As one may have expected, the Sacred Beasts and other Yu-Gi-Oh! GX–related cards from Shadow of Infinity are easily the most popular cards from the set. Equally popular, at least to more competitive players, are the new Ritual monsters, as well as Treeborn Frog. None of this comes as any surprise to me. What does surprise me, however, is the almost complete lack of attention to the main themes of the set—namely, Insect support and the “multiplicity” monsters. Insect support is rather self-explanatory, and I built a deck using some of the new Insect cards last week. This week, I’ll be trying my hand at building a fun little deck around the newest family of effect monsters. Let’s jump straight into it.

“Multiplicity”

Monsters: 20

3 Divine Dragon – Excelion

3 Disciple of the Forbidden Spell

3 Grass Phantom

3 Cyber Dragon

2 Shining Angel

1 Mystic Swordsman LV2

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Sangan

1 Tsukuyomi

1 Exiled Force

Spells: 12

1 Dark Hole

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Snatch Steal

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Premature Burial

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Symbol of Heritage

3 Smashing Ground

Traps: 8

2 Generation Shift

3 Sakuretsu Armor

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Chain Destruction

The multiplicity monsters, as I call them, are monsters that gain fantastic powers if you have extra copies of them in the graveyard. Headlining this class of monsters are the super rare Divine Dragon – Excelion and the Sealed Pack powerhouse Disciple of the Forbidden Spell, both of which are capable of giving you a huge advantage when they’re at full power.

First, let’s have a look at the new addition to the Warrior family, Disciple of the Forbidden Spell. Whenever you normal, flip, or special summon the Disciple, you choose an attribute for each copy of Disciple in your graveyard. Then, whenever you battle a monster with that attribute, it’s automatically destroyed. This card has an obvious impact on the current metagame, allowing you to call the attribute of any problematic monster on the field so that your Disciple can take it down, regardless of its stats or effects. Light and Dark are most the most common attributes you’ll want to call, and choosing either of those will give you the ability to take out Cyber Dragon, D. D. Warrior Lady, Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke, D. D. Survivor, Spirit Reaper, Mystic Tomato, Newdoria, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Chaos Sorcerer, and any other Light or Dark monster that your opponent cares to play. Other good choices are Earth for D. D. Assailants and against Beastdown decks, or Water, in case he or she has summoned Mobius the Frost Monarch. That’s a lot of versatility, and it’s well worth considering, even outside of this deck.

Divine Dragon – Excelion is certainly more difficult to use than Disciple (owing to its status as a level 5 monster), but it’s also incredibly powerful and certainly worth the work required. Obviously the first effect to pick is going to be the ATK increase in order to bring Excelion up to a massive 2500. The other effect, assuming you’ve got both of your other copies of Excelion in the graveyard, should be chosen based on the situation at hand. If both players are at low life points and your opponent has Mobius in play, obviously you’re going to want +1000 ATK and the Flame Wingman burn effect. Usually though, the goal is going to be to help clear out the opponent’s board, so you’ll be going for +1000 ATK and the double-attack effect. Finally, I’m using the extremely self-explanatory Grass Phantom to round out my trio of multiplicity monsters. The purpose of the Phantom is to be a big level-3 beater that helps out during the first game against stall/burn or certain combo builds. At full power, it’s also capable of taking down almost any commonly played level 4 monster, with the exception of Spirit Reaper and Gravekeeper’s Spy, and that’s always a plus.

This brings us to the obligatory rulings section of the article where I explain any confusing interactions that the deck might produce. Specifically, I want to talk about Chain Destruction. As you may have noticed if you’ve read through the rulings for Shadow of Infinity, Chain Destruction does good things for you if you activate it when you summon a multiplicity monster. Remember that Chain Destruction destroys the copies of the summoned monster in the summoning player’s deck, unlike last format’s side deck tech card Chain Disappearance, which always removed all copies from the opponent’s deck. This means that using Chain Destruction in response to your Excelion’s trigger effect will put the other two from your deck into your graveyard, allowing you to choose two effects when the trigger effect resolves. It works the exact same way with Disciple of the Forbidden Spell, allowing you to choose two attributes, and it also automatically brings Grass Phantom up to full strength.

Symbol of Heritage can also present a problem if a monster with the same name as the one you’re trying to summon is removed from the graveyard in a chain along with the Symbol. Fortunately, the problem involves explaining to your opponent why you still get your monster. This is because having three monsters with the same name in the graveyard is only a requirement for the activation of the Symbol, so after it’s activated, the only real way to stop it is to eliminate the specific monster you’ve chosen to summon. This also has the fun side effect of letting you play Symbol of Heritage and then chain it to Call of the Haunted to get two monsters of the same name on the field. Finally, it’s important to remember that destroying a monster for Generation Shift is not a cost, so if the monster you want to destroy somehow disappears before Generation Shift resolves, you’ll have to destroy a different face up monster you control.

On the topic of Generation Shift, it appears that many players don’t quite understand what the card is. Generation Shift, in simplest terms, is a generic search card in the vein of Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest. However, instead of choosing the monster you get based on its ATK or DEF value, you fetch it based on its name. Unlike Sangan, you have to build your deck specifically around being able to use Generation Shift. The card was clearly intended to appear in decks alongside the multiplicity monsters from Shadow of Infinity, but there are plenty of other excellent uses for the card that only take a small creative leap to realize.

The best part of Generation Shift is probably its chainability, which makes for some interesting exchanges in card advantage once cards like Snatch Steal and Sakuretsu Armor get involved. Not only can Generation Shift thin out your deck and let you search for new copies of expended monsters, it also makes for a fascinating exercise in card exchange. What exactly happens when you play Generation Shift in response to Snatch Steal or Sakuretsu Armor? How about against Smashing Ground or Widespread Ruin? Working out the mechanics behind these situations is a good way to sharpen your mind and improve your analytic abilities.

As for how to play this deck, it actually lacks a good number of first-turn plays. Personally, I’d seriously consider going second, if given the choice. Much of the deck is reactive in nature, so going first doesn’t really help that much and will only set you up to lose resources to Cyber Dragon/Reaper or Don openings. Your first priority should be to get Disciple of the Forbidden Spell to full power as quickly as possible through a combination of your search effects. Tsukuyomi will help you to adapt to situations as they arise by flipping down your Disciples and allowing you to flip summon to set their effects to whatever attribute is currently bothering you. Just remember that Disciple isn’t able to use its auto-kill ability against a face down monster even if it is revealed to have one of the chosen attributes.

While you’re working on this, you can also start loading up for Excelion by using Shining Angel to pull copies to the field, where they will most likely be destroyed by an attack or your own Generation Shift. Excelion is the finisher in this deck, and its ability to be searched out by every search card in your deck (except for Reinforcement of the Army) is the key to its usefulness. Remember, even if you’ve only seen one copy of a multiplicity monster, if you’ve got Chain Destruction, you can immediately bring it up to full power. Chain Destruction is a surprisingly versatile card that can be useful in a number of situations. What kind of situations am I talking about? Think about some of the commonly played monsters with 2000 ATK or less, and how great it would be if your opponent couldn’t draw or search for any more of them. The number of cards on that list will probably surprise you. Just be careful of Pot of Avarice abuse if you’re going to use Chain Destruction on your opponent. I hate it when tech bites the hand who techs it.

That’s just about going to do it for me this week. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: The aftermath of Shonen Jump Championship Durham, along with a look at the latest hot decks from across the pond not created by Tim Willoughby.