Introduction
Hello! My name is Luke Tyler and I'm a Top Player Council member alongside the assigned Gemini Expert in the discord. I recently finished in the Top 4 of MCS 13 using a Gemini deck. The following will be a tournament report of my experience and why I built the deck as I did. I originally planned to include my tournament report in the guide simultaneously to its updating, but with a banlist imminent it made sense to hold off on updating the guide until such occurs.
Tournament Decklist
Deck Decision
In the current tournament format with side deck, I felt like Geminis were a good pick. This is because every represented deck in the format either doesn’t have an easy time beating Gemini or heavily fears Loading... . Loading... was a fear of mine - hence as to why I side decked Loading... .
There are quite a few ways in which you can choose to construct a Gemini deck. However, I decided that Balance was the skill to play with the provided consistency being too valuable.
Through testing I also came to the personal conclusion that the number of monsters added to the number of revival traps in a Pure Gemini deck should total 8. This is because you don’t want too many monsters clogging your hands but you want enough so that you are able to topdeck them when you are on the back-foot. This is a decision of mine that could definitely change in the future as the pace of the game shifts.
So with the above in mind, I decided to play 8 monsters with only 6 traps (no Loading... ) - this was because I wanted to abuse Loading... , considering how it can still steal games. Having a third of my trap lineup be Treacherous Trap Hole meant that Balance would give me the card quite often. To account the instances in which I did not open Treacherous Trap Hole, the other 4 traps in my deck needed to compliment the use of the card to limit the odds of it being a dead draw late game. This made playing at least 2 Loading... a no-brainer when taking it’s graveyard recursive ability into consideration. For the remaining 2 trap cards in my deck I chose to use 2 copies of Loading... .
Why Mirror Wall
In further regards to Mirror Wall, there were 4 main reasons as to why I chose to use it. It is resilient to mass backrow removal cards such as Loading... and Loading... , it lets Loading... and Loading... survive many Paleozoic Canadia plays, it is a semi-continuous trap (granting synergetic Treacherous Trap Hole applications) and it is Damage Step removal.
Matchups
Hero matchup
- Played 6
- Won 5
The way that I would advise playing against Masked Heroes is to try and gauge how many battle traps they have. Early in the game I tend to make the decision of whether dealing with their battle traps in your current state would deplete you of too many resources or not. If the answer to that question is yes, then it is likely best to play the waiting game. Chances are that you will typically draw into the ability to remove enough of their backrow before they draw enough Loading... s. When side decking, I replaced both Loading... with Loading... s in anticipation of backrow removal coming in.
Blue-Eyes matchup
- Played 3
- Won 2
I’d say this matchup is completely subjective to the backrow that you choose to play. With the backrow that I opted to use I’d say that I had a slightly favoured Blue-Eyes matchup. Canadia isn’t too great against their big monsters when they have access to bringing out multiple, but being able to deny one of their backrow interceptors like Loading... can be quite nice. Considering that my trap cards were already quite good against Blue-Eyes, I chose not to side deck for the matchup and reserve my side deck slots to combat issues like Bujin, Loading... and Spellbooks.
Vampire matchup
- Played 2
- Won 2
With the exception of an early Loading... I’d say that the Vampire matchup is in the favour of Geminis. By getting a boost from Loading... , Loading... puts the pressure on them to bring out their bigger monsters. The main threat seemed to be Hey, Trunade! and because of that I brought in 2 copies of Magic Deflector to replace both copies of Treacherous Trap Hole when side decking.
Thanks to the people cheering me on in the tournament, and to my teammates on Animal Plays for helping me test.
Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!