There’s something supremely satisfying about the look on your opponent’s face when you beat him or her with a really janky card. Whether it’s Dark Snake Syndrome, Exchange of the Spirit, or even Spatial Collapse, there’s always that initial look of hope in his or her eyes as he or she looks for a way not to lose, followed by the inevitable glazed eyes and gaping mouth that occur when your opponent finally decides to scoop. Today I want to celebrate a truly janky card that has, until very recently, been almost entirely unplayable. I’m talking, of course, about Ameba. That’s right, the little critter from Spell Ruler that nails your opponent for 2000 damage if the opponent somehow gains control of it while it’s face up on the field. Why is Ameba so frustrating that it makes you want to claw your own eyes out when you see it? Your reason is right underneath this sentence.

Monsters: 19

3 Ameba

3 Mother Grizzly

3 Poison Draw Frog

3 Giant Rat

1 Injection Fairy Lily

1 Sangan

1 Exiled Force

1 Magician of Faith

3 Cyber Dragon

Spells: 15

1 Dark Hole

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Snatch Steal

1 Scapegoat

3 Mystic Box

2 Creature Swap

2 Enemy Controller

2 Salvage

1 Pot of Avarice

Traps: 6

3 Sakuretsu Armor

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Magic Cylinder

1 Ceasefire

I must admit that this deck is quite silly. However, it definitely occupies an important space in the metagame under the heading of, “Decks You Use to Beat the Guy at Your Local Tournament Who is Horrible at This Game, Despite Numerous Claims to the Contrary.” That’s DYUBGYLTWHTGDNCC, for short. The concept is simple: destroy or steal every good monster that comes your opponent’s way, and give him or her nothing but Amebas and Poison Draw Frogs in return. Sounds fun, right? It is.

The style of this deck is what I like to call an aggressive burn strategy. This means that the goal is to reduce the opponent’s life points to 0 by various card effects, but you’ll be doing it without any stall cards and with some strategically placed attacks. Basically, it’s the opposite of Stall/Burn. You won’t find any copies of Chain Energy or Gravity Bind here, and if you put them in, you’ll only be harming your own main strategy. The first question, then, is what’s your main strategy? In the simplest of terms, your strategy is split into two parts. First, get Ameba on to the field. Second, give it to your opponent and attack it. All you should have to do is repeat these two steps until you win the game.

Obviously, before you do any of this, you need the cards to be able to do it. Getting Ameba is the easiest part, as there are more than enough cards to search it out of the deck. Mother Grizzly can put it directly to the field, and it’s usually best to pull it out on the opponent’s last attack of the battle phase, so that you’ll probably start your turn with an Ameba ready to go. You can also fetch it out of the deck with Sangan or out of the graveyard with Salvage or Call of the Haunted, so getting Ameba isn’t any trouble at all. The real problem lies in getting the cards you need in order to be a generous Ameba-giving soul. Sadly, there are currently very few effects that allow you to get a spell out of your deck. Dark Sage is completely out of the question, and Different Dimension Capsule is a bit slow for my tastes, so I’ve decided to rely on a little extra draw power to help me get to the Mystic Boxes and Creature Swaps.

Poison Draw Frog is a nice card to go with the theme of giving monsters with non-existent stats and nasty effects to the opponent, and makes a nice present for your opponent in case you lack Amebas. It plays nicely with Salvage and also finds its way into your graveyard fairly quickly, along with the Grizzlies and Rats, so it seems pretty safe to include a copy of Pot of Avarice in the deck as well. Since we’ll be quickly disposing of the Frogs and Amebas after we give them to our opponent, Avarice is a nice addition that not only allows you to get through your deck faster, but it also lets you repeat some of your tricks if you run out of Amebas. Magician of Faith lets you take back a Mystic Box or Creature Swap and then use it to give the opponent a tiny monster. Heck, it’s a tiny monster itself, so you don’t even need to worry about not having one to donate.

The next issue that needs to be tackled is how we’re going to get the monsters in the graveyard so that we can recycle them. In theory, Creature Swap should get us something big to work with, but Mystic Box doesn’t. Therefore, we need to carry some heavy hitters of our own to help score extra damage and claim some effects. Cyber Dragon is an obvious choice, not only because of its special summon ability, but also because it can be used in a pinch to try and match the pace of a fully aggressive deck.

I’ve also included Injection Fairy Lily as an acceptable damage source and a way to punish people who get all-monster hands. The statistic I like to throw around when I talk about Injection Fairy Lily is that I tend to lose around 90 to 95 percent of games in which she sees play, just because of my terrible tendency to draw every monster in my deck, including any and all tribute monsters I may be using.* The point is, it works on anyone who has a crappy hand, and you should be able to tell within a couple turns whether this is the case. Look for a total lack of plays in the spell and trap zone as a pretty good indicator that your opponent has nothing.

Now, I know that there’s a good contingent of you out there who are actually going to try to play this at a serious tournament. Good luck with that. There are a number of flaws that you may want to be aware of before you try this deck at anything above the local level. First off, this deck can produce some pretty awful hands. Triple Ameba with two Enemy Controllers and a Mystical Space Typhoon is pretty unplayable (if you don’t draw into a swap card) and pretty unlikely, but it’s already happened to me three times in my exploits with this deck, so you should definitely watch out for hands like this. Secondly, weenie rush decks will have a field day with you. Fortunately, not many people play them, but a really early rush will mess you up hard—especially if it involves Spirit Reaper, Don Zaloog, and Nobleman of Crossout. However, on the plus side, any deck that passes its first attacking turn against you is probably in for a nasty surprise once the turn passes back to you. Flip-Flop Control will hate you for life when you wipe out their Dekoichi with a Mystic Box, and Burn decks really don’t appreciate losing their Stealth Birds or Des Koalas before they can do any damage. Basically, you only want to play this deck in an environment where you can be reasonably sure that extremely aggressive decks are at a minimum.**

That’s just about going to do it for me this week. This is a light-hearted deck for when you’re just looking to have a good time swapping Amebas with your friends, or when you just want to wind down after a long session of serious playtesting. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

Jcmchale AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu

NEXT WEEK: Remember what I said about a near-total lack of spell searchers?

*This is well-documented. I can and will draw both copies of Mobius the Frost Monarch in my deck when I really need to, you know, not . . .

**I guess that rules out my local store . . .