Goat Format Championship 18 Deck Tech: Smokescreen Burn

The 135-man Goat Format Championship 18 event is underway! There's plenty of interesting Goat Format action from every spectrum of player going on, but as far as deck techs are concerned, we're looking for the unique and spicy strategies! Oftentimes, this means we need to be looking at the more inexperienced players, who for some reason or other, frequently seem more brave than their veteran when it comes to trying unorthodox strategies. Such is the case with Snikkers, who decided to attempt a take down of some of the format's best and brightest with an interesting Smokescreen Burn strategy! 

Decklist

Overview

Drain Burn decks pair the disruptive power of Skill Drain with powerful burn cards, like Wave-Motion Cannon, in order to stall out the opponent until they can win from behind their various walls. Typically, Skill Drain combos with Big Shield Gardna for a near-impenetrable  defense, though Level Limit Area B and Gravity Bind are also frequently played. 

What sets Snikkers' list apart from the typical Drain Burn list is the sideboard, which appears to allow the deck to smokescreen in to something else entirely! 

Player Insight

Snikkers mentioned that they played the deck both because they enjoyed the "dead card" advantage it gave over opponents. After they sideboard for burn moving into game two, Snikkers is able to catch them off guard with a completely new strategy, making many of the side boarded cards completely dead for the opponent! They had lots of insight into the exact game plan and sideboard plan, so here it is! 

​First Game:
- Skill Drain synergizes with Big Shield, every other monster but morphing jar and Reaper is not affected by it. Level Limit also synergizes with Big Shield.
- Wave-Motion Cannon is the win con, and is protected by Magic Jammer, Solemn Judgment and Curse of Royal
- The most unique card is probably the Different Dimension Capsule. It is to get the combo pieces that are necessary out of your deck. If you can't protect it, you can still activate it on another card like Jar of Greed that is nice to have but you wouldn't mind losing.
- When it comes to the game plan, you want to first establish a lockdown with Big Shield and Skill Drain or Level Limit, backed up by Solemn Judgment. Then you close the game with Wave-Motion Cannon.

Siding: 
While Burn is pretty good Game 1, it gets significantly worse after siding. So the gameplan 
is to catch opponents with their pants down, taking out their traps for anti-burn cards like Decree, while you're siding into a whole different strategy. On top of that you don't have to worry about battle traps like Mirror Force when attacking with your monarchs.
​
Most of the time you can just throw in every single card of your side deck and take out all of the burn cards. That means we take out: Wave-Motion Cannon, Curse of Royal, Level Limit, Skill Drain, Magic Jammer, one Big Shield, and Different Dimension Capsule.

Game 2:
- Win condition changes to controlling the game with Monarchs and tributing your opponent's monsters. Enjoy your Monarchs. 

Game 3: 
- Decide if you wanna stick with Monarchs or go back to Burn again, depending on the matchup.

That's a pretty neat strategy! Smokescreen decks in general are nothing new to the format, but it's not often that you see them in action, let alone with this combination of strategies. So, how's the tournament been for Snikkers? Ending the day with a 2-2 record, they had this to say:

I accidentally started a Single match instead of a 2 out of 3 and got a warning for it :D

The deck was originally built by my boyfriend left arm suffering (Discord name). I am new to the format, which is why I played a deck that is easy to side and built by an expert. :D