Notes & Combos
I thought there were a couple big differences playing Tear this season vs in the past:
- The introduction of Bystials. This to me meant that you want to play more extenders and I did so by adding Grief and Foolish Burial. They're good cards because they're also starters by being additional ways to get to Reinoheart.
- Shufflers going from 5 to 2. I still play the maximum number of shufflers, but I dropped the millers completely. I felt that without having a large enough number of Ishizu cards that enabled the shufflers to be special summoned, the millers have just become very bricky. I stuck with Kelbek for a while for the hand trap effect, but it didn't feel worth it. I felt that, in a way, the millers were in direct contention with Bystials for deck slots because they can all be bricky going first, and Bystials just felt more impactful when they can be used. I think the only reason that you would still play all the millers now is if blindly activating them going first actually works out more times than not.
- The overall power level of the top decks right now. I think the results from the WCS qualifiers have shown that Spright was already as good a choice as Tear, and I think Branded Bystial is now a deck that's part of that discussion. Between the addition of Bystials, losing Ishizu cards, and other decks being strengthened by new cards, Tear just doesn't feel super dominant right now. I think the power dynamic between the top decks is actually pretty balanced at the moment.
Couple specific things that I want to touch on:
Imperm - I dropped them completely because I feel like they're just a very low impact hand trap right now. In the mirror it's good but not as good as Bystials. And against Spright, it's very low impact. You also want to consider if Super Poly is just a better card right now, and that was a choice that I landed on.
TTT - I think the problem with the card in the past was that there was a decent chance that you wouldn't be able to activate it going first, but with Bystials being so popular on top of Maxx C and Ash being in every deck, tt just felt like there were no reason not to play this card.
ED - I had to cut Bagooska to be able to find room for Sprind and Garura and still keep the Zoo package in, and it worked out fine. I absolutely love the versatility of the Zoo package and I just find them to be useful way more than the specific scenarios for Bagooska.