About
Battle Nexus Event - Philippines Meta Report
Battle Nexus PH Top Decks Representation
Champion: Jude Macaranas [Tenpai Dragons]
Top 2nd -4th
Anan Quipit [Chimera Horus]
Darwin Roa De Castro [Tenpai Dragons]
Patrick Burton [Fire King Snake-Eyes]
Top 5th - 8th
Kenneth Febra [Rescue - ACE]
Angelino Espiritu [Voiceless Voice]
Jan Patrick Suinan [Spiritual Beast]
Richard Renz Balucio [Salamangreat]
ABOUT THE TOURNAMENT
EIGHT TOTAL ROUNDS
Players are pitched in a 8-round total of matches, each with a maximum match time limit of 50 minutes.
BEST OUT-OF-3
Each match is best out of three and consists of 40 minutes of duels, with 10 minutes last three turns.
Top 8 OUT OF 211
Only the Top 8 out of the 211 players will be crowned to get the Battle Nexus 2024 Playmat and Prizes.
About Power
The Best Decks so far
What the Data Suggests
The Tiers represent the capability of each archetype to outperform other decks in terms of tournaments and the likeliness of them to enter top cuts and win as top 2 to 1. It also represents their strength when matched with specific other tiers. However, in this tier, we are going to focus only on the deck performance in the Battle Nexus tournament.
The Battle Nexus 2024 PH was held at Estancia Mall from the 23rd to 24th of March 2024, gathering 211 participants. These players fiercely fought on eight (8) rounds of Swiss with the Top 8 being the Top Cut.
Fire King Snake-Eyes and Tenpai Dragons sit atop the S tier, with 38% overall participation in the Battle Nexus Event during the Top 16, followed by Voiceless Voice at A tier. The deckbuilding strategy of Tenpai Dragons which focuses on bombarding the deck with board breakers played a significant role in choking decks within borderline S and A below to a certain level.
About
Deck Highlights
1st, Jude Macaranas
[Tenpai Dragons]
Jude Macaranas was hailed as a champion in the 2024 Battle Nexus Philippines held at Estancia Malls, on March 24, 2024, using Tenpai Dragons.
His build was surprisingly rich with board breakers, even including Ghost Ogre and Snow Rabbit in the main deck. He even pushed it to its maximum breaking limit, adding three (3) copies of Forbidden Droplet, and two (2) Nibiru, The Primal being, just to make sure that he had a blind go-second counter for any type of deck he would duel against. At the same time, this significantly gave him an advantage against Fire King and Snake Eye decks, since even under the damage restriction of Forbidden Droplet, the deck can still burst the opponent dealing more or less 15, 000 LP damage (from 30k+ original potential damage).
2nd, Anan Quipit [Chimera Horus]
Anan ended 2nd using Chimera Horus. His build was almost identical to the previous champion of Black Luster Soldier Normal Monster Event 2, Chito Racimo, but this time, he decided to instead use a full-engine type and did not include Super Polymerization despite the extreme popularity of Fire King and Tenpai in the current metagame. Fire King focuses on destroying their cards to facilitate combos and generate advantages, which involves disrupting the opponent's board with board breakers and destructions.
The deck's power increased its potency with the release of Nightmare Apprentice along with Diabellze of Original Sin. The Nightmare Apprentice is one of the deck's best supports up to date, having the ability to summon itself by sending one (1) card from the hand, and when summoned, can search any Illusion-type monster from the deck. This opens an opportunity to search Diabellze which restricts the opponent to activating Spell cards without setting them first.
3rd, Darwin Roa De Castro
[Tenpai Dragons]
Darwin Roa De Castro went Top 3 using Tenpai. Apart from other builds that utilize common board breakers, he decided to tech in Dinowrestler engine, which really worked pretty well for him.
In general, "Tenpai Dragons" refer to a series of Dragon-Type monsters characterized by their potent abilities revolving around various forms of support and destruction. These monsters typically possess effects that can disrupt the opponent's strategies or bolster the user's own field presence. It is no wonder that they are a significant factor to consider in the meta to counter with.
4th, Mark Patrick Burton
[Fire King Snake-Eyes]
Patrick Burton went 6 - 1 - 1 during Day 1 and went top 4 on the final top cut of Battle Nexus 2024 using Snake-Eyes Fire King. He previously won top 14 during on BLS Normal Monster and featured in MEIOCG, and is one of the non-central Luzon players who topped this event, together with Richard Renz Balucio, representing Region V - Bicol (Albay). Both are members of ODA, also known as Order of the Duelists in Albay, a community of duelists residing in the Bicol Region, in Southern Luzon.
During this event, he modified his build and he decided to include Triple Tactics Talent to his main deck. At the same time, one of the most deciding factor on the changes he made was the inclusion of PSY-Frame engine, which gave him a 3 for 1 upper hand.
Top 5th - 8th, Angelino Espiritu
[Voiceless Voice]
Angelino Espiritu is the only Voiceless Voice to reach Top 8. With its new support, the deck performed way better and can compete against the aggressive meta. His build was focused on the same setup, the triple Extravagance plus handtraps. He also included Odd-Eyes Meteorburst Dragon in the Extra Deck, which can be special summoned by Odd-Eyes Pendulumgraph Dragon.
5th - 8th, Kenneth Febra
[Rescue-Ace]
Kenneth Febra was able to include Rescue - ACE to the Top 8. Rescue ACE had been a formidable archetype for the past 4 months, with short decline due to Emergency! being restricted to one (1).
His Snake Eyes Sinful Spoils engine played a significant role in increasing the overall power of his deck, and included two Super Polymerization in the main to account for Tenpai, Voiceless and Fire Kings.
5th - 8th, Jan Patrick Suinan
[Spiritual Beast]
Jan Patrick Suinan went 6 - 1 - 1 using Spiritual Beasts earning Top 5-8th. His build focuses on pure consistency, and at the same time, he main-decked two (2) Super Polymerizations for crucial board breaks in blind going second.
His deckbuilding utilizes the latest Spiritual Beast support from Terminal World, such as Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara, Ritual Beast Ulti-Nochiudrago, Ritual Beast Ulti-Reiraturi, and Ritual Beast Inheritance.
5th - 8th, Richard Renz Balucio
[Salamangreat]
Richard Renz Balucio was able to secure the Top 5-8th using Salad (Salamangreat). It was quite unusual for the deck to enter the top due to the pressure of current metagame, however, through the help of its latest supports, Code of Soul, Salamangreat of Fire, and Salamangreat Raging Phoenix. His complete mastery of the deck paved his way against Fire King and Snake Eyes, and considering Salad is a fire archetype, he was able to utilize Promethean Princess for an extreme combo recursion.
Final Thoughts
Conclusions
The Battle Nexus 2024 had a great success, and it was noticed that the number of Tenpai before Top 16 was incredibly high, which significantly show how popular this Archetype right now. Voiceless Voice and Fire King both stood their grounds, accounting for a portion of the whole decks that was played in the event.
Melodius, Runick, and Labrynth are surprisingly powerful, however, was outnumbered by the amount of counters that hinder them earlier during rounds 3-4 preventing them from climbing higher.
Horus, Centurions, and Branded remain average in terms of power, and Chimera is currently overpowered on its own.
So far, Tenpai Best Deck.
References
RespectYGO | Official Page
Charlie Hobbies | Official Page
Photos | Stephen Uy Tan
(The rest of the Decklist and Information are directly gathered from the players of the event)