Jerome McHale is best known as a top-tier Yu-Gi-Oh! player and judge, as well as being one of the favorite feature writers on Metagame.com for Yu-Gi-Oh! Like fellow elite Yu-Gi-Oh! player Mike Rosenberg, he decided after the Nationals to take the year off to focus on Vs. System, forgoing this weekend’s exciting Shonen Jump Championships here at Gen Con Indy to play in the PC event. While he’ll continue to judge Yu-Gi-Oh! events, his playing will be just about 100% Vs., and this weekend was no exception, as he’s brought a very exciting, and somewhat unique, Blue Abuse build to the table.

Jerome was originally planning on playing GLEE, but as he told me, “My dad got this Blue Abuse build and then [beat] me, even with all of my drops and stuff, three times in a row, so I figured that if a sub-optimal build could do that, imagine what a tested build could do! It would rip GLEE apart!” The key, Jerome says, is the early game. “A few early Soldiers, especially with Supercycles, and you can pull a huge game advantage over GLEE. You play Soldiers, Soldiers plus Cycle, then Supes Red on three, and watch it unfold.”

So what’s so different about this deck? Aside from the sheer volume of Soldiers of New Genesis, one haymaker is Trial By Sword. “Apparently there was a rush to buy them this morning, and they sold out because it’s so good. If (your opponent) attacks and you successfully Trial By Sword, you don’t get stunned. It’s the huge swing card, especially with so many small drops. You drop will almost always be the smaller one.” And with the Soldiers having invulnerability while they have cosmic counters, you can essentially team attack without fear of stunning back, a tactic Jerome is banking on. So out went The Kent Farm and in went four copies of Trial. “The Kent Farm doesn’t really work at all. I wanted board advantage early on.”

The next change was to add Swing Line. “Swing Line came in because the lack of flying hurt. I needed to be able to go after the G’Nort or Arisia, especially with Chopping Block. They’re often hidden behind a Kyle or Dr.Light, and then with Light Armor.” So out went one S.T.A.R. Labs, one Man of Tomorrow, and two Lanterns in Love, and in went four copies of Swing Line for the flight, range, and stat boost. “Recovery with Lanterns in Love is not worth it because if you can drop them 40 points below you in four turns, you’re probably going to win anyhow.”

The last change was replacing Mother Box with Supercycle—the obvious choice for Blue Abuse, especially with all of the low drops in the GLEE folder. Between the invulnerability and the stat boost, Supercycle also helps him to dominate that early game.

One character who was there from the beginning, however, was Commander. “Commander is awesome because you don’t need to spend resource point to gain counters, and it fuels Superman, Blue.”

So how does it match up? It tends to take down GLEE fairly well, and the mirror as well. “I beat a mirror pretty hard—on turn 6 I was at 31 and he was at 28. I had the initiative, and he conceded, with my board showing Soldiers, Blue, Commander, Cycles . . .”

His one weakness today, however, seems to be Prison Planet. “Prison Planet owns me, even later on. I lost the second one while I held a huge endurance gap . . . The only thing I can’t do is resource removal.” With two losses to Prison Planet, it is the one bane of his existence.

So we’ll see how it holds up, but Jerome may have found a key to Blue Abusing his way to Day 2, as long as he doesn’t keep running into Prison Planets . . .