Locals has been going quite well for me ablehe past couple of months, so I thought that it might be helpful to write about it for the people looking to get into Metalfoes/a more competitive game in general.

I skipped the weekend before in order to hang out with some friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, so I was really looking forward to playing on Sunday! Before the weekend that I had skipped, I had come in 3rd place, 4th place, and 1st place playing Metalfoes with a Qliphort side engine at my locals in the first 3 weeks that they were tournament legal. I attend a medium-sized local which gets anywhere from 20-40 players depending on the time of year and interest in the prize support since it’s a pool of any of the current packs. Depending on who shows up anywhere from 70-85% of the players are playing meta.

Depending on attendance, we’ll play 4-5 rounds with no top cut since everyone has stuff to do outside of playing yugioh, even though yugioh is life. I’m attending as often as possible to practice for my regionals and get all my bad misplays out of my system, which are approaching fast on October 2nd. It’ll be my first US regionals that I’ll be playing in, but not my first regionals overall as I attended regionals in Germany while living there.

The Build

I chose to drop the Qliphort engine this week. I felt as if 3 weeks of relative success with it was enough. Instead I wanted to try a side engine that was good at both going first and second. Since Monarchs are weaker than they were pre- F/L list, I figured it was the appropriate time to try Jowgen the Spiritualist in the main deck. I also replaced the 2 copies of Majespecter Unicorn – Kirin that were lost with 2 copies of Maxx “C”. This also freed up some side and extra deck space. To accompany the copy of Instant Fusion that I included in this build, I added Elder Entity Norden and Diamond Dire Wolf to the extra deck. There is one small error, I didn’t play Artifact Durendal, it was actually Void Ogre Dragon. Without further ado, here’s the report.

Round 1: vs. HAT

I won the dice roll and elected to go first. I saw Blackwing – Gofu the Vague Shadow in my opening hand with the appropriate cards to go into the Ultimaya Tzolkin combo. I was very pleased because the Ultimaya combo into Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon is a very flexible play vs. most decks you’d expect to see. That was of course until my opponent chained Maxx “C” to Gofu’s effect, instead of allowing my opponent to go too plus off his handtrap, I flexed Gofu into PSY-Framelord Omega. I also set Metalfoes Counter to my backrow by destroying one of the Gofu tokens and passed to my opponent. He set 1 monster and 4 cards to his backrow before I sniped his last card with Omega and he passed. When I saw that it was an artifact, I knew I was in for a ride. The game was very grindy but my opponent was never able to deal with Omega and the Kirin that I had acquired turn 1. I pushed him down to 100LP and he eventually conceded 1 turn after.

I decided to side in 1 D.D. Crow, 1 Cosmic Cyclone, and 2 Mystical Space Typhoon for Vanity’s Emptiness and a few other cards that I cannot remember. My opponent elected to go first and opened with a set monster and healthy backrow as he liked to call it. I opened a hand that included Cosmic Cyclone. My extra deck summons were stunned by an Artifact Santctum into Artifact Scythe so I had to pass without doing too much. My opponent was able to bring out a Traptrix Rafflesia on his turn before passing back to me. On my turn he revealed an Artifact Beagalltach play but I was able to D.D. Crow his Artifact Moralltach, which was a turning point for the game. My opponent wasn’t able to gain any sort of advantage over me since he didn’t have any more backrow and could only stall me with Floodgate Trap Hole. Metalfoes Fusion was able to turn the permanently facedown monsters into a workable advantage over my opponent and I came out on top starting off with a nice 2-0.

RECORD: 1W 0L

Round 2: vs. Metalfoes Performapal Magician

This match is admittedly a little bit hazy for me. I lost the dice roll and opened a hand of 5 scale 8 Metalfoes I’m still in shock as to how I won game 1 with that big of a setback, but I do remember that my opponent was never able to get his mixed engine going and I was able to bring out an unanswered Tzolkin.

I sided in 1 Crow and the single copy of Cosmic and was told that I’d be going 2nd again. After a rather lackluster turn 1 from my opponent I came after him with a Gofu + Instant Fusion play into Tzolkin. I opted to summon Ignister Prominence, the Blasting Dracoslayer to go after his pendulum monsters and set him extremely far behind. I was able to win on my next turn as my opponent was too far behind to actually apply meaningful pressure to me.

RECORD: 2W 0L

Round 3: vs. Metalfoes

Going into round 3, I was matched up against one of my friends who had won with his Metalfoes build the week that I came in 3rd and finished just below me the week I came in 4th. I won the dice roll and elected to go first. I opened Pot of Desires but no combo pieces so I set Metalfoes Fusion before activating Desires. It was a sweet, sweet activation as I drew into Vanity’s Emptiness. After I pendulum summoned monsters in defense and set my Counter and Metalfoes Combination, I set Emptiness and passed. Turn 2 I flipped Emptiness in response to his scales being complete and we moved to game 2.

Expecting to go 2nd I sided in both Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju, 1 Crow, and Cosmic. I was right and drew into one of my Maxx “C”s, which I chained to his Gofu effect activation. He decided to not give me any extra cards and pass, which was enough to keep me out of the game. I opted to move to game 3.

I sided Emptiness back in and elected to go first. I opened Gofu, Majespecter Raccoon – Bunbuku, and enough metalfoes to go for a Tzolkin combo. My Gofu effect was met with a Maxx “C” challenge so I decided to flex into Omega + Kirin and blockers giving my opponent a total of 3 cards from Maxx “C”. I made the judgment call that establishing some sort of a board was important. It was the right choice. Although my opponent was able to bring out Cyber Dragon Infinity, I didn’t care one bit. He had to absorb one of his own monsters to bring Infinity to 2900 attack so that Omega wouldn’t be able to beat over it on its return from the banish pile. When play was passed to me, it was all but decided. The first thing my opponent negated meant he’d lose his board, and I had multiple options and threats. I collected my 2-1 win that turn.

RECORD: 3W 0L

Round 4: vs. Demise Kozmo

This match was an absolute blowout. Not only is Kozmo one of the hardest matchups that Metalfoes have, I also was off my game for this one. I could’ve and should’ve taken this match to game 3, but I misplayed horribly in game 2. Better now than at regionals, right?

After losing the dice roll, my opponent elected to go first and managed to find his way to Kozmo Tincan + Card of Demise. He set a full complement of backrow after resolving Demise and passed turn to me. On my turn he tagged out into Kozmo Dark Eclipser and even though I opened Gofu, I didn’t have anything strong enough to back it up. All of his backrow was also relevant as I was met with Solemn Strike and Kozmojo.

I sided my backrow hate in as well as the copies of System Down and hoped for the best. I opened a disgusting hand that should’ve guaranteed moving to game 3, but I misplayed quite horribly in extending my combo to the point that I had no way to trigger Ultimaya Tzolkin. I had to pass with an unprotected Tzolkin, Totem Bird, another monster, and Counter set. My fate was sealed when I passed and my opponent activated Demise. I took my first defeat of the day and it was a painful 0-2 that didn’t need to be an 0-2. I offered to play a 3rd game just for fun so I could get some extra experience, I won that game handily because I was actually thinking, which made me sad since that could’ve been the match win.

Record: 3W 1L

Round 5: vs. Blue-Eyes

The final round of the day served me up the other hardest matchup that this deck has, in my opinion. My opponent won the dice roll and allowed me to start. I had a strong opening hand with Gofu and Instant Fusion setting up a low-resource Tzolkin play. I opted to special summon Crystal Wing from my Tzolkin since I was going into this match blind. I put Counter behind Crystal Wing and my pendulum summoned monsters and passed play to my opponent. He didn’t open a path into Blue-Eyes Alternative White Dragon and from there the writing was on the wall as he couldn’t out Crystal Wing and have a follow-up play. He had to crash his The White Stone of Legend into my Crystal Wing to get anything going.

Moving to game 2 I sided 2 D.D. Crow, 2 Book of Eclipse, and 1 Gameciel in. My opponent chose to let me go first again and to his misfortune, I opened Jowgen. Also in my opening hand was Book of Eclipse, D.D. Crow, and Gameciel. I felt confident enough to normal summon Jowgen and set the Eclipse as well as Counter to back it up. My opponent activated Dragon Shrine, sending Dragon Spirit of White to the grave. He then normal summoned Sage with Eyes of Blue to search out an Effect Veiler before setting a card to his backrow and passing. On my turn I switched Jowgen to defense position and normal summoned Metalfoes Goldriver and began to play some good old beat down yugioh. During the end of my Main Phase 2, my opponent activated Veiler targeting Jowgen then proceeded to activate Silver’s Cry targeting his Dragon Spirit. I shut this down with D.D. Crow to my opponent’s dismay and all he could say was “savage.” On his next and final turn he proceeded to draw through his entire deck, showing the raw draw power of Blue-Eyes, but was unable to find the answer to Jowgen that he needed. I netted a quick 2-0 victory and earned myself a 2nd place finish on the day.

Record: 4W 1L

Thoughts and Last Words

I rather enjoyed playing this particular build of Metalfoes today. Although not detailed in the report, I saw every tech/one-of at least once today, and they each served their intended purpose. Ghost Ogre and Snow Rabbit was fantastic against both Metalfoes builds. Rescue Rabbit made Gofu plays much more threatening and meaningful, and Maxx “C” was always a welcome sight, even when going 1st. I didn’t play and Burning Abyss variants all day, which meant that 4 of my side deck cards saw no use. I toyed with siding in Ghost Reaper and Winter Cherries for my round 3 matchup just for laughs, but I decided against it.

Overall, I was pleased with how my side deck operated today. It was versatile and most cards could put in work against multiple matchups. I definitely need to improve upon my focus while playing the game so that I don’t make such obvious misplays. For a deck that lost 2 copies of one of its amazing cards, Metalfoes is looking like a pretty decent contender for this format.

As always, I hope this was an informative read, please let me know if there’s anything that I can improve on. Good luck and thanks for reading!