|
Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043
Doomkaiser Dragon's effect isn't just for Zombie World duelists: remember that its effect can swipe copies of Plaguespreader Zombie, too!
Click here for more
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
| |
 Woo! Another week has arrived, and with it comes yet another deck for me to fix. This week's deck fix takes a look at one of the coolest themes in Yu-Gi-Oh!—Archfiends. I don't know about you, but I think the art and the chessboard motif alone make this a theme worth playing. Oh, and that whole "I roll a die and your effect doesn't work" thing . . . that's nifty too, to say the least. Oh, and the massively high ATKs for level 4 monsters. And the special summon effects. And the hand advantage given by Pandemonium. And the Balter-esque effect of Terrorking. All good reasons to try an Archfiend deck!
Today's contributor had a great deal to say about his deck, so I'm going to let him get to it!
I have many strategies for getting out my precious Chess Fiends. My most notable one is using Marauding Captain in order to get around Terrorking's 'No Archfiends' restriction on his summoning. Also, Cyber Jar works around this nicely, as well as Graceful Charity+Monster Reborn. Due to the Desrooks, I have also found a nice strategy. It is to Archfiend's Roar the Terrorking Archfiend from my graveyard, and when he gets sent to the graveyard as per Archfiend's Roar's effect, I discard a Desrook to get him back on the field.
Pandemonium makes this deck fast, with many forms of monster removal these days aside from battle. It also means I can keep my precious life points. Compulsory Evacuation Device is an experiment, but seems to have worked well for things like Vampire Lord so far. Dark Hole activates Pandemonium's effect with my Archfiends, so if Summoned Skull goes, I can get my more-prominent Terrorking Archfiend or anything else I need.
Kuriboh and the Desrooks are useless as soon as they hit the grave, thus the inclusion of Dark Necrofear. Graceful Charity adds to this strategy, as well. And finally, Shadow Spell was included so that my Terrorkings and Shadowknights can dispose of the higher-class monsters.
Well, I hope you can help my deck! It's very nice with its negation effects, and they all have very powerful attacks. I was considering purchasing a Skull Archfiend of Lightning and replacing Summoned Skull with him. I was also considering Dimension Fusion due to Dark Necrofear, but when most of the fodder is Kuriboh and two Desrooks, it's not very useful, especially for 2000 life points.
Well, thanks for your time!
—Seph, location withheld
As you can see, Seph's put a lot of thought into the deck, and has really kept synergy and combos in mind while building and testing it. Here's the deck list that he sent:
Seph's Chess Fiend Deck
44 cards
Monsters
2 Terrorking Archfiend
1 Infernalqueen Archfiend
3 Desrook Archfiend
2 Shadowknight Archfiend
2 Archfiend Soldier
1 Summoned Skull
1 Sangan
1 Great Maju Garzett
1 Giant Orc
1 Kuriboh
1 Dark Necrofear
1 Witch of the Black Forest
1 Cyber Jar
1 Marauding Captain
Spells
3 Pandemonium
1 Axe of Despair
1 Dark Hole
1 Pot of Greed
1 Monster Reborn
1 Graceful Charity
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Scapegoat
1 Raigeki
1 Change of Heart
1 Mage Power
1 Premature Burial
1 Giant Trunade
Traps
1 Imperial Order
1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
1 Archfiend's Roar
1 Magic Cylinder
1 Waboku
1 Judgment of Anubis
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Mirror Force
1 Shadow Spell
Not bad—the deck has a lot of interesting tricks up its sleeve, and like any theme deck, it has the element of surprise. Since not many people play with or against Archfiend decks, they're not going to know what the deck has in store for them on a comprehensive level. However, I do have two concerns with the deck, and those are as follows.
 First off, the deck seems a little pudgy at 44 cards. Paring it down to 41 or 42 cards is going to help you get to those Pandemoniums reliably. Reload seems a bit like overkill for this deck, so I'm going to regard bringing the deck down a few cards as being the chief way to increase the deck's chances of drawing into Pandemonium. Test Mirage of Nightmare, but remember that it works for some and doesn't work for others—it's a definite card to be included if you can use it, but if you can't, you're certainly in good company, as I'd say about 70 percent of the game's players can't make the card work due to their personal style.
Secondly, I do have a major concern with the focus of the deck. Seph has a great eye for the synergetic tricks his deck has at its disposal, but it seems like the deck is being approached too softly. There are a lot of defensive cards in the deck, and considering the high attack of Terrorking Archfiend and Shadowknight Archfiend, you should generally be playing aggressively and dominating the field. There are cards here that don't really belong in a deck with such offensive potential, and there are one or two cards that don't belong in here simply because an opponent is going to head into a game against this deck with defense in mind.
Luckily, these two concerns tie together into one solution—the deck's a bit big, and there are cards that don't exemplify the potential strengths of the deck. Pretty easy, we just take those cards out, and that solves both our problems! After doing that, I'm going to add in more cards that will help this deck be the fast, vicious throat-ripper that it should be. Let's begin.
First, we need to do some trimming in the monster department. Summoned Skull is going to be the first card to be cut. Yes, it's a powerhouse, but we need to keep the deck really light on tribute/special-summon-only monsters, and we already have two of those in the form of Great Maju Garzett and Dark Necrofear. To be honest, you could get away with running Summoned Skull over Great Maju Garzett—each has its advantages. In the case of Summoned Skull, you're going to be able to retrieve virtually anything you like from the deck if it gets destroyed in any way that fulfills the condition of Pandemonium. Plus, it's searchable by Witch of the Black Forest. With Great Maju Garzett you get the benefit of what will usually be a far higher attack total. It's also more searchable than Summoned Skull. I'd personally suggest going with Great Maju Garzett, but if you want to test things out, test Summoned Skull in its place and see which one you like best.
For now though, Summoned Skull is gone, which means that the tech target for Pandemonium's search effect is going to be Desrook Archfiend (it's the only option). Because it's searchable in this way, as well as via Sangan, I think it's safe to drop down to two. We need the space, and we're going to take some more measures to get to Sangan more reliably anyways later on in the fix.
Infernalqueen Archfiend should be dropped. Before this card was given errata, it was remarkably good, but with its new lines of text, all it really does in this deck is effectively beg to be Skill Drained. Its place is in a Fire deck, where UFO Turtle could special summon it to the field; it's not really needed here, especially since you are not yet maxed out on Archfiend Soldiers.
Lastly, we're dropping Kuriboh. Kuriboh is only really suited to a straight Fiend deck centered around Dark Necrofear, or a serious hand-advantage deck. With the raw power offered by most of your Archfiend monsters, you're not really going to be getting attacked as often as other decks will be. Just play aggressively and try not to give the opponent any openings—you won't miss Kuriboh.
 Next up, we're going to look at spells. Right off the bat, Scapegoat and Swords of Revealing Light are obvious candidates for being tossed out of the deck. They're too defensive in a deck that will retain board presence in most games, with aggressive positioning in most cases. Though I'm a big fan of Swords of Revealing Light in an age where that's sometimes an unpopular opinion, I'm also a big fan of lunging towards the opponent's jugular in a quick and efficient fashion, and this is definitely one of those lunge-for-the-jugular decks. Scapegoat's great, but if all goes well, and it generally should, Scapegoat will usually be unplayable—you'll have more than one monster on the field, thus preventing the activation of Scapegoat in the first place.
Next on the chopping block: Mage Power. The deck is already chock full of very fast high ATK monsters, and unless you were using monsters that can deal breakthrough damage, like Spear Dragon, there isn't much of a reason to run ATK-enhancing equip spells. I'm keeping Axe of Despair, but only because it gives the added bonus of counting towards Terrorking Archfiend's requirement. Equip spell cards come with the unfortunate inherent cost of offering card advantage to your opponent—a Mirror Force, Sakuretsu Armor, Fissure, Tribute to the Doomed, or Offerings to the Doomed that would normally only be costing you one card (the monster being destroyed), costs you two cards if that monster is bearing an equip at the time. That's not to say that equip spells are bad, because they're not. But what I am saying is that this isn't the place to be running multiples of them.
Premature Burial is also going to be removed, simply because Call of the Haunted is so superior. While Call of the Haunted can be trumped by Harpie's Feather Duster, Mystical Space Typhoon, and Heavy Storm in most decks, Premature Burial is counterable by all of those, plus Imperial Order. Decks that run Spellshield Type 8 are going to be even more problematic, and when the activation is pinging you for 800 life points, it's sometimes not worth trying. Those 800 life points might not sound like a lot, but in any normal Beatdown or Control deck, they can make a huge difference. In a deck where you're paying LP costs in your standby phases a significant percentage of the time, 800 life points can be a death sentence. Free is better than costed, so Call of the Haunted is going to sub in for Premature Burial.
Lastly, I'm going to remove Giant Trunade. Trunade's purpose is obvious—it allows the deck to have a board-clearing spell/trap remover without using Heavy Storm. However, I'm going to suggest adding a lot more spell and trap removal than is currently in the deck, so Giant Trunade won't be needed.
Moving on to the trap cards, we hit some major candidates for removal. Torrential Tribute and Waboku are not going to be particularly necessary in this deck, again, due to its ability to maintain board presence and board control due to high ATK values. I've played with Dark Elf in my Beatdown decks since it was released, simply because regardless of the drawback, the card can trump nearly anything—2000 ATK is that good. The ability to stomp nearly anything in your path is quite gamebreaking, and once you start playing with some serious aggression, you'll see just how much contingency cards like Kuriboh, Waboku, Torrential Tribute, and Scapegoat were holding you back.
I'm going to drop Compulsory Evacuation Device. It's interesting, for the defensive purpose of bouncing troublesome monsters out of the way, like you mentioned with Vampire Lord, and it can, of course, get your Archfiends off the field before you need to pay their standby costs as well, but I think there's a card that can accomplish this far better, and I'm going to add that into the deck (two of them, actually). Shadow Spell is going to be dropped for the same reason (what it accomplishes can be done better by a higher-utility card).
Judgment of Anubis is going to be removed. This is one of those decks where you're guaranteed that a percentage of your opponents will definitely try to destroy a spell or trap card, since Pandemonium has a bull's-eye on it as soon as it hits the field. However, because the deck will play so aggressively, I'm not sure that there's often going to be a face up monster on the opponent's side of the field. Coupled with the fact that the card is triple-conditional, I think it's not quite worth being in the deck. It is, however, very side deck worthy, because if you're facing a player running an aggro-Beatdown or aggro-Hybrid deck, you are going to have a lot of opportunities to use it.
 Lastly, I'm going to remove the Archfiend's Roar. Though I think the Desrook Archfiend combo is cute, and very tricky, I think it's going to be even trickier to get all three cards needed for the combo in the right places (graveyard for Terrorking Archfiend, field for Archfiend's Roar, and hand for Desrook Archfiend), especially when Archfiend's Roar isn't being run in multiples. The odds of having this combo available are low enough, and when coupled with the odds of actually having an opportunity to use it effectively, the odds descend to the near-microscopic. It's a really good idea, but it needs more resources than we can commit at the moment.
That's it for the cuts. I've dropped fifteen cards, and I'm going to add in thirteen in their place, for a total deck size of 42 cards. That should be a perfect size for this deck.
First off, we dropped Infernalqueen Archfiend, so we need another attacker. Naturally, this is going to be a third Archfiend Soldier. A simple, straightforward 1900 ATK monster with enough defense to block Cannon Soldiers, Don Zaloogs, and Mystic Tomatoes in a pinch. Cheap, and effective.
For the second and last monster addition to the deck, I'm going to suggest two Mystic Tomatoes. This is going to accelerate your access to Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan, give you some assured board presence (though this deck doesn't need it as badly as others might), and give you a couple good opening moves (which are lacking in most Archfiend decks).
Moving on to spells, the first necessary addition is Mystical Space Typhoon. Waboku, Mirror Force, Ring of Destruction, Magic Cylinder, Imperial Order, and Gravity Bind can all hurt this deck considerably, so MST is a must. You want to have one set whenever it's possible and you want to attack next turn—Waboku isn't chainable if you Mystical Space Typhoon it in the end phase of the turn in which it's set, and neither is Imperial Order. Mystical Space Typhoon is also going to give some insurance against equip spells that can lend much-needed power to your opponent's monsters. An unaugmented non-tribute monster is generally not going to be able to trump your Terrorking Archfiends and Shadowknight Archfiends. You want to keep it that way, and Mystical Space Typhoon is a great way to do it.
To complement the Mystical Space Typhoons, Harpie's Feather Duster is a must. It gives completely uncosted card advantage, and it hits the opponent where it hurts—the spell/trap field. You're already going to be dominating the monster field most of the time, but you need to be able to back that up with pressure on your opponent's spells and traps. There's no better card for that on a wholesale basis than Harpie's Feather Duster. It's a promo and can be a bit pricey, but hunt around until you can find one—it really is a great card for almost any deck conceivable.
Next up, Snatch Steal. Any big tribute monster can be a problem for this deck, and Snatch Steal is a great way to remove that kind of problem. It's also going to accelerate your offense, give you fodder for Great Maju Garzett, and generally function as an all-around fabulous board-control card in a deck that already has commanding board presence.
 Once you get two decent attacking Archfiend monsters out, your opponent is generally going to go on the defensive. That translates to face-down defense position monsters, and that translates to a potentially very high utility for Nobleman of Crossout. It's great in the early game if you go second (most players start the game with a face-down defense position monster), and it's great in the mid and late game. This is one of those "go for the jugular" cards—it's a great momentum card, but it can also help you in the very early game and it can tech out key cards that can cause you problems, like Fiber Jar or Spirit Reaper. It's also going to have beautiful synergy with . . .
Book of Moon. Two of them. Book of Moon is one of the single most awesomely under-rated cards in the game. A chainable quick-play spell, Book of Moon is going to serve many functions in this deck, as it can:
—Negate an attack
—Turn a high-ATK, low-DEF monster, such as Jinzo, to defense position, making it an easy target (2400 ATK might be hard to deal with, but 1500 DEF is not)
—Negate the cost of one of your Archfiends for one turn
—Give you the option of attacking, then turning that attacking monster to defense position
—Negate your opponent's equip cards
—Make your own Snatch Steal into a one-sided Creature Swap (when Snatch Steal is successfully resolved and Book of Moon turns the monster Snatch Steal is attached to face down, Snatch Steal is destroyed, but you now keep the monster until it is destroyed)
—Negate your own attack to save a monster from Mirror Force (and other notable traps)
—Negate Ring of Destruction
—Give you prime targets for Nobleman of Crossout
—Block Yata-Garasu and leave it trapped on the field, where an Archfiend can eat it from a bucket next turn
The list of uses for this card goes on and on. I'm sure you'll find some creative uses for it. A pair of these will more than take the place of the board control given by the now-removed Torrential Tribute and Compulsory Evacuation Device.
Lastly, I'm adding two traps to the deck. Call of the Haunted is a superb card that can really shine in a fast, relentless deck like this. It allows you to overextend and attack with a monster that you know can be killed next turn by your opponent, and still have field presence for an attack next turn. It's also, of course, sweetly chainable to a piece of spell and trap removal and can be used to grab Witch of the Black Forest or Sangan in such a situation. Second, since all but three of the monsters in this deck are Effect monsters, and the deck is meant to secure victories quickly, I'm going to recommend adding Ceasefire to the deck. With maintained board presence like this deck can often get, Ceasefire can easily deliver that 1000, 1500, or 2000+ coup de grace to finish the game. Being chainable is great too—hopefully you can get your opponents to burn removal on it and distract them from holding removal for your Pandemoniums.
That's it for the changes! The total list is as follows:
-1 Desrook Archfiend
-1 Infernalqueen Archfiend
-1 Kuriboh
-1 Summoned Skull
-1 Scapegoat
-1 Swords of Revealing Light
-1 Mage Power
-1 Premature Burial
-1 Giant Trunade
-1 Torrential Tribute
-1 Waboku
-1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
-1 Archfiend's Roar
-1 Judgment of Anubis
-1 Shadow Spell
+1 Archfiend Soldiers
+2 Mystic Tomato
+2 Mystical Space Typhoon
+1 Snatch Steal
+1 Harpie's Feather Duster
+2 Nobleman of Crossout
+2 Book of Moon
+1 Call of the Haunted
+1 Ceasefire
And the fixed deck looks like this:
Chess Fiend Deck—Jason's Fix
42 cards
Monsters
1 Great Maju Garzett
1 Dark Necrofear
2 Terrorking Archfiend
2 Desrook Archfiend
2 Shadowknight Archfiend
3 Archfiend Soldier
1 Giant Orc
1 Cyber Jar
1 Marauding Captain
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Witch of the Black Forest
1 Sangan
Spells
3 Pandemonium
1 Axe of Despair
1 Dark Hole
1 Pot of Greed
1 Monster Reborn
1 Graceful Charity
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Raigeki
1 Change of Heart
1 Snatch Steal
1 Harpie's Feather Duster
2 Nobleman of Crossout
2 Book of Moon
Traps
1 Imperial Order
1 Magic Cylinder
1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ceasefire
 Your opening goal is to ensure an attack by turn 2. If you feel you can get away with it, feel free to drop a face-up attack position Shadowknight Archfiend—with luck, you can get the opponent to drop a face-down monster and then Nobleman of Crossout it next turn. Play your first turn entirely based on what you want your second turn to look like. Do you want a face-down monster to attack, or a face-up? Can you bait the opponent to attack you and run into an early-game Mirror Force or Magic Cylinder? This can be a prime chance to use Book of Moon, because if it gets destroyed, you can chain it, and if it's not beneficial to do so yet, it's not like you just lost Magic Cylinder or Mirror Force
From the second turn onward, attacking is the priority. Aim to run your opponent out of cards—monsters are resources, and if you dominate the field, nothing will stop your opponent from committing more cards in an effort to save the situation. Knock out your opponent's legs, and then lean, and lean very hard. If you can do it, aim to take the game by turn 3 or 4. Most opponents in today's conservative environment are not prepared for an overextension to come so early.
The side deck is your call. Giant Trunade can't hurt, and Bottomless Trap Hole is going to help a great deal against the Chaos decks that seem to be everywhere at the moment. Tribe-Infecting Virus can also be a great choice against theme decks, but remember that if it makes its way onto your opponent's field, you could be in a lot of trouble. A second Marauding Captain can also be a good choice if you feel an opponent is absolutely unprepared for overextensions in the first four turns of the game.
Thanks for sending it in, Seph. I hope the deck does well for you! As always, email any comments or questions to jasonatmetagame@yahoo.com.
|
| |
| Top of Page |
|
|
| |
|