Combating the Format: Ritual Beast

[Stardog]

Before I start this, I want to give an apology to Tactician since I'm making a segment countering his favorite deck.

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Ritual Beast

Each of the "Ritual Beast Tamer" monsters have a tendency of swarming the Field (with the exception of "Necritual Beast Tamer Zefra-Wendi"), in order to ease their Contact Fusion, either by Special Summoning one of the banished or deceased "Ritual Beast" monsters or by giving an extra Normal Summon to the player. On the other hand, the "Spiritual Beast" monsters banish 1 "Ritual Beast" card from the Hand, Deck, Graveyard, or Extra Deck in order to get rid of problematic opposing cards, search for a card on the long run, give a power boost, or preparing set-up for your combo plays, respectively. Each of the Main Deck monsters also shares a restriction that only allows them to be Special Summoned once per turn.

Weaknesses:

Imperial Iron Wall: To put it very bluntly, this card is Vanity's Emptiness and Mistake in one card against your Ritual Beast opponent since they need to banish cards for searching and special summoning their fusion monsters. This is probably the best card to use on your opponent if it doesn't affect your own deck at all.

Artifact Lancea: Although if Imperial Iron Wall does affect your own deck, you might want to give this card a shot; this card is essentially a one-turn Imperial Iron Wall. And you'll want to activate this card of course on your opponent's turn in response to key cards like Cannahawk.

Artifact Scythe: This restricts the opponent from special summoning from the extra deck which should stop a lot of loops and force them to pass turn early.

Artifact Moralltach: Ritual Beast will dodge anything but without knowledge of what you're targeting, it will pressure your opponent to de-fuse their monsters early. Artifact Moralltach's does not target, so if your opponent doesn't chain their fusion monsters effect you can properly destroy them.

Madolche Queen Tiaramisu: Obviously only works in 1 archetype but I wanted to mention that Tiaramisu is another card that doesn't. Essentially pressuring your opponent to de-fuse early or shuffle them back into the extra without de-fusing.

Majesty's Fiend: Completely stops any effect that would activate on the field, in the graveyard and in the banish zone. As mention before when I've recommended this card in previous segments, this card works best in slower decks or Monarchs that can utilize it.

Skill Drain: Most of the effects happen on the field for Ritual Beast monsters so Skill Drain is a good option to stop them, although drawing into a Skill Drain has become harder from the April 2015 banlist. Along with it negating your own effects, so Skill Drain works best in decks that are related to a playing fashion as Qliphort.

Royal Decree/Jinzo/Denko Sekka: The Ritual Beasts have a couple trap cards that can be a nuisance such as the one that special summons from the banished section and the graveyard and the other one that is a trap card that doesn't target and destroys monsters equal to how many Ritual Beast monsters they have, which if you take into account the fact that Ritual Beast can de-fuse themselves to have multiple copies of Ritual Beast monsters, it can essentially remove a lot of monster that would give Ritual Beasts a hard time. That's why Jinzo and Royal Decree (Or any form of trap negation) is great against going up a Ritual Beast player. Denko Sekka is also great in this situation since it stops cards from being set and stops set cards from being activated.

The Selection: This works to negate monster effects but only works when there is another present monster with the same attribute to negate. Although, it might be worth getting around this condition considering this card is a Spell Speed 3 Counter Trap with a very minimal cost.

Hero's Rule 2: This card specifically only works on Ritual Beast Tamer Lara, Ritual Beast Tamer Wen and Ritual Beast Ambush. This card negates any Monster/Spell/Trap effect that targets a card or cards in the graveyard and destroys them. Very useful and very overlooked card.

Black Horn of Heaven: All the fusion monsters that are summoned in this deck are considered inherent summons, so this card can negate their summons and not let the fusions get off with their effects.

Note: Yang Zing archetype as a whole seem to do absolutely fine against the Ritual Beast matchup since they can make their monster protected from battle and trap effects. And Ritual Beast have trouble already dealing with monsters that are over 2700ATK, but will now have even more trouble when that monster cannot be destroyed by Ritual Beast Steed.
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I hope this helps anyone who are having trouble against Ritual Beast. If you'd like me to cover another deck, don't be hesitant to leave a reply.

[Arc V Yuto]

screw that deck i hate the playing style and worst of all turn time is worse then nekrozs ill keep these all in mind when facing the deck

[Akaneia]

All very valid points there Stardog. All of those cards will counter Spirit Beast very well.

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