Goat Format Championship 19 Deck Tech: Erkator's Archfiends

With such a large crowd to start the year, we were bound to see some crazy decks in the GFC19 meta. I don't think anyone expected a full-fledged Archfiends list, though, but that's exactly what Erkator ran in their bid to be crowned a goat format champion! 

Deck List

Archfiend decks rely mainly on the strength of Terrorking Archfiend, who not only boasts a whopping 2000 ATK at only four stars, but also the ability to negate effect monsters, as well as the potential to dodge removal. Because of his summoning restrictions, he is often in the company of other archfiends like Archfiend Soldier. Some players will even pair him with Marauding Captain, which circumvents the summon restriction altogether.  

Erkator's list does not play the three-star warrior. Instead, he's gone all-in on the Archfiend theme. While Desrook Archfiend is commonly used in lists as a way to protect Terrorking, and Shadowknight Archfiend is sometimes played because of its high ATK stats, the other Archfiends are not often seen, even in such a rogue strategy. Archfiend's Roar is also quite rare, but Erkator seemed to feel confident enough in the revival spell to play a full three. 

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Player Insight

Erkator admitted to us that he did not spend a lot of time preparing for or even really thinking about his deck list. A bold strategy, to be sure, but we have seen such things pay off for players in the past. 

I was straight naturally thinking without having any psychological weight on my mind, but I have to admit that was pretty fast and I should've maybe taken more time to build my deck. I wanted to stay thematic with the archetype while still adding a few staples, that's just how most decks are built. I think main-decking cards like Breaker and Tribe-Infecting Virus wouldn't have been bad. This Archfiend deck loses hard to Delinquent Duo, but if played correctly can be devastating against Chaos Turbo since only Gravekeeper's Spy followed by an attacking BLS can screw it.

The archetype for such early days was actually really well designed, I think people really missed a huge opportunity, because let's not forget it was a huge featured series in Dark Crisis. Too bad I didn't achieve a huge result to be seen seriously.

Despite the less than stellar performance, Erkator left us with some optimistic advice for anyone looking to play a rogue strategy like Archfiends. 

The event went quick to me, nothing amazing to speak off. Still, stay focused on some low tier decks, I swear my life they can actually easily compete with Chaos Turbo or Chaos Warrior if played carefully.