OBELISK 70: Top 8 decklist Coverage

Obelisk 70 is all wrapped up, with Leuh winning the event and earning an invitation to the Goat Format World Championship. We are back with some coverage of the players' decklists. As always, replays of all matches in the event can be found on the Academy Server. In addition, a stream of the Top 4 of this event is available here.

Leuh's win is another qualification earned by Chaos Turbo, which, despite rumors of its demise, continues to notch top performances left and right. Taking a closer look at our winner's deck, we can see they have added a few twists.

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Leuh has dropped the higher-variance Night Assailant from the deck entirely (and Card Destruction as well) and is instead playing a main deck copy of Kycoo alongside one Spirit Reaper. In their side deck, they have chosen to trim the more conventional second Mind Control in favor of a third copy of Trap Dustshoot. Finally, as with any successful Chaos Turbo decklist, we want to look at their postboard strategy against Warrior and other aggressive decks. In addition to the more standard Zombyra, Leuh has also included a full recruiter package, with Tomato (which has the main deck Reaper as an added target), multiple Shining Angel, and targets for Angel. We asked Leuh to share some insight about their deck for this event, particularly the choice to exclude Assailant along with their recruiter-based side:


“The main issue I had with CT vs aggro match-ups, especially Warrior, is that they out-tempo you very easily and most of the time you're unable to recover from cards like Nobleman of Crossout, which trades 1 for 1 but makes you lose 1 turn to set up a defensive board. NoC is basically the most broken card of the format when you're the CT player. Resolving a Dekoichi is huge on paper, but even if it doesn't get NoC'd, you need to pair it with a battle trap to protect it from Mystic Swordsman lv2 or Blade Knight; otherwise, it's a strict minus 1 (and your battle trap is likely to be destroyed by Mystical Space Typhoon/Heavy Storm/Dust Tornado/Xing Zhen Hu anyway). As a result, flip-hate stuff makes a big amount of average CT hands awfully bricky. Flip monsters don't work alone, and your chaos monsters will stay in your hand forever if your light/dark happens to get NoC'd, etc. I tried to solve this by swapping flips and recruiters post-side. Then, each of them is a play no matter what the rest of your hand is; they are really good defensive tools because the body sticks on board; they fill your GY so you can keep 2 Chaos Sorcerers; and since you don't need the perfect ratio of 1 flip + battle trap + something to bait Dust Tornado, you are more flexible in what you side in (you can keep NoCs, for example). And Warrior players don't run Wanghu anymore. This is why I play Spirit Reaper over Night Assailant. The card is ok against every match-up but for siding pattern purposes (having enough darks once Gravekeeper’s Spies and Dekoichis are gone and a second Mystic Tomato target) and limited side slots I had to run it in main.”

Our second-place finisher is psyt, bringing their signature Stein Will Archer Goat (SWAG) deck. They have had a lot of success this season with this novel strategy, earning a Top 8 finish at FLC39 and a Worlds invitation at PWCQ85. This deck uses a variety of one-ofs and easy ways to trigger Last Will to set up huge amounts of damage (often lethal) out of seemingly nowhere. We cannot do the deck justice in writing -- you really need to watch some of psyt's games to see for yourself what SWAG can do.

Finishing third was shifty4953, bringing a very familiar Chaos Control decklist. Astute readers may recall that AlephYa2 won Obelisk 68 with a main deck identical to this one. Very similar to the Chaos Control build popularized last year by geistD, shifty’s main deck makes one notable change: using Maharaghi as its third Spirit monster, offering more card selection, another Creature Swap target, and a respectable body. We can also see that shifty has mixed up the sideboard, clearly anticipating more token-based decks in the field with the inclusion of another Asura Priest and a singleton Token Thanksgiving.

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Rounding out the Top 4 of this event was mrbignoodle, with quite a novelty. While they have built their deck around a Reinforcement of the Army toolbox core, the deck is completely unlike the traditional Warrior strategy. They have fit their signature Masked Sorcerer in addition to Don Zaloog and its Light Spellcaster variant in White Magical Hat. The Light count is supplemented with two copies of Zaborg, and the monster lineup is rounded out with none other than a pair of Cyber Stein! The traps have also been switched to reflect the deck's more explosive potential, as they have dropped more commonly seen choices for Compulsory, Reckless Greed, maxed Dustshoot, and multiple Xing Zhen Hu.

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For the rest of the field, we actually have FOUR different Warrior decks, each with its own unique choices:
- grenoftoussaint with a list similar to what we have seen quite often this season, with a singleton Book of Moon, a medium-density flip transition sideboard, Widespread Ruin perhaps as a diversity hedge instead of maxing Sakuretsu, and the ever-popular alternative backrow disruption of Xing Zhen Hu. 
- LeGoat, who has replaced the third Blade Knight with a second Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke, alongside fitting in a main deck Spirit Reaper as another Dark to fuel the inclusion of another boss monster in Chaos Sorcerer; their side deck also includes Needle Ceiling, an anti-goat tech card that has seen more play of late.
- M4rv1n3's Warrior list trims the usual extra copies of Blade Knight and Kycoo, forgoing the typical dodging of Nobleman of Crossout in favor of four main deck flip monsters; this choice also allows them to free up sideboard slots for a variety of one-ofs rarely seen out of Warrior; they have also elected for Bottomless Trap Hole as additional removal out of the side. 
- zainoman brings their own twists, with a searchable main deck Zombyra to help swing aggressive matchups, a single Magician of Faith, and a tech Mind Control perhaps anticipating a flip-heavy meta; they've also brought along a full goat package in the side, alongside Spy and multiple Monarchs. 

Overall, Obelisk 70 was a Warrior-heavy event, but one where a mix of other decks also found success. We also saw multiple innovative takes on Cyber Stein-based strategies. Consider watching some of the footage to see how different decks can overcome Warrior decks, a strategy that has only grown in popularity this season. Come visit the Academy Server to watch along or play in the events yourself!

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