Recap Day 1 Of YCS Guadalajara

Hello Fellow duelists(I decided to change my intro I was getting bored of writing the same thing post after post) I am here to do a relatively short recap of the day one events of YCS Mexico(I will be calling it this for the remainder of the post because it is easier to spell!). I have to say it is quite surprising and unexpected.

First I would like to say that almost all of the info I have here is from konami's coverage site that you can find here. Also konami neglected to give any sort of feature match so I have no idea whatsoever about the way people played or certain cards they teched. Also I know very little about Latin America meta so if I sound very surprised about some decks topping and/or I do not recognize certain pros you will know why.

The Stats
Attendance: 512 participants
Rounds of Swiss: 9

The 9 Rounds of Swiss
First I did notice that Angel Flores( the guy that won both of California's YCS's) was in attendance and he was piloting dino rabbit and he also happened to be a bounty duelist. The rounds leading up to swiss were quite uneventful and konami was scarce with details, again I have no bios or matches to go off of. Konami did give deck types after round 8 and that was when the winds of change blew so to speak. Synchro summon had only about 3 spots and six samurai and gravekeeper were littered everywhere. Dino rabbit had respectable numbers, but wind ups were easily the most popular after the standings of round 8. Apparently their loop was very underestimated and easily took down their competitors. Really Allen C penninton calculated that wind ups only have baout a 42% chance to pull of teh loop first turn, thats less than 50% which means they should lose at least 50% of thier games. From my experience the wind up deck is a one trick pony and really doesn't have anything else to offer, Sure it can rank 3 alot but that isn't enough to win all of your games! Against decks like dino rabbit and plant synchro the deck should succumb to their power. Again many may say that the loop is the reason they had so many tops but how did they get that loop off so consistently?

The Top 32
Really very little changed from round 8 some six samurai decks and gravekeeper were eliminated but wind up dominance continued to shine through. Here are the official numbers
9 Wind ups
5 Inzektors
5 Dino rabbit
3 Synchro Summon
3 Six Samurai
1 Wind up/Inzektor
1 Scrap Stun
1 Dark World
1 Chaos
1 Agent
1 Gravekeeper
1 Tech genus

My reaction to it all
How did six samurai top let alone have 3 tops? The deck can open with the nuts but their is absolutely no way it is a tier 1 caliber deck. It is all luck sack you either open with the nuts and win or don't and lose. Sure last format they had 4 rotas which made the sack happen more often but I am not convinced that shien and naturia beast/barkion are enough to make it all the way to the top 32. The deck is not as consistent as it once was and is not a good deck. Maybe at most 1 might sneak in but equalling synchro summon in tops is absurd, I might sound ignorant here but there is no way in any meta with the same card pool as the tcg can compare synchro summon with six samurai, there is a reason that synchro summon top consistently and often and in plentiful amounts, because they are consistent and can constantly drop outs to almost any situation. Six Samurai sit behind shien or beast with a few backrow, sure that can win you games but not top a YCS(Rant over). Next wind ups taking the number one spot are surprising to me but again maybe I didn't take them seriously enough, I hope they post up the deck lists I am curious to see the builds. Inzektors are not a surprise to me, they are good and facts are fact, i just didn't know that wind ups were apparently better than them. The dino rabbit tops is to be expected. I honestly expected wind up/Inzektor to be number 1 here. In my testing against most of the tier 1 decks it stood its own and having access to both the hand loop and the field clearing capabilities of inzektors seems YCS worthy, so only having one spot is surprising. We have to have some rouge decks sneak in so scraps are worthy of that(I guess), gravekeeper seem off the wall really. I don't see how gravekeeper and agent could possible get the same number of tops as they are not even in the same league, royal tribute does win games but there are better ways of doing that and since gravekeepers rely on the backrow alot and this is not a backrow friendly format. Chaos is cool to top, dark world is to be expected, this just proves that the deck is really not that good. tech genus is meh but again it seems to have potential.

Conclusion
Alot of rouge decks that have seem to fallen off the radar topped here which kind of makes me doubt the legitimacy of this event since it is supposed to be such a high level event and all. My opinions are this:

• Six Samurai are not tier 1 caliber and shouldn't be treated as such
• Wind ups are a large threat and siding for them is going to be a deciding factor as apparently they have more to offer than the loop.
• Inzektors are good and should be handled accordingly
• Dino Rabbit continues to cement its tier 1 status
• Synchro Summon is still Imo the best deck of the format and can compete with inzektors and wind ups

Honestly perhaps the answer to alot of wind ups topping is alot of people having the same logic as me and thinking that wind ups were one trick ponies and not siding accordingly. If that is true than the problem is similar to when dark world came out only instead of siding too much and not topping people sided to little and focused so much on plant sycnhro that they forced plant synchro out of the limelight and allowed wind ups to go around un hindered. That of course still doesn't explain how 3 six samurai decks top at a YCS no less.

Thanks for reading and please leave your comments telling me your take on all of this I would like to get some opinions other than my own as maybe I am too blinded by my bias against six samurai, I am of course open to suggestions!

-Cameron