Is rescue ace secretly mid?

[Chojoukif]

I've been playing a bit of rescue ace recently, don't have all the cards so its far from full power (only one hydrant for example whereas I am pretty sure you would want at least 2), particularly I don't have anything snake-eyes or fire kings related so its pretty much just pure rescue ace, but anyway, I just cannot stop losing with this deck lol

It always seemed so strong when I fought against it but now that I looked into the deck myself I have come to the conclusion its being carried by snake-eyes hard. First of all rescue ace has a ton of bricks, most of the high level monsters can special themselves but they can't act like starters, so you are pretty much relying on air lifter, emergency and hydrant to start (on turn 2 impulse can also start, and I guess in certain situations you can even summon a bunch of guys going second on turn 1 which is cool but extremely risky). Also you never want to draw any of the spells (other than emergency) or traps since ideally you want to set them for free with turbulence. Thats a lot of cards that don't do anything by themselves especially if you play like 9-12 handtraps. My personal experience also corroborates this as rescue ace is the deck I have seen brick the most.

The other thing I am noticing is rescue ace is very weak to disruption. If your starter gets impermed its rough but possibly salvagable, if hydrant or turbulence gets impermed thats pretty much game over. Now you do have one tool at your disposal to deal with this, that is using emergency to dodge, however, this only really works if you hard drew your searches. Usually you need to use emergency to go into hydrant which searches turbulence, so you usually don't have emergency available for dodging. Contrast this to snake-eyes, you just make linkuriboh with poplar and then you have an easy dodge for hydrant or any of the level 1 snake-eyes. Subsequently you can make SP to have a dodge for turbulence (You can do this without snake-eyes as well but depending on your hand and how many things got negated you can't always get the material).

If they let you set 4, make promethean and masquerena its a really difficult board to break, and rescue ace has a pretty good grindgame with their pseudo pot of avarice from the field spell but in the average scenario it seems to me like its actually a rather weak deck without support from snake-eyes.

[Papa Shekels]

Snake-eyes carries everything. You get basically free access to either baiting 1-2 hand traps or setting up a full board of i:p into s:p with princess and/or raging phoenix + follow-up off one card without any locks, sometimes without even using your normal summon.

Rescue-ace is a pretty strong deck by itself, if it can get going. The problem is that it does absolutely nothing if its single choke point is interrupted, and once it does set up, it still requires a decent amount of player input into how to use those sets correctly. The deck before snake-eyes was very bricky and tended to either set up a full board or set and pass. Emergency was an amazing boost to the deck, but again, you have to get access to it before reaching your important play starters to benefit from dodging negates with it, so it's a bit of a catch-22.

Snake-eyes fixes two of its biggest weaknesses, since it lets you start the turn with the snake-eyes cards to bait out any hand traps and make sure your hydrant/turbulence resolve, while also giving you 10+ extra ways to reach hydrant, and diabellstar even gives you a way to get rid of any of the garnet s/t you wanted to place off turbulence instead of drawing

[Chojoukif]

Originally posted by Papa Shekels:

Snake-eyes carries everything. You get basically free access to either baiting 1-2 hand traps or setting up a full board of i:p into s:p with princess and/or raging phoenix + follow-up off one card without any locks, sometimes without even using your normal summon.

Rescue-ace is a pretty strong deck by itself, if it can get going. The problem is that it does absolutely nothing if its single choke point is interrupted, and once it does set up, it still requires a decent amount of player input into how to use those sets correctly. The deck before snake-eyes was very bricky and tended to either set up a full board or set and pass. Emergency was an amazing boost to the deck, but again, you have to get access to it before reaching your important play starters to benefit from dodging negates with it, so it's a bit of a catch-22.

Snake-eyes fixes two of its biggest weaknesses, since it lets you start the turn with the snake-eyes cards to bait out any hand traps and make sure your hydrant/turbulence resolve, while also giving you 10+ extra ways to reach hydrant, and diabellstar even gives you a way to get rid of any of the garnet s/t you wanted to place off turbulence instead of drawing

So I guess its not just me. I think your first point is really a big part of it, given that almost every card in snake-eyes is a one card combo you let them resolve at your own peril. You have to respond to it at some point, preferably immediately to hope they don't have any more starters or once they get to ash at the latest. The incredible resilience of snake eyes makes it S-grade bait, even if you literally only played poplar, sinful spoils, ash without flamberge it still a great value for milling handtraps.

When I play pure rescue ace there is no "bait", you just play the cards you have in your hand. I think this is one of the reasons dual/tri engine decks are so popular, because even if one of those engines does not have a win-con it protects your actual win-con. Everyone and their mother is putting kashtira fenrir, unicorn and the field spell in their deck, or imsetty sarc and maybe a couple more horus lads. Whenever they see them they start with those and then they do what their deck is actually supposed to do. Its frustrating that this sort of "good stuff" approach is so effective but that's the situation.

I've been researching for some unknown technology to add some more starters to the deck but so far I haven't had much luck. Unfortunately I think I might have to put a snake eyes package in the deck just so that I don't feel like I am playing on challenge mode or something.

[Papa Shekels]

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

When I play pure rescue ace there is no "bait", you just play the cards you have in your hand. I think this is one of the reasons dual/tri engine decks are so popular, because even if one of those engines does not have a win-con it protects your actual win-con. Everyone and their mother is putting kashtira fenrir, unicorn and the field spell in their deck, or imsetty sarc and maybe a couple more horus lads. Whenever they see them they start with those and then they do what their deck is actually supposed to do. Its frustrating that this sort of "good stuff" approach is so effective but that's the situation.

It is interesting how this has changed over time. Back when decks used to all have 20-30 of all the same (mostly limited) staples, there weren't really many combos, you just had piles of goodstuff with a small core of some synergistic cards to fill the remaining slots. At some point archetypes overpowered the generic goodstuff pile, so they have been creating stronger and stronger splashable engines as well as occasionally creating some random little pieces that were more splashable than intended (think something like kashtira fenrir or speedroid terrortop).

The modern game has a completely different resource and advantage system, where your biggest resources to manage are your normal summon and hopt effects. But then you also have less-significant-yet-still-important resources like extra deck space, card advantage, versatility, locks/restrictions, etc. So it does make sense that people fill in the gaps for anything that their deck doesn't make use of, to make sure they maximize their deck's potential. It's like how any deck that didn't care much about its normal summon played the adventure package, to get a free negate and board breaking potential going second. My personal problem with it comes when you have something strong enough to be its own competitive deck that is also capable of being a generically splashable engine

[Knud den Store 🧙‍♂]

Rescue Ace was great before Snake Eyes full support and Fire King, essentially we did a time skip passing over R-ACE reign in Master Duel given how messed up it was we got Snake Eyes at full power first and then RACE support WAAAAY later, so even hitting it in the banlist is pointless since it falls down in power against Snakey and Kangs.

Of course it bricks more because you are running more spells and traps that do nothing on their own.

Snake-Eyes is not that necessary really, you are good with a small package that is poplar + spell and bonfire and you can add witch and wanted too but it is not mandatory. Additionally the banlist are different in TCG and OCG when it comes to R-ACE.

Still a great deck and still can do a lot of stuff specially with a Cyberse package but its like Labrynth. Right now I would say the best decks are Fire King, Anti-Meta and Horus Tearlament, not a bad meta but there are just too many Fire King players on ladder.

[Chojoukif]

Originally posted by Knud den Store 🧙‍♂:

Rescue Ace was great before Snake Eyes full support and Fire King, essentially we did a time skip passing over R-ACE reign in Master Duel given how messed up it was we got Snake Eyes at full power first and then RACE support WAAAAY later, so even hitting it in the banlist is pointless since it falls down in power against Snakey and Kangs.

Of course it bricks more because you are running more spells and traps that do nothing on their own.

Snake-Eyes is not that necessary really, you are good with a small package that is poplar + spell and bonfire and you can add witch and wanted too but it is not mandatory. Additionally the banlist are different in TCG and OCG when it comes to R-ACE.

Still a great deck and still can do a lot of stuff specially with a Cyberse package but its like Labrynth. Right now I would say the best decks are Fire King, Anti-Meta and Horus Tearlament, not a bad meta but there are just too many Fire King players on ladder.

Don't get me wrong, it has the makings of a strong deck, and if you get lucky you can make a pretty strong end board but when I compare it to fire kings for example it seems notably weaker. The main deck monsters are weaker, the quick effects are more restrictive (e.g. the special summon quick effects require the opponent to use a monster effect on the field vs FK can just pop with kirin whenever, that means they can guaranteed start playing during your endphase and you may not be able to do anything in response. Same with Labrynth), it plays more bricks, its super weak to backrow removal etc.

I feel like rescue ace desperately needs more starters, and snake-eyes provides that. Of course snake-eyes is not the only solution to this problem, but it is arguably one of the better solutions. The version of the deck I am playing currently (which like I said, is not in any way optimal cause I am missing a bunch of URs) honestly feels even weaker than my salamangreat deck, and that's saying something.

[Filipino Enjoyer]

its mid because you're playing the single best card in the deck at 1

[Terminal Desolation]

R-ACE is a tough deck to learn, as there's a few ways you can play depending on your hand to try to bait or otherwise protect your cards from interactions. In my experience, if R-ACE gets into its combo (which is literally just "I have summoned Turbulence and its effect resolved successfully) it's extremely difficult to stop. Definitely one of the most dominant decks at going first.

I unfortunately have not learned this deck yet so I can't really provide a lot of tips, but I know that R-ACE players have done things like summoning Spright Elf or SP Little Knight before getting Turbulence on field to protect vs Imperm or Veiler, which are pretty much the only HTs that stop Turbulence from doing his thing. An R-ACE player that's drawn decently can easily set up a few link plays like this, Apo, or other stuff like Auroradon in addition to the standard Turbulence set up. There's a LOT this deck can do, and it can get pretty complicated, but once you learn the lines you can play through a lot.

You usually want to try to get to Hydrant off Poplar (via Bonfire, you don't want to NS this guy if you can avoid it) or Diabelle since that preserves your normal for something like Air Lifter, which is imo the best normal summon in the deck as it can get you into EMERGENCY!, the field spell, or otherwise bait interactions.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

The main deck monsters are weaker, the quick effects are more restrictive (e.g. the special summon quick effects require the opponent to use a monster effect on the field vs FK can just pop with kirin whenever, that means they can guaranteed start playing during your endphase and you may not be able to do anything in response.

Kirin is MP only, actually, so no they can't. I've had a few FK players throw by trying to use Kirin on my turn during my Main Phase and turning on Talents or other cards...

[Chojoukif]

Originally posted by Terminal Desolation:

R-ACE is a tough deck to learn, as there's a few ways you can play depending on your hand to try to bait or otherwise protect your cards from interactions. In my experience, if R-ACE gets into its combo (which is literally just "I have summoned Turbulence and its effect resolved successfully) it's extremely difficult to stop. Definitely one of the most dominant decks at going first.

I unfortunately have not learned this deck yet so I can't really provide a lot of tips, but I know that R-ACE players have done things like summoning Spright Elf or SP Little Knight before getting Turbulence on field to protect vs Imperm or Veiler, which are pretty much the only HTs that stop Turbulence from doing his thing. An R-ACE player that's drawn decently can easily set up a few link plays like this, Apo, or other stuff like Auroradon in addition to the standard Turbulence set up. There's a LOT this deck can do, and it can get pretty complicated, but once you learn the lines you can play through a lot.

You usually want to try to get to Hydrant off Poplar (via Bonfire, you don't want to NS this guy if you can avoid it) or Diabelle since that preserves your normal for something like Air Lifter, which is imo the best normal summon in the deck as it can get you into EMERGENCY!, the field spell, or otherwise bait interactions.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

The main deck monsters are weaker, the quick effects are more restrictive (e.g. the special summon quick effects require the opponent to use a monster effect on the field vs FK can just pop with kirin whenever, that means they can guaranteed start playing during your endphase and you may not be able to do anything in response.

Kirin is MP only, actually, so no they can't. I've had a few FK players throw by trying to use Kirin on my turn during my Main Phase and turning on Talents or other cards...

Yes, perhaps I did not stress this enough but if your opponent does not interrupt you and you drew a starter Rescue ace is indeed strong. Its just that you can't really be banking on that happening too often. You only get one dodge with emergency but if you didn't hard draw it you can't protect the first search. Protecting the hydrant search is possible with linkuriboh but again you need to have drawn well, you need either rescue or preventer to bring the hydrant back. Similarly for turbulence you need 2 other monsters to make SP to protect the search, and that's not the easiest thing with pure rescue ace. It just feels like the "good" plays are often unavailable without the power of snake-eyes backing you up.

I think I have a basic understanding of the common plays rescue ace makes, but I question whether pure rescue ace can make them consistently. Like I talked about a little bit earlier in the thread one of the key problems of pure rescue ace is the lack of bait, the combo is basically normal air lifter search emergency, emergency into hydrant search turbulence, turbulence set 4. If any of these steps gets disrupted you can't get to the turbulence set 4 and that's most likely going to cost you the game. Of course depending on what you drew you might have some leeway, for example, if you already have emergency and air lifter you can afford to have it impermed, or in the best case if you hard drew turbulence your only concern is getting 2 bodies on the field to make SP to protect turbulence. The problem is, this scenario is kind of rare, in the average case you are lucky to draw one of your 10 starters, drawing 2 or 3 of the cards the combo searches is a rare luxury.

Yeah, I agree with your third paragraph, pretty much illustrates my point that Rescue ace really benefits from the flexibility of snake-eyes, to take weight off the normal summon and to have some bait.

Ok wow, my selective memory is really starting to piss me off, I could have sworn I have seen fire kings play in the end phase, but maybe I was conflating end of main with endphase (tbh, point still stands that being able to start playing in the end of main beats having to react to an effect on the field any day). I'm seeing that "Fire King Avatar Kirin" can be used in the end phase but I'm pretty sure the high avatar kirin is the one people actually play (which has the quick effect to pop), its possible I saw someone use the small kirin in the end phase and conflated that with the big kirin but Idk.

I do wonder about talent though, on one hand it can be quite devastating if you let your opponent activate it, but on the other hand what are you supposed to do then? Monsters have effects that they want to use, what are you not going to use them fearing the 3 of talent? Unless I have hand knowledge I always play into talent (unless its the first turn and the payoff to activating an effect is low), Imo its a stupid gamble to forgo ashing imsetty or something because there's a chance the opponent has talent.