FLC8 1st Place Tournament Report: Noelle Yves

​I suppose it all started with ACP launching GoatFormat.com, the main feature of which was a ranked ladder for Goat Format that didn’t exist on DuelingBook.com’s own functionality. Fast forwarding back to recent months, after playing standard Goat Control for a while, I guess I got bored and decided to make my own deck. I had seen that Jay had success with a Reasoning Gate Combo deck but, with knowledge of various combo decks from my years playing current format, I was pretty convinced that a lot of the cards he played just shouldn’t even be in the deck.

Building Reasoning Gate Combo

Right off the bat, Scapegoat and Metamorphosis were two cards that really didn’t make any sense to me along with low-impact stuff like Dust Tornado. If I’m playing a combo deck, I’m not playing it so I can have a “fair” game of Yu-Gi-Oh! where I set some cards, maybe summon a monster, attack, you do the same in return, play a trap card, and so on. There are decks which are built for that, but it’s mismatched to the essence of playing a combo deck.  The longer the game goes, the more chance there is for something to go wrong, especially considering that with a Dimensional Fusion strategy, your life points being under 2000 can be effectively the same as losing. There is, of course, a grace period of 1-2 turns that you can abuse, since the average Goat Format deck can’t just kill you, but after that you’ll have to actually play. Going by this logic, there were other cards that made no sense too. One of them was Airknight Parshath. What one must realize is that the hidden effect of Parshath is, “Your opponent gets another turn.” This is because, with the exception of piercing for game, the draw only matters insofar as it’s a card that you can play after the battle phase that turn, and since the game did not end in the battle phase, then your opponent gets another turn. In other words, you’ve played your combo pieces (Monster Gate, Reasoning) presumably getting yourself an Airknight, and all you got from it comparatively to other options is giving them another turn and using up combo cards, which is mismatched to the maximum 1-2 turns you want to give them as previously dictated. Thus, Metamorphosis, Scapegoat, and Airknight Parshath would not be making the list. Same with other cards that played “fair Yu-Gi-Oh!”, or otherwise implied that my opponent would get more turns, including most traps like Dust Tornado. Using these ideas, I quickly made the prototype for my first Reasoning Gate list, and the public (GoatFormat.com and FormatLibrary.com discord servers respectively) received it with shock and horror. ​

I wasn’t only maining three Toon Table of Contents and Toon Cannon Soldier, I was also playing three Thunder Dragons, and (at the time) 2 copies of Reload. The obvious responses that I had anticipated followed: ​