Invited Author: Sam Zhou
Country: North America
Introduction
Hey guys it’s Sam here with a summary of my experience at the Carta Magica NA Online Regional Event. The first thing about this event to address is the format which was up to BT8 with the exclusion of ST-9 and ST10 due to inaccessibility from delays. This meant that two premier strategies in Imperialdramon and Mastemon would be missing from the tournament and fewer tools for other decks such as armor rush not having access to mega death. Realizing this my playgroup surmised that the top threats in this meta were likely: Yellow Hybrid, Blue Hybrid, Black Wargreymon, Armor Rush and X-Anti body thus the building was revolving around having good matchups against these decks.
Deck's Distribution
Eggs:
4x Upamons/ 1x Frimon: Upamons are the premier yellow eggs to maximize due to the consistent ability to draw your cards late in the game. There is argument to play Cupimon to have access to card draw early on in the game when you have 5 or more security however the game plan for this deck was to usually be at a security deficit to enable T.k & Kari which is counter intuitive to Cupimon so I elected to play Frimon as the 5th egg to give a very easily enabled 1k dp boost. I believe it is also totally fine to play only 4 Upamons as you only play 6 rookies and thus is very unlikely to run out of eggs.
Rookies:
The low rookie count is typical of yellow hybrids strategies since you will mostly be playing tamers rather than evolving in raising. Previously yellow hybrids would play a synergistic purple sub package including purple eggs and rookies however with the addition of Rapidmon and Cody Hida, the favor shifted towards yellow eggs and rookies, but I can see a shift back to purple as the meta develops as it is still providing strong and unique tools that mono yellow doesn’t have access to.
4x ST3-04 Patamon: Extremely important rookie since it allows you to gain memory when you delete Digimon via dp reduction which is key in being able to evolve into Rapidmon and not passing turn with its 4-evolution cost.
2x BT2-034 Salamons: Extremely good at stabilizing when the opponent is playing aggressively, however most of the time you will reserve it as the 5th and 6th body to go into rapidmons.
2x Bokomon: One of the few proactive Digimon you play in the deck. It’s ability to search for key cards while presenting a continuous memory advantage makes opponents forced to react and commit to remove it.
Champions:
4x Kazemon and 4x Zephyrmon: Standard to max out the hybrid, offers a lot of synergies with Jetsilphymon, the tamers and Susanoomon and now with yellow eggs you have more ability to dig via evolving on top of your rookies. Some of the most important decisions in games is choosing when to turn your tamers into the hybrids as well as moving them to the correct zones whether it’s from security to the hand or cycle aggressively to draw and fuel a potential Susanoomon evolution.
4x Rapidmon: One of the 2 cards from BT8 that make a big impact in making yellow hybrid viable in bt8 and single handedly saves in a lot of matchups yellow hybrid previously struggled in. When you can set up tamers to guarantee enough memory to Rapidmon and keep turn you can play with high confidence that you will be able to out any threating board your opponent can present. With the usage of Cody and even T.K. Kari you can easily swing over the high dp megas that your opponent invested a lot of resources into. It forces opponents to respect this threat that they are forced to play conservatively and slower which is ideal for your gameplan. It is having armor purge makes it the creme de la crème of champions as it allows you to build up your board and play more aggressively than in previous formats due to it limiting opponent removal options.
Ultimates:
4x Jetsilphy: Super powerful card that allows you to control your security as well as enabling an avenue to your megas for 3 memory if evolving from tamer into lv 4 hybrid into Jetsilphy.
2x Rizegreymon: High tempo card that is surprisingly sticky on the board since it dodges Ouryumon and Blackwargreymon’s on digivolve as well as options such as Gewaltschwarmer. The strongest aspect of this card however is the inherited ability to give sec+1 if you have 3 or more tamers which allows the deck to quickly end games.
Megas and Susanoomon:
2x Dynasmon: One of the most nuanced cards in the deck. Provides 3 distinct roles. Firstly, it is one of the few ways to remove our own security to enable TK. & Kari in control matchups. Secondly it is a proactive play that allows you to dig into your deck and find the key pieces that you are missing in your hand while filling trash for Susanoomon. Lastly it completely stops chip strategies and stabilizes your life by recovering using Zoe or T.K. while also providing an additional buffer vs OTK strategies.
2x Shinegreymon: Really underrated card nowadays due to yellow having so many new mega since the glory days of bt3 but the sun hasn’t set on this card as it still clears boards and can swing with unmatchable power when supported by the plethora of tamers you play.
1x Susanoomon: Highly synergistic card in a hybrid strategy. Provides removal, clears 3 securities at once, base high hp and most importantly. prevents deck out which is highly likely with this deck in control matchups.
Tamers:
The bread and butter of the deck. Yellow tamers allow you to proactively build recurring advantage over your opponents whilst being difficult to interact with. They also serve as a launching point for your hybrids to make high impact plays.
4x BT1-087 T.K Takashi
4x Cody Hida
4x Zoe Orimoto
3x T.K. & Kari
Each tamer has different importance depending on the matchup and I will explain those in the matchup section later.
Options:
1x Yellow Memory Boost: A flex slot, ideally it should be another Susanoomon but I only had 1 available but It boosts consistency and helps mitigate the low number of rookies being played in the deck while arming you for explosive turns even if your tamers aren’t enabled.
1x Reinforcing Memory Boost: The giga chad boost yellow memory boost wishes it was. Does everything yellow memory boost does but bigger and better. It’s limited to 1 for a reason.
2x Tactical Retreat: A tech card aimed at helping prevent blue hybrids from running rampant with memory advantage after freezing your Digimon. Also allows you to recycle hybrids by retreating them into security and grabbing them back with Zoes. Effectively allows you to play more than 4 Jetsilphymon in a game.
Gameplay / Matchups
Matchup Notes:
Blue Hybrid: One of the hardest matchups and feels unfavorable unless you play tech cards that are not good against the rest of the meta. Our play group expected Blue Hybrids to be a stronger contender in this format without Imperialdramon since it was a bad matchup while still having good matchups across the rest of the board. Key strategies are to be decently aggressive and force the blue hybrid player to turn their tamers into hybrids and remove them as well as exhausting their ability to strip sources by slowly evolving your lines. Tactical Retreat allows you to salvage Digimon that would normally enable their Sora & Joe.
Black Wargreymon: A decent matchup in my opinion unique in that they are able to interact with your tamers, but they have issues blowing up your security quickly and presenting a face clock which gives ample time to set up. Just be aware to deny Blackwargreymon’s ability to delete 2 Cody, play wyvern’s breath if you expect this matchup to be prevalent and always try to reserve a rapidmon play to respond to their blackwargreymons or a fast evo into shine if you have enough tamers.
X-Antibody: Another similar matchup to blackwargreymon but they have more explosiveness and OTK potential. However, they have fewer controlling elements and takes time to set up. You must play for aggression or else they will establish the perfect stack and OTK you. Shinegreymon can usually out any board they present while also allowing you to swing over their mega blocker.
Armor Rush: Relatively easy to control early on but does have insane high roll potential. Try to set up an overwhelming memory advantage with your tamers so you will out tempo their moves and try to set up your security so that it can deny big fire rocket turns. If they set up multiple Ken and Davis, you will be forced to try to end the game quickly because it becomes impossible to control them at that point.
Yellow Hybrid Mirror: Most important aspect is being able to set up a memory advantage via tamers. Usually neither player is going to attack security, so it becomes a race to draw the key cards as well as trying to self-inflict damage via T.K or Dynasmon or force them to recover more than you to enable T.K Kari. There for you must be careful when you play Jetsilphymon or Reinforcing memory boost. Susanoomon is usually the key card to win since it has sec + 2 as well as deck out prevention.
My matchups at Carta Magica 2022 Regional:
R1 vs Beelstar 2-0:
G1&2: Was able to set up a memory advantage after scatter mode swung into my sec using T.K & Kari and end the game before they could start playing Beelstars for free. Cleared wide boards using Rapidmon and set up security to ensure scatter mode / promote survives.
R2 vs Yellow Hybrid Mirror 2-0:
Opponent never saw their T.K. & Kari or didn’t run them, so I was able to comfortable win via memory advantage both games.
R3 vs Yellow Hybrid Mirror 2-0:
Usual strategy g1 with the memory advantage. G2 was spicy/lucky, both of us were even and high health. I used my only Susanoomon on my shine to clear the board and try to set up an OTK but it got wyvern-ed, I hard played cards and avoided digivolving to stay in the game but by the time I drew the last card in my deck I couldn’t go for lethal, however my opponent’s was also near deckout and I swung into security and hit eden's javelin to force my opponent to draw their last card which was Susanoomon.
R4 vs Yellow Hybrid Mirror 1-0:
R1: I won traditionally, R2 I was in the driver seat and time was running low, I decided to try to go for the win which led to some bad security checks by me that put me on the back foot but with some good security checks on my part as well I was able to stabilize, and we both drew g2 due to time.
R5 vs Beelstar 2-0:
R1: my opponent bricked and hard played a bunch of rookies that I was able to remove using goldrapid, which set him back far enough that I could gain momentum using T.K & Kari due to his early swings. G2 was closer, I played aggressively knowing my opponent would win the late game once he set up and he was 1 memory/ 1 discount away from being able to win but he couldn’t set it up and I was able to end the game the next turn.
R6 vs Beelstar 2-0:
G1: Played aggressively but it got to the edge once my opponent started zwart D on top of their beels to start removing my tamers but rapidmon provides a lot of damage early on and I was able to seal the deal past a full board of zwart defeats and a vilemon. G2 I positioned and early rapidmons that swept the board and survived a couple of checked and followed up with a rize to make my opponent’s removal options really awkard and was able to carry the tempo to a win.
R7 vs Big AncientGreymon 2-1
I was nervous for this matchup since it was not on my radar and could potentially win the game by building a mega stack in security. The gameplan focusing on trying to either: recovery my sec high enough to survive the turn he moves out and prevent an otk and use all the tamers from those sec checks to stabilize OR develop enough zoes and time zephymons to make ancientgreymon die to a sec check and luckily 2 of the 3 games I was given enough time to set up zoes and zephymons to make his ancientgreymon die to a mega in my stack and I was able to wipe the board on the following turns and close out the game before he could pose another lethal threat.
There was only 7 rounds due to the other undefeated losing to a pair down and the large amount of draws in the tournament.
Summary
I think a large part of my wins was due to the preparation of the deck which led to favorable matchups in the mirror match with the usage of shines and T.K & Kari and luck with the pairings being able to face mostly matchups that I was well practiced in. I want to give special thanks to the shine master QiQi and the the first bandai tournament champ FromTheFuture(who got 4th this event!) for helping me prep for this event by playtesting/theory crafting. I learnt the playstyle from QiQi’s who had won a previous Bandai event using yellow hybrid and he also came up with this list.
Hope you found my write up informative and valuable!