The Yugioh community separates Goat format into 3 categories from earliest to latest: (1) Pre-Exarion Goats, (2) Exarion Goats, and (3) Goats with both Exarion and the booster set Cybernetic Revolution (CRV). The vast majority of the original 2005 Goat format was before Exarion and CRV. However, players today are able to look at and playtest the short tail-end of the format with a larger microscope nowadays.
The time period between the legality of Cybernetic Revolution and the arrival of the next ban list (which would create the next format after Goats) was not even a month. SJC Boston (Sept 2005) was the one major event where it was tried out. Some players splashed in a Cyber Dragon or two, but otherwise, many players decided not to main deck it at all. Cyber Twin Dragon (unfortunately) enabled more OTK’s with Metamorphosis and BLS Envoy. Burn decks benefited from 3 Dimensional Wall. Drillroid and Steamroid were playable. Most of the other CRV cards were garbage.
Players at the time didn’t realize the impact that Cyber Dragon could have had on Goats if properly utilized. They did notice the immediate fact that Cyber Dragon simply did not fit in the mold of the Goat strategy. There was an inherent lack of synergy between Scapegoat and Cyber Dragon. If Goat tokens are on the field, Cyber Dragon is dead in hand. If Cyber Dragon is on the field alongside another monster, Scapegoat can’t be used. Cyber Dragon and Scapegoat were used for two fundamentally different purposed. Scapegoat was used as a way to allow the player to not commit their monsters on the field without losing life points. The goal was to get the opponent to out-commit them so they could Metamorphosis their remaining Goat token for Thousand-Eyes Restrict and punish the opponent. However, Cyber Dragon contradicts this by immediately committing a beater to the board.
The players at SJC Boston had the right idea but perhaps the wrong answer. Yes, Scapegoat and Cyber Dragon were in conflict. But was Scapegoat the superior choice? Players, at the time, didn’t realize how powerful Chaos Sorcerer was and how Cyber Dragon was the perfect card to bolster dedicated Chaos decks. Dedicated Chaos Decks needed more LIGHT targets, a fast way to get a LIGHT into play so that Chaos Sorcerer can be fueled sooner and extra muscle so that the player doesn’t have to rely on Sorcerer alone for high ATK. Additionally, Recruiter Chaos builds were able to summon Cyber Dragon, summon a recruiter, use Creature Swap, attack the Recruiter with Cyber Dragon and summon a search target from the deck for epic plussing.
CyDra Goat format still needs far more testing and tournament data before any accurate meta could be established, but Goats will definitely have strong competition in this format.
