Decks of April 2014: HAT

HAT, Hatrix, Trapifact, Handtrix

"Seriously, nobody really knows how to call this deck."

This deck started to become real shortly after the release of Primal Origins and made its debut in YCS Philly which resulted into 9 of them got into Top 32 list. Everybody then bought into this deck's bandwagon. In only  a week, cards like Traptrix Trap Hole Nightmare, Traptrix Myrmeleo, and the pair of Hands rose 100% in price, making HAT the most expensive deck at that time in which a core deck was valued about $350.

However, the rise of HAT's popularity doesn't go in line with its performance in circuit series. After YCS Philly, the number of HAT in Top32/Top16 list was reduced little by little. Worst of all, the latest ARGCS Philly shows no HAT deck got into the Top list.

How could all of this happened? How could a deck that started so good in the beginning of format becomes worse and worse and even nonexistent in the end of format?

Let's see how this deck works first.

Basically, HAT is a combination of all of the best splashable cards in the game currently. 3 Sanctum and 3 Moralltach allows you to disrupt opponent's play and give you a strong beater. 3 Fire Hand and 3 Ice Hand allows you to remove any threat in front of you. Traptrix Myrmeleo works as a further beater that adds your defensive backrow and later can be used in combination with Traptrix Dionaea to create instant Rank 4 XYZ. All of those splashable monsters are backed by a line of the best splashable reactive trap in the game currently.

If you read my explanation before, then you'll realize that every card in HAT deck works by itself without having any relations with other cards. You got no real combo nor real play in this deck. All you do is grind, grind, and grind until you have higher card advantage than your opponent. As far as I know, there is no winning condition for this deck.

Funny thing is, this deck reminds me a lot of the old time Yugioh deck such as Goat Control. Back then, archetype wasn't as consistent as nowadays, therefore people rather choose to play a deck that consists of every good cards that exists. The grinding playstyle is also similar, because back then OTK is nearly impossible. Perhaps they should call this deck Hand Control.

Anyway, as a concept, this deck should be really weak against almost any deck that currently exists. Because if all you can do is grind and grind, then you'll be very weak against opponent that can generate advantages very quickly while able to bypass all of your defensive traps. Moreover, every play that you can make in this deck is a reactive play, which means that you can only make advantage when your opponent do something that you can react with.

For example, your opponent destroys your Fire Hand, then you can destroy their monster and summon Ice Hand from your deck, nets you +1; or your opponent plays aggro and you activate your Sanctum, summon Moralltach from your deck, destroying their important monster, stops their play and nets you +1; or maybe your opponent simply falls to your traps. There is no real aggresive play in this deck, except Dionaea play which is not really consistent since you can't search for Dionaea to begin with.

Therefore, this deck can't really do anything if your opponent doesn't want to play into your hands. Unlike any other grinding deck such as Fire Fist +1, Rai-Oh Antimeta, or Hero Beatdown, you don't have any cards that will force your opponent to plays aggresively. 1 Hand or Myrmeleo with their 1600 ATK in the field won't be any threat to your opponent and they can easily shut you off simply by putting a monster with strong defense in the field. There is no way a HAT player can eliminate a big defender except by summoning Moralltach from Sanctum.

That's why Geargia becomes this deck's Kryptonite. Geargia doesn't need to play aggresively. It can simply set a Geargiarmor and 5 Traps while generating advantage with Armor's flip effect. HAT player can do nothing to eliminate Armor, except by summoning Moralltach and attack it, considering you didn't get stopped by the backrows, and even if you succeed, you will still activate Armor's effect. Since Geargia is the number 1 most played deck in this format, then grinding through 11 rounds of YCS will surely become hell for HAT players, right?

But then, if this deck is pretty bad as a concept, how could there be 9 HAT in the YCS Philly?

From what I read, many players are still unfamiliar with HAT's play. They either play too aggresively or missplayed too much. Like for example, many players didn't know that if a Hand can't destroy its respective target, then it won't be able to summon its counterpart from the deck. My friend deals with this kind of thing. He has Number 101 with 1 material but he refused to ATK his opponent's Fire Hand because he thought that it will make Ice Hand summoned from the deck, which is not the case.

However, with the development of the metagame, players become familiar with HAT's play and able to deal with it pretty easily. The ever growing popularity of Geargia also make this deck doesn't have so much room to explore.

In the end, people realize that combining all splashable cards inside a deck is not the way to play Yugioh anymore. Finally people realize that splashable cards should only be a support for other deck and not its own deck. This change of mindset resulted into a good deck that topped, such as Geargia Hands, Traptrix Fire Fist, Madolche Artifact, Inzektor Artifact, Mermail Hands, etc.

Will there still be player who plays HAT deck? Surely, but I doubt they will have a good result.