Welcome to Week #7 of the OCG 2019.07 format.

This report will cover 90 top-performing decks from 12 tournaments that were held in Japan and China during 14 – 20 August 2019.

Metagame Breakdown

36 Dragon Link

10 Thunder Dragon

8 Salamangreat

8 Sky Striker

6 Altergeist

5 Zefra

4 Orcust

4 Subterror

2 HERO

2 Mythical Beast Endymion

1 Atlantean Mermail

1 Goat Meta Beat

1 Invoked

1 Sky Striker Trickstar

1 SPYRAL

Dragon Link

Hasegawa Akira “ハセキョン” (3rd in World Championship 2015, 5 – 8th in World Championship 2018) went 6-0-1 and finished 1st in “62nd Adachi CS with Hatti CS” (Team 3v3).

His build is an extremely streamlined version of Dragon Link, cutting out Chaos Emperor, the Dragon of Armageddon, Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms and Eclipse Wyvern.

He has also made some fine tuning to play around Super Polymerization.

Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon is another option for Guardragon Agarpain. As a WIND attribute, it cannot be used as Fusion Material by Super Polymerization to Fusion Summon Starving Venom Fusion Dragon. Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon‘s ② effect will ensure that it will always be able to attack over Starving Venom Fusion Dragon despite the ATK gain. Then Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon‘s ① effect will be able to negate Starving Venom Fusion Dragon‘s ③ effect, protecting your Special Summoned monsters from being destroyed.

Koa’ki Meiru Drago is a new tech to improve the final setup. During the opponent’s turn, Hieratic Seal of the Heavenly Spheres would tribute itself to bounce a card, and then its Trigger Effect would Special Summon Koa’ki Meiru Drago from the deck to a Monster Zone that Topologic Gumblar Dragon is pointing to. Koa’ki Meiru Drago would prevent the opponent from Special Summoning LIGHT and DARK monsters, stopping cards such as Destrudo the Lost Dragon’s Frisson, Orcust Harp Horror, Destiny HERO – Malicious from using their graveyard effects after being discarded by Gumblar.

Thunder Dragon

Pokkerio (ポッケリオ) did quite well over the weekend. On Saturday, he went 5-1-2 and finished 2nd in “62nd Adachi CS with Hatti CS” (Team 3v3). And on Sunday, he went 6-1-1 and finished 1st in “63rd Adachi CS with Hatti CS” (Team 3v3).

Due to Dragon Link going back to running Unexpected Dai, he ran 2 copies of Retaliating “C” in the Side Deck.

Retaliating “C” is quite effective against most Dragon Link builds that relies on Seyfert, the Starliege Dragon, White Dragon Wyverburster, Black Dragon Collapserpent for their combo.

Salamangreat

Monpi (もんぴ) finished 1 – 2nd in “110th Oretachi Trading Card Division CS ★ 2v2 Team Battle” which had 27 teams (54 participants).

He ran 3 Mistaken Arrest in the Side Deck, an interesting tech against Dragon Link.

Similar to how Thunder Dragon Colossus is effective against Dragon Link, Mistaken Arrest works by stopping the opponent from adding cards from Deck to Hand with Seyfert, the Starliege Dragon, White Dragon Wyverburster, Black Dragon Collapserpent, Ib the World Chalice Justiciar, etc.

Being a Quick-Play Spell, Mistaken Arrest is immune to PSY-Framegear Gamma, Called by the Grave and Red Reboot.

Sky Striker

Miikun (みゐくん) went 5-2 and finished 2nd in “5th Woluney Cup Team Battle” which had 32 teams (96 participants).

He ran 3 Wattkinetic Puppeteer in the Side Deck against Dragon Link.

Wattkinetic Puppeteer works by moving the opponent’s Link Monster and messing with Guardragon effects by making the Link Arrows point to different zones.

Wattkinetic Puppeteer is arguably one of the weaker tech choices as it only counters the Guardragon, but has the advantage of not being limited to once-per-turn, so multiple copies can be activated in the same turn.

Altergeist

The newly crowned 2019 World Champion, Kosaka Kouki “魔鏡”, is back to playing Altergeist over the last weekend. He went 5-1-1 and finished 3 – 4th in “63rd Adachi CS with Hatti CS” (Team 3v3).

He is trying out Iron Dragon Tiamaton in the Side Deck against Dragon Link.

By playing Infinite Impermanence, Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay or Retaliating “C” in the same column as two of the opponent’s monsters, that would result in 3 cards in the same column, and allowing Iron Dragon Tiamaton to be Special Summoned from hand.

Iron Dragon Tiamaton would mess up the Guardragon effects by destroying Link Monsters and blocking out Monster Zones where Link Arrows are pointing to.

Conclusion

Dragon Link continues to dominate at the dusk of the format, but we are still seeing a lot of new innovations in trying to beat them.

Various interesting cards such as Koa’ki Meiru Drago, Mistaken Arrest, Wattkinetic Puppeteer and Iron Dragon Tiamaton are brought out by innovative players as a counter play to current deck builds and play styles.

Some of these tech cards might be too unreliable and eventually dropped by the players, but some of these tech cards will be effective and will be picked up by other players.

There is no way to know how good or bad these cards are against the format except to try it out in a tournament, and see how the opponents react and play around it.

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