Overview
In case you missed it, This Week's Meta Weekly definitely had some spice, with an Evil Eye player making it all the way to Top 4! In the finals, however, we had Negative1 and his Witchcrafters taking out LampPosted and his Ritual Beasts in an intense two-game match. If you want to learn more about Negative1 you can check out his TPC Profile here!
Interview with Negative1
How did your day go? Any notable matches?
I think my match against Evil Eye was my most tense, most backrow strategies get crushed by Witchcrafters but against Evil Eye you have to get kinda lucky to win.
Care to elaborate on the Witchcrafter vs Evil Eye matchup and why it's so difficult?
The way Witchcrafter generates card economy is by using their Graveyard effects to exchange Witchcrafter Spells for more valuable cards; because the Witchcrafter Spells recycle in the End Phase, you can Loading... draw a card discard a Witchcrafter Spell and because your discard comes back to your hand you drew a card for free. Evil Eye is good at banishing Witchcrafter monsters in the Graveyard to prevent you from generating those free cards, and because of Loading... and Loading... they are able to continually remove Loading... from the board.
You've had a notorious love / hate relationship with Witchcrafters, how do you feel about them after the banlist hit?
I have expressed the opinion that I dont like the effect Witchcrafters have on the game just in the sense that I'm opposed to what amounts to free negation. Negation is uninteractive by nature, so adding cards to the game that negate all of your opponent's monsters is a questionable decision from my perspective.
I still play the deck because as of right now I think Witchcrafter is either the best or second best deck
Anything you'd like to say about your Decklist?
I used three Loading... and three Loading... because I really wanted cards that can trade against backrow. The most played strategies are essentially backrow decks that resurfaced after the nerf to Loading... , but I don't think the nerf actually killed Witchcrafters the way many people believed. I'm using Night Beam and Galaxy Cyclone over similar anti-backrow spells like Loading... and Loading... for a few reasons. Lance is good against some cards like Loading... and Loading... but it's not useful against Counter Traps which have become more prominent in the meta. Storm I think is very strong against multiple backrow but in a majority of your games you don't want to suffer the card loss incurred by Storm as maintaining cards in the early game is something Witchcrafter can struggle with.
Lastly, do you have any Shoutouts you would like to make?
I'd like to thank my teams Tier Zero and 1% for being supportive of me as well as zaidking and Snyffus for being great discussion partners. I know it happened a long time ago but I'd also like to thank Konami for nerfing KaibaCorp Bling because that will forever be the most healthy change the game has ever seen. Thank you to Dkayed and the mods for the tournament, dont forget to thank the mods everybody. Stay hydrated and take it easy!
Winning Decklist:
That's all we got for this DLM Champion spotlight! What kind of questions should we be asking in the future? Comment down below!