You Vs. Your Deck: The Meta Interferes

How do you react?

If you keep getting beaten up by the same cards week after week, the time may come where it's not that you need to make your deck faster or stronger, but you need to put in answers to answers. How do we find the answers to answers that we are going to need to stop players from walking all over your game plan?

First off, this depends on what you find yourself losing to, and this may take a bit of self reflection. If your opponent revokes a crucial enhance that would have won you the game and then goes on to beat you on their turn with back to back to back copies of Forbidden Moonset, you just lost to Revoke, not Moonset. So, what are the common cards that people lose to in this manner, and what are some of the ideal ways to fight back?

First, it's important to note that a good amount of newer players don't know that canceling an ability works a bit different in our game than other games. You cancel an ability technically at the colon of the text of the ability, not after it happens. You also cancel the entire ability, not just the part that your card references. If you cancel your opponent's Templar response with Inhuman Speed's response, your opponent does not get to draw 2 cards.

Toguro Brothers has been a popular one since its release. It does have some drawbacks that Revoke does not have, some of which are less apparent than others. There's the immediately obvious facts that Toguro has a worse check than Revoke, and it hinders your builds on turn 1, but it goes a bit deeper than that as well. Because Toguro Bros also destroys its target, that opens up options on how to fight back!

Protecting the Protector is a fantastic card for only 1 difficulty, and as it is important that Toguro's ability destroys and cancels together, Protector will cancel the whole ability.

Redeemed Rogue and Ageless & Wise both stop destruction with the low cost of a flip ability, so they are active to protect you the moment they hit the board. Some people have even taken to running 4x copies of Ageless & Wise simply because it protects you from Toguro Brothers and Forbidden Moonset.

Revoke is a card that I believe is a crucial tool to have in the metagame, one that keeps abilities in check across the board. It is one of the easiest cards in the game to run off-symbol, and the ways to fight it are much fewer than the other big answers, but that doesn't mean that there aren't answers. The answers to Revoke are going to be cards that you can also use to fight off many other big cards, such as Toguro and Bang. Due to how many things they stop overall, it's a good idea to include some of these cards in your decks from your first steps.

Mortal Resurrection is a card that I've run a few copies of in my sideboards for many decks due to its ability to save you from big answers.

Bebop Blues is a fantastic card that works as a hate for those annoying blue cards, and it also works as a tiny Bang, able to turn off characters who spam their abilities multiple times over the turn.

Koenma's Task is a card whose form ability is virtually impossible to use in most decks, but it's not a terrible sideboard card to have, especially in a character with a larger handsize where you could pocket the Koenma's Task until you really need it.

Azwel's Little Doll is one that I absolutely love. This stops more than just Revoke and Toguro, but also has the ability to stop reversals, as well as basically every answer that I've put on this list!

Bang and Stop are both popular cards to turn off your character, and in a lot of cases, to basically turn off your character for 1-2 turns.

Protecting the Protector, as listed earlier, stops both of these due to the wide net of cancellation it casts.

Celestial Being is a classic card to fight targeted committal and large stun, but it can also be used to stop Stop.

Shitenketsu is another one that may have to sit in your hand for a few turns, but it can cancel so many things! It's worth slotting this card as a 1-2x in your mainboard, and maybe sliding a couple in the sideboard, too.

Fatality could be wrecking your day pretty hard with its inability to be interacted with, and the discard pile hitting ability, but it can actually be interacted with a bit more than some people realize. The static ability of it says “your opponent cannot play abilities during this attack”, but the part of “during this attack” doesn't actually happen until the enhance phase starts, so you are allowed to interact with it while it's being played, including when its response is being activated.

Orphaned Alchemist stops Fatality's response for the low cost of being a 1/6 foundation with a nice block, and it even draws you a card for you having to put up with Fatality!

Cast Away and Forgotten can seal the Fatality as it's played. Your opponent still gets to snipe your discard pile, but if the issue is them getting free momentum and an enhance step that you can't interact with, then sealing Fatality is a great bet!

Fast Learner may be a fairly unreliable card to activate, but just think about how strong this can be. A lot of the time, people will open with Fatality as a way to avoid both Bang and Stop, and this card activates even earlier than those two and still gets to commit their character! Just be sure that this won't be canceled by something like Protecting the Protector or Celestial Being, as it has quite the hefty cost.

Paranormal Investigation is a very uncommonly used card, but it does have some uses here. You aren't allowed to play enhances during the Fatality just as normal, but your opponent won't get free momentum and the Fatality has to sit around in their card pool doing nothing, and that is usually a huge impact on your opponent!

There are of course many cards that can stop you from winning the game, and many that can help you stop your opponent from helping themselves to your rightful victory, and this article could go on for ages about it. If you are having trouble adapting to cards and being able to protect yourself, feel free to message me, or pretty much any other veteran, to have a nice discussion about how to save yourself some stress. You could say that by writing this article, I am protecting the protectors. Or, you could not. Please don't.