Tier List Update: 5 June 2019

Overview

The Tier List will be categorized into two sections which are Tier List (PvP & KOG) and Tier List (Tournament Format / Bo3 and Bo5 Format).

Tier List (PvP & KOG)

This is the tier list based on the KOG section and deck performance in PvP Ladder Format.

Tier 1

Blue-Eyes still as one of the best choices at this moment in terms of consistency and fast games. This deck has the ability to control the back row easily with Dragon Spirit of White and usually has a great front row advantage as The White Stone of Ancients and Dawn Knight can easily get out Blue-Eyes monsters multiple times in a single turn. Pair it up with Snipe Hunter, a valuable card that can potentially wipe your opponent by discarding The White Stone of Ancients then special summon Blue-Eyes monsters at the end phase. Sphere Kuriboh, which also very useful in surviving big turns from your opponent.



The high power stats monsters like Blue-Eyes White Dragon or Cosmo Brain (special summoned by discarding Blue-Eyes White Dragon or Dragon Spirit of White) which are hard to get rid by the other decks. Spellbook players and Neos Fusion players will have trouble while they duel against Blue-Eyes deck that pair with Sealed Tombs skill since Neos Fusion or Spellbook of Fate cannot be activated while Sealed Tomb is activated on that turn. Adding in Koa'ki Meiru Ice to the mix with Diamond Core of Koa'ki Meiru solves some of the decks issues especially Ancient Gear deck. All around this deck has everything which makes it sit strong at Tier 1.

Koa'ki Meiru with Neos Engine is one of the top decks at this moment due to the flexibility of tech space to adapt. Koa'ki Meiru Ice and Koa'ki Meiru Maximus have the strongest pair of effects and very useful against Subterror Deck. Neos Fusion and Diamond Core of Koa'ki Meiru with their protection effects also make them immune for once with through common destruction effects like Treacherous Trap Hole.

Subterror is extremely powerful as soon as it starts rolling. Masked Tribute breaks this deck and Subterror Final Battle is the best card in the game. Subterror Behemoth Umastryx and Subterror Final Battle cause a lot of trouble for other decks. However, there is an obvious weakness of this deck which they are kinda slow since they need time to set up.

Tier 2

Ancient Gear still has pretty good matchups rate against the other deck. The main support of this deck is Ancient Gear Reactor Dragon, high power stat and spell/trap destruction effect; Ancient Gear Wyvern, a good searcher to search Ancient Gear cards and anti-monster effect while it declares an attack; Geartown allows you to normal summon Ancient Gear monster with less 1 tribute and you can special summon Ancient Gear monsters from your deck, hand or graveyard while it is destroyed then sent to the graveyard; Ancient Gear Fortress can protect your monsters while they are normal summoned on that turn.



Nonetheless, this deck will have hard matchups against Blue-Eyes deck. Cosmo Brain and Blue-Eyes monsters with Beatdown skill can easily get rid of Ancient Gear Reactor Dragon if you don't have any back row protection. There is also isn't as much flexibility in tech strategies, so you will have less card protection if you can't manage to OTK your opponent.

Red-Eyes can dominate matches with its massive size and ability to negate targeting cards by using Red-Eyes Slash Dragon. The new Red-Eyes Build which utilizes Black Metal Dragon which can resolve the weakness of Red-Eyes Slash Dragon on the first turn but it seems they still hard to compete with Spellbook deck due to the Spellbook of Fate with powerful non-target effect to get rid of Red-Eyes Slash Dragon easily.



Tech cards like Cosmic Cyclone is good to use against a deck like Subterror who depends a lot in the traps. Forbidden Chalice can be a good choice because without it you gonna have tough time vs Subterror and cards that target. You can use Power of the Guardians so you can make your slash bigger than Cosmo Brain or Blue-Eyes monsters. Buster Blader can be tough for Blue-Eyes monsters to deal with too.

Tier 3

Amazoness still has the ability to compete with the other deck in PvP Ladder format due to the flexibility of the back row tech cards to deal against with certain deck and some Red-Eyes Engine is a good choice to mix with this deck since you can protect the Amazoness Onslaught with Red-Eyes Slash Dragon.

The Buster Blader Deck is back to the game since the rise of the Blue-Eyes Deck and Red-Eyes Deck which are hard to compete with this anti-dragon deck.



Their main playstyle is using Buster Blader, the Dragon Destroyer Swordsman, and DNA Surgery to lock down your opponent's field. Combined with Light and Dark and the Red-Eyes engine also can receive a nice boost since you can fusion summon Red-Eyes Slash Dragon easily and use Red-Eyes Slash Dragon to protect DNA Surgery from the removal tech cards like Cosmic Cyclone.

A good tech engine for the other decks like Steelswarm, Koaki Meiru and Cyberdark which makes those deck more consistent and aggressive due to the powerful fusion card, Neos Fusion that can fusion summon Elemental HERO Brave Neos by sending Elemental HERO Neos and any Level 4 or lower monsters from your deck to the graveyard without reducing your hand card. Not only that but you can protect Brave Neos from destruction for once by banishing Neos Fusion from your Graveyard; Elemental HERO Brave Neos can search the spell/trap that lists Elemental HERO Neos in the card text like Neos Fusion or Miracle Contact for preparing the follow-up strategies while it destroys an opponent's monsters by battle.



Besides that, some good tech cards like Bacon Savers or Sphere Kuriboh as protection from receiving huge damage from the battle that declared by the opponent. Gale Lizard and Karakuri Ninja Mdl "339" Sazank role as anti-meta cards that can remove the opponent's monsters without destroying them.



However, Pure Neos control builds are now too slow to compete and anyone still wanna use this deck should consider the Koa'ki Meiru build.

Six Samurai Deck still as a good deck in the current format although this deck receives a consistency hit after the new banlist has been announced as Shien's Dojo is restricted as Semi-Limited Card. Six Samurai players still can easily summon Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En with Legendary Six Samurai - Enishi which special summoned by Shien's Dojo or Six Style - Dual Wield set on the field while they going first. Even if Six Samurai players are going second, they can still achieve OTK easily if their combo is not interfered or stopped by the opponent's player.



At present, the Six Samurai deck mainly has two types of the build which are Asceticism of Six Samurai Version and Dual Wield Version. The Dual Wield version is easier to operate but swaps out the extra consistency for extra disruption whereas the Asceticism of Six Samurai Version is more powerful than the Dual Wield Version and high versatility of play style which makes the combo is not easy to be predicted by the opponent player.



However, the hit on Shien's Dojo not just hurts the consistency of Six Samurai Deck but denying access to cards like Treacherous Trap Hole and Enemy Controller which makes this deck more harder to deal with the stall cards. This deck also hard to deal with Blue-Eyes deck which have higher power stats monsters and Subterror deck that have decent monster removal effect like Subterror Behemoth Umastryx.

Combine with the Light and Dark skill which increases the consistency of this deck that makes Silent Magician can be special summoned in one turn easily.



A powerful Non-target banish card like Spellbook of Fate, which can remove the big boss monsters that most of the other meta deck like Ancient Gear Reactor Dragon. Moreover, Silent Magician has a spell card negation effect that can negate the spell cards like Neos Fusion, Red-Eyes Fusion or Silver's Cry which can be devastating for the opposing deck. Also, Spellbooks have high power stats monsters, Silent Magician Lvl 8 which is hard to deal with.



However, Silent Magician cannot negate the activation of Trap cards which makes Spellbook still weak against the Heavy Back row Trap Deck.

Metaphys is a valuable archetype whose playstyle revolves around banishing its own cards in order to set up and trigger certain effects. Most of the monsters even can be shuffled back into the Deck and activate their effects, adding cards from the Deck to the hand, banishing cards from the Deck or Special Summoning monsters from the hand. With the synergy such as Gold Sarcophagus will make this deck perform their combo easily. The other powerful support cards like Metaphys Factor, Asymmetaphys and Metaphys Dimension will be a huge problem to the opponent players.

There are some good support cards that released in the latest main box, Blazing Rose which is Cockadoodledoo, a flexible tuner monsters which can special summon regarding condition.



A ­­great Synchro monster, Vermillion Dragon Mech that can destroy the cards by banishing 1 Tuner from your hand, field, or Graveyard and it can even recycle one of those tuner monsters from the banishing zone to your hand after it gets destroyed by a card effect and sent to the graveyard. Chevalier de Fleur similar effect as Shi En which can negate the activation of Spell/Trap for protect the monsters from defensive back row but this effect can be applied on your turn whereas Shi En's effect can be activated during either player's turn.

Tier List (Tournament / Bo3 or Bo5 Format)

This tier list is based on the deck performance in Tournament or Bo3 (Best of three) and Bo5 (Best of Five) Format. As the Tournament Format has a Side Deck section which makes this tier list will be slightly different than the Tier List of PvP Ladder.

Tier 1

No doubt that Blue-Eyes is fast and consistent and as such is perfect on the Tournament Format. With the side tech cards like Non-Fusion Area will make this deck much easier to deal with Buster Blader Deck. Sealed Tombs is a good skill to stop Subterror Nemesis Warrior to revive Subterror Behemoth Umastryx and Spellbook of Fate activation.

As I mention above that Koa'ki Meiru with Neos Engine is one of the top decks at this moment due to the flexibility of tech space to adapt with. There are so many things to be mindful of such as side techs like Lava Golem to remove trouble monsters on your opponent field then fusion summons Brave Neos to destroy it. The versatility of this deck obviously makes it extremely difficult to know how to play against it which is its biggest strength.

Tier 2

With the new support from the latest box and the changes of meta environment make this deck have more favorable matchups. Lots of red-eyes players start to get on top and win many tournaments after its optimization.

Although Subterror is extremely powerful in PvP Ladder Format as they are kinda slow and they can easily get shut down by continuous traps like Royal Command.

Spellbook deck becomes more completely and this deck gets well performance in the latest Tournament due to the Light and Dark skill that solve the missing consistency problem of this deck.



The non-target banish effect card as Spellbook of Fate, which can remove the big boss monsters that most of the other meta deck like Ancient Gear Reactor Dragon and Blue Eyes monsters. Good side tech cards which are the Mispolymerization and Non-Fusion Area will make Spellbook easily deal with Buster Blader deck.

Tier 3

Ancient Gear starts hard to compete in the Tournament Format due to the non-flexibility side tech cards that you can put in which makes this deck have less protection.

The kryptonite of dragon decks. With the new support of Red-Eyes Engine that released on the latest main box which makes this deck more consistent and less rely on DNA Surgery for non-dragon matchups but high usage of Non-Fusion Area or Mispolymerization as Side deck tech cards will make this deck hardly compete in the Tournament.

Neos Fusion still remains as a valuable deck to deal against the other deck as the core of the deck has no issue against them. However, the rise of the Blue-Eyes deck and Subterror deck make the Neos Fusion deck becomes harder to compete in the meta.

Six Samurai deck have struggle matchups in the tournament against the Blue-Eyes as this deck hardly to deal with the 3,000 Attack of boss monsters meanwhile the Sealed Tomb skill activated during the turn to prevent the activation of Legendary Six Samurai, Enishi to bounce them back. However, a Six Samurai deck with the good side tech cards makes this deck still get a good performance in the Tournament Format.