Phantom of Rebellion Review with Umso

Introduction:

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Overall:

There are only 2 archetypes to talk about. Cipher, Star, and Zefra are all filler cards. While they have individually good cards, some of those archetypes don't even function. Even Amazoness from nearly 4 years ago can beat them easily.

Infinitrack is solid and Phantom Knights have potential. Infinitrack has searchers, extenders, recyclers, as well as access to a huge XYZ toolbox. For now, the deck will turbo out rank 6s and try to outgrind the opponent. That might change with future trains support.

Phantom Knight on the other hand already has support in the form of Burning Abyss. BA PK, also known as PK Fire, has a lot of potential. Dante can mill the BAs as well as the Phantom Knight monsters, triggering both in the process and plus a lot potentially. As such, milling 3 PKs with different names will lead to a second XYZ and extend even further. It is hard to tell though how well the deck can play through the backrow. We will have to wait and see.

Cipher:

Loading... pretty good card. Being able to steal an opponent's monster, which can be used for the summoning of an extra deck monster, is pretty strong. Enjoy your Blue-Eyes and Photon support. The Cipher cards are the first archetype that can summon a rank 8 consistently. Summoning 1 rank 8 is not good in this game but hey. At least we have them now, I guess.

Infinitrack:

Infintrack is weird. On the one hand, we got Loading... and Loading... , 2 searchers for the archetype. On the other hand, this deck did not get any of their XYZ and will rely on the generic XYZ pool. Luckily (?), both Infinitrack Harvester and Infinitrack Anchor Drill can make each other lvl 6. With 2 lvl 6 on the board, we can summon Loading... . The lvl 5 Infinitrack monsters special summon themselves by tributing an earth machine. As such, if the opponent uses Loading... on one of the earth machines, one can still summon the lvl 5 Infinitracks. There is no earth machine XYZ that this deck can reasonably summon. As such, Loading... is currently not usable. If nothing else, it will be future Trains support.

Phantom Knights:

The individual Phantom Knight cards are good. Loading... as well as Loading... are great searchers, Loading... , which is not in the box, can mill any PK card and Loading... is both a great removal and floater. Loading... is searchable by Cloak and Boots, providing the deck with a way to revive any PK. We also have good rank 3 cards in the form of Loading... , which can mill the PK, as well as Loading... which can bring back banished PK. With those 3 the deck already has great tools to extend, set up GY resources and force out interaction.

That being said, the deck suffers from similar issues as Burning Abyss. Not having a turn 1 will be an issue since it relies just like any other deck on techs. And while Phantom Strategy can put Loading... into the deck even that is not good.

First up, one needs to sacrifice the main deck by not being able to play any other monsters besides dark warrior. That is a huge issue since that leaves the monster pool to 3 Loading... , 3 Loading... , 3 Loading... , and 3 Loading... , nowhere near enough to make it a functional deck. And even if the restriction would not exist, that would not prevent Harpie from just normal summoning a monster and forcing out the backrow in the process.

Secondly, Loading... , Loading... are all issues for the deck. The PKs don't have to trigger when send to the GY. They can trigger a turn later if facing Dweller. On top of that, Loading... is finally a rank 3 Necrovalley out. As such, those floodgates are less of a threat compared to other GY-reliant decks.

As such, PK has the potential with all their GY resources to do something in the format. But we will see how big of an issue the backrow is going to be for the deck.