Goat Format Championship 25 Deck Tech: Dark Return
This article provides a deck tech analysis of Geist D's Dark Return deck, highlighting its unique strategy and card choices for Goat Format Championship 25.
It seems that the dark side was too enticing for Geist D, since they decided to enter Goat Format Championship 25 with a Dark Return list sporting some casual favorites, like D.D. Scout Plane and Skull Lair! Are you afraid of the Dark (attribute)?
Deck List
Overview
Return lists use Return From the Different Dimension as a surprise finisher and can be built as quick OTK-style decks, or something slower and more methodical. What they all have in common are tools that allow them to banish their own monsters from the graveyard (or sometimes even from play) in order to bring them back with the title trap card. Bazoo the Soul Eater is common in these decks, but is also common to simply play large numbers of strong flip monsters like Gravekeeper's Spy or Deckoichi. If they get hit by an opponent's Nobleman of Crossout, they can just come back later! In Dark-centered lists, the most common banish enabler is Strike Ninja. However, Geist D is only playing a single copy of the stealthy assassin. Instead of additional ninjas, it looks like Skull Lair plays double duty as both a removal tool and a banish booster. D.D. Scout Plane is an ideal target, since it can be recycled for Lair over and over, and makes for easy tribute fodder for Mobius and Dark Magician of Chaos.
Player Insight
This is my personal favorite Goat Format deck of all time. I think it is very fun to play and very special in terms of what the deck does. It is very underexplored, despite the fact that this deck is stronger than a lot of Tier 2 decks and can easily compete with Tier 1 decks as well. The Turbo matchup is very close, it overperforms against Control, and underperforms against Aggro.When putting the deck together, I asked myself which so-called “staples” are actually needed when your goal is to execute your own strategy rather than disrupt your opponent’s.At the end of the day, this deck requires a lot of setup, but it only takes one Return to finish the game. When you can deal lethal damage, card advantage vanishes in an instant. So if the goal is to deal lethal damage in one turn, I tried to figure out which cards I actually need in that situation and worked backwards from there.That led me to the question: do cards like Duo, Storm, or Breaker in the opening hand really bring me closer to what I want to achieve, or do they sometimes just prevent me from doing so?The most interesting cards in this deck are not the ones it plays, but the ones that are not in the main deck: Storm, Snatch, Duo, MST, Ring, Breaker.Each choice has a reason:
