After plenty of west-coast-and-beyond submissions the past few weeks (California, Hawaii, and others!), I decided to work on a deck submission a little closer to home. This week's deck comes from Steven, in Long Island, New York. Here's what Steven said:

With the advent of IoC, I hit [an online auction site] for the heavy hitters to make a Chaos deck. I came up with this, but I'm not sure if it's tournament material, or more importantly, Regionals material. It does pretty well against my friends, but I need input from someone more attuned to the national metagame. Mind lending a hand? ^_^

The objective here is to win via lockdown, either using [Black Luster Soldier's] abilities or the much-reviled [Chaos Emperor Dragon/Yata-Garasu] combo. If that doesn't work, the Chaos monsters can be good beatdown monsters, especially with a few [Interdimensional Matter Transporters] to protect them from the opponent's removal. The damage from CED's effect is not to be disregarded either. A problem arises when you don't draw either Chaos monster. I've tried to compensate by using beatdown-worthy creatures, but a lack of decent Light monsters leaves me with cumbersome-to-play Thunder Nyan Nyans.

—Steven, Long Island, New York

After the swarm of Chaos decks I had submitted to me (without even having an official email address yet for deck submissions!), I figured it was about time to take a crack at one of these. Steven's decklist looks like this:

Steven's Chaos Deck
42 cards

Monsters
1 Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End
1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
1 Jinzo
1 Airknight Parshath
3 D. D. Warrior Lady
3 Thunder Nyan Nyan
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Sangan
1 Witch of the Black Forest
2 Spirit Reaper
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Cyber Jar
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Yata-Garasu

Spells
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Warrior Returning Alive
1 Pot of Greed
1 Graceful Charity
1 Snatch Steal
1 Raigeki
1 Monster Reborn
1 Harpie's Feather Duster
1 Painful Choice
1 Mirage of Nightmare
1 Dark Hole

Traps
2 Interdimensional Matter Transporter
1 Ring of Destruction
2 Raigeki Break
1 Imperial Order
3 Waboku


A very interesting deck, with some interesting choices. The monsters, in my opinion, are solid. The Thunder Nyan Nyans seem problematic, as Steven mentioned, and a frequent mistake that I notice a lot of people making when building Chaos decks is assuming that Thunder Nyan Nyan, D. D. Warrior Lady, and Shining Angel are the only particularly viable options for Light monsters. X-Head Cannon and Reflect Bounder are both great options (though X-Head Cannon is admittedly better-suited to Machine decks). Some readers seemed to notice this, however the one fabulous option that no one out of about ten or twelve submissions total picked up on was Thunder Dragon. Thunder Dragon is the number one easiest way to get Light monsters into your graveyard. It's superb because not only does it give you hand advantage and thin your deck, it doesn't require you to use a summon to get them into the graveyard. A big problem with Chaos decks is that they're often built to respond, not to act, so they often have a very hard time actually getting what they need into the graveyard and thinning the deck adequately when playing against an opponent who refuses to press an early offensive.

We're going to be looking at solving this problem as our main goal in this fix—streamlining the deck to make it faster in accomplishing its two main goals (getting the proper monsters into the graveyard, and getting to the Black Luster Soldier and the Chaos Emperor Dragon). Like I said, Steven has made some very interesting choices, and in my opinion the deck is already quite good. However, we can change it up slightly and add a few cards to take it to the next level.

First, as always, we're going to make the cuts. The Thunder Nyan Nyans are gone. Like Steven said, they were a hassle, and there are several better options. Without the Thunder Nyan Nyans, we're going to lose some of the offensive ability of this deck, so the additions are going to have to add some resiliency and insurance in the way of board control. That's easily done, though, so no worries.

Next up, Airknight Parshath needs to go. If ever there was a momentum card that was the king of momentum cards, it would be this one (Yata's head is too small for a crown . . .). Useless if you're not winning, and amazingly good if you are winning, the card is in here because it's a Light type monster and it accelerates getting the unsearchable Black Luster Soldier and Chaos Emperor Dragon into your hand. However, it is a momentum card, and the deck has a total of four tribute monsters in it already, which is a high number and can hurt in the early game. We obviously can't remove Chaos Emperor Dragon or Black Luster Soldier, and Jinzo needs to stay as well, so Airknight Parshath takes a walk.

Lastly for the monster reduction, I'm going to remove one of the D. D. Warrior Ladies. Having three in the deck was the smart decision for the previous build, but in my fix I'm going to be adding some more searching that does virtually nothing but get D. D. Warrior Lady, so we can safely get away with only running two. We need the extra space—if we didn't, three D. D. Warrior Ladies would be fine. I'd suggest taking it out of the main deck and tossing it straight into the side deck, as there will be instances where you'll still want three.

Moving onto spells, the only ones that I didn't think quite fit were the two copies of Warrior Returning Alive. It's a nice card, retrieving D. D. Warrior Lady or Black Luster Soldier and finding surprising and subtle synergy with Painful Choice, but again, we need space, and I'm not honestly convinced of the worth of Warrior Returning Alive in this deck.

The deck is running quite trap-heavy at the moment. I'm not sure that three Wabokus were ever justified in this deck, given the number of monsters that you want to see get smacked into the graveyard. However, under the new fix, with Thunder Nyan Nyan and Airknight Parshath gone, there are going to be even more monsters that you will want to see attacked and, often, destroyed. The deck was slower before, so the Wabokus were probably necessary as part of an effort to stall. Stalling and maintaining board presence aren't going to be nearly so much of an issue after the fix, so I get to do one of my favorite things, which is drop all the Wabokus from the deck.

Lastly, I'm going to chuck the two Interdimensional Matter Transporters. They're not going far, though—I'd suggest slipping both of them straight into the side deck. The combo with Chaos Emperor Dragon is great, and they can be chained to a lot of different things that give them a good deal of utility, but again, for space reasons, I'm getting rid of them. You'll definitely want to side deck the Transporter against an aggro monster control deck, because it eats Mirror Force, Ring of Destruction, Sakuretsu Armor, Fissure, Tribute to the Doomed, and Offerings to the Doomed for breakfast.

Now that we've cleared out a dozen cards, we need to add some things. First up are the three Thunder Dragons that I mentioned at the beginning of this column. The one thing I didn't mention is that these are going to find fabulous synergy with some cards already in the deck and one that isn't in here yet. Mirage of Nightmare can make really interesting use of this card, adding cards to your hand when you need them and giving you more cards to discard to protect ones that you want to keep in your hand. They can also help you pay for Raigeki Break. Raigeki Break is a really cool card that has a lot of potential, but most players shy away from it because either it's a trap (and they have a Jinzo complex—who doesn't?) or its discard cost is frowned upon. However, with five traps removed from the deck, being over-skewed towards traps isn't a concern, and with the Thunder Dragons in the deck, paying for Raigeki Break will be significantly easier.

Just remember that when you use Thunder Dragon's effect, if you take two Thunder Dragons from your deck, you can't discard either of them to use the effect again. If you want to get one Thunder Dragon in your graveyard and two in hand, use the first's effect and pull both. If you want to get two into the graveyard, use the first's effect, pull only one, then use the second's effect. You cannot activate Thunder Dragon's effect if there are no more Thunder Dragons in your deck. Just a weird ruling that I figured was worth mentioning.

Next up, more monsters, in the form of Shining Angel! A fabulous card for any Chaos deck, Shining Angel is the Mystic Tomato for Light-type monsters. I'm going to suggest running two of them, for the obvious reasons of maintained board presence, deck thinning, and increasing access to D. D. Warrior Lady.

I'm also going to add a third Mystic Tomato. Whereas the Shining Angels are pulling either themselves or D. D. Warrior Lady, Mystic Tomato can get Witch of the Black Forest, Sangan, and Spirit Reaper, so it's going to be exceedingly useful. Might as well run a third for added reliability, speed, thinning, and options.

With Mirage of Nightmare in the deck, and no Heavy Storm, a third Mystical Space Typhoon is a must. Yes, you've got two Raigeki Breaks that can destroy spells and traps as well, but a third Mystical Space Typhoon is going to help you manage Mirage and make attacking a bit easier. It's also going to Jinzo-proof the deck just a bit more. Mystical Space Typhoon, Black Luster Soldier, and Raigeki Break are going to create an interesting synergy. When you have Mystical Space Typhoon on hand, Raigeki Break will serve chiefly as monster removal. However, when Black Luster Soldier isn't needed for attack, you can use the Raigeki Breaks for spell and trap removal (which I'm sure Steven knows, but I wanted to point out for the benefit of the reader). Raigeki Break is a great card for this deck, and props to Steven for knowing that and acting on it.

Three Reloads are a must for this deck! Like I've been saying, a big challenge to the deck is the fact that Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End, and Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, are not searchable via Witch of the Black Forest or Sangan. With the increased amount of deck thinning, it's going to be easier to draw into these two key cards, but with Reload, you're going to be able to draw entirely new hands from your thinned deck. This is awesome, especially when combined with Thunder Dragon to give you more cards in-hand than you technically should have, which can then be exchanged for more useful cards.

Lastly, I'd really suggest Ceasefire for this deck. I don't really think you should be using Chaos Emperor Dragon's effect to blow up the world in the midgame, regardless of whether or not you have a Witch of the Black Forest or Sangan on the field. Really, I think it was meant as a game-finisher, and I've used it as such many, many times. The effect can easily net 1500-2400 damage, and after a big attack in the early or midgame, that's often enough to claim the win. However, all of your monsters are Effect monsters, and since you'll be maintaining board presence pretty well in most games, you can really take advantage of Ceasefire to get in a good chunk of damage. It's also going to clear out the chance of a nasty Cyber Jar or Fiber Jar that could threaten your control of the game or prevent you from attacking once Chaos Emperor Dragon or Black Luster Soldier hit the field. Lastly, it will nicely tech any Gravity Bind deck that is lucky enough to survive against your Mystical Space Typhoons and Raigeki Breaks.

So, the total changes look like this:

-1 Airknight Parshath
-3 Thunder Nyan Nyan
-1 D. D. Warrior Lady
-2 Warrior Returning Alive
-3 Waboku
-2 Interdimensional Matter Transporter

+3 Thunder Dragon
+2 Shining Angel
+1 Mystic Tomato
+1 Mystical Space Typhoon
+3 Reload
+1 Ceasefire

And the final decklist is as follows.

Steven's Chaos Deck—Jason's Fix