one deck is so dominant that you expect to play against it most of the time which then means mirror matches become very intricate and there's a lot of skill in deckbuilding for the mirror match and you basically have to win by outplaying your opponent (see: goats, TeleDAD, plants, Ravine Rulers) or very varied formats where there's always a chance of seeing everything.

 

edit: Also, to be honest post-Djinn format was not 3 top decks, it was one deck which was every so slightly ahead of everything else and then a good 6-7 decks which were almost as good as eachother all of which had realistic chances of success in any other matchup (apart from Satellarknight vs Infernoid). It was to all intents and purposes a balanced format in which the top deck of the chasing pack changed literally every event just due to minor things.

 

TBF, the formats I'm thinking of when I say "Trinity Format" are more like Shaddoll - BA - Qliphort. I actually think very fondly of most pre-Nekroz DT3 formats in Series 9. You know, before Nekroz turned it into a pretty-much-single-deck-format with some cameos from the other archetypes; but even something like July 2015 is one of my all-time favorite formats. And I felt like it was going somewhere good... until Tewert realized Kozmos weren't as good as he needed to hit those nice decks to push exclusives >:C

[Kaiji]

Don't care too much but after post DRGL format Id definitely would love to have that format again.

 

Pretty much instead of how 1 deck shaped a format, a single generic card at 3 does the "shaping"

 

It also helped that Soul Charge was a great combo piece \(=P)/

[Maeriberii Haan]

I forgot the exact detail, but wasn't it the format where the deck that has HAT as the most common deck, but the deck people mainly siding against (or was it the deck to beat?) was...uhh...WATER? Or was it Soulcharge Sylvans? I forgot.

 

Quite honestly I disliked NECH format because how the format feels really RPS. Iirc Qli has a really good Shaddoll matchup but got overwhelmed by BA, but BA had a shitty G1 matchup against Shaddolls for a big part of the format. G2 and G3 is a thing, but it felt way too matchup heavy compared to July '15.