For those of you who don’t know, the “snowball effect” refers to something that starts small and gets progressively larger as time goes on. For example, school just started back up for me, and right now I have relatively little work to do. As time marches forward however, the amount of work will keep increasing until I reach final exams, at which point I will no doubt have two group projects, at least one paper, and a couple of take-home exams to do, all while studying for my regular finals. By the end of a semester, I’m so exhausted that the first thing I do is collapse in a heap and sleep for a day or so. This presents an interesting parallel to the way that many games are won these days. Someone attacks an Apprentice Magician, and the next thing he or she knows, the opponent has flipped Old Vindictive Magician to destroy a monster and then tributed it for Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch to take a card out of our hapless player’s hand. Soon after, that Monarch turns into a Monarch every turn, and the game is over very shortly afterwards. In this case, the “snowball” is the amount of damage dealt to the opponent over time. It starts out with a Cyber Dragon hitting a random monster and progresses until someone gets his or her face beat in by two or three Monarchs.

Since the release of the Machine Re-Volt Structure Deck, you’ve probably seen a lot of people sporting the new Gadget deck that I talked about last week in School of Duel. As I explained then, Gadgets work by keeping a steady flow of monsters available and eventually just wearing down the opponent’s ability to resist  It’s more like a “Sticking a Snowball in Your Microwave” effect, melting the opposition down to nothing. The question then becomes, what happens if you stick a snowball that’s rolling down a mountain inside a mass-less, volume-less microwave? The answer depends on what particular mountain and whether your Non-Existent Microwave of Science is set to “popcorn” or “nuclear.” Let’s say that the mountain in question is Mt. Everest and that the microwave is set to “poultry.”  In this case it’s quite likely that the snowball effect is going to beat out the microwave due to the extreme temperatures and the generally huge amount of snow available to be absorbed into the snowball. Even though the microwave is producing a lot of radiation, the snowball is absorbing snow at a much faster rate than the microwave is melting it. This is, of course, an impossible example that no one in the universe could possibly test, which means it’s time to relate all this to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG.

“Mt. Everest”

Monsters: 20

3 Hydrogeddon

3 Gravekeeper’s Spy

1 Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys

2 Vampire Lord

2 Apprentice Magician

2 Old Vindictive Magician

1 Magician of Faith

1 Hand of Nephthys

2 Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive

1 Sangan

1 Treeborn Frog

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

Spells: 11

1 Heavy Storm

1 Graceful Charity

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

3 Rush Recklessly

1 Book of Moon

2 Enemy Controller

1 Scapegoat

Traps: 10

2 Widespread Ruin

1 Mirror Force

1 Ring of Destruction

3 Seven Tools of the Bandit

3 Magic Drain

The goal of this deck is to create a bigger snowball than your opponent can possibly melt away, and compound it by preventing all attempts to do so. I’ve specifically chosen the monsters in this deck for the sole purpose of exploiting the weaknesses of the increasingly popular Gadget decks. Each Gadget you take out with Hydrogeddon allows you to claim your own Gadget-esque effect by claiming another Hydrogeddon from your deck. Unlike the Gadgets, Hydrogeddon doesn’t get run down so easily. It also special summons itself to the field to attack for more damage and further your field presence. There’s only so much that simple removal can do for a player, and its usefulness is radically diminished by the fact that this deck can counter it outright or otherwise render it useless.

Right now, we’re in a phase where the primary components of most decks are cards that destroy other cards, cards that replace themselves somehow, and Cyber Dragon. Therefore, any deck that can nullify one or more of these categories can be a big winner. Let’s say that my opponent is playing against me with a Gadget deck, which is made up primarily of cards that destroy other cards (specifically monsters). Let’s say I open with a set Gravekeeper’s Spy and a spell or trap. My opponent summons a Green Gadget (fetching a Red Gadget from his or her deck), and attacks into my monster, figuring it’ll be a “standard” turn 1 set like Treeborn Frog or Sangan or Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. It isn’t. The opponent takes damage and I get another Spy out of my deck. What’s a Gadget player to do in this situation? He or she could just dump a pair of Smashing Ground or Fissure cards right now, but the more cards the opponent plays this early, the closer he or she gets to having nothing but Gadgets in hand. Besides, a Cyber Dragon can beat the Spies in battle, so why not save the removal for something that a Cyber Dragon can’t take? That said, the Gadget player is smart and sets a Sakuretsu Armor or Widespread Ruin in case I get something dangerous out next turn that really needs to go. I do. It’s Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys. Now what?

That’s the question we want our opponents to be asking when we play this deck. In the example above, the Gadget player has no real options other than to try to keep the Phoenix off the field long enough to shove enough damage my way to win the game. If he or she does that, however, there’s a good chance that the exact opposite will occur. Let’s say I attack with the Phoenix and the Gadget player burns his or her removal to destroy it. Next turn, the opponent summons Chiron the Mage or another Gadget. I take a maximum of 2800 damage from the clockwork kids. Suppose my opponent is a wise one and decides not to set anything face down because my Phoenix will just destroy it when it rises from the ashes on my turn. That’s great, because I’m going to bring back my Phoenix, summon Hydrogeddon, and swing for the fences. The end result will be 4400 damage to the opponent’s face along with three Hydrogeddon cards and a Phoenix on my side of the field, and there’s not a single thing the Gadget deck can do to stop me. What started as a tiny bit of damage and an extra Spy quickly turned into a three-move checkmate.

Let’s move on to the other expected matchup that you would face if you were playing in the upcoming Shonen Jump Championship Orlando. Monarch control starts out slow and grows over time, like two snowballs coming down two different mountains of varying size and temperature, and colliding at some point in time. The end result of such a collision would be that the larger snowball would either absorb or destroy the smaller one. Since the two decks play off the same base idea, the one that can create and maintain the largest presence the fastest should win. The key components of the Monarch deck are the Apprentice Magician engine, Brain Control, Treeborn Frog, and frequently Soul Exchange. It also has the other general amenities of modern decks—Cyber Dragon and an arbitrary amount of removal. Let’s say that I open up with a face-up Hydrogeddon and a set spell or trap. I’m basically daring you to attack me with a Cyber Dragon. If you look at your hand and find no spell or trap removal, you already have to ask yourself, “What now?” That’s 15-love in my favor. If you take the chance and attack me, I’m likely to have Rush Recklessly to make you pay in a big way. After all, if I didn’t, why would I make that opening play? Most people would become defensive in that situation, setting a card to each zone and passing, and for all you know, that might be the right play. Then again, it might not. I could have Seven Tools of the Bandit down, and you could get hosed.

Unpredictability is an important word when it comes to being successful right now. If your opponent doesn’t know what you have down and guesses incorrectly, you could win right there. When playing the exact same deck as everybody else, one of the only ways to create this unpredictability is to make sub-optimal or bizarre plays. Breaking away from the norm gives you a chance at the ultimate advantage over your probable opponents: you know every move available to them, but only the most savvy of them will know what you’re up to. Of course, the standard disclaimer for non-standard decks is still in effect here: if you don’t know what you’re doing and why, don’t. Despite what many forum-goers might tell you, it’s no crime to play a Monarch deck. You just sacrifice some potential advantages for others. I’ve seen many a player use a themed deck and specifically exclude cards beneficial to the strategy entirely because they’re good cards that people like to use. Then, after he or she loses every single game at a local tournament, he or she complains about how everybody else uses them. Well, it’s hard to fault other players who enjoy being able to dig three cards deeper into our decks while tossing useless cards or cards that are better off in the graveyard. Play what you feel comfortable with, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: They say the line between genius and insanity is very thin. As it turns out, it’s also drawn in purple lipstick.