Ultimate Cup Season

Well, well, well, it’s been a minute hasn’t it!

In my defense, I went to Nationals, made a whole trip out of it, took 186th because of the tie curse, getting one tie means getting paired with other folks who tied increasing the likely hood of more ties, it was a whole thing… Where was I?

Right, made a whole vacation out of that trip, then I had surgery, lumpectomy, aka getting a painful thing removed from my boob, but hey, not cancerous, so yay! And I’ve spent the past two weeks in not insignificant pain recovering from that.

But! I’m mostly functional again, and we have deck lists, so I can write again! I will be writing about the Championship deck lists from around the world soon, as that format will still be mostly what we’re playing come regionals in April, give or take tomorrow’s ban list, but right now, I get to talk instead about the extremely weird, but mercifully not as weird as they could have been, Ultimate Cups!

If you haven’t been paying attention, or are one of my followers who is interested in Digimon but not “compete in online tournaments” interested, then let me tell you about the goofy rules Bandai has put in place to try and make the Ultimate Cup feel more casual.

So, basic idea, all the Ultimate Cups in March and April will be following this special rules set up. P-025 GranKuwagamon is restricted to 1 because while most of the other X-Antibody based OTK decks rely on both a white option, X-Antibody, and a white tamer, Cool Boy, for consistency, Grandis as a deck doesn’t so to keep it from running away with the format the card that enables their OTK turn has been limited. It’s of course still a viable deck, but it has to play a bit differently in this format.

Chaos Degradation is also limited to 1 though, personally I don’t see this one as quite such a huge deal, but maybe I’m just numb to it now? It’s a rather annoying card in Sec Con, but the mono color nature of this format sort of edges out a lot of traditional Sec Con lists, but there’s likely some reason I’m missing here.

Then we get to the banned cards. DeathXmon is banned because, frankly, most of it’s “fairness” comes from everyone having relatively equal access to it, but in this format only black and purple decks would be able to use it, generally putting them in a painfully dominant position without necessarily winning. WereGarurumon (X Antibody) is, again, a bit of a weird choice from my perspective. See, Melga hasn’t been supremely competitive since BT11 came out, and even before that it pretty much needed X Antibody to get it’s combo working right as most of the MetalGarurumon cards were simply not that worth playing.

I think the idea was to try and limit the deck’s OTK potential, like they did to Grandis, and removing WereGarurumon X does strip one of the repeated attacks the deck needs to win, but instead of slowing the deck down like banning P-008 WereGarurumon would, this blows the poor things legs out from under it.

And finally, we have Cerberusmon: Werewolf Mode. This one is actually kind of cute, because purple as a rule is generally quite on board with being mono color, and has a long history of loop decks powered, at least partially, by this goofus. See, in theory, you play him for 9 memory, then use his [On Play] effect to pop a normal Cerberusmon to regain that 9 memory, then attack because he has rush. But Purple has a good many ways to cheat purple Digimon into play, letting them pop thier existing Cerberusmon, gain 9 memory without having spent any, or at least without having spent the 9 one would expect, and keep the turn going.

So what decks do these rules keep out of the running?

Well Xros Heart is right out, since it needs at least three colors to run Shoutmon, Ballistamon, and Dorulumon, and their tamers. Mastemon also has a hard time since while they can run the new tamer to maintain access to yellow and purple for options, they can’t run both LadyDevimon and Angewomon since all of the former are mono purple, and all of the latter are mono yellow. So they have to make do with Maycrackmon: Vicious Mode for the other side of their DNA digivolution.

The same goes for most DNA Digivolving focused decks, Blue Green Imperial can’t run ST9 Stingmon or BT6 Parasaurmon for thier Green, leaving them to use Raidramon. Plus they, and well, everyone, are cut off from white cards that support thier decks, like Kimeramon. Jesmon dies hard to this rule too as they can’t run any Sistermons, which the modern version uses to combo off.

Heck, even BlackwarGreymon X, the boogie man of BT11 bricks hard to this. X Antibody is what enables thier only protection, so they have to decide to run a Red Base, giving them access to BT9 Greymon X’s protection effect and more aggressive if less synergistic tamers, or the black base, giving them BT8 Greymon’s blocker inheritable, and Yuuya’s more temporary protection effect and letting them still play a control style.

Ok I hear you asking, then what is left?

Well, that’s the thing… kind of a lot? Essentially this weird format let’s some lower tier decks out of the bag.

We just yesterday got deck lists out of the two European Ultimate cups that ran on the 11th and 12th, plus lists from MTGGirl’s Ultimate cup event on the 11th, and the Win-a-Box Egman and Primitive put on on the 14th.

I’ll be going over ALLLLLL of them, hopefully before the first NA Ultimate cup… on Saturday… Why do I do these things to myself? But the big names that keep showing up are as follows.

BloomLord/HydraBloom

This deck was already a mostly Mono-Green deck, though some would tech in cute pieces like Digimon Emperor. It got a few new cards in BT11, but many of the topping lists are actually skipping out on them, we’ll talk about why when we get to them, don’t worry.

Blue Flare

The Mono-Blue counterpart to Xros Heart’s “play with all the colors but Blue” approach. It essentially plays like a more interactive blue hybrid list from BT7/EX2 era, but using Digi-Xros and Armor Purge to establish a presence quickly and try to maintain it. If I were to ever break and play a competitive Blue deck, it would probably be this, sorry Fish deck, you don’t count. Blue flare loses some of it’s aggro potential in the mono color form, as the deck likes running the Red ST1 Greymon that gives Sec+1 as an inheritable and BT9 MetalGreymon (X Antibody) since the Digi-Xros requirements don’t care if the greymon used doesn’t have Blue Flare in a trait, and MetalGreymon X also doesn’t care if he evos onto a weird Blue MetalGreymon

Machinedramon

This has been a quiet rouge deck for a while now, most often running an extremely silly red egg base with EX2 Gigimon and Promo Guilmon so they can swing and draw two cards. Of course most of the deck is black, and the titular Digimon is Mono Black so that had to change for this, thankfully with BT11 the deck gained it’s fist Machinedramon that actually wants to evolve instead of being played, and a tamer that helps to cheat out the other versions that prefer to be hard played, and helps to provide a more defensive board.

Mervamon

While they’re not quiet the purple loop deck’s I’m sure they’d like to be playing these are still some silly lists using a wild variety of purple Digimon, especially those with <Retaliation> or [On Deletion] effects to build into a Minveramon, an annoying body on her own, but whose [On Deletion] let’s them either throw a level 5, or a Mervamon from trash into play and allowing thier [On Play] effects to go off, including Merva’s rather brutal [On Play] that let’s her up to two purple level 4 or lower Digimon from trash, and then her passive [All Turns] effect that gives all Xros Heart Digimon, like herself, and all Digimon with <Retaliation>, <Rush> and <Blocker>

Honorable Mentions

These decks aren’t making as much of a splash, but they’re still popping up in top 8’s and 16’s. We’ve seen a few Grandis variants, usually playing a bit slower and more control-ly. Some UlforceVeedramon, especially playing like a budget version of Melga, though only in style, as the deck needs 4 copies of a secret rare with a massively inflated price. And there have also been a few Yellow Hybrid/RizeGreymon builds, some Gallantmon lists, and even some DarkKnightmon lists.

And with that, I think I can safely start writing the first ACTUAL analysis, as opposed to this explicatory thing.

I’ll be starting with the Raid’n’Trade Ultimate cup from the 11th, both because it’s technically the first event that happened, and because of all the events we have lists for, it was the largest.

If you want to see lists more quickly than I can get to them, TheEgman continues to be the only person TO’s give lists to, but he’s got a solid new site that collates the info quite well, much prefer it to his old google doc style. You can find all of his BT11 event coverage here.