I'm sick of artards.

[DTC]

I'm sick of these artards (no names, ahem dan smith) who complain about cookie decks or cards being played a lot. Dan in particular complained about gadgets being played a lot at the store. This is an obvious dee dee dee because joe and myself each have 3 sets and play them at the tournament. Why do people play gadgets? In theory the american gadget is relatively consistant (not as much as the japanese due to lack of shield crush and shrink and the fact we only have 1x ultimate offering so mobile fortress stronghold is much more inconsistant in the old school 5th gadget swarm decks over there) because the deck is built with:

1/5th gadget (9x)
1/3rd basic removal (3x saku, 3x widespread, 3x fissure, 3x smashing ground, torrential, mirror force, ring)
and the remaining 47.7(inf)% goes to support and regular staples, making the 5th gadget build extremely consistant at what it does.

Also most decks by support usually means ultimate offering, snipe hunter (multi-trigger card that one for ones everything on your field and really hurts late game), and limiter removal/overload fusion x2 can be a good game ender, as people saw me top it to beat dave c. in the finals of this sunday's tournament right when i needed it most.


Now what's this mean? It's a deck people will run.

Gadgets = free +1 and fuels overload in the late game (which you're running two of to garentee even if you lose the first you can still use it as a finisher)
Removal = derpa dave helped us figure out why this is important.
Support = all decks with good synergy require support, gadgets are no different, without the support they're a regular artard/derpa dave archetype.

People just dislike gadgets because they don't completely understand how the deck itself works. For example, here's a decklist similar to what was being run in japan 6 months ago when 5th gadget dominated:


5th Gadget

3x Red Gadget
3x Yellow Gadget
3x Green Gadget
3x Cyber Dragon
3x Chiron the Mage
3x Cyber Phoenix
18-monsters

3x Smashing Ground
3x Fissure
3x Shield Crush
3x Shrink
1x Limiter Removal
1x Graceful Charity
1x Heavy Storm
1x Pot of Avarice
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Snatch Steal
18-Spells

3x Ultimate Offering
1x Mirror Force
1x Torrential Tribute
2x Stronghold the Moving Fortress
2x Royal Oppression
9-Traps


Or something similar in nature. The deck was flawless and would've been even more broken if boot-up soldier was around back then (for the uninformed the card first came out in SD10, whereas gadgets were released a while back in japan before the card was released, they originally came with stronghold in a set and broke the meta).



Anyway the point of this is people run stuff because it's good. I get tired of people who complain about netdecking or certain cards becoming popular, that's why it's called metagame, and cards are called staples/etc. It's all based on the format itself. If you run a deck you run a deck, who cares? If a card becomes popular it's because it's good or it's the ideal card in the current metagame trends. That's how card games work. The most powerful cards and combos are the most commonly used ones. The reason cards like graceful charity, mirror force, torrential tribute, etc are good is because with the exception of a handful of decks these cards are almost perfectly necessary in a good deck. Every card can be debated as a staple used in every deck (only pot of greed and graceful charity are cards that benefit every deck, everything else can be debatable whether or not the card works in the deck, even monsters like sangan and breaker, and the power 6 spells of this format i can think of a reason not to run each one in certain decks). The reason they're staples though is because the cards are the best at what they do. I get sick of people who explain they don't run say torrential tribute or sangan because it's used in every deck. Building a deck isn't about trying to stand out like a goth chick at a superbowl party, it's about finding the best cards the accomodate the decks win condition. Staples or not certain cards work. There are decks i've built that don't run sangan. To be completely honest I haven't run a sangan since i've started playing gadgets a couple weeks ago, and i used to see that as a card almost every deck can use. It's just not a great monster choice in a deck like gadgets where the monster count should always be below 20 due to multiple gadgets is bad in your hand.

Also if a deck becomes a top tier archetype, then run it. There's a difference between netdecking and checking out decks, then building your own version to fit your playstyle. That's what i do. For those who don't know i'm on a small new england based competitive yugioh team with matt and a few individuals we know from regional events who live in mass, connecticut and maine. We all swap deck ideas, and decks like my old monarch deck was a deck that top8'd one of the regionals our team was at, then matt and i built our own version based off our team mates decklist, and made our own version with our own tech and certain specific cards for it. It's not the same as netdecking, it's more taking a deck's influence and building our own version of the same deck which is why we played very similar decks for most of the month. Then when gadgets came out i built my gadget deck after talking with my team about the best cards to run with gadgets and a couple weeks of testing.

So what are peoples thoughts about those who complain about metagames and netdecking a lot without much insight as to what is considered netdecking or just using a similar deck.

Also imitation is flattery. If your friend wants to check out your deck and copy it that's usually because it's good. Joe uses many of Brian's decks i'm sure because he really likes Brian's deckbuilding skills and it's his way of complimenting it, just like when i run a deck my team mate was playing, and Matt's dark world deck which was inspired by a team mate and the fact i went undefeated against him with it the entire week before regionals.

[samonosuke]

See what it funny where i live is that i was the first to try gadgets here, and they were all like:

"gadgets are shit little monsters they can't beat our monarch control or our friken derpa machine decks or whatever the ppl here play."

So i was all like:

"ok, lets have a few practice matches with the best players down here."

beat the top player in our shop 3-0 he got a bit cut.

The secong best player went 2-0. He quit wanting to play me.

Then ppl randomly walking past pffting at my gadgets.

After i crushed them all at the tournament. At least 6 ppl wanted to build gadget decks lol.

[DTC]

I think it's a bit similar over here. When Raven, Nagatsu, and I were first talking about gadgets people were just looking at them asking why they're any good. Since then Raven and I have done great with gadgets, and I let matt borrow my deck for a tournament and he went 5-0. Now people are complaining about the gadgets, especially since most people in the store pretty much use their only spending cash to enter tournaments so they can't buy 3 decks or anything.

[Takkun]

first thng i thought when it came to gadgets was ditch cards for costs n rituals