Notes & Combos

After hearing all about Tears for a year, I finally got to face them here in MD. Too bad that their arrival has plunged us into one of the least enjoyable metas in recent memory (though still far better than when floodgate Runick was everywhere). I really hate how almost every deck is either Tear or (GY) floodgate turbo at the minute. Just incredibly boring—and I hate that I can no longer use the World Legacy engine and the deck that I had so much fun playing last month. I will say, though, that Tears are actually quite fun to play against in a vacuum. It just gets old really quickly when you face them 8 times out of 10.

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As a Crusadia OTP, the simplest and most direct approach to completing the D1 climb so that I can stay away from MD for the rest of the month is, of course, good ol' Equimax bonk.

Gameplan is simple. OTK all day with no shame so I can move on to the next duel where I can hopefully face something unique, go into Astram if I fail to OTK and hope they don't play Goddess, or scoop.

I removed all midrange components from my deck (e.g., the World Legacy engine) because I could see no real way of outgrinding Tears and wanted to have close to 0 GY reliance in any case. I just kept Lib in my ED because I frankly only used like 9 of the slots anyway lol.

It's basically the classic Crusadia OTK, but with Mekks as extenders and auxiliary board breakers just as I've been playing them all this time. I did not always need to get to Equimax through Magius thanks to the monster removal techs.

Even now I am unsure about the board breakers I chose, so you should experiment more than I did. I find Tears' backrow to be more threatening than their actual monsters on board (apart from Dragostapelia, Bagooska, and Kaleido), so I kept Duster and LS even though they basically gift them a Havnis in hand. I was very unconvinced about the risk:reward of this trade all through my climb, but couldn't really think of anything better to use. I was also considering Droplet, but got to D1 before I bothered to edit my deck. Backrow removal helped vs Floo and Branded as well.

The other way to turn off their backrow is to remove Tear names from their field. Kaijus are great but essentially HOPT, so I chose to play Change of Heart, Mind Control, and TTT for more unique monster removal options in the average hand. However, I did notice more Tears players going into Exterio off Cyber-Stein after a few days, so these may become a lot worse.

Overall, I think Tears is a...decent-ish matchup. All of my monsters are inherent summons, so Rulkallos is a non-factor. It is even possible to OTK without triggering Havnis with the Mekk bodies and the monster steal spells. And, finally, I do not care about the GY at all.

Please end this format, Konami