Top Player Council Thoughts

Less than a week away from the November KC cup, this Tier List update will be focused specifically on the KC cup format with best-of-1 duels on the ladder.

Tier 1

Blue-Eyes has been promoted to Tier 1, in part due to a great performance by BlackJesus who used them to win MCS XIII, but also because their power, consistency, and speed are very valuable for grind events like KC cups. An excellent match-up against Masked Heroes is a strong point as well, especially with Heroes likely being one of the most popular decks of the event.

Masked Heroes have remained in Tier 1 as a consistently reliable choice for KC cups. Pilots of Hero decks have used them to get Top 10 rankings in April/June, and multiple Top 100 rankings in August. Hero decks can be built successfully in multiple different ways: with for maximum consistency, for help against Vampire and Blue-Eyes decks, or even for a boost in the mirror match. No matter how they’re built, however, Heroes are always good for at least a few free games with an opening hand of multiple .

Vampires are the third and final Tier 1 deck going into the KC cup, although they are expected to be less played than Blue-Eyes and Heroes. Vampires’ typical turn 1 set-up with / + + with another Vampire in the grave leaves them liable to get OTK’d on turn 2 by Masked Heroes. Top-performing Vampire players will have to be very clever and adaptable with their card/skill choices – do you want to use for mirror matches (where is most useful), Blue-Eyes, and Spellbooks? and for backrow-heavy decks that might otherwise give you trouble? Even is a very strong option, giving you access to game-ending cards like ECon or Trunade almost at will.

TPC Comments:

monkeyboy44 :

Heroes tier 1, hope you were sitting down when you read that one. BEWD and Vampires also have just as much ability to compete as Heroes do in a best-of-1 format like the KC cup. There’s a clear triangle here of which deck counters which and one may end up being a stronger choice than the other two depending on what the KC cup meta ends up looking like, but right now it’s just too up in the air to say that any of these 3 will be better than the others, they’ll likely all top.

Sasuke:

Heroes have and always will be one of the best decks to run in the KC cup. Even without Polymerization, the deck still has huge OTK potential with the right build. Vampires also have amazing OTK potential and can often win games by turn 4 or sooner with a play into / removal. Blue-Eyes will also be a great KC cup deck that can be very overwhelming. Although OTK potential is not as high as the other Tier 1 decks, it can often put 2-3 big bodies on the board by turn 2/3 and remove backrow with to go for quick games. It may not always win games as fast as Heroes or Vampires, but it for sure will have great consistency in the KC format.

kcful :

Heroes provide fast and easy wins against a variety of matchups. Vampires will be the Spellbook and BEWD counters in the KC cup; expect to see them widely played. BEWD is another OTK deck that will be used to counter Heroes and stack up wins.

Tier 2

TPC Comments:

monkeyboy44 :

In a best-of-1 format with no side deck, Books will be a very strong “slow but steady” option to grind your way through the Tier 1 decks of the event.

Sasuke:

Spellbooks is a slow and steady, but very strong KC cup deck that can steal wins from the top performing decks by negating their key spell cards with and removing other key cards with . This deck may not allow you to net wins as fast as the Tier 1 decks; however, it is for sure capable of having a good win percentage and/or maintaining a high score.

kcful :

Books are a very good deck to use for KC cup grinding. Expect to see a lot of Sealed Tombs though in the higher levels.

Tier 3

Banish Control Buster Blader

TPC Comments:

SDotAkuma :

Buster Blader has been making waves more and more recently. Having a board of and is ridiculous to deal with. Add a locking your backrow and it’s looking bleak for the opponent. With the rise of Blue-Eyes will also be the rise in strength of this deck. Blue Eyes better tech out!

monkeyboy44 :

Buster Blader can reliably counter BEWD and can win almost any other matchup when it draws its “Exodia” combo, making it a powerful rogue pick. Banish control will be another option to try and slowly grind through the higher tiered decks, however due to its extremely long duels I would expect it to have low overall representation.

Sasuke:

Buster Blader and Banish control are oddly slow and will most likey not be anywhere near as popular as the other tiered decks for KC cup, though these decks can be good “meta counter” decks when a specific archetype(s) become increasingly popular and start topping the event.

Removed

TPC Comments:

monkeyboy44 :

Especially for KC cup format I wouldn’t completely count either of these decks out, however both struggle with consistency as well as get hard countered by Paleozoic Canadia, a card I would expect to be very popular this time around.

Sasuke:

Dragunity may do well in KC cup due to its high OTK potential, especially while running 2 copies of Trunade, however going first can often be an issue for this deck.

Bujins will not do so great in KC cup where Sealed Tomb decks, and some Spellbook decks, will be very active. They also do poorly versus the Tier 3 decks; for example, Buster hard-countering with 3 DNA in their main deck.

This week we have the Meta Weekly on 11/20 at 2:30pm EST and other community events throughout the week. The KC cup begins on Friday 11/22 at midnight EST. Expect the results of these events to have a strong influence on the Tier List.

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