Goat Format World Championship 2023 Deck Tech: Kevin Micenin's Relinquished!

Kevin "Splevin" Micenin is another veteran of the Goat Format scene. He's made top placements at GFC and FLC events, and has continuously proven himself as one of the best players in the world. Today, at the most important event of the year, Micenin decided to try and prove once again that he's got what it takes to be a champion. His deck of choice? Relinquished Turbo! 

Decklist

Relinquished is one of the new decks in town when it comes to competitive Goat Format. Sure, duelists have been jamming the card since the Magic Ruler set, and José Rodriguez (AKA selim) brought a version of the deck to GFC17, but actual success was rare, to say the least. That is, until this year, and specifically, until Claudio Destro got 2nd place at Goat Community Italia's GCS10 piloting Relinquished Turbo. This placement put the deck on the map, and it's seen a surge of popularity since then. Also notable was Wavment winning GGP Chicago with a similar deck. 

This increased popularity is with good reason, too. Thanks to Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands, Relinquished Turbo can play a similar game to Chaos Turbo decks, enabling powerful cards that require discard fodder (like Raigeki Break), while also making it quite easy to get Light and Dark monsters into the graveyard. 

Player Insight

Perhaps in typical Yu-Gi-Oh! player fashion, it seems like it may have been a last-minute decision by Micenin to play Relinquished today. Still, the deck has proven it's more than capable of taking down a large event, and in the hands of an experienced player like this, it's definitely not an unlikely scenario for us to see Relinquished in the top standings tomorrow. 

​So, after spending several days testing goat control and Flip Warrior, neither managed to convince me. Then, the night before Worlds, I stumbled upon Wavment's deck while checking replays on formatlibrary.com and decided to give it a shot.

I didn't want to leave anything to chance, so I shoved in mirror force, Torrential, and Raigeki Break (these cards were initially sided or not in the deck at all), especially after watching Wavment's replays and noticing he had hard times dealing with Tsukuyomi, Breaker, and Ojama Tokens.

Having both chaos monsters, because they are the best bombs in the games, and being able to do some control-ish stuff with Relinquished (I'd play chaos control if the deck wasn't so bad) is pretty underrated. Manju, Relinquished, and Black Illusion Ritual can definitely be liabilities, and I think I should've used main Card Destruction, which was sided because I was expecting a large number of Turbo players.

​Despite looking like a ​last-minute choice, Micenin clearly put some thought into the deck, its matchups, and its strengths. How do they feel it's all been working out for them today, though.

The tournament isn't going to go well, to be honest, but that's almost totally on me. In round 1, I played a nice back-and-forth match with Alephya; I lost round 2 because I played sloppy, and I got destroyed by Rabbid during round 3.


I think more people should try this deck. I can't say if it's tier 1 or 2, but it can definitely be a meta deck since it has all the right tools.