Alright, so maybe it isn’t technically spring yet, but the snow on campus has melted, which is good enough for me. With spring comes the return of plant life to Pittsburgh. Where once we were limited to leafless trees buckling under the weight of snow, we now have leafless trees that are not buckling under the weight of snow along with a few other random plants that think they’re clever. They aren’t. Those plants are toast (figuratively speaking) as soon as the first frost of March comes along. There is, however, one plant that is incredibly clever and blooms wherever there is a battle to be fought. That Plant is Gigaplant, and it’s ready to wreak havoc on your duels in a whole new way.
One of the nicest things about Gigaplant is that it can be used in so many different ways. Most cards just have a single purpose in life, and that’s it. For example, Smashing Ground destroys a monster. That’s all it does, that’s all it ever will do, and there’s little to no actual strategic depth to the card. A card like Gigaplant, on the other hand, has a whole wealth of unique uses despite the fact that at face value all it does is special summon Plants and Insects from your graveyard or hand. The difference lies in all the various things you can do with the monsters you summon. Unlike the Smashing Ground that’s always going to destroy a monster, the monster you get back from Gigaplant in a given turn could be put to one of any number of uses. You could use it as an attacker, you could tribute it to pay the cost of another card or effect, or you could even trade it off to your opponent’s side of the field for one of his or her monsters. Every time you special summon a new monster with Gigaplant, that monster has a specific purpose it’s there to serve, but that purpose can be just about anything depending on your needs at the time. Last time I looked at Gigaplant, the goal was to win the game by means of a potentially infinite loop carried out until the opponent ran out of life points. This week, I’m returning to the classic trading card game win condition: beating your opponent over the head with monsters until you win.
The thing about swarm decks is that there’s always a serious potential for disaster in the form of Torrential Tribute, Mirror Force, or some other mass removal card your opponent rotated in from the side deck. Basically, if you don’t win when you finally commit your monsters to the field, you end up losing in the long run. That’s why the most successful swarm decks are built in such a way as to not lose overall card presence due to a failed or foiled swarm attempt. Take Zombie decks for example. They have to toss a good portion of their hand to revive all their monsters for a big swing, but they also make use of Card of Safe Return to replace all the cards they lose. This makes the Zombie deck particularly nasty to play against, because if you somehow stop them from swarming the first time, it’s almost guaranteed that there will be a next time. Six Samurai decks can clear the field of impending disaster while in the process of storming the opponent’s defenses thanks to The Six Samurai - Yaichi. Many opening moves can be easily disrupted by a simple play of Yaichi and Grandmaster of the Six Samurai regardless of what the opponent has face down. Yes, even if the opponent has Torrential Tribute set: as long as you have Grandmaster and haven’t been throwing monsters face down, you’ll be just fine. Heck, if you had Six Samurai United out when you started summoning monsters, you’ll be more than fine: you’ll get to draw some replacement cards in addition to getting your Grandmaster back!
That brings us to Plants. What exactly do Plants have to help make sure that things don’t go completely awry? Turns out, the answer is plenty. Gigaplant is, for all intents and purposes, Il Blud with more ATK, and that automatically makes it a force to be reckoned with. Furthermore, Gigaplant’s revival ability means that Plant decks are compatible with Card of Safe Return in a similar way to Zombie decks. Sure, they don’t have Zombie Master to continually revive monsters and allow for more draws, but they do have Lonefire Blossom as an effective method of searching out any of their key monsters and putting them directly into play. All you have to do is tribute Blossom or another Plant and you can have Gigaplant on your side of the field as early as the first turn of the game. It won’t be able to do anything until your next turn, but there’s certainly something to be said for having a 2400 ATK monster on the field on turn 1. The best property of Gigaplant cards is that they tend to multiply. One Gigaplant revives the Lonefire Blossom that summoned it in order to summon yet another Gigaplant in addition to drawing you a card if you have Card of Safe Return out. It’s probably the easiest way to continually summon 2400 ATK monsters that I can think of. In fact, it’s even easier than bringing back Treeborn Frog every turn to tribute it for a Monarch, since everything is searchable by something and you don’t need to forgo setting spell and trap cards to do it.
This point is particularly important since the trap cards you’ll be setting have been specifically chosen to make it even harder for your opponent to stop you from overgrowing the field. As I looked through the list of playable Plant-type monsters, I noticed that two of the best, Lekunga and Lord Poison, shared the Water attribute. If I could find one more playable Plant that was Water, I felt that I could justifiably add a hand control element to the deck in the form of Spiritual Water Art - Aoi. I couldn’t find one, but I did remember that Homunculus the Alchemic Being can shift its attribute to Water, and it has 1800 ATK to boot. Armed with even more beatdown and revival power, I slipped a full complement of Aoi into the deck to strip the opponent of answers before he or she gets a chance to lay them on the field. Being able to see your opponent’s hand and control its contents has become frightfully important of late since it lets you disrupt every single deck out there. If you’re playing against Six Samurai and the opponent drops a Yaichi, go ahead and use Aoi to strip the Grandmaster out of the opponent’s hand. You might take some damage from Yaichi that turn, but you’ll also likely be able to run Yaichi down and shift momentum back in your favor. Once you run out of useful monsters to search for with Lonefire Blossom or revive with Gigaplant, both of these cards can also be used to fetch tribute fodder for Spiritual Water Art - Aoi in addition to being perfect cards to swap over to your opponent with Creature Swap.
Right now, there are two kinds of decks I can think of that love seeing Creature Swap Unlimited. One of them is Apprentice Magician-based Spellcaster or Monarch builds. Being able to send over Apprentice Magician and then attack him to fetch Crystal Seer from your deck is simply brutal. The other is Plant decks. Sending Lord Poison to the opponent and attacking it, only to revive a Gigaplant to continue the assault is practically the same as swapping Pyramid Turtle over to the opponent and attacking it to bring out Ryu Kokki in a Zombie deck. Zombie decks are in love with Creature Swap between Pyramid Turtle and Goblin Zombie, and since Plant decks work in a similar fashion, Creature Swap is a must-have here as well.
Before I go, I have a question for all the readers out there who have been playing since the beginning. Did you ever think you would go to a high-level tournament and hear people complaining about how they got wrecked by a Plant deck? Neither did I, but I’m so glad I was wrong. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
NEXT WEEK: FUSION: "1 Deck I Don’t Like" + "1 Deck I Love" Result? You’ll see.