Notes & Combos

Testing - Mitsurugi Labrynth

It’s still very early in this new meta’s lifespan and tough to know how things are going to shake out long-term, but I’ve seen very few arguments for not playing Habakiri and company somewhere in your deck - at least before rampant counterplay appears on ladder.

Mitsurugi’s engine is not only strong in a vacuum and highly splashable, but rather grindy too with solid tools built in both on the monster and the S/T side that are rewarding for control-centric gameplay. Combined with Labrynth, things get incredibly silly in resource wars as your ability to scale card advantage and remain profitable through exchanges can be flat-out dumb at times when both engines are clicking.

People will inevitably try to outmuscle each other with Mitsurugi, building their decks to have bigger and more powerful endboards. This approach does have plenty of merit, but I just rather handle things more simply. Sure, mixing with Ryzeal, Fiendsmith, Orcust, etc, and having neat bridges and lines between the themes with layered endboards is all very exciting, but what if we just cut the movie and functionally end the game instead? Dimensional Barrier creates massive swings with how powerful it is, and cards like Full Force and Simul covering its blind spots and contributing to free games aren’t too far behind individually for that same designation. Getting to play with a bunch of relevant skips and other power traps in the format, all while being one of the more grounded bases into HTs (particularly Droll as Lab really doesn't care about it) has been a pretty nice deal so far.

It's worth noting that this list is not on pre-prep. I preferred the versatility of the little Mitsus and an overall smaller Mitsurugi engine to allocate slots elsewhere, but that's subject to change as testing goes on.