LUXURY 32-MAN GOAT FORMAT TOURNAMENT REPORT AND SOME OTHER STUFF
This was a double elimination best of 3 tourney, played in April 2019, with $20 entry fee and the following prize pool:
1st place: $400 plus exclusive goat mat
2nd place: $60 plus exclusive goat mat
3rd place: exclusive goat mat
4th place: exclusive goat mat
What makes this tournament special, in my opinion, is the fact that the two decks that reached the finals (mine with 1 loss and Chris DiGregorio’s undefeated) are at this point in time pretty unrecognized in the goat format community, although both decks have been achieving some good results in the recent tournaments and in goatformat.com’s ranked ladder. These two decks are Jazz’s Chaos Flip Turbo deck (which was piloted by Chris) and Nicey’s Chaos Control deck (or Asura Chaos as I call it). More about these decks later on.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE TOURNEY
I guess I’ll have to start from the very beginning, with me playing vs random guys on duelingbook.com. One day, a guy called Nicey texted me and asked whether I wanted to join the formatlibrary’s discord server, which of course I accepted and this was my first step into the online goat community. Soon after that, ACP and Skully lauched goatformat.com and alongside it, the goatformat.com discord server, where I was an active member, too. In this time I played a lot on the ranked ladder and Luxury tourneys and met new people and new friends. Some time after the Colosseum tourney was over (for those who are interested, I wrote a report about it, too. You can read it here: https://slogoatsss.github.io/blog/2019/01/12/colosseum-report) I was messing around with Chaos decks A LOT and I entered a Luxury Team Tourney with Noelle and Mark with a weird Chaos Control build that didn’t play any Shining Angels, Skilled White Magicians or Thunder Dragons, which was based on Nicey’s theory and ideas. I did very well in that tourney and my team won. Soon after that, I talked to Nicey and showed him my decklist. In response, Nicey gave me his Chaos Control list that was similar to mine, but more optimized and that he had used in some other Luxury team tourney. Although he didn’t do well in that tourney, I thought the list was pretty cool and it was exactly what I wanted to build myself originally, but Nicey did it better. I used that list in goatformat.com’s ranked ladder and took 1st place, finished 1st after swiss on two local side event Goat tourneys in Slovenia, won a small 8-man tourney hosted by Silver, split finals in a smaller 32-man tourney and soon after, split finals of this 32-man tourney as well.
I didn’t prepare much for other tourneys, because they were all small-stakes just-for-fun tourneys, but this one had a very big prize of $400 for 1st place, so I wanted to come prepared. Unfortunately, Nicey wasn’t around when this tourney started, so I couldn’t talk to him about small main deck reconfigurations or the side deck. Instead, my friend Brandis helped me out and together we built a strange looking side deck, which I wasn’t very satisfied with but it was the best we could do in the limited time we had. I wasn’t sure how many people would netdeck Jazz’s turbo deck but I knew Noelle was in the tourney with her signature Reasongate deck, so we kept that in mind.
THE DECK
Finally, here’s the deck that Nicey originally built: https://imgur.com/OlFU5dw
I won’t talk about it much in detail because I hope that the creator of the deck himself will some day make an article about it. You can easily see why I like to call this deck Asura Chaos – the two signature Asuras are heart of this deck, and together with 2 Magical Merchants and 2 Magician of Faiths (+ 1 D. D. Warrior Lady, who is not “really” a LIGHT) they constitute the LIGHT core for the deck, which supports the 3 Chaos boss monsters. Nicey cut Snatch Steal for a 3rd Dust Tornado in the main for that particular event because he assumed that most opponents would run Goat Control with 1 or 2 copies of Abyss Soldier, and with triple Tornado he would consistently be able to stop their annoying Premature Burial loops. Note that Asura works really, really good when supported with S/T removal (similarly to AKP), so 3x Dust Tornado makes sense in this deck. I couldn’t make myself cut the Snatch, though, so I always played 2 Dust Tornados and 1 Snatch Steal. The decklist with which I entered the tourney was the following:
A short explanation of the side deck:
Skilled Darks would swap out Tsukuyomis against Aggro and against decks that I needed to pressure fast (Reasongate Turbo, Empty Jar).
One random Mobius (lmao) was for Burn and Pacman and some other ugly, unimaginable alt-win decks.
Two Creature Swaps were very flexible and are in my opinion one of the best side cards; they were for Aggro, Burn or basically everything, that doesn’t run Scapegoat.
Three Dustshoot and one Mind Crush (known as the Crushshoot package) were for Chaos Turbo and other combo decks.
Decree for heavy backrow decks, including Aggro.
Cursed Seal for combo decks.
I pre-made my post-side configurations against certain match-ups. They were as follows:
Chaos Control: https://imgur.com/8rwZNNT
Chaos Turbo: https://imgur.com/OlXQbMa
Aggro: https://imgur.com/RxyZnWe
PACMAN: https://imgur.com/v6P32Gl
Burn: https://imgur.com/tM6XQB0
ReasonGate: https://imgur.com/YApHEUE
Empty Jar: https://imgur.com/i3oHqXP
In the middle of the tourney, I bumped into Nicey and we talked a little. He asked how his deck was doing and made few comments about the side deck, mostly about Mobius which didn’t really fit in the deck. Instead, he suggested that I try Giant Trunades. Well, the decklist can’t be switched in the middle of the tourney so I was stuck with the Mobius, which, fortunately, I never had to use in the entire tourney.
I think the main deck is good as it is, but I would consider changing it up a bit if meta starts to change (more Turbo Chaos and Reasongate Turbo deck would for example require mained Trap Dustshoots). The side is a mess and I don’t recommend copying it, although I think that the post-side vs Aggro is pretty solid, much better than Goat Control can even dream of, but Goat Control inherently beats us vs some other matchups, for example Reasongate or Burn, where having Tributes proves to be of good value.
MATCHES
Round 1 vs James Kim (Thunder Dragon Chaos Control) 2-1
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=25926-8945772
I think my Chaos Control deck is favoured in every Chaos match-up, since my monsters aren’t weak to opposing Chaos Sorcerers. This replay, however, still haunts my dreams due to horrible misplay I made game 3, from just pressing the buttons too quick. Luckily, I was able to still win, but I really didn’t deserve it after being so careless.
Round 2 vs Maracelo Lopez (Goat Control) 2-x?
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=25926-8986626
This replay glitches for me so I can’t rewatch it, but I do remember that Marcelo plays Upstart Goblins in his deck, which I’m really not a fan of.
Round 3 vs Calvin Tahan (Aggro Warrior) 2-1
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=25926-9069595
Featuring misplays game 1 and probably game 2 and game 3 also, also featuring Mr. Decree putting in a lot of work. I was confident in my Aggro matchup and I’m thankful to Brandis who made me side in 3 Decrees vs this matchup, for it really paid off.
Round 4 vs Danny Spring (Goat Control) 2-0
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=25926-9244077
My very first move is a misplay, after that it’s the grind and I win. Game 2 he adds Snatch from Merchant and I make my CS into a Senshi which he can’t out so I win. :D
Semi Finals vs Chris DiGregorio (Chaos Flip Turbo) 1-2
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=25926-9430289
I lost, though games may have been winnable, I don’t know I haven’t really analyzed them. All I know that in game 3 he adds back Duo with MoF and I have Mind Crush and I don’t set it xD So I deserved to lose, lmao. After the match I talked with Chris and he turns out to be really nice guy, we talk about our deck choices and we both agree how strong Jazz’s deck is. Chris also took the deck to FLC but he didn’t do well in that tourney; he lost to ReasonGate and Aggro.
Loser Bracket Finals vs Carl Manigat (Chaos Flip Turbo) 2-1
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=25926-9666382
Game 1 I made an interesting misplay where I NoCed his MoF before activating Charity; doing it in the correct order would give me a chance of drawing my own MoF first. I lose game 1 and win the next two games, one by Tsuku loop to death and other I OTK him by Creature Swapping him a token. Chris then tells me that I played vs his best friend and that they both used completely same list. Chris and I then decide to split.
Finals vs Chris DiGregorio (Chaos Flip Turbo): split :D
LAST WORDS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT THE DECKS
Jazz’s Turbo deck has in my opinion proved its worth, not only when I easily took the #1 spot on ranked ladder with insane winrate but also in this tourney, where there would be a Turbo Chaos mirror match in the finals if I lost against Carl. The deck will have a solid place in the meta and force people to start siding for it appropriately, which will also hurt ReasonGate and other combo decks (since Crushshoot is very good vs both decks).
Nicey’s Chaos Control deck has become my favourite version of Chaos Control, and in my opinion it is the best version currently in existence. With proper side deck that deals with alt-wins appropriately, the deck is without a doubt tier 1, next to Goat Control. Compared to Goat, it has some better and some worse match-ups, and against Goat Control itself the deck does well; it is still a skilled grind game where the better player will win, so which deck is better mostly depends on the other decks that are played in the event. I also think that both Goat Control and Asura Chaos are favoured against Jazz’s Turbo Chaos deck IF they are siding properly.
I’d like to say thanks to Kyuna who helped me to test against Chaos Turbo deck, to Brandis who helped with the side deck, to Nicey who gave me the decklist and to Spare for proofreading the whole thing. Shout out to Walia for being the best Goat player ever and to Morpp for emotional support. <3
That is all for this report, I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Until next time,
Siwski
