Early format review/discussion

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of posts. School is starting soon and I have been very busy preparing for it. Anyway the main point of this post is for me to give you my observations and review of this format as of right now before YCS Toronto.

I have done extensive playtesting with my teamates and friends and have played in a local tourney(I can't find my notes so don't expect a local report, sorry!) and here is what I have found out.
SIDE NOTE: All of the following paragraphs are taken from my point of view and I was playing X-Sabers so just know that I have taken this info from a X-Saber standpoint.

Currently the best deck of the format is Agent for a few reasons. First they have the most boss monsters of any deck, and those boss monsters can turn the tempo of any game and ruin a setup. On the topic of boss monsters the most important card in that category is kristyia. Once that card hits the field your sole prority is to get it off the field. it can shift games around and is they get back honest with its effect you are restricted to using card effects. Since the only real out to kristyia is to remove it and our remove from play options quite limited ex: d-prision, karma cut(if you really want to.) all of those options either are not chainable or make you lose advantage. so now we turn to destroying kristyia which is not a permanant solution unless you can manipulate the graveyard. This is where the bad players are seperated from the good players. The whole test this format is if you can keep the graveyard clear or a card that restricts your opponents acess to the graveyard. Your opponent could have 6 faries in grave and have a hyperion and kristyia in hand. Your opponent is just a hyperion drop away from dropping kristyia( you remove one fairy to summon then remove another to pop a card 6-2=4). So that leads to the question of how do you control the graveyard? Well playing smart is one thing but having the right cards can help as well. The card that I personally found to be one of the best cards this format was kycoo. He restricts your opponents access so that your opponent can't drop hyperion or any other choas monster(BLS or choas sorc.) al,l the while allowing you to drop whatever monster you want. Other good side deck cards are cyber dragon cause big beaters are good and rai-oh cause big beaters are good and big beaters with good effects are even better. Also getting back to the point of agents being the best deck is because no two agent decks are exactly the same. Some builds might have the tour guide engine some might have the vallhalla engine, some could be just straight agents, I even faced a agent deck that splashed the d-hero engine. Diversity among top tier decks is a very good thing. That is part of the reason that six sam fell out of the picture late last format all of the builds had little to no differenation.

Tech cards are returning to full form this format. In almost any deck now days you are bound to have room for 2-3 tech cards that can often win you games. It is important to test out these tech cards and see is they work or not. The same goes for the side deck choose cards that attack the meta, right now agents are the only deck that is defined tier one so they are the meta right now side alot for them. But never forget to side heavily for rouge matchups, some cards are already good against those matchups rai-oh and cydra are always good. With agents being the meta it all bois down to how fast can your deck ge rid of kristyia and how well can it recover after it has been dealt with. The point of this post is to say that kristyia is a format defining card and a decks viablity will be determined by how well it can utilize it or if it can't utlize it how well can it handle it.

Part of the reason kirstyia is such a format defining card is that when people( myself included) looked at the banlist many thought that all non chainable backrow was dead. That is not true. Some power cards are just to powerful to be ignored. Mirror force is one of those power cards. Sure it can die by mst but this card can generate such huge swings in tempo it is nothing to scoff at. It allows you pick yourdelf back up dust your self off and try another time to comeback from what was thought to be certain defeat. Also it allows you to set up for kristiya since you know that is what your oppnent will draw next turn putting you in a very powerful situation. Also some people will not be expecting it and walk right into it because they think that nobody plays it anymore. Imo the three main traps you should be running are mirror force, torrential, and dustshoot. On occasion a first turn dustshoot can win you the game.

Moving on to the main card of the format. Dark hole. Yes Dark hole. If you draw this card in your opening hand consider yourself very lucky. You cannot underestimate the value of dark hole this format. Never use dark hole as a one for one(the same goes for mirror force) dark hole can get you out of any situation period. This is what also seperates good players from bad, how well they use their power cards. As a final note play conservatlity(really bad spelling lol) never waste any power card and never go aggro until you are 100% sure you can win the game, that is what defines this format. Thanks for reading!
-Cameron