MW: Major Meta Impacts For Newer And Returning Themes

YCS Rhode Island and Alliance Insight impacted the meta… in a good way!

As we wrapped up this past weekend with the release of Alliance Insight, many national events, and YCS Rhode Island, let’s take a look at what was impacted from the topping lists. From Regenesis Kashtira topping its Premiere YCS to Dragon Ruler hype, let’s take a dive and see what techs players were using.

First off, let’s get into the main 3-of monster in the new Regenesis theme from Alliance Insight, Regenesis Archfiend. For one thing, it can Special Summon itself from your hand with ease by simply revealing another monster in your hand with 2500 ATK or DEF. Archfiend also allows you to add 1 other Regenesis card from your Deck or banishment to your hand when it’s Normal or Special Summoned, which adds consistency to your Deck along with their Spell Card named Regenesis.

Speaking of which, Regenesis is another 3-of for the Deck as it takes a Regenesis monster from your Deck and either adds it to your hand or sends it to the GY, but if you control a Regenesis monster, you can add 1 monster with 2500 ATK and DEF from your Deck to your hand instead. Even though that last part rarely comes up, it will always search up a Regenesis monster for the piece that you’re missing if you searched it off of Regenesis Archfiend itself. 

Even if Regenesis got a single top at the YCS, many duelists have paired the Deck with Kashtira in testing, as it works with the control tempo both themes share, and you can reveal Kashtira Unicorn for Regenesis Archfiend, thus allowing you to go into most of your control strategy for the Deck.

During the Day 1 Stream of YCS Rhode Island, many players got to see what Dragon Rulers were capable of, which led to Spectral, Dragon Ruler of Flickers, receiving a mass buyout on the TCGplayer market. This is due to the fact that it is one of, if not the best, cards from the new support, as it can discard itself and a Dragon or LIGHT monster to add 2 other Dragon Ruler monsters from your Deck to your hand. The two Dragon Rulers you want to search for most of the time are Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos, or Tempest, Dragon of Storms and Stream, Dragon Ruler of Droplets. 

The main reasoning for this is that you can discard Stream and another Dragon or WATER monster from your hand to Special Summon a Tidal, Dragon Ruler of Waterfalls from your Deck, although it cannot attack that turn. As for Tempest, you can discard it and a Dragon or a WIND monster, like Mulcharmy Fuwalos, to add 1 Dragon monster from your Deck to your hand, allowing you to get another Dragon in the GY, making it ready to be banished by other Rulers. With Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos, you can discard it and a FIRE or Dragon monster to target 1 card on the field and destroy it. But many use the card as banish material for another Dragon Ruler. Doing this allows you to add 1 FIRE Dragon monster from your Deck to your hand, like Tenpai Dragon Genroku, to have even more Dragon monsters to summon to go into Synchro or Link plays. The main Link Monster you want to Link Summon is Hieratic Seal of the Heavenly Sphere, while the main Level 10 Synchro you want to Summon is Bystial Dis Pater, as Genroku can treat itself as a Tuner if it is Special Summoned by its own effect when you add it from your Deck to your hand. Both cards are very good at making your opponent’s own turns miserable.

With the powerful buff that Dragon Rulers received in Alliance Insight, it is clear that they could potentially be a rogue Deck to watch out for, even though it catches strays from almost every player on Artifact Lancea.

There was an influx of Maliss players at the YCS, allowing the Deck to take 37.5% of the Top 32. The brand-new inclusion of Maliss <P> March Hare and Backup @Ignister helped Maliss, as it added additional consistency from Backup @Ignister being able to add 1 DARK Cyberse monster from your Deck to your hand on summon, but you do have to discard 1 card. This allows you to search any of Maliss monsters, like Maliss <P> March Hare, or even allows you to search up Wizard @Ignister for another extender.

Maliss <P> March Hare in particular has allowed many cards like Maliss <P> Chessy Cat or Allure of Darkness to become essentially Pot of Greed clones. This is because when she is banished, you pay 300 LP to add any of your banished Maliss cards to your hand, even herself. Even if March Hare is in your hand, she can Special Summon herself from your hand during either Main Phase by banishing 1 other Maliss card in your hand or GY. With this effect, you could banish any Maliss monster like Chessy Cat, White Rabbit, or even Dormouse to start your combos. Even during your opponent’s turn, if you have Maliss <Q> White Binder in your GY, you can banish that to summon March Hare, which allows the White Binder to trigger its own effect to Special Summon itself by paying 900 LP, and you can draw 1 card after that. On top of all that, when Binder is Special Summoned, you can banish up to 3 cards from either GY to control what your opponent has in their own GY.

Hidden from the player base, some decided to try Topologic Bomber Dragon once again! This card can be extremely powerful depending on the state of the game and how much your opponent has left in terms of resources. This card saw play over the years in the Plant FTK Deck with the currently Forbidden Phoenixian Cluster Amaryllis, even to 2019 with Orcust to control the board state. With Bomber Dragon, it destroys all monsters in the Main Monster Zones if another monster is Special Summoned to a zone a Link Monster points to, with the restriction that your other monsters cannot attack for the rest of the turn. However, using this destruction effect during your opponent’s turn gets around that restriction. This can be detrimental, as Maliss has a couple of ways of triggering this with Maliss <C> GWC-06, as it can Special Summon any Maliss monster that is in your banishment or GY, or even using Maliss <P> March Hare’s Special Summon effect for an additional way to trigger the effect.

Even with Maliss replicating what Thunder Dragon did back in 2018/2019 of not winning a YCS for so long, maybe it could take on the National Season and finally receive its First Place Trophy with these new additions as players try and figure out how the deck is supposed to be. 

The hype for Mitsurugi continues, as many players played the Deck at YCS Providence to show how powerful the deck is and how much more potent it is with Ryzeal as Ame no Habakiri no Mitsurugi and Mitsurugi no Mikoto, Aramasa, the newest additions to the deck. Mitsurugi Ritual has gone up more in price because of how many different versions of Mitsurugi showed up, from Pure Builds to Ryzeal and even Ogdoadic from this past weekend of events. Being the Deck that players now have to prepare to beat, we will see how much things will change going deeper into this National Season.

Along with Mitsurugi Ritual, Ice Ryzeal and Ext Ryzeal have started to creep up in price because of Mitsurugi Ryzeal winning YCS Providence. Two extremely important cards for the Deck since Ice Ryzeal can Special Summon itself from your hand by sending 1 card from your hand or field to the GY. This does lock you into Rank 4 Xyz Monsters, but that is fine with Mitsurugi being mainly a Ritual Archetype. It also helps if a card you control gets flipped down by Book of Moon or Book of Eclipse so you will always have a card to send to the GY to Special Summon itself. But if you Normal Summon this card, you can Special Summon 1 Ryzeal monster from your Deck, so you could Summon either Sword Ryzeal or Star Ryzeal to either search for a LIGHT Pyro monster or set a Ryzeal Spell/Trap from your Deck to your field, mainly Ryzeal Cross, to set up an effect negation on resolution.

While Ext Ryzeal is still doing its main starting plays by sending either Eclipse Twins to summon back an already summoned Ryzeal Detonator from the GY or sending Mereologic Aggregator to the GY in order to target 1 face-up card on the field and negate its effects until the end of this turn. And while you control no other face-up monsters except a Level/Rank 4 monster, Ext lets you add a FIRE Thunder monster from your Deck to your hand. This allows you to search for either your Sword Ryzeal or Node Ryzeal for extensions either way.

Even with the semi-limitation of Ext Ryzeal, Ice Ryzeal, and Sword Ryzeal, along with the limitation of Ryzeal Detonator, it shows how much power this engine still holds, especially mixed with other decks or engines like Heraldic or Mitsurugi.

Finally, we have Spell Card “Monster Reborn”, which was used as a tech against many decks that want to Special Summon monsters from the GY. As a hard-once-per-turn Quick-Play Spell Card, it can target a monster in either GY to Special Summon it to your field, but for the rest of the turn, it cannot attack, and neither player can activate the effects of that monster. This is extremely useful against Bystial monsters, Maliss <C> GWC-06, and even against Ryzeal if their Ryzeal Detonator gets sent to the GY with an Eclipse Twins attached to it as material. This card had an impact during a few matches, stopping their opponent’s main push against a weakened board as a last line of defense.

With Spell Card “Monster Reborn” having 1 print from The Infinite Forbidden, players hope to see a rarity upgrade coming in the future for this impactful card.

Even though Ryzeal and Maliss are still the top Decks to beat, Alliance Insight still impacted the meta enough to see more Deck varieties show up in topping lists all over its premiere weekend! It’s only a matter of time before Battle of Legends: Monster Mayhem and Duelist’s Advance releases to see what real impact those sets have.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon