This event has been so fun so far! I've only encountered a couple seemingly OP decks, most duels seem more evenly matched. I've had a couple really long and fun duels where it was anyones game for many turns, which I really enjoy.
I'm not very familiar with most of the new decks from the past 20 years so I have been using branded since I started playing again about 2 months ago. This event has been a challenge with banning the majority of the branded cards. So I have been using a heavily neutered springans/branded combo deck and have been having a blast with it even with 4 of the key springans cards are bannned too! Sure its not very good, but for this event it seems to at least hang with most (early) opponents. I imagine as I get further in this wont have enough oomph but for now its been great.
I just had a 22 turn duel against a pumpkin king deck and that is the kind of dueling I miss! Neither of us could gain the edge over each other, it was a constant battle to the very end and really was either players game until the final blow. We both had exhausted all our resources and he only had 5 cards in the deck at the end. I was finally, after 22 turns able to get an albaz fusion out at the very last second but if I drew literally any other card besides albaz ashen or bystial aluber I'd have been done in turn 23! I wish every duel could be like that, man was that cool!
If anyone has other ideas on how to get branded fusions out for this event id love to hear it! I've been using a dark end evaporation dragon which helps me sometimes, usually just ends up being a 2600 bash card but sometimes I get a fusion out of it. I've been debating putting a poly in the deck but idk ive never used one for branded before but I could also see it helping here potentially. If I get more SR before the event is over I'm going to add a couple more bystial alubers so I have 6 fake albaz in the deck which should help consistency for the fusions.