Neon Pix!

"King Tiger What?"
Heading into YCS Milan, if I were to ask you about King Tiger Wanghu, many of you would have had to delve into your boxes of commons and rares to know what i'm on about. This is no reflection upon players in general, as through your dueling career, you will have seen this card, or may have even played it, but for a long time, the Tiger has been redundant, sitting in those boxes of commons.


At YCS Milan, people were touting plant synchro to pick up the win with no major problems. All you would hear pre-event was "Debris" this and "Dandylion" that. Even some of the hardened X-Saber players had made the jump to Debris-Hime, and even quickdraw variants. The Anti-Meta players picked up on this, none moreso than Noel Garde (As seen featured in my work on PJ Tierney's blog Here)


Good call / Bad call
King Tiger Wanghu was the ultimate meta call at the event, and I have no question that if asked, Noel would say that the Tiger or Banisher of the Radiance was the deck's MVP that weekend. King Tiger as a starter has a pretty solid attack at 1700. This trumps all of the monsters normal summoned in the deck, forcing the player to set a vital Debris Dragon just to keep a foothold in the game.


Alongside this, the effect of King Tiger to automatically destroy anything summoned with less than 1400 attack decimates the debris match up, as the most commonly played monsters in the deck all lose out to this ability. Debris Dragon, Lonefire Blossom, and Dandylion all fail to the King, and even the tokens summoned from Dandylion's effect are destroyed, leaving the Debris-Hime player at a severe disadvantage.


King Tiger wasn't only a good call for the Debris-Hime match-up Tiger also thrives against a lot of other top tier decks, X-Sabers lose their Fulhelm Knights and Emmersblades, and Blackwings lose their Blizzards and Gales.


It's not all roses and tiny monsters...
and King tiger lost out to the mirror however, due to Doomcaliber Knight, Thunder King Rai-oh and the likes all having bulky attacks, aswell as losing out in the Light Gemini decks, utilising Stratos and Neos Alius.


It may not be as effective splashed into other deck's side decks, but with the right protection and support in the Antimeta deck, King Tiger Wanghu can take you a long way in a tournament...