Welcome to Week #2 of the OCG 2018.07 format.

This report will cover 22 top-performing decks from 4 tournaments that were held in Japan and Malaysia during 7 – 10 July 2018.

Metagame Breakdown

10 Sky Striker

3 HERO Gouki

2 Greener HERO ABC FTK

2 Altergeist

2 Magician: 1 Performapal Magician 1 Performapal Supreme King Magician

1 Chaos Dragon

1 Sky Striker Trickstar

1 SPYRAL

Sky Striker

Kajihara Soichiro “フミオ”, 3rd in World Championship 2016, finished 2nd in “Hatti CS × Dragon Star Cup in Dragon Star Kishiwada Haruki Shop” (Team 3v3) which had 40 teams (120 participants).

Pot of Desires has been gaining popularity among the Japanese players but remains a debatable inclusion to Sky Striker.

The key to using Pot of Desires is to play it only after pulling out at least 1 of each important key cards such as Sky Striker Ace – Raye, Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! and Sky Striker Mecha Modules – Multirole, as well as powerful singulars such as Sky Striker Mecha – Hornet Drones and Sky Striker Mecha – Shark Cannon from the deck.

This ensures that the basic Sky Striker loop is still possible, then the card advantage from Pot of Desires would put you momentarily ahead of the opponent. This lead would create a snowball effect and eventually accumulate to a victory.

However, since Pot of Desires is generally a card that you only want to see in the mid-game onwards and not so much in the opening hand, most players prefer to run just 1 copy of it.

Gouki

Zeratin (ゼラチン) went 6-2 and finished 2nd in “77th Aichi CS in NextPro Osu Shop with Hatti CS”.

HERO Gouki has been gaining popularity since the limitation of Sky Striker Mecha – Hornet Drones.

A Hero Lives is used to Special Summon Elemental HERO Stratos, whose effect would add Vision HERO Vyon to hand. Vyon is then Normal Summoned and its Trigger Effect would send Destiny HERO – Malicious from deck to the graveyard. This basically starts off the whole Gouki combo as you can now go into Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights to bring out a Gouki and then leading into Summon Sorceress.

However, a Maxx “C” chained to A Hero Lives would often halt the whole combo, leaving the Gouki player vulnerable with only 4000 Life Points and a bare board.

Zeratin runs 1 copy of Mask Change II as an alternative play when his A Hero Lives is met with a Maxx “C”. Instead of Stratos, he would Special Summon Elemental HERO Shadow Mist which would get him Mask Change II. Then during the opponent’s turn, Mask Change II on Shadow Mist will bring out Masked HERO Dark Law.

Sky Striker’s only outs are Sky Striker Mecha – Widow Anchor and Sky Striker Maneuver – Afterburners!. If Afterburners was added to hand by Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage!, then there is still a small chance that Dark Law’s Trigger Effect would banish it.

Conclusion

Both the Asia Championship 2018 and the South Korea WCQ 2018 saw Sky Striker being victorious.

From the 9 OCG players (6 Japan, 2 Asia, 1 Korea) that are participating in the World Championship 2018, 6 of them have qualified using Sky Striker. The remaining 2 qualified using Performapal Magician and Trickstar, and the last player is the 2017 World Champion.

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