Benefits of Obscure Decks

As many of you are aware, YCS Charlotte had Empty Jar in the top 4, after Book of Moon’s limit was widely believed to have killed the deck.

You didn’t expect Empty Jar to get in the Top 4 after losing 2 of these, did you?

So I will take this opportunity to speak about the 2 main benefits of using obscure decktypes in major tournaments, since everyone seems to assume that the dude stacked. This is not necessarily the case.

As long as you use a consistent enough build, decks that aren’t tier 1 or tier 2 have a few inherent bonuses compared to other decks. The first of which is that nobody has anything sided specifically for it. As long as you can handle common stuff like Veiler, Rai-Oh, Crow and Chain Disappearance, all of which can be mained/sided against pretty much anything, you have a little more leeway than most other decks in games 2 and 3 of the match. Hopefully, anyone reading this is smart enough to know why this is a good thing, so I won’t dwell on that point.

The other major benefit is that people are typically out of practice against the deck you happen to be using. The benefit there is also rather obvious. Not only does your opponent end up ultimately having a harder time reading your plays, but they’re typically left to react to your plays, rather than preparing for them ahead of time.

Of course, no matter how consistent you build an obscure deck, how much testing you did, or how well prepared you are, people will always accuse you of stacking if you topped with something that isn’t *insert popular decktype here*. Seeing as I nearly topped YCS Toronto last format with Morphtronics, I personally find this rather annoying. But nothing can be done about it, people will be skeptical about anything. Just be satisfied with how you skillfully dodged most people’s Side Decks and states of mind.