David Rodriguez is widely hailed as the duelist who finally won a Shonen Jump Championship with Cyber-Stein back in San Jose last year. Now, almost a year later, he’s back with yet another dominating OTK: A Demise build teched with new cards, built as a cooperative effort with Hugo Adame.

Rodriguez has 2-0’d both of his opponents thus far today, winning his first duel in two turns with Demise. The trick? He sides into a Burn build, which won him his second game on turn 4. In his second match he won with Demise on turn 3, game 1, going on to claim game 2 with Burn again. Like Mike Glowacki’s Samurais, this deck is fast, consistent, and seeks to out speed what most anticipated as the slow pace of today’s competition. And it’s working:

There are two groups of cards in this deck that interest me. The first is the new material: primarily Trade-In and Swing of Memories. While Trade-In has been lauded quite loudly as a new must-run for Demise, the Swing has garnered a lot less attention. Rodriguez has optimized the efficiency of both cards by maxing out on the number of Metal Armored Bugs he’s running. That gives him nine hits for Trade-In, which is the perfect number to ensure that the new spell is never a dead card for very long. It also gives him five targets for Swing of Memories since he’s also running two Insect Knight.

Two copies of Swing of Memories gives Rodriguez another pair of cards that can dish out big damage, swinging for either 1900 with Insect Knight or 2800 with Metal Armored Bug. It’s even an instant combo with Trade-In too, since the Bug can be discarded and then immediately brought back completely independent of the deck’s central strategy. The element of speed and aggression that these two additions bring to the core theme can’t be underestimated, and many opponents aren’t ready for it.

Swing of Memories also sets Rodriguez up to use Great Maju Garzett, an unconventional pick that’s highly effective. Since the Swing destroys the monster it special summoned in the end phase of the turn it was activated, the monster’s really no loss — against an open field it can be tributed immediately, and Great Maju Garzett will have either 5600 ATK from Metal Armored Bug or 3800 from Insect Knight. Against a more complicated field, Rodriguez can wait to tribute in main phase 2 so that he doesn’t walk into a removal trap.

Beyond that the deck also runs Marshmallon. It’s actually got quite a defensive orientation, using Magic Cylinder, Threatening Roar, Gravity Bind and Swords of Revealing Light to buy itself time. Beyond that the deck is what you would expect: combo enablers like Giant Trunade and Premature Burial mixed with Demise standbys like Senju of the Thousand Hands and Sonic Bird. It runs very few copies of the latter however, a change it can presumably afford to make just because it has so many different ways to wreak havoc on the opponent’s life points. Three Doom Dozer of course round out the Insect-heavy decklist.

A duelist facing this deck and fearing Demise as their only major concern is going to be very surprised. David Rodriguez has essentially taken a very narrow, often predictable strategy and turned it into something much more. That surprise factor is going to win him a lot of games today, because even if he faces an opponent prepared for the Demise matchup, he’s got a ton of tricks they aren’t likely to anticipate. If you’re looking for a Demise build to use for your testing gauntlet, or would like to play Demise at your tournaments, I’d really recommend something like this version. Rodriguez has tasted title gold before, and another Day 2 qualification is a very real possibility this weekend.