We can all agree that Fusion monsters are cool. Two big monsters combining to form an even bigger, nastier monster? Sweet! The problem is, we want that monster right then and there, and we want it with minimal investment. Fusing the required monsters together usually takes three cards to accomplish (Polymerization plus the two material monsters), and there's no guarantee that the new monster won't just fall into a Bottomless Trap Hole like every other 1500 ATK monster in the game.

 

Fortunately, the Magician's Force set brought us an evil little card called Magical Scientist that could produce just about any useful Fusion we wanted for 1000 life points. However, someone turned the Scientist in to the authorities, and now it's on the Forbidden list. Unwilling to give up their Fusions, some players turned to another nasty little common for their fix, so the Metamorphosis deck exploded onto the scene. Metamorphosis isn't as brutally efficient as the Scientist was, but the spell lets you keep your Fusions permanently, plus you can attack directly with them—so I'm not complaining!

 

Monsters: 18

1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning

1 Jinzo

1 Airknight Parshath

1 Fusilier Dragon, the Dual-Mode Beast

2 D. D. Assailant

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Blade Knight

1 Reflect Bounder

2 Magician of Faith

2 Tsukuyomi

1 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

1 Tribe-Infecting Virus

1 Sinister Serpent

Spells: 16

1 Pot of Greed

1 Graceful Charity

1 Delinquent Duo

1 Lightning Vortex

1 Premature Burial

1 Heavy Storm

1 Snatch Steal

1 Brain Control

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

3 Scapegoat

2 Creature Swap

2 Metamorphosis

 

Traps: 6

2 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Mirror Force

 

Fusions: 20

2 Gatling Dragon

2 The Last Warrior from Another Planet

2 King Dragun

2 Ryu Senshi

1 Dark Blade the Dragon Knight

3 Thousand-Eyes Restrict

3 Dark Balter the Terrible

3 Karbonala Warrior

2 Fusionist

 

First, let's go over some news that you should know. On June 6, several ruling changes were put into effect. These changes aligned the North American rules with those of Japan so that everyone will have a level playing field at the World Championships this year. One of the results of this is that the rules for battle position changes have been updated. For those of you who haven't seen the revised rules yet, here's a brief breakdown.

 

You may manually change the battle position of a monster once per turn as long as the following things are true.

 

 

Because I like numbered lists, here's another one that outlines the immediate aftershock of the updated rules.

           

1.      Enemy Controller and Book of Moon are a lot less useful when you chain either one to a removal spell or trap, a Breaker counter, or whatever.

2.      Tsukuyomi is a whole lot better than it used to be.

3.      People will splash Tsukuyomi and Metamorphosis into nearly every deck that uses Scapegoat.

4.      Mike Rosenberg will take over the world.

 

Now then, back to business.

The Metamorphosis deck is based on the concept of taking the best Fusion monster from each playable level and getting it onto the field. To achieve this, you have to run other monsters at each of those levels so you can tribute them to Metamorphosis's effect. The best way to go about this is to play strong monsters at the right levels. I like to run the ever-present Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning for level 8, the card advantage machine Airknight Parshath for level 5, the big, bad Jinzo for level 6, and the multi-functional Fusilier Dragon, the Dual-Mode Beast for level 7. Level 1 monsters are easily covered by Sinister Serpent, Magician of Faith, and the sheep tokens from Scapegoat.

 

Given the quality of these monsters, you may wonder why in the world you would want to trade them in for something else. The reason is that Fusion monsters have special abilities that go above and beyond what a normal deck can do. How many people do you know who still play Dark Ruler Ha Des? I'm not aware of any, but its effect-negation power lives on in the metagame through Dark Balter the Terrible. Barrel Dragon and Blowback Dragon have all but vanished, but Gatling Dragon keeps their penchant for random destruction alive and kicking.

 

The real star of the deck is The Last Warrior from Another Planet. Its effect will destroy all of your other monsters on the field, but that can often be a blessing, especially if you use it to get rid of a copy of Magician of Faith that you just flipped. The second part of The Last Warrior's effect is even better, since no one can summon any face-up monsters while the Fusion is face up on the field. That means that Tribe-Infecting Virus can't hurt you, Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning can't hit the field, Zombie decks can't function, Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial are useless topdecks, Scapegoat can't be activated, Nobleman of Crossout suddenly becomes a much better draw, and the number of cards that your opponent can use is equal to the number of cards in his or her deck that can get The Last Warrior off the field. By my count, that's usually about four or five cards, and by the time you play the Warrior, your opponent should be down to two or three—and those are pretty good odds to me.

 

One thing that you need to know before you start playing this deck is that it has a nasty tendency of producing horrible topdecks. Need any monster to win? Metamorphosis! Need any monster to tribute for Metamorphosis? Creature Swap! You need to conserve your monsters as much as you can, because this deck's tricks rely on you having something on the field.

 

Another challenge that you'll have to deal with is picking the right time to use Metamorphosis and deciding what monster you want to get with it. The Last Warrior from Another Planet is an insanely good card, but if you play it at the wrong time, you'll end up wasting it and the cards you spent to get it out. Try to hold The Last Warrior off until your opponent is down to two or three cards total between his or her hand and field, and you know that at least one of his or her removal traps is gone. Bring out Balter for the face-down cards and Thousand-Eyes Restrict for the big monsters.

 

It's also important to be aware of how Tsukuyomi will interact with your cards. Due to the revision of the battle position rules, Tsukuyomi can now be used to steal one of your opponent's monsters every turn. The trick works like this: You summon Thousand-Eyes Restrict and suck up an opponent's monster. On your next turn, you normal summon Tsukuyomi to flip that monster face down. Then, you use your manual position change for the turn to flip it back up, and then you suck up another monster with Thousand-Eyes. Now, that's brutal. Because it's easy to splash a copy of Metamorphosis or two into any deck that runs Scapegoat, expect this little trick to pop up in a lot of decks.

 

 

If you're going first with this deck, a good opening move is to play any draw or discard spells that you're holding and then set a copy of Scapegoat before ending the turn. This will help you draw out your opponent's spell or trap removal, plus it will set you up for the game ahead. If your opponent destroys Scapegoat and then you chain it, he or she will have wasted a card to give you a defensive wall that can be turned into an offensive threat thanks to Metamorphosis. If your opponent destroys the wall via Lightning Vortex or Tribe-Infecting Virus, that's even better for you, because even though you'll take some damage, your opponent had to spend real cards to get rid of your non-cards.

 

When playing against a Metamorphosis-based deck, your best bet is to conserve your removal cards. If your opponent has an empty field except for a single face-down spell or trap, go ahead and attack blindly. Chances are, the card is either a copy of Scapegoat or it's nothing to worry about. As long as you don't spend any cards to get rid of it or do anything crazy like stick four monsters into attack position and then attack blindly, you should be able to keep up with the Morph deck and perhaps outlast it. It's essential that you try to maintain card advantage in this matchup, because if you can force the Morph player to topdeck, he or she will be toast.

 

U.S. Nationals is only a few weeks away. If you've been trying out the decks that I've been presenting, you probably have a good idea about what most of the competition will be like. For the final weeks leading up to Nationals, I'll be talking about some of the rogue decks that are going to make an impact on the scene. Until then, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

 

Next week: When is the early game the coin flip, the mid-game your starting hand, and the late game the first turn?

 

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?