Riding the winds of day-2 excitement, we joined a local game shop that hosted a tournament of 10 pax: to check out the early BT7 meta and to do a little bit of deck testing.
Tournament Format & Player Pool
The tournament runs a 4-round swiss, BO3 format with a top-cut of 4 places, which is a very reliable format to gauge deck (and player) strength.
More than half the players have migrated to a BT7-centric deck, with the exception of Mastemon, Eosmon, Rookie-Rush, Melga-Beelstar, and a Sec-Con that runs a couple copies of Kazuchimon.
Correction: The 1st Place deck is Gabumon B.O.F with Hybrid Digimon, check out the winning deck here.
Hybrid Red and Blue Decks
First place was taken by a BOF deck piloted by a very experienced blue player, which remained largely a BT6 deck with addition of a couple copies of Bokomon to search out tamers and hybrids. He plays a couple copies of Garummon, which gives that additional board control.
The new Takuya Kaisergreymon deck is also popular, and is an absolute monster when run with Ancientgreymon. We've witnessed a game where Ancientgreymon and Kaisergreymon collectively pulled off 10 security checks on a Security Control opponent!
We ran a slightly different configuration for Magnagarurumon, using Himi as the tamer base instead of Koji. It has decent board control and freezing effects, but lacked the synergy that Koji has with Magnagarurumon. You can read about our early version here.
Yellow Hybrid Security Control
With the new yellow tamer Zoe Orimoto and her digivolution lineup, recovery becomes more efficient. While in the past there was heavy reliance on 7-cost to play MagnaAngemon and the 11-cost to play Magnadramon, it is not possible to get to recovery in a staggered 6-cost.
In security control decks, it is generally desirable to reduce the tempo of the game, due to limited draw power. The "per-turn" draw is usually the only reliable way to increase your hand size (aside from occasional Coredramons which are also expensive to play). Therefore, giving the opponent too much memory in 1 turn can help accelerate their growth, especially in the current fast paced meta.
With Zoe at 3-cost, she pulls a hybrid card from security, which is important since hybrid cards are not good cards to stay in security. She can then digivolve into LV4 and LV5 at just 2 cost and 1 cost respectively, while recovering security at LV5 Jetsilphymon. Seraphimon at LV6 performs another recovery, and then into a Susanoomon to delete anything pesky.
Summary
Expect to see many players jumping into the hybrid bandwagon in BT7, and plan your deck against it. While red and blue hybrids are the popular colors in the early meta, we expect the other colors (especially yellow and green) to gradually crop up in the coming weeks.
The new hybrid mechanisms are exciting, and is definitely drawing a lot of attention away from traditional nursery-based digivolutions.
The Tommy Himi decklist we used and won 3rd Place in the tournament is here:
Would love to see an anti-Hybrid list. I've heard Lucemon FD is bad but maybe there is another way to put these OP warp monsters in their place.
Also, updated Tommy list please?
Hello there.
For the anti-hybrid list, I believe the decks that can deal with Hybrid will appear soon, give the meta some time.
In my opinion, Lucemon FDM is not that bad, just need more time to optimize the deck to adapt to the current meta.
Lastly, we already included the Himi decklist that we used to win 3rd place in the tournament. It is still can be further optimized and we think Koji deck is stronger since Koji can digivolve into MagnaGaruru faster. But for the playstyle, Himi would give better control to the game.