What to expect in Games 2 and 3 in WCQ and how to fight your opponents side deck

I had a sudden urge to do a post about this today because I've been thinking about this a lot lately and felt it would be a good idea to express my feelings on the topic. While I could make a post about what side deck cards you should or could use in games 2 and 3 I feel that enough people will eventually or will do a post on this topic so there isn't a point in doing so. The point of this article is to expect what your opponent might do in game two and three against you and what you can do to counter this.

Of course take this post with a grain of salt because this post is dependent on the fact that your opponent is of a certain skill level and will put these cards against you. You never know when you might meet somebody that is still quite inexperienced at this game who might put in some random cards against you. When that happens I hope that you can hopefully compensate for this with greater skill, knowledge, and planning than your opponent might have.

Anyways as for todays topic lets create a scenario here which you might see at a major tournament here.

You are playing Inzektors with a Card car D engine.

Your opponent is playing Rabbit Ragia with main decked macro cosmos.

You played an moderately long game 1 against him and saw no effect veiler.

You have lost Game 1 due to him protecting his macro cosmos and beating you down with his exceeds.

In this situation it is quite obvious he will leave the macro in as it wins the game almost instantly against you if he can keep it alive.

Your opponent might also side in chain disappearance to against you to solve the problem straight away instead of taking a chance and having you herp derp to victory.

So on the assumption that your opponent is putting the expected side deck cards in against you what you should see are things that will stop the summon and effects of your inzektors from working which is quite obvious.

Thus your main problems are:

Forbidden Chalice
Macro Cosmos
Chain Disappearance (possibly)
Demon Chain
Transmigration Prophecy

Also lets not forget the core of his deck the laggia itself.

Now the question is if you know whats coming how do you prepare for it.

Well Firstly the obvious backrow removal.
Then the even more obvious laggia hate snowman eater etc.

Now what do you take out?

Well taking out Card Car D is generally a good option as you actually don't need it to win.
I normally take out one pot of duality as well along with a few uneeded traps such as compulsory evacuation device. That should give enough room for you to put your side deck hate in.

Well that was a basic example of what to expect from Macro Ragia but what about something more complicated?

In this scenario you are playing Hanzo Hieratics

In this game your opponent went first set one card and ended his turn.

On the following turn of this game you destroyed his lone backrow a torrential and proceeded to otk him with a swarm of Hieratics since you had a godly hand.

Now in this scenario you have won the first game and are at an advantage.

However you do not know what your opponent is playing and what to side deck for game 2.

Now lets think about this for a second. In this scenario the goal should be not to find out what your opponent is playing but to figure out what he might not be playing.

Your opponent only set one backrow and ended his turn.

What decks would not make a play like this?

We can eliminate rabbit ragia as first they only set one backrow and ended turn even if he drew 3 sabersaurus and 2 kabazauls along with that torrential he would at least summon one of them right?
and since he did not summon anything I can make the assumption that he is not playing rabbit ragia.

Following this line of logic we can also eliminate Machina Gadgets most of the time because even if he drew 5 gadgets he would at least summon 1 to add one to hand as well.

Also any deck with a relatively large spell and trap line up could be eliminated from the equation as well due to the fact that he would have at least set one more backrow which is the standard play.

So basically judging from this one play we can assume he is playing a deck which special summons monsters quite easily but he cannot summon any of them because they are all stuck in his hand with few backrow.

Thus I would most suspect him playing chaos dragon or hieratics.

While this does not mean you should side in all your chaos dragon and hieratic hate in your main deck it might not be a bad idea to side in some Maxx C and a Tragoedia to back up your veiler.

You also have to account for the fact that your opponent is side decking against you as well so prepare for the basics such as Maxx C, mask of restrict, mind crush, tragoedia, and all the other stuff that people use against hieroglyphs.

If your side deck does work then all is good however if your opponent is playing something completely off the wall then just remember you have game 3 to try to win.

I hope with this article people will be better able to understand why you side deck some cards in and how you should prepare for games 2 and 3 better.

Thanks for reading.