Meta Fridays: Royal Knights

Hello everyone, and welcome to Meta Fridays, the (not-so) premier bi-weekly (more likely when I have the energy) Digimon primer series! This week on Meta Fridays, we're going to be covering the host computer of the Digital World and its guardian deities, the Royal Knights.

While the Royal Knights have had smattering of appearances and even success before BT-13, the set Versus Royal Knights really brought the whole table together under the umbrella of King Drasil and unified it into one solid deck. The deck has always historically

been more control focused, slowly building up an army of Royal Knights under King Drasil until the time is right to OTK with BT-13's rendition of the famous Omnimon. Within BT-13 itself, we got almost the entire historical core, as the deck now focused on Royal Knights with good [On Play] effects, instead of your traditional [When Digivolving] effects. If you are a long time reader you may recognize that this is very similar to the Seven Great Demon Lords that we covered a while ago, and this deck functions on much the same axis. The whole gameplan is to control the flow of the game while overwhelming your opponent in advantage as you build up sources under your King Drasil in the breeding area, before using BT-13 Omimon's [On Play] effect to play out all the different Royal Knights you had tucked under to swing with upwards of 9 attacks and a whole wave of devastating [On Play] effects. And while this was definitely good and a meta strategy at the time, it was outpaced with the design changes from BT-14 forward.

.... Until now! With the advent of the Digimon Liberator web comic, the communities favorite Cool Boy, Cool Boy makes an appearance with a mini yet utterly impactful wave of

support. Cool Boy himself is an immense engine of raw advantage turn after turn, helping you hit thresholds for keeping turn that were previously impossible and increasing the flow of card advantage that the deck desperately needed to fully embrace a toolbox-esque control play-style. Along with him, he brings his partner Omekamon, Omnimon (X Antibody), and a new option that helps with consistency. BT-20's rendition of Omekamon is frankly one of the most absurd cards ever printed in this game, giving the deck more offensive pressure, number of sources, and defensive utility in a <Blocker> that essentially respawns every turn that you can then swing with. This isn't even to mention its ability to warp straight into BT-20 Omnimon (X Antibody) which is a full board wipe for your opponent along with multiple checks if you have the new option The Last Guardian to protect your Omnimon (X Antibody) from your King Drasil's effect to tuck it under itself. This is all combined with many good Royal Knights printed since BT-13 with amazing [On Play] effects such as BT-19 LordKnightmon, BT-20 Jesmon, and BT-20 Alphamon: Ouryuken.

This deck has been pretty undisputedly the best deck for the last two sets, and does not look to be going anywhere anytime soon. As for the future of this deck, as long as they keep printing Royal Knights with an [On Play] effect, this deck will always be evergreen. For this weeks sample decklist, we have Malloy's 3rd Place Decklist at CoreTCG's Regional at the end of March. This has been a very belated Meta Mondays (temporarily Meta Fridays), and I hope to see you next week for Training Tuesdays, covering the latest anime to join the Digimon TCG, Appmon!