Last week, I mentioned that I would be looking at the deck types that can come from the chain cards of Cyberdark Impact today. However, I feel that there is a more important card to look at before I get to that topic. I typically submit these articles of mine at the start of every week, and they go up here on Metagame.com the following Monday. With that said, I’ve had about a week since I first started writing this to look at the Shonen Jump Championship Anaheim decklists. Feel free to check the top decks out by clicking here.
You may notice a few interesting trends that have appeared with the results of SJC Anaheim. For one, Monarch control is still winning! That Apprentice Magician toolbox is obviously brutal in mangling any aggressive strategy, and the Monarchs are extremely powerful, quickly destroying the opponent’s cards. The deck’s Apprentice engine (along with other slow tempo monsters such as Mystic Tomato and Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive) do such a good job of delaying early game speed that it can simply focus on the late game. Unfortunately for most decks, when it comes to fighting a late-game war, the winner is most likely the one summoning 2400 ATK behemoths that also destroy all of the opponent’s options. The only other control strategy that can really topple this one is a no-attack stasis control deck that relies on counter-traps and turn-by-turn card draw (such as Des Lacooda), and that sort of deck risks being trampled by an aggressive duelist who gets a decent draw.
Other than that note on Monarchs (winning a fourth straight SJC title), Fili Luna and Kirk Leonhardt were also sporting some interesting tech strategies in hopes of dealing with popular cards in the metagame. The card they were running? Dimensional Fissure. It doesn’t seem very exciting, but it has a very powerful and subtle effect. Some readers may remember an article I wrote a while back on Macro Cosmos. Dimensional Fissure is effectively a spell version of Macro Cosmos, with a few differences. The first is that Dimensional Fissure only removes monsters that would be sent to the graveyard from play, whereas Macro Cosmos removed everything that would go to the graveyard. The second key difference is that Dimensional Fissure is a continuous spell card, which gives it some very important advantages over Cosmos and more widespread trap versions of the “remove stuff” effect.
Dimensional Fissure serves a very valuable purpose in this game. There are a lot of effects that would typically trigger in the graveyard. Almost every single recruiter monster does (with the notable exception of Apprentice Magician). However, Dimensional Fissure also stops many spells and traps from working properly because of its ability to send all monsters that would go to the graveyard to the removed-from-play pile. Premature Burial and Call of the Haunted are both good cards, but they need actual targets in the graveyard to really be powerful. Dimensional Fissure nullifies both indirectly. What about Pot of Avarice? I wish your opponent good luck in reaching the five-monster minimum to activate that spell if you have multiple copies of Dimensional Fissure in your deck.
Dimensional Fissure also stops two of the most annoying monsters in the game— Sangan and Treeborn Frog—dead in their tracks. Sangan is seen in just about every deck, while Treeborn Frog is a constant sight and a huge aid to the Monarch control deck. The ability to nullify both of these monsters makes Dimensional Fissure even more powerful as a card choice, since it will help neutralize cards you’ll typically see, along with the major deck types you are trying to tech against.
Speaking of deck types that Dimensional Fissure utterly wrecks, Dark World needs to remove Dimensional Fissure immediately. All of the Dark World monsters need to be discarded to the graveyard in order to work. Having Dimensional Fissure out effectively nullifies the focus of the strategy. While this continuous spell is out, all of an opponent’s Dark World monsters are 2300 ATK vanilla tribute monsters. You can see the effectiveness of this in the semifinals coverage at Anaheim between Fili Luna and “T” Poonsombat, where Fili’s side-decked strategy of Dimensional Fissure left T utterly devastated when he had no removal for the continuous spell card.
Perhaps the defining benefit of Dimensional Fissure is the fact that all of the cards it can wreck are simply a bonus. The real power behind Dimensional Fissure is its incredible synergy with D.D. Survivor, which allows for the monster to be special summoned back onto the owner’s field during the end phase of the turn in which it was face up removed from the field and from play. Dimensional Fissure removes all monsters from play that would be sent to the graveyard. See what’s so good about this? While Dimensional Fissure is on the field, D.D. Survivor is pretty much invincible. Your opponent can attack it, Smashing Ground it, pop it with Exiled Force, or reflect it with Mirror Force, but it will just keep coming back. Folks, if you thought Treeborn Frog was an annoying tribute-fodder monster, then D.D. Survivor is the ultimate thorn in a duelist’s side. Not only does it act as a “free” tribute for a high-level monster every turn, it’s also an efficient attacker that will flat-out refuse to go away as long as Dimensional Fissure is face up on the field!
While Fili Luna ran Dimensional Fissure cards in his side deck with D.D. Survivor as a tech strategy, Team Enigma’s Kirk Leonhardt ran Dimensional Fissure and D.D. Survivor as his main deck plan of choice at Anaheim! Kirk was no stranger to the Top 8 of a Shonen Jump Championship, and he once again proved what unique choices can do for a player’s success in a large premiere tournament. His deck ran three copies of Dimensional Fissure with a back-up copy of Macro Cosmos, three D.D. Survivor cards, and even a few D. D. Scout Planes. The deck also ran Big Bang Shot with Giant Trunade. Both cards are good on their own for their specific purposes (Big Bang Shot gave Kirk a chance to end the game quickly, while Giant Trunade guaranteed a battle phase uninterrupted by traps like Sakuretsu Armor), but the two cards act as a removal combo to get rid of pesky monsters too!
If Anaheim is any indication of what to expect in the future, it is these few things.
— Monarch control is still a powerhouse.
— Dark World is a powerful deck type, and its easy use of Deck Devastation Virus is brutal against tons of decks.
— Macro Cosmos may be a little slow, but Dimensional Fissure is a powerful and more aggressive choice. It’s also a powerful contender for premiere tournaments.
In the future, Dimensional Fissure will most likely be seen providing Warrior-toolbox decks with an effective threat in an invulnerable D.D. Survivor. Two well-known players in this game took it to a Day 2 performance at Anaheim, so you should be ready to see this card at your regional events too. Perhaps you can take the power of Dimensional Fissure to a Top 4 performance at your next regional!