Master Duel Meta Report - Mysterious Labyrinth

Published on December 26th, 2022 by

Updated on December 26th, 2022

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Master Duel Meta Report: Mysterious Labyrinth

With Selection Pack: Mysterious Labyrinth arriving just a few weeks ago at the start of December, players waited with bated breath to see how the long-awaited Labrynth and Runick archetypes would perform. While overall expectations should be satisfied, it has left a sour taste in the mouth of some as it marked the arrival of a new meta relevant floodgate deck.

With such a short time period between set releases, there will be little opportunity to showcase new techs to decks resulting in smaller text segments, additionally, the sample size will expectedly be fewer. Please consider this when looking at the graph below.

Data sourced from tournament reports on MasterDuelMeta.com

Runick

Despite dismissive comments from some, Runick has been the top performing decks in the last period, though how much of this is due to recency bias is up for debate.

What is not up for debate however, is that the deck is more than capable of keeping up with the current Master Duel meta. With the tools to deal with virtually any situation and resistance to most floodgates, Runick is rarely in an auto-lose situation. While playable and finding success in many different forms, such as combined with the Invoked engine, or as a Synchro deck, the floodgate variant has been overwhelmingly by competitive players. With a unique deck strategy that usually involves few or even zero monsters on the field, Runick is able to beat the clock that is the opponent assembling enough damage to end the duel by decking them out first.

It remains to be seen how powerful Runick will be in the meta over the future; while losing to auto lose techs such as Loading... and powerful cards like Loading... which disrupts the protect-the-castle strategy focusing around Loading..., tournaments which follow a no side or best-of-one format do not allow players to take the measures needed to grant a chance to win. So many counters make it likely that Runick will not be particualrly dominant in tournaments with siding, but will be a force to be reckoned with in tournaments which do not.

Top 8 in Meta Weekly #43 –
Nero

40 cards

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Top 8 in Third Eye Weekly #37 –
Teremiare

45 cards

Side Deck

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Top 4 in Hey! Cup #41 – しらっくす

40 cards

Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir

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Despia

For the first time in months, Despia is no longer the showrunner in terms of representation. Despite getting brand new support, it has fallen by the wayside to Runick, though this can likely be attributed to recency bias. Despia is still the highest performing deck with a traditional playstyle, so those interested in that avenue of gameplay are still best off playing the deck. With the impending Duelist Cup Forbidden & Limited List, the players are expecting hits to this deck, which may spell the end of its meta relevance.

Of note is Despia's ability to play Loading..., an extremely strong Trap that has applications against most decks but also immediately wins the Runick matchup.