Tournament Report: Lordknight Yellow / Big Swing Green

Location: Local Game Store in Hong Kong (Game Geek)

Participants: 22

Format: Swiss, Best of 1

Link to "Finals" Game: https://fb.watch/44Jh7aaSRG/

1st: Big Swing Green

2nd: Lordknight Yellow

3rd: Lordknight Yellow

Introduction

I placed 2nd using the Lordknight yellow deck, before you say "hey it was an Impdra v Green in the vid", because of the points system in the Swiss format I placed 2nd despite not playing the featured "finals" match.

Apart from going giving a brief description of each matchup I played, I'm going to go in-depth and analyze both 1st and 2nd place decks. Yes, both decks, because I'm friends with the 1st place and we basically built the deck together, thus I know it inside out as well.

It is worth noting that Hexeblaumon decks have completely disappeared, not casual enough for the for fun people, not good enough for the competitive people.

Games

Game 1: Lordknight Yellow v Lordknight Yellow (3rd place guy)

Set up 1 level 5 on board and 1 in breeding, opponent felt pressured and evod his only lv5 into Slashangemon to remove my lv5 on board. Unfortunately, I had Lordknight prepared  (TK was setup) proceeded to roll over him for he was unable to immediately remove Lordknight

Lesson: Removing Lordknight is of utmost importance, should rather stall the game than let a Lordknight run free.

Game 2: Lordknight Yellow v Shoutmon Red(with omni X)

The opponent had Zekegreymon setup in breeding, thus I couldn't push my Lordknight out in fear of getting ran over by Shoutmon DX (Zekegrey allows for attacking untapped). Ultimately won by building a wide board and forcing him to respond, even when he managed to summon Omni X by having a lv5 in breeding ready using a combination of  BT04-Wargrowlmon, Slashangemon and Starmons

Lesson: A single threat play style is extremely ineffective against LK, due to the ease of removing a single large threat 

Game 3: Lordknight Yellow v Lordknight Yellow

Back and forth removal fest, but because I opted to miss a few draws and turtle Lordknight in breeding, while my opponent opted to push Lordknight out but not attack (in fear of getting killed by my LK), I saved up enough resources to clear his Lordknight and go very wide. Which ultimately lead to his demise for he was playing catchup the whole time.

Lesson: Protect LK at all costs, its the heart of the deck, nothing functions without Lordknight

Game 4: Lordknight Yellow v Big Swing Green (1st place guy)

Ultimately lost to 2 Nidhoggmon and a tad of bad luck revealing in security check the MVP anti meta card that he wouldn't have put in the deck if not for a discussion I had with him the day before the tourny..... bt5- Sora & Joe (explanation below)

Lesson: The actual number of security is very unimportant in this matchup, Big Swing green will use Promo-Grankuwagamon and Chaosmon to destroy the security. Let them make the swing, focus on clearing his board and saving blockers. At the end of the day they still need to make that final attack even if you have no security.

Game 5: Lordknight Yellow v Purple Omnimon

Turtle Lordknight in breeding zone, he played Zwart thinking it would be safe enough (unlucky him, no targets for Zwart to summon), had Knightmon+Slashangemon+Starsmon to clean Zwart up.

Lesson:  A single threat play style is extremely ineffective against LK, due to the ease of removing a single large threat 

1st place - Big Swing Green

TTS Import: 

["Exported from https://digimoncard.dev","BT3-004","BT5-004","BT5-004","BT5-004","BT5-004","BT1-064","BT1-064","BT1-064","BT1-064","BT2-042","BT3-046","BT3-046","ST4-03","ST4-03","ST4-03","ST4-04","ST4-04","ST4-04","ST4-04","BT1-072","BT1-072","BT1-074","BT1-074","BT3-048","BT5-050","BT5-050","BT5-050","BT5-050","ST4-08","ST4-08","BT2-046","BT2-046","BT2-047","BT2-048","BT2-048","BT3-054","BT3-054","BT4-059","BT4-059","BT3-058","BT4-062","BT4-062","BT4-062","P-025","P-025","P-025","BT4-090","BT4-090","BT4-090","BT4-091","BT3-103","BT5-088","BT1-089","BT1-089","BT1-089"]

Previous write up: https://digimontcgdecks.blogspot.com/2021/03/swing-green-tts-import-exported-from.html

For the combos please read the link above. 

3 Mimis: Conventional wisdom tells us that abundance of 3 mem tamers are bad, because they dont stack, anymore past the first one are just dead cards. However this deck doesn't function at all without atleast 3 memory, can't lv5,6 in 1 turn for Nidhoggmon, can't attack immediately with Promo-Grankuwagamon etc etc. Asides from that Mimi is one of the few 3 mem tamers that has an impactful secondary effect, being able to always have a breeding zone up and ready to push into a lv6 provides a constant threat, additional Mimis allows for extra pushes.

Togemon: Consistency choice, the inability to do anything without a lv6 makes Togemon a fine addition, to reduce the chance of that happening.

Cherrymon: lv4 blockers are not uncommon, but why BT2-Cherrymon? It's a lv5 that you are going to evo over anyways. Asides from it being 2cost, 7000DP allows it to dodge most conventional blocker removals meaning it can actually be put on board before evoing into a 6, thus stopping potential aggro. With the recent resurgence of Imperialdramon decks, 7000DP also stops paildramon, significantly reducing their burstiness.

3 Nidhoggmons: A meta read that all decks want to attack whenever possible, unlike in bt04 meta where the dominant card bt04-wargreymon could untap itself dodging Nidhoggmon. Especially with Lordknightmon running around everywhere, slapping down lv3s left right center, Nidhoggmon has many more targets to hit.

Sora & Joe: What is a random blue tamer doing in a green deck? you cant even proc the discard source effect! The game is balanced around having 3 memory per turn, imagine having 5 memory per turn, its bonkers! Sora & Joe does exactly that. +2 memory if your opponent has a sourceless digimon, despite having no way of removing sources, it is not hard to proc at all. Let's go through the currently popular decks.

-Yellow: Lordknight, spams summoning, always has a sourceless target. Impossible for them to completely play around Sora & Joe, for it means not attacking with Lordknight.

-Green: Non-existent, typically digiburested lv6s, 2 cost lv3s that was used as memory fodder.

-Blue: Hexeblau, fading out due to inability to make proactive plays. Imperialdramon, 2 cost lv3s and hard summoned Paildramons. Garuru, hard summoned Gabumons from using Nokia and lv4s from BT1-Metalgarurumon.

-Red: Shoutmon, no particular target. Wargreymon, hard summoned Agumons from using Nokia

-Purple: whatever variant you play the entire purple theme is designed around having lv3 as destroy fodder. 

-Black: Diaboru, tokens

As we can see, it's actually not that hard to proc Sora & Joe. Especially when yellow is so dominant. Using 4 memory to play Sora & Joe also doesn't really matter, because this deck requires your opponent to build a presence, then punish with various tools. Thus mitigating any loss of tempo from having to play Sora & Joe.

Sora & Joe has been so effective, that it might be considered worth running 2.

2nd Place - Lordknight Yellow

TTS Import:

["Exported from https://digimoncard.dev","BT5-003","BT5-003","BT5-003","BT5-003","BT1-049","BT1-049","BT1-049","BT3-033","BT3-033","BT4-115","BT4-115","BT5-034","BT5-034","BT5-034","BT5-034","BT5-035","BT5-035","BT5-035","BT5-035","BT3-035","BT3-035","BT3-037","BT3-037","BT3-037","BT4-042","BT4-042","BT4-042","BT4-042","ST3-07","ST3-07","BT1-057","BT1-057","BT1-057","BT1-057","BT4-046","BT5-042","BT5-042","BT5-042","BT5-042","BT1-062","BT1-062","BT4-048","BT5-045","BT5-045","BT5-045","BT5-045","BT4-091","BT4-091","BT4-104","BT4-104","BT5-099","BT5-099","BT1-087","BT1-087"]

Previous write up:https://digimontcgdecks.blogspot.com/2021/02/aggrolv3-yellow-tts-import-exported.html

4 Digitama: Yes its not me forgetting to put the 5th one in, all other useful yellow digitama have their effects tied to security being at a particular number. Since we have moved away from security manipulation, they become alot less reliable. A game typically never lasts all the way to 5 digitama anyways, due to excessive turtling in breeding.

Lack of lv3 package: This version has completely dropped the typical lv3 wargrey package of patamon for recovery, bushiagumon for the push, BT3-Angewomon for summoning lv3s etc etc. To simply put it, lack of space and consistency. Lordknightmon is a superior version of BT3-Angewomon, it doesnt have a 3sec requirement, Lordknightmon already throws lv3s out easily enough that we dont need Angewomon.

The shift away from the 3 security requirement also makes recovery less important, for we are no longer actively trying to drop ourselves down to 3 security to enable things.

Bushiagumon was used to for the suprise push which worked great with wargreymon's ability to attack twice, also was anti meta back in bt4 (due to bt4 wargreymon yellow's big weakness was unable to activate effect if dropped too low in sercurity), but since Lordknightmon only swings once per turn. Bushiagumon effectively is only useful for the final attack.

Kotemon: Yes there is hardly any target to search, but Lordknightmon is so crucial to the deck, that even opening 5 cards and not getting anything is still good, because it means you are 5 cards faster in getting to Lordknightmon.

Labramon: Since Lordknightmon enables so many methods of -DP removal and the fact that Lordknightmon drains your hand, Labramon offers a steady stream of resources to ensure you always have fuel to remove threats. Coincidentally it also makes my "weird" tech/one-of cards much better, because of the draw power it provides.

Sirenmon / Wargrowlmon: Sirenmon's low cost enables it to be hard summoned, which synergizes very well with a turtle in breeding play style, to establish mutiple lv6 threats. Which is also why i opted to main it over wargrowlmon despite the -4000dp being so impactful. The inability for Wargrowlmon to do anything outside of the breeding makes it imcompatable with a turtling play style.

2 TK 2 Blinding Light: The typical approach was either full TK or full Blinding Light, TK was a lot slower and useless with mutiple copies, but it gave consistency. Blinding Light was faster and allowed for suprise turns, but one turn use only. Going 2/2 allowed for potential 5 memory plays while. The mixture of the 2 also surpises the opponent, for they only expected only one.

Spiral Masquarede: Lordknightmon simply floods the board too easily, it also gives yellow some much needed security effect.