[TCG] Week 2: Top 20 Decks and Cards
First week of August 2018 reviewed
Again, shoutout to our boys at YGO Scope for providing such a sophisticated tool.
This week we’re doing something a little different. I’ve taken extra consolidation steps so rather than looking at monarch true draco seperate from pure, I’m just averaging the stats as ‘true draco’ and letting the techs and ideas influence it how they may. I’ll continue experimenting with ways to best present the data, but let’s see how things change based on this.
Top 15 Decks:
- Frogs – 70.85% Win Rate
That’s right, we’re doing 15 decks this week, since 15 different decks in the top ‘tables’ were seen at least 50 times this week. I’m just gonna list em all. Last weeks 1st place was Zefra, which this week didn’t even see 50 games played. It did win 68.42% of the 20 it did play. There’s only gonna be 14 decks listed as Zefra is the 15th, but I’m not ranking it due to scarcity. Froggy buddies, however, utilizing sky strikers and/or paleos saw variations of success, that when summed up and averaged, came out on top.
- Invoked Mekk Knight – 69.4%
Finally getting some more fair representation, this deck has more than 10 ways it shows up in the data based on so many kinds of techs like world legacy, or sky striker cards, that without this method, this deck actually hides in the form of 15 decks that were played 10 times each. Summed up, it showed up 180 times, and won 125 of those. Morning star was a definite boost to this deck, and the new Invoker Link monster can do nothing but help its future!
- Dinosaur – 67.92%
The next 3 are all neck and neck with each other, but dinosaur having the fewest mirror matches mean its not lowering its own average towards 50 as fast as the others.
- Gouki – 67.81%
This one goes way higher with pure DARK HERO stuff, and way lower when adding sky striker stuff, but through our new methodology, lands right here. Still by far the most represented deck.
- Sky Striker Trickstar – 67.43%
People will play this deck until you tell them they can’t anymore. Anything over 50% means you’re seeing game 3s. Anything over 66% means you’re winning matches.
- Altergeist – 66.11%
This was my pick to win worlds, and what I’m currently playing, myself. The people running sky strikers in this deck saw significantly lower win rates, and actually dragged an average of 72 down to this 66.
- Sky Striker Pure – 65.46%
Cybernetic Horizon has been good to this deck. Borrelsword, Hayate, I’ve even seen the Mana Dragon teched in a few. This decks mirror matches are still basically neo-new goat format, and I encourage people to try them out, they’re fun. However, in a world where people are allowed to play decks that aren’t this one, this isn’t the right call.
- Cyber Dragons – 65.38%
People playing this deck will be happy in the coming months, there’s two more sets of support for these things. I said I’d be surprised if it stayed as high as 61 a week later, and it actually went up!
- True Draco – 65.02%
The Monarch variant is losing even harder this week than last, but also was almost completely unseen so it didn’t drag the stats down that much. rivalry is a lot weaker vs frog/geist, and gozen is a lot weaker vs trickstar and the formers; so the massive early format advantage this deck had by maining six has been slowing down a bit. I wonder if ‘there can be only one’ wouldn’t be a good idea for these guys.
- Trickstar – 64.06%
Well, we have a deck in 10th place that actually doesn’t use the sky striker cards whatsoever to eliminate weaknesses to floodgates. It isn’t winning as often without those weaknesses though.
- Pendulum Magicians – 61.29%
ヘビーメタルフォーゼ・エレクトラム
- Mermail – 61.25%
A 49-31 record. This deck keeps winning. I’ve been watching replays of it using Moulinglacia and Gumblar in one turn to really cripple hands. It’s pretty cool. Another deck that doesn’t see a lot of mirror matches to drag its total towards 50, however.
- Burning Abyss – 58.54%
Gone is the hype from Thomas Rowe and his “Dante’s Cat” deck. This deck has gone from the most played to bottom 5 on a list of 20. Poor results can be chocked up partially to people jumping ship, and those who stay, trying to use Danger! monsters in the deck. They’re still not good.
- Danger! – 42.00%
Well, it’s not 0. A lot of this comes from the new consolidation however, where the pure variants winrate of exactly 50, raised the dark world variants winrate of …8%, up quite a bit.
World Chalice, ABC, Infernoid, Satellarknight, and even a Gem-Knight FTK all still saw some play, but it was less than 10 matches each, and not significant enough data to work with.
Top 20 Main Deck Cards by win rate:
| Unexpected Dai | 86.84% |
| Jizukiru, the Star Destroying Kaiju | 83.78% |
| The Winged Dragon of Ra – Sphere Mode | 81.25% |
| Slime Toad | 78.43% |
| Mind Control | 78.38% |
| Babycerasaurus | 77.50% |
| Mekk-Knight Red Moon | 77.14% |
| Moulinglacia the Elemental Lord | 75.51% |
| Speedroid Terrortop | 75% |
| Rescue Rabbit | 75% |
| Lilith, Lady of Lament | 75% |
| Gouki Bearhug | 74.77% |
| Machine Duplication | 74.58% |
| Ultimate Conductor Tyranno | 74% |
| Cyber Dragon Drei | 73.81% |
| Sky Striker Mecha – Eagle Booster | 71.88% |
| Imperial Order | 71.72% |
| Crusadia Maximus | 71.43% |
| Miscellaneousaurus | 71.43% |
| Sky Striker Maneuver – Jamming Waves! | 71.12% |
Top 20 Extra Deck Cards by win rate:
| PSY-Framelord Omega | 78.69% |
| Borrelsword Dragon | 77.60% |
| Tri-Gate Wizard | 77.50% |
| Link Spider | 74.74% |
| Altergeist Hexstia | 74.56% |
| Wee Witch’s Apprentice | 74.19% |
| Firewall Dragon | 73.65% |
| Summon Sorceress | 73.07% |
| Underclock Taker | 73.05% |
| Toadally Awesome | 72.55% |
| Bahamut Shark | 72.09% |
| Topologic Trisbaena | 72% |
| Chimeratech Rampage Dragon | 71.93% |
| Knightmare Goblin | 71.66% |
| Decode Talker | 71.05% |
| Qliphort Genius | 70.97% |
| Knightmare Unicorn | 70.88% |
| Linkuriboh | 70.60% |
| Knightmare Cerberus | 70.60% |
| Borreload Dragon | 70.41% |
That Gem-Knight FTK though. Dai wins you the game when it works, a very high percent of the time. Sphere mode comes in clutch vs Gouki surprising nobody. Slime toad only hits the board when rabbit resolves successfully, but it would appear that 78.43% of the time rescue rabbit works, you win! Red Moon rather than Yellow Star seems to be the flavour of the week, but ultimately things like both players using Gouki will see stuff like suprex fall off a cliff towards 50 since one of those players lost.
An added bonus, a big request has just been ‘most used cards’ at this level of play, so in 3000 matches, here are the top 50 most used cards!
| Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring | 1463 |
| Sky Striker Mecha – Hornet Drones | 945 |
| Sky Striker Ace – Kagari | 922 |
| Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! | 909 |
| Infinite Impermanence | 885 |
| Knightmare Phoenix | 817 |
| Pot of Desires | 708 |
| Linkuriboh | 683 |
| Sky Striker Ace – Shizuku | 661 |
| Terraforming | 652 |
| Called by the Grave | 701 |
| Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights | 629 |
| Knightmare Goblin | 598 |
| Gouki Suprex | 611 |
| Droll & Lock Bird | 587 |
| Gouki Octostretch | 567 |
| Knightmare Unicorn | 547 |
| Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade | 558 |
| Sky Striker Mecha – Widow Anchor | 552 |
| Firewall Dragon | 501 |
| Sky Striker Ace – Raye | 511 |
| Gouki Twistcobra | 500 |
| Gouki Headbatt | 502 |
| Knightmare Corruptor Iblee | 517 |
| Gouki Re-Match | 487 |
| Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit | 457 |
| Knightmare Mermaid | 455 |
| Sky Striker Ace – Hayate | 442 |
| Twin Twisters | 463 |
| Knightmare Cerberus | 435 |
| Gouki Bearhug | 387 |
| Sky Striker Mecha Modules – Multirole | 405 |
| Gouki Riscorpio | 405 |
| Altergeist Meluseek | 429 |
| Sky Striker Maneuver – Afterburners! | 389 |
| Altergeist Multifaker | 393 |
| Sky Striker Airspace – Area Zero | 380 |
| Summon Sorceress | 359 |
| Altergeist Marionetter | 392 |
| Reinforcement of the Army | 380 |
| Instant Fusion | 368 |
| Junk Forward | 368 |
| Altergeist Silquitous | 350 |
| Rivalry of Warlords | 377 |
| Altergeist Protocol | 354 |
| Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin | 335 |
| M-X-Saber Invoker | 335 |
| Evenly Matched | 317 |
| Foolish Burial Goods | 328 |
| Metalfoes Fusion | 309 |
Tier 1 Decks (>3000 decklists analyzed), by percent of the field, demonstrating Representation:
- Gouki – 23.13%
- Sky Striker 19.3%
- Altergeist 16.23%
- Sky Striker Trickstar – 7.26%
- True Draco – 6.76%
- Invoked Mekk Knight – 6%
- Frog – 5.83%
- Cyber Dragon – 3.46%
- All other Decks make up the remaining 12%
Week 1 saw 40% of decks in ‘other’ and last week saw 35%. This week we have only 12%, largely due to cyber dragon now making the cut. That 12% of people are using things like Burning Abyss, Danger, and Pendulum. As an interesting experiment, that assumes every deck on the list was used evenly, I’ve also averaged out the winrates of every deck, beside its name in the header.
Tier 1 Matchups:
Gouki – 56.14875%
- Gouki -> Sky Striker – 57.14%
- Gouki -> Altergeist – 53.66%
- Gouki -> Sky Striker Trickstar – 21.43%
- Gouki -> True Draco – 69.23%
- Gouki -> Invoked Mekk Knight – 75.00%
- Gouki -> Frog – 50%
- Gouki -> Cyber Dragon – 72.73%
Sky Striker 36.18125%
- Sky Striker -> Altergeist – 46.15%
- Sky Striker -> Sky Striker Trickstar – 33.33%
- Sky Striker -> True Draco – 66.67%
- Sky Striker -> Invoked Mekk Knight – 21.87%
- Sky Striker -> Frog – 0%
- Sky Striker -> Cyber Dragon – 28.57%
Altergeist 69.26125%
- Altergeist -> Sky Striker Trickstar – 60%
- Altergeist -> True Draco – 79.9%
- Altergeist -> Invoked Mekk Knight – 64%
- Altergeist -> Frog – 100%
- Altergeist -> Cyber Dragon – 100% (only 3 times did these two meet, and altergeist won all 3)
Sky Striker Trickstar 38.57125%
- Sky Striker Trickstar -> True Draco – 40%
- Sky Striker Trickstar -> Invoked Mekk Knight – 0%
- Sky Striker Trickstar -> Frog – 0%
- Sky Striker Trickstar -> Cyber Dragon – 33.33%
True Draco 43.025%
- True Draco -> Invoked Mekk Knight – 50%
- True Draco -> Frog – 66.67%
- True Draco -> Cyber Dragon – 33.33%
Invoked Mekk Knight 58.01625%
- Invoked Mekk Knight -> Frog – 75%
- Invoked Mekk Knight -> Cyber Dragon – 50%
Frog 44.79125%
- Frog -> Cyber Dragon – 100%
Cyber Dragon 41.505%
Sticking with only listing decks that were played at least 100 times this week at the highest level, we actually have 8 decks now instead of only 5. The rest of our top 15 saw up to 80 uses (burning abyss) or as low as 53 (dinosaur). I actually upped the cutoff to 150 just to try and lower the total, and 7 still showed up. Cool. About 2% didn’t end up accounted for, some of which is rounding. 50% win rate would have been the target for the above decks. Matchup data this week was pretty weak, so i’ll try something different next week. Probably only look at the top 5 decks regardless.
Huge thanks and shoutout to our friends at http://www.ygoscope.com for compiling such valuable information!
