As we wait with bated breath for the upcoming update for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game’s (TCG’s) Limited/Forbidden List, it cannot be understated how tyrannically oppressive one of the leading archetypes in the competitive scene, Ryzeal, has been.
High consistency, easy access to a plethora of tools, and a boss monster that can eat through opposing board breakers with relative ease, there’s no denying that Ryzeal has solidly established itself as the archetype to beat.
While it won't enough to eject Ryzeal out of the metagame, here are some of the best cards to use against the Ryzeal archetype.
The Honorably (Mentioned) Tools
Firstly, there are staple cards that are just generically useful because they can be slotted into almost any deck type. Many of these also happen to be among the best cards to use against Ryzeal monsters.
And as much as we’d like to give each card their due, this list would end up being atrociously long. So we’d like to lump all the generic hand traps and board breakers in this segment because like or not, modern Yu-Gi-Oh! dictates that such cards be used for their utility.
Despite all of their capabilities, the Ryzeal archetype does have natural choke points these staple cards can take advantage of.
For example, Droll & Lock Bird is a hand trap that can cut off a Ryzeal player’s access to Ryzeal Duo Drive. This in turn will prevent the Ryzeal player from accessing their powerful Ryzeal support cards, Ryzeal Plugin and Ryzeal Cross.
Other cards such as Ultimate Slayer and Super Polymerization are examples of staple board breakers that can see use against Ryzeal or any competitor for that matter.
They have a built-in anti-response package that ensures that something like Ryzeal Detonator -the in-archetype boss monster- will be prevented from starting a chain of effects.
Tactics to Some Dimensional Mischief
The whole is usually greater than the sum of its parts. That is usually how best to describe Yu-Gi-Oh! decks in general.
In this case, these two trap cards -Dimensional Barrier and Mischief of the Gnomes can easily lock out Ryzeal’s most potent of extra deck plays.
The issue with the trap cards however is that by modern Yu-Gi-Oh! conventions, they are slow to use. This will be especially true if you are going second and need a way to break through an already established board.
However, Triple Tactics Thrust can be used to help speed things along. With how prevalent monster hand traps are, a player can easily get Triple Tactics Thrust to activate and set one of the above trap cards.
If the opponent decides to use a hand trap of their own, like Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, to prevent Triple Tactics Thrust from activating, then that’s one less hand trap for you to play through. It would be a relatively small price to pay for your deck’s own engine.
The Sleeping Tapir Rides Again
This is a card that has probably fallen out of the zeitgeist for most players. But Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir is a generically reachable rank 4 XYZ monster that can just shutdown almost any card that Ryzeal could throw at you.
Most importantly it just stops Ryzeal Detonator or Duo Drive from imposing their will on the board.
Bagooska does have the caveat of also affecting its own controlling player, so the astute deck builder would have to work around this. For what it’s worth, it’s not the end of the world if you can stop any of the extra deck monsters your opponent summons from activating their effects.
The Copycat Play
Breaking the fourth wall a bit, the aspect of the side deck and extra deck in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG can also be used in the overall campaign against Ryzeal. Metaltronus is one such tool that takes advantage of this.
If facing against Ryzeal in an organized tournament, the strange copy of Ryzeal Detonator or Duo Drive in your side deck can easily be swapped in and used to feed Metaltronus to just get rid of a problem card on the field should it appear.
If you don’t fancy doing the copycat play in siding any of the Ryzeal extra deck monsters, then Underworld Goddess of the Closed World can be used as a worthy target for Metaltronus. But this assumes that the controlling player’s deck uses the Fiendsmith cards as part of their deck’s original design.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of tools, but it can help give that little edge needed to fight off the encroaching force that is the Ryzeal archetype.