One of the best weapons standard Goat deck has at its disposal is stalling. In this short article, I will explain the simple theory of »stall when behind, pressure when ahead« and how to apply this when playing GC. Applying this in your games should increase your winrate significantly.
The »stall when behind, pressure when ahead« theory is not rocket science and it is pretty straight forward. It does not only work for Yu-Gi-Oh in general, but other games as well (such as chess). The concept is based on the fact that if you have more resources than your opponent, then simplifying the game (trading cards or trading pieces in chess) will benefit you more than your opponent, and if you have less resources than your opponent, then accumulating cards will benefit your more than your opponent. Why?
This is best illustrated with a simple practical example. Lets say that I have 6 cards and you have 3 cards. I am in +3 card advantages The theory states that I should enforce trades now. Okay, so I enforce three one-for-one trades. Now I have 3 cards and you have 0. It does not take much brain power to realize how much easier it is to win when your opponent has 0 cards to your 3 cards when compared to 3 vs 6 cards. On the other hand, if I were to be behind with only 3 cards to your 6 cards, I would love to let the cards accumulate for as many turns as possible.
Now we will take a look at the GC deck to see how it can enforce this dynamics.
When playing vs mirror (Chaos or Goat Control), especially vs less experienced players, we can frequently use their own TER / Scapegoats against them when we are behind. If they activate Scapegoats without a plan on how to continue their pressure (as they often do, with a simple short term plan to steal your set monster with Metamorphosis) we will benefit from the locked position and we help to keep it locked, try to assemble a game-shot or something like that. We never want to kill their 0 attack TER and / or tokens when behind in card advantage. A common trick versus Chaos Control deck that doesn not run any tribute monters is to Book of Moon the monster they summon next to 3 tokens and TER (most often this will be Tsukuyomi) and thus locking their field completely. GC is a little trickier because they run Airknight Parshats.
Of course, we can also use our own TER to try and stop the game when behind. When we do, and even if TER stole their beater, we may consider NOT attacking with TER into an obvious Sakuretsu / Mirror, which would break our lock.
Now, when we are ahead, we want to pressure. Goat Control has some solid means of pressure, namely AKPs. The main things you need to worry about when being ahead are to not minus yourself into MF / TT, to not minus yourself into TER, to not let your opponent lock the board and to not let yourself lock yourself.
I have seen some otherwise experienced Yu-Gi-Oh players play Goat Control totally wrong, because they did not understand those dynamics explained above. Keep this in mind when playing and I guarantee you will see more success.
This is all for now, thanks for reading.
siwski