Notes & Combos

Early M1 - Unchained Labrynth

It's a new month but the metagame stays the course, offering its blend of hand peeking and top deck manipulation in usual proportions as Kewl Tune clearly remains the deck to beat for the third season in a row.

That said, there wasn't much that had to be changed from May’s entry as it was already shown to be fine for climbing in a KT lead environment. So the only thing to truly account for this time around was any rising matchups peripheral to Kewl Tune's chokehold on the meta.

Despite Elfnote being the newest released relevant theme between now and last season, the steady surge in Sky Striker play and success felt like it fit that bill better, worthy of undercutting and ultimately leading me to play Magic Deflector to do so. While EEV is a good candidate here to push back against Striker as well, Deflector just felt a bit more elegant in the bigger picture: Able to the thread the needle smoother between its blatant target in Striker and decks like Kewl Tune that weren't particularly spell heavy or needy (but still had a few strong ones to stop) at an overall more efficient price point.

Beyond that, the list already had some good tools for the MU in question too. Songs on Zero’s tag just might be my favorite use of it this season. It swings for a bunch of raw value and tempo all in one stroke, and is generally fairly weighty to the bottom line of those games

Not only do you stop the pop, they don't get two bodies and thus, they don't get Kagari adding back what’s likely a fully charged Engage either. But you also do this in a way that circumvents Raye’s revival, so you cleanly sever their engine loop. And If that wasn't enough, you're likely getting Impulse as well on top of this to further keep them down.

Deflector worked out well, but seeing Songs a good amount made this run much more tolerable too.