Hello everyone, and welcome to Meta Mondays, the (not-so) premier bi-weekly Digimon primer series! This week on Meta Mondays, we're going to be covering the rosy lord of knights, LordKnightmon X.
While the Dark Animal engine has been used ever since EX5 dropped in various decks such as Anubismon and Leviamon X, the engine has found its true home in LordKnightmon X. While its usage has dipped as the 2.0 format has gone on and new sets have released in Japan, it is still an extremely powerful deck, taking an 8th place finish at the recent (as of writing) LATAM 2024 Finals. The deck focuses on using the aforementioned powerful Dark Animal engine to cycle cards, gain memory, and generate bodies on board to go wide
and give BT19 LordKnightmon (X Antibody)
more <De-Digivolve> triggers. The most important card is EX5 Cerberusmon (X Antibody), being able to both cycle a card and playing a Rookie out from trash for free with X-Antibody or a Cerberusmon under it. Most times this will be triggered by EX5 X Antibody Proto Form, allowing you to digivolve into a digimon without X Antibody under it with the cost reduced by 1. This also triggers every single X Antibody effect by being named X Antibody, allowing you to skip future base digimon forms, like LordKnightmon, and still trigger their special effects. The engine also consists of multiple cards like BT14 Goblimon and EX5 Labramon and Dobermon (X Antibody) to gain memory when a card is trashed from hand and a digimon is played by effect for the last two, respectively. This allows for practically free digivolutions in some cases when combined with effects like Purple Scramble, Wisdom Training, and Purple Memory Boost!. Usually when doing this combo, you will have 2 digimon on board by using Cerberusmon (X Antibody), but by using BT19 LordKnightmon, you will gain an additional digimon on board totaling 3 on board, assuming none when moving out from breeding.
But what are all these bodies used for? Let me introduce you to the shining star of early BT19 format, BT19 LordKnightmon (X Antibody). When this card was introduced into the
game, it was one of the single most powerful digimon released to that point. By itself, it triggers <De-Digivolve> once, but by going through the Dark Animal engine as your base or even using a EX5 Anubismon before this, that number can reach a staggering number. It also prevents one of your opponents digimon from digivolving, preventing Blast Digivolution assuming they even still have an eligible card on field. Then using the <Alliance> in combination with <Collision>, it can effectively remove any digimon while still checking security twice with <Piercing>. By using Cerberusmon (X Antibody)s inherited effect, you can also unsuspend to remove another body with another <Collision> attack. This also makes it an extremely effective counter against threats like BT16 Magnamon (X Antibody) by swinging over it. This leads the deck to be extremely explosive and able to close out games fast. While this deck is undoubtedly powerful, there is a couple downsides to it. Such as OTK decks being able to run it over with removal and OTK from raising (or from a tamer like with the Ancient decks). Another metagame specific issue is MirageGaogamon and the draw tax eating this deck alive. While I am not certain for this being why the deck has flopped in the west, this has led to the deck being extremely dominant in Japan while falling more flat in the west. Overall it is still an extremely strong deck, with it placing 8th at the LATAM 2024 Finals, as stated earlier. With this being a recent deck, there isn't a whole lore of list variation with Japan besides personal tech. This has been this week's Meta Mondays, and I hope to see you again for next weeks Training Tuesdays, covering ShineGreymon!
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