My, my, how the mighty have fallen! Just weeks ago, Demise, King of Armageddon was the most feared deck on the radar of any truly competitive duelist. Now, with the Demise OTK strategy having been utterly savaged through main deck and side deck counters at Shonen Jump Championship Philadelphia, the big blue blight is a shadow of his former self.
Duelists like today’s contributor are becoming creative in their attempts to resuscitate the ripped-up ritual monster, and some of the resulting strategies are certainly stylish. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: a flashy victory is simply worth more than a crushingly direct one!
Israeli duelist Aviv seems to agree. He’s altered the Demise engine to support one of dueling’s long-lost alternate win conditions, and if there was ever something worth working at, it’s dominating your sniveling opponents with Exodia the Forbidden One! Here is what Aviv had to say.
I’m sending this letter with hope that you will help me improve my Exodia-Demise deck.
I really do think that this deck can be competitive.
The deck is based on summoning Demise, King of Armageddon with Advanced Ritual Art, discarding the normal pieces of Exodia. Then, I take them back to my hand with Backup Soldier and Dark Factory of Mass Production. The main problem, though, is getting the head. I just can’t think of a way to get it into my hand quickly.
Hoping you can help me,
—Aviv,
Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel
Aviv’s letter was both short on elucidation and complementary epithets, but his strategy is simply too appealing for me to ignore. Here is the deck list Aviv submitted.
Exodia, King of Armageddon—40 Cards
Monsters: 22
1 Exodia the Forbidden One
1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One
2 Demise, King of Armageddon
3 Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands
1 Senju of the Thousand Hands
1 Sonic Bird
1 Spirit Reaper
2 Mystic Tomato
2 Gene-Warped Warwolf
2 Mad Dog of Darkness
2 Charcoal Inpachi
1 Sangan
Spells: 11
2 Advanced Ritual Art
2 Monster Reincarnation
1 Level Limit - Area B
1 Upstart Goblin
1 Snatch Steal
3 Dark Factory of Mass Production
1 Swords of Revealing Light
Traps: 7
2 Backup Soldier
3 Jar of Greed
1 Gravity Bind
1 Torrential Tribute
Aviv has a good idea at the core of his deck: adapt the Discard Exodia deck from years gone by to use Advanced Ritual Art, creating the potential for a speedy win (or at least a reliable grind towards your win condition). He’s prioritized the speed aspect of the strategy with cards like Jar of Greed and Upstart Goblin, while using long-term defensive spells and traps as his central means of remaining in the duel. When things go wrong, the effect of Demise, King of Armageddon provides a self-destruct failsafe to recover from a bad situation.
However, I have some concerns. As Aviv noted, the head of Exodia the Forbidden One is still exceptionally difficult to seek out. Special summoning it with Mystic Tomato and then returning it to his hand with Monster Reincarnation once it’s been destroyed is really Aviv’s best plan, and sadly, it’s not a very good one. It leaves him exposed to cards like D. D. Warrior Lady that can remove the head from the game, and if the stall engine works properly, those Mystic Tomato cards may never be attacked anyways. Sangan does its job well, but it’s only one card in 40.
The deck also runs into serious issues if it ever draws one of the limbs of Exodia before it can activate Advanced Ritual Art. Since it only uses four level-1 Normal monsters and pairs them strictly with level-8 rituals, the strategy becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. If only three limbs remain in the deck, they can no longer be sent to the graveyard and everything becomes infinitely slower.
My mission? Improve the reliability and speed of the deck, with special attention paid to the key weakness of using only four level-1 Normal monsters. If I can improve the deck in these two ways, I am confident that it can be competitive (and deliciously devious!) enough for any local competition. Let us begin.
First, I would like to remove what I feel to be the deck’s weakest trick: the Mystic Tomato line. While Tomato does give access to the head of Exodia in two different ways, neither is reliable when you’re preventing attacks thanks to your lockdown cards. The Tomatoes simply never get a chance to use their abilities. The engine itself is very thin for a deck running so many sources of draw power, so you’ll often draw into your Sangan or Spirit Reaper before you ever get a chance to special summon them. Not good, and we could use these slots to greater effect.
I’ll be changing the deck to address the problem of drawing extra Normal monsters, so the copies of Charcoal Inpachi and Mad Dog of Darkness seem superfluous. I would prefer to keep three level-4 Normal monsters in the deck just for the purpose of paranoid redundancy, but when we aren’t already playing the maximum number of Gene-Warped Warwolf permitted, I don’t believe we should be degenerating to measures such as Mad Dog of Darkness. That additional 100 ATK (and the comparative lack of drool) makes the choice a clear one.
I’m going to be refocusing the deck to play with more emphasis on its lockdown components, and part of doing so will be the removal of Swords of Revealing Light. Have faith—the Swords will be replaced with something along the same lines that will prove superior in my final build.
Lastly, I’m going to change the way this deck approaches the concept of drawing cards. The Upstart Goblin and Jar of Greed “engine” (if it can even be called such) is a lowly little beast that is inconsistent, ineffective, and simply inadequate for Aviv’s needs, despite its flexibility. If we are to use a draw engine to accelerate towards Exodia the Forbidden One—the head—then we must have something more powerful than this.
On to the additions!
One more Demise, King of Armageddon and a third Advanced Ritual Art are the obvious starting place. If this deck is to perform quickly, we simply must have access to these cards as soon as possible, and I’d imagine that one of Aviv’s earlier builds probably had three of each: this has “mistaken deck tweak” written all over it. Even though I’ll be making the deck more reliant on its continuous effects, it shouldn’t suffer from the presence of Demise. Brain Control and Snatch Steal are worth being wary of, but the speed with which you’ll win many of your games will make these risks relative non-factors. Besides, it’s a small price to pay for such dueling pizzazz!
Two Messenger of Peace cards will provide the added defense I think this deck can benefit from. Although our build won’t have any spell negation to protect us from Heavy Storm, we will be diversifying the number of integral face-up cards we’ll be playing, and that should be enough to mitigate Mystical Space Typhoon. We’ll be able to outspeed the Storm in most cases anyway.
Interestingly enough, your four lockdown cards (the two Messengers, the Level Limit - Area B, and Gravity Bind) can all be rotated out for different defensive suites as needed. Against Monarchs, you can trade them for three Pulling The Rug cards and a tech card of your choice (perhaps D.D. Crow). Against more conventional Demise decks, swap in three Trap Dustshoot cards and three Mind Crush cards. The use of four particular defensive cards makes this deck very easy to customize for the second and third duels of a match, and that’s a factor that will work in its favor.
The last, and most important addition I’ll be making is three Card Trader cards and three Volcanic Shell cards! As star Obelisk student Mike Rosenberg noted last week, this pairing creates a draw engine that effectively doubles the number of cards a duelist draws each turn. With one Volcanic Shell in the graveyard, you can use its effect to bring another to your hand for 500 life points. Then on the following turn, you can shuffle the Shell back into your deck with Card Trader to exchange for something more useful. Finish by plucking the Shell from your deck again. The cycle is devastating when repeated, and Aviv should have no trouble drawing towards Exodia the Forbidden One and his combo pieces.
The use of this new draw engine also gives us a convenient method of sending Exodia limbs back to the deck, ensuring that Advanced Ritual Art can send all four limbs to the graveyard in any duel! This technique is similar to that used in the short-lived Turbo Zorc deck which briefly flourished before the rise of Demise OTK. The theories we’re operating on are proven to be successful—a reassuring fact to those of you who lack faith in my esteemed genius. Shame on you!
So, gaze upon the changes I have wrought!
-2 Mystic Tomato
-2 Mad Dog of Darkness
-2 Charcoal Inpachi
-1 Upstart Goblin
-1 Swords of Revealing Light
-3 Jar of Greed
+1 Demise, King of Armageddon
+1 Advanced Ritual Art
+2 Messenger of Peace
+1 Gene-Warped Warwolf
+3 Card Trader
+3 Volcanic Shell
Here is the final deck list!
Exodia, King of Armageddon—Vowler’s Version —40 Cards
Monsters: 21
1 Exodia the Forbidden One
1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One
3 Demise, King of Armageddon
3 Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands
1 Senju of the Thousand Hands
1 Sonic Bird
1 Spirit Reaper
3 Gene-Warped Warwolf
1 Sangan
3 Volcanic Shell
Spells: 15
3 Advanced Ritual Art
2 Monster Reincarnation
1 Level Limit - Area B
1 Snatch Steal
3 Dark Factory of Mass Production
2 Messenger of Peace
3 Card Trader
Traps: 4
2 Backup Soldier
1 Gravity Bind
1 Torrential Tribute
My version of Aviv’s creation is highly specialized, and more redundant than his original. While other decks would use only two copies of Card Trader with two Volcanic Shells, such an approach isn’t practical for our purpose here, since we don’t have room to run anything that could search out the Shell. At the same time, we aren’t concerned with drawing extra copies of redundant cards, simply because the deck will be winning at such a blazing speed in most of its games. When cards truly are redundant to a fault, they can be sent back to the deck with Card Trader or discarded for Monster Reincarnation.
The latter is an important thing to take into account, because the discard power of Monster Reincarnation will fuel your Volcanic Shell engine when your field control does its job too well. If your opponent refuses to attack, you can always just discard Volcanic Shell for Reincarnation. Truly desperate duelists may even find themselves destroying the Shell with Demise, King of Armageddon’s effect, but such instances will be rare—and flashy!
You’ll have three priorities from the get-go, and they’re all very straightforward. First, shield what vulnerable bits you hold precious with your defensive spell and trap cards: while most opponents in a Demise matchup have one reason to defeat you as quickly as possible, you’re adding Exodia to the mix and giving them two, so expect aggression. Second, establish the Card Trader/Volcanic Shell engine and begin your career as a hand-management magnate. The final step is using Advanced Ritual Art and your Normal monster recursion cards to get all four limbs of Exodia into your hand. You don’t need to fulfill these priorities in any particular order, which is one of the strengths of this build.
If you truly wish to dazzle those at your local tournaments, practice and perfect your play with this deck. Any win via Exodia will inspire awe amongst the plebeian dueling masses, but this deck’s ostentatious and daring play tricks would impress even one such as I!
—The Flashy, Flamboyant, and Fantastically Fabulous Crellian Vowler, PhD