Notes & Combos

Lots of handtrap RNG casino games this season to deal with SHS/Branded both of which are ridiculous decks imho since they can just generate way too much value with 1 single card.

• Branded can pretty much do everything well and doesnt actually hard lose to anything, unlike SHS which can lose to resolved Max C/Droll.
• SHS can end on a bijillion negates though so it's just surrender if no handtraps going second against them (unless ra sphere mode).

Throughout this climb, I played 3 different versions of Lab:

1. Trap Lab (P5~M4) <was on 2 month MD hiatus/break, so climbed to D1 all in 1 day on the last day in January>
2. Furniture Lab (M4~M2 2 wins)
3. Kash/Bystial Lab (Last few games to M1)

I swapped around depending on the mood/matchups I'm seeing. Here are some of my personal opinions about each deck:

Furniture Lab:

Pros:

• Fun (activate a bunch of stuff)
• Can turn 0/1 combo to pop field/hand
  • Can sometimes win from this
    • get info
    • snipe important cards
• Grind game is very strong with furniture
• More lab stuff from furniture means more
  • BW bounce
    • Deals with ED mosters with Grave effects well
  • Lovely and Field spell non-targeting removal
    • Deals with Albion the Santifire Dragon well
    • Deals with all the targeting dodges well

Cons:

• Impacted more by Ash / Ghost Bell / D.D Crow / Bystials
• Can lose pretty hard if turn 0/1 combo fails

Trap Lab:

Pros:

• No Hand Traps
  • You don't need to play the HT resolution RNG/casino game
• Can play through handtraps super well (None of thse hurt much at all)
  • MaxC
  • Ash/Droll
  • DD Crow/Bystal
  • Imperm/Veiler
  • Ghost Ogre
  • Bell
• Can kind of always play
  • Generally no dead cards (other than ra sphere mode going first), you can set 5 pass
  • Many Cards are not once per turn (Daruma, Solemn Strike, Torrential)
  • Winning going 2nd feels more frequently possible. (Esp. with Ra sphere mode, solemn strike, floodgates)
• Can get free wins with floodgates

Cons:

• No Hand Traps
  • This means you cannot just instant win from HT RNG
    • Resolved Max C vs SHS/Mannadium
    • Resolved Ash vs Branded
    • Resolved Droll vs SHS
• Games are usually longer
  • Often gets into top deck situation, where you have advantage with strong trap cards and bigger monsters (3 more than usual with Lords)
• Less "Fun"
  • No wombo combos really.
• Lose harder to Harpie Feather Duster when no Lord
• Small room for error when no floodgate
  • Need to use each trap well to win, since it is harder to regenerate value

Kash/Bystial Lab

See Jay in 4k's list

Pros:

• Strong against top meta decks (Branded, SHS, Mannadium)
  • Kashtira Unicorn + Birth feels really strong to deal with the ED and GY.
  • Bystials are strong against Branded
  • Fenrir banish face down is OP
• Runs ~14 handtraps (17 counting bystials)
  • Handtraps can just win games going first or second

Cons

• 3 Bystials feel weak vs SHS
  • I ended up cutting bladrake for DD Crow
• No furnature means even when stablized, opponent might be able to claw back while our deck can't recoup/generate value as fast
• Awkward situations with summons at times
  • cant summon kash when monsters are on board
  • many NS options can be stuck in hand (Kash with Birth/Ecclesia/Airanna
• No field spell makes grind game a bit worse
• Can lose hard to droll
  • Pot of Extrav, Nadir Servant, Kash, Arianna all searches/draws
    • if open multiple and get drolled then the hand becomes very crippled.