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The February 2019 Trinity Cup Top 4 were:

1st Place: TheCardRipper

2nd Place: Wuh Train

3rd Place: Lt. Labcoat

4th: woosh

Top 8: Giant Skyhawk

Top 8: MBT

Top 8: 41 Flavors of Burrito

Top 8: Caroman

1st Place: TheCardRipper’s Zombies

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/feb-2019-1st-place-zombies/

Why did you choose to run your deck?

The Mekk-Knight Crystron deck I was testing for a while before the cup wasn’t nearly as strong as I would have liked, so my fellow clan member Burritos sent me a zombie deck I thought was pretty fun and strong when testing against him. I improved the deck a good amount and entered it last minute.

What was your deckbuilding philosophy when making this deck?

Zombies thrive on grave setup, so I maxed out on Foolish Burial-like cards. Because there are a lot of cards that want to be milled rather than drawn, I increased the deck size to 45 to put more power cards in the deck, even when they might not be starter cards because of how many unlimited starters you can run.

What were some of your tech choices and “trinities?”

My spiciest trinity that many might argue is sub-optimal but I still like very much is the 2nd copy of Shiranui Style Swallow’s Slash. It functions like a co-pair because you can run Trap Trick. This is significantly better than drawing the actual slash because you can dodge backrow removal on it. You can also get Super Team Buddy Force Unite! if you want that instead.

I also ran Armageddon Knight with The Phantom Knights of Silent Boots to make Time Thief Redoer. I just think that engine is just way too good not to run. You get an amazing recurring monster with disruption, don’t have to worry about the EMZ, and still have a summon remaining which is extremely good for being able to utilize your whole hand.

How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?

I didn’t really prepare for the meta so there isn’t any super spicy meta counter card here. The side deck is pretty lackluster because of this and is mostly just inherited from Burritos without any thought. I definitely wished I was running Cyber Dragons in the side for the train matchup.

In the future I would only run Danger! Thunderbird! and Danger! Mothman! as far as Dangers go, only those 2 are worth it. Upstart is bad for playing the battle of attrition with Fraulein which you do very often, so I would cut that as well. I would also go down to 40 cards by cutting the co pair. Haunted Shrine was extremely bad so I would play the 3rd Super Team Buddy Force over it. The side deck would get revamped for the next cup completely, depending on the meta.

2nd Place: Wuh Train’s Rank 10 Roids

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/rank-10-roids/

Why did you choose to run your deck?

Vehicroids have been a favorite deck of mine for a long time. Meepmoto one day jokingly said that he would play Red-Eyes. Skyhawk furthered the joke by saying he would play Pac Dinos if Meep played Red-Eyes. I then jumped in and added in that I would play Vehicroids if that happened. Meep ended up holding me and Skyhawk to our pact to play bad decks and the rest just kind of happened. Shout out to Skyhawk who made it to top 8 with me.

What was your deckbuilding philosophy when making this deck?

While Vehicroid is often conflated with a fusion deck, I think that the good stuff cards they have work better than wasting 4 cards to fusion summon a boss monster that dies to Knightmare Cerberus. Thus I wanted to play as many good stuff Vehicroids and back them up with other good stuff machine cards which would allow me to make use of cards like Super Team Buddy Force. The pay-off of these advantage engines was Machina Fortress which could turn monsters sitting in my hand into a high attack recurring boss.

What were some of your tech choices and “trinities?”

My deck is pretty much a mash of 6 engines: Vehicroids, Cyber dragon, Speedroids, Trains, Machina, and the Tour Guide engine. Vehicroids are the biggest engine but also the worst. Expressroid can give you a plus 1 in card advantage, but can often not be live and its low attack makes it risky to normal summon. Steamroid can be run over by weak cards like Armageddon Knight. UFOroid is a level 6 with no inherent special summoning ability so it bricks. Armoroid has to tribute a roid monster to get its effect, is level 8, and its mandatory effect on tribute summon banishes your s/t as well. Mixeroid is the best of the roids. It has an effect which can summon out the 2700 attack Armoroid, get out UFOroid which accesses other parts of my deck or Expressroid to add itself and another roid back to hand. Mixeroid’s grave effect allows me to finish off games with powerful boss monsters like Barbaroid or Jumbo Drill. Cyber Dragons are insane. Everyone of them can give you access to powerful removal of the Chimeratechs. Core is the best with being able to give access to Cyber Emergency or Cybernetic Overflow. Overflow is a non-targeting pop for 3 cards with the right set up. Cyber Dragon Herz is a good machine which can be excellent discard fodder and help get enough cydras in play for overflow. Cydra can summon itself from hand and has a pretty good attack stat. Speedroids are needed to help keep the roid count up to make Expressroid live. Speedroid Terrortop is also a good card. Trains are the most powerful engine. Super Express Bullet Train can add back any machine from the grave which is dope. Ruffian floats into bullet train. Pegasus revives any earth machine from the grave which is insane in a deck with strong earth machines like Machina Fortress. Pegasus gets even nuttier with Bullet train. Pegasus can revive Bullet Train and then makes a r4nk or r10nk. When they go to grave, Bullet Train adds back Pegasus which allows you to do it all over again. Snow Plow Hustle Rustle is a bad card, but he’s the second best level 10 machine earth (also he has a cute interaction with overflow). Machina allows you to grind the game out with Fortress and Gearframe searches Fortress. I have some generic cards to help these engines along as well. I used 2 trinities to get 2 more copies of Urgent Schedule. It’s a stupid card that summons 2 dope cards from the deck. Buddy force in a tribal deck is good. Watch Cat can get Future Fusion. Dark Factory of More Production turns useless monsters into s/t and turns into pluses if you send stuff like Scarm or Bullet Train. Black garden is my favorite card in Yugioh, but is bad and shouldn’t be played here (that art tho).

How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?

My side deck had a lot of Redoer OrcBard hate cause it’s the strongest deck and you need a lot of sides if you want to see them playing a 55 card deck.

I also played a lot of hate for pendulums. They’re a deck that can almost win before playing if you don’t side enough for them.

I also knew that MBT was on Rituals and I hate losing to him, so I put in Dimensional Barrier and Mind Crush to help my already good match-up against him.

How were your matchups?

Round 1 was against diing on ritual soup. It was a close match, but I played better after a game 1 screw up and managed to win 2-1.

Round 2 was against woosh. Wooshis a better player on a better deck. Pretty much a bye for him.

Round 3 was against lumine on Dark Magician. This was another close game. He could put a lot of damage on board fast and had a lot of good backrow, but this was overall a really good match-up for me so I won.

Round 4 was against KrasherV on OrcBard. We both misplayed a lot, but I run both Chimeratech fusions which help in the early game and I can outgrind him in the late game.

Round 5 was Prawnwizard on Red-eyes. Game 1 they bricked. Game 2 they misplayed then quit.

Top 8 was Caroman on Orcbard. Game 1 I otk-ed them with the help of Megafleet. Game 2 I otk-ed them with the help of both Megafleet and Chimeratech Fortess.

Top 4 was a train mirror match. It felt like Labcoat had 4 or 5 dead cards in his hand the whole match which allowed me to do stuff like get 3 co-linked Knightmares in game 1.

Finals was against Cardripper on Zombies. It was a pretty close match up, but the power of Redoer, Balerdroch and Fraulein put out immense pressure in the early game and helped out-grind me in the late game.

It’s still decent, but if you want to be competitive take out the Vehicroids. Also expect to lose heavily to sides like Chimeratechs and System Down if you end up playing this deck or a similar one.

Cutting something for Time Thief Redoer is the only main change I would make if I played this deck again.

3rd Place: Lt. Labcoat’s Rank 10 ABC

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/feb-2019-trinity-rank-10-abc/

Why did you choose to run your deck?

No, seriously, because Trains. I joined one month ago because I saw someone advertise the previous tourney cup on Reddit and I thought to myself “Hmm, I sure do like the Trains archetype, and I’d like to compete in SOME sorta Yugioh tournament. I wonder if Trains can work in this format, even without the easy access to Liebe?”. So I rushed together a quick deck, competed in the tourney…

…and lost, of course. But I felt inspired to give it a proper go next time! So over the subsequent few weeks, I learned what I could about Trinity deckbuilding and previous winners and came up with something new entirely!

Apparently, I also inspired Wuh because he’s now taken up using Trains too. Hooray, I’m influential!

What was your deckbuilding philosophy when making this deck?

It started by looking at the old ABC-Shaddoll-CyberDragons idea that topped tourneys in the past, since both Shaddolls and CyDras work wonderfully with Trains. The gameplan was simple: either summon ABC or summon a Rank10, and beat the opponent down with boss monsters. Then, I added in some revival spells. ABC can be summoned from the GY and still be at full power and the Rank10s can immediately go into Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Juggernaut Liebe, so it’s real strong boss recursion. Oh, also Switchyard goes crazy when you summon a Train on your opponent’s turn.

At this point, things were looking reasonably good, the deck was the typical 40 cards, but I noticed an unusual problem: getting too many combo pieces was… not ideal. One CyDra was a blessing, two was a curse – and the other archetypes had similar reasons why drawing too many was causing problems.

So I thought: well hey, what happens if I start filling the deck with generic filler cards just for being filler cards?

Conventional wisdom was that it doesn’t work, that unless you’ve got specific Trinities in mind you should keep the deck as small as you can, but I wanted to see what would happen if I broke that rule. So I threw in a bunch of control cards, the no-longer-co-forbidden Timelord trio, the Marshmacaron triplets, all the revival spells/traps I could find. I turned the deck from a typical combo deck into a “Stall until I get the right cards” one. And it… well, it worked! It’s not much of a Trains deck anymore, what with them only taking up 7 cards of a 60 card deck, but I can’t complain about results!

Oh, and Redoer was there too. I feel it’s important to mention it, because there’s quite a lot of Lv4s in the deck, but that was just a lucky coincidence.

What were some of your tech choices and “trinities?”

I think they’re all fairly self-explanatory, except for three things:

1: Not using a Trinity for an Unlimited card. That one’s simple: the only cards I’d even consider would be Urgent Schedule (bricks like a mofo because of so few targets), Union Hangar (getting out ABC is too easy without it, it would likely be a dead card), Time Maiden (it’s good, but not THAT good), or Flying Pegasus Railroad Stampede (too weak an effect). So without any good Unlimited targets…

2: Pot Of Greed. Well, it works! It wasn’t something I included for giggles, I did test and calculate it and determined that it really was worth the inclusion – the deck is is so consistent in power that just a single card advantage is pretty significant. The guys on Discord are still in disbelief about it, because Pot Of Greed is normally supposed to be the ultimate newbie trap. Guess it was secretly the ultimate newbie tech instead, huh?

3: Yes, adding in Fairy Tail – Sleeper for Luna to draw was totally worth it. I think people have been SLEEPING on that one! Ho ho ho!

How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?

I… uh… put in Mana Dragon Zirnitron, and put Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay in the side deck. Also Swords Of Revealing Light because I wanted to see if it would work against decks with low backrow removal. In the end, I guess it did? I wouldn’t do it again though. That’s about the total extent of my meta preparations, because I had no idea what was coming up. Oh, and I sided System Down because I’m a silly person who didn’t realize why banishing Orcusts doesn’t work.

As for going forward? Someone suggested Pot Of Acquisitiveness for against Redoer OrcBard – which I think is a hilarious idea. Beyond that, just a more disruptive sidedeck. The sidedeck I used got a heck-ton of criticism. Sure wish people had criticized it BEFORE the tournament started.

Wuh’s deck demonstrated something that I had missed entirely: that Machina Gearframe is really strong. And because it’s an Urgent Schedule target, it makes that card not brick so much. Which is unfortunate for all them fun times, because it means Pot Of Greed doesn’t make the cut. Oh, and that deck also showed me that even with 3 Cydras in a 60-card deck, Cybernetic Overflow still works. Wasn’t expecting that at all. Finally, Summoner Monk deserves an inclusion (because Redoer turned out to be really worth it), and the entire sidedeck needed upholstering too.

4th Place: Woosh’s Altergeist

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/feb-2019-trinity-altergeist/

Why did you choose to run your deck?

I forgot I had signed up for the cup so I just spent like 5 mins making another Geist list.

What was your deckbuilding philosophy when making this deck?

There was none.

What were some of your tech choices and “trinities?”

Cydras are bad without Megafleet. I played some pretty uncommon cards in the maindeck like Lullaby, Desires, Fantastical Dragon, etc. and they were all pretty good. Fanta was never bad for me, but I think think that was just the luck of drawing it like twice all event.

How did you prepare for the meta, and would you change anything going forward?

I didn’t prepare at all.

How were your matchups?

Nekroz matchup is nearly unwinnable without siding really hard for them which I didn’t. Every other matchup is pretty good though. Outside of Nekroz you really just lose to your opponent drawing their anti-backrow cards like Heavy Storm Duster/Twisters.

I wouldn’t play Geists again, the deck is practically self inflicted torture to play because of how incredibly slow the games are and there’s just better decks.

Top 8: Giant Skyhawk’s Pacasaurus Rex

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/feb-2019-trinity-pacasaurus-rex/

This deck is still good! I decided to try a slightly different variant by relying on the synergy between normal monsters and Pacifis, The Phantasm City. I didn’t see the engine very much and this is definitely a suboptimal version of the deck, but I had fun! Dinosaur had problems against the Machine mashup decks this tournament, so in the future you should keep that in mind when building them.

Top 8: MBT’s Nekroz Impcantation

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/trinity-feb-2019-nekroz/

Hype for a ritual-focused deck in trinity has been building ever since ShinoBErd, and after the release of Impcantation Chalislime, it reached a fever pitch. I built this deck – full of the most easily-accessible and consistent ritual monsters of all time – to prove it was all hype, and accidentally realized the strategy might have legs after all. Your first turn play (which is accessible via almost any hand with an Impcantation in it) should almost always be a Nekroz Kaleidoscope summoning Nekroz of Valkyrus and Nekroz of Unicore. This is followed by tributing your remaining Impcantations for card draws via Valkyrus’ effect. My list benefited immensely from playing a grand total of 0 trinities, though it wasn’t perfect. Instant Fusion under-performed and a lack of Linkuriboh in the Extra Deck cost me a few games.

Top 8: 41 Flavors of Burrito’s Orcbard

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/feb-2019-trinity-orcust-bardiche/

For this deck, I constructed it before Orcust Knightmare was being run in the deck (or at least before I knew that was a thing), so it instead focused on other plays besides Galatea. Typically, it aimed to either establish interruption or to make Time Thief Redoer. This is why I had a Trinity on Armageddon Knight, since I found that in many situations where if you didn’t draw into a number of backrow, going Redoer was overall better. This is because it gave a form of interruption during your opponent’s turn. If I were to change anything, I would run Knightmare Orcust and probably swap out some of the traps like Infinite Impermanence for better cards like Bottomless Trap Hole and Called By The Grave. Overall, I found that it did better than I expected it to.

Top 8: Caroman’s Orcbard Time Thief

Decklist Link: https://ygoprodeck.com/feb-2019-trinity-orcust-phantom-thieves/

Orcbard is still a tier 1-2 deck in this format, although the hits to Fogblade and Babel really hurts it. Also with people now knowing the match-up, it’s easy to get countered and lost the link climb. Redoer helps and in this tournament where people weren’t prepared for Redoer it helped carry the deck by just making it turn 1 then Orcust link climb. High skill cap means I would not recommend it for March.