Mid August update on the top decks and their performances

Again, shoutout to our boys at YGO Scope for providing such a sophisticated tool.

I’ve spent the last week working with the boys at ygoscope, to help refine their tool. Too often, things like ‘frog’. ‘paleo frog’, ‘sky striker frog’, ‘sky striker paleo’, ‘paleozoic’, etc were dividing up the results, and a lot of the time, the one thats just frog, is paleo frog that just didn’t draw his paleozoic stuff. Last week I manually compiled it all together, but some still slip through the cracks.

We took a weekend to re-define how each deck is decided, and updated the tool a lot for this week. It does mean some of the earlier data doesn’t use the new setup, so the fruits of this labour will be much clearer next week, but we’ll still take a look. Let’s start with Decks.

Top 20 Decks:

SPYRAL – 76.92%

Starting us off this week is another tcg archetype deck that won’t seem to die. With big thanks to Knightmare Unicorn both discarding rescue and putting resort back in the deck, Spyrals returned to their former power, and frequently synergize with gouki’s motif of extra linking Knightmare monsters. Many players even still ran gouki’s, though that’s been getting rarer as people realize the SPYRAL engine in the deck was just stronger.

Dinosaur – 73.68%

Still rocking the Naturia Beast and True King cards of an era long-gone, this deck got some nice help in Cybernetic Horizon, and with such a few number of people playing the deck, it had much fewer mirror matches than other top decks (which drag a winrate closer to 50%, for better, or worse).

Gouki – 72.24%

Just like last week, it’s barely behind dinosaurs just due to how many mirror matches drag it down towards 50.

Pure Sky Strikers – 70.29%

Now overtaking gouki as the most played deck, it will have had the most mirror matches. Nothing surprising here, but what’s fascinating is how close its sister is to it.

Sky Striker Trickstar – 70.27%

You read these numbers right. These decks are at this point identical in success. It helps that there is no time limits in online play.

Frog – 69.47%

This deck has taken a bit of a fall. It’s actually only a fall of about 1-2%, but everything else jumped back up as people had new bad decks to try this week. Still playing almost no mirror matches as well. This is still a very real threat this format that people still just aren’t taking seriously.

Invoked Mekk-Knight – 68.42%

One more week. Just one more week.

True Draco – 67.29%

Like Dinosaurs, but with mirror matches. There’s nothing really to be said. Dig fast. Floodgate often.

Pure Trickstar – 65.65%

You win worlds one time and suddenly you’re the 2nd most played deck in the game. Again I’ve seen 3 replays just from the ones I watched where somebody used reincarnation + droll on the opponents draw phase, without them playing a card, and the opponent being okay with it. This does not work. You cannot do this. Stop doing this. You require them to have added a card first (or a 2nd reincarnation to add 5 for them).

Altergeist – 64.56%

This deck is just nuts. A few people have started to tech Clara to play around their rivalries, but opponents are starting to play around things like typhoon more often to severely inhibit the success rate of this deck. It’s still a crazy deck. Most of the losses had one thing in common: Traps that responded to summons like bottomless trap hole or Torrential Tribute.

Zefra – 64.29%

ヘビーメタルフォーゼ・エレクトラム

Cyber Dragon – 62.42%

The representation is steadily declining, but those sticking to this deck are seeing above average success with it. I think this is a good deck to play with for a few days to fully understand it, and prepare for the upcoming support its getting in the near future.

Burning Abyss – 61.04%

I really am a fan of the play that makes beatrice turn 1 to dump snow and set up the cir dante loop. It’s crazy to me how consistently well that has been working for months now.

Mekk-Knight – 60.01%

A pure Mekk-knight deck using the field spell to nuke boards, the new link monster, and a bigger focus on the column traps. World Legacy’s Secret is one of the games most under-rated cards.

Infernoid – 58.88%

Another deck using the sky striker engine, and primarily fueled by void feasts almost assured victory upon resolution. It’s very disruptive of opposing graveyards which helps this deck win. It doesn’t go 2nd well enough to be a top contending deck.

Danger! (usually with Dark Worlds) – 57.89%

This wasn’t last place this week. Still yet to see it win without getting lucky. Its record for this week was 11 and 8.

ABC – 53.85%

I guess the outer entity nyarla is supposed to make this deck become better, but it’s already good. Better than these results represent. A rise in the use of Ghost Belle, and the general oppressiveness of altergeists; who get more popular every week, has been rough for these mechanical dragons.

HERO – 50.00%

Win with Dark Law. Lose without Dark Law.

Mermail – 42.86%

Only 1 guy played this deck. He played it 7 times. He lost 4 of them.

Pendulum Magicians – 41.67%

“Most Consistent FTK EVER CHECK OUT MY YOUTUBE”

Top 20 Main Deck Cards by win rate:

Set Rotation 90% Mythical Beast Garuda 88.89% Survival’s End 88% Secret Village of the Spellcasters 86.96% Babycerasaurus 83.78% Infernoid Attondel 83.33% Gilasaurus 81.63% Miscellaneousaurus 81.40% The Winged Dragon of Ra – Sphere Mode 80.95% Hey, Trunade! 80.95% Sauravis, the Ancient and Ascended 80% Performapal Odd-Eyes Dissolver 80% Sky Striker Mecharmory – Hercules Base 78.57% Altergeist Emulatelf 78.57% SPYRAL GEAR – Drone 78.57% Giant Rex 78.33% Souleating Oviraptor 77.42% Gouki Riscorpio 76.44% Thunder King Rai-Oh 76.19% Ultimate Conductor Tyranno 75.44%

Top 20 Extra Deck Cards by win rate:

Altergeist Hexstia 77.59% Topologic Gumblar Dragon 77.50% Panzer Dragon 76.92% Mekk-Knight Spectrum Supreme 76.47% Ningirsu the World Chalice Warrior 75% Summon Sorceress 74.85% Underclock Taker 74.48% Knightmare Goblin 74.17% Evolzar Dolkka 74.07% Firewall Dragon 78.21% Evolzar Laggia 91.67% Reprodocus 85.71% Borrelsword Dragon 83.87% Tornado Dragon 83.33% Clara & Rushka, the Ventriloduo 82.35% Tri-Gate Wizard 81.75% Dante, Pilgrim of the Burning Abyss 80.95% SPYRAL Double Helix 80% Trickstar Holly Angel 80% Leviair the Sea Dragon 80%

Top 50 most used cards by high rated players

Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring 1268 Sky Striker Mecha – Hornet Drones 910 Sky Striker Ace – Kagari 900 Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! 896 Infinite Impermanence 802 Terraforming 674 Knightmare Phoenix 656 Sky Striker Ace – Shizuku 639 Pot of Desires 552 Sky Striker Mecha – Widow Anchor 549 Called by the Grave 542 Droll & Lock Bird 537 Linkuriboh 515 Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit 451 Twin Twisters 438 Sky Striker Ace – Raye 421 Sky Striker Maneuver – Afterburners! 420 Sky Striker Ace – Hayate 415 Knightmare Unicorn 409 Knightmare Goblin 363 Knightmare Cerberus 333 Knightmare Corruptor Iblee 330 Sky Striker Mecha Modules – Multirole 325 Trickstar Light Stage 320 Trickstar Candina 320 Altergeist Meluseek 318 Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights 316 Trickstar Lycoris 310 PSY-Framegear Gamma 305 Altergeist Marionetter 300 Sky Striker Airspace – Area Zero 295 Gouki Suprex 288 Altergeist Multifaker 288 Reinforcement of the Army 287 Knightmare Mermaid 286 Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade 285 Firewall Dragon 284 Evenly Matched 280 Altergeist Silquitous 279 Rivalry of Warlords 278 PSY-Frame Driver 275 Gouki Octostretch 266 Scapegoat 263 Trickstar Reincarnation 259 Gouki Twistcobra 253 Altergeist Protocol 251 Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherries 250 Solemn Strike 248 Gouki Headbatt 239 Foolish Burial Goods 228

Tier 1 Decks (>3000 decklists analyzed), by percent of the field, demonstrating Representation:

Pure Sky Striker – 14.8%

Altergeist – 11.9%

Pure Trickstar – 10.9%

Gouki – 10.4%

Cyber Dragon – 6.1%

I’m only going to be doing top 5 decks from now on so the data is more clearly presentable. We have one deck sticking out as most used, and then 3 decks that are all very similarly used.

Tier 1 Matchups:

Sky Striker

Sky Striker -> Altergeist – 52.94%

Sky Striker -> Trickstar – 27.27%

Sky Striker -> Gouki – 50%

Sky Striker -> Cyber Dragon – 33.33%

Altergeist

Altergeist -> Trickstar – 50%

Altergeist -> Gouki – 58.82%

Altergeist -> Cyber Dragon – 50%

Trickstar

Trickstar -> Gouki – 54.55%

Trickstar -> Cyber Dragon – 66.67%

Gouki

Gouki -> Cyber Dragon – 100%

Huge thanks and shoutout to our friends at http://www.ygoscope.com for compiling such valuable information!