The "deck to beat" wars have been raging over the past few weeks and it looks like we’ve found our winner: Dark Armed Dragon Return. This presents a problem for deckbuilders. Seven of the eight decks in the Top 8 at Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa were Dark Armed Return variants. That’s a whopping 87.5% of the competition! Evaluating this more globally, let’s look at the Top 32. About 21 out of the 32 decks present were Dark Armed Dragon Return—that’s 65% of the competition that actually qualified for Day 2. Of the decks in the Top 32, 25 ran Dark Armed Dragon in the main deck and two others had it in the side.
In a way, this simplifies deckbuilding since you now have a limited set of targets. The most common matchup after a certain point at a Regional or Shonen Jump will be Dark Armed Return. It’s hard to beat this deck consistently, and it’s even harder to trump a deck that splashes Dark Armed effectively (something Kris Perovic proved with his Diamond Dude Turbo build featuring a playset of the Dragon). Six Samurai decks have proven to be a quick, cheap, and fast solution to Dark Armed Return, though they sometimes lack consistency. It’s nice to see that two Gadget decks also made the Top 32 with pretty solid builds.
The point of this article is to come up with ways to trump Dark Armed Dragon decks consistently. Let’s re-hash the obvious strengths of the Dark Armed Return deck:
-Dark Armed Dragon is one of the most powerful cards in the game right now.
-Decks built around it are very fast and have at least six ways to draw two cards.
-They have good graveyard management with Prometheus, King of the Shadows, Soul Release, and Strike Ninja.
-In fact, they’re quite comfortable with their removed-from-play pile thanks to cards like Return from the Different Dimension and Escape from the Dark Dimension.
-Dark Armed Return decks, being Dark-based, feature powerful, high-level monsters like Jinzo, Dark Magician of Chaos, and Darklord Zerato.
Our task is to come up with a deck that can withstand the force of the mentioned strengths, and I think Zombies can pull it off while maintaining a tight hold on other matchups. Jason Grabher-Meyer came up with convincing arguments in favor of the Zombie deck in his
March 9th article in The Binder. Like him, I am a huge fan of Zombie decks and I’m always looking for ways that they can shine. I’ll offer some of my own opinions as an addendum to his article.
Zombies—How They Measure Up
With the introduction of
Goblin Zombie, Zombies gained that extra "oomph" they needed to pull off the
Card of Safe Return combo more consistently. Searching for
Zombie Master is, as Jason said (quoting Matt Peddle), one of the key components to executing your game-winning combo in a Zombie deck. Besides that, a single-turn over-extension to achieve victory seems to be the theme of today’s combo-oriented metagame.
Allure of Darkness easily fits into the Zombie deck and it adds even more consistency.
I think that Pyramid Turtle is still somewhat important by virtue of its effect. Its relevance may wane in time if the format becomes even more skewed towards combo-dependent strategies. If this happens, then exchanges in battle become less and less meaningful in the long term against your opponent. Pyramid Turtle is less likely to pull off its effect, but it can double as a wall against any preliminary pressure your opponent may try to bring upon you. I don’t think you’ll really need it anymore, but it will still be good.
My opinions are in line with Jason’s on dropping Creature Swap from a Zombie list. However, I disagree with its validity in today’s affairs primarily because I don’t think intelligent battle exchanges are very relevant at this time, not because it’s bad in an opening hand of no Zombies (even though it’s a small contributing factor). Your opponent is busy setting up a combo while trying not to lose all of his or her life points. While I was in my usual round of testing, I found that I spent the majority of my time waiting for my opponent to finish drawing cards. Afterwards, if the opponent had two Darks in the graveyard, then I had to do my best to keep him or her from getting a third. If the opponent has three Darks and drops Dark Armed Dragon at a good time, then you may not survive the assault. You can’t wait for your opponent to set up the field for you anymore, because you’ll have 0 life points by then. If you choose to play Creature Swap (and it’s a big if), then it’s best used after surviving your opponent’s power turn from his or her Dark Armed Return, Diamond Dude Turbo, or Six Samurai deck. Generally, I wouldn’t depend on that.
One of Jason’s points that intrigued me the most was the effectiveness of Goblin Zombie’s discard effect. There may be some merit in discarding from the top of the deck. While this carries the risk of setting up Dark monsters in your opponent’s graveyard without him or her doing any work, you can also get rid of key spells and traps. In this respect, I think Don Zaloog can do some real good in a Zombie build. I’d actually test him with a few copies of Mystic Tomato or Reinforcement of the Army to fetch Don and then knock the top two cards from the opposing deck.
Book of Life is a card that gets attention from time to time, and I think it may be that time again. Since we’re looking for cards to manipulate the opponent’s graveyard in our favor, while at the same time accomplishing something else that’s meaningful, Book of Life conveniently fits into both categories. With proper graveyard disruption, a Dark Armed Return deck has to rely on its Plan B: Return. If you can handle Return, then the rest is cake.
Final Thoughts
I think Jason may be right on the money by stating that Zombies will have a chance to shine in the future. The slow speed and inconsistency of Macro Cosmos makes decks like Zombies or Dark Armed Dragon much easier to play. Even if they were more prevalent, Return and Escape can offer safe haven against remove-from-play strategies. I’ll attempt to build a more refined Zombie deck to see how it stacks up against common decks over the next few days, and then I’ll comment on the results next week.