Notes & Combos

I played furniture lab for DC Stage 1; Bringing a list that was a weight class above typical builds both in terms of hard interaction and potent threats as we're also mixing in valued-based breakers here, rather than just the usual heavy hand trap approach. The climb was very comfortable overall.

Notes:

• Some Labs have gotten away from Dogmatika Punishment but I believe that's a mistake. Arise Heart is generally cited as the reason why, but Kash's ability to actually land it against Lab is suspect at best assuming you're playing correctly, and even when they do make it, it's fairly easy to out. Punishment is arguably the best removal Lab has - it offers great flexibility, value, and plays well into a wide range of matchups. The attrition game it presents is too beneficial to pass up in my opinion, especially when the top of the meta is full of midrange decks that love to grind.

• I've opted to be on a mix of breakers and HTs as highly relying on HTs alone can be disadvantageous a fair amount of the time. With the introduction of Thrust, lots of decks have leaned on multiple copies of it and Talents to offer more counterplay to HTs, punishing the choice and making their use way less lucrative. Breakers give you a board solution even when punished, all while generally having less counterplay to them in a given game so they can actually resolve. The mix worked out very well for me.

• Following on that, Kurikara and Evenly were both solid in this list. For Kurikara, she's hard to read in furniture as she's a rarer option than not, and particularly here given the list is still on HTs - which is suggestive of a standard build. The interactions with her and Big are nice along with the added value off of the revive, which makes your grind game that much grittier. For Evenly, it's quite underrated right now. The card is sturdy basically into everything that matters currently as there are very few omnis in the meta, and the top decks commit to board early and often to the extent that even if they leave up a boss monster, you can usually outvalue it from there. Lastly, Evenly's ability to cover you through rogue matchups shouldn't be underestimated, as Stage 1 (mainly in the earlier levels) had its fair share of stun, various combo piles, etc where it really shined. It was a good choice for this event.