Last week, Paul Levitin sent me an email to say that his team had another “metagame-breaking deck” for Durham. Now, I get that kind of email on a regular basis, but when it comes from the team that created Bazoo Return, I tend to listen.

After some unfortunate leaks, the deck hit the Internet just a few days ago, so Levitin played the deck publicly here last night in private duels. Seeing the deck’s strength after playing against it, Dale Bellido opted to create his own version in conjunction with the rest of the Superfriends team, and now Scoop and Superfriends are each using their own version here today.

The basic principle? Establish a slow tempo in order to cut off fast wins from Warrior Toolbox and other aggressive decks. Magical Merchant and Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive negate the average player’s ability to gain card advantage through battle. At the same time, the deck uses an inordinately large number of high-level monsters in order to generate card advantage through effects. Chaos Sorcerer, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, and Mobius the Frost Monarch are used with precision accuracy to hit the field hard and fast at just the right time. Because the deck establishes a slow tempo, it has the time to draw into those big monsters and use them effectively. It also doesn’t have to fear poor draws as much as other decks out there, since its heavy defense and ability to see more cards on a per-duel basis softens the blow of an opening hand packed with stuff that is less useful early on.

The high-level monsters are almost exactly the same, save the one extra copy of Cyber Dragon in Levitin's build. These are the heart of the deck, and thus there's little deviation here between the two versions. The pair of Zaborg, Mobius, and Chaos Sorcerer are what make the strategy. Without them, the deck is completely different.

Tempo manipulation is where the two decks start getting a bit different. You can look at the lists above (once the event has concluded) and see which monsters are in the deck because they slow tempo. While Levitin is maxed out on copies of Magical Merchant Bellido is only using one. Previous builds of the deck actually ran Pot of Avarice, but the extra Merchants are more than just a holdover from that era. Levitin will generally have more monsters in his graveyard than Bellido, and those monsters fuel his Bazoo the Soul-Eater and copies of Return from the Different Dimension. Both players agree that one Magician of Faith is a must, as well as the two Gravekeeper's Spy, but Bellido has traded hand presence for field presence, going for Mystic Tomato instead of Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. Levitin didn't like the change. “You lose the big hit with Zaborg. You want to flip Dekoichi, draw a card, and then tribute it for Zaborg to destroy a monster.” While Bellido's swap for Mystic Tomato does lose that devastating trick, it can maintain field presence a bit better, arguably making it easier to summon Zaborg or Mobius. That’s going to be important for games in which he opens poorly, and needs to fend off a series of aggressive attacks. He’ll outperform Levitin in that kind of situation.

The disagreement between slow-tempo monsters forms the direction for the rest of the decks. Scoop has opted to run Tsukuyomi, to take advantage of those Dekoichis and create a full-fledged drawing engine. They're also running one copy of Bazoo, banking on the monkey and Chaos Sorcerer to remove monsters for Return from the Different Dimension. Bellido opted just to run Newdoria, widening his options for Mystic Tomato and again cramming more monster removal into his deck. It’s interesting to show how these differences reflect the personal style of each player. Both are using cards with which they’ve had previous success. Bellido won Shonen Jump Chicago with Tomato Control, and is running a Tomato engine, while Levitin won Shonen Jump Los Angeles with Return from the Different Dimension, and has included key cards from that deck. Anyone who says Yu-Gi-Oh! is all about cookie cutters and netdecking, you may want to take note. Here are two of the format’s four champions, applying personal style to the same deck and getting drastically different results.

Back to the technical stuff! Both duelists are running near-identical spells, with the exception being the fact that Bellido is playing three more than Levitin: two Enemy Controller and one Swords of Revealing Light.

Levitin is more committed in the trap department, running one more Widespread Ruin than Bellido, plus two copies of Return from the Different Dimension instead of Bellido's one Trap Hole. While the Returns are a dead draw earlier on, they do give this version more strength than Bellido’s in late game topdecking situations. Remember, too, that the deck’s ability to fend off attacks and slow the game down can cushion the blow of drawing a late-game card early on, so it’s a relatively safe splash.

When either of these decks work, they work extremely well. When they fail miserably, they can still stall like crazy and work with what they’ve got later on. When I asked Levitin what matchups he was fearing, the only thing he said he was concerned with was Flip-Flop Control, and a large chunk of his side deck was dedicated to ousting that archetype. Flip-Flop Control  has the ability to take advantage of slow tempo situations, and once it gets set up with Tsukuyomi and a Dekoichi, it can out-draw Levitin and Bellido. That’s bad news, because this deck needs to gain resource advantage before it swoops in for the kill. If it can’t ever do that, it can’t score a win.

Watch for this deck to be huge here today. Though Levitin took an unfortunate Round 1 loss (maybe those Returns came back to bite him after all?) Bellido is 2-0 right now, and everyone competing against the deck has been seriously impressed. A smart entry into the current metagame, this hot new strategy could easily be the next big thing!