Invited Author:Benjamin Russel Thaver
Country: Malaysia
Introduction
Good day everyone, my name is Benjamin Russel Thaver from Malaysia and I’ve recently placed First in both the Digimon Card Game Championship 2022 Area Finals SEA as well as the 2nd Preliminary SEA and will be representing SEA in the World Championship Finals. I first started playing Digimon TCG during the first released of BT2 when the new color Black was introduced. I took immediate interest in the color as I liked the color’s theme of being a more defensive/control and since then have been using any deck that has integrated the color in it such as BlackWargreymon which is a Red/Black deck and the deck I used to win both tourneys.
The deck I will feature is BlackWargreymon BT12.
What made my BlackWargeymon Anti the Anti Meta?
BlackWargreymon to me has been the number 1 deck to beat since BT11 and it got even more support when BT12 drop with the new Greymon line and the new 3 cost Taichi Yagami which gives the deck more defensive power. Since then, many decks such as Grandis and Raid Wargreymon were heavily used has a counter to BlackWargreymon as both decks have high OTK potential and can easily hit over BlackWargreymon DP and removing them by attacking in to them with Wargreymon’s Raid and Grandis ability to rest and switch attack targets making them the perfect counter to deny their ability to remain on board.
With this in mind, I thought of building my deck in a way that I makes my Digimon DP be as high as possible during my opponents turn with cards such as BT9 MetalGreymon X, Yuuya Kuga and etc. in order to delay my opponents from moving their Digimon out of the raising area for a turn to build another Blackwargreymon X in the front, if possible, to have double delete when my opponent unsuspend via effects to bypass the protection of Greymon X and Grandis big power restand.
Also respecting Blue Flare and Beelzemon as decks in the Meta, I played high counts of BlackWargreymon X and Yuuya Kuga as Blue Flare has the ability to stun the opponents Digimon from attacking/blocking which makes it hard to defend against their attacks especially when I have 2 Digimons on board. With that BlackWargreymon X is very important as it allows me to redirect the highest DP attack to it and also deletes an opponent’s lowest play cost Digimon when anything unsuspends during their turn which makes it the perfect counter when 2 of them are on board which provides the perfect defense/control against an aggressive control deck like Blue Flare.
Against Beelzemon, I believed that by having at least 1 Yuuya on board will have a very high advantage against them as the deck high use of option of delete Digimon multiple time in a single turn and by giving my Digimon immunity for the turn prevents them from having much ways of removing my board while giving me time to build the second line.
Last but not least, I did feel Hunter as a deck was very strong in the Meta as played by two of my friends here in Malaysia Koay Chun Yong and KCH ChinHow with both of them making it to the Area Finals as well as coming in Top 16 and 2nd place respectively.
The deck is very high tempo technical with many ways to bring out tamers for free to have their best removal Arrestordramon Superior Mode to punish players for having 2 Digimon/Tamers on board by putting them into the other while pushing for damage early. For this matchup, I believe the only way for a BlackWargreymon player to say it is a one-sided matchup is if they are able to play BT8 Blackwargreymon followed by Hades Force in the following turn as that will effectively delete a total of 19 play cost Tamers (6 tamers = best scenario). Aside from that, playing against the deck can be challenging as it makes you be more cautious of playing Tamer/Digimon as your Digimon might be easily removed.
Matchups
Digimon World Championship Area Finals SEA (South East Asia)
Round 1 vs WarGreymon (Eka (Indonesia))
The game went pretty one sided as he managed to get a perfect line at the back with a memory boost in play and a Digimon in the front while I was missing my BT12 MetalGreymon and was still trying to set up my board with a Digimon in the front and in the raising area. Looking at my options, I decided to get rid of the Digimon on board by pushing for damage and going into BlackWargreymon X to delete the Digimon during his coming turn hoping that he doesn’t have BT5 Blitz Omegamon in his hand while he Raided my Digimon and security with BT12 Wargreymon and Wargreymon X and luckily he doesn’t have Blitz Omegamon to end the game so he set a BT12 Taichi down to give blocker to his Digimon and pass the turn with his Wargreymon X standing due to the skill given by the BT12 Wargreymon. At my following turn I managed to get my BT12 MetalGreymon and with it as well as all of my tamers in play to end my turn with a BlackWargreymon X with 22K DP during my opponents turn stopping any attacks from the Wargreymon X while having a Greymon X on board as well. His following turn he played a level 3 and Hades Forced to delete my Greymon X and passed the turn as he forgot that he could burn my Tamers as well so a misplay from his part. When it came to my turn again, I evolved my Digi-Tama to a level 3 and pass the turn with Hades Forces deleting his level 3 and tamers leaving him with 2 memory and returning the X Antibody on the Wargreymon X to the deck. He played another X Antibody and evolved into Omegamon X to return my BlackWargreymon X but with Greymon X I returned X Antibody to have it remain in play and with my DP being 17K his Omegamon X could not delete it in battle thus winning the game the following turn.
Round 2 vs Bloomlord (Divinigracia Nikko (Philippines))
My opponent bricked as he did not manage to get a level 3 the whole game and whatever Digimon he had played was delete with BT12 Metalgreymon and BlackWargreymon X making the game very one-sided thus securing my second win.
Round 3 vs BlackWargreymon (William Teh (Malaysia))
Started round 3 against my friend William piloting a BlackWargreymon deck that was built with many different cards to help him in any situation. We started the game with a decent hand while his was slightly better as he was able to get a Greymon X while I was still building my line. After a few turns the game stated was in his favor as he managed to get a level 3 on the board and a Greymon X in the back while I was still digging for mine. With that, I played a level 3 searcher to further dig for my pieces and during his turn he pushed up his Greymon X and evolved all the way to Metalgreymon X and attacks my Digimon with 13K DP piercing and 2 checks but luckily for me the second check was a BlackWargreymon X so his Digimon was deleted giving me back the tempo to control the game state by going to BlackWargreymon X and building another line at the back while controlling the number of memory I gave him to further limit his play thus securing my 3rd win. If he were to not attack into my security and hit into the BlackWargreymon X the game could have gone either way but overall, a great game.
Round 4 vs Hunter (See Andre Ryan (Philippines))
Started with a very bad hand (2 Hades Force, BT5 Greymon, BT12 Greymon, BT12 MetalGreymon). With my opponent going first and setting up his Tamer all I could do was to play a Greymon down and pass the turn and he responded with a OmegaShoutmon to delete it. The game felt one-sided but I managed to draw a level 3 at my following turn and evolved it all the way to Metalgreymon. He continued to push for damage while I decided to play a Hades Force to burn the tamers but forgot that Im only allowed to attack the player thus opting to not attack and leave my Metalgrey standing. With his OmegaShout still on the board he evolved it into Quartzmon and suspend my entire board leaving me with liitle answers but I happen to have BlacklWargreymon X so I evolved into it and passed the turn deleting his Quartzmon as it unsuspends during his turn. After that, it was just about attacking his security and deleting the remaining tamers with my second Hades Force thus securing game 4.
Round 5 vs Hunter (Koay Chun Yong (Malaysia))
The final round was against Chun Yong who practice with me for this tournament and taught me how scary Hunter as I believe he is one of the best Hunter players I know and knows how to fight the Meta with the deck’s flexibility. The game started with him not having a great hand as he was unable to play down much tamers at the start, I was able to tempo my way against his board which allowed me to secure the win. I know if he was able to have a decent hand or even just a slightly better hand he would have definitely won as I had no BlackWargreymon or Hades Force in my hand and both Hades Force were sent down to the bottom of the deck. Overall, it was great to meet him in the Finals and we had a great time going up against each other and with that I managed to placed First and represent SEA in the World Finals.
Special Thanks
I would like to thank Koay Chun Yong for training with me for this very tourney, we both gave it our all and it could have been either one of us at First place but nevertheless it was great to face you in the finals and couldn’t have asked for a better Hunter test partner. I would also like to give a big thanks to Austin Lee who was a participate in the second qualifier but didn’t make it to the area finals but continued to help me practice and for that I really appreciate it and hope we will get to face each other in another tourney as big as this in the future. A big shout out to the Malaysian team that qualify for the area finals for giving it their all and almost all of us placed in the Top 16. It brings me joy to know that all of our hard work and effort was shown in the results.
Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family that supported me in the tournament whether it was helping me practice if they could or provided moral support. I will do my best as SEA representative to bring home the win for Malaysia.
Hi I would love to know why play the red and yellow agumon? The deck need that much the search in that extra card or something? Or would you have change it if you could?