People need to realize metas come and go... We had almost exclusively control metas for 17 sets? I am not an aggro player, and I hate aggro, but its important to have these cycles in the game.
If having to rely on RNG EX burst or having an interaction in your opening hand is the only way to counter then we might as well play Yugioh with more then half the deck filled with hand traps.
So I figured I'd hop in a bit on this - probably some non-zero bit of this is a reaction to me talking about the cards here. First off - I really hope I never gave the impression that people shouldn't play what they want to or enjoy or anything of that nature. The goal of competitive games is to win, you pick the deck that you think gives the best chance to do that. I think that's great and important. Players play and break cards, card designers have to make cards that are fun and interesting. As far as the two decks in question - I honestly just have huge problems with them as long term health of the game things. I'll start with Chaos - the counterplay is to burst. Hence everyone running Lev 6. But that means that there's a huge centralizing force now to playing a ton of ex bursts in a deck and we start to approach a different problem. Right now, if you aren't doing something "unfair", you need to play between 18-25 bursts in most decks. Basically, 40% of your deck needs to have the EX symbol in the corner. But they only print maybe 10 cards with EX per set. So now, when a set releases with 110 main deck cards, less than 10% of them are getting 40% of the deck slots. And then, I think the problem is exacerbated in two deck format. I guess you can do Water and Lightning but only one deck gets to play Lev 6 and Chu. I dunno, I just think propping the format on a decision 4 years ago to put EX in the corner of a 6 CP summon is scary. And then the question is... what power creeps the deck? Better interaction is probably the healthy way, but as noted, they're trying to turn off interaction with cards like Bucaboo and Clione. What about power creeping for better aggro? Is it literally just going to be a Force check format where the opponent plays the thing and if you don't have Amat or MD or something after a mulligan, you lose? And then, as you mentioned, Wind literally has no answer to this. I'm not going to pretend mono-wind has ever been the healthiest deck to have in the format but I don't think it really even has bad cards it can play to survive something like this. Hand rip 2 and 4 damage is just... not really leading to a game state that any of Wind's mechanics work in. And clearly, the designers want mono-wind to have some sort of metagame share or Adelle wouldn't have been printed this set. Ice is slightly better off just due to the nature of discard being a weird natural counter to this and the ability to kill faster but I don't think 2 CP Shiva helps very much, if at all. You can stop a single damage from Chaos or two damage from Raijin/Fujin over two turns... at the cost of 2 cards in hand after discarding 2. So you go to a 1 card hand, with 3 forwards on field. And the bursts aren't much better since they only delay the problem. As for Hythlo, I cannot disagree more on Clione - it turns off so much of the cards that interact with the deck it's wild. Ryan had to Shantotto LB a Relm to have a chance to interact with Hythlo. Or you have to Amat Relm, at which point, she's basically Teodor and then they still need to find removal for Hythlo + Emet. I think there's an argument it's worse against Chaos or Ice Discard because it still uses every card in hand but I think turning off the main way that people interact is brutal. On top of that, outside of exactly Dragon which... I really don't think is a great answer, lots of on board interaction folds to the ping that Emet does. Refia for instance can't profitably interact outside of spinning Emet on play. I guess the final point is that I think Refia is still probably the same as she ever was - the deck initially spawned as a way to combat the ludicrous aggro meta in Japan at times - they'd do things like dump the entire hand going first to play 3 backups, then expect to burst or draw Refia and win the game. I think Bartz probably leaves the deck as a card that doesn't interact favorably into the new aggro but I think that the lack of results in Portland was a pilot discrepancy for the most part - until Mike or Air play and fail to convert, I think the deck is more than fine and should be considered one of the premiere control decks of the format. Great video and fun listen. Love hearing your thoughts.
God bless you KP. Won't be needing to go to Corn Hub tonight
I seem to always call the Warrior of Darkness people Kingsglaive 😅
People need to realize metas come and go... We had almost exclusively control metas for 17 sets? I am not an aggro player, and I hate aggro, but its important to have these cycles in the game.
If having to rely on RNG EX burst or having an interaction in your opening hand is the only way to counter then we might as well play Yugioh with more then half the deck filled with hand traps.
Looks like I'm silly and Hythlo doesn't force all 4 cards into play, also Canada didn't play with new set so should've excluded it
So I figured I'd hop in a bit on this - probably some non-zero bit of this is a reaction to me talking about the cards here.
First off - I really hope I never gave the impression that people shouldn't play what they want to or enjoy or anything of that nature. The goal of competitive games is to win, you pick the deck that you think gives the best chance to do that. I think that's great and important. Players play and break cards, card designers have to make cards that are fun and interesting.
As far as the two decks in question - I honestly just have huge problems with them as long term health of the game things. I'll start with Chaos - the counterplay is to burst. Hence everyone running Lev 6. But that means that there's a huge centralizing force now to playing a ton of ex bursts in a deck and we start to approach a different problem. Right now, if you aren't doing something "unfair", you need to play between 18-25 bursts in most decks. Basically, 40% of your deck needs to have the EX symbol in the corner. But they only print maybe 10 cards with EX per set. So now, when a set releases with 110 main deck cards, less than 10% of them are getting 40% of the deck slots. And then, I think the problem is exacerbated in two deck format. I guess you can do Water and Lightning but only one deck gets to play Lev 6 and Chu. I dunno, I just think propping the format on a decision 4 years ago to put EX in the corner of a 6 CP summon is scary. And then the question is... what power creeps the deck? Better interaction is probably the healthy way, but as noted, they're trying to turn off interaction with cards like Bucaboo and Clione. What about power creeping for better aggro? Is it literally just going to be a Force check format where the opponent plays the thing and if you don't have Amat or MD or something after a mulligan, you lose? And then, as you mentioned, Wind literally has no answer to this. I'm not going to pretend mono-wind has ever been the healthiest deck to have in the format but I don't think it really even has bad cards it can play to survive something like this. Hand rip 2 and 4 damage is just... not really leading to a game state that any of Wind's mechanics work in. And clearly, the designers want mono-wind to have some sort of metagame share or Adelle wouldn't have been printed this set. Ice is slightly better off just due to the nature of discard being a weird natural counter to this and the ability to kill faster but I don't think 2 CP Shiva helps very much, if at all. You can stop a single damage from Chaos or two damage from Raijin/Fujin over two turns... at the cost of 2 cards in hand after discarding 2. So you go to a 1 card hand, with 3 forwards on field. And the bursts aren't much better since they only delay the problem.
As for Hythlo, I cannot disagree more on Clione - it turns off so much of the cards that interact with the deck it's wild. Ryan had to Shantotto LB a Relm to have a chance to interact with Hythlo. Or you have to Amat Relm, at which point, she's basically Teodor and then they still need to find removal for Hythlo + Emet. I think there's an argument it's worse against Chaos or Ice Discard because it still uses every card in hand but I think turning off the main way that people interact is brutal. On top of that, outside of exactly Dragon which... I really don't think is a great answer, lots of on board interaction folds to the ping that Emet does. Refia for instance can't profitably interact outside of spinning Emet on play.
I guess the final point is that I think Refia is still probably the same as she ever was - the deck initially spawned as a way to combat the ludicrous aggro meta in Japan at times - they'd do things like dump the entire hand going first to play 3 backups, then expect to burst or draw Refia and win the game. I think Bartz probably leaves the deck as a card that doesn't interact favorably into the new aggro but I think that the lack of results in Portland was a pilot discrepancy for the most part - until Mike or Air play and fail to convert, I think the deck is more than fine and should be considered one of the premiere control decks of the format.
Great video and fun listen. Love hearing your thoughts.