The Top 16 ended up having 10 Lilias Petals, 4 Mikage, and 2 Dark Alice. The Fox flood, and the utter lack of Fiethsing decks, is interesting. It really speaks to the North American TCG climate that one deck got bandwagoned so hard immediately after release of a set and 1 ARG win in Atlanta. Bandwagoners will bandwagon, I suppose, especially a deck like Fox. It has an extremely good matchup against Fiethsing, being just as fast (if not faster) at chugging out huge resonators, while simultaneously packing a nice control package to deal with Gwibers. If you'll notice, all 16 decks of the Top 16 are anti-Fiethsing decks, or decks with a strong matchup against her.
J/Ruler: Lilias Petal, Agent of Salvation // The Nine-Tailed Fox
Main Deck (40):
4x Tama, Familiar of Holy Wind
3x Change the World, Orb of Illusion
4x Red Riding Hood
3x The Monkey Trapped in Life
4x Heaven Bound Pheasant
2x Wind-Secluded Refuge
3x Dance of the Shadows
3x The Last Drop
2x Lilias Petal’s Assistant
3x Lapis’ Dark Storm
1x Messenger of Lilias Petal
3x Fruit of Yggdrasil
1x Arthur, the Dead Lord of Vengeance
2x Blessing of Yggdrasil
1x Heavenly Gust
1x Keen Sense
Stone Deck (10):
4x Killing Stone
4x Magic Stone of Black Silence
1x Magic Stone of Deep Wood
1x Sorrowful Necromancy’s Memoria
Side Deck (15):
4x Griphon, Racing Across Darkness
3x Ammit, Beast of Gluttony
3x The Manticore
1x Keen Sense
1x Wind-Secluded Refuge
2x Black Moonbeam
1x Heavenly Gust
Here's the list for First Place. It's a fairly standard Chimera-turbo build with a couple spicy techs. Change the World is there for recovering the Nine-Tailed Fox so you can recycle Killing Stone with his tap ability and then call it out by tapping for stone. Once you've gone through your whole stone deck (which is very easy with Griphon + Red Riding Hood) that combo is basically "Call a Killing Stone every turn" which is important for a deck looking to make as many Chimeras as possible. Rocking 4 Pheasants seems like a lot to me, but since he's using Lapis' Dark Storm, this seems to be a build looking to do a lot of discard/hand control, so the flock of birds makes sense. Dance of Shadows is there for re-using Chimeras once the opponent has dealt with them, letting you summon 2 of them in one turn if need be. Fruit of Yggdrasil is interesting to me, but it replaces itself in your hand and makes great Chimera fodder, while also being a target for Last Drop. Dark Arthur kind of single-handedly shuts down the Fiethsing match-up while also letting you re-add him to hand if you eat him to make a Chimera.
All-in-all, nothing incredibly special about this deck. The side board is dominated by the Chimeras, and he just sides in more copies of certain main-decked cards for certain match-ups. I don't really get the one Deep Wood Stone, since there's no water anywhere in the deck, but I guess he wanted another green source instead of a second Sorrowful Necromancy?
J/Ruler: Girl in Twilight Garb // Dark Alice, Maiden of Slaughter
Main Deck (40):
2x Schrödinger, the Fallen Black Cat
3x Seal of Wind and Light
3x Artemis, the God’s Bow
2x Deathscythe, the Life Reaper
3x Laevateinn, the Demon Sword
4x Space-Time Anomoly
4x Soulhunt
3x Lapis’ Dark Storm
2x Magic Rebound
2x Valentina’s Reach
3x The Nameless Mist
3x The Scorn of Dark Alice
3x Charlotte’s Water Transformation Magic
2x Wind-Secluded Refuge
1x Heavenly Gust
Stone Deck (10):
4x Ruler’s Memoria
3x Magic Stone of Dark Depth
3x Magic Stone of Black Silence
Side Deck (15):
2x The Prison in Lunar Lake
3x Riza, First of the Dead
3x Melder, Last of the Dead
1x Magic Rebound
2x Horn of Sacred Beasts
2x Heavenly Gust
1x Charlotte’s Water Transformation Magic
1x Artemis, the God’s Bow
Second place was a Dark Alice deck which, as has spread pretty rapidly throughout the community by now, only lost because he was issued a Game Loss for accidentally shuffling a Charlotte's Water Transformation Magic into his Stone Deck. It really sucks to go that far only to lose because of something like that, but at least it's a nice meme.
The deck itself is interesting in the fact that there are absolutely 0 resonators. The main deck is exclusively 40 chants/regalia. This leaves room for a LOT of control, but also tunnel visions Alice as the win condition. He mains two Wind-Secluded Refuges to protect against Moonbeam, and Laevateinn/Schrodinger to give her Imperishable against other removal, plus Heavenly Gust to remove Deathscythes that might get in the way. With the huge amount of discard he's packing, the opponent will find it hard (if not impossible) to chain removal and get rid of Alice. Once their resources are drained, the deck uses the tried-and-true method of all Dark Alice decks and flips for beatdown against a topdecking opponent. I'm honestly surprised Dark Alice hadn't seen more tops before this, due to her God's Art totally shutting down Fiethsing decks, which used to be the top dog. She dies to Shackles of Ice, but that's what the Heavenly Gusts are for.
The side deck isn't anything too special. Lunar Lakes are there for on-enter decks, namely Lilias Petal since it shuts down Chimera's hard, and Riza/Melder are an additional win condition, I assumed against decks that are packing a ton of J-ruler removal or don't care too much about their hand.
Main Deck (41):
3x Sacred Elf
4x The Monkey Trapped in Life
4x Tama, Familiar of Holy Wind
2x The Executioner
4x Red Riding Hood
3x Lilias Petal’s Assistant
4x Messenger of Lilias Petal1x Keep of the Past, Urthr
1x Arthur, the Dead Lord of Vengeance
2x Heaven Bound Pheasant
2x Keen Sense
2x Wind-Secluded Refuge
3x Dance of the Shadows
1x The Last Drop
4x Change the World, Orb of Illusion
1x Wall of Wind
Stone Deck (10):
4x Killing Stone
4x Magic Stone of Black Silence
1x Magic Stone of Blasting Waves
1x Sorrowful Necromancy’s Memoria
Side Deck (15):
3x Griphon, Racing Across Darkness
3x Ammit, Beast of Gluttony
2x The Manticore
1x Keen Sense
2x Black Moonbeam
2x Heavenly Gust
2x Deathscythe, the Life Reaper
Here's the Third place deck. The deck itself has a few tweaks that sets it apart from the first place list. Sacred Elf for ramp (though ramping towards what I don't know), the inclusion of Executioner, 4 of Lilias Petal's Messenger (I assume to compensate for no Blessings of Yggdrasil), and a sole Urthr. Rather than the phantom Magic Stone of Deep Wood the first place guy ran, this deck used Blasting Waves, which it made use of with Urthr. That's a pretty spicy tech in my opinion, since it can kill off other Chimera with relative easy since your own Chimeras provide tons of fuel. Outside of that, though, the deck is pretty similar to the first place deck, aiming to be a Chimera Turbo engine and just overwhelming the opponent with aggression, albeit with a little more field control (Urthr and Executioner) and less hand control.
With Fox being 10/16 of the top decks, and being 3/4 of the Top 4, it's clearly a contender for the top deck of the format. What remains to be seen is if Blazer, or Final Forfeit + Moonbeam, will be a strong enough counter to him or if he just works too fast and hits too hard with the Chimeras to really be countered like that. The Dance of Shadow tech, which seems to be popular, is a good built-in counter to Lunar Lake and Sorrowful Necromancy's Memoria clears out Charlotte's Bear Magic and Space-Times from graveyards to keep the Chimera's safe. It will be interesting to see what people come up with to counter this card, or if they'll just decide to bandwagon him and try to out-Chimera opponents rather than deal with them with other decks. Also, shout-out to GrinningRemnant for compiling these lists and stats. It made my life a lot easier!
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