Notes & Combos

I was very surprised to see Branded doing so well in the Duelist Cup, and even more so when I discovered that most top 100 lists were Grass variants, so I wanted to try and climb with this version of the deck.

This deck is very explosive when it gets to play, but personally I wasn't very impressed by its performance. It doesn't run many handtraps, so a lot of times I could not play through a full Dragon Link or Mathmech board (or, even if I could, they would just drop Maxx "C" on me and I couldn't OTK), it gets hit by Bystials very hard, which are now very popular again, and it just cannot play through certain Floodgates or a single Noir without Herald of the Abyss. On top of that, it can lose to itself pretty easily by just bricking.

Branded definitely has its strengths with its insane recursion, board presence and a newfound way to more consistently play under Maxx "C" thanks to Sanctifire, but my expirience on ladder was a bit frustrating. I ended up reaching Master V with it, but after that I had to tweak the decklist a lot and even tried to cut down to a 43 cards list. Eventually, I decided that it wasn't worth all this effort and finished the Master I climb with Labrynth.

I might try it again next month, as Dragon Link and Purrely should go down in popularity, so maybe it'll be an easier climb.