Hello Tamers!
This most recent weekend of competition, one could have expected a variety of decks in the finals of the Mesquite Texas Regionals. Royal Knights is a strong contender, using powerful interactive tools and protection in conjunction with impeccable defense of Omekamon and a combo finish to win games. Megidramon, a significant representation in the top cut, abuses the final bastion of 0-cost memory generation in Gravity Crush in combination with rush finishers. Sakuyamon locks the game down between the pillars of Shinegreymon: Ruin Mode and Chaosmon Valdur Arm. There’s even a variety of decks with incredible potential, such as Virus Imperialdramon, UG Imperialdramon, and even mainstays of the format and formats past in Leviamon, Galaxy, or Gallantmon.
When it all came down to it, though, two decks towered above the rest at 7-0-1 records, and that was Adventure, piloted by Alexander Pham of Hoang Zero fame, and Gaiamon Hero piloted by Shooting Star. Both of these decks were relative competitive dark horses sporting the new Secret Rare Tai Kamiya, and though there was a lot of excitement about the Adventure deck from casual players and brewers alike, the Hero deck was almost universally panned by onlookers as an expected competitive dud with little in the way of synergy. What do these decks bring to the table, and how do they affect the projections of the competitive landscape moving into the future? That is what I aim to address in today’s article!
To start, we turn our attention to the metagame, as mentioned earlier. Royal Knights maintain a firm grip as the most consistent deck at giving players a leg up on power in tournaments across the world. This deck is incredible, but as a mainstay of the battleground the players who are innovating look to the weaknesses of the deck as a gateway to victory. As a relatively controlling deck, Knights plays to the board quite well. The core conceit of the deck, however, is readily answered by both Hero and Adventure. Alex boasted a whopping 4 match victories against the deck on his way to the finals. Having brought Hero to the event myself as well, the matchup felt quite favored for the deck as well, with more details to come later in the article. The other big pillars of the format are of course Megidramon and Sakuyamon, and fortunately for both Adventure and Hero are quite capable of pressuring those combo decks on rate, so going into the weekend these decks were incredibly well positioned, in addition to being unexpected by the vast majority of the player base.
Now that we’ve taken a look at what competition was expected to look like, let’s look at the strengths of the Adventure and Hero decks and how they specifically matched into the format, starting with Adventure.
Adventure
At its core, Adventure is an Aggro Toolbox deck. Early in the game, Adventure is primed to set up multiple resource and ability generating tamers, then turn to beat down with a variety of level 5 powerhouses all sporting the Alliance keyword. Each of the tamers reduces the play cost of Adventure Digimon, and in combination with T.K. and Matt the level 5’s can Rush down the opponent. With flexible removal options across the Ultimate suite, and a pair of powerful floodgates in Tentomon and Gomamon, the Adventure deck is going to really put pressure on any opponent relying on their threats staying on the board, as well as hindering the Boosts and Scrambles being played by nearly every single-color pillar deck in the format. The real defining resilience of the deck is exemplified in the delay option Our Courage United though. As an early setup card, drawing resources is massive. Then the floating effect, when combined with T.K. and Matt, can provide a brutal aggressive curve of MegaKabuterimons and Skullgreymons, or maintain sticky Ace pressure replacing any of your Ultimates with more, in addition to their On Play effects. When combined, all of these synergies truly provide a relentless amount of value and damage that any deck would struggle to keep up with.
Hero
Hero, though, is a pure Aggro deck through and through. The deck sports powerful removal in this version topping out with Globemon, Arresterdramon: Superior Mode, and Gaiamon, but the core of the deck is built on the efficient placement of tamers and the wave tactics that the deck can leverage to keep the foot on the gas for the whole game. As a core gameplay loop, Hero will often set a rookie in raising on turn 1 while placing a delayed Boost or Training, using Arresterdramon on the following turn to immediately set a tamer and converting into the first wave of removal and damage, then taking the next turn to hatch and Hybrid with Agunimon over the tamer set the previous turn to convert into another set of attacks, and repeating this gameplay loop until a Gaiamon linking DoGatchmon can close the door on the opponent. This deck can easily control Digimon on board, and in the face of a deck like Royal Knights the overwhelming aggressive power of the deck can remove every single Knight played over the course of a game, while pressuring the whole way. Even Omekamon can only protect the Knights player so many times when they can’t interact with tamers, the Agunimon is always waiting to bring in the next attack. Of these two spotlight decks, I would say that Hero is the more robust of the two, as the approach is far less reliant on tamers, but lets move on to see what we can expect these two decks to do to the meta overall.
The Fall
Let’s first evaluate what the biggest loser is when we’re looking at these decks entering the scene, and based on the previous evaluations one could reasonably suggest that the victim of these decks is almost certainly Royal Knights. In addition to the rise of Megidramon, the increase of popularity in Hero and Adventure decks is likely to spell the doom of the recently Liberated archetype. While Knights maintains a stranglehold on matchups across the variety of decks in the metagame, the very best decks all seem to maintain an overall positive win rate against the deck. Virus Imperial has a famously one-sided ratio against Knights, so with the addition of all of these other top-tier losing matchups, it is quite likely that the reign of Drasil is about to take a turn for the worse. This could be a huge change for the format overall, as Knights is one of the single biggest gatekeepers to diverse gameplay thanks to the raw power of the greatest Ace in the game, Omekamon, and removing a majority of that meta share can easily open up the gates for some powerful control decks to take their place.
The Rise
Now, with the downturn of Knights and the rise of Adventure, we can safely evaluate what the biggest beneficiaries of tamer-focused gameplay are. The first deck that comes to mind is Leviamon, and the second is almost certainly Galacticmon. Both of these decks eat Tamers for breakfast, and can offset aggressive curves with stellar removal and near combo finishes as well. Galactic can reset Adventure to no tamers on board significantly offsetting the resource boost and warp potential in the deck, and though Hero can remove the Galactic, it takes a clean stream of pressure from the deck to maintain tempo advantage in the matchup. Leviamon is far more likely to struggle into Hero, but Adventure plays Digimon and tamers by effect regularly, so the trap of Biting Crush can entirely shut off the powerful lines of the deck while Leviamon X eats the tamers alive and deals an astonishing amount of checks to security when paired with Cerberusmon X at an incredibly cheap memory rate. Galacticmon is also incredibly soft into Royal Knights, so a downturn in that predatory matchup will likely bode well for the deck moving into the future.
Overall, it is going to be incredibly interesting what both Hero and Adventure have in store for the format as we move into EX09, but a dynamic competitive scene seems to be starting to form ahead of that transition. Royal Knights is likely to continue to be played into the newer threats, but due to the exceptional matchup Adventure has in addition to the relatively inexpensive nature of these newcomers it is quite likely that the deck is going to have a smaller representation at top cuts of major events. There seems to be a cohesive Rock-Paper-Scissors meta forming with the pillars of Knights, Combo/Aggro, and Tamer Control dominating. Players looking to be successful in the future will need to be prepared to trace the ebb and flow of this pattern and player preferences over multiple events. Each of these decks do sport notable weaknesses though, and good deck builders can innovate to knock out multiple of these pillars of the metagame while dodging the bad matchups, especially in shorter tournaments. Be prepared, as the palette of decks is still wide, and looks to expand even further into the future.
Best of Luck, Tamers!
Nick Hutchens
Awesome analysis! I’m starting to fall in live with Heros, so it’s interesting to learn about all these interactions.
Well, I hope you enjoy the analysis I’ll be posting of Hero in the near future! Thanks for the comment and hope you have a good day ✨️
Good article, very informative.
Thank you 😊✨️