Goat Format Championship 22 Deck Tech: Melchid's Shinato

The reign of ritual monsters continues, this time with the King of a Higher Plane himself, Shinato. We wonder if pilot Luke "Melchid" Baranowski even needs us to cheer him on when he's got a higher power at his side.  

Deck List

Overview

Shinato decks focus on summoning the namesake boss monster, often by tributing other large ritual monsters, like the Masked Beast, which is easily found with Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands. Melchid did not choose this route, however. Instead, he seems to have taken a few ideas from Thunder Clap, making use of key monsters like Gravekeeper's Spy and Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. This gives the deck more utility and keeps it from being a one-trick pony that's too reliant on the ritual Fairy monster. 

Player Insight

Everyone has cards that they simply enjoy playing more than others. For some, these are meta-defining power houses like Black Lust Soldier. For others, these cards are a little more rogue. Still, being able to win with them is arguably that much more rewarding, and that's just what Melchid planned on today! 

I normally play goat control variations with DMOC because I feel like I get my best results with those builds. But for this tournament I wanted to try something new, while keeping the DMOC in the deck because it is one of my favorite cards. I think I will always find a way to jam it into my deck lists even if it is suboptimal. It will either blow your opponent out or you'll brick on it and lose. For me personally, I prefer to play decks that are less common, this keeps the format interesting for me and hopefully the other players as well. There are so many amazing players in this format that are leagues above me in skill level. So I feel like I need to bring decks that can catch people off guard or win out of nowhere. Of course this deck is not going to be the best or most optimized, but I felt like it had enough decent ideas in it to be able to pull off some wins.

The automatic plus 1 off the ritual searchers is a nice way to deck thin and get your combo pieces. I wanted to try and make my opponent's NOC's and mind cons less useful in game one so I didn't play very many flips in the main. Just keeping Spy for my own mind con if it comes up and faith because it's just good, and if it gets NOC'd I am usually fine with that too. Warriors can be a tough matchup for this deck which is also why i wanted to make it more aggro. The side board was meant to be able to go into a more standard DMOC Turbo deck. Though it's still missing cards like upstart goblin which would likely help the deck be less bricky.

​The big combo play the deck is trying to do is use DMOC as fodder for summoning Shinato, then using call or premature to bring it back and make a big push or otk. Honestly, aside from the ritual stuff and the DMOC, the main deck is mostly just a pile of "good stuff". 3 Kycoo's was probably a bit much but like I mentioned previously I didn't want to be setting much and I felt like it was the best beater I could be playing. I main decked Saku and smashing ground to give me a better chance against warriors game 1. Probably should have played dustshoot to some extent, creature swap was another card I was considering. The side was meant to try and throw my opponents off slightly. I was banking on them siding out some number of NOC's/mind controls. Then I can resolve my flips more easily.

Melchid's run today shows promise, as, according to him, the deck has been very consistent. Still, sometimes you just run into bad luck. That doesn't mean you can't tweak things and do better next time, though! 

So far it has been fairly consistent. Occasionally you will draw some of the ritual stuff before drawing the searchers which feels bad, and is really where the deck falls apart. There was a game where I used card d for 5 (my opponent had no hand) and I drew 3 thunder dragons and DMOC. So I might never run card d again lol. Shinato won me a couple games. I was able to use it to get the DMOC into grave a few times, and then get the DMOC into play later. So in a way it did what I wanted it to. Overall, I did better than I thought I would and I think I could make some changes to make this deck a bit better. As well as just play better, I for sure made a lot of mistakes.

​Melchid the four-faced beast is purely in the side as my good luck charm/deck mascot.