The Fabled Bandwagon

Lately, I have been talking about the Fabled Deck. The archetype is pretty much finished now that Hidden Arsenal 4 has been released and the only other cards that may be created are TCG exclusives(in which we have 1 already). With so many cards in the deck already, all we really need is a skeleton to base the deck around. Right now, I believe that is
3 Grimro
3 Cerburrel
3 Ganashia
2-3 Chawa
2-3 Krus

Of course, I use 3 Chawa and 3 Krus, because I think that you can't really have too much of those cards. It is until you start putting in non-fabled cards that you have to start taking away from the skeleton. For some people, that is Reborn Tengu. Some others use the plant engine - 2 Lonefire, 1 Dandy, 1 Glow Up, 1 Spore. Those are all nice cards, but we don't have any large tournament reports to base our information on.

Until now.

http://www.duelist.it/coverage/yugioh_nationals2011/index.asp

This is Fabio Minicozzi, winner of the Italy Nationals that took place last weekend. He won this huge event thanks to his build of the Fabled Deck. It is quite a bit different than mine, and a LOT more different to the other builds floating around on the internet. Let's take a look!
Monsters: 22
3 Reborn Tengu
3 Snipe Hunter
3 Fabled Grimro
3 The Fabled Chawa
3 The Fabled Cerburrel
2 The Fabled Ganashia
2 Fabled Krus
1 Gorz
1 Sangan
Spells: 12
2 Instant Fusion
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Pot of Avarice
1 Dark Hole
1 Monster Reborn
1 Card Destruction
1 Mind Control
1 Book of Moon
1 Giant Trunade
Traps: 6
3 Reckless Greed
1 Dust Tornado
2 Solemn Warning
Extra Deck
1 The Fabled Unicore
3 Fabled Ragin
1 Catastor
1 Brionac
1 Gaia Knight
1 Black Rose
1 Ancient Sacred Wyvern
1 Stardust
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Trishula
1 Charubin the Fire Knight
1 Darkfire Dragon
1 Musician King
Side Deck
3 Puppet Plant
2 Kinetic Soldier
2 Fabled Gallabas
2 Cyber Dragon
1 Chimeratech
2 Gozen Match
1 Dust Tornado
2 Malevolent Catastrophe

What I like is that he plays the deck in the best way possible. That is, making Fabled Ragins, drawing cards, and synchroing past all of your opponent's cards. With the Reckless Greed, it seems he wants to be more OTK focused, with the ability to draw into Trunade more easily. After Trunade, you can synchro as much as you want with no fear of anything besides a Gorz. As you can see, most of his spell and trap lineup is to get rid of an opposing backrow, assuming that that is the only real threat to stop your advances. I don't really like Reckless Greed in any deck, but I can see why he used it here. Can't really see myself trying it out.

The next card that is different is Instant Fusion. When you look at JP decklists, and the AI deck lists in the YGO WC2011 video game, Instant Fusion is a very popular card. I guess, here in America, it doesn't see much play. Most likely because most TCG decks refuse to run cards that don't work without another card with it(unless it is a boss monster). Everyone else sees Instant Fusion as "the other nontuner." Whatever monster you would special summon to make your amazing synchro play, can be done with 1 Instant Fusion and 1000 life points. I was lucky enough to grab 3 of these, but again, I don't know if I would actually use it.

Next up is Snipe Hunter, a card I have never liked. However, it being at 3 isn't something to scoff at. Like Phoenix Wing, Snipe Hunter can hit any card on the field. It does target, so unfortunately, if you don't plan on destroying their monster, your card will fall into a Bottomless Trap hole. However, passing priority to your opponent can save you from having to discard at all in a lot of situations. Also, a lot of people don't even run bottomless anymore, so chances are you either bait out a solemn warning, or you will get to roll for something! And the best part about rolling, is you can't negate it with Stardust. Even better is that you can do it multiple times in 1 turn. Snipe Hunter->Ganashia->Grimro for Cerb->Snipe Hunter->Cerb->Ragin. And the fact that you could run 3 of those makes for an excellent contender against Phoenix Wing Wind Blast.

If you think about it, it seems so difficult to get momentum back if your opponent stops a play. Decks like Glads don't necessarily have to have a backrow to win, though it definitely helps. All they really need is something to attack and not die from, and in a deck like this with only solemn warnings and 1 book of moon to stop them, that seems like a tough match to me. Samurai and Plant Synchro are similar to Fableds in that whoever can put a good monster on the field will probably be in a good position. Gravekeepers and Hero Beat seem difficult, but perhaps with the large amount of S/T destruction in his deck and side deck, he had an easier time.



I do have most of the deck finished now. Of course, my build used The Tricky, which I feel can be replaced by snipe hunter for sure. Hopefully, I will have tournament results for Fableds soon, so keep a lookout for that.