[No] Bad Cards 2: Rising Air Current (Part 2 of 2)

The Shadowknight Rises, Pt.2

Continued from Part 1

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RESULTS AND MODIFICATIONS

​Format Library Championship 41 Results: [1-2] [1-2] [2-1] [1-2] [DROP]

This deck kind of crystallized the week before this tournament started, so I didn’t get as much practice as I would have liked, I’m very sure I misplayed in my match (1-2) against Nessapouliata on Chaos Turbo (which I didn’t play against as much in the limited testing window) and the 55 had the win in it despite Nessa being both meticulous and difficult to predict. I’m sure my siding is suboptimal, however Chiron applies a great amount of pressure and maining him at one or two copies may be correct. Dustshoot is also a standout card as always if you lose g1 vs Turbo, previous builders in this vein mained it.

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In my duel with Pattn13 in round 2 I walked away with a new appreciation for the low utility of blind MST by hitting JoG twice and had some serious Solemn Judgment envy. We can’t support the LP cost of a Solemn, but we might be able to afford a Seven Tools of the Bandit, or main a Giant Trunade, just to stop counterplay. A serious weakness to Creature Swap was revealed as well, which could warrant the secondary effect of Spell Shield Type-8 since our Chiron suite in the sideboard already banks on turning dead Spells into S/T removal. If I were smarter I might have brought in the Spear Dragons I had in triplicate to help deal with Sheep tokens, but I was respecting my own Skill Drain more than their tokens and paid a steep brokerage.


I had decided to drop after going 0-2 because I got good reps in against Turbo in a tournament environment, and it highlighted how unprepared I was for the event despite the deck being in a pretty solid state, and X-2s aren’t likely to make it to the top in a 200+ player field. Then I saw I was paired up against picatron for Round 3, and I wasn’t gonna pass that duel up. The match was mostly a sacking competition, with game 1 being a Chaos Warrior steamroll after a questionable opening turn from me, game 2 me grinding my way back from squandered advantage I started with, and game 3 was closed out by exactly the Ring of Destruction I needed.


I probably should have beaten MrBigNoodle considering that I had all the trinity draws, but, I am really not familiar with Cat Stein and things got interesting. Also forgot to revive a Twin-Headed Behemoth after a Cyber Jar, which could have changed things, but, not too worried about it, just need to keep better track in the future. I am grateful to have had strong opponents to test this against. Ultimately I don’t feel like the deck itself needs as much work as much as I just need practice, but there is definitely room for improvement. Between main and side, I would say about 40 of these cards are “set in stone” as probably ideal for what this deck is trying to do but I’m eager to see what 55s people come up with.

R1 Replay (vs Nessapouliata): https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=966730-83783032

R2 Replay (vs Pattn13): https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=966730-83846344

R3 Replay (vs picatron): https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=966730-83861492 

R4 Replay (vs MrBigNoodle):
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=966730-83942056 
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Puy helpfully pointed out an elephant in the room regarding my Turbo matchups when I asked her to take a look:

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A great point she raised about Nobleman of Crossout that I neglected when I thought of it as possibly redundant spot removal is that unlike Drain, NoC banishes stuff and that really really matters if you don’t want your opponent to drop a Chaos monster on you. She cooked up a more viable list which cuts some cute stuff but still demonstrates the strength of Rising Air Current. I made no changes to the main and the sideboard I had very few changes to consider from her initial suggestions. A bit of the “joy” being subtracted led to “Joyless Wind” as the name of her edit, but winning feels good. I couldn’t offer suggestions to improve the sideboard, but I did make a tweak or two of debatable value. Waboku and Vortex, mainly.

Below lies the RAC.dek puymix “Joyless Wind”:

https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=20546559 [JoylessWind]

​Waboku is an edge case I’m choosing over puy’s Threatening Roar suggestion because of the frequency with which we can crash with monsters like Blade Knight or Jirai Gumo. This option is fine because we don’t really fear Mystic Swordsman LV2 and we can often use Drain to turn off the D.D. monsters that could otherwise trouble us. Lightning Vortex I’m stubborn about just because it works in so many matchups. She leans into what’s needed so you can get to plowing through the opposition faster, as the deck has been more or less de-bricked and up-removaled into a serious contender with unique strengths and answers for its weaknesses. With some testing though, a question arises regarding the optimal usage of Skill Drain and necessity of RAC: "why am I using a Spell card to have a bigger monster when i could just have a bigger monster?" asked puy.

It’s worth examining, what does this deck do better or different than just, Drain Beat? (she linked me to one of don’t copy’s old lists that was pretty gnarly: https://formatlibrary.com/decks/861). RAC inherently makes you more vulnerable to disruption, and it bricks in multiples.

My argument is that the monsters occupy a better balance of function with or without Drain up. Drain shifts our own needle less while Drain guarantees that Emissary can trade profitably with Blade Knight even if we may have to throw a Slate under the bus and crash with a Duck or Silpheed to stop a Gumo offense. Our ceiling is higher since with RAC, 2200 ATK is the WIND suite’s floor, barring Twin-Headed, with the other beaters entering at 2400 and 2500 under those conditions. If this article wound up successfully selling the merits of Skill Drain more than it did Rising Air Current, I would not be surprised. Skill Drain is great vs Warrior except for two monsters, Exiled Force who can ignore it, and Zombyra who gets massively pumped by it. Gumo offers two Jirai Gumo and a Swift Gaia as opposition also, and Slate can get over them both under RAC. Silpheed significantly advances the clock while beating over enough of the metagame to be a relevant attacker, and its effect triggers in the GY, safe from Skill Drain.

Manticore being cute at one, a disaster that goes well rarely at two, as puy had said earlier, makes me want to push the deck back out a little bit more (read: re-insert bricks and adjust), but at risk of slowing it down for a chance at a higher ceiling, make no mistake about what putting high level monsters in decks does. If you still want to play Necrofear and Manticore, these ratios seem good as one gets. A single Silpheed remains because WIND monsters are abundant, including 4 non-Fiends 3 of which are tutorable. The Fiend count is increased to 9 total by adding a third Shadowknight Archfiend to make Necrofear available earlier and just to have another beater that is 2000 ATK without RAC.

https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=20561723 [CompromisedJoy]

To anyone’s complete lack of surprise the match that got me thinking hard about Emissary was one with AlephYa2. There’s also been good discussion in the Discord lately about the viability of Necrofear and Manticore, not together, but also completely separate from this deck’s development so it may just be that the universe was trying to manifest this deck. Who knows. But it’s a blast to play and can go toe-to-toe with most aggro strategies out there while often shutting down Warriors and critical FLIP effects. In my mind, RAC + Drain is the most viable WIND strategy I have seen so far, and while I don’t have the time to grind for competition like I should, I know that good recipes are meant to be shared.

Shep in 2021 made a pretty sick list [https://formatlibrary.com/decks/2074] that topped FLC 16 classified as “Emissary Beat” by Format Library featuring the Duck at 2 copies (Manticore and RAC reward us for maxing them), AlephYa2 shows up next in the archetype for topping with an Emissary focused list in 2022 [https://formatlibrary.com/decks/19914]. Puy was an immensely helpful collaborator on the Modifications section and gave some great tips. Spooky helped me tighten the article up and cut some bloat too. I would like to thank Alderoth as a fellow chef, Riksaah and Alison as amiable early testers, as well as the NoVA Goat Format Community for being a dope locals helping me fine tune this (special thanks to bluetooth for crushing my Winged Beast build, Desi for throwing insane ATK values at me and ⛧sᴛᴀʀ∴ꜰɪʀᴇ⛥ for all the Gumo runbacks).

-C.G.