Goat Format Championship 17 Deck Tech: Relinquished

José Rodriguez (AKA selim) entered our largest tournament ever with a touch of Maximillian Pegasus in his heart. Sure, Thunder Dragon Chaos Control isn't anything too special in terms of spice, but what if you add in just a pinch of Relinquished? 

Decklist

Overview

Chaos Control combines Goat Control and Chaos Turbo into one, pairing the Black Luster Soldier and Chaos Sorcerer core of one with the Metamorphosis and Scapegoat core of the other. Chaos Sorcerer and Thousand Eyes Restrict push card advantage alongside the popular Thunder Dragon engines. Rodriguez has taken this concept, though, and given it an uncommon twist. 

​Here, ritual floaters add to the already consistent discard engines, allowing for Raigeki Break and similar cards. Additionally, the Metamorphosis + Scapegoat package pairs well with the Relinquished strategy, giving the deck even more consistency in dealing with monster threats and locking up the board. 

Player Insight

The card advantage boost provided by the ritual floaters was not lost on Rodriguez, who mentioned it specifically when talking about his list. 
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Honestly? I like relinquished, and I thought Manju could be a solid card advantage/chaos engine in a chaos control shell.

Outside of the ritual engine, this deck is a pretty standard Thunder Dragon Chaos Control list. As I've been honing this list before the event, I've been focused on the Warrior and Chaos Turbo matchups, with those being the best decks with no real silver bullets I can side. The Manjus and Thunder Dragons (TD) are very good at grabbing virtual card advantage early game, but the tradeoff is brickier hands and late game dead cards (i.e. drawing Reli after you've pitched Black Illusion to Raigeki Break), so having a lot of ways to convert that advantage from virtual to real, as well as interact with relinquished once it hits board (which it does actually do a surprising amount) were big goals in this build.

​It may look weird to only have one of each ritual piece, but you pretty much never want to see them in your opening six or hard draw them in the late game. Relinquished (I mean, ritual summons in general) is a big investment of resources. So big, honestly, that unless the game rides on the it, you probably shouldn't summon a hard-drawn Reli. However, searching a piece off a Manju pays for half the cost of the summon, and standard Chaos Control cards like Thunder Dragon, Sangan, Sinister Serpent, and Scapegoat go a long way to making the summon feasible. On top of that, there are a lot of small synergies between the ritual package and standard CC cards, with Tsukuyomi and Book of Moon being able to loop Relinquished and Manju, and the light Manju quickly pairing itself with the dark Relinquished in graveyard to support the chaos monsters. The way I've put it before is this: Manju of the Ten-Thousand Hands is kind of like if a better Thunder Dragon searched a worse Chaos Sorcerer/Metamorphosis. The ritual package can give you a strong head start, with both  Manju and Reli chipping at your opponents life points, tempting unfavorable trades, and helping to pull the deck into the late game where it can really start to smash face with its chaos monsters. 

​That's some thoughtful insight! It looks like Rodriguez has definitely put a lot of thought into the deck! I asked him how the event was going, and unfortunately, it looks like that hard work didn't quite pay off this time around. However, he's already looking towards the future and how he might change his list for next time! 
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Honestly? Fairly poorly. Going 1-2 in my first ever GFC is a bit of a blow, but I'm not certain I've quite cracked this build yet, and I definitely have a lot to learn about playing in this meta and tournament environment. I had one very cool loss where my opponent's solemn judgment put them into a range where my Ring of Destruction could have forced a tie, but sadly, their final set was a second Judgment. I also had a fairly brutal win where I managed to get both Ryu Senshi and Dark Balter on board and softlock my opponent from playing their cards. I wish I had played a little better, or gotten a little luckier, but either way I had a good time and can't wait for my next chance to play!

​Just before last night's Goat Format Friday I cut Card Destruction and Premature Burial for Dekoichis in a somewhat feeble attempt to match pace with Chaos Turbo. I'm going to be taking a hard look at my deck list and replays to see if I can squeeze those back in. Unlike Thousand-Eyes, a properly summoned Relinquished can be revived with Premature Burial for a great surprise play in the mid-to-late game, and Card Destruction (CD) plays very well with the virtual card advantage earned through Manju+Serpent+TD. I think CD could also be especially useful in punishing Chaos players while they're holding back chaos monsters looking for an opening to steal the game.