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Europe And America: How Wind-Ups Won
Jason Grabher-Meyer
7/11/2012 10:40:00 AM  Whew! So that was a hell of a week there, wasn't it?Heading into the North American WCQ, most Duelists anticipated that the tournament would largely be decided by Chaos Dragons and Dino Rabbit. Inzektors were still a strong pick strong enough to be played by a number of Championship-level Duelists like Sam Pedigo and strategies like Dark World, Heroes, and Final Countdown seemed like they'd definitely have some influence. But it's fair to say that most competitors were expecting Dragons and Dino Rabbit to be the decks to beat on the WCQ weekend. The door certainly seemed open for Wind-Ups to make some sort of impact: we talked about that a few times over on the official TCGplayer facebook feed. But those conversations were largely approached from one perspective, centering on the notion that most players weren't teching their main deck (or even their side decks), for that particular match-up. And I think very few Duelists accurately predicted what the shape of the weekend ended up being. When we hit Round 7 in the North American WCQ coverage and saw that six of the top twenty seats from Tables 1 through 10 were occupied by Wind-Up Duelists, it was interesting, but not too terribly surprising... yet. When Round 9 hit, and Wind-Up mirror matches were seated at Table 1 and Table 2, the tone definitely Shifted. Half a day later, the Top 8 was a dead-heat split between three Dino Rabbit and three Wind-Up Duelists, leading to a Finals match that saw two Wind-Up players go head-to-head for the Championship. Feature Match after Feature Match saw big-name competitors falling to Wind-Up strategies, and it wasn't just Wind-Up Hunter that was putting in the work. Sure, some auto-wins were definitely occurring thanks to the Hunter loop, but there was also just some quality Yu-Gi-Oh going on as well. And as the wins stacked up over the course of the weekend, it was clear that Wind-Ups had alot more going for them as a metagame call than just a lack of side decked tech picks. So how did it happen? How did a deck with minimal representation in the last few YCS tournaments go on to win not just the North American WCQ, but also Europe's WCQ in Milan one week later? They say hindsight's twenty-twenty, so today I want to spend some time and look a little deeper. Let's take a minute to review the decks that won our two most recent WCQ's...
and then let's investigate the range of reasons why Wind-Ups dominated the biggest WCQ's this season. Okay, Let's Get It Out Of The Way: I'm a big fan of getting through the obvious talking points first, and in this case that means one card: Maxx C. When everyone and their grandmother was main decking and side decking three copies of Maxx C, Wind-Ups didn't win. Once Wind-Ups stopped winning, people stopped playing Maxx C in favor of Effect Veiler, and even the number of Veilers being played dropped by a fair percentage. The new Fast Effect timing ruleset also served to make Bottomless Trap Hole more popular, eroding the near-staple status of Fiendish Chain, which had been another big tech card keeping Wind-Ups in check earlier this year. The lack of Maxx C was the one big reason that some Duelists thought Wind-Ups had serious potential for the North American WCQ. With Maxx C reduced from its once-ubiquitous status to relative obscurity, the gates were pretty clearly down (Maxx C fell from the $100+ range on the secondary market to less than $30, because everybody stopped playing it almost simultaneously). Even with Effect Veiler continuing to see a respectable amount of use, a strong Wind-Up Duelist is often capable of playing around it anyways. So yeah, the number one trump card keeping Wind-Ups in check was pretty much gone. The other two tech picks that had previously restrained Wind-Up Duelists were also seeing less play. But if these were the only trends you observed, you might not have been sold on the idea of taking Wind-Ups to the WCQ. The real true believers knew that there were many more trends at work, some of which emerged earlier on in the WCQ season in smaller tournaments. Removing The Removal: There were a few big differences between the winning Wind-Up builds from Columbus and Milan, and those that had survived on the tail end of the deck's success in YCS tournaments and Regionals months prior, before the deck's popularity initially collapsed. One of the most significant of those differences was the renewed use of Wind-Up Factory in the WCQ-winning builds. With Mystical Space Typhoon a must-run at three per deck earlier this year, alot of Wind-Up Duelists who stuck it out and kept playing the deck past its prime coped by playing just one copy of Wind-Up Factory or no copies at all. As strong as the Factory was when it worked, it was usually pretty poor for a Wind-Up Duelist to plan his turn around Factory's effect; map out a string of interconnected combos; and then find themselves stuck holding one half of a ruined plan when Factory got nailed with a chained Mystical Space Typhoon before it could resolve. Flash forward a few months, and the threat of decks playing few to no trap cards had led many WCQ Duelists to lower their Typhoon count, often in favor of alternatives like Forbidden Lance. Many continued to side Typhoons, but some only played two copies total; and the sided cards of course did nothing to help stop the crushing Game 1's that Wind-Ups were afforded in the recent WCQ's. The rise of Chaos Dragons to the top of the format gave plenty of competitors ample reason to start dumping their Typhoons which were useless in that match-up in favor of Lances, which could help power a smaller monster over a big threat like Darkflare Dragon, Chaos Sorcerer, or Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. So with fewer copies of Typhoon in competitive circulation, Wind-Up Factory made a comeback. Check out North American WCQ winner Tyler Tabman's build, as well as European WCQ winner Stefano Memoli's deck, and you'll see that both of them played two copies of Wind-Up Factory. All metagame advantages and match-ups aside, these decks are just structurally stronger than the ones that became the standard earlier this year, thanks to Factory. And that made a big difference in the WCQ's. Less Commitment, More Opportunity: The rise of Chaos Dragons led the way for another trend that Wind-Up Duelists benefited from. When Wind-Ups were largely pushed out of Championship-level play, the deck to beat was Dino Rabbit. A Rabbit Duelist's goal is to establish a heavily-entrenched field as early as possible, usually consisting of Evolzar Laggia with multiple back row cards: the more defensive cards it can set the better. That makes Dino Rabbit an inherently tougher match-up for Wind-Ups, because it softens the potential impact of a potential Hunter loop. If you go first, and go off on Turn 1, your Rabbit-playing opponent still has cards in hand to discard. You're free to wreck them. But if the Rabbit Duelist goes first, then proceeds to bust out a Laggia and set everything, one of the biggest tricks in your arsenal is suddenly useless. From there you have to actually... ye know, play Yu-Gi-Oh. And while Wind-Ups can certainly function as a versatile combo deck under those circumstances, it prefers match-ups that wait a while before committing cards to the field, because they're more vulnerable to that loop play. Chaos Dragons don't generally throw all their cards onto the field on their first turn, because they don't want to commit cards until they can press for the win. You're just begging to get nailed with Dark Hole or banish effects. The Dragon deck's increased popularity meant a favorable match-up for Wind-Up Duelists Tabman described the Chaos Dragon match-up as an auto-win, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. The fact that many Duelists continued playing Inzektors as well, created another match-up with a similar fault: the Inzektor strategy usually won't choose to go off early if there's nothing on the field to destroy with Inzektor Hornet combos, and that lets a Wind-Up Duelist hold back and buy time in which to demolish the opponent's hand (that tactic is especially effective if the Inzektor Duelist doesn't realize he's in a Wind-Up match to begin with we'll talk more about that later). Certain fringe strategies that were played at the WCQ, like Final Countdown, also keep big hands that are easily wrecked by Wind-Up Duelists. So you had a bunch of match-ups that favored Wind-Ups, and the all became markedly more common. In addition, every Duelist playing one of those vulnerable strategies was one less person left to play Dino Rabbit, the toughest match-up a Wind-Up Duelist could reasonably expect to see. This multi-faceted trend of decks that made low levels of field commitment in the early game was a big factor contributing to Wind-Ups' strong performance. The Surprise Factor: Moving from the match-up side of things into issues of player mentality, there was a strong surprise factor that contributed to Wind-Ups' success: it bolstered the deck in more ways than one. Sure, people weren't properly teched to take on Wind-Ups as far as individual cards were concerned. But more than that, many just didn't know how to play against Wind-Ups period. Alot of competitors wouldn't have playtested much, if at all for the match-up. And even those who did put in the time may have been testing with older, inferior builds: ones that might not have played double Wind-Up Factory; double Bottomless Trap Hole; and that almost certainly didn't run Tabman's Instant Fusions. Even a week after Tabman's success in Columbus, European competitors armed with Tabman's deck list were still stymied, because plenty of European WCQ Wind-Up builds had evolved in different directions in just that week's time. For instance, Memoli's winning Wind-Up deck didn't play Tabman's Instant Fusions, but ran fewer cards, plus Tour Bus From the Underworld and a main decked Soul Taker instead.
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With no standardized build of Wind-Ups for either WCQ, there was no adequate way to playtest the Wind-Up match-up. Even if you put in what seemed like a fair amount of time to test against the deck, you were probably testing against the wrong build. In fact, the only Duelists who had the right builds of Wind-Ups were, well... The Wind-Up Duelists: See, what's really interesting here isn't just the fact that testing against Wind-Ups was largely impossible. It was the fact that the Wind-Up players themselves had just the opposite going for them. Normally, if you want to take your opponent by surprise, you have to play a rogue strategy they've never seen before. The problem when you do that, is that when you play a rogue deck you lose one of the biggest assets you can have in high-level competition: communal development of your strategy. Let me define that, in case it isn't clear: when you play the same deck theme that thousands (or tens of thousands) of other Duelists are playing, you benefit from their development, testing, and research. If I was playing Dino Rabbit as my number one deck over the past year, I was able to look at YCS-topping builds from every major tournament in 2012. I could go on message boards to discuss my card choices, or come to sites like TCGplayer and find articles with complete deck lists; in-depth analysis; and speculation about future trends related to the deck. Hell, I could've just gone to my local tournament store and chat up other Dino Rabbit players. People focus alot on netdecking when they discuss popular decks, as if having access to a starting point for a given strategy is the most influential advantage one could have. I don't think that's true. I think the real advantage is that when you play a well-acknowledged strategy, you have access to a huge network of support, encompassing a vast range of ideas. It's not just you on your own, playtesting dozens or hundreds of Duels. It's you and thousands of people like you, playtesting millions of Duels globally. And that's the advantage Wind-Up Duelists had going into this event. On one hand, they had the rogue deck surprise factor, because opponents were both unfamiliar with their particular builds, and many had forgotten or never learned how to approach the strategy on a tactical level. But at the same time, the Wind-Up players also had months of testing and experimentation; Championship-level proofs of performance; and full knowledge of their incredible range of combos and play patterns. Combined with the individual, technical advantages determined by specific cards and decks, the advantage of widespread communal development made Wind-Ups an incredible pick on a very fundamental level. And that's why they won the last two WCQ's. It wasn't just the lack of Maxx C: it was a range of advantageous trends that scaled all the way from individual cards, up to this perfect-storm combination of surprise factor, and long-term global testing. Will Wind-Ups' success continue? Probably not. Players are going to attack these advantages on all levels. They're going to start running the right individual cards; they're going to adjust their play patterns and card commitments; and they're going to educate themselves about the ins and outs of the Wind-Up deck to make themselves tactically stronger. I wouldn't bank on Wind-Ups over the coming months. But for one week, they were a stellar choice for a handful of insightful competitors, some of whom are now headed to the World Championships in Tokyo. And to them, I say congratulations and good luck. Each of those Duelists made the perfect metagame call; put in the time to turn a great idea into real success; and now they're reaping the rewards. In my opinion, that's exactly how this game should work. -Jason Grabher-Meyer 
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this card!