Since players anticipated such a huge amount of Chaos to be present in the Yu-Gi-Oh! U.S. Nationals metagame, many banked on turbo decks to win games before Chaos could get up and running. Though Dark Manticore/Exodia decks can often pull off turn-one wins, the Nationals environment has few or no such decks. Instead, truly aggressive players dedicated to culling speedy wins as quickly as possible are running Magical Scientist One-Hit KO decks—decks that use Magical Scientist and Catapult Turtle to deal fatal amounts of direct damage to clinch games. For those not familiar with it, the deck traditionally uses a few well-known combos to clinch games as early as turn 1, getting Catapult Turtle and Magical Scientist to the field while the Scientist player has more Life Points than the opponent, then special summoning 2100+ ATK Fusion monsters via Scientist for 1000 Life Points a pop, which are then tributed to Catapult Turtle for 1050 or 1100 damage to the opponent. In an ideal situation, this is done seven times, and then the Scientist and the Turtle are tributed for the win. The combo most players use to pull this off are Canon Soldier and Last Will (wherein Cannon Soldier tributes itself to use Last Will’s effect, special summoning Magical Scientist or Catapult Turtle to the field), as well as two to three Mystic Tomato and Mother Grizzly to the same effect.

The traditional deck is alright, but it’s missing reliability and thus isn’t taken seriously by many players. However, several highly skilled One-Hit KO players are using Scientist decks in the Nationals competition. They’re using some original, creative synergies and tactics to make the one-trick pony Scientist deck of the past into a lean, reliable machine, and most are finding that they can get a first-turn win in 75 to 85 percent of their games.

The first “new age” Scientist trick is the use of Reasoning. Experimented with widely for months, but popularized by players in the early Regional tourneys such as New York, Reasoning fits into Scientist decks simply because, when faced with the decision of calling a monster level, most players are going to predict level 4, meaning that Magical Scientist or Catapult Turtle can be special summoned as a result. Here at Origins, many players are taking Reasoning to new levels, building their decks without Mystic Tomato or Mother Grizzly in order to have a high success rate with the spell. Some players are even going so far as to throw large tribute monsters into their Scientist deck to ensure that their Reasonings pack a punch.

Gilasaurus is another method that might be familiar to non-Scientist players. Gilasaurus provides more tribute fodder for Catapult Turtle’s effect as well as its own normal summoning. When used in the early game before monsters hit the opponent’s graveyard, Gilasaurus is basically a free summon for the turn on which it is played.

Some of the more original tactics being seen at Nationals are a bit more interesting. Monster Recovery, when used to return Serpentine Princess to the deck, acts as both a Reload and a chance to grab Scientist and special summon it. Not only do you get half the one-hit KO combo nailed, you also get a decent defense monster in the meantime and a new hand.

Also seeing a lot of use are massive Fusion decks, packing monsters of a wide array of attack powers. The reason? If a Scientist player has Scientist out on the field and plays Last Will, he or she can meet Last Will’s condition very easily if he or she can use Scientist to pull out a monster and suicide it by rushing it against a bigger attack-position monster of the opponent’s. So, if a one-hit KO player has a Fusion deck with monsters ranging from the low triple-digits in attack to about 1900, he or she is always going to be able to have the perfect candidate for suicide.

These, and a handful of other ingenious strategies have been used by the truly creative to try and push the one-hit KO Magical Scientist deck into the top tier of Nationals competition.