If you’re playing a deck filled with Monarchs and tiny supporting monsters this holiday season, there are a few things that you should be aware of. First, you likely have exactly four immediately playable monsters with more than 1500 ATK. Those would be three copies of Cyber Dragon alongside your single Breaker the Magical Warrior. Second, while the best defense is often a good offense, the reverse is only true in a very small fraction of the situations you’ll face. This means that constantly setting monsters because it’s all you can do isn’t going to win you any games. Why do I point all these things out? Because Deck Devastation Virus puts you in the first situation, King Tiger Wanghu puts you in the second, and I’m about to talk about a neat deck that runs both.

I started thinking about this deck as soon as I saw that Theereak Poonsombat had made the cut at Shonen Jump Championship Anaheim with a deck running two copies of Deck Devastation Virus. Many players have been trying hard to really abuse this card since it moved from being Limited to Semi-Limited, but most of them have met with little or no success at the SJC level. T finally changed all that with his incredibly brutal Dark World deck. The deck was basically the antithesis of everything that had been successful up to that point, and when combined with T’s incredible amount of talent and tournament experience, it’s really no surprise that he did so well with it. My only complaint with the deck is that, in my estimation, it isn’t as mean as it could be. We all know that Thestalos hates running into Goldd and that Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute are useless if they’re destroyed while face down, but there are so many more things that can go wrong with your standard tournament deck than anyone cares to admit.

First off, you have to realize that if you’re playing a Monarch-based deck, you probably have no less than five tribute monsters in your deck. In fact, six is a more likely number since most people have decided that three Zaborg the Thunder Monarch cards and three Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch cards is the way to go. That means you have at least six cards that you can’t play without having a monster already on the field or a theft card to spend. I think that as the format progresses, people are discovering that giving up your battle phase to Soul Exchange really isn’t such a wise thing to do when every attack you miss out on is one more chance for your opponent to beat you. It’s definitely a key factor in the general switch from two Soul Exchange/one Brain Control to two Brain Control/one Soul Exchange, and I suspect that Soul Exchange will be entirely phased out by March for this reason as well. The number one reason that Monarch decks lose is because they can’t summon their Monarchs, and while blowing away all the Monarch player’s weaker monsters with Deck Devastation Virus can certainly cause that state to occur, it isn’t a be all, end all solution to the problem.

Deck Devastation Virus is only a temporary fix, and if you can’t win in the three turns in which your opponent is crippled by it, there’s always a chance for a comeback. Things get worse for you if you happen to knock a Treeborn Frog into the graveyard with your Deck Devastation Virus. It basically makes the lack of any other monsters irrelevant, due to the fact that (barring any other effects) your opponent will be able to summon a new Monarch every single turn. Fortunately, I’ve got a workaround for the Frog problem, and it’s none other than King Tiger Wanghu. The last time Wanghu was a popular choice was when Scapegoat roamed the earth in triplicate. We may not have the Sheep infestation that we did back in 2005, but recruiter monsters have gained immense popularity since then. If Wanghu runs into a standard recruiter, the only way your opponent can make it work for him or her is if it’s a Mystic Tomato turning into a Sangan, and even then, it does nothing for the opponent’s field presence. Wanghu also stops the opponent from bringing Treeborn Frog back into play and forces him or her to either deal with the Beast or just lose. There’s more to this week’s deck than just King Tiger Wanghu and Deck Devastation Virus, but I think I’d better just show you before I get carried away.

Monsters: 21

3 Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World

3 Sillva, Warlord of Dark World

3 Cyber Dragon

3 King Tiger Wanghu

3 Drillroid

2 Asura Priest

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Morphing Jar

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Giant Orc

Spells: 12

1 Graceful Charity

1 Card Destruction

3 Dark World Lightning

3 Enemy Controller

1 Heavy Storm

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Premature Burial

1 Book of Moon

Traps: 8

2 Deck Devastation Virus

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Mirror Force

1 Call of the Haunted

3 Solemn Judgment

This is what many players would call an “anti-meta” deck: a deck that seeks to combat the most popular deck in the metagame by fully exploiting its weaknesses. Past anti-meta decks include “Beastdown,” from the era of rampant Scapegoat abuse, and the distinctly less successful Gravekeeper decks from last format. In general, an anti-meta deck will win against the popular deck an overwhelming amount of the time, but will usually lose to just about everything else. In our current format, “everything else” tends to mean “Cyber-Stein OTK,” but fortunately, there’s one card that’s just as good against the Apprentice Magician engine as it is against Cyber-Stein. That card is Drillroid, and it’s really quite excellent. The main thing that’s been keeping it out of the spotlight lately is the success of Recruiter Chaos back at SJC Philadelphia. Since then, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of Mystic Tomato and Shining Angel cards appearing in decks. Shining Angel has dropped off since September 1^st, but Mystic Tomato still remains a very dangerous threat. These recruiters are frequently used to press the attack on an opponent, forcing him or her into using removal that he or she would rather save for something bigger, or allowing the recruiter’s controller a search. To combat this, Banisher of the Radiance became popular due to its ability to remove the recruiter from play regardless of whether it was in attack or defense mode. Nowadays though, Apprentice Magician is the monster to beat, and Drillroid is one of the best things to beat it with. Apprentice Magician, Nimble Momonga, and even the pesky Spirit Reaper will almost always fall to it, and that’s a lot more than you can get out of most monsters.

As usual, Drillroid plays nice with Enemy Controller as does King Tiger Wanghu considering that its 1700 ATK will be enough to take down a Cyber Dragon that’s been forced into defense mode. I’ve also taken measures to try and counteract those decks that run as many Sakuretsu Armor-type cards as possible by including a full set of Dark World Lightning cards in my line-up alongside Heavy Storm. While trap usage seems to be down a bit as of Anaheim, traps are still extremely dangerous to this deck considering that a well-placed Mirror Force or Torrential Tribute spells disaster for your strategy. Even if trap usage is down, Dark World Lightning is still a good card for clearing out set monsters, and if you use it in that manner, you never have to consider the possibility of the monster being chained for a beneficial effect of the opponent. Of course, Treeborn Frog and Sangan are always a pain if you hit them with Lightning, but the Goldd or Sillva you’re likely to drop with it will often make up for that, especially if you follow with King Tiger Wanghu. A bit of quick math shows that a direct hit from a Dark World monster and Wanghu does 4000 damage, so you only actually need two direct hits on your opponent to win. You’d be surprised how often you can pull it off on the first couple turns of the game.

The last thing I want to talk about is Instant Fusion. While I may not be playing the card in this particular deck, I did mention towards the beginning that I think Soul Exchange will be phased out of Monarch decks by the next time the Forbidden list changes. In addition to the impact that not being able to attack has on the Monarch strategy, I should also point out that Soul Exchange can be a dead card to you if the Monarch you’re holding is Zaborg. After all, if your opponent has only one monster on the field, tributing it with Soul Exchange to summon Zaborg isn’t exactly a good idea. Tributing the monster to set Zaborg is even worse due to the fact that your opponent will most likely just run it down with Cyber Dragon next turn. This is where Instant Fusion comes into play. While it costs a bit more than Brain Control, it functions as a way to gather tribute material in situations where Brain Control or Soul Exchange could end up doing more harm than good. It’s also useful in the same situations as Soul Exchange as long as you’re holding the right Monarch, and it never costs you a battle phase. Instant Fusion also counts as a Fusion summon, so if you’re playing a Zombie deck, you’ll definitely want to consider it as a way to both find monsters to tribute and to get a “properly” summoned Reaper on the Nightmare into your graveyard for Book of Life.

If you haven’t checked out this week’s School of Duel, I highly recommend you do so, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: When you just don’t feel like tributing monsters, next week’s deck is the way to go.