In my preview of D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master, I talked about the synergy that card has with Fusion Gate. While it seemed like a slow deck, it’s one that I think is viable, especially given the conservative play trends that have pervaded most metagames.
Jim G from Ohio gave me a chance to see how viable I could make it when he submitted his own fusion deck! Here’s what he had to say about his deck.
Hi Jason,
I’m Jim, and I’ve been reading your column for quite a while. Great work! I was wondering if you could help me out with my Fusion-based deck. I’ve heard people talking about some of the great new cards coming out in Cybernetic Revolution, and it seems like there are a lot of ideas I could play with. I’m not really sure which I should use and I’m hoping that you can help me out!
My deck is focused on bringing out Gatling Dragon for control, or Big Koala to lay the hurt on opponents with its massive ATK value. I’ve got D. D. Assailant and D. D. Warrior Lady to maintain board presence, as well as Mother Grizzly, and the Grizzly can seek out King of the Swamp for on-field use. It works pretty well, but I find that I tend to lose if my opponent manages to destroy one of my big fusion monsters or otherwise remove it from play.
Please help!
—Jim G., Columbus, Ohio
Here’s the decklist Jim sent in to be fixed up.
Lock, Stock, and Barrel Dragon (…and Koalas!): 40 cards
Monsters: 18
2 Barrel Dragon
2 Big Koala
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
2 D. D. Assailant
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Tribe-Infecting Virus
3 King of the Swamp
3 Mother Grizzly
2 Magician of Faith
Spells: 16
1 Pot of Greed
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Graceful Charity
1 Snatch Steal
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Premature Burial
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Book of Moon
2 Nobleman of Crossout
3 Polymerization
2 Fusion Gate
Traps: 6
1 Mirror Force
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Bottomless Trap Hole
Fusion: 4
2 Master of Oz
2 Gatling Dragon
While Jim’s deck shows a great deal of thought and tweaking, I think I see his problem—this deck kicks out big monsters at a pretty slow rate. It takes a lot of resources to get Master of Oz or Gatling Dragon into play with the deck configured the way that it is now, and if one of them gets taken down, it seems like Jim can’t do a lot to defend himself.
Now, I could go ahead and build the deck defensively by adding in more copies of Sakuretsu Armor, cutting it down to only a single fusion monster, and making the deck run more like a standard Beatdown build with some tricks. But that wouldn’t carry the same flavor as Jim’s original deck, and besides, it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. I think D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master is just what this deck needs!
I’m going to take the deck that Jim built and add a bunch of remove-from-play tricks. These will allow for better control over the board, as well as the ability to swarm with several big monsters once the deck goes off. We’re going to do this mainly through the use of three cards.
The first is Fusion Gate. I’m going to cut one Polymerization, since we can search those out with King of the Swamp anyway, and add a third copy of Fusion Gate. It’s nice because it can be used for multiple fusions (it’s a field card, after all) and it also removes the fusion material monsters from play. That gives us something to bring out with our other two key cards, Return from the Different Dimension and the mighty D. D. M.
Speaking of which, I’m going to add in two copies each of Return from the Different Dimension and D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master. The use of Fusion Gate will make it easier to fuse multiple monsters, and the abuse of the return-to-play mechanic will allow us to add big fusion materials to the horde!
I’m going to change both of those fusion materials, too. Barrel Dragon and Big Koala will both be removed and traded in for alternates. The reason? Barrel Dragon and Big Koala are both high-level monsters that require two tributes to bring into play, so while this deck isn’t looking to tribute summon very often, these two make it a complete non-option. Changing to lower level fusion material monsters will make this deck more versatile and keep those fusion material monsters from being dead cards. We’ll come back to this topic once we get to the additions.
Because we’re going to be swarming so much, Torrential Tribute isn’t going to be as useful as it once was. I’m going to bump it to the side deck and recommend that it be rotated in for matches against aggressive players. If someone is running an aggressive Warrior or Machine deck, you should go ahead and use it. If not, you probably won’t need it as much as you might think.
Bottomless Trap Hole and Sakuretsu Armor will also be bumped to the side deck, strictly for space reasons. This makes the deck more vulnerable to attacking, and you’ll need to bluff in order to get through some opponents. The loss of two copies of Mother Grizzly will create some weaknesses in the early game, but this deck should still do just fine with D. D. Warrior Lady and D. D. Assailant at its disposal.
One of the copies of Magician of Faith will be removed. Again, since Polymerization isn’t as important to the deck any more, we won’t need to be using Magician of Faith to bring it back. Fusion Gate makes this a safe drop. The same is true for Premature Burial. Because we’re ideally going to be removing monsters from play instead of sending them to the graveyard, there won’t be as many desirable targets for its effect.
Finally, the two Nobleman of Crossout will be sent to the side deck purely to preserve the deck’s size. This strategy takes a lot of cards to pull off, and the finished version is going to be over 40 cards. Putting Nobleman of Crossout in the side deck instead of in the main deck will make it easier to keep the total card count down.
We’ve cleared a ton of space in this deck, so let’s get started with the additions. I promised replacements for Big Koala and Barrel Dragon, so I’m going to put in two copies each of Summoned Skull and Blowback Dragon. Master of Oz was in the deck to provide raw ATK power, and while B. Skull Dragon isn’t as strong, Summoned Skull is going to fit a lot better into the main deck, due to its lower level. Blowback Dragon still allows us to use Gatling Dragon, but like Summoned Skull, it requires one less tribute to actually normal summon.
The cool thing is that now both of the fusion monsters carry the Dark attribute. That means that we can use The Dark – Hex Sealed Fusion to get out either one, and while its on-field effect won’t send monsters out of play, it’s nice to have another fusion substitute beyond King of the Swamp. It also gives us yet another way to fuse monsters, and that fits into our strategy of trying to fuse fast and often.
The last monster I want to add is a single Sangan. This deck is really packed to the gills with important cards, but Sangan gives a powerful level of control to virtually any deck. It’s also very nice in the early game, and since this deck can lag behind in that portion of the duel, that gives us an extra reason to use it.
We do have a problem, though. The deck is running six tribute monsters, and that can really hurt. A single copy of Monster Reincarnation can help turn a useless monster into a useful one, and it will also allow us to reuse monsters that were sent to the graveyard by Polymerization or The Dark – Hex Sealed Fusion. A copy of Card Destruction will share synergy with Reincarnation, and will also let us dump those hands that are jam-packed with too many tribute monsters to handle. It lets us cycle quickly towards fusion materials as well, so that’s going to help the pace of this deck.
The last addition I want to make is two more copies of Book of Moon. While it’s always a versatile card, Book of Moon will accomplish some very important goals in this deck in particular. First, it will be chainable to an opponent’s freshly-summoned Breaker the Magical Warrior, preventing it from destroying Fusion Gate. Second, it will protect vulnerable monsters like The Dark – Hex Sealed Fusion from being attacked and also aid in maintaining board presence. Third, it can be used in main phase two to ensure that a monster that’s special summoned by Return from the Different Dimension stays on the field instead of being removed from play.
These three factors make Book of Moon more synergistic than it normally would be, so maxing out and playing as many as we can is a good idea.
That’s it for my changes to Jim’s deck, and here’s the recap!
-2 Big Koala
-2 Barrel Dragon
-2 Mother Grizzly
-1 Magician of Faith
-1 Polymerization
-2 Nobleman of Crossout
-1 Premature Burial
-1 Torrential Tribute
-1 Bottomless Trap Hole
-1 Sakuretsu Armor
+2 Summoned Skull
+2 D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master
+2 Blowback Dragon
+1 Sangan
+2 The Dark – Hex Sealed Fusion
+1 Monster Reincarnation
+1 Fusion Gate
+1 Card Destruction
+2 Book of Moon
+2 Return from the Different Dimension
The fixed version of the deck is as follows.
Lock, Stock, and (no) Barrel Dragon (and no more Koalas!): 42 cards
Monsters: 20
2 Blowback Dragon
2 Summoned Skull
2 D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
2 D. D. Assailant
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Tribe-Infecting Virus
3 King of the Swamp
1 Mother Grizzly
1 Magician of Faith
1 Sangan
2 The Dark – Hex Sealed Fusion
Spells: 17
1 Pot of Greed
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Graceful Charity
1 Snatch Steal
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Lightning Vortex
3 Book of Moon
2 Polymerization
3 Fusion Gate
1 Monster Reincarnation
1 Card Destruction
Traps: 5
1 Mirror Force
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Call of the Haunted
2 Return from the Different Dimension
Fusion Deck:
3 B. Skull Dragon
3 Gatling Dragon
The deck is a bit weaker in the opening and in the early game, due to the loss of Mother Grizzly, but it can be absolutely explosive in the mid-game. The objective is to get out fusion monsters with Fusion Gate as quickly as possible, and then start flooding the field with the monsters you removed by using D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master and Return from the Different Dimension. You can also tribute summon for the powerful monsters that the deck would normally use as fusion materials, or summon fusion monsters with Polymerization or The Dark – Hex Sealed Fusion.
This strategy is highly dependent on synergy, but now that it has so many ways to access its big monsters, it can be far more consistent than Jim’s original build. Your two return-to-play cards have a nice double use by working well against both Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning and the hot new Cybernetic Revolution spell System Down, so you’ve got some recourse to some of the common problems that your opponents might throw at you.
While I’ve already mentioned several side deck options, you might want to try experimenting with D. D. Trap Hole, which is yet another cool Cybernetic Revolution card. It combos really well with Different Dimension Master and Return from the Different Dimension, and can provide even more tech for matchups where the opponent plays defensively.
If you’ve been looking for a cool way to try out D. D. M. – Different Dimension Master, this deck makes a great testing ground! If you’re a fan of fusion monsters, this strategy is not to be missed—give it a try if your favorite color of monster happens to be purple.
Thanks for sending it in, Jim!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Interested in seeing your deck fixed up and featured in The Apotheosis? Send it to me with your name, city and state of residence, and a bit of information describing the deck—it might be featured in a future article! You can get in touch with me at Jason@metagame.com.