As you all know, the water deck is becoming more and more popular. It's easy to run, easy to pilot - well if you want I can say 'medium', but it's not hard by any means. So what I'd like to talk about is how do we stop them.
If you're playing 'Chaos Dragons', 'Macro Rabbit', even 'Darkworld'... Like if you think about it, you can pretty much win with any deck that has easy access to 'big' monsters - Agents for an example, those decks are good vs mermails - sure, they lose time to time, but they are good.
As you all know I'm a WU player, I play other decks, but WU is my main deck. The big monsters I have are only XYZ monsters. The idea is that I side good cards vs that deck in order to win, since I have almost nothing in my main that can do me any good vs them.
Now what I'll talk about might sound more like 'What to side in WU vs Mermails' but I think you can use it in other decks - for an example 'Trooper Agents'.
So before that, lets say how mermials win their games. They win by OTK, the times that it's not an OTK was cause he attacked you earlier and you took some damage to you LP. If you think more about their plays, they spam a lot of monsters, in order for them to win, they summon 'Abyssmegalo' and some other 'not so good' monster(s) on board and have you OTK'ed - that happens cause they've discarded copies of "Marksman' and "Infantry' to remove any protection you might have in the turn. ~That pretty much sums down the whole strategy the 'Water' deck has.
Cards are good against that deck:
As monsters, in this moment, you have a very little number of monsters you can use to do anything vs them.
Best monster against the mermail deck is probably - Banisher of the Radiance.
Now the problem with him is that he's not 'big', he's only at 1600 attack, they do run 1800 attack monsters in the deck, so they can kill it. The place where is that card good tho is Agents. Trooper agents have enough backrow protection to keep him alive as well as the presence of 'Gachi Gachi' on the field to boost his attack to 2000. If he doesn't have a quick out to that monster it pretty much seals his fate.
Next monster is being currently used in a lot of decks - Thunder King Rai-oh.
TK is a part of WU main decks since the start of the format, but not just there, a lot of decks started playing Thunder King cause of its multiple 'powers'. What I'm talking about is that not only TK is a good normal summon with 1900 attack it stops your opponents cards - it can stop the special summon of a monster (don't try to stop the special summon(s) from effects, TK can't negate something that start a chain) and he stops them from adding any card from the deck to his/her hand. Yes, the last part is what we're looking for - they can't search any of key cards from the deck, as you might have seen - all of the mermail combos, in order to be executed, they need to activate the effect(s) that let them search some cards within the deck. The Idea is that, with TK on board, you pretty much lock most of the cards they have to stop you, but not all of them. 'Abysslinde' is a pain in the ass for your TK since it summons a 'Abyssmegalo' from the deck, a monster that is bigger than your 1900 attack TK. He can do that or he can just special summon the copy of 'Abyssmegalo' he has in his hand, and since it's summoned from an effect, your TK can't negate that.
Other good choice of a monster is actually a XYZ Monster - Abyss Dweller.
He's good against them cause of his effect - detach one and you stop all of the grave effects, plus you can use it in his turn. The down part is that you can only use it twice. A very good card never the less.
As for spells, there is pretty much only one card - Dimensional Fissure.
The card is really good, that's why everyone probably know to side this one. Since of its huge popularity I will not talk that much about this card. What I will say is that 'Fissure' stops their access to the grave and if they don't MST that, like very fast, they can't do anything - just like DW.
Traps: there are a little amount of traps in the game that can do 'much' vs the Water deck, the ones that qualify are - Macro Cosmos and Soul Drain.
Macro Cosmos.
This card has been in the game for quite some time, the card is basically the same as 'Banisher'. Macro is currently being used in the 'new' Dino Rabbit builds in their main deck. Like Banisher this card has flaws, being in a deck like Dino Rabbit it would be normal to expect the opponent to side 'Royal Decree' against you. In terms of number of outs this card has against Banisher, Macro is weaker - 3 MST, 2 Dust, Heavy Strom, Royal Decree.
Soul Drain.
What 'Soul Drain' does is that it stops their graveyard effects from activating. The card can be used vs DW, as well as 'Hieratics'. You pretty much use it like a 4th 'Fissure' vs 'Water'. In the near future when this: http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Armor_Kappa
comes to the TCG, people won't use fissure against this deck, so if your deck can't handle 'Macro'-like cards - Soul Drain is the card for you.
Now I'll talk about the new card I was thinking about.
As everyone knows WU, Trooper Agents, and like a lot other decks as well main 'Dimensional Prison', there are decks that run say - Mirror Force instead of it, but never the less, when they go against 'Water' they have to side those cards. The idea is that you remove the cards that you CAN'T chain - you'll still have 'Torrential Tribute', 'Bottomless Trap Hole', all of the 'Solemns', but that's about it. If you keep cards that 'can be used only when they attack', sure there are times that your opponent won't use 1 of 3 copies of 'Marksman' or 1 of 3 copies of 'MST', you can actually use your set Mirror Force on some cards. In the more realistic way of thinking it - your 'Prison', 'Mirror', even 'Fiendish Chain' is not that effective, in other words they are all dead, and your opponent will pop them and OTK you. Since most people know that, they side those cards out.
So how do we side against this deck?
What some WU decks have at this moment is copies of 'Snowman'/'Spirit Reaper' in main - you side that as well. Now if you think about it, you already removed 4 cards from your main - and this is like the best case scenario. So what you'll do is that you'll put copies of 'Fissure' in your main deck in order to lock them, but you can side 3 at max, so that means that you have one more spot left. So far so good, you can side a copy of 'Soul drain', like I said before, as your 4th 'Fissure' and go into the next duel. That's all nice but it doesn't always work. Aside from those generic cards that you'll remove from your deck, you have cards like 'Compulse', 'Mind Control/Soul taker' in your main deck as well. Now 'Mind Control' is probably the best out of those 3. What 'Compulse' is is a card that lets them summon their 'Untine', 'Abysspike', 'Abyssmegalo' one more time - true, you can use the card against other cards he might summon against you and actually do something with it. As for 'Soul Taker', the card can be used only in your turn and the monsters your opponent, 'Water', has are just little bit over 2400 attack, that's not hard to overpower, what I'm saying is that 'Soul Taker' is not that good vs 'Water'.
What I thought about was the last YCS, won by Inzektorz and Water being 2nd place. How did the Inzektor guy won - Threatening Roar.
As you might have seen I said a couple of times that 'Water' can only OTK you to win, the times that they don't OTK you is when they have done some damage to you BEFORE their final spamming. What 'Water' does is spam some monsters and by doing that they destroy your backrow and your monsters, so they clean your board and attack you with all forces directly - the only thing you can do is have 'Gorz' or 'Tragoedia' to stop the OTK. What the Inzektor guy did was he had 'Threatening Roar' - you can chain that card to MST, to 'Marksman's effect' buy you another turn. At this point when you use the card, other than against MST, your opponent will have his monsters on board already, since what 'Water' does is OTK. You can say that his hand is already weaken, he'll need time to make another OTK spam. What you can do once you stopped those attacks is to comeback in the game - now in Agents it looks pretty easy, you can summon a new 'Hyperion' and pretty much kill his field; what you can do in WU is a little harder, you'll need a little more cards in hand to fully comeback but you can still do it.
You can have 'Carrier' and a 'Magician' and have Roar in set, he spams the field you just flip the copy of roar and you have your Magi/Carrier alive for next turn. Now with them you can really comeback, I'm not gonna talk about what you CAN do since the combos that you can do from that point are a lot, but you get the point. You protect your combo monsters - carrier and magi, and you comeback on the next turn.
Now this is actually only in theory, I haven't yet tested the idea to its fullest, but I do see Threatening Roar as a side option against 'Water'. So I'd like to hear your opinions on it and maybe share what you side against the deck.
Posts
Subject: Side decking - Mermails. 
Sun Jan 06, 2013 2:15 pm
