Nationals 2011: Adjusting your deck for the field.

There is something I posted on duelistgroundz about plants and what I feel players need to do to be successful at Nationals. One thing is being able to make sacrificial deck choices and adjust your deck to the expected field. From the looks of it, Junk and Debris will easily be the most popular deck of the event, with decks like Water Synchro, Samurai, and X-Sabers taking 2nd and decks like Stun, GK, and Agents making up a small amount of the field. While these expectations is not based on how good the decks are (GK is a very strong contender for my deck choice still), it should be reasonable based on the online communities focus on creating unbeatable Plant builds and other decks that counter said Plant builds.

One thing you will have to do to win this tournament is adjust your main deck to enhance your matchups. While I cannot stress enough the importance of your side in such a diverse meta, you will have to let certain side choices leak into your main as well. One card that exemplifies this concept is Maxx "C". While pre-librarian Maxx "C" could only be sided because it wasn't as powerful as it is post. Being able to freeze your opponent for a turn or draw 14 cards in the plant mirror is incredible. Or being able to draw 5+ cards vs Sabers/Six Sams/Water Synchro is perfect as well or you just freeze them and win next turn. It is almost completely dead vs GK and Stun and Agent decks so that's where risk vs reward comes in. If you'll notice those 3 decks it's dead against will be the least likely for you to play against multiple times in a tournament, maybe 10-15% of your 12 round tournament. So if we can assume Maxx "C" will always produce a win when resolved successfully vs those matchups listed earlier (that it's good against) then the reward is FAR greater than the risk (in which games 2 and 3 exist for you to hopefully win). It's an overlap card vs expected matchups and is compatible with the deck itself (being a Junk and Debris target).

So while preparing your deck to be very combo oriented may provide you with a high success rate over the course of games played, you have to realize that others will become more and more adjusted to playing a purely combo oriented deck. Cards like Effect Veiler and Maxx "C" exist to help hinder combo decks and if you fall too far behind with the time and only focus on making your own combos and not preventing theirs, you will be on the bad end in a lot of mirrors so much of the time.

Good luck dueling~
-Jhub