[EX5] Robin: Anubis – Merva Head of the Table

Introduction

Hello DigiDestined! This is Robin from DigiDestined Doods (@DDDTcg). With the recent release of EX5, we have seen the popularity of purple decks rising: Belphe-Levia, MetalgaruruX, Beaststar (credits to @slyx183 for the naming) and finally Anubis-Merva. Let’s dive in and understand more about this Eygptian God’s terror.

Anubis-Merva Deck Ratio

This is a recommended skeleton structure for anyone looking to start with Anubis-Merva. The deck aims to set up Anubis to flood the board with Merva as fast as turn 2 or 3 and it packs consistency with wisdom training and purple memory boost. Gazi and psyche help to lock your opponent’s board leaving them with little room to counter. The deck also packs superb draw power from Tsunomon, DoberX, and BlueMera, so getting your pieces is not an issue. Unfortunately, the deck still struggles with Pomumon, Pillomon, and Gotsumon (Digimon that do not allow players to play Digimons by effect) and also Leviamon with Biting crush option.

Anubis-Merva in EX5 Environment

In the current meta, games can be determined in the blink of an eye with decks like FenriLoogamon, Shinegreymon BM, MirageGaogamon BM, but we also see control decks like BloomQuantum, Huanglong, Belphemon also making success in reacting to these fast matchups. Anubis-Merva combines both of these elements to establish a strong presence that your opponent has a difficult time dealing with. Below you can find my decklists that I had success in the recent 3v3 and Magnacup Tournament.

Source: https://x.com/DDDTcg/status/1700844759034757396?s=20

Source: https://x.com/DDDTcg/status/1700418121025380410?s=20

Source: https://x.com/DDDTcg/status/1699806943706337683?s=20

Common Ruling

Anubis effects can be hard to catch at first but there are a few things that you should take note of, Let’s break it down into 2 parts:

“ [When Digivolving] [Main] [Once Per Turn] You may trash up to 3 cards in your hand. Then, play 1 purple Digimon card from your trash for the cost. When it would be played by this effect, reduce the play cost by 3. For each card trashed by this effect, further reduce it by 1.”

The effect can be triggered even when Venusmon blanket is on the field as it is a main effect
You may trash up to 3 cards so you can opt to not trash anything and play a purple digimon for – 3 cost
If your opponent has a Psychemon on the field, you can still use Anubis’s effect but you would need to pay the full cost.
When you play Mervamon from trash, total cost to play would be 2 cost (-6 cost + Digixros -3) and + 1 memory if you have Ignitemon as ESS

“ [Your Turn] When your Digimon is played by an effect, delete 1 of your opponent's level 5 or lower Digimon. If no Digimon was deleted by this effect, <Draw 1>. “

This effect only allows you to delete or draw per digimon(s) played by effect. In the stance of Mervamon, When you play Mervamon from trash (considered as 1 played by effect) and Mervamon plays 2 digimon by effect (considered as 1 played by effect) you will be able to delete up to 2 Level 5 or lower digimon or if no digimon is deleted, draw 2
You can play Mervamon to slot another Mervamon but you would not gain memory from Ignitemon’s inherit, you could play around de-digivolve or dexmon in this way.

Level 3 Flex Slots:

Labramon sits on my bench because I felt that the times that I needed to return an Anubis or Merva seem very low, as once you establish the board flood, the game is pretty much yours, just watch out for Dexmon!

Gabumon gives you the +1 memory and needed draw/discard to cycle through your deck, which suits very well in situations when you are bricking.

Elecmon can clear the pesky memory blockers, playcost blockers, and your arch nemesis, played by effect digimon blockers. Although it needs to be deleted, you might be able to trigger it with “Calling from the Darkness” or CeberusmonX inherit effects.

Spadamon, a tech choice to de-digivolve your opponent when played with Mervamon effect, and when you slot under the Mervamon. You can also delete the level 5 digimon (after being de-digivovled from level 6) and clear the board! Its inherited effects can also help you to search for another Xros Heart digimon.

Level 4 Considerations

You can basically run the same package as Minervamon deck, with more retaliation digimon so that you can gain rush and blocker. Dobermon also offers additional draw power as you can X-digivolve into DoberX to give you +2 draw and discard 1, with another digimon gaining rush.

Pocupamon is there to delete any pesky blockers, and could potentially proc twice with doberX giving another digimon retaliation to help you gain control of the board if needed.

Level 5 Considerations

There are 2 considerations to selecting your level 5s, Firstly, it should be able to pull back memory with your Gobli and Orge inherited effects so that you can digivolve to Anubis to continue your turn and board flood.

Secondly, it would serve as a secondary effect for Anubis to play from the trash in scenarios where you are not able to play Mervamon. You can use DoberX and Pumpkinmon on play effects to call back a Gazi or Psychemon to have 2 additional bodies on the board.

These are unorthodox choices, test them if you like!

Tamer Considerations

The Tamers slots are really tight, and you would probably need to sacrifice memory or training options to include these cards. Although they do value-add to your gameplay (win more cards), they are not key pieces to achieving your win conditions, but feel free to test around with them!

Options Considerations

For options choices, if you would like to take a more defensive stance, you can opt for Rivals’ Barrage or Pummel Whack, to be able to clear the key cards when needed. Rivals’ Barrage works well with EX1 Ladydevimon and you can also consider EX2 Dobermon to play it into the play area.

Calling from the Darkness is mainly needed to recycle Ruin mode, the blanket -DP has proven super effective in the current meta, with many decks playing from the raising.

Final Thoughts

If you can’t beat them, join them. This is a straightforward deck with a clear win condition, board flood, and control. The difficulty in piloting the deck is suitable for any new purple players too! (like me!) Having said that, there are also interesting deck-building ideas that can complement Anubis playstyle like using Levia/Biting Crush to deal with mirror matches (Crocodile Dundee!) and Bephlemon, which I will be testing in upcoming tournaments. Thank you for reading and until then I AM THE TABLE!

[ST16-EX5] MetalGarurumon Ace – "Jamming" and "Recovery"

Introduction

We are seeing a new purple-blue MetalGarurumon Ace / Xantobody in EX5 meta that won a lot tournaments during this time. Knowing this deck, personally I found it is very strong. Let me list out some key point of this deck.

An example, source is here.

The "Jamming" that helps it never deck-out

Unlike the BT9 blue Gabumon/Garurumon X protection, the purple-blue LV3 Gabumon X and Lv4 Garurumon X protects the Mega from deleted during battling by returning 2 cards (non-egg) from trash to bottom of the deck in both turns. This effect is like a "Jamming", but protected in all turns which makes it even better.

And Cool-boy is so perfect for the deck. Without the effect of returning cards to bottom of the deck, Cool-boy would normally cause it deck-out, but now it is safe from that.

BT9 MetalGaruruX is better than EX5 MetalGaruruX

While EX5 MetalGarurumon X can delay the game (defense) because it seems that the opponent would lost their turn immediately after they declare first attack, sound good right. But what I feel I need the most when I digivolve into LV6 X antibody would be the "unsuspend this Digimon". It maybe just a last hit to finish the game, or unsuspend to block in next turn.,etc.

Because purple line don't have "Security Attack+1" so we rely on multiple attacks at LV6 Digimon. So with the EX5 LV5 WereGaruru X and LV6MetalGreymon Ace (ST16) + LV6 X Antibody, we have total 3 checks. If the MetalGaruruX survives, the evolving into BT5 Omnimon will trigger another check to opponent's security in one turn.

The Metalgaruru and Omnimon are protected during battling, so if the opponent's security has "Option" cards that can delete/return to hand(deck)/place to its own security then the Metalgaruru gone.

However, for the current meta, not many lethal option cards are used, only Sec Con (maybe).

The "Recovery"

X antibody Protoform introduced and replace the old BT9 X antibody option card.

While the BT9 X-antibody option card is good to counter those blue decks that trash the digivolution source then those cards without digivolution cards can't attack during its turn/next turn and also allows the attacking Digimon to evolve into a "X antibody" Digimon, the new EX5 X-antibody Protoform is simply for "recovery" and recycle cards because we can pick 1 Digimon from the digivolution source of the one that leaves the battle. (It is good to recycle LV5 or LV6 Metalgaruru Ace.)

You won't be able to take back the white cards from trash if you use the "calling from darkness", so get them from security is the easier method.

Another Variant, Ulforce Zero and Rina

UlforceVeedramon and Rina combo has the advantage with this deck's tech because the deck has a certain number of cards in trash.

Basically as long as we have enough trash, the "All turn" without "Once Per Turn" effect of Rina can make the Ulforce Zero attack until trash-out.

But there are weaknesses, UlforceZero with only 12000 DP and no "protection" is vulnerable to the opponent's security and 12k DP blocker.

[BT14-LM] Hariz: Jelly Amphimon Deck

Invited Author: Hariz

Country: Brunei

Introduction

My name is Hariz and recently I was given the privilege of creating this article for the Jellymon Deck after winning with it at a recent Digimon League Event at Gamer’s Tavern, Brunei on 20^th August 2023. Ever since they introduced Jellymon into the game, I’ve always tried to slide her supports in some of my blue decks but it still just didn’t felt very viable nor necessary at times. Then came RB01 when they introduced the Lv6 Amphimon, I was hyped because it was the start of when Jellymon could be its on independent deck rather than just a support package.

But something was still lacking, it was still getting outshine and couldn’t perform just as fast and consistent like other decks. It wasn’t because there wasn’t enough jellymon cards to support the mechanic but rather the newer support for BLUE wasn’t generic enough for other blue decks to utilize till the introduction of BT13 and the new Amphimon ACE from the LM Booster. Let’s Begin!

The Goal and how it works

So before we start, I’ll explain on how Jellymon/Amphimon deck works and what is the goal of the deck. The deck wants you to have 7 or less cards in hand, strip off the digisource of your opponent’s digimon and have a bunch of ‘jellymon in its text’ cards in the trash to trigger certain conditions. Building this deck with just that knowledge however makes you randomly dunk your hand when not necessary or even play too much of the jelly cards which you don’t have to. Below you’ll see my rendition of the deck that I recently use and I’ll explain how it worked out and my match ups.

Jellymon Decklist (3-0)

This was the only 2^nd time I brought the deck to an event, the 1^st time time I built it was purely Jellymon Tribal and it showed what which cards I needed to play more, what I needed to play less or which ones I didn’t need to play at all. But just cause I didn’t play in my deck doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, it just means it belonged in a different focus or didn’t suit my local Meta. My local meta is run by a lot of X-antibody and other Blue decks like Mirage Gao, Blue Flare, Ulforce and at times random once in a while.

The Boss card: Amphimon

Let’s talk about the old and new Amphimon, RB01 Amphimon has an on digivolve and attacking ability to trash sources and bottom deck an opponent’s Digimon by discarding cards and filling up your trash. Not only does it have board control, it also has the protection ability from deletion not only for itself but for other Blue Cards aswell. Yes ‘OTHER BLUE CARDS’ meaning it can protect your ACE cards or any other key cards you don’t want to lose by returning 3 cards with Jellymon in its text.

The issue I had find with this Amphimon before the LM Supports was that it wasn’t a finisher, it was too defensive and you slowly poke opponent while they try to slowly recover, it was missing that certain pressure. Then came the new Amphimon from LM Booster. Now some may think because its an ACE Card, its mainly just for defense, but I find that this Amphimon is at most will be your main attacker. Downside is that its DP is quite low and unless you have jamming or the RB1 Amphimon ready, you might feel hesitant to swing with it most of the time. The Ideal setup would be if when you have both Amphimons on the battle area, RB1 Amphimon for the Defense and refilling your resource and the LM Amphimon do all the damage.

The Weakness

The weakness of the deck… well I’ll be honest it has quite a lot of weaknesses but so far I stumble upon while playing this deck,

I’ll break it down into the type of decks you need to look out for instead of specific decks .

Decks that De-digivolve your stuff: The fact that the level 6 is an ACE card the moment it gets de-digivolve, opponent over flows 4 memory, it’s even worse if there was a zudomon under it and if opponent can get rid the whole line that overflows for 7!

Decks that minus DP: It has 0 protection against cards that lowers its DP. RB1 Amphimon can only protect itself and you’re other Blue Digimons from deletion, but if their DP stays 0 it will still get removed.

Decks that run X-Antibody: The moment you face these decks that run the X-Antibody Option, you cannot bounce their digimon because you can’t trash the X-antibody at all with any of the Jellymon cards. This is literally the bane of the Jelly Deck. That is why you need to run other cards to just remove the digimon entirely to help you buy time.

Jogress Decks? : I’d find jogress decks takes awhole lot of work and resource to remove because the stack is just too long and too much time and resource needed to remove. Not Impossible…but yeah..

Reliable Support

Amphimon can’t trigger their abilities if the opposing digimon has any cards in their digisource so in order to strip those ees away you need to discard cards to remove each cards under , but what if I tell you you can basically just pay less and still get value? With the help of the new Goma Line and good’ ol reliable cards like Sourai , you can basically remove 1-4 cards from other digimon source while having a body with Zudomon and aswell as control your handsize from going 0. But of course there will be a match up against an X-antibody deck where you can’t remove the source, so Ikkakumon can help with stalling while the opponent builds up.

Matchups

Game 1 : Diaboromon

My 1^st opponent was against a diaboromon Deck, against this deck I had to be very cautious of their Diaboro ACE and also make sure to finish the game before they can generate their token army. The night before I had practice with the deck and you cannot be greedy and wait for the diaboromon hoping to let you counter evo, they will get rid of your Lv4 and lv5. Luckily for me however, my opponent was not able to set up his Arata before he could swarm his token army.

Game 2 : Xrosheart

Now Xrosheart, it was one of the top meta decks during its prime time because not alot of decks could do anything to it once they set up their tamers and resources, but even so its still a strong deck even today and can snowball out of nowhere when you least expect it. In theory I really think Jellymon deck could counter Xrosheart and other xros decks because it can remove sources from both digimon and tamers, why I say theory is because this was my first time playing against it with the Jellymon deck. RB01 -14 Thetismon also allows you to trash sources from their tamers and make them unable to suspend and activate effects for a turn. Thanks to this I was able to deny his key sources and slowed the deck down abit.

Game 3 : Yellow Vaccine

Finals, well I’ll be honest this was one game I really thought was gonna end my streak. So many decks I manage to avoid like X-antibody decks that day but eventually I knew it was coming. I was afraid of how easily he can ramp evo because of the vaccine engine and how much minus dp cards he was packing in. My deck has no protection against minus dp cards. The game went just as I predicted, he manage to keep clearing my field with his Seraphimon and his other dream crushing messengers, but at that same time I tried to build up my raising area and wait to find an opening just like I did in my Game 1 with the Diaboromon deck. Earlier in the game I manage to chip in abit of his security that just so I don’t fall back too far behind. When I found the opening I manage to remove back his board, the downside of evolving on your ACE Cards against a blue deck sometimes is that it makes it easier to trash it for the overflow.

Tournament Summary

Some would say I got lucky, because of either my match ups were easy or the number of players was not a lot to beat my streak, but that would be an insult to my opponents if I did not acknowledge their level as a player and the challenge they gave me that led to my victory. This was only my 2^nd tournament I brought the deck for action and there are so many other decks I have yet to test against with it.

Summary

This deck has potential, the new supports gave it the extra edge to be competitive worthy. It’s a deck that can fight almost anything now but not everything, it still has weaknesses as I mentioned and all you can do is try to play around it and pray for the best, because the only way out of it is to go through, in Malay we say ‘LANGGAR SAJA!’ . I hope I inspired some people to give the deck the chance or see it in a new light.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to DigimonMeta for giving me this opportunity, I had waited so many moments when it’d be my time to make an article about one of my winning decks.

Thank you to my longtime friend Khai who recently played and won with his Gammamon deck the same week which also wrote an article about it here, if he didn’t played his gamma deck that night, Id probably would have debuted the deck longer.

Thank you to my group of friends from ‘Team Trials’ El, Alvin Tan, John , Ronnie and Yuzu who helped me grind through my Digimon Journey, I hope one day they all too can have this privilege to make an article and lastly thank you to all the people I’ve met and played with to get to this moment.

This game means a lot to me and this article is abit of how I was also able to express abit of gratitude for the game and bonds I’ve made thanks to it. See you next time.

[BT14-LM] Arnold: Green BloomQuart Quantum Deck

Invited Author: Arnold

Country: Indonesia

Introduction

Hello, this is Arnold from Indonesia. This time I want to introduce you to my quantum-bloom deck that I used for the evolution cup.

Deck Building

In addition to the LM set, we have a new friend Quantumon, a level 6 fairy digimon. Because its type is fairy, it can easily be searched with Palmon BT12, and even reduce the cost with Sunflowmon BT13. That’s the reason in this list I used 4 cards for both of them.

With Quantumon we now have access to Shinegreymon Ruin Mode, although we can only evolve it only from her. It’s not a problem because it has protection on its own. So it’s pretty safe to evolve it on battle area and evolve it to ruin mode in the next turn.

For tech cards like tamers and options. I am using only 2 Mimi BT1 and 2 Mimi BT14, and this is the reason why I am not bringing togemon BT14 too much. It's pretty rare to use togemon effect to put tamer, I only use this if my enemy is bricky and he doesn’t have a way to remove my togemon after I suspend it for its own effect or I need an extra search with Mimi BT14. For options, the reason is using 2 memory boosts and 2 training, instead of 4 training.

Because ruin mode cannot be reduced with agility training and mostly to level 6 digimon I use Sunflowmon BT13 to reduce its evolution cost instead of training. Some situations we can use memory boost to gain memory and play lillymon ACE to remove 5000 DP or lower digimon and then evolve it to Quantumon to remove another 1 any digimon in the opponent field. With this we have an ACE digimon that has a protection.

Tactics

In BT14 meta, 50% of meta decks are OTK Decks and that’s the reason I make efforts to put Ruin Mode in the deck to stalling it and in some cases we need to have our own OTK that is where kimeramon will do the job. It’s pretty common to use kimeramon to finishing the game in Bloomlord deck, so i will not explain too much for this. But, the key of every game I played is always Quantumon. I always want to have the 1st evoline to Quantumon to check the opponent's security and remove any option that can mess up our field and in some matches like yellow vaccine, you can just remove level 4 digimon inside security so their Patamon cannot freely evolve with its effect. Another reason is so we have 1 digimon in the battle area that can help Bloomlord to finish the game instead of using kimeramon. If somehow our Quantumon was removed from the field by the opponent's digimon, this is where Lillymon ACE shines. We can easily remove their opponent’s digimon with Lillymon ACE then evolve it to Quantumon. Although sometimes this can only be possible if we have 3 memory and 1 Mimi BT14 or 2 memory and 1 memory boost.

Other than checking security and its protection, Quantumon can recover our own digimon to our security then remove 1 card from the opponent's security, this commonly happens when you have Ajatarmon that call Sunflowmon BT13 and use its effect to reduce Quantumon evo cost. If there is no digimon in the opponent's battle area, we can just put Sunflowmon to our security, to recover and then remove 1 card in the opponent's security.

If you have 2nd turn and enemy gives you 2 memory or more, always put Mimi BT2 if possible, Because even if they try to build evoline in battle area and safe 1 other digimon in raising area, you can just remove the battle area digimon with Quantumon and hatch another digitama with Mimi. As long as they tried to remove our Quantumon by hitting it, it protected 1 of our security from being removed. After that is our next turn we can counter it with either Hydramon, Bloomlord, or maybe another Quantumon.

Matchups

VS Miragegaogamon

I think this is the worst matchup for this deck. Because even if we have 6 or 7 security, they can still OTK if they have enough memory boost or training in the field, although we can try to prevent it to evolve our digimon to Quartzmon or Shinegreymon ruin mode, it’s very hard to comeback when they have evolve to Miragegaogamon BT12, because our digitama forced us to draw when we try to suspend one of our digimon and it make Miragegaogamon BT12 effect triggered move the memory to their side. Sometimes to prevent this you need to do lillymon ACE to Quantumon if possible or hoping your digitama is Argomon.

VS Shinegreymon

For this matchup, It’s pretty much Quartzmon that will always be MVP. The worst case scenario is they evolve to ruin mode after removing all of our digimon in the field. If possible you can do Lillymon ACE to Quantumon, or just make Ajatarmon in the raising area and placing memory boost or training as much as possible so we can evolve to level 6 without passing the turn and try to evolve it again to Shinegreymon Ruin mode or another Quartzmon.

VS Mill Deck

In this matchup, I cannot tell too much because of my opponent's brick and I think you need to be more careful of their option instead of digimon when choosing 1 card from their security, because if i rememmbered correctly their digimon doesn’t have any big removal, instead they use option.

VS Digi Police

This matchup is very tricky, sometimes you can lose when they become Quartzmon before you. Or you can just let Quantumon unsuspended every time you pass the turn and hope you guess the top deck right. So even if they become Quartzmon it cannot suspend Quantumon and you can counter it with another Quartzmon. Other than that, use Lillymon ACE wisely, they can easily remove your Quantumon with DCD Bomb option with 1 cost.

VS Hunter

In this match my deck is very bricky, I don't have any level 3 digimon in the 1st and 2nd turn. If I have to guess how to do a matchup with this deck, I think Quartzmon can really help so much, as long as their tamer doesn’t have 4 types of color. Or you can just become Quantumon and reduce their security, as long as they cannot make Arrester Superior mode to 14k DP with 2 darcmon they cannot destroy Quantumon with digimon effect. Or you can leave Quartzmon alone in the field while making another digimon in the raising area.

Other Matchup:

VS Fenrirloogarmon

I think in this matchup you just need try to put either Terriermon or Pomumon BT9 in battle field while Quantumon reducing their security or if you can Shinegreymon Ruin Mode and put -10k DP to their field i think the game should be safe as long his setup not fast enough and you not bricky.

Conclusion

Overall with the help of Quantumon now we have many ways to play and many ways to be built in the decks. To be honest I was really hopeless when playing Bloomlord deck in BT14. But, when Quantumon is revealed in LM and has a fairy type. I am very hyped to build this deck with it and after much time testing and researching. This is a list I am very comfortable with for now.

I still think every person has a different way of thinking, even if some of the decks have not worked out with you, try to find it yourself. Research, Testing, Rebuilding, rinse and repeat until you find what suits you perfectly and of course luck it’s still part of the game. By any means good luck for everyone out there and always remember to still have fun playing the games.

[BT14] Khai: Gammamon Winning Deck Tournament Breakdown

Invited Author: Khairul Irzan

Country: Brunei

Introduction

Hi everyone Khai here again with another winning list I have brought to a recent Digimon Tournament in Brunei’s Razid Zemar’s Hobby Shop.

Important Cards

We know of Gammamon from the latest Digimon Series Ghost Game and how we have been teased with quite a few cards from different BTs and Promos over the past years, with the introduction of the RB set for the Gammamon evolution lines it finally became a proper deck. Lets break down the RB Cards as below:

Searcher Gammamon and an ess that powers up the Digimon a strong body with "Raid" to attack unsuspended digimons and playing a tamer on evolve, which is quite important as you want the tamer supports.

The aggressive GulusGammamon with its BT10 version both for the attention of poking at opponents and to replay any important Level 3 Gammamons especially the ones with on play

Both Regulusmon and Canonweissmon with the ability gain all effects of Gammamon in their names which are core important pieces for the deck, each with their own special abilities.

Regulusmon able to give any 1 digimon an on deletion to delete the lowest level opponents Digimon on field.
Canoweissmon to be able to warp from a level 3 Gammamon with a gammamon in their evo line.

Arcturusmon, even with an ability on evolve to delete a Digimon, honestly for me the best part of this card which makes it one of the most valuable card in the deck is the ESS. To be able to trash a security after deleting an opponents Digimon is high valued in any aggressive decks.

Next we have these two cards which ive decided to just talk about them together, Siriusmon and Proximamon. Honestly these two cards are good in the deck, not great, just good. You still want them in the deck but they are used for deleting opposing opponents Digimon most of the time and finishers.

LM BOOSTER

Now that we have covered most of the viable cards from RB somehow with the introduction of RB making Gammamon deck one of the playable decks in Digimon TCG, somehow the deck is still not the best deck to go for in the meta. It was still fragile and easily disrupted.

That’s until Bandai introduced the LM booster set. The LM booster brought us reprints of the Gammamon line, as well as all new playable Gammamon pieces that I believe has changed the deck for the better if not close to a Tier 1 Deck in our current Japanese Meta. I will now breakdown to all of you the three best cards from LM that has made Gammamon a top fighting deck:

The new purple Gammamon LM-016.

This card is a menace to opponents. With an ess on deletion to play a free Hiro tamer, it helps us setup early game by evolving to any of the level 4s we have in our decks to give an aggressive early poke.

Now the main ability of this card all turn is to allow it to evolve into any Gammamon in its text from your trash without paying the cost, this is super powerful especially when you combo with the RB Regulusmon and Canoweismon from RB and BT10. Before you know it you can actually evolve up till a Proximamon with the right setup.

So to trigger this ability is to have any of your other Digimons be deleted by an effect, yours or opponents. Easier said than done….but the next card will show how it helps.

Bokomon LM-019

This card is one of the new backbones of the Gammamon deck. You would play 3-4 in the deck. For an uncommon card it does too many things which would atleast make it a rare.

It’s a body that can attack
It’s a top deck searcher that digs top 4 cards and taking any card with gammamon in its text, tamer included.
Its all turn ability that made it such an important card, any Digimon with Gammamon in its text other than Bokomon were to leave the field, delete Bokomon instead to prevent it from leaving.

With this three abilities especially point number 3, it has given the Gammamon deck more protection to removals and battles. This also helps Purple Gammamon to be able to evolve up.

Regulusmon Ace LM-017

One of the greatest Gammamon piece LM booster has brought for the Gammamon deck.

The fact it is an Ace card to allow us to blast digivolve
it has both an on play and when digivolving effect, to put any gammamon in its text from your trash to its ess. Note: Level 6 Arcturusmon is its best friend to put into ESS. Another note is that you can put wezengammamon blocker to the ess to also do a surprise block if you have the inherit abilities of gammamons in your ess too.
Its all turns when you put an ess in to Regulusmon you have a choice of deleting your own or opponents level 4 or lower Digimon, and if you do you can play any of your level 4 digimon from trash, in this scenario you would always want to play the new Bokomon to make sure you will always have that protection from getting removed from field.

This card is an auto 4 in the deck, its effects are too good to not play enough in the deck.

Now that I have broken down the cards that have made the deck to what it is, let me break down my tournament match ups.

TOURNAMENT BREAK DOWN

It was a BO3 tourney format:

1^st game BWG X 2-0

2^nd game D-Brigade 2-0

3^rd game Jellymon 2-1

BWG match:

This is ofcourse one of the most challenging match ups being one of top tier decks in the meta. My strategy against BWG was to ofcourse exploit its weakness which is higher power and direct attacks to avoid them from using their effect deletion prevention.

The key cards to use was promo Gammamon that allows us to attack unsuspended and also the Raid ability. Tamers also came in handy to give Gammamon more power to smash into BWG.

MVP of the game ofcourse had to be Bokomon which had given me so much protection from the massive deletion effects from BWG.

D-Brigade match:

This was also one of the big bosses of the meta, also to mention the pilot had been back to back champion with D-Brigade. The key card here was definitely BT8 Gammamon with its ess to delete 3K power digimons which allowed me to clear his board most of the time.

Once I got to Regulusmons with Arcturusmon ess it was also easy to clear out and raid into his digimons while trashing security to grab the win.

Jellymon Match:

This was a game where its dangerous as I lose the most important key in the Gammamon deck, the ess.

I had lost the first game because I wasn’t too familiar with the deck, one careless attack from me, opponent was able to blast evo into the new LM Level 6 Jellymon, Amphimon and removed my Gammamon lines.

After the first defeat I knew the important card for this match up was to spam Bokomons to protect my digimons. For the next two games my opponents couldn’t remove any my Digimon cause of the protection Bokomon gave, he was forced to instead remove my Bokomons. As long as I had the bokomons I was not worried at all about him bouncing my digimons, and it secured me the win.

Tournament Summary

With me defeating some of the top tier decks that night I believe that Gammamon is able to fight atleast most of the meta decks. Although I have not tested against them yet but I believe the deck would have a hard time facing the 3 big monsters of the meta:

Shinegreymon – because of the DP minuses, Bokomon cannot prevent that, and most of the time if they OTK its over.
MirageGaogamon – we all know the adding cards to hand and losing memory is a pain. Other than that I believe the Bokomons can protect the deck
Sec con – I have no words lol just pray.

Summary

This deck has proven itself a worthy deck for the meta and it should be. I trust anyone who are interested to build the deck will have fun with it and see how interactive it is with all the supports. I myself am looking forward to test more with the deck and its other pieces. Another card id like to test with is Siriusmon Ace. For now keep on playing and keep on testing

EX-5 Review: Animal Colosseum

Dawn and Dusk Digimons unveiled

Apollomon, Dianamon, and GraceNovamon are finally unveiled in this set. This digivolution line has a new mechanic that takes the top card of the Digimon's stack and puts it at its bottom digivolution card to gain some memory or de-digivolves for cheap/free. In a way, this sounds like a re-digivolving process (removing the current LV.X Digimon and re-digivolves into another LV.X Digimon) so we shall call it "re-digivolve" for simplicity.

Essentially, re-digivolving allows the player to not only abuse their Digimon's [When Digivolved] effect, but also cycle their cards in hand. However, the effectiveness of this ability in competitive play remains uncertain. The LV3 rookies Coronamon and Lunamon, as well as the red tamer Koh and Sayo, grant this re-digivolve effect.

The red Coronamon/Apollomon line emphases offence. The LV5 Flaremon has a [On Play]/[When Digivolved] effect that deletes your opponent's Digimon with 5000 DP or lower, while the LV6 Apollomon can ideally delete your opponent's 16000 DP Digimon, with [Blitz] and 2 checks to boot.

The blue Lunamon/Dianamon line emphases defense. Both the LV5 Crescemon and LV6 Dianamon has the unique ability that prevents your opponent's Digimon from suspending (hence cannot attack or activate effects by suspending, which are especially rampant in green).`

At LV7, GraceNovamon can be DNA digivolved from Apollomon and Dianamon at 0-cost for board control, [SA+1] and [Blocker]. But the most interest effect being that he can be very difficult to remove from play.

The blue tamer Sayo & Koh is the secret sauce that allows you efficiently digivolve into GraceNovamon.

Devas, Four Sovereigns, and the God Beast Huanglongmon

After almost 20 sets, Bandai finally unveils the much awaited Fanglongmon (or Huanglongmon).

In EX-5, the four sovereigns are redesigned as ACE cards, and plays with a huge variety of Deva Digimons cards in a unique mechanic. Devas are usually LV5 Digimons that has a unique effect that lets you play another Deva for free into your Breeding Area, so the game plan revolves around playing LV5 Digimons and ACE digivolving into LV6 sovereigns.

The game plan in this deck is to slowly mill and have some board control with your Devas and Sovereigns, and then launch Fanglongmon for further board pressure and for the win. However this deck may give away a lot of memory in the process so it is interesting to see how this mechanic fares competitively.

Lots of Leomon

Many of EX-5's Leomons possess the new [Indomitable] effect, giving them a lot more board protection in today's meta landscape.

The new LV6 HeavyLeomon has high versatility aggression, armed with an arsenal of effects such as [De-Digivolve], return to deck bottom, and unsuspend, while the new LV6 BanchoLeomon is more defensive. Both cards, together with their new LV5 lines, will be welcomed additions to many Leomon decks.

New support for Etemon

Bandai has tried for the past few sets to buff up the iconic Etemon, but this Digimon line has never managed to pull in the spotlight in competitive scene. We believe that this will change in EX-5, with the new LV6 MetalEtemon having immensely powerful board control effects.

Aside from a good Digimon/Tamer deletion effect, MetalEtemon can also recover and manipulate your security stack, and reroute attack target to himself or your security. This effect synergies very well with BT14 Etemon as well as the Suka's Curse option card.

New X-Antibody

With the old BT9 X-Antibody being a little obsolete, a new X-Antibody option card is now included in EX-5. X-Antibody Protoform not only reduces digivolution cost, but most importantly grants your Digimon some much needed board protection. We should see a lot of this card in upcoming decks, and there seems to be a silent synergy with the Magnamon line.

Other notable Digimons

Metalgarurumon X-Antibody is a surprise re-introduction in this set, and has very good balance of offence and defence. This card will serve as a good entree before BT-15 reveals a whole new line of Garurumons. An alternate vintage card design is also included for this card (not sure if it's a high rarity pull).

Mitamamon is a new LV6 yellow Digimon that has a versatile set of offensive/defensive effects. He should work very well with BT6 Mimicmon and BT4 Lucemon.

Merukimon is a new LV6 green Digimon that synergises with the new [Indomitable] effect, but since this is only the first set where this effect is introduced, Merukimon may not see a strong scene yet in decks.

Anubismon is re-introduced in this set having immense synergy with many existing cards/decks. Being able to play any purple Digimon from trash with heavily reduced play cost, makes many hard-play Digimons (especially those with [Digixros]) such as Mervamon and Bagramon/Darkness very playable.

Leviamon is also a much awaited Digimon, being one of the few Seven Demon Lords that has yet to be unveiled. At LV6, he has the ability to delete 2 of your opponent's Digimon, and gains memory for every of your opponent's Digimon deleted (similar to BT3 Malomyotismon).

Summary

In summary, EX-5 unveils a new effect [Indomitable], some new play mechanics coming from the Dawn/Dusk Digimon lines and Sovereigns lines, and subtle buffs to a number of decks through singular (mostly LV6) cards.

I felt that the set can be a little better (many other animal/beast Digimons that can get a buff) and there is an unnecessary 12 slots wasted for Deva cards (much like EX2's Mother Reaper line). But otherwise, there are enough cards in this set to encourage creative deck building!

[BT13-EN] George: 1st place at the PPG Regional with Belphemon

Hello, My name is George, and I’ve been Digimon since the beginning. The deck I used to get 1st place at the PPG Regional as well as 3rd and 10th at the Offline Gencon Regionals is Belphemon.

Matchups

My matchups for the 1st place finish were:

Round 1 – Yellow Hybrid 2-0

Round 2 – Royal Knights 2-0

Round 3 – Royal Knights 2-0

Round 4 – Miragegaogamon 2-1

Round 5 – Shinegreymon 2-1

Round 6 – Shinegreymon 2-1

Round 7 – Shinegreymon 2-0

Round 8 – Royal Knights 2-1

The deck’s strategy is to put your opponent on a clock with sleep mode, forcing them to make decisions they don’t want because Rage Mode will be coming onto the field destroying all their level 5 or lower digimon.

The primary outlet of cycle with Belphemon is drawing and discarding cards to get powerful effects like BT-13 Astamon’s inheritable to play a level 4 or lower digimon on their turn and floating into your other Gizmons when they get deleted. Psychemon is a strong tech into the Royal Knights matchup as it forces them to remove the floodgate or they cannot extend their plays. Nidhoggmon is also another strong tech card as it acts like a Hammer Spark to extend your plays, or a strong defensive card for when your opponent swings while you have Belphemon: Sleep Mode on field, you can discard 2 cards from your hand to stop an attack, and discarding the Nidhogg will surely make them rethink their next move.

Belphemon has relatively positive win percentages against majority of the decks of the format except for Shinegreymon. The biggest tip for playing against Shinegreymon is knowing when to Block / Negate an attack since the deck can output massive damage quickly. Stopping the Marcus Sec +1 attacks is usually the key point in survivability. If you can bring out Sleep Mode / Rage mode as quickly onto the field as possible, the safer you are.

Miragegaogamon feels more like a 60/40, 60 being in Belphemon’s favor, and Blue Flare is the closest 50/50 matchup, as they have tools to stun Rage Mode since it lasts till the end of your opponent’s turn.

For mulligans, I would only mulligan if you have no turn 1 play. If you have no rookie but you have Eyesmon: Scatter Mode, playing it for 4 isn’t horrible as the On Deletion gets you a lot of value.

Shoutout

Shoutout to PPG and PlayTCG for always running smooth tournaments as well as my teammates/ locals who helped me prepare for these big tournaments.

[BT14] A Looga taking 1st Place in Evo Cup

Been a while since I last played in another tournament (thanks to parenthood, the last tourney I joined was an Evo Cup some months ago). But decided to give this new round of Evo Cup a go after my buddy DTCGReview signed me up and my wife's support 🙂

With luck, I managed to top this Evo Cup again so here's sharing my deck and match-ups to hopefully give a bit of insight into my deck 🙂

Introduction

Loogamon was first introduced in Digimon Seekers (2023), and has his full digivolution line and tamer included in BT-14. The Loogamon deck is designed to be a highly efficient one-turn-kill (OTK) deck, with a good degree of board control from his LV5 HelLoogamon.

Build

The standard Loogamon build simply uses 4 copies of everything along his digivolution line, with some assortment of card searchers to stabilise the deck. Mine is no different. However, I optimised the deck to my liking, and thrown in a few tech cards to cover a few weaknesses.

8 copies of LV3: I run 4x of Loogamon and 3x [BT9-071] Dracmon as my main rookies. In all my games, my early-mid game priority is to draw just a Loogamon and his tamer Eiji. Dracmon has a good [On Play] searching effect, allowing me to draw 1 and trash 1 from the revealed 3 cards from deck. I rarely use him for his inherited effect since building my perfect digivolution line from Loogamon is always my priority. I also have no concerns playing only 8 copies of LV3, since we have a mulligan rule and this deck runs many others ways to search and stabilise.

A large pool of LV4: In addition to the 4x Loogarmon and 3x [BT14-072] Fangmon, I also run 2x [BT8-077] BlackGatomon for Rush, 2x [BT13-081] Porcupamon for some LV3 board control (especially against opponent's memory-control rookies), and 2x BlackGatomon Uver for trash control (against mirror decks or purple decks that can pick up from trash). An optional tech card I run is the hybrid Digimon Loweemon, which is not a bad LV4 when used along my standard Looga digivolution line (albeit not having Loogarmon's inherited +1 memory) but can be ultra flexible in rare cases when I needed a last hit or needed to grow from my tamer Eiji.

8 copies of LV5: Instead of playing 4x SolLoogarmon and 4x HelLoogarmon, I dropped Hel to 3 copies to accommodate a [BT8-084] Kimeramon. Kimeramon is my LV5 tech card that works incredibly well with Looga's OTK format, since the LV6 FenrirLoogarmon will swarm your board with LV4s that are either suspended by alliance, or just doing nothing due to summoning sickness. Kimeramon is the only 0-cost play (via jogress) to deal the last hit, wiping a swarm of 2000-3000 DP Digimons, or ramp to another Fenrir.

4x of LV6 FenrirLoogarmon is standard, and I also play 1x Dexmon (a must in this meta) and 1x Shinegreymon Ruin Mode for the occasional scenario when I need to buy another turn.

Tamers: 4x Eiji and 4x Analog Boy are also standard in any Loogamon deck. Analog Boy works wonders with HelLoogarmon, and is the main searcher for this deck.

Options: Aside from the standard 4x [P-108] Wisdom Training, I also play 1x Mist Memory Boost for more delay and search, and 1x Calling From Darkness to retrieve any missing pieces for my digivolution line.

Gameplan

Mulligan: I always try to go for a starting hand with at least a LV3 and another searcher card such as Analog Boy or Wisdom Training. Avoid having too many tech cards (LV4 hybrid, LV5 Kimera, LV7 Ruin) in starting hard to avoid suffocation.

Early game: I use searchers to find my LV3 Loogamon. Analog Boy is ideal as I will reveal 3, keep the Loogamon and trash the rest (including tamer Eiji). I try to build my trash to at least 3x LV3/LV4 Digimons, and have at least 1x Wisdom Training on my board.

I will try to drag the game if I have a less-than-ideal hand/trash. I use Porcupamon for some LV3 board control, and HelLoogarmon for anything that's LV6 or below. HelLoogarmon picks up LV3 Loogamon from trash when deleted so I usually do not hesitate to sacrifice any early Loogamon that I draw. The key with HelLoogarmon is to drag my game, stabalizes my hand, and builds my trash.

Mid game: This will be my endgame. My pre-requisite are usually (1) Eiji in hand or trash, (2) Loogamon in breeding area, (3) 3 copies of LV3/LV4 dark animal in trash, (4) complete digivolution line to LV6, and (5) enough memory.

If I have Looga's ideal digivolution line in hand (LV3/Looga, LV4/Loogar, LV5/Sol, LV6/Fenrir), then all I need is 3 starting memory. If I have a Wisdom Training or Mist Memory Boost in play, then all I need will be just 1 starting memory!

For OTK, assuming I have 3 starting memory (or 1 memory and 1x Wisdom Training), I move LV3/Looga to the battle area and puts Eiji under him from hand/trash for +1 memory. Digivolves to LV4/Loogar and then LV5/Sol and then playing a LV4 dark animal from trash for free using his [When Digivolved] effect. The inherited effect from LV3/Looga and LV4/Loogar will fetch me another +2 memory, effectively costing only 2 memory going up to LV5/Sol.

I will then declare attack on opponent's security by using [Alliance] on my other dark animal, and trashing LV6/Fenrir to gain another +1 memory, and then subsequently digivolving to the trashed LV6/Fenrir using my Digitama's inherited effect. Fenrir's [When Digivolved] effect will then play another 3x dark animals from trash, and unsuspends thanks to LV5/Sol's inherited effect. This should put me at -2 memory (but my turn will not end thanks for Fenrir's effect), 2 security checks with huge DP due to [Alliance], an unsuspended LV6/Fenrir, and 4 other dark animal Digimons (1 suspended by Alliance).

Fenrir can declare attack again (with Alliance) and deletes an opponent's LV7 or lower Digimon to unsuspend himself, and then attack again (with Alliance or for win). If all these attacks still fail to succumb my opponent, then a last hit from BlackGatomon (with Rush) or Kimeramon should do the trick.

Match Ups

I went with this deck for my recent Evo Cup, and this deck is seemingly stable against almost all my opponents. Deep respect to all my opponents as they are all very graceful and amazing players.

Unfortunately, due to the OTK nature of my deck, I cannot always remember what has transpired in all my matches. This deck is pretty unforgiving when properly setup, so it is really standard OTK play unless my game/deck was heavily countered.

GAME 1: Green Bloomlord Quartzmon

Can't remember much, as I think Looga is a tad bit more aggressive than green. That little bit of tamer setup (Mimi and Yoshino) wasted enough memory for Looga to setup preconditions, and there is nothing in green's security to stop my OTK.

GAME 2: Lilith Loop Ruin

When the Lilith Loop deck uses the Guilmon line to mill, plays to Looga's favour. My trash is easily setup by my opponent's milling, and I timed my not-so-ideal Fenrir build to move out and delete my opponent's board on the turn that he moved his Digimon from breeding area. I wiped his security but couldn't land the last hit, but made sure he does not have any Digimon that can attack (nothing in his breeding area) on his next turn thus preventing any Lilith/Ruin damage. In his case, the most he could do is Ruin's [When Digivolved] effect of a blanket -5000 DP, which only wipes out a handful of my Digimons (my BlackGatos and Loogars are 6000 DP).

GAME 3: Mother Sec Con

Technically a potentially difficult match up for Looga, but my opponent did not have anything too dangerous in security (mostly tamers and recovery) so Fenrir just sailed through.

GAME 4: Pata Sec Con

Had my opponent not had his hand bricked, this would be a horrible game for me. He did not manage to draw his LV3 for most of his game, throwing out a BT1 MagnaAngemon for recovery on his first turn, and then into BT14 Seraphimon. Sometime into mid game he had BlackSeraphimon in play as well, with about 9 securities. I had to build into HelLoogarmon twice to control his board (since Fenrir would just be de-digivolved or deleted by BlackSeraphimon), and had my early Fenrir deleted by checking into his Heaven's Judgement (-12000 DP), and then later had my board wiped by his Dexmon. All his board control did little to my security, but exhausted my deck.

This game eventually dragged into time call, and I won by strand of luck having 1 card more than his security. The final turn ending with me drawing my last card in deck, and with my Fenrir/Eiji blocking his Dexmon's security attack in my opponent's attempt to equalise our security count. A big respect to his game!

GAME 5: Mugen

Surprisingly Mugen decks are doing very well in this meta (probably thanks to the new LV3 Commandramon). My opponent was already building into his LV5 in breeding area, while I was just seemingly still setting up my pieces. Before I could complete my setup there was already a Chaosdramon in the battle area, but equipped slightly defensively (with attack-active and trash-sec but without Sec+1 or Piercing). I used Porcupamon to delete another of his LV3 Commandramon in order to manage his board size to just 1 slow Digimon (which his Chaosdra eventually deletes and trashes my security).

By the time I had my pieces, I have 2-3 security left and my opponent about 3 security left, with a Hagurumon, Blocker HoverEspimon, Chaosdramon, and an Analog Man tamer. He chokes me at 1 memory but I managed to digivolve into Fenrir with help from 1x Wisdom Training, deleting Haguru for a total of 3 attacks with Alliance (1 was blocked by HoverEspi and another redirected to Chaosdramon) dealing 2 security checks, and 1 more security check by my rushing BlackGato, and then finally a final hit using Kimera.

Summary

Looga is one of the most potent OTK decks ever since Grankuwagamon was nerfed, but not without weaknesses. For one, he may succumb to some memory-control rookies, a Ruin mode's blanket -DP, or some sec con decks. However, with some proper tech cards and luck this deck should still be able to ride well in this meta.

A big thank you to all the amazing players with their variety of decks, and apologies to my opponents who lucked out in a BO1 match. Shoutout to Sentinel Games for hosting a successful 32-man Evo Cup! And all the best to you in your upcoming games!

[BT14] Khairul Irzan: Lilithloop Mill Deck

Invited Author: Khairul Irzan

Country: Brunei

Introduction

Hi everybody, Khai here again with another interesting Purple deck. I bring the ever famous overly restricted Lilithloop combo deck that I have referenced from an Evo Cup Winner in Japan:

This time it is not the usual strategy where you get multiple attacks from looping Ceberusmon, but instead we are going for the mill strategy with the Guilmon-Growlmon-wargrowlmon line up.

With the milling strategy and Lilithmon looping options, The Lilithmon Loop Deck gains incredible momentum where you can repeatedly send cards from your opponent's deck stack to their trash. This aggressive mill loop weakens your opponent's ability to find their potential answers and finishers away.

This Deck has a potential to end games as early as turn 3 with the right setup.

Important Cards

The Searchers:

These options help you set up your combo, drawing cards, choosing the potential pieces to your hand, and will remain on field to have enough memory and discount to help your Digimon to evolve and combo off.

The Mill package:

The main wincons of the deck Growlmon + WarGrowlmon is the guarantee mill 5 cards which helps us get the win.

Growlmon EX3 – our answer to Digimon memory blockers, played by effect blockers, and if non we mill 2 cards

Growlmon Ex4 – our guarantee mill 2 cards but most important the digivolving and ess effects to return Growlmon in its name (in this case we usually choose Wargrowlmon)

Wargrowlmon Ex3 – The star level 5 of the deck, the powerful mill 3 and to play a free Guilmon from hand or trash, this allows us to repeat the evolution lines.

Utilize the Growlmon and Wargrowlmon mill loop in tandem to disrupt your opponent's strategy and chip away at their decks for wincons.

The Loop package

the Call to Darkness tactic acts as a powerful trump card for this deck. By activating "Call to Darkness," you can return up to 2 purple Digimon cards from your trash, including the menacing Lilithmon herself. With lilitmon returning 2 options on evolve, This allows you to consistently reuse key pieces, maintain a loop as long as you have enough memory.

We also have the new Lament of Friendship from the ST16 Purple TD. It acts as a mini call to darkness but whats important is that it can return any 1 Digimon. Which makes returning Avengekidmon a possible target to ensure you don’t deck out.

Strategy

The deck is all about holding back. Ensure you have your level 3 ready to move up anytime, but spend all your first few turns setting up Delay options on to the field, this is to guarantee enough memory gaining to fire up your combo.

Once ready and enough resources in trash field and hand we proceed to combo off.

The First 5 Mills:

Any Level 3 -evolve-> Growlmon Ex4

Mill 2 cards and return any growlmon in its name to hand (in this case wargrowlmon)

Evolve to Wargrowlmon

Mill 3 cards play a guilmon from trash or hand (choose hand whenever possible to maintain cards in trash)

Now you have a guilmon ready and a wargrowlmon ready to evolve into a Lilithmon.

The Loop:

With your trash ready abuse Jack Raid as you want to have enough memory.

You can then evolve to Lilithmon and return 2 options: priority is always jackraid and call to darkness.

If you have call to darkness in hand then you may return two jack raids to ensure you have the memory gaining.

You can now start using call to darkness to sacrifice your own Lilithmon to return a Lilithmon and a growlmon to hand, not Wargrowlmon! Why?

Growlmon EX4 ess can return any growlmon in its name, pick wargrowlmon. So with one call to darkness you can potentially return 3 of your important pieces!

With the ready guilmon from our previous wargrowlmon we can now repeat the process, HENCE LOOP!

The Math

In one turn we can usually mill opponents out 15-20 cards depending how we set up for our turn one.

For opponent:

Setting up 5 security + 5 cards in hand. So that’s 40 cards in the deck. Depending how the meta decks now have so many cheap evolutions and searches, potentially they will draw out their deck leaving atleast 28 cards in their deck by their turn 2 or 3.

Match Ups

I was surprise I went for a full 5-0 win and manage to mill out all my opponents.

GAME 1: Yellow Red Hybrid Control

My opponent was aggressive in this match up, I had to swing in to his hybrids and ensure he wont aggro me out. With his low cost evolving he manage to draw a lot of cards and this help me to set up the loop engine properly by turn 7 and win. Tip: deleting a Digimon with overflow helps us out a lot LOL.

GAME 2: Dorbrickmon OTK

My opponent has been a known champion locally with his OTK Dorbrick, unforturnately he bricked and couldn’t set up properly so he was force to use options and hard call coredramons to keep drawing his deck, which was an advantage to me as I want him to thin his deck. On turn 2 I manage to mill atleast 10 cards against him which made him loose a lot of his key pieces, and by my turn 3 I was able to finish it off.

GAME 3: Loogamon

Now this was a hard match up for lilithloop, as milling a loogamon deck is like a godsend for them as they want their pieces in trash. Unfortunately he had his pieces to cheat out his digimons, but they were the wrong ESS which couldn’t help him gain memory to maintain his turn. Opponent also made a major misplay with forgetting to place his EIji Tamer under his Digimon.

With his card draws and trashing options helping me thin his deck, I was able to mill my opponent out by my turn 4. I could have ended it at turn 3 but I chose to kill his level 5 digimon without noticing he had 2 analog boy on field.

GAME 4: Royal Knights

This was a hard match up as RK does not have much digging other than Dynasmon. My opponent did play one dynasmon atleast which in a way helped. I had no choice but go for an early mill to hopefully mill out my opponents key Knights. It proved to be a viable strategy as I was able to mill out my opponent from all his Omnimons to prevent OTK. Memory control was also a key strategy against RK.

GAME 5: SECCON

A deck I have dreaded to go against. Funny enough opponent knew what I was playing so decided to heal a lot during his early turns to prevent me from going for an aggro strategy. So I decided to go ahead an mill him out. Lucky enough I was able to hit most of his own avengekidmons which prevented him from returning his own cards. He played down multiple dexmons to prevent me from gaining the upperhand but I was able to play around use the dedigivolution to my advantage. I failed to mill him out when I started to initiate the loop, I was forced to play my avengekidmon to buy an extra turn and surprisingly manange to combo loop again the next turn.

SUMMARY

Overall this deck was a menance to all my opponents who were not ready for it. It definitely is a meta slayer in a way. I was actually looking forward to face greymon decks or D-brigades.

I think the worst match ups for the Lilithloop would be Beelzemon (since there is so many when trash from deck effects which helps the beelze deck abuse and also mess with the combo) and Miragegaogomon (the when opponent adds card by effect and gain memory for each card in hand will definitely mess up the combo)

I hope this article helps all of you understand the deck better and I must say it is not an easy deck. I had to grind and practice alone for a whole day to prepare myself for the tourney. Practice makes perfect.

[BT14] Garry: MirageGaogamon with ZudomonAce, a strong deck for Evo Cup

Invited Author: Garry Yeung (won Evo Cup)

Country: Indonesia

Introduction

Hi, Garry from Indonesia here. Finally, after a while we got a new prize for Evolution Cup (BlackWargreymon) and the event starts in the early meta of BT14 Blast Ace. Since we got new mechanic (Blast Evolution) and (Counter) timing that really change the game, I will give you my opinion and what I know about the meta and my MirageGaoGamon deck.

First of all my opinion might change in the future since we are still in the early meta of BT14 and people will try new things to counter the meta deck. When BT 14 got teased I thought that the new cards won’t help MirageGaogamon too much, but after some test I think some new card really help MirageGaogamon to become a better deck.

Deck Building

Digitama (Lvl2)

Bukamon BT14-002 (x4):

This Digitama is the best upgrade that MirageGaogamon can have since Mirage always have problem with DP and to give Jamming to Mirage before we need a tamer (Nikolai Petrov BT11-090) that is hard to play since there is no timing to play it. It’s really easy to get to the Digitama condition to get Jamming we can just bounce all the enemy that have more source than our Digimon. It’s also good to push early when the enemy brick and can’t deal with our Rookie (Lvl3) or Champion (Lvl4) that will keep hitting with jamming early. For now bringing this digitama is the best choice for Mirage deck.

Rookie (Lvl3)

Gaomon EX4-015 (x4): I only play one type of Gaomon and to me this one is the most powerful one, It can give you easy memory+1 and can help adding hand to your enemy for another extra attack when we already in MirageGaogamon Burst Mode.

ModokiBetamon (BT6-021) and Syakomon (BT5-021)

Since there’s a lot of deck that requires to bring Memory Boost and Training cards this is the best way to control them from getting free memory. But you need to let it go when you know the enemy can easily handle Modoki or Syako just use it to evolve and place a tamer or you can hit the enemy since you are probably still Jamming from the Digitama. Both ratio of this card can be change depends on your local meta.

Gomamon BT14-020 (x4): This new Gomamon really help you to get rid of the enemy Digimon and Blocker. Since we can trash 1 Digivolution Card at start of main phase we can easily get rid of enemy’s Level 5 (Ultimate) with Zudomon after. If you’re facing deck with many blocker and you can’t get rid all of them like Commandramon deck you can use this Digimon other effect (can’t be blocked for the turn) to make their Blocker useless. In my opinion you can reduce this card to make slot for Gaomon BT11-020, but since I already have many searcher from the option I play only this card.

Champion (Lvl4)

GaoGamon (EX4-017) and GaoGamon (BT13-025): This is the usual Lvl 4 (Champion) for MirageGaoGamon deck and not much to say since both always really good with the deck. GaoGamon (EX4-017) easily handle Rookie that blocking your Memory Boost or Training card and GaoGamon (BT13-025) can play Thoma H. Norstein for free.

I always bring one or two Hybrid in a mono-colour deck especially if you need to play an Evolution Line as your win condition. Right now, Lanamon (BT12-024) probably the best Hybrid for this deck since you can add Gaomon (EX4-015) for extra memory later when you evolve. You can also play Kumamon (BT7-021) since it goes well with the new Zudomon ACE (BT14-026).

Ultimate (Lvl5)

MachGaoGamon (EX4-019): I always bring this MachGaoGamon since I want to control my opponent’s board and the source effect goes well with MirageGaoGamon BT11-033 (unlike the other MachGaoGamon you need to attack first with Lvl5).

Zudomon ACE (BT14-026): One of the best ACE Card in the game, I was surprised to see the price when the set is released since it’s really cheap for a really strong card. With this card surprisingly we can easily handle the new Commandramon and even Greymon X-Antibody sources effect. It also good to remove enemy’s Digimon and goes well with Gomamon (BT14-020) and the option card Sourai (EX3-067). Just make sure your enemy can’t easily destroy your Digimon with ACE or you will lose some memory with Overflow.

Mega (Lvl6) and (Lvl7)

MirageGaogamon (BT11-033) and MirageGaogamon Burst Mode (BT13-033):

You can never go wrong with this MirageGaogamon and Burst Mode simply one of the best Mega in the game since released and with the easy access to Jamming these cards just go nuts. When you evolve to them usually the enemy will have no more Digimon left in the field. For other option you can always bring MirageGaogamon BT13-031 to remove the enemy’s tamer and play your own tamer for free but it always depends on your local meta because sometimes there are deck that don’t have any tamer and you don’t want a dead card in your hand.

Tamer

Touma H. Norstein (BT4-093) and (BT13-097)

Most people at first thought that MirageGaogamon deck really need it’s tamer like ShineGreymon Deck but after testing with the deck a lot you can really reduce both of this Tamer since we only really need one for easy access to Burst Mode and even if you miss the Tamer you can always just evolve normally to Burst Mode and put the Tamer later when you get it from the draw, most of the time you can play the Tamer again since we play many Memory Boost and both of our Mega (Lvl6 and Lvl7) literally gain memory when evolve.

Option

Blue Memory Boost (P-036) and Mental Training (P-104)

This deck main searcher, you really should spam this card until your setup is ready for an OTK move or clean your enemy board. In this deck you can get rid of the rookie that block them very easily.

Ice Wall (EX1-068)

This card is limit for a reason, always good to bring this to hold deck with multiple attacks (Commandramon, MirageGaogamon, FenriLoogamon, etc).

Sourai (EX3-067) and Full Moon Meteor Impact (BT13-105)

Sourai can hold against ShineGreymon and Commandramon deck it can always help and goes well with Gomamon and Zudomon from BT14. I bring one Full Moon Meteor Impact (BT13-105) just to spice up my security cards and its not a very costful card in hand since in the late game it will be very cheap to play.

Matchups

Usually I do a tournament report but for today’s article I will tell you my opinion’s about some matchup with this MirageGaogamon deck. If you are interested in my matchup you can go to my Twitter (@garryyeung), I already play 2 Evolution Cup (32 Player) and went to the finals in both of them.

Bad Matchups

Four Great Dragon Loop

I think Venusmon (BT10-042) is one of the worst match up you can get when you play MirageGaogamon deck and with the Four Great Dragon loop with Holydramon (EX3-036) you can never use your When Evolving and When Attacking effect like in forever and the Security Attack -1 and -2 really hurts Mirage. The way to handle this is to rely on the new BT14 Gomamon and Zudomon effect to get rid of the Venusmon (BT10-42) or play the Full Moon Meteor Impact right away before the enemy’s board getting uncontrolled.

Security Control

MirageGaoGamon have no protection unless you play the one from BT13 that only have Evade and unlike other deck that have protection (can prevent from leaving the field) this deck is weak against Security Control deck with have many option card to check in security. Don’t play ACE card if you can or you will have to pay the overflow everytime.

Blocker with Breath of the Gods

Such an underrated card for now, I think we will see more of this card coming into the meta since so many ShineGreymon and MirageGaogamon. Easily counter them by gaining reboot and can’t have its DP reduced or be returned to deck or hand until opponent’s next turn. Even the security effect really preventing Burst Mode deck to finish the game since it’s stop Digimon to attack player for the turn. Might see this card play in Commandramon or Alphamon deck.

Other Matchups

With the addition of Bukamon, Gomamon, and Zudomon I think the deck rarely have other bad matchup, though in my experience playing mirror (MirageGaogamon vs MirageGaogamon) is very hard since the one with the better hand can easily finish the game first.

Conclusion

With addition of ACE card, I think the game become much more interactive for players and it’s interesting how they will take the counter timing in the future with new cards. For the meta itself, in my opinion it will not change very much, ShineGreymon, MirageGaogamon, FenriLoogamon, Commandramon and WarGreymon or BlackWarGreymon will still dominate the game.

I hope many players will try testing other deck since there are still a lot of potential in other cards and I hope to see more Patamon BT14-033 for the Yellow Vaccine or Mastemon deck and Palmon BT14-044 for the Bloomlordmon or Rosemon deck. There’s also a potential of black deck slaughtering the meta with Breath of the Gods from (BT3-105).

Overall really excited to see how the meta grow and and with many new events coming (Magnamon Cup and Ultiamte Cup) I hope we see many new deck joining the meta. Thank You for reading my article, hopefully I can share a lot more in the future and goodluck. Don’t forget to follow me at Twitter @garryyeung.