Goat Format Championship 21 Deck Tech: Kapetanicus' XYZ Machines!

Regardless of what we end up playing in tournaments, we all have that one pet deck, often from the ol' playground days, that we love to whip out from time to time. Stefanos "Kapetanicus" Kapetanakis, for example, loves Machines. Specifically, XYZ machines like X-Head Cannon or Z-Metal Tank. The difference between Kapetanakis and most others with pet decks, though, is that he's brave enough to play it in a Goat Format Championship tournament with over 230 players! 

Deck List

Overview

Machine decks are not commonly seen in competitive events, but some of their staple enablers are powerful enough that it shouldn't necessarily be a surprise when they do show up. Limiter Removal, specifically, can be a crazy fast game ending spell in the right conditions. What's more, many of the most powerful monsters in the game (Jinzo, Dekoichi, etc) are machines!  

​The last time we saw a deck in our events that could be called a true "machine" deck was all the way back in Goat Format Championship 11. Back then, Jonathan "Hackbyrd" Chen was the pilot. However, Kapetanakis has gone a little further with the machine theme, playing all of the XYZ monsters (not just X-Head) in order to potentially summon the XYZ-Dragon Cannon boss monster. He's also decided on some Union monster support, which is a spice all its own. 

Player Insight

As unique and rare as it is, it seems like Union support cards like Combination Attack were a key factor in convincing Kapetanakis to sign up with today's mechanical monstrosity. We'll let him explain. 

So, the XYZ archetype has been near and dear to me since the historic era of the game, although I never expected it to ever be possible to perform in any competitive scene. I started playing Goat format almost a year ago and in the meantime I have played with most meta viable decks to some extend, grinding on the ladder and at local events. For my first participation at a larger event, I wanted to bring something unique and perhaps inspiring. I decided to try this deck after finding out Combination Attack as a support choice for Union monsters, and thought that it would make a great combo with Limiter removal to provide an OTK combo seemingly out of nowhere.

The XYZ archetype has a lot of good things going for it. Being a series of Light monsters, they can be integrated in a Chaos type deck, while their statline make them quite resilient against the Chaos turbo regular monster lineup. Dekoichi was the next perfect candidate for the deck, since its a Dark machine monster which is great, and provides consistency with card draw. However, I believe that the most important objective of this deck is to finish games as fast as possible, behaving more like an aggro deck with combo elements thrown in.

The deck resolvers around the combo of summoning at least 2 X-Y-Z monsters on the field and then judging by the enemy board state the pilot can either go union, attack with the combined machine, then use Combined Attack to split the monsters and attack again with both. A limiter removal and/or big bang shot can be enough to close the game then and there. Alternatively, a cautious choice of which X-Y-Z piece to bring on the board can lead to the summoning of the fusion counterparts, of which YZ- Tank Dragon can deal with face down monsters and XZ- Tank Cannon can deal with backrow. The third combination, XY- Dragon Cannon, which pops face-up backrow has some utility vs burn or lockdown strategies, while the ultimate fusion, XYZ Dragon Cannon is incredibly difficult to summon and has only fringe uses. 

 As with most combo decks, it is important to have patience and lead the game to a state where there is an opening for an all-in inverstment, while controlling the tempo until it gets there. Dekoichi is the prime cancidate for that, obviously, but I have found Cyber Jar to be amazing when it resolves. 
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 Against Turbo strategies, setting Y-Dragon can shield you from anything non-Chaos, since Kycoo has been declining in popularity lately, while keeping a key piece of the combo on the field. After that, it becomes a game of who will draw better, which obviously benefits the opponent, so the pressure is on the XYZ player to find the timing to dominate.
Agaist aggro decks, this deck has a hard time dealing on 1 for 1 trades, and thus the key is to bring out a union piece for that >2000 attack and hold the line until a Heavy storm or Solemn judgment can tip to the scales to our favour.
 The side deck is pretty standard, with Kinetic Soldier for the warrior matchup, spys for the turbo ( ideally to absorb a Nobleman, or to benefit from a Mind controlled enemy spy), 3 royal decrees mainly to replace Solemns vs Burn etc.

With money and World Championship invites on the line, its often difficult to remember that at its core, Goat Format is about having fun. If you can win all the while, well that's just icing on the cake! Kapetanakis hasn't seemed to have forgotten this, though, as is evident when they talk about their experience in the event so far. 

This deck has been a blast to play so far, I love it because it can lead to an open game state where the pilot is provided with several approaches to finish the game quickly, be it with union monsters, fusion summoning or using Return from the Different Dimension to swarm the field. My first game was against a fellow Greek player, P0rtal, in which, during game 1 I messed up my combo due to overwhelming anxiety and lost, with game 2 being an one sided slaughter for my opponent. After that, I visited Dogtown for the first time ever, with my second opponent not responding to me, which led me to get a "by" win. Games 3 and 4 were quite interesting, as several people joined in to watch the deck, against ATJ with turbo in game 3 and The Nano playing Burn in game 4. My last game was against P-epoxy, an amazing player using Turbo, with a close loss in game one for me, and a second loss in game 2, after my opponent used an early Card Destruction to draw into both BLS and Ring of Destruction to close the game before I could retaliate.