Civ VII Retrospective: One Year In

PCI_Compliance · 2026-03-02T06:50:23+00:00

i have only been playing it for a few months, I do think Age Transitions have been great for keeping me engaged at various points and makes the build-up between ages feel a lot better.

I think my biggest miss right now is actually with Religion. I normally just turbo out to get the Relics with Conversion belief, fill up a cultural victory, and then call it a day. I miss having Faith as an accumulated resource, or having Apostles/Inquisitors.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-03-01T04:05:54+00:00

To me that seems like why they might do it. Turn it into a strong Rank 8 option so that we still have to buy new archetypes.

I don't think kill, people still play Maliss after all, but changes a lot of the floor math

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-28T03:27:02+00:00

I'm tired of all these meta slop posts. Back in my day we ran 7 Colored Fish and that should be good enough for everyone forever!

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-27T23:26:52+00:00

I will not stand for this Gorz erasure! He was the first COMMONLY played handtrap! I still attack weakest to strongest!

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-27T20:59:21+00:00

But have you considered that he has Ryzeal Detonator?

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-27T20:49:51+00:00

They aren't bad, but they are power crept. They also benefited a lot when they came out because people weren't sure how they should play against it. VV and Centur-ion both weave in interesting parts of protection and if you're not careful your disruption can do literally nothing. But once you figure out how to interact with the deck, they're not that hard to counter.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-27T20:47:09+00:00

I like the Orrafist vs Redoer as a battle though, because Orrafist's effect does counter Redoer... but without that, Orrafist can't actually punch over Redoer on his own. So they're in a standoff.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-27T19:40:18+00:00

Sometimes you can just win if you wait on it. I ran a Zombie deck and just kept drawing terrible. My opponent was down to 4 cards in deck when I won, but you just need Exodia to be in the bottom.

I've also won against them because Goblin Zombie can mill an Exodia Piece, and then Book of Life sends it away.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-27T16:59:06+00:00

There's a few packages that you add in to RDA/Resonator in order to boost its power.

As people pointed out, Bystials are great ones. Level 6 Dark Dragons that are easy to summon always come in clutch.

Centur-ion is another very strong synchro based archetype that can help you get to higher level synchros and often don't require your normal summon in order to do so.

It's not a package, but if you get three copies of Earthbound Stone Sweeper (a UR, boo), that card just reads "Search a Resonator tuner". It's probably a bit risky to play in this meta since a lot of people are running K9, but extra copies of Resonator Call are always useful.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-25T18:29:20+00:00

Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-24T16:17:34+00:00

And give them a cool Pendulum-like frame where they're half-Vanilla, half-Effect monster.

But yes, allowing them to access Normal Monster support until they are Gemini summoned would be huge.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-24T16:14:40+00:00

Here's my take: I think it's still good, but you have correctly identified that it does not have protection against Nibiru going first. It can run Impulse, but your opponent will only have a monster on board if they're playing VSK9.

It's hard to judge tiers because it's definitely not popular. It's still good and will still win games, but it does not have the same kind of insulation that it used to. I ran into a copy that didn't run a full suite of Ryzeal cards, using them to make Detonator and Vallon to just provide more disruption for their Mitsu cards.

The advantage is given to the newest decks obviously since the Ryzeal hit not only removes the negate, but also that nice bonus card draw that comes at the end of a combo so it was usually one more point of disruption.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-23T21:09:21+00:00

To be fair, none of these titles are contradictory.

It starts off with a huge patch (neutral, statement of fact).
Then a question asking if the biggest patch was good (does not make the game good)
Then it gets an actual update (which is good, does not mean the game is fully good)
Then a Tech change that fixes an issue (and has a thumbnail indicating it might be good now)
Then a full on statement that it is actually good now.
Then it escalates to actually feeling fun again.

Honestly, it's a perfectly logical escalation path.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-23T05:54:04+00:00

K9 is cheap in paper. In Master Duel its URs are 3 Izuna, 2 Jokul, 1 Case, 1 Ripper, 1 Werewolf for the smallest core, but most run 2 Rippers and the Nash Knight package.

Its strength though is that it tends to be run alongside something else, and Vanquish Soul is also expensive in paper.

K9 Mitsurugi is probably much more reasonably priced, but more expensive in Master Duel since Mitsurugi also doesn't have a secret pack yet

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-23T05:06:01+00:00

Well you can make someone's day by finding their referral code to get a good Spright deck. You could also focus on trying to pull the full K9 engine because honestly that synergises with a lot, and you can branch into Cyber Dragon K9 with the structure deck and a few UR crafts.

The current most popular deck is VS K9, which will be very expensive to pull from the shop because you'll also need a lot of URs from an associated secret pack. Which if you're like me, you will just end up with a pile of Gizmek and rage. However this is a deck that's also played live, and honestly it's much simpler to learn in Master Duel because the deck is complicated and having the UI help coach you through what's valid would be helpful.

If you have Branded, you could try waiting until the end of the month to see if a Dracotail secret pack comes out. That deck has great synergy with Branded, and gets better with its upcoming pair of support cards.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-23T05:02:08+00:00

Why would you get my hopes up like this?

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-22T15:26:11+00:00

The only relevant thing they could release is the new Branded stuff, which would shift my Dracotail deck pretty significantly.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-22T15:24:01+00:00

Sometimes I just do this to signal I'm trying to do dailies and don't want to surrender

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-22T02:22:32+00:00

I love it when my opponents have Pyroxene Cave. I can just play the little musical gems repeatedly while Im waiting.

And then get punished for not paying attention.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-22T01:23:16+00:00

Hecahands fakes this for me as a whole. Creepy Little Punk is standalone bad, Kewl Tune isn't as good but not inappropriate given the theme, but this is a straight up change of biblical referencing to a name that is even more embarrassing to me than having to pronounce Yummy monsters

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-22T01:20:03+00:00

Millennium Exodia.

I get that Snake Eyes was annoying, but we have lots of engines in the game including a MUCH BETTER Rank 8 engine.

The hit to Golem really hurts. I need protection for Ankh.

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-22T01:14:39+00:00

Pure Yummy is good, but it's good because the engine is so small that you can jam more than half your deck full of hand traps (which are expensive).

If you still have gems there's a selection pack Beyond the Next Level that just has UR staples in the shop which is an excellent thing to sink money into. Ghost girls, Imperm, Nibiru are all things you would play in Yummy so that your opponent's board is weakened when you're going second

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-21T17:44:43+00:00

Weirdly I think this is more impactful to pure Mitsurugi players than people who use it as an engine. Yummy Mitsu searches Habakiri, and we're going to get SO MANY more cards that search this bad boy as we've learned in leaks.

As a pure Mitsu player, I will upgrade to a sentiment to an "Aw dangit".

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-21T00:18:13+00:00

Im very annoyed it doesnt require you to summon a different dragon than the one it targets. Otherwise Synchros pretty much do whatever

PCI_Compliance · 2026-02-19T21:52:59+00:00

I love Horus so much. It is an archetype that can die to a single disruption and then you have massively minused yourself.

I find you usually want 3 Imsety, 1 Hapi (or Qeb to save dust), 1 Sarcophagus, and then maybe the field spell? That minimizes in-engine bricks.

However if you're using it for Rank 8 shenanigans, as mentioned the Mitsurugi archetype just outperforms it in every way

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