Notes & Combos

Let me begin by saying that I legally cheated to get to King of Games this August 2023 Ranked season. What I mean by this is that when I saw there's an update to Duel Links to go to version 7.10.1 I simply didn't update my game and played on the old version, version 7.9.0. Playing on the old, un-updated version means that the ranked queue was empty other than the most unskilled players on the planet or bots, which made my climb a lot easier.

That being said, I still had a really fun, easy climb to King of Games with this decklist. Trickstars have a really favorable matchup into a lot of the meta decks and you just hard win vs Speedroids and pure Odd-Eyes.

For the staples, I do want to quickly mention that Dark Hole and Needle Ceiling respectively helped me sack a ton of wins by clearing my opponent's board and securing lethal, or by pushing the tempo in my favor if I couldn't lethal.

The decklist is standard Trickstar stuff but what I do want to point out is that I cut D.D. Crow out of my deck for Wightprincess. D.D. Crow felt like a garnet more often than naught, especially if I'm not against a graveyard-heavy deck. I wanted the consistency with Wightprincess, plus Wightprincess allows you to just sack Speedroids turn one by wasting their Crystal Wing negate.

Another new addition I want to point out is Trickstar Delfiendium, which is not a bad addition. I summoned her once, and she's very good vs enemy link decks, by allowing you to recycle your banished Trickstar Festivals for more follow-up on your turn.

Trickstar Divaridis is situationally good too. I usually summoned her if I bricked but she's great against enemy combo decks if their life points are low and you couldn't secure lethal. With Divaridis out, your opponent can't reliably summon or combo or they risk getting burnt to death. Everything else is standard Trickstar stuff.

Trickstar Bella Madonna is also a really fun finisher. It's always funny seeing your opponent trying to hit Bella Madonna with backrow and being unaffected because Bella Madonna isn't pointing to anything.

And finally, to close out this ranked season, I want to mention that my rankup match to King of Games was versus a 9,500 Life Point Gouki player that went Gouki the Great Ogre and got out-grinded in terms of available resources. I had a very bricky opening hand consisting of x2 Wightprincess, x1 Compulsory Evacuation Device, and x1 Trickstar Festival, but even so, I still managed to prevail and win vs Gouki.