Hello there! My name is Matthew Murphy, and I’m a new recruit to Metagame.com. I am a college student, eighteen years of age, and I’ve been following Yu-Gi-Oh! (both the card game and the animated series) since late 2001. Since the rest of the information is either unentertaining or irrelevant, I’ll leave it for later times. Today I bring you combos—hot off the grill (or whatever the correct phrase is).

There are a lot of good combos in the game. They range from obscure to funny to more obscure and even funnier. I really like combos, and I don’t think I’m alone. It’s a fairly uniting topic. We all like to build some sort of synergy into our decks. It might be simple stuff like Asura Priest (or any Spirit monster, really) with Creature Swap, or Treeborn Frog with a bunch of tribute monsters, or even Skill Drain with Goblin Attack Force. Players love to combo, no matter the age or play style. It’s just plain fun to see cards in your deck working together to achieve a higher goal than they could produce alone. 

It’s a great niche to write about. While I have some truly delicious tidbits here, I’ll save some of the best ones for later. We’ll start off with one of my favorite cards from Strike of Neos, Cloak and Dagger. I liked this card from the moment I saw it, particularly because of its potential to interact in funny ways with special summoning effects. If your opponent activates the effect of Treeborn Frog or Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys that effect goes on a chain, and you can then flip over your copy of Cloak and Dagger naming that card. All of a sudden, your opponent is forced to special summon his or her monster and you remove it from play as soon as it hits the field. Another thing I like about Cloak and Dagger is the potential to invalidate the cards in your opponent’s hand. What good is a Cyber Dragon if it’s removed from play as soon as it’s summoned? Cloak and Dagger has other uses as well, such as naming a card that could win your opponent the game so that it can’t impact the field (making it a good card when you are winning). It can be anything from a wall of defense against the worst card your opponent can play, to a counter for Premature Burial or some other special summon effect, to a more flexible, focused version of Bottomless Trap Hole.

Since you can’t know exactly what your opponent has in his or her hand, you need something to use in combination with it. Since we’re already using one exciting card from Strike of Neos, it’s no stretch to add another that many players have already taken a liking to. Neo-Spacian Grand Mole allows us to put monsters the opponent has already played back into his or her hand, which also allows us to flip Cloak and Dagger naming that monster, invalidating that card and preventing our opponent from playing it again. This particular combo of “bounce” and Cloak and Dagger is absolutely cruel, letting your opponent keep the card in his or her hand as a painful reminder that it can’t be used without it immediately leaving the field.

So far, we have a pretty narrow set of cards: assuming we run three copies of Cloak and Dagger (the important part of the combo) and one Neo-Spacian Grand Mole, we have four cards total, or ten percent of the deck. We’ll expand the strategy to include other forms of “bounce”—that is, an effect which returns monsters on the field to their owner’s hand. This way, we have extra methods of removing a monster from the field and determining what monster names to call for Cloak and Dagger. Compulsory Evacuation Device is good here, but feel free to play anything from Penguin Soldier to Legendary Jujitsu Master. Since I am only discussing rough drafts, it’s up to the player to decide what the most enjoyable route is. If we are going to have bounce, then a little bit of discard probably couldn’t hurt either. Of course, it should be noted that too many cards like Don Zaloog, Mind Crush or Spirit Reaper will conflict with using Cloak and Dagger. 

So we add a little bit of discard. I like Spirit Reaper here more than Don Zaloog. Though I may still add him, I prefer the former since Spirit Reaper will help protect a field that might otherwise be left wide open. The continuous bounce that your Mole provides leaves your field open as well, which means you need to compensate for what might be a double-edged sword. Don Zaloog provides very little presence on the field, so he is a less desirable option. Playing into the whole idea of field presence, we’ll also add three copies of Giant Rat, a card that received several major boons recently. On top of receiving an awesome target for its search effect in the form of the ever-friendly Grand Mole, it also gained several new targets from the Machine Re-Volt (I like that pun) structure deck. While the Gadget monsters do not play into our combo or our theme, there is one overlooked 1500 ATK monster that I will give attention to. Ancient Gear Engineer is the little robot that could, attacking without fear of retribution from Sakuretsu Armor, Mirror Force, or Widespread Ruin, while destroying your opponent’s spell and trap zone. We’ll add one copy of this monster to the deck.

Giant Rat is going to be a central part of our plan, allowing us to search out a copy of Grand Mole or Ancient Gear Engineer from the deck as needed. Other cards can be added to increase the utility of the adorable rodent. Exiled Force allows you to blow up a Cyber Dragon or plop your opponent’s high-powered monster into the graveyard, and a single copy of Des Lacooda will help you draw into more options and hopefully your combo pieces! Two copies of Exiled and one Des Lacooda get added to our build. At this point I must consider more things to work in tandem with either of the two cards our deck and our combo are based upon. It really hurts that Cloak and Dagger’s only help comes from a card that is Limited to one per deck. At the same time, we lack good offensive cards, so to help ensure that we know what is in the opponent’s hand, defend the strategy, and see the opponent’s options, we add two copies each of Compulsory Evacuation Device and Trap Dustshoot.

But we can be even more proactive with our bounce effects. Instead of merely limiting ourselves to monster cards, we can use a sort of discard toolbox. D.D. Designator allows us to remove a pesky card from play so that it really can’t come back, and Great Phantom Thief serves the double purpose of discarding cards from the opponent’s hand (whether you are guessing or not) and allowing you a glimpse at his or her hand so that you can name cards wisely with Cloak and Dagger. Both cards encourage us to play an extra copy of Trap Dustshoot. Since we already have five useful toolbox cards for Giant Rat, I found it no stretch to add another high-utility option that can be searched out by our awesome rodent friend. Let’s add a sixth option that will not only add good defense, but also play into the bounce theme. We’re going to add a Golem Sentry to the deck.

From here, we can put together a basic list of other high-utility cards and cards that are strong on their own. While there are other options for the deck, I feel that I should stay focused to what I already have. So we add a number of cards and end up with this list:

A Cloaked Mole—42 Cards

Monsters: 19

1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

1 Sangan

1 Spirit Reaper

1 Golem Sentry

1 Des Lacooda

1 Great Phantom Thief

3 Giant Rat

2 Exiled Force

1 Ancient Gear Engineer

1 Treeborn Frog

2 Cyber Dragon

2 Des Koala

2 Gravekeeper’s Spy

Spells: 13

3 Smashing Ground

2 Creature Swap

2 D.D. Designator

1 Confiscation

1 Snatch Steal

1 Premature Burial

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Book of Moon

Traps: 10

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

3 Cloak and Dagger

3 Trap Dustshoot

2 Compulsory Evacuation Device

I’d like to explain some of the off-theme additions. Smashing Ground helps the deck to answer cards like Jinzo or Elemental Hero Wildheart that might otherwise cause problems. Treeborn Frog and Gravekeeper’s Spy have proven themselves solid cards. Gravekeeper’s Spy builds up defense while thinning out your deck (very crucial for the combo engine) and Cyber Dragon is simply a great aggressive card. Des Koala is an excellent source of damage with all of the bounce effects in the deck. There are other ways you can go, but this is the one I will leave you to tinker with, because I feel it is a good base to work off of. This is your opportunity to get creative, but I’ll get you started with some ideas sure to get your creative juices flowing

One thing that might bring your opponent to tears is playing cards more along the lines of D.D. Designator. While I wanted to assist the deck in answering a copy of Jinzo when I chose D.D. Designator over Mind Crush (note the Book of Moon and three Smashing Ground cards), you can certainly focus more on Mind Crush, Great Phantom Thief, and D.D. Designator than I chose to.

Another option for the fiendish player is Spring of Rebirth. What’s better than bouncing everything your opponent plays? Gaining life points in a ludicrous fashion simultaneously!

You can also expand more on some of the sub-themes. You can certainly add reactive trap defense like Sakuretsu Armor or Bottomless Trap Hole, and focus on using Des Lacooda repeatedly to draw more defenses. This not only increases your options, but also makes it difficult to destroy the Des Lacooda. Of course, this isn’t even touching on the idea of using stall cards such as Level Limit - Area B with Golem Sentry, Des Lacooda, or their ilk. You can take the sub-themes anywhere.

This is merely a brief delve into the possibilities here, of course. You can do a lot with this deck, and it was fun to play around with. In my next session, we’ll look at a twist on an overlooked Gravekeeper card! Until next time, duelists!

—Matthew “Coin Flip” Murphy