The format for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game is in limbo right now. Everyone and his brother is trying to break the format, and we’re all coming incredibly close. At the moment, the format is focused around one card. Return from the Different Dimension has taken up the mantle that Scapegoat left behind when the format changes removed the entire Goat Control deck from the metagame. In the wake of Thousand-Eyes Restrict, Return from the Different Dimension eventually rose to take its place.

Both decks win the game through different means, and definitely at different speeds, but both essentially do the same thing: combine good cards to make even better combos and take games through means that are incredibly hard to prepare for.

In contrast, anti-Chaos Return decks are beginning to pop up in several metagames. One nifty piece of information about “anti-metagame” decks like this one is that they tend to replace the main tricks and combos with tricks and combos built to beat the popular decks of the time.

Team Comic Odyssey, well known for defining the metagame in past formats, has taken to countering it in this one. The deck they played at Shonen Jump Championship Chicago was covered in one of Jason’s deck profiles that weekend. The decklist and a brief synopsis is given there, but I’ll give you the list again here.

Monsters: 20

3 Spirit Reaper

1 Mystic Swordsman LV2

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

2 Chaos Sorcerer

1 Sangan

1 Exiled Force

2 Asura Priest

3 Mystic Tomato

1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

3 Cyber Dragon

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Newdoria

Spells: 17

1 Heavy Storm

1 Smashing Ground

1 Last Will

1 Premature Burial

1 Graceful Charity

2 Creature Swap

2 Enemy Controller

1 Scapegoat

2 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Snatch Steal

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Confiscation

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Book of Moon

Traps: 3

3 Royal Decree

The first thing you’ll notice about the deck is that it packs a whopping three copies of Royal Decree. Second, tempo is essentially how the Chaos/Return decks win games, and half of maintaining good tempo is having the monsters to do so. Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and Zaborg the Thunder Monarch can push your opponents around while generating positive trades, which works along with Chaos Sorcerer’s ability to instantly remove your opponent’s monsters. But these two tactics are only half the battle.

The other half is making sure your opponent can’t attack back. Your opponent has two options for retaliating. He or she can either be conservative about it and attempt to clear your monsters slowly with only one of his or her own monsters, or else throw down an army and try to completely reverse the tempo of the game. He or she could also choose not to retaliate at all, and try to stabilize his or her own field before making any moves.

Trap cards are what make or break these strategies. If an opponent has no defensive cards, an aggressive push to change the tempo against him or her is likely your best option. It will put your opponent in the hot seat, and if you have defenses, he or she will be hard-pressed to make a move. Counterattacking becomes difficult because of your defense, and trying to stabilize the field is even harder in the face of an army of monsters and a lack of defense to stop them.

However, you face the same problem if your opponent has defensive cards of his or her own. An opponent with a handful of monsters, monster removal, and defensive traps is extremely hard to break, and can cost a lot of your life points even if you do. Then Return from the Different Dimension kicks in, and the final push becomes unstoppable. This is the sad fate of many players at every Shonen Jump Championship.

And many players have done something about it. Andrew Hayton and Lazaro Bellido each played the same aggressive control deck at Shonen Jump Columbus and were rewarded with ninth and eighth place, respectively. Emon Ghaneian replaced the defensive power from his deck for more aggression and won the entire tournament. At Chicago, players such as Kyle Duncan took Tomato Control decks stuffed with a pair of Royal Decree cards to the top spots. These decks all have one thing in common: they don’t let the opponent maintain his or her own tempo throughout the game.

Team Comic Odyssey did the same, but with a bigger bang. Rather than opting for the traditional Decree trap line-up that consists of Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute, and Call of the Haunted in addition to a pair of Royal Decree cards, Wilson instead ran three Royal Decrees as his only traps. This allows Wilson to shut off his opponent’s trap cards in almost every game. Without any defense, Wilson is free to push the speed of the game as hard as he wants, and since Royal Decree shuts down Return from the Different Dimension, Wilson doesn’t need to fear the game being turned around and won in a single turn. This level of security means he doesn’t have to play any defensive traps, freeing space in his deck to allow more room for tempo-oriented cards.

Jumping from the trap lineup to the monsters, we see that Wilson sports the standard pair of Chaos Sorcerer cards coupled with the aggressive power of three copies each of Spirit Reaper and Cyber Dragon. Not only do these monsters provide an aggressive control element to Wilson’s game, but under the safety of Royal Decree, Wilson doesn’t need to worry about over-extending his field into an unfortunate Mirror Force or Sangan/Torrential Tribute trap. Throwing down Cyber Dragon and Spirit Reaper with a face-down Royal Decree will usually cost your opponent’s monster, defensive trap card (when you negate it with Royal Decree), and a card from his or her hand to boot. This kind of resource swing puts Wilson in excellent position and sets up exactly how he wants to play the game.

Asura Priest and Mystic Tomato are two key monsters for Wilson. The Priest takes away opponent’s field presence and the Tomato keeps the same presence for Wilson. Both also work very well with Creature Swap. There’s no better tempo-generating effect than stealing an opponent’s monster, especially if that monster happens to be Chaos Sorcerer or Cyber Dragon!

Mystic Swordsman LV2, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Newdoria, D. D. Warrior Lady, and Exiled Force are included in the deck to keep the opponent’s field as inactive as possible. Each monster pushes tempo in Wilson’s favor and forces his opponent against the ropes. An opponent whose hand lacks monsters is in deep trouble, since Wilson should be able to take care of all of them, and then (under Royal Decree) begin pounding away at the remainder of his opponent’s life points. A monster-clogged hand is equally useless against Wilson’s deck, as he will simply take care of the monsters turn by turn until his opponent runs out.

The spell lineup is designed to do everything that Wilson’s traps would have done. Taking a look past the regulars, we see that the main goal is to remove opposing monsters and regain tempo if it’s lost. Enemy Controller and Creature Swap both create situations where Wilson can remove an opponent’s threats and maintain his own field. Smashing Ground serves as a last resort to get something unmovable out of the way. Last Will and Reinforcement of the Army search out the tempo-generating characters from Wilson’s deck. They also act as a toolbox of sorts, allowing Wilson to fetch answers to different scenarios as they arise.

The deck is very good at beating the metagame. However, the two-Decree/five-trap route is much safer, and when your opponent draws the best thing that he or she possibly can, you’ll be happy that you decided to include that Mirror Force. While Team Comic Odyssey has made a step in the right direction, there’s still a better deck out there to be discovered.