Notes & Combos

Early M1 - Unchained Labrynth

It's been awhile since a set of incentives came along to push me in the direction of using the Unchained variant of Lab, but recent releases and meta trends have made a good environment for it. W:P Fancy Ball has been a fantastic addition, powerful enough to center turns around and a distinct upgrade in ammunition on a whole. The infrastructure supporting it here is arguably some of the best in the field for the card; Rage is a strong entry point into W:P, you're fiend rich with generous access to A Bao to fasten the Fancy loop, and there's solid recourse through the dogs and Muck to keep the show upright if the opponent does out your key link-4 to stop the cycle.

Beyond that, the rest of the deck already had appealing touchpoints. As a backrow deck, you have natural avenues to stymie K9 cards if desired and can shrug off most common HTs on the market right now - particularly the draw type ones. The interaction suite is quite good, you have a bunch of access to silver bullets that happen to line up nicely against a thick slice of the leading decks, and you're well equipped to take on the latest top contender to come along in K9VS. Daruma, Impulse and Black Goat are all potent pieces in that MU with the latter being particularly valuable.

A common denominator among top decks at the moment is destruction: decks like Mitsurugi and Dracotail were already big on blowing up cards as a forefront choice of removal, but Vanquish Soul has pushed that keyword density even higher. Snow Devil, Razen, Caesar, etc have become commonalities in the metagame, there's plenty of popping going around and that bodes well for Yama and friends. I'm not sure how long this beneficial atmosphere will persist, but until the winds change it's all systems go for the dogs