Only one player was really able to solve the puzzle: the eventual champion Jonathan Moore and his surprisingly effective Six Samurai deck. You can bet you’ll be reading about that deck here in The Champions in the upcoming weeks, but to understand why it was so good, we’ll first need to dissect the deck it was built to beat. The Dark Deck that stood out the most in my eyes from the Top 16 decklist was that of Paul Levitin. Obviously with Return from the Different Dimension being the most useful it’s ever been and loads of new, highly rare cards being made available to the public, Paul would show up with a spectacular deck created by Shane Scurry.

In fact, the deck goes almost card-for-card with my dream Dark/Return deck. Here’s what Paul played:

The concept of the deck seems pretty obvious when you notice that Paul has maxed out on both Return from the Different Dimension and Escape from the Dark Dimension. Load up the removed-from-play pile and bring back the most powerful monsters when necessary. The deck works like a Bazoo Return strategy, but instead of Bazoo the Soul-Eater, Paul plays Strike Ninja and Prometheus, King of the Shadows.

Strike Ninja is very cool because he removes monsters from play while dodging opposing card effects or attacks. He’s virtually indestructible if you have a graveyard of Dark monsters at your disposal, which makes him a late-game gem, forcing your opponents to waste cards on him simply to stay alive. In the early game, Strike Ninja can fuel a quick Return from the Different Dimension OTK. Imagine that you play Armageddon Knight (dumping Dark Magician of Chaos into your graveyard) and set Return. Afterward your opponent plays his or her own Knight and bumps into yours. On your turn, you play Strike Ninja, attack for 1700 damage, remove your Strike Ninja, and flip Return from the Different Dimension and attack for 5800. 7500 damage and a spell card in your hand at the cost of half your life points, Return, and some Dark monsters in the graveyard. Seems like a pretty good deal, and it’s one this deck would be perfectly willing to make.

Prometheus, King of the Shadows on the other hand has a much more simplified purpose. He can remove any number of Dark monsters in your graveyard from play, and Dark Armed Dragon needs exactly three Darks in your graveyard to be summoned. As such, Prometheus is going to be used primarily to reduce the number of Dark monsters in your graveyard to three, removing the biggest or most damaging monsters to be brought back via Escape or Return.

Dark Armed Dragon is the high roller in the deck. It does big things, dropping down and blowing up an entire field by itself. Destroying up to three cards is nothing to sneeze at, and if combined with Return or Escape, it can be especially damaging and even harder to stop. Returning Jinzo to the field with either trap card prevents the opponent from chaining targeted trap cards and allows your Dark Armed Dragon to freely target the monsters on your opponent’s field. Then both monsters get to attack for a total of 5200 damage. Consistently achieving these combos leads to easy game wins.

and Dark Grepher are the monsters that will help you achieve maximum consistency when playing. Armageddon dumps any Dark monster in the graveyard upon its summon, allowing for fast access to Dark Magician of Chaos, Jinzo, or Darklord Zerato. Snipe Hunter and Spirit Reaper are other possible targets, depending on what one wants to achieve with the Return or Escape.

Dark Grepher is really useful when trying to achieve the proper amount of monsters in the graveyard for Dark Armed Dragon. Grepher himself can put exactly three Dark monsters in your graveyard. It’s not impossible to respond to an opponent’s opening play of one set monster and two set spells or traps with a special summon of Dark Grepher—an activation of his effect, putting a total of three Dark monsters in your graveyard. Follow that up with Dark Armed Dragon destroying all three cards and Dimension Fusion to special summon the three monsters back, and you could easily defeat the opponent on your first turn.

With the possibility of explosive victories around every corner, Snipe Hunter and Morphing Jar are two obvious inclusions in this deck. Snipe Hunter can break an opposing field open, and when combined with Dark Armed Dragon, the Hunter can fuel the Dragon’s destruction effect as well. Snipe Hunter can fuel a graveyard as fast as Grepher can, and turn an all-monster hand into an explosive victory. Morphing Jar, on the other hand, can add cards to the graveyard and dig further into the deck for more copies of Dark Armed Dragon. Messing with your opponent’s Dark count can also be quite beneficial.

The spell and trap cards in this deck promote the idea of rushing the field. Three copies of Escape from the Dark Dimension and Return from the Different Dimension make that painfully obvious. Return is the game-winner, used to swarm the field. Ideally, the monsters being brought out will be Jinzo, Dark Magician of Chaos, and Darklord Zerato. Bringing just these three to the field usually means the destruction of the opponent’s monsters, the disabling of his or her defensive cards, and 8000 points of direct damage. Escape is used as the advantage-maker. Its primary target is Dark Magician of Chaos, who would optimally return an Allure of Darkness, Reinforcement of the Army, or Premature Burial to your hand. Doing so means speeding the deck up a lot, and adding another one or two monsters to the graveyard.

is maxed to ensure that Armageddon Knight is seen as often as possible and to pull Strike Ninja out on a whim. Using multiple copies of Reinforcement of the Army with Dark Magician of Chaos and Escape from the Dark Dimension is a very easy way to set up victory with big beaters. Allure of Darkness removes monsters from play itself, which means your opponent instantly fears all set cards once you’ve used Allure with Jinzo or Dark Magician of Chaos.

Dimension Fusion may seem like a risky card at first glance. Considering that most players are using remove-from-play engines themselves, Dimension Fusion is going to special summon a bunch of their monsters as well. However, Darklord Zerato can simply blow away everything your opponent special summoned, and since it was probably going to have to use its effect to destroy a monster he or she had already, you aren’t giving up any additional cards. The possibility of so many free monsters is simply too much to give up.

Enemy Controller is probably the only surprising card in the deck, but was likely pivotal to Paul’s success at Houston. Controller is one of the best cards in the game during eras when both players can easily OTK the other. Being able to put monsters in attack mode or take big beaters means that your own offensive efforts are strengthened, and being able to take an opponent’s monster on his or her turn can put a halt to almost any victory march. In a Dark Armed Dragon format, Enemy Controller gets even better. Usually you don’t want to summon, then play the Controller and use its monster theft effect, since there’s usually no way to tribute the monster once you’ve used your normal summon. However, Dark Armed Dragon can destroy itself, and since the monster tributed is going to be a Dark monster, the Dark Armed Dragon is going down for sure.

Paul’s deck is one of the most consistent, flexible, and powerful Dark builds to debut at Houston. I believe his will be the deck to beat in the future, since the new Advanced list only helps his build.