Goat Format Championship 25: Top 16 Deck Lists

Our first Goat Format Championship of the year has come and gone, and your author must admit this is the most excited I’ve been about Goat Format in a long time. A couple times a year, we run a massive online free-to-play tournament. Players compete for a plethora of worlds invites (usually 4 or more) and the glorious title of “Goat Format Champion.” You can enter this event and our other events via our Discord here.

GFC’s have a reputation for bringing out the weirdest players with the weirdest decks, and GFC 25 was far from an exception. In Swiss pools we saw everything from Dark Return, Fire Cat, and the hot new Benkei OTK deck made a pretty deep run! Better still was how many awesome decks made top 16, and the decks only got cooler and cooler as bracket narrowed.

Though Chaos Turbo was heavily represented in top 16, and went deep in the hands of Wolf and RoughSleeper to top 4, it was our final 2 duelists who brought the spice to slice and dice. In second place was NB96 playing a [Rescue Cat OTK utilizing the SWAG engine] (and some interesting anti-Warrior tech courtesy of the author, Puy). However, no amount of Warrior tech prepared him for our GFC 25 champion: Ez2Slayu and his flagship “Gumo Sumo.” Ez looks to close the game out in 3-4 attacks using Bladeknight, Jirai Gumo, and Swift Gaia. The deck simplifies the game to an even greater extreme than Warrior by utilizing Time Seal, Dropoff, Solemn Judgement, and Compulsory Evacuation device for a quick and deadly tempo game. Though NB took one game off the champ, the kitty cat was no match for this oppressive and aggressive strategy.

Also in top 8 was the legendary grandfather of Goat Format Panda Burn: KL1993. KL brought his own take on the emerging SWAG deck, featuring Decree over Trunade and a full suite of 3 Rat 3 Spy for staying power versus aggressive decks. Congratulations to both of these players for their sick deck choices and great performance.

Congratulations to Ez2Slayu for taking the title of champion. Congrats to NB, WolfKMH, and RoughSleeper on their invites to the World Championship 2026, and congrats to SporeXD for besting the top 8 in playoff and earning the fifth worlds invite with Quish Turbo.

In top 16 we had InsiDS, Loger, WolfKMH, and Roughsleeper, and FungusAmungus on standard Chaos Turbo. Fungus repped his Phoenix Wing Blasts all the way to top 16, while Ghostrider15 took his with a Mask of Darkness and three Trap Dustshoots up to top 8. Confuserei put Goat and Meta in his turbo to make Chaos Control, ReturnWinner brought warrior, S1lverflash brought Cat Burn, Chessprime1 brought RGT for their first ever Goat Major (and first ever top), and SporeXD brought my beloved Quish Turbo to top 8. Congratulations to these players and their fantastic efforts! 

Delinkquent’s deck is a major headline of the top 16, with an undefeated 8-0 top seed finish in Swiss pools. He played a new formulation of Chaos Turbo, combining a small warrior package with one Chaos Return to create a consistent and aggressive Turbo variant. This list is not dissimilar to the one his brother AlephYa2 used to dominate the Format Library Spring ladder, and I for one am excited to see it make more appearances.

Next we have Pikefreak on Relinquished Goat Control, making top 16 before falling to our champion. Most notable about this deck is the complete lack of discard traps in the 55, as they’re a common include in any deck playing Manju and the blue monster.

Congratulations to Ez2Slayu for taking the title of champion. Congrats to NB, WolfKMH, and RoughSleeper on their invites to the World Championship 2026, and congrats to SporeXD for besting the top 8 in playoff and earning the fifth worlds invite with Quish Turbo.

In closing, I must say this top 16 and indeed this tournament were nothing short of beautiful. There are times when I lose hope that Goats is anything more than a tier 0.5 Chaos Turbo format, but there’s nothing like a top cut this diverse to prove there are all sorts of amazing ways to get the job done. Thank you everyone who attended this fantastic event (all 161 off you!).

Our next GFC will be September 26th at 12 PM EST. Our next Patreon World Championship Qualifier (PWCQ) will be May 23rd at 12 PM EST for subscribed patrons. See you there!