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 current scourge of the meta, MirageGaogamon.
Since the release of BT-11 Mirage, the deck has been in the meta's radar, but only really came into the limelight with the release of BT-13, Versus Royal Knights. This set introduced a new wave of support for the entire Savers/Data Squad cast, MirageGaogamon included with Thomas, which kicked the deck into overdrive. With the advent of the Mental Training and Zudomon ACE in BT-14, Gaogamon in BT-16, and more this deck has become a formidable force in the meta, dominating ever since EX-6 released in 2024.
The deck revolves around the abilities of BT-11 Mirage, pictured left. While being able to bounce any small bodies or a security is undoubtedly a strong effect, the second [All Turns] effect is what makes this card, and maybe even deck, so game-warping. This effect gains you memory for every 4 cards in your opponents hand whenever they add a card by drawing or searching, so in essence this means that if you can break down their board, then they will have an extremely hard time setting up again. Mirage as a deck also has many effects that draw your opponents cards, one being BT-13 Thomas (which we'll take a look at later), allowing you to keep generating memory turn after turn, incurring massive swings in advantage. This effect also triggers off the first effect bouncing, making its digivolution cost practically 1-2. The bouncing of security also makes gathering an OTK even easier, which is helped by the inherits from almost every MachGaogamon, and a guest star in EX-6 Huankunmon.
Moving on to how the deck assembles this OTK, we have BT-13 MirageGaogamon: Burst Mode. This card is one of your main ways to OTK with help from
both Thomas tamers from BT-4 and BT-13. This [When Attacking] effect is also not once per turn, allowing you to unsuspend again to attack if their hand size reaches 9 or more again after the effect resolves. A practical example that is one of the deck's bread and butter combos is having one BT-13 Thomas on field that hasn't activated its effect yet, and a Burst Mode on field. When you attack with the Burst Mode, the effects of both cards will activate, allowing you to choose which one you activate first. By activating Burst Modes [When Attacking] effect first, you will reduce their hand to 8 and unsuspending in the process then activating BT-13 Thomas' [Your Turn] effect to have each player draw a card, making your opponents cards in hand 9 again allowing you to unsuspend with Burst Mode's effect once more. This combo is supplemented by BT-4 Thomas allowing you to unsuspend a digimon with [Gao] in name, and Burst Mode allowing you to reuse this effect by bouncing that Thomas back to hand.
This is all well and good, but is missing the obvious question. What happens if your Mirage dies in security? It is only 12,000 DP after all, which isn't the largest. Well Bandai has this question too, and their solution was to give us a jamming inherited effect in archetype.
Meet BT-16 GaoGamon, possibly one of the most single most powerful cards to ever grace this archetype. While not only having the infamous <Jamming> inherit that has landed BT-14 Bukamon on the banlist, it is also functionally a 1 cost evolution. Part of the decks whole game plan is also flooding your opponents hand with cards, which this card helps enable, but also if they have met the requirements of 8 cards in hand that most of the deck requires, also gains you 1 memory functionally making it's digivolution cost 1. And while this all is a powerful effect and would make the card amazing on its own, it also is part of the Galaxy archetype from Digimon World Dawn/Dusk. This has led to the rise of another flavor of Mirage dubbed "GalaxyGao" by most of the community, however we will be covering that in the future instead of here. While this card itself is great, the deck runs many more <Jamming> inherits ranging somewhere from 5 to upwards of 11 in some topping lists. This makes the deck much more secure in going for the OTK, only being walled by big blockers such as the infamous BT-16 Magnamon (X Antibody) and options in security that remove digimon. With that all being said, how you play the deck is fairly simple. You either make Mirage as soon as possible to tax draws, or build it up in raising to crack the board, either way leading into an OTK. There are some control tools the deck runs such as EX-7 Hexeblaumon and BT-17 Imperialdramon: Paladin Mode, but for the sake of brevity we will not be going into detail here. While being extremely simple to pilot and relatively affordable to build, MirageGaogamon has proven itself to be a staple of the format, even earning it's keep into the future within Japan's metagame, being around 1.5 sets ahead of us. For a sample list, check out AVAULT's Mirage List that got second place at the December 2024 Ultimate Cup, at the link, courtesy of Egman Event's tournament database. This has been this week's Meta Mondays, and I hope to see you again for next weeks Training Tuesdays, covering Beelzemon!
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