Yesterday, Jerome showed you what I consider to be the seminal Elemental Hero Neos / HERO Flash!! deck. I put it together myself, and it delivers on all the media hype that’s surrounded the Elemental Hero monsters over the past year. With the release of Elemental Hero Neos, the Elemental Heroes have finally arrived in style, and could drastically shake up local tournaments.

Today I’m going to look at another deck that focuses on Elemental Hero Neos, but I’m going to take it in a different direction to show you just one way that you can create new strategies with Jaden’s newest headliner. Today’s submission comes from Charles B. in Austin, Texas.

Hi Jason!

I’ve been a fan of the Elemental Heroes for quite a while, but something always seemed missing. They’ve had lots of cool tricks available before, but the thing they lacked has finally arrived: Elemental Hero Neos.

This deck uses Elemental Hero Necroshade to get Neos and Elemental Hero Bladedge into play as quickly as possible, and it also uses Elemental Hero Clayman and Elemental Hero Sparkman to fuse for Elemental Hero Thunder Giant. I run Reinforcement of the Army to help me search out the fusion materials, and it also lets me search for one of two Exiled Force. Together with Thunder Giant, Exiled Force gives this deck a lot of monster removal.

I’ve played this deck a bit in my home store’s tournaments, and it’s doing better than any other Elemental Hero deck I’ve tried before. Maybe you have some new ideas for it? Being an Elemental Hero fan, I’m willing to try just about anything so long as it’s cool.

Thanks Jason,

Charles B. ~ Austin, Texas

Charles’s e-mail was exactly what I was looking for. Because Neos is a normal monster, and not an effect monster, there are a ton of older cards that we can dust off and combo with it to create unique strategies. If you’ve been reading Metagame lately you’ve probably already considered Neos’ synergy with cards like Non-Spellcasting Area and Soul Resurrection, but the card I want to try and use is a long-time favorite of my own. Anyways, before we get to that, here’s Charles’s deck list as he submitted it to me:

Neos Craziness — 40 Cards 

Monsters: 19

3 Elemental Hero Neos

1 Elemental Hero Bladedge

3 Elemental Hero Necroshade

3 Elemental Hero Clayman

3 Elemental Hero Sparkman

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

1 Magician of Faith

1 Spirit Reaper

2 Exiled Force

Spells: 16

2 H — Heated Heart

2 E — Emergency Call

2 R — Righteous Justice

2 O — Oversoul

1 HERO Flash!!

2 Miracle Fusion

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

Traps: 5

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Sakuretsu Armor

Fusion:

2 Elemental Hero Thunder Giant

It’s a solid build with a lot of tricks. HERO Flash!! can special summon Elemental Hero Neos from your deck and let it attack directly. Elemental Hero Necroshade can eliminate the tribute costs of Elemental Hero Neos and Elemental Hero Bladedge, making for even more surprising offense. Miracle Fusion leverages your fallen Heroes into more field presence and more field control by summoning Elemental Hero Thunder Giant. This giant-sized Elemental Hero blows away tricky defenders like Mystic Tomato, Nimble Momonga, and D. D. Warrior Lady. The cool part? It also lets you discard cards to the graveyard, so you can pitch Elemental Hero Neos and bring it back with O – Oversoul, or ditch Elemental Hero Necroshade to get its effect.

It’s that premise that I want to tinker with. I think a deck that can just keep Elemental Hero Neos in play, and get it onto the field very quickly in the first few turns of a game, is something to be reckoned with. Since Snatch Steal and Chaos Sorcerer are gone, it’s far more viable to run a strategy that just involves clubbing the opponent with a big piece of field presence. Keep Neos around and you suddenly control the tempo of the game. The opponent is forced to play defensively, and you can then take advantage of your field presence with cards like R — Righteous Justice and H — Heated Heart. You can force the opponent onto the defensive, and then extend your central strategy into moves that are specially designed to blow away a defensive player.

I’m going to aim to do that, while also taking the “discard cards to perform awesome tricks” thing to a new level. You’ll see what I mean once I start adding cards to the deck.

First, I’m going to have to make one big sacrifice in order to get the deck space I need: Thunder Giant has to go. He’s actually a great card in this new format, but I’m going to have other plans for my destroyed Elemental Heroes, and I won’t be able to use them for Miracle Fusion. As a result, I’ll have to drop both Miracle Fusion as well as the three Elemental Hero Sparkman. Without Thunder Giant, it just doesn’t have a place in this deck.

Magician of Faith and Spirit Reaper are also going to be dropped. I don’t need Reaper’s defensive potential here, and if everything goes to plan I’d rather swing for big damage instead of doing a small hit that robs the opponent of one card. I’ve got stuff like R — Righteous Justice to limit my opponent’s options: he or she will be playing cards out of their hand fast enough for me to destroy them with a variety of effects once I start thumping him or her with pairs of Neos anyways.

The last monster I want to remove I’ll actually just bounce to the side deck. Elemental Hero Bladedge is a beast when combined with Elemental Hero Necroshade, but I’m going to be placing more emphasis on O — Oversoul, a card Bladedge doesn’t work with. Still, if your opponent is good at turtling, side deck it in to crack open the opponent’s defenses.

I’m going to remove HERO Flash!!, because this deck wants to hit hard and fast, and Flash!! can be a poor draw early on. Cards like R — Righteous Justice present the same problem, but I think they’re easier to use than Flash.

Nobleman of Crossout is one of the hardest drops I’m making here, but I think it will be worthwhile in the long run. Spirit Reaper is less of a problem in the current format, and if the opponent wants to play slow tempo monsters like Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and Magical Merchant, this deck won’t mind, especially if Neos swings into such a monster with H — Heated Heart. Again, feel free to side Nobleman if you feel you might need it in your area.

With more emphasis on searching for Neos, and less emphasis on searching for the smaller Warriors, Reinforcement of the Army is no longer a priority. I’m going to drop it, and replace it with another copy of E — Emergency Call. The Call can fetch both Neos and Necroshade, each of which are central to our strategy, so being able to search out either is integral.

It feels weird, but I’m dropping Mystical Space Typhoon to the side deck as well. R — Righteous Justice is almost always superior, and, in testing, drawing Mystical Space Typhoon usually made me wish I’d just drawn Justice instead. Shock, dismay! “Staple” cards being dropped!?! Welcome to September, folks.

Finally, I’m going to remove Call of the Haunted and Sakuretsu Armor. I’ll be focusing on Elemental Hero-specific recursion, and since Call and Sakuretsu aren’t all that necessary here, they just present a liability when you’re faced with Royal Decree. Keeping this deck’s trap count down won’t just make it immune to Decree, it will also ensure that we’re playing proactive cards most of the time instead of reactive ones.

The first cards I want to add are the lynchpins for my fixed build: three Dark Factory of Mass Production. One Dark Factory is going to get me two normal monsters back from my graveyard, and I’m going to use that extra card to fuel some powerful discard effects. In addition, Dark Factory is going to let me return a fallen Neos that I don’t have O — Oversoul for back to my hand. I’ll then be able to normal summon it if I have an Elemental Hero Necroshade in my graveyard, and with the discard effects I’ll be adding I’ll usually be able to pitch a Necroshade at will.

So to recap, the cards returned to my hand by Dark Factory of Mass Production will feed discard effects that also get Necroshade into the graveyard. Necroshade will then bring the biggest, baddest target for Dark Factory back into play. Cool stuff, huh?

Right now this deck has three Neos and three Clayman to use with Dark Factory. The neat thing is that both monsters are pretty hard to knock off the field thanks to their high stats, and that means you’ll control an opponent’s attack options. In addition, it also means that you’ll frequently be claiming two of the opponent’s spell or trap cards whenever you activate R — Righteous Justice. With that said though, I think we need a little more fodder for use with Dark Factory.

Enter a pair of Gemini Elf. While beatsticks don’t get any more basic than these two (or these four, if you’re keeping track), their stats are very good. That translates to aggression and field dominance, and because you know you’ll be able to get your Elves back into your hand with Dark Factory of Mass Production, you can often take bigger risks than you normally would. Whacking one of the opponent’s monsters with one of yours and forcing him or her to use a card like Smashing Ground on it on the following turn hurts him or her. If you then retrieve that card from your graveyard later on, essentially for free, you’re just rubbing salt in their wounds. Since we can always get these normal monsters back from the graveyard, we can storm the field fearlessly.

I like the two Exiled Force, and to support them, I’m going to add in three Giant Rat. The Rats will give us yet another way to maintain field presence, while also thinning this deck a bit. That’s important, because I’m probably going to end up a little bit over the 40 card mark. That’s fine though, because with E — Emergency Call and the Rats thinning my deck, it won’t create problems in the long run. To go with my Giant Rats I’m going to add another monster to my suite of searchable Earth-types. Injection Fairy Lily is great, because it can knock a Cyber-Stein player for a loop or finish off the opponent unexpectedly. But it’s especially deadly in this deck, because of the one HERO card that doesn’t focus on Elemental Hero Monsters: H — Heated Heart. Warm Lily’s heart sufficiently, and it’ll be swinging for a fiery 3900 ATK by the time it hits the damage step. It’ll then pierce through any defense position monster in its way. Brutal.

The last monster I want to add is Morphing Jar. This deck loves to get Neos and Necroshade into the graveyard early on, and Morphing Jar is just an amazing card for any synergy-heavy deck. Set Dark Factory of Mass Production, discard a couple normal monsters with the Jar, and then immediately recover them by flipping the Factory . . . this deck uses Morphing Jar like none other, and it’s a must-have here.

E — Emergency Call and O — Oversoul are both integral to our success, so I’m going to max out on each. Emergency Call replaces the one Reinforcement of the Army I removed earlier, and ensures that we can get Necroshade and Neos into our hand as early as possible. O — Oversoul lets us beat the tar out of the opponent with Neos once it’s set up, while also fuelling bigger blasts of Righteous Justice.

The last cards I want to add are the ones that will take advantage of all our extra discard fodder. This format lets us run three Lightning Vortex? Great — let’s play ‘em. Three copies of Vortex will keep the opponent running scared, daring him or her to over-commit to the field. Even if you take out two monsters with Vortex and your discarded card, the trade is heavily in your favor if you’re discarding a normal monster, Neos, or Necroshade.

Finally, I’m going to add a single copy of Monster Reincarnation. It’ll come in handy when you side in Elemental Hero Bladedge, and it will let you reuse Morphing Jar. You can even do crazy stuff like activate it, discard Necroshade, return Neos to your hand, and then normal summon it with Necroshade’s effect. Or, just trade a Clayman or Gemini Elf for something else. Perhaps Sangan? This card opens up a ton of options that your opponent just won’t see coming.

Here are the final changes I made to Charles’ deck!

-3 Elemental Hero Sparkman

-1 Magician of Faith

-1 Spirit Reaper

-1 Elemental Hero Bladedge

-1 HERO Flash!!

-2 Miracle Fusion

-1 Nobleman of Crossout

-1 Reinforcement of the Army

-1 Mystical Space Typhoon

-1 Call of the Haunted

-1 Sakuretsu Armor

+2 Gemini Elf

+3 Giant Rat

+1 Injection Fairy Lily

+1 Morphing Jar

+1 E — Emergency Call

+1 O — Oversoul

+3 Dark Factory of Mass Production

+3 Lightning Vortex

+1 Monster Reincarnation

The final build, which I’ve dubbed Discard Neos Craziness, looks like this:

Discard Neos Craziness — Jason’s Fix — 42 Cards 

Monsters: 20

3 Elemental Hero Neos

3 Elemental Hero Necroshade

3 Elemental Hero Clayman

2 Gemini Elf

3 Giant Rat

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

1 Morphing Jar

2 Exiled Force

1 Injection Fairy Lily

Spells: 19

2 H — Heated Heart

3 E — Emergency Call

2 R — Righteous Justice

3 O — Oversoul

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

3 Dark Factory of Mass Production

3 Lightning Vortex

1 Monster Reincarnation

Traps: 3

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

This deck opens with much more strength than one might first assume. Elemental Hero Clayman and Giant Rat are both prime openers if you go first, as both usually ensure that you’ll have a monster on the field going into your second turn. Cyber Dragon is one of this deck’s only fears, but Heated Heart allows Gemini Elf and Breaker to trump it. You’ve also got a pair of Exiled Force, three Lightning Vortex, Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute, and Ring of Destruction, not to mention Neos itself.

In the early game, infrastructure and aggression are your two big concerns. You want to get cards into the graveyard early so you can start abusing Neos and Dark Factory, so don’t hesitate to open a duel with Morphing Jar, or at least play it as soon as possible. Remember that even if the opponent reads a set Jar and sets cards to their back row, you’re going to have R — Righteous Justice to show him or her who’s boss. Unless the opponent is running Dark World, you can’t get slammed by your own Morphing Jar.

Press fast and early. Your main goal is to get out Neos and keep it out, because once it’s on the field the opponent is eventually going to run out of answers. Your job is to just overwhelm him or her with raw ATK in order to force him or her to play out his or her hand. Then, Righteous Justice and Lightning Vortex simplify the field and leave you with a 2500 ATK thug sitting front and center. If you can create a topdecking situation in which you control Neos, you’ll probably win. While the opponent draws useless Cyber Dragons and reactive solutions like Exiled Force and Sakuretsu Armor, you’ll be drawing O — Oversoul and your Necroshade combos.

This deck is a blast to play, and the looks it can get from your opponents are simply priceless. Lightning Vortex early on and you can get some serious mind games going. Vortex, Heated Heart, and Righteous Justice are all very cerebral cards, and all three will cut off options in your opponent’s mind. Just be careful with how you use Justice — you don’t want to get into a position where you control a lot more Elemental Heroes than your opponent controls spells and traps, because Justice will be a dead card in that kind of scenario. Then again, if you have a couple Neos and Clayman on the board you’re probably winning anyways.

Give it a try. It’s almost absurd, but Neos’ status as a normal monster makes it an exceptionally versatile card, and there are plenty of ways to build successful decks around it. So far, this is one of the best, and most entertaining, that I’ve found.

(And remember, with the Elemental Hero Neos tin, you can even add some shine and sparkle to this deck!)

Thanks for sending it in, Charles!

-Jason Grabher-Meyer

Working on a deck for the new Advanced format? Looking for some help, or just want to see your creation right here on Metagame? Send it to me, and you might see your deck featured in an Apotheosis column! I’m Jason (at) metagame (dot) com, and I’m always looking for cool new decks to write about.