This KC Cup took place from 05:00 Friday 7th September to 06:59 Monday 10th September (GMT).

A huge congratulation to Eugen Heidt, our Top Player Council member, for getting #1 global and a spot in the World Championship 2019!

“How did you prepare for this event?”

Whilipino: [Global Rank: 3 | Regional Rank (North America): 1]

Got as much rest as I could beforehand and tried to prepare some decks that I may or may not play for the event. Also had snacks and water on hand so I can get as much optimal game time as possible.

Yanstorm: [Global Rank: 11 | Regional Rank (Latin America/Caribbean): 1]

I actually didn’t do any particular preparation since I knew that I would not have all the time available during the weekend since I had a prior commitment. I didn’t think I had the time to fight for a good, top position.

Jason: [Global Rank: 14 | Regional Rank (North America): 2]

Didn’t really prepare due to lack of time. Just made sure I had all the meta decks and relevant builds that would counter specific matchups.

zaidking: [Global Rank: 27 | Regional Rank (Asia/Middle East/Africa): 1]

I looked at all the meta decks I owned a couple of days before it actually started and only had Vampires missing which I honestly thought was going to be a problem at some point. I then proceeded to build a Maske Heroes deck, a Spellbooks deck and different variants for Amazoness.

Snyffus: [Global Rank: 30 | Regional Rank (Europe): 5]

Although I played Amazoness and Spellbooks for the recent MCS, the results clearly showed that Vampires are the best deck. On top of that in the KC Cup fast wins are key and Vampires can finish games very quickly. I tested the deck the week before the KC Cup, my team Bricks & Potatoes helped me with that, but one problem I ran into was the mirror match. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of control in those games. Enemy Controller matters a lot and can easily decide games. The day before the KC Cup I talked to Eugen and he told me about something new I hadn’t considered yet: Sealed Tombs Vampires - the deck I ultimately used throughout the event.

ShinySopheon: [Global Rank: 84 | Regional Rank (North America): 9]

I didn’t!

“Which decks did you use during the event? What led you to make changes, if any?”

Whilipino: [Global Rank: 3 | Regional Rank (North America): 1]

0-30k: Fur Hires. It was the deck that gave me the most success in the beginning despite it having a poor Vampires match up.

30k-60k: Sealed Tombs Vampires. I switched to this because I noticed an overwhelmingly large amount of Cyber Style Vampires as well as a small rise in play of Sealed Tombs Masked Heroes, and this deck beats both of those fairly easily.

60k-68k: Endless Trap Hell Amazoness. A lot of the really good players ended up switching to Sealed Tombs Vampires as well, and that mirror match is a coin flip, so I wanted to give myself the best possible win streak possible, so I switched to an Amazoness deck that gave me an edge over all of them.

Yanstorm: [Global Rank: 11 | Regional Rank (Latin America/Caribbean): 1]

I started with Vampires but it was very bad for me because my hands were broken or I had to play first and I could not defend myself from the one turn kill of my rivals, about 20 duels later I changed to Fur Hires and used them until the end.

Jason: [Global Rank: 14 | Regional Rank (North America): 2]

Vampires, Spellbooks and Amazoness.

zaidking: [Global Rank: 27 | Regional Rank (Asia/Middle East/Africa): 1]

Started the event with Spellbooks since it felt the most comfortable for me to use at the time and made it to 10k. A few games later I realized the deck just relied far too much on Silent Magician and just loses without it in your opening hand, not even Spellbook Organization would help since it’s actually a pretty slow card and it can be too late to get the full use of it. Switched to Masked Heroes and streaked all the way to the top. Played a few games with Amazoness but they weren’t ideal for an event like KC Cup where consistently is key and I regret using it.

Snyffus: [Global Rank: 30 | Regional Rank (Europe): 5]

The idea behind Sealed Tombs Vampires is that it makes the mirror match infinitely better as it completely stops them from playing for a turn. You can easily capitalise on that and just kill them the next turn. Also, sometimes they flip up Vampire Takeover in the standby phase because they’re afraid of the skill. You can then force the destruction effect of Vampire Kingdom by summoning Samurai Skull which is huge because if they pop it you get the Special Summon effect and if they pop one of their own cards that’s just as good.

It also helps vs Spellbooks, stopping Spellbook of Fate and also against Amazoness, destroying Amazoness Onslaught without triggering its graveyard effect can be very important. Against Fur Hires locking them out of Mayhem Fur Hire can definitely help.

I didn’t switch my deck the whole weekend, I thought that Sealed Tombs Vampires was by far the best deck for the event, not only being fast and by that perfectly suiting the event style, it also just naturally felt better than any other deck.

ShinySopheon: [Global Rank: 84 | Regional Rank (North America): 9]

I used Vampires and Amazoness. Vampires were definitely the strongest deck of the cup, but I switched to Amazoness mainly because so many people were trying to counter Vampires and Amazoness has no terrible matchups. Luckily it ended up paying off!

“What is your personal reflection?”

Whilipino: [Global Rank: 3 | Regional Rank (North America): 1]

I personally had a really rough start in the beginning. That and having work on Friday, I was surprised I did as well as I did. An hour and a half before the event ended, I was at 74k, which was 8k points behind the first place global, so I tried gunning for it and ended up tilting myself down to 68k. I even noticed the current 2nd place global stopped moving so it was either I gave Eugen Heidt a run for his money or no one did at that point, and I couldn’t do it ): In terms of the meta, I actually really enjoy Vampires and a lot of the decks felt more skilful now compared to how they were back in full power Fur Hires format. I also really enjoy playing against top calibre players at the top who make me really think as we exchange games with each other. I do think the KC Cup format is too long though and it is way too draining because I honestly got around 10 hours of sleep that whole weekend because of this. I also don’t like how only 1st place global gets the invite to World Championship 2019. If top 3 had it, there would have been more incentive for the people in the top 10 to fight for those spots. Overall, despite not having a worlds invite still, I’m really happy I did as well as I did during this event.

Yanstorm: [Global Rank: 11 | Regional Rank (Latin America/Caribbean): 1]

I feel very satisfied for what I achieved, however, I regret not trying to fight for the top 10 overall since the last day I had the time to do it but I did not want to risk it. I also had the thought that maybe, if I had all weekend free I would have fought for first place global. The bad things about KC Cup are still the ridiculous rewards they give to the top players, I hope Konami will change that in future.

Jason: [Global Rank: 14 | Regional Rank (North America): 2]

The meta was actually pretty tough because, not including the usual coinflip, but it was hard to make a deck able to beat all the meta decks. Lack defense = rolled over by Vampires/Masked Heroes. Too much defense was weak against Amazoness. Too much backrow removal = lack of defense. Going second without backrow removal vs Amazoness Princess + Paleozoic Canadia = “good game”. The grind event for KC Cup seems okay because the reward was so great, limited duels with bad luck for a good player would lead to a misrepresentation of their skill/performance. I believe prolonging the event to 1-2 weeks with some kind of restrictive factor to prevent someone grinding 500 hours straight to gain advantage would make for a better format.

zaidking: [Global Rank: 27 | Regional Rank (Asia/Middle East/Africa): 1]

The way the event went for me was pretty bad and good. I did start off the event pretty well up to 30k using Spellbooks and Masked Heroes, then I decided to try my luck with Amazoness but my opponents kept drawing strong vs me with whatever deck and Amazoness in general aren’t very consistent in my opinion, so it can really struggle to compete with average hands vs above average hands, that deck dropped me all the way to 20k from 30k. After completely deciding to ditch both Amazoness and Spellbooks I felt Masked Heroes were 100% the way to go (besides Vampires since I didn’t own them) and it got me to 41k on day 2. I got pretty greedy for more points and titled down all the way to 25k and almost gave up. Day 3 the second I woke up I really have the urge to do well and top so I spent 1 hour playing till 36k from 25k and went to something for a few hours, came back and played for another hour and streaked to 45k, decided to stop there thinking it mightve been enough but top 100 was getting narrower way too quick so played 1 game every hour till 50k which I did succeed in doing, and pushed a few more to 52k to secure top 100 100%. My plan worked out and I learnt that taking your time with games and only playing when needed can help a lot. Now for the format, 3 days might seem a lot, but the 3rd day actually saved me so much for topping my region/KC Cup and I think Konami is doing this to really test out the players skill and whether he can maintain his top rank for long enough since they want to reward such players, and not the ones who can luck their few games in. The meta is pretty lit I love it a lot, super diverse and so many ways to play each deck which makes it enjoyable to play in rather than the 1 sided Fur Hires meta we used to have.

Snyffus: [Global Rank: 30 | Regional Rank (Europe): 5]

Due to the delay, the event started at 9am for me, I played the first day to 40k, took a nap and climbed to 50k the second day but dropped down in the end to 35k. After sleeping I went more focussed into day 3, climbing up to more than 70k. As I came close to Eugen Heidt he also had to start playing again and it eventually came down to a race between Eugen and me with Whilipino, March and Joshi also getting closer and closer. The smallest gap between us was 2k points, I peaked at 78k. Unfortunately in the last 2 hours I dropped 25k points and finished 30th place instead of 2nd. In hindsight there probably were things I could have done differently, maybe take a nap after tilting down too much to avoid losing concentration.

I think the format overall was pretty good for this KC Cup, in my opinion Sealed Tombs Vampires was the best deck for the event and I think the players who used it had a big advantage over the rest of the competition, also the Sealed Tombs Vampires mirror match is better than the Cyber Style Vampires mirror. Of course there are always these sacky hands, mainly Spellbooks starting Silent Magician + Spellbook of Fate but that’s just something you have to accept. Shoutouts to Eugen Heidt who definitely deserved the win, congrats on going to worlds!

ShinySopheon: [Global Rank: 84 | Regional Rank (North America): 9]

I personally loved the meta of the event. While I do feel like Vampires were the strongest and most consistent deck, I never felt like they were extremely overpowered. There were a lot of good decks in this meta and a lot of diversity on the ladder in general, which was nice. The 3 day grind-fest format was the only thing holding this event back. Would be nice if we could get a similar event but over the period of a month.

Eugen Heidt

Global Rank: 1 | Regional Rank (Europe): 1

So talking about my KC Cup experience. Like many of you already know I got 1st place mostly playing Sealed Tombs Vampires. In my opinion it was the best deck and skill by far. Being able to push for game really fast while protecting yourself for one turn with Sealed Tombs. Also using Hey, Trunade! to remove most backrow and having strong set up cards like Vampire Takeover going first helped a lot. About the tournament itself: It started 7am my time, so I woke up and wanted to play realizing that Konami fucked it up kinda, so I had to wait another 2 hours. Starting at 9 am I wanted to play Vampires instead of Amazoness first because it’s the way faster deck, which is better in the early stages in the Cup, not realizing yet that the deck is so much better. I got up till 59k points they first day, so I just wanted to get to 60k before going to bed. Turned out it was easier said than done because it took me 24 hours losing two “end-boss matches”, one against my app closing mid-match and the other one against Snyffus. Also, the meta shifted a lot. People were realizing how good Vampires are (thanks Dkayed 😠) so they started using Sealed Tombs in almost every decktype. That’s the point I tried Amazoness for a bit but just like Mario, I wasn’t lucky enough to get the princess so I switched back to Vampires.

Due to the high usage of Sealed Tombs, the Vampire players went down a bit and Sealed Tombs didnt make much sense for me anymore. ShinySopheon suggested that I switch to Bandit which I did. I must say it came clutch sometimes but in the end I think the skill wasn’t correct in this cup. The format was really fast so you either started with 4k only paying yourself down to 2500 without being able to use it or your opponent just killed you. I also realized that I missed Sealed Tombs against other matchups, not only Vampires. Against Amazoness you sometimes go for the Hey, Trunade!-OTK in the midgame, so you have to pop Amazoness Onslaught when they already have monsters in the graveyard. Against Fur Hires I always used it first turn if I drew Treacherous Trap Hole to not get destroyed by Mayhem Fur Hire, it also helped in the latter turns if I hadn’t used it yet. And not to mention why it was good against and Spellbooks.

Anyways, I finally had 60k Saturday evening after I played 38 hours straight and I could go to bed being 1st place with a tiny lead of like 1k points. I woke up Sunday morning after 10 hours of sleep expecting to be dropped a lot but I was 4th with like 3k difference to the first place. In the meantime Joshi suggested Stall being pretty good so I tried that out because I was top 10 already and could play some slower decks. I won against Amazoness even if they got Vision HERO Witch Raider but I couldn’t really win against good Vampire players and it was a bit boring to play so I switched back yet again. After that I got a huge win streak gaining 20k points in like 4-5 hours being at 80k with a 15k point lead and I decided to chill for a bit. It was around 4pm my time and it wasnt until 1:30 am where Snyffus came dangerously close. With 8k difference and 7.5 hours left I decided that it’s getting a bit close and I played again. The first hour I dropped 5k, next one I gained them back and the next two hours I stayed at around 80k. The difference was 12k again though and it was only 3.5 hours left so I stopped playing. It turned out that the 80k I had Sunday afternoon was enough and I didn’t need to play.

That’s the deck I used for like 95% of my games. I won’t show the Amazoness and Stall because they are pretty irrelevant. The deck is pretty self-explanatory. Hey, Trunade! to push for quick OTKs and Treacherous Trap Hole to have some protection besides Enemy Controller. I didn’t like Vampire Grimson, thought about Vampire’s Desire but it’s better with Cyber Style, same goes with Black Luster Soldier - Sacred Soldier. Oh and by the way, because I played as Ishizu, many Vampire players activated Vampire Takeover in their draw phase after their setup to get the special summon which is a big mistake in my opinion. And Spellbooks was the hardest matchup if they had Silent Magician.

Some fun facts:

• Played against #FixYourGame 4 times.
• Played the time stall cheater 2 times.
• Played Snyffus around 15 times 😠.
• Amazoness players opening Amazoness Princess then setting 3 backrow happened 100% of the time.
• Masked Heroes going second with double Mask Change happened 100% of the time.
• Fur Hires going second with Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire and Donpa, Marksman Fur Hire happened 100% of the time.
• Spellbooks starting with Spellbook of Fate and Silent Magician happened 100% of the time.

March

Global Rank: 2 | Regional Rank (Japan): 1

I used only this deck for all the entire duration of the KC Cup. Took the recipe from Jason’s MCS XI deck. I firmly believe this deck does well against all the other top decks we have now.

Whilipino

Global Rank: 3 | Regional Rank (North America): 1

I climbed with Fur Hires from 0-35k. Sphere Kuriboh was good because there were a lot of Vampires. I then switched to Sealed Tombs Vampires and climbed to about 60k as Sealed Tombs Vampires beat the Cyber Style version. I then switched to Endless Trap Hell Amazoness because people were getting smart and started playing the Sealed Tombs Vampires deck and the mirror match is a coin flip. Amazoness brought me to 74k but then I tilted down to 68k the last hour and a half in an attempt to catch Eugen Heidt. I guess 3rd place global is cool though. I also went by the names High Noon, Metapod, and Lamp. Good games to everyone that I played!

Kimeruru

Global Rank: 7 | Regional Rank (Japan): 4

Yanstorm

Global Rank: 11 | Regional Rank (Latin America/Caribbean): 1

Joshi

Global Rank: 13

Jason

Global Rank: 14 | Regional Rank (North America): 2

These are the three decks I played the most throughout the cup. I switched dependent on how the meta shifted in the top ranks. Sealed Tombs Amazoness performed the best for me taking me to my highest at 62k. Good games to everyone I played. My names throughout the cup were “deku”, “Goku”, and “yukihirasoma”. Congratulations Eugen Heidt for taking #1!

zaidking

Global Rank: 27 | Regional Rank (Asia/Middle East/Africa): 1

Used this list the whole time, tried out Spellbooks, Amazoness and even Fur Hires but none of them worked out. This felt super consistent and was able to deal with every matchup with a really decent win rate. Masked Heroes easily tier 1! Forbidden Chalice mvp btw.

Snyffus

Global Rank: 30 | Regional Rank (Europe): 5

Played Sealed Tombs Vampires because I think it’s the best deck. The deck is very fast and the skill highly improves the mirror match. Unfortunately dropped from 2nd place global to 30th in about 2 hours in the end. Shoutouts to Eugen Heidt who convinced me to play the deck, well deserved win.

FettyGuap

Global Rank: 40 | Regional Rank (North America): 4

Basically played this the whole way through. I had 3 cards in the extra deck to make opponent think I was playing Masked Heroes so when Vampires go first they like to put their guys in defense position so I capitalise with a nice dunk! I ran double U.A. Dreadnought Dunker because that card is insane and surprise factor for when Amazoness banishes your first one they think they’re safe - but they’re not! Overall the deck performed well, played the same list I played in MCS XI.

“They see me dunkin, they see me sluggin, but they can’t do nothin.”

Xeco ✗O

Global Rank: 50 | Regional Rank (Europe): 8

I used Masked Heroes 0-40k. Changed some things during my climb but this is what it looked like at the end. I used Spellbooks for 40-50k then basically just stopped playing.

Sow

Global Rank: 55 | Regional Rank (Europe): 9

Played Noble Knights and Amazoness at the start for the low DP people (started on day 2). After like 30k I switched to this because the ladder was infested with Amazoness.

k0k!

Global Rank: 71

I played using Vampires 320 times, Spellbooks 28 times and Fur Hires twice. My deck is nothing special but what I’m only confident in is win rate against Spellbooks with Vampires is over 70%.

Kayoh

Global Rank: 74 | Regional Rank (North America): 7

Heroes always come through. Played it 99% of the KC Cup, Switcheroo was MVP, really helped unbrick my hands. Out of ~200 duels, I Switcheroo’d back into a Destiny HERO - Malicious like twice. Had a few epic duels that I wish I saved for replays, but I kept spamming for next duel. Baiting furry players to negate Mask Change into a TRINITY CRUSH was too damn fun!

OwOcelot

Global Rank: 78

Treacherous Trap Hole wins games. Played Vampires until 40k. Switched to Amazoness when Sealed Tombs became popular and because they have decent matchups across the board.

Fab

Global Rank: 81

ShinySopheon

Global Rank: 84 | Regional Rank (North America): 9

I used Vampires for the majority of the climb. I switched between Cyber Style, Sealed Tombs, and even Bandit. They were doing really well for me, but I randomly decided to switch to Amazoness and they went on a big tear, netting me my last like 15k. I also played a bit of U.A. in the beginning but SURPRISE, they weren’t consistent enough. These are the lists I had the most success with. Mirror Wall was the mvp!

KiryuRyo

Global Rank: 86

Switched between a few decks but mainly used these two.

Stevie

Global Rank: 99

Used this for most of the climb after Vampires got countered. Most fun I’ve had playing a deck in a minute. Some of the OTKs are insane!

If you also ranked top 100 global, post proof in the DuelLinksMeta Discord or the comment below and we’ll add you here!