One of the biggest issues for an aggro deck is the devastating effect of a field-wiping card. Mirror Force single-handedly stops aggro decks in their tracks, and a monster like Asura Priest can completely destroy the monsters that you worked so hard to keep around. Monsters such as Gravekeeper’s Spy and Hydrogeddon can lessen the blow a bit, but you’re still losing important attackers when you go toe-to-toe with Mirror Force.

This is one of the reasons that some aggro players resorted to running Solemn Judgment in their main decks. It gives them an extra line of protection, though the cost is often far too great. Life point costs rarely matter for stasis and control decks, because most of the control vs. control matchups focus on building up cards and disrupting your opponent’s tempo. An aggro deck needs to maintain decent life point totals or the opponent won’t feel overwhelmed. If your life point total is around 4000 or 2000 when you only inflicted around 3200 points of damage after the Solemn Judgment activation, then your opponent will feel pretty confident that he or she might draw a card that can counter your strategy, or find something else to buy even more time. Royal Decree is another possibility, but some aggro decks need trap-oriented removal in order to punch through the other player’s life points. This applies to Gravekeepers especially.

Enter My Body as a Shield. This is the kind of card that aggro players can use to counter spell and trap effects that rid their field of monsters. While the life point cost isn’t pretty, it’s certainly a lot better than Solemn Judgment.

The Basic Breakdown

One of the most important aspects of an aggro deck is the sheer psychological impact it has. While control decks are more about deck preparation and understanding all of your matchups, aggro decks focus on manipulating your opponent’s train of thought and forcing him or her into making bad moves. My Body as a Shield is unique in that it’s a quick-play spell card that can negate and destroy cards that would otherwise destroy your own monsters.

How is this more valuable than Solemn Judgment? In the case of a control deck, Solemn Judgment is vastly superior because it has the ability to counter anything your opponent plays. However, it requires you to dedicate cards to your field. In terms of an opponent staring down a very controlling deck, he or she might expect Solemn Judgment to be face down on your field. However, My Body as a Shield suits aggro decks exceptionally well, because you never need to have it on your field when you are only defending your own attacks. When you start attacking with all of your monsters, you’re always representing a possible My Body as a Shield to take down threats such as Mirror Force.

This is grueling for your opponent, since he or she knows that you can stop any removal spells when you attack. A control player may need to hold back even more in an attempt to bait out a My Body as a Shield. This would be a good play only if the player can draw enough removal cards or counters, because otherwise you will do so much damage that he or she will be inevitably forced to flip a Sakuretsu Armor or Widespread Ruin right into your My Body as a Shield. Of course, it’s not like flipping a removal trap card is going to save your opponent, since most of the time it comes only when he or she is just about to die from one of your attacks. This makes My Body as a Shield one of the best game-winning cards for aggro.

However, My Body as a Shield isn’t exclusive to aggro decks. The Soul Control/Monarch aggro-control decks that became a staple in almost every Shonen Jump Championship Top 8 from the last format also gave My Body as a Shield some serious play. While aggro players can protect a whole field of monsters with this versatile spell card, players such as Jonathan Navarro used My Body as a Shield to protect the field once they dropped a powerful Monarch monster, such as Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. Monarch decks found it especially useful, because it allowed the player to maintain field presence and overwhelming tempo, and opponents would be hard-pressed to do anything about a 2400 ATK monster staring them down.

The best part about My Body as a Shield is that it can be treated just like a counter trap. You’re always free to set it on the field and use it during your opponent’s turn in order to negate an effect such as Exiled Force or Smashing Ground. Such versatility makes this quickplay counter very powerful and gives it a spot in more than just an aggro deck.

Limitations

While My Body as a Shield is a very powerful card for many deck types looking to maintain the game’s tempo, a player has to make sacrifices to their deck in order to make space for the spell. The 1500 life point cost to activate this card can be very relevant, and it leaves little room to include other cards with hefty costs. Unfortunately, this means that aggro decks that wish to use Injection Fairy Lily as an effective bomb will be forced to move it into the side-deck or out of their deck entirely. It’s just far too risky to include both of those cards in the same main deck. You will most likely use either Injection Fairy Lily or My Body as a Shield at least once per duel, and using one of those cards makes the other card effectively a dead weight in your hand or deck. This means you actually lose strength when running both in the same deck, since it clogs your deck or hand with unusable options.

 can also be dangerous to draw late in a duel. It risks lowering your life level too far for comfort, and when you’re at 1500 life points or less, every copy of My Body as a Shield becomes useless. This is the risk that players will have to run, but as with cards such as Confiscation, the effects of My Body as a Shield are well worth the possibility of a dead draw.

Final Thoughts

Jae Kim gave a lot of props to this card back in the Goat-Control–infested advanced format, where stopping a widespread destruction effect could swing the game into your favor. I personally feel that My Body as a Shield is one of the most effective cards for aggro-based decks in the current format, since a wide array of destruction effects are still used. My Body as a Shield works not only in Monarch-based aggro-control decks as a defense against Sakuretsu Armor and Mirror Force, but it also provides the deck with a defense against Nobleman of Crossout so you can protect your Gravekeeper’s Spy monsters and other self-replacing monsters such as Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. Make sure that you are at least aware of My Body as a Shield during a Shonen Jump Championship or Regional event, because it was a definite looming threat to controlling decks in the previous Advanced format. Don’t be too surprised if someone springs this quick-play spell card on you in the future.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this or previous articles of mine, feel free to email me at Mrosenberg at Metagame dot Com.