Pharaoh’s Servant Format (October 2002)

Pharaoh’s Servant Format (October 2002)

Pharaoh’s Servant (PSV) is the 4th booster set, coming after Magic Ruler.  FormatLibrary refers to this format as Imperial Format.

The main cards in that set which impacted the meta are

• Imperial Order.  Strongest card in the set.  Obvious staple.  An answer to the powerful spells released in the previous set.
• Jinzo.  It replaced Summoned Skull as the go-to tribute monster.  Makes players keep their trap lineups a bit lighter (if the abundance of spell cards in the previous set didn’t do that already)
• Call of the Haunted.  Has synergy with Jinzo (its effect negates COTH from destroying it).  Synergy with Witch/Sangan if chained to spell/trap removal.
• Nobleman of Crossout. In some retro formats with a lot of Attack Position monsters, players main 1 and side 1.  But in this retro format, Mechanicalchaser (which was super-expensive and most people didn’t own it in 2002) makes other beaters obsolete so people used more defensive monsters instead of 1800 beaters that just got destroyed by it.
• Time Seal.  A bit underrated at the time, but guaranteed 1for1, that could be a +1 if chained to MST.  Is more impactful
• Premature Burial was widely regarded as a staple at the time.  But nowadays some decks use it; some don’t.  It’s very good, but paying the cost just for MST to negate it isn’t fun.  And having 3 revival cards in a deck sometimes bricks opening hands (early-game if you don’t have a good target to use it on yet).

This is the deck list that won the most recent tournament.

4-Starred Ladybug of Doom and Goblin Attack Force are sided against beatdown decks with a lot of LV4 beaters.  Dust Tornado, some people mained 1 copy like a 4th MST, though many people keep it in their side deck against stall, burn and other potential weird spell/trap cards. 

Here are the 2nd and 3rd place decks.

And the top 4 decks from last time.

Seems like a solved meta, at least for now.