Notes & Combos

Notes are mostly for myself to look back on later, but if they help anybody that is great

This was the standard gem-knights engine, though my non-enginge choices might be a bit different from others. I don't think I was the strongest pilot of this deck, there was certainly misplays, but more likely more optimal lines to go through most the time. In any case Gem-Knights can be pretty forgiving broadly speaking, but some games you can't make any misplays.

The gameciels in the deck were a later addition halfway through diamond, it is really good however I think only 1 maybe 2 is ideal (Gem-knights really can't run lava golem). Running only 1 copy of many of my non-engines felt good because it made it less likely to brick because of duplicate non-engines. In particular the single ultimate slayer was useful every time I drew it. Thrust was very useful as well, even if just to bait out a spell/omni negate. One thing I learned in the run was is to not use meowls during the standby phase, wait for the special summon out of the grave. Decks that meowls is good against often went for another line when meowls was active, so it was worth going for the forced carddraw even if it played into tactics talent. Other charmies just shotgun in standby phase etc. I took out Nib halfway through diamond as well, the card just wasn't really showing its value compared to other board breakers. Similarly armadillo was not very good, pretty much the worst single opener the deck has. 2 Hollow cores was useful at times because of bystials getting more popular.

The run itself was pretty varied, started with a ton of stun decks (morganite, regenesis, etc) which honestly wasn't that bad for the most part - gem knights has the tools to take them out unless they have a godly opening. After that it was a lot of mitsurugi/ryzeal/fiendsmith with a couple other decks showing up. I didn't really experience any matchups that felt terrible in particular, although some of the pile decks were scoops if they got into their full engine.

All in all I think this list & gem-knights show what the current format is like right now - super powercrept & you need blowout cards to win going second. One ash/imperm isn't going to do it, even both of them isn't enough many times. So just cut the pretenses & run board breakers/lingering floodgates.

I have a couple gem-knight replays, a few of them are just saved because the opponent raged & slowplayed me (unfortunately was not that rare).