In BT13, all the Burst Mode Digimon are introduced but we can't deny that ShineGreymon Burst Mode received more supports with the stronger mechanics, and with red and yellow traits, the damage it caused is hard to avoid.
While Shine Burst Mode stays in top tier of this meta, MirageGao joins the battle with a little humble and board control with the bounce-back skill. But for blue color, Blue Flare is still stirring up the other decks in the tournaments with its rush and stun ability, players tend to choose BlueFlare over MirageGao BM.
A slow deck with little board control
The main game-play of MirageBM would be: try to control the board by returning opponent's Digimon to hand, force them to draw more cards, gain more memory, play more tamers and setup the digivolution line till LV7 MirageGao BM (must still in the turn) and declare many attacks depends on how many Thomas you have in the fields.
To play a tamer for free, we have to rely on the LV4 BT13 Gaogamon and LV6 BT13 MirageGao or get them free from your security. These are totally nothing compared to Shine BurstMode when it can play a tamer for free in any level of digivolution from lv4 to lv7.
Not many players would put many copies of BT13 MirageGao into their decks because we prefer the BT11 MirageGao. We can earn a lot of memory with the BT11 MirageGao and move up to lv7 BM in the same turn. Because of those reasons, most of the time we have to pay 3 or 4 cost to play a blue tamer.
2. Many Conditions to make MirageGao BM works
MirageGao BM is strong, can do OTK if there are enough supports in the board. But to achieve this state, it will take a while for the player to set it up.
When digivolving into BM, we have to trade off one Thomas tamer to evolve into him for free. If you pay 5 cost to do a normal digivolving and still stay in our turn, then we can keep a Thomas in the board to enable one more attack if it can end the game. Another reason is the MirageGao BM is a lv7 Digimon, it can avoid many option cards that can remove/delete/return to hand a lv6 or lower Digimon.
The MirageGao BM may achieve 16 or 17k DP (from lv3/lv4 inherited's effect), so it is not easy to be destroyed during battling with opponent's security Digimon. The worst case scenario would be the MegaDeath option card.
So how many Security Attack that Gao BM can check:
- The LV7 MirageGao can do 2checks when the opponent has 9 or more cards. (this condition is hard to achieve if the opponent plays RoyalKnight or Hunter decks, or any decks with "save" effect (from hand)).
- LV5 inherited effect contributes 1 check.
- For each Thomas tamer in board, it gives 1check.
It seems the MirageGao can do lots of attacks, yes it is. But for the current meta, Mirage Gao BM seems to be slower. It takes time to play tamers, or search for cards. The deck can do simple returning opponent's Digimon to hand, but once opponent knows that we play this deck, they will twist the game to avoid those advantages for MirageGao.
I believe this deck is a fun deck to play, but for the competitive level we need it to be faster or can find the way to play more tamers for free.
You can check out another version of MirageGao (BT11) when it is combined with Jellymon for the Bibi Thunder (return opponent's tamer to hand) and Leomon-Juri for controlling board with Leomon-blocker (destroyed: gains 2 memory) and play tamer for free with Panjyamon. This version forces the opponent to play a slower games (thanks to Leomon's sacrifice).