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Deck Evolutions:
“All Hail the Queen!”
By JMatthew Markulin
April 19, 2014

 File:The Hive Queen (7CLA).png

The evolution of a deck is quite a thing to see. The story of the megabug deck is frankly, one of the more interesting stories…

Upon the release of Clash of the Duel Masters, players were smacked in the face with huge monarch creatures.  Each promised to alter the game in a way that players had yet to see up to this point. Beneath the shadows of these monarchs The Hive Queen nurtured her “bug buddies” as she prepared to “stir the hive.” Many duelists overlooked her proud form and dismissed her as simply incapable of competing in a realm of dragons and monarchs.

On June 22, 2013, at the Las Vegas KMC, Nima Hosseini would go on to prove that first impulse wrong and guide his green queens into a top 4 standing.

LFN Megabugs

Top 4 | KMC Spring 2013 - Las Vegas

by Nima Hosseini

Latest Set: Clash of the Duel Masters | June 22, 2013


 

One week later Carl Miciotto would evolve the bug deck into a truly competitive direction. The first shift for Carl was to change the third color from Fire to Water, thereby allowing himself access to powerful disruption cards like Rusalka, Aqua Chaser and General Finbarr. Additionally, General Finbarr allowed him a stronger mid to late game by granting him access to greater card advantage than the initial Las Vegas build could generate. Next we see a maximizing out of trump cards such as The Hive Queen and Keeper of Laws. The addition of the 3 cost Sword Horned over Gigahorn Charger allowed Carl to not only deal with early threats more quickly than Nima’s previous version, but also allowed his deck to play more aggressively. At 5550 power, Sword Horned is powerful enough that no creatures outside of evolution creatures could deal with such power so early in the game.

With the addition of new cards, even with the absence of Fire from the deck, in order for it to be a contender for the top spot there needed to be a culling of further cards. Carl removed a good deal of the less effective cards such as Ra-Vu, Seeker of Lightning and Keeper of Clouds. When all was said and done, Carl’s new list generated a lean 40 card deck list over Nima Hosseini’s slightly bloated 45 card deck list. This allowed  Carl to more consistently produce viable threats on the board and catapult him into the 1st place position after battling through a 63 player swiss tournament and then an extremely control heavy top 8 environment. In the end, it was Carl’s deck which would truly be the archetype for megabug decks to come.

LWN Megabugs

1st | KMC Spring 2013 - Pennsylvania

by Carl Miciotto

Latest Set: Clash of the Duel Masters | June 29, 2013


 

By the LCQs on August 2nd, 2013 Gordon Kane and Noah Koessel would each pilot their megabug decks into strong top 4 spots (though not strong enough to take the invite to champs). Each player ran essentially on Carl Micciotto’s framework with a few exceptions. Both decks sported more aggression foregoing any blockers entirely, relying purely on disrupting their opponent, swift attacks and shield triggers. Neither of the decks bothered to run Bottle of Wishes or Reap and Sow, yet both players decided to introduce Piercing Judgment into their build, which would quickly become a staple in most megabug decks to come. Noah’s singular contribution to the competitive top 8 megabug build came in the form of Lyra, the Blazing Sun, which would also become a megabug main stay.

On August 4th the first Kaijudo Champs kicked in…and megabugs missed the top 8 mark,  not putting a single deck into the top spots.

On September 28th, 2013, with the recent introduction of Shattered Alliances earlier in the month, both Carl Reddish playing at the Louisiana KMC and Drew Bridges, playing at the Georgia KMC,  simultaneously tapped into a single critical card which would become a serious staple for the deck – Cyber Scamp.  This simple little 1000 powered blue creature allowed the megabug deck to punish players for setting off early spells such as Sprout and Mesmerize. Cast the spell and face another Cyber Scamp or drop the spell in mana and go with another plan? This became a very difficult decision opponents now had to deal with. 

Sam Bisa at the Montreal KMC on October 12th, 2013 contributed a small change to the deck. While not his only change, the addition of Oath Sworn Call would prove to be a shield trigger players in the future would need to consider when developing future builds.

The success of the megabug deck was greatly in part due to the ability of the deck NOT to simply go about a single aggression strategy to win.   Michael Web,  playing at the Florida KMC on October 20th, 2013,  decided to add an additional strategy that would create a sort of “cultural divide” amongst megabug decks. While megabugs and The Hive Queen are at the core of the deck, Humonculon, the Blaster, Sword Horned and Full Metal Lemon all provided access to another set of powerful evolution creatures in the form of Blinder Beetle Prime. Being an enforcer that could tap down two creatures the turn it entered play and swinging with a 6000 body at the cost of only 5 mana, Blinder Beetle Prime would prove to be an effective means of stabilizing the board or pushing for a final swing. In fact, in the mirror match, the deck NOT running Blinder Beetle Prime would often be at a disadvantage as the Blinder Beetle Prime player would clear their board of opposing megabugs just before The Hive Queen was ready to go online.


LWN Megabugs

Top 8 | KMC Fall 2013 - Florida

by Michael Webb

Latest Set: Shattered Alliances | October 20, 2013

Creatures (29)

Evolution Creatures (6)

Spells (5)                        


The Winter Championship LCQs and Winter Championship itself held on November 23rd and 24th brought about the first major tournaments since the release of Invasion Earth. Nearly consistently across the board the agreed changes to megabug decks that saw top 8 standings  included Tricky Turnip, a cheap untargetable creature, and  Stratus Beetle, the new duel civilization megabug  (including myself from LCQ 2 – but that’s another story – see previous article). Carl Miccioto would nod his agreement with the introduction of these two creatures as he would go onto take 2nd place in the Winter Champs. While Tricky Turnip (my own favorite card in the game!!) would go on to be a card to be included based on personal preference, at least 1 or 2 Stratus Beetles would also be included in nearly every top 8 megabug deck in the future.

Enter 5 Mystics

Immediately going into the 5 Mystics format, Psychic Predator Rusalka was the universal addition to megabugs…if you could immediately afford it. With asking prices as high as $50 on release date, there ended up being a few top 8 megabug decks that did well, despite doing without one.

An additional change came with the introduction of 5 Mystics in the form of a brand new megabug. Brood Mother sparked a good deal of debate  since at 5 cost Humonculon the Blaster was already in that mana curve cost and had proven very effective up to this point. Since that time, the majority of top 8 megabug decks have all agreed - Brood Mother works.  Between Mana Tick, Brood Mother, The Hive Queen and General Finbarr, your hand nearly always stays fresh and full while your board keeps continuously pumping out multiple threats per turn. With my own version of this deck, I’ve managed to pilot two top 8s since the release of 5 Mystics, including securing my invite at KMC Bedford, Texas.

LWN Megabugs

Top 4 | KMC Spring 2014 – Bedford, Tx

by Jason Markulin

Latest Set: The 5 Mystics | April 12, 2014


 

What’s Next?

On May 30th,  Quest for the Gauntlet will be released. The release of this set will be the first time since megabugs has begun to be played that it will be forced to remove cards in order to remain legal for the standard environment. Let’s looks at what we may lose…

Manapod Beetle and Ambush Scorpion: These two are currently the only two solid Nature 2 drop megabugs in the game. With these rotating out, megabug players may be forced to run 3 Stratus Beetles and then dip into the last remaining not in use 3 cost megabug – Saber Mantis. Being forced to run Saber Mantis will definitely be a step down from where the deck wants to go and could potentially make the decks match up versus rush a lot more difficult.

Lyra, the Blazing Sun: This card hasn’t been a necessity in every constructed megabug deck. However, Psychic Predator Rusalka may serve well as a replacement. Of course, there is a strong disadvantage to Psychic Predator Rusalka over Lyra. With all the new evolution creatures we are seeing for the Release Celebration cards, Lyra is certainly more effective. Lyra can tap the bait and an evolution creature played on that bait doesn’t untap; whereas Psychic Predator Rusalka’s effect is ignored when a creature becomes evolved. Perhaps the repeated use of the Psychic Predator Rusalka will overcome this deficiency.

Stormspark Blast: We know that Terror Pit and Root Trap are getting the reprint treatment, yet we have received no word regarding Stormspark Blast. Should it not be reprinted, there really isn’t a significant enough equivalent in the game right now to warrant a straight swap. Perhaps Quest for the Gauntlet will surprise us with something worthwhile. If neither of these scenarios occurs, I pretty well imagine that Stormspark Blast will simply be replaced by additional creatures.

*I’d like to thank TKC of the The Kaijudo Channel for all the work he has put into thekaijudochannel.com. Without access to his site, this article would have taken a great many more hours to complete. Keep up the work TKC and be sure to visit his site!

 


 


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