Goat Format Championship 17 Deck Teck: Final Countdown

Stall decks are nothing new to the format. That being said, its rare to see someone play a deck which has a win condition that most Yu-Gi-Oh! games consider an official challenge to complete. That's exactly what Daniel Magnin (Dmag) did today when he signed up with his Final Countdown deck, though! 

Deck List

Overview

Final Countdown activates its eponymous card  then survives for twenty turns. Usually, everything in the deck either finds Countdown, or slows the game down to a crawl in order to allow the twenty turns to pass safely. this means Floodgate cards like Level Limit - Area B, Gravity Bind, Wall of Revealing Light, and Messenger of Peace are common. 

Magnin has found even more ways to stall, though, as he borrows cards and strategies from Drain Burn and other popular lockdown decks. 

Player Insight

Speaking on why he chose such an off-the-wall strategy, Magnin noted that he has always loved crazy decks, and that he specifically chose Final Countdown for today because it didn't play a single monster in the whole list. 

​The hardest part was remembering how the deck was constructed 15+ years ago. Nothing much changed since then, but I did look briefly at what was doing well and decided to add seven-tools since most of my problem cards are traps.

​The goal is to obviously stall for ten turns. The most efficient way to do this is to combine Skill Drain and Wall of Revealing Light. If I can get those on board there are only two cards that every deck plays (MST, Storm) that can break that up. Some decks play Dust Tornado, Rageki Break, and Phoneix Wind Blast, but I feel like I'm in a good spot if I can get those two together. 

Overall, the deck wants to find a stall card and then protect it using Solemn Judgement, Seven Tools, and Fake Trap. If I notice some of the cards listed above, I board in Curse of Royal as well for added protection. Royal decree kills me, so I board Prohibition for that if I see it or expect it to come in, in addition to my own MST and Dust Tornado. Jinzo is also problematic, but I just hope I have Skill Drain for him. 

It looks like our pilot's been playing the game for quite a while! Props to him for keeping things fresh for himself for so long! How has the day been for him so far, though? Well, speaking with us with a 1-1 record, he had this to say: 

So far I've played Final Countdown in every game and gotten to double digit turns in all but one of them. The games I've lost I just didn't draw the stall I needed and ended up with redundancy which is a problem. There was one game I thought I had won as I got my opponent to use both MST and storm when I had my Skill Drain and a lock piece, but after burning my Solemn Judgement I lost to burn with their Ring of Destruction. Overall I'm just having a fun time playing again. ​