Making the Cut #1 - Part 2

Hey yo and welcome back to Making the Cut, where we build sealed deck together

As you know, Making the Cut is a potential series about opening and building your sealed battle pack deck.

In this half, we will be building the deck from the pulls.
Usually, we would only have to build a 30 card deck, but for the sake of exploring how to make cuts, we will make an additional 5 cuts, to go down to 25, so you can use similar thought schemes to make cuts.

First, lets review our pulls




And some of our preliminary picks

12
Gorz
Cyber Dragon
Ambitious Gofer
Insect Kight
Gene Warped Warwolf
Zombyra the Dark
Card Trooper
Big Shield Gardna
Chiron the Mage
Grave Squirmer
Hyper Hammerhead
Exiled Force

7
Pot of Greed
Pot of Duality
Mystical Space Typhoon
Burden of the Mighty
Offerings to teh Doomed
Forbidden Lance
Shield Crush

6
Skill Successor
Shadow Spell
Ring of Destruction
Spell Shield Type 8
Call of the Haunted
Miracles Wake

5 Exceeds
Gachigachi
Grenosaurus
Leviathan Dragon
Gemknight Pearl
Tyrus

Seems like its coming together, right?

After this is our 2nd line picks.
A 2nd line pick is a card that didnt jump straight out as playable, but still has potential.
Level Eater - This alone potentiates Tyrus. But we still lack some level 5s, other than Cyber Dragon, which brings us to...
Gagaga Magician - This card enables Rank 2, 3, 4, and 5 plays. we have each rank, but the weakest rank we have is 4. we want to be making Rank 5 with Tyrus and Rank 3 for Leviathan. This with Cyber Dragon equals Tyrus. Which almost always equals win.
Voltic Kong nad Jurrac Protops - Beatsticks that didnt quite make the preliminary picks
Damage Gate -It means making more Card Troopers, Reviving Exiled Force, and Big Shield Gardna. With some of the cards above, it makes exceeds much easier to play with
Giant Soldier of Stone - If we want to be making leviathan dragon, we need him.
Night Assailant - 2 of them. Although it is a flip effect to kill and a level 3 for Leviathan, we are also considering...
Skill Drain - The best of your "denying effects". Most of the cards work with drain out, with the exception of card trooper and Hyper Hammerhead.


So, lets smash those into the pile and build from that, cutting down to 30 and then 25
Right now, we have 34.

Now, ideally, your main build would want to be something like 14:10:6, of Monsters, spells, and traps.
However, I would prefer to rather have a total of 15 spells and traps, and 15 monsters. With some recursion going, you can even drop to 14 monsters.

So, right now we run 18 monsters, 9 traps, and 7 spells.
So, what we want to be cutting is monsters.

But, before that, we should take some time to review what the deck does well, and more importantly, what it does NOT do well.

So, we run 3 Cards that kill monsters when they get attacked, and one monster that kills monsters when it tributes itself.
For Traps and spells, we have 3 Cards that kill an opponents monsters straight.

Thats 7 Kill Cards, actually a tad bit over.
You want to always have one, so you need about 6. I would cut one Night Assailant. Goodbye infinite combo with non existant Cyber Magician.

Damage Gate and Miracles Afterglow are two cards that do similar jobs: Recursion.
Whilst Miracles Afterglow lets you get your monster back after they use a combat trick to get rid of it, Damage Gate gives more synergy with Card Trooper and Grave Squirmer
I would pick Miracles Wake, as its ability to turn a combat trick to nothing is what we want to be taking.

Now, for the final 2 cuts, I chose Jurrac Protops and Gagaga Magician. While Dropping Gagaga Magician means that I wont have Tyrus, I guess its what my card pool tells me, that I will have to focus on low level monster combat, and use removal on anything bigger.

So now, we are down to 30 Cards.

Monsters
Beaters
Insect Knight
Gene Warped Warwolf
Zombyra the Dark
Chiron the Mage
Cyber Dragon
Voltic Kong
Card Trooper
Ambtious Gofer

Killers
Exiled Force
Night Assailant
Grave Squirmer

Turtlers
Hyperhammerhead
Big Shield Gardna
Giant Soldier of Stone

Broken
Gorz

Spells
Pot of Duality
Pot of Greed
Mystical Space Typhoon
Burden of the Mighty
Offerings to teh Doomed
Forbidden Lance
Shield Crash

Traps
Half or Nothing
Skill Successor
Shadow Spell
Ring of Destruction
Call of the Haunted
Miracles Wkae
Skill Drain


What about if we had to cut another 5 cards down to 25?

So, the cards I would cut out would be:
Night Assailant
Giant Soldier of Stone
Hyper Hammerhead
With less cards in the deck, you need less monsters to fight around, and you need less monsters to turtle. As the monster killer count is much higher rate, you dont need quite as much.
As I dropped Giant Soldier of Stone, Night Assailant would go next, as, well, theres no good reason to make rank 3 exceeds anymore, and so flipping him then going for the rank 3 is gone.
Also, Hyper Hammer Head is also cut.
Note that although I did cut it in the early stages, it was to maintain good tempo, and to one shot kill some exceed monsters. Since I have ring of destruction, a 1st turn Hyper Hammerhead, set a MST, and clear their field and smash through and get ahead in damage racing would put me in the win.
An alternative would to be to drop Voltic Kong instead, as, it is "just" an 1800 beater.

For Traps, I dropped Miracles Wake and Half or Nothing.
Half or Nothing may seem obvious. it was just a stall card that put me in advantage for damage dealt so I can finish with Ring of Destruction
Miracles Wake, however, was because I dropped the Rank 3 Exceeds. The Synergy to make a Rank 3 easily with a Night assailant that got attacked is there because you had some other level 3s with the ability to keep themselves on the board. Drop one, drop all.


So, in the end, this is what our deck turned out like

What about you? What do you think?

How would you build it differently?


And now, we shall do an all important step: Putting the cards back into the packs!
The more you practice with sealed play, instead of throwing away the packs, I keep the empty packs, and record what cards are in what order, returning them so next time, I just have to open the tin, pull out 10 random packs, and build!
It does get much better once you have 30-40 packs to your pool.


And lastly and most importantly, feedback!
What do you think about the way I wrote the post?
What changes do you think could be made to the post, and most importantly,
Do you want to see more of these posts on sealed play/Alternative formats?

/sezuar