Is Dimension Fusion better than Return from the Different Dimension? Is a static life point cost better than a dynamic one? Is pure field advantage more important than the chainable win condition? It’s a debate that’s gone on since long before SJC Austin, and Luna’s discovered the answer to the pros and cons that each card presents over the other: just run both. The deck uses three Bazoo the Soul-Eater to fuel big pushes, and plays sort of like a reduxed version of the Bazoo Return that defined the game last December. Cool stuff!

The fact that Bazoo the Soul-Eater happens to totally conflict with some of the cards Luna’s running doesn’t seem to be slowing him down at all. Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted, and Pot of Avarice are all used here despite the fact that Luna’s actively removing a lot of his best monsters from play in order to fuel big attacks. It’s mind-boggling that this deck can even work. When I spoke to Luna’s teammate Jake McNeeley about it earlier this morning, he grinningly told me, “Fili’s been winning with this deck that doesn’t make sense. It runs conflicting cards but he keeps winning!” Luna just leaned back in his chair and smiled as he prepared to sign up for the Scrub Brush Challenge.

The truth is that this deck presents its user with all the fundamentals of a successful archetype. It opens strong, with two Mystic Tomato and three Gravekeeper’s Spy to maintain field presence. Spy is a very popular pick here today, seeming to sub in over the expected recruiter pick, Apprentice Magician, in many of the decks here. From there it can play very aggressively with Cyber Dragons, two Exiled Force, and three Bazoo to clear the field, backed up by three Sakuretsu Armor. The sheer amount of special summoning power that this deck is packing makes it deadly — it can go from an empty field to a filled field with little warning, either through the graveyard recursion or Return and Dimension Fusion. That lets Luna play possum to draw out relatively predictable fields, and then drop multiple monsters in order to kick out big damage. The deck’s mid and late game are both ridiculous.

While Luna’s build can seem very conflicting, I think it actually presents more options than the average aggro beatdown deck normally does. The fact that some of those options conflict at times is irrelevant to a player who’s practiced with this strategy, because even at its worst the deck is still offering a certain base number of playable possibilities. At its best, it simply gives more potential plays than other decks can muster, most of which happen to center around explosions of offense and massive ATK numbers.

Of note is the use of double Asura Priest, which has been popular here in this metagame. With fields emptying so quickly in this format it’s easy to force an opponent’s Cyber Dragon to become a useless card by simply not playing any monsters. It’s even better to use Asura Priest as a source of 1700 damage and then take it back before the opponent can special summon his or her Dragon. While this strategy was seen frequently towards the end of the last format, where it was played in Chaos Creature Swap variants or specialized Spirit decks such as those pioneered by Calvin Tsang, it’s just better here. Lots of duelists are banking on Hydrogeddon, and Asura Priest is one of the best ways to rout a field full of the pesky little Dinosaurs.

Right now Luna is 3-0, and well on his way to a fourth round win. If he can dodge the risk of drawing all his conflicting cards at once he could easily make Day 2. Some of his performance today might hinge on luck, but I think the quantity of luck he needs to be successful will actually prove surprisingly low. There’s more to this deck than meets the eye, and if he can make it to the Top 8 this format will have a brand new top-level archetype!