[Duel Links] KoG Six Sams

Skill: Mind Scan

Monsters: 9
3 Zanji
3 Hand
2 Yaichi
1 Enishi

Spells: 3
2 Econ
1 Gyokkou

Traps: 8
2 Powerful Rebirth
2 Floodgate
2 Mirror Wall
1 Wall of Disruption
1 Metalmorph

Total: 20

Really late season but got there. It seems Joey is the preferred skill for most people, but this deck attracted me as a pure control deck, and imo it's better to go for either consistency with Balance, or Mind Scan. And I feel like the latter is significantly better, as playing around backrow is so critical to your success. Wall of D, MW, SRH, Floodgate, Impenetrable Attack for GB's, Xing/Cyclone/backrow hate... all of those cards are prevalent, and much easier to either play around and destroy outright. The Mind Scan nerf hurts any deck trying to OTK consistently, but for pure control it's just more of a hindrance going 2nd, which is a fair trade off tbh. I would suggest anyone who wants to play Six Sams seriously to try Mind Scan for at least 10 games or so and see how they like it.

There're 2 ways to play Six Sams imo, and that's either centering the deck to sack and win with Shogun Shien, or to play a slower game and run Enishi. Overall I feel like if I ran a sack deck with Sogen I would have had significantly more losses. Sogen is likely better for the Red-Eyes match up, but Storm wrecks every control deck anyways.

I didn't play much early season thanks to how late the banlist/nerfs hit, also Bamboo really killed any small interest in the ladder that you could possibly have. Tbh I deranked to Plat 2 testing decks while being FTK'd every so often, then climbed back up to Plat 5 with broken ass 3sd Ninjas right before the nerf. I played PvE events and on my alt primarily until this past week or so. Had about 30-35 wins at Plat 5, used Sams exclusively from then on and KoG'd at 70 wins.

The deck doesn't perform well if you draw too many monsters, I wouldn't go for 11-12 myself. Also it's really annoying to open 2-3 of the same ones not named Hand, as it just feels like you're running Vanillas at that point. Zanji is there as a solid beater that can destroy anything on its attack, Yaichi pops backrows and helps bait cards like Floodgate often. Hand is far and away the best Six Sam, as it works with other copies of itself, and gets rid of threats in the Main Phase. Irou and Kamon imo aren't strong enough as main deck cards, solid choice for Side Decks in tourneys imo.

Enishi imo is a fantastic card. Easy to summon mid to late game, larger than every level 4 naturally, and as a special summon it's easy to either shift the game completely or outright win the game. It honestly feels like a TCG card; with more Six Sam support (Grandmaster, Kizan, etc), Shogun might be more preferred to  win games quickly, but Enishi will always be safer and more consistent to go for.

The deck is mainly backrow from there, I would say SRH would be the strongest by itself at the highest level, I have 0 copies like a pleb :kappa: but Econ is still good. Econ take into an Enishi summon, or combined with Powerful Rebirth are all solid plays. Rebirth in particular is staple for Six Sams, abusing Hand, or baiting backrow/monster destruction, then flipping Rebirth is a huge play for the deck. I would say any Sam deck should run 2-3 copies, likely 3 (my F2P woes doe)

It's personal preference from there, but I'll highlight a few cards. Wall of D is fairly controversial, some players run 2-3 in everything, others think it's trash or just side deck material. Imo it's a tech to a staple for the ladder, as people simply do not see it coming. I would almost always run 1 Wall of D in most decks, certainly over something like Etaqua. Etaqua is safe and decent for the most part, but the times where it's dead, to outright useless make it a poor card imo. Same can be said of WoD; it's partially based on what matchups you worry the most about. But I feel WoD can win you more games than Etaqua can.

This deck is also running fairly rare cards in Gyokkou and Metalmorph. Gyokkou is pretty okay by itself, most would run Cosmic Cyclone. And honestly if I had something like Double Cyclone I would test it out. But locking down the correct backrow consistently with Mind Scan is quite helpful, with almost no chance for them to chain. I would sometimes also Bluff set Gyokkou, then flip it next turn, felt pretty tilty :FeelsGoodMan:. Metalmorph isn't as good as SRH overall, probably not even Curse of Anubis either. But since it's such a rare card to see nowadays there's huge surprise factor, I also felt that it would be a decent counter to Hazy, which it was at times. Rolling over bigger cards in general felt pretty good, also making Hand go from 1600 to 1900 on the opp's attack is good as well. I drew the card fairly rarely tho, it's certainly not something you want to open all the time.

I might flesh out the matchups at some point, but it's pretty straightforward. Play your hand out carefully; this deck isn't autopilot, and fairly easy to misplay in comparison to more popular decks. Sams aren't a Tier list relevant deck for good reason, it's not as good as Red Eyes, or any Tier 2 decks for sure. Need at least 1 more good card to be taken seriously.