The deck had spread like a glitch. People were taking it to remote duels, locals, even a regional qualifier in Texas. A player named RogueRook went 7-2 with it, losing only to a mirror match.
Because at the bottom of the stats page, under "Optimized Variant," was a deck he had never built.
The cursor blinked. A new notification appeared.
Match 1: Loss. He misplayed the timing on Trap Trick.
Match 4: Win. He bricked on two Needlebug Nests , but top-decked Terraforming into Mystic Mine as a hail mary. The AI couldn’t out it.
He typed a query: "Anti-negate. High recursion. Non-linear win con."
It had a 68% win rate against the Tier 0 deck over 3,000 games.
He dismissed Plunder. Too reliant on attributes. He merged Springans and Time Thief. The idea: Xyz summon without activating effects that could be negated. Use Springans Merrymaker to dump Springans Booty to grave, then Time Thief Redoer to loop banishment. It was clunky. But interesting.