[TCG] Floowandereeze Post Barrier Statue

Yugioh is a just like every other card game, decks come and go, themes rise and fall, and cards get banned or thrown out the window when they become too strong. With the most recent ban-list from Feb-2023, the two decks that took the biggest hits were Tearlament and Spright. 

Tearlament, for lack of better words, was slaughtered. When nearly every card in the deck that was played as a 3-of was knocked to 1 and your main kicker was knocked out of the park all together, it’s going to be a little hard to play. But that hasn’t stopped Tearlament from persisting and staying at some top tables at the local level and even regional level. What has stopped them from snagging YCS wins though, has been the introduction of Kashtira and it’s banishing mechanic which gets around all the tricky recursion that Tear could have usually played into.

Spright did not receive as many hits on this most recent list however, it did lose Spright Elf, which was the cornerstone to many Spright-Hybrid strategies all across the TCG format. In all fairness, Elf was one of those cards that everyone in the format loved to play and everyone in the format knew it was broken. The general reaction to the Elf ban was an overall “yeah, that makes sense”. Elf did quite a lot, it was fairly generic, “2 monsters including at least 1 Level/Rank /link 2 monster”, it offered protection to other monsters, and it’s biggest asset, being recursion from GY every turn. As much as I am going to miss Elf, it is entirely understandable why Elf took the hit instead of the other anticipated hit, Toadally Awesome. 

There was another hit on the list that was celebrated more than the mass Tearlament Slaughter in some circles, The Wind Barrier Statue. Wind Barrier Statue needed to be hit for some time, back during peak Tri-Brigade format, Barrier Statue was a problem then but alas, the Link-3 that summoned it took the hit. In OCG, Kashtira began using Rank 7 Winged Beast strategies that could summon the Barrier Statue to lock the enemy out of the duel. Before the ban list, some Post-PHHY Ninja lists even ran barrier statue because they too could also cheat out this simple 1000 ATK/Def deck-killer. The most important deck that consistently threw down this card was Floowandereeze. 

Floowandereeze has been around since 2021 and despite being a steady Tier 2 and (hot take) Tier 1 deck option through a lot of 2022, it never once saw any hits on the ban list. It also saw nearly zero changes in strategy the entire time it was on the docket. You could expect a Floowandereeze end board to be Empen, Barrier Statue, Dream Town set, Map, sometimes Feather Storm set. To be honest, that’s a pretty scary board. Both players can only special summon Wind monsters, the opponent is essentially coerced into normal summoning in which their field spell triggers and Floowandereeze gets to go full combo on the opponent’s turn… again. And if that didn’t work, you have dream town acting as another full combo AND a field flipped face-down. A board that looks fairly simple at first glance, wildly frustrating to play against if you don’t have the proper tools ready. 

With Barrier Statue gone, then general consensus among most players was that Floowandereeze was a dead deck. This was a short-sighted interpretation and it often just revealed how little they actually knew about Floowandereeze strategy. This would be like the larger Yugioh community saying that Spright is a dead deck because Elf is gone. Spright adapted and created new strategies to still do what it needed to get the job done. Floowandereeze must do the same. 

Contrary to general consensus, Floowandereeze was not “summon statue, pass”. It was the easiest and most consistent board to make. Why play strategy B when strategy A works almost every time? Post-Banlist, Floowandereeze is seeing a lot of under representation at the regional and YCS level but the deck is still there, taking on new forms and adapting strategies much like how Spright had to adapt with Elf being gone. 

Floowandereeze has a couple tools up it’s sleeve that make it a strong contender in the current meta. First up is Floowandereeze and Snowl, Snowl does a lot but in summary it does 3 things: Give you 3 normals per turn, gives your whole board piercing, and lastly and most importantly, during the opponent’s turn, flips all their special summoned monsters to face-down defense. You can see how a card like this is troublesome right? It is an OTK enabler and baited alongside something like Empen, these two can make for and incredibly annoying board. 

Their second tool is their counter trap, Floowandereeze and the Scary Seas. Scary Seas didn’t see play because barrier statue did the exact thing but way more consistently. But with statue gone, Scary Seas is starting to sneak into side decks and in some cases, main decks. Scary Seas negates any inherent summon, throws it back to hand, and says “the opponent cannot special summon for the rest of the turn” but they get 3 normal summons this turn instead. Spoiler, a lot of decks right now can’t make use of the three normal summons. Also— Floowandereeze gets to pop off when you normal summon thanks to their field spell. Scary Seas essentially makes the same coercive game-state that Barrier Statue did. The plus-side is that Scary Seas can’t be shotgun-Impermed. 

Lastly, with as many power-spells currently in the meta like Book of Eclipse, Dark Hole, Raigeki, etc. Floowandereeze is one of those decks that really benefits from cards like Forbidden Lance. Kashtira and other strategies that aim to protect 1 core monster follow strategies similar to this. Empen alone hurts many decks, being able to protect Empen is even better. In addition, cards like Skill Drain are seeing play and a well-timed Lance can allow Some cards to pop off to allow them 1 effect to help break it, which for Floowandereeze, sometimes all they need. Looking at Mega Raiza for example. 

Floowandereeze as a deck strategy is not out of the question. In my opinion, a lot of players were so used to Floowandereeze being a one-trick pony type of deck that they never considered what other plays or strategies the deck could muster. Which put the deck under the radar for more experienced players to swoop in with new strategies. We’ve already seen small Harpie packages to allow Feather Storm to be activated from hand, Dark Simorgh for Traptrix and Labrynth, and some rare Earthbound Immortal lists for more burn damage. It will be interesting to see what else comes from the deck moving forward.