#licence to otk

As anon pointed out in that ask a moment ago, getting the deck to work with 40 cards is proving very difficult. The SPYRAL deck can’t function purely on SPYRAL cards: they don’t alone have any means of getting cards into the grave to maintain Resort nor set up for Sleeper, they are excellent at clearing away boards going second but not exemplar at consistently setting up boards going first and they have some important normal summons spread between them all that usually one or the other card takes up.

So! It’s looking necessary to do one of two things: run a 60 card build or run Sleeper Turbo.

The latter build incorporates the former, but with the added benefit of the Zoodiac engine which synergises nicely with a whole lot of your SPYRAL cards and allows you to run Master Plan and the MISSIONs, as well as make full use of Foolish Burial Goods. As for the Sleeper combo itself, I didn’t come up with it, so I’ll link it here to save me typing it out and attribute it to the source I got it from. The combo is quite strong and only requires two cards - either Instant Fusion or Gofu and either Resort or Terraforming - and has potential to get even stronger with some more development. I just know we can use that extra special summon from Ancient Fairy Dragon for something great, like a tuner to make Crystal Wing or a Zoodiac to make a Drident, or even just an Agent that you called wrong so your Utility Wire can work.

There are a whole heap of cards that start off your combos in the sixty card deck - The Predaplant engine, Terrortop, Barrage, Resort, Machine Duplication, Ratpier - so while it does have a higher chance of bricking, the potential power output is drastically higher. With the right combination of cards, I’ve gone from five cards in hand to 11 cards on field with 3 or 4 still in hand. The Sleeper build trades off this power for consistency of a strong play that your opponent simultaneously will have difficulty removing but also threatens their board severely. The new cards have added a destructive boss monster, an incredibly protection/finisher card, non-targeting removal and a quick effect retrieval/revival card, all of which are searchable.

With regard to the upcoming meta, True Dracos are by far going to be the most threatening deck to compete against. Master Peace is difficult for this deck to overcome, it essentially requires you to either resolve a Drone on an Agent/Sleeper or make a rank4 out to it, with them likely destroying the first attempt you make at outing it. True Kings will also be something to contend with, as VFD will make completing your plays quite difficult, but not impossible. Zoodiacs and Zoodiac variants will still be around, especially with the addition of Lyca, but I feel now that SPYRALs will be able to contend with pure variants without too much issue.

I still have a lot of testing to do, and am happy to look at any suggestions or answer any questions regarding the direction SPYRALs are heading in, so feel free to hit me up! Sneak Peek is in a few days time so I’ll let you know how it goes~

(viahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PW4KGGDoUs)

‘Ey check out my handsome face and watch me show off my SPYRAL deck and whack my friend in the stomach.

Guess who just got top 8 at a Regional with his SPYRALs~? Hoo boy you better believe it was me.

The deck list is up there for you all to look at, but I’ll go into my tournament report below. Also at some point I’ll probably make a deck profile with my friends which might be enjoyable to watch and I can explain all the card choices and stuff~

Round 1 vs Spirit/Kaiju OTK, 2-1 Win

Despite about 90 people being in this tournament, I somehow managed to get paired against three of my friends throughout the day, including in round one. My friend was playing a really silly deck that still had some nice potential. Essentially it relied on using Aratama and Nikitama to make rank 4s and Nikitama was really good for drawing cards (you could also send it with Brilliant Fusion) and then Pre-Preparation of Rites would get out Shinobaron Peacock which cleared all the monsters OR Kaiju Slumber would clear out all the monsters and then Peacock would bounce the monster you summoned to the opponent’s side and OTK with something you then normal summoned. Essentially he did this to me game 1 but games 2 and 3 he didn’t and a combination of Terrortop and Misty + Agent ended in victory for me.

Round 2 vs Synchron Quasar, 2-1 Win

I did get OTKed one of these games, despite using Ghost Ogre to hit Hyper Librarian, but the other games I held off with the Zoodiac engine keeping his plays in check one game and using Agent + a couple of Quik-Fixes to keep my Utility Wires coming to hold him off before drawing Ratpier and winning from there.

Round 3 vs 60 Card Infernoid/Zoodiac, 2-0 Win

Another round against my friend, this game was weird.He goes first and opens Ratpier which he does the combo with and he makes Bujintei Kagutsuchi with the two Rats he summons. The 5 cards he mills are allspells and the rest of the cards in his hand are either backrow or Infernoids he can’t summon because he literally has milled 0 Infernoids. I clear the board eventually, he stops me with Spiritual Swords of Concealing Light which I later get rid of with Tough and Agent. Then he has an empty field and 7000 life points while I have Drident with Whiptail attached, Agent and Misty on the field, Tough in my graveyard and Big Red and Speedroid Taketomborg in hand. I’m trying to figure out how to get 7000 damage on board, but Drident + Agent + Misty + Tough is only 6500, or 6900 if I make Misty and Agent into Gagaga Samurai, but then I realise that Tough is a Wind and I can special summon Taketomborg from hand for the extra 600 damage! But just before I go committing to any plays, I check his graveyard and see the Spiritual Swords and comment to myself “ah damn you can stop the OTK with this anyway”, which prompts my friend to look at the graveyard and go “oh I completely forgot about that”, so my reminder delayed my win by a turn :P

Then game 2 I opened Artifact Lancea, Maxx “C”, 2 Interrupted Kaiju Slumbers and Torrential Tribute and think “gee this is terrible”. My friend opens an equally awkward hand of Fairy Tail Snow, Zoodiac Whiptail, a couple of Infernoids he can’t summon and something else I can’t remember. I drop the Maxx “C” on the summon of Whiptail (which I probably shouldn’t have, I was planning on using Slumber anyway) and he passes where I then Slumber him after drawing something unhelpful. He’s forced, next turn, to use Infernoid Harmadik to get over my Kaiju and then summons Snow and starts beating me down with that. To which I then, next turn, respond with my OTHER Slumber and, weirdly enough, end up winning with Kaiju beatdown. He never even got enough cards into the graveyard to use Snow’s effect.

Round 4 vs Zoodiac, 2-1 Win

One of the great advantages about playing a rogue deck is taking advantage of the fact that your opponent has no idea what your deck and the individual cards do. He goes first and makes Drident with backrow and Emeral, but by using Assault, Resort, Tough and Agent, I’m able to break through his initial board and clear out his backrow, allow me to then go through the Zoodiac part of my deck and establish a board. He hits some wrong cards with Drident and I eventually overpower him and he scoops.

I forget how game 2 goes, but I think it went something along the lines of “he does Zoodiac things and I don’t get cards to out it hard enough”

Game 3 is great, we both fight through a bunch of each others’ resources, until I’m down to Quik-Fix, a set Starlight Road, a Drone that I searched and another Big Red in hand, while he has very little. He attacks over Quik-Fix with, I think, Whiptail that I stop from going into an Xyz with Dimensional Barrier. I get out something bigger than the Whiptail and also summon Drone which lets me see his top three cards, a Cosmic Cyclone, a Tenki and a Twin Twister. I know I want the Twin Twister on top, but I pretend to be thinking long and hard about the cards that I see to give my opponent the idea that I don’t want him to use them. I then Big Red to get back the Quik Fix and he drops the Maxx “C”, which I feign annoyance at, search a Big Red, attack him for a little bit of damage, set the Big Red as a bluff and pass my turn. He draws the Twin Twister off Maxx “C” and the Cyclone for turn, then goes to Twin Twister my two set cards which of course gets the biggest smile from me as I flip the Starlight Road. He tries to make a play next turn and attacks into my Drone, which I tribute for its effect to increase Quik-Fix’s atk in the damage step, meaning he can’t do any damage. We’re in time by this point, so he concedes.

Round 5 vs Artifact Zoodiac, 1-2 Loss

Another friend of mine, although not as close as my other three friends, I did know his deck beforehand and he went on to win the tournament, so I can’t be too upset I lost I guess? The slightly bothersome bit was that he got a game loss for a decklist error and I still lost despite having the lead anyway, haha.

So game 1 immediately went to me, game 2 I figured out a pretty troublesome fact about the Artifact variant that being it’s much harder for me to play through backrow with cards like Tough and Agent because they wantme to destroy Sanctums and Artifacts. Despite this, I do fight through a Drident and Emeral board and hit a correct backrow, but when I start my Zoodiac play with Barrage he flips Torrential Tribute on the summon of my Broadbull and I’m left with nothing, so he makes a big comeback afterwards and finishes me with Gagaga Samurai.

Game 2 I open really mediocre, with Agent, Taketomborg, Starlight Road, SPYRAL Resort and something else I can’t remember, might have been Big Red. I blind call Agent wrong so I can’t go into any rank 4 plays and have to pass just sitting on Starlight Road. He opens Terrortop and is able to go into the Zoodiac plays and also sets 4 backrow. My turn doesn’t get any better and he flips Sanctum in the end phase to summon his Beagalltach which then destroys his set Scythe. He makes Pleiades and, with his existing Zoodiac board, attacks me for game.

Round 6 vs Atlantean Mermail, 0-2 Loss

I can’t remember the last time I beat Water actually, something about the deck’s sheer explosive, OTK potential just makes it hard for SPYRALs to deal with. It’s like, the OTK power they output just overrides the defensive capabilities I can make with the deck.

It also probably didn’t help that I didn’t open any Zoodiac cards, so I couldn’t even get out a Drident, but oh well. I get OTKed game 1 and game 2 I open bleh and can’t break his board of Toad, Mizuchi and Megalo.

Round 7 vs Metalfoe/Zoodiac/Kozmo, 2-0 Win

Final round and I’m paired against my friend for the fourth time today, which kinda sucks. He goes first, opening pretty decently but I break through it and set up Misty, Agent, Invoker and Drident, which keeps his Pendulum scales from going up and nets me the win.

Game 2 is pretty ridiculous: I accidently sided wrong. So normally, if I expect to be going 2nd, I’ll side out my Zoodiac engine for the Kaiju engine. Over the course of the day though, I figured I only ever could get out Master/make proper use of Assault with the Zoodiac engine, so I decided to side that out to make room for more cards that would help in the matchup. In doing so, I accidentally left in 1 Ratpier, my Whiptail and 1 Barrage. So he goes first and made a first turn board of DOG Fighter, Tincan, a Metalfoes card, a set Counter and complete Pendulum scales. I open Kaiju Slumber, Radian, Terrortop and some other irrelevant cards and think “gee I can get over the board but he still has Pendulum scales so next turn he’ll just do everything all over again”. Regardless, I activate Kaiju Slumber to wipe the board (after first summoning Radian over the DOG Fighter) and then, as I’m going through my deck to get out the Kaijus, I see that I’ve left my Rat and Whiptail in the deck and have an internal moment of “holy crap I can make Drident I accidentally might have won this” and then normal summon the Terrortop, search the Taketomborg and do a liiiitttlleee bit of Zoodiac shenanigans to get out Drident. I hit one scale during my turn, force him to make suboptimal plays the next and then draw Resort which gives me the massive resources necessary to maintain my lead and bring the duel to a close.

I finished up in 8th place, thanks to excellent breakers and a solid win-loss ratio, earning me a fancy Zoodiac mat and my invite to WCQs!

So the first thing you can probably notice here is that I sure am siding a Zoodiac engine. My logic was that I wouldn’t win every die roll and there would be games where I’d go second, thus I built the deck to go second since the Kaijus and SPYRALs are both really good at playing through fields. Then, if I lost a game, I’d side the Kaijus out for the much stronger Zoodiac engine and opt to go first, meaning I’d have an engine that is much more synergistic with the SPYRALs and also a powerful engine in general that was guaranteed to get its plays off because I was going first (well, more likely, plenty of handtraps still exist.)

I felt this logic  was quite sound, however, my problem lay with the fact that I only own one Zoodiac Barrage (and I borrowed the second Barrage, Drident and Bull off a friend, although having tested I believe I only need 1 Bull anyway). Having only one Barrage meant that I only saw it once the whole day (I opened Rat a couple of times) but Barrage really makes the whole combo come together and having only two in the deck hindered the consistency a fair bit. The rest of my side deck I didn’t use that much, the Lancea’s I used once to good effect against ABC but otherwise didn’t come up against any Infernoids and the Twin Twisters and Ghost Ogres were very effective against Metalfoes and Metalfoe variants, as was Ghost Ogre, D.D. Crow and Veiler nice to use against D/D/Ds (although I only ever got to resolve a Ghost Ogre against D/D/Ds, the theory was good.) Solemn Warning was my choice for a replacement to Barrage because, while it couldn’t do what Barrage did, it did put an effective stop to a single play of the opponent’s turn. If I owned a third Dimensional Barrier, I’d have probably used that instead though. Thinking back on it I probably should’ve gone with Vanity’s Emptiness, but it ultimately didn’t really matter because what I’d reallywant would be a third Barrage.

The extra deck is solid, the only thing I’d change is the second Broadbull for something else, maybe an Abyss Dweller? There are heaps of good rank 4 options so I’m not too fussy and I’m sure I’ll come to the optimal decision soon enough. SPYRAL Resort is really exceptional in this variant for putting back your extra deck monsters or the Zoodiac monsters not shuffled back by Emeral, meaning that it can repeatedly make use of the Zoodiac engine, as well as Drident comboeing really nicely with SPYRAL MISSION - Assault and SPYRAL Master Plan.

As for the main deck, I was actually really impressed with the effectiveness of the Kaiju engine, however, I did struggle sometimes with heavy Kaiju hands, even going second. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I might flip the two engines; main the Zoodiacs and side the Kaijus, with more main-decked protection cards like My Body as a Shield to counter cards like Zoodiac Drident. The SPYRAL cards, notably Misty, Tough and Super Agent, are all actually very effective at playing through fields themselves, meaning that I should be able to still play through fields provided I have some cards like the aforementioned Shield. I’m not 100% on what ratios I should have with the new build, since the Kaiju engine and the Zoodiac engine are both 7 cards. I may go over 40, but I don’t want to get any higher than 42 really, or I start to run into consistency issues (and this variant had a fairly large amount of consistency). Summoner Monk is really powerful in this deck, and so long as I run him I can’t afford to cut cards like Dark Magic Veil nor cut down on the Assaults, but perhaps I’ll do some experimenting.

My next regionals is on the 3rd of March, so I’ll be practicing until then! We’ll also have the Invoked cards by then, so maybe I’ll look into Invoked variants of SPYRAL as well~

YGOPro is awful for testing competitively I’ve found, almost purely because I can’t go anywhere without seeing “Meta-deck guest starring Zoodiacs”. And testing against that doesn’t do me a whole lotta good considering my deck will be entirely different when Zoodiacs come out.

Anyway, look at this abomination that is doing surprisingly better than the 40 card variant I had. Basically, with 40 cards, I was pretty limited in my combos, mostly relying on opening a combination of Scrap Recycler/Mathematician and then a two card combination that also got out Master Plan to start off my Synchro plays. If I DIDN’T open that specific combination, my plays weren’t very good.

So by making the deck 60 cards, I’ve vastly increased the amount of combos the deck has. Weirdly enough, this had made it more consistent in making A play, as opposed to ‘sometimes’ making my ‘good’ play. The deck is also better for going first as a result, since now I have heaps of options for first turn combos that don’t necessarily rely on the SPYRALs or, similarly, don’t necessarily rely on Mathematician/Recycler.

Vanity’s Fiend and Scolding I only just put in. The logic with Fiend is that it’s a main-deck boss monster and I run so many special summon cards that tribute summoning him is super easy, also tributing Master Plan to summon him is pretty sweet, since Resort + Fiend + Agent on the field means I can keep boosting up Agent each turn with Drone while Vanity’s locks my opponent down. And Scolding’s just a neato trap, I felt like I could need more protection going first, haha.

But yeah, my main problem right now is lack of testing. I’ve been super busy all throughout December, so only get to locals every now and then. I have a YCS in January, which I am super excited for, but I’m going to need to do heaps of testing before I’m satisfied with my deck’s performance and right now I’m just not in a spot to do much testing. After Christmas though, I’m hoping to just regularly meet up with my friends and really put the pedal to metal in terms of testing~

As always, ideas and feedback are appreciated~

Here’s an updated decklist!

I cut out Prohibition, as hilarious as it was to use at times, in order to make space for consistency/setup cards like Mathematician and Scrap Recycler. Both send key cards like tuners or SPYRALs to the graveyard so I can start my plays. I also cut Phoenix Wing to the side deck, as this deck almost always MUST go second in order to do its thing and PWWB isn’t good going second. Great going first though! Twin Twister proved to be a MUCH better card, as it not only clears away the ever-so problematic Vanity’s Emptiness, but in a pinch it can be used first turn to start off your combos by discarding things you want to use graveyard effects of (and destroying your own cards isn’t so bad; typically you’ll hit either Resort, which you can get another copy of with Master, or Assault, which you want in the grave anyway).

The extra deck has Scrap Dragon (which is VERY nice with Master + tuner because you can destroy the Assault you searched with Master to extend your plays) and Herald, which is an easy level 4 to make with Math/Recycler and the tuner they send. Herald alone is pretty meh, but set it up with something like Stardust Spark or just a board of stuff and you can do some serious damage to decks like BA.

Let me know if there are any suggestions!

So I was thinking “hey, you made one video and you have all these replays saved up, why not just make a full length, proper video?”

So here it is, 13 minutes of SPYRAL shenanigans WITH sound. Check out the insane plays you can do! The deck has so many options! And, if you’d like, I have a reflection upon the deck, going into detail with regard to its playstyle and what I’ve learnt from testing it below the cut.

I am really, really enjoying this deck, almost as much if not equally as much as I enjoy playing Noble Knights. The deck is so fun and has so many options and cards like Drone and Agent have such unique interactions with the opponent’s deck that make alter your playstyle beyond the standard lines of thought.

With that in mind, I think I’ve ascertained the best way to play SPYRALs: the key is Drone. Now, as you can see from the video, all of SPYRALs big, explosive plays come from discarding/sending your key combo pieces to the graveyard - like Master Plan, Quik-Fix, Jet Synchron, Glow-Up Bulb, SPYRAL MISSION Assault, and so on - and bringing them back with their own effects or Big Red for massive Synchro plays. Now these plays tend to wipe out your opponent’s field and, with Trishula and Omega, even their hand and/or graveyard. Cards like Coral Dragon, Moonlight Rose Dragon and Dullahan all take out cards or weaken them so your other monsters can take them down. Super Agent clears out backrow and can boost his atk very high with Drone, and because of Resort and Master Plan, he is incredibly easy to search nowadays.

Now all that is super important for this reason: it simplifies the gamestate and narrows down your opponent’s resources. Even if you’ve also exhausted a lot playing through your opponent’s field, it’s at this point in the game that Drone becomes highly important. Stacking your opponent’s next draw secures your win condition. By simplifying the gamestate and then utilising Drone to ensure your opponent’s next draw is dead means that you can continue your explosive plays while ensuring your opponent has none. And since SPYRAL have so many recovery abilities and search power, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll have a play next turn.

It’s a deck with a huge amount of potential, even this format. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to say it will be a contender for number one deck this format, but it is definitely shaping up to be a strong competitor nonetheless. It has a hugely versatile set of options in each game and the combos you can do with the deck are virtually limitless. It’s decks like this that make me wish the extra deck was bigger!

I don’t know if I’ve got the perfect build down, but I’m definitely happy with my current success. I’ll be keeping you all updated on my further builds and testing results and will be absolutely sure to let you know how I do with this deck at real life events!

Terrortop, Quik-Fix and Machine Duplication is greeeeaaaaatttt