Anti-Meta Ascension DragonCaster [KP11]

Foreword
Tired of losing to Thunderbold? Then this deck is for you. This list is explicitly designed to counter the strongest deck in the format, Thunderbold, but should theoretically hold its own quite well into other matchups. The overall gameplan is to slow down our opponents and bring their deck's speed down to our level, where we can win by having better tempo through disrupting their plays and capitalising off of it.

Key Cards
Let's start off with the card that lead to me making this deck: Armaments of Ascension. When this card was revealed, many didn't think too much about the card, myself included. Outside of gimmick decks that wanted specific levels, its effect looked very simple but niche. However, after testing and theorycrafting, it turns out that this card is sleeper strong, and it boils down to what the opponent is playing. Taking for instance Thunderbold, that deck often runs JAM:P Set!, a removal spell to deal with the face-up monsers that the Melo:D combo isn't able to deal with. Some lists, even outside of Thunderbold, also run Siesta Torero as a way of playing around cards like Barrier Statue of the Inferno and Ultra Violady alongside Jam:P Set, and specifically in Thunderbold as effectively a removal option alongside Melo:D. One thing that is common among these is that they can only target monsters that are Level 8 or lower. This means that they are non-functional against monsters of higher levels, which before KP11 only existed in Fusion and Maximum monsters, neither of which being particularly consistent. Now, with Armaments in the card pool, any 2 tribute monster can bypass these types of cards. Now, it's only a matter of what to equip this card onto. Firstly, Multistrike Dragon Dragias is a sure inclusion. The card is not only already a fantastic card, but equiping Armaments onto it alleviates its main weakness, not being able to beat over monsters with equal or higher stats, and while there are other options to circumvent this, Armaments is a strong option in its own right. The key difference between Armaments and something like Cranked to Ten!! is that the attack gain is permanent so long as it stays equipped, meaning to get multiple turns to make use of the buffed double attacker. But there's one option that possibly even better, especially into Thunderbold: Ultra Violady. This card has a strong but theoretically niche floodgate effect that's well positioned into Thunderbold, but being extremely susceptible to Jam:P Set and Siesta Torero whilst taking up precious slots for other 2 tribute monsters made it not ideal. However, with Armaments, that weakness disappears. Not only that, with the 200 ATK boost, Violady will have 2.7k attack, which Thunderbold can't attack over even with its effect. This means that in the Thunderbold matchup, an Ultra Violady equipped with Armaments of Ascension will never die. That's partially exaggerated though, there are other ways to topple the monster, either through destroying the equip spell and then using Jam:P Set (Wicked Shadow Dark Lurker for example) or through debuffing the monster enough to swing over it (Shock Dragon). However, in the case of Thunderbold, both of the examples are 1 ofs in the Thunderbold main deck, and is not easy to find. If they do find it though, that's where the traps come in. Crisis at the Sacred Tower is an incredibly generic and strong disruptive tool that's very common and presumably very expected, and Dark Revelation, which shouldn't be surprising if you looked at the name of the deck but is maybe surprising when we're trying to counter Thunderbold. While battle tricks aren't great into a deck that spins your entire backrow into your deck, they can't perform the loop while Violady is on board. The biggest threat to Violady is both effects that don't discriminate based on level and battle. Dark Revelation is a way of protecting Violady should it be threatened by battle and a tempo tool to clear their board. Though, Crisis is generally better into Thunderbold, and I'd suggest trying out 2 Crisis 3 Dark Rev and 3 Crisis 2 Dark Rev and see which one you prefer, still testing it out myself personally. That about covers the key pieces of the deck, which we are playing 3 copies of each, but there's more cards to go over.

Boss Monsters:
Outside of the key ones that have been mentioned, we're also playing 1 Ecdysis Caliguleon. This is another monster that benefits from having Armaments equipped, it gets large amounts of attack on both player's turns, and suffers from the same removal prone problems that Violady has. This rounds out the 2 tribute monsters in the deck at 7, while that is lower than the current popular decks, do note that we are not running cards like Ship of Seven Treasures that easily incentivises and capitalises on a higher boss count. This is largely because the space is better used for other cards with more utility, and the overall consistency of the strategy can be boosted using low level fodder that we're going to run anyway. While we are still playing a couple consistency tools, those aren't enough to support a 9-10 boss count like other decks. 7-8 is a good number for a deck like this, personally have been having success with 7 but feel free to tinker with the ratios as you please.

Spellcaster Low Levels:
Since we're playing 3 Dark Revelation, we need a fair number of Spellcaster monsters. This list is on 15 Spellcasters, which is a good enough amount. Assuming you go through 10 cards in your deck in 2 turns, you'll find 4 of these spellcasters 56.8% of the time, and finding enough to enable Dark Revelation more than half of the time is a good rate to be at, not to mention the 10 was chosen arbitrarily, in testing with the 9 tools that help dig through the deck you'll easily go through more than 10 cards assuming you draw them. You also have more than 2 turns to find your spellcasters most of the time, so you should be able to find enough spellcasters most of the time. For the actual cards, we're on 3 copies of Mystic Dealer and Amazing Dealer for consistency. Both of these let you draw through more of the deck, Amazing Dealer being better earlier on. The 3 Fillan Dwarf also acts for a similar purpose, but instead of drawing it mills your deck. This is useful not just to get Spellcasters in grave faster but also to dump other non-spellcaster cards to either shuffle back into the deck or to retrieve with other effects. Since its indiscriminate milling, you do run the risk of milling your spell/traps, but that's a fine risk to take. The ability to return a spell/trap in your opponent's grave to the bottom of their deck also comes up, often to cut your opponent off from cards that they can retrieve from grave or benefit from but also occassionally to shuffle less desireable cards back into the opponent's deck, but only after either you or they shuffle their deck with another effect. For utility, we're on 3 Sevens Road Mage to debuff and aid Dragias and Violady in beating over things without Armaments and 3 Wording Fairy for graveyard hate and reshuffling spent cards back into the deck.

Utility Low Levels:
Outside of the Spellcasters, we've also got some other strong tools at our disposal. 3 Phoenix Dragon is a way for the deck to recycle copies of Dragias or other high level Dragons that you may choose to run. This is especially useful with our lower boss monster count as well as Amazing Dealer and Fillan Dwarf which occassionally send Dragias to grave for you to collect again with Phoenix. 3 Sea Dragon Knight is a way to scout backrow and is very handy alongside the backrow removal in the deck, important as it helps protect your offensive pushes from being disrupted, and we don't have as many ways to push aggressively as other decks. Outside of popping trap cards, getting rid of impactful spell cards is also great, and there's many types of both in the format, so having backrow removal is very nice. It also can recycle your non-spellcasters into your deck, allowing multiple uses of itself and other strong tools.

Spells:
3 Magical Stream as the spellcaster themed backrow removal to go with the 3 Sea Dragon Knight to help your offensive pushes, 3 Armaments as a key piece of the deck, and 1 Monster Reborn as the legend card of the deck. This deck finds it harder to develop threats compared to faster decks, so having Monster Reborn allows you to apply pressure faster. It also has interesting applications in stealing something from your opponent's grave, for example taking a Level 7 in the Thunderbold matchup, or taking their Secret Order target.


Side Deck:
I honestly haven't messed around with the side deck as much, but my current configuration should hold up well enough. The current lineup is:
1 Ecdysis Caliguleon 2 Sevens Road Magician 1 Shock Dragon 3 Barrier Statue of the Inferno 3 Ghost Cyclone 1 Back Beat 1 Cranked to Ten!! 1 Crisis at the Sacred Tower 2 Imptailing Crisis. Starting with the 2 tributes, these are mainly here to swap in if Violady is ineffective, the chosen 4 are generally solid options in most matchups. Yamiruler the Dark Delayer is also a good option to run that I haven't tried out yet but can serve a similar purpose to Violady except it only floodgates for a single turn but the stun effect is more universal. 

Barrier Statue of the Inferno is additional special summoning hate that you can even consider main deck, I've just chosen Sea Dragon Knight over it as it is more generally useful regardless of matchup but that doesn't detract from how strong Barrier Statue can be against certain decks.

Ghost Cyclone is to be sided in to going second over the Magical Streams to hit that highroll tempo advantage, but should stay in the side if you're playing against a backrow heavy matchup as Magical Stream is more reliable. Back Beat is for matchups that really like having a grave such as the mirror or Plants, Cranked to Ten!! is for matchups where you need to increase your kill pressure or just have more ways to beat over 2.5k/2.6k defenders, like the Zombie matchup.

1 Crisis at the Sacred Tower is just the leftover copy that didn't make it in the main, your opponent, assuming they came prepared, will likely side in graveyard hate, so siding out your grave reliant cards for ones that aren't is a good line of play. Another trap that isn't grave reliant is Imptailing Crisis, though this one is mainly for the Gate Order matchup, despite Violady + Armaments being quite tough for the deck to handle, sometimes you don't have the combo, and it's just generally better than Crisis at the Sacred Tower in that matchup anyway. As for other things you can run, Acetic Acid Trap Hole and Mystery Handcuffs are some considerations as generic traps.

Closing Words:
Overall, the deck has a lot of potential in the current format, with techs and options geared towards hitting the titans of the format. While I feel that the concept is sound, the decklist likely won't be final, though this is a good starting point for the strategy. I'll be continuing to work on this deck in the future, but for now, I'll leave it as it is. I encourage you to try the deck out for yourself and tinker around with it, personally Armaments has been a fantastic card to play, seeing someone drop a Black Luster Soljersey - Envoy of the Drying and scoop out of shame is incredibly funny.