With Gladiator’s Assault hitting store shelves and many duelists fine-tuning their decks to fit all the new cards, I decided to try something that I have wanted to try since I first laid eyes on the key card in this deck. When I first saw this card, I was amazed at the hidden potential it could offer, despite not having an incredibly easy search method. I hope to make it a very feared deck type indeed, as there are many ways it can better itself.

Basically, this deck revolves around a one-turn KO involving Evil Hero Infernal Gainer. His unique ability that allows any Fiend-Type monster to attack twice under no restrictions is beyond amazing. Given the right timing, you could inflict up to 6000 damage in one turn just by removing him from play for two turns. The tactics and combos are limitless. But first, the deck needs some strong Fiends, as well as field presence and the ability to have Infernal Gainer when you need him.

Hoping you can help!

Dylan Morrisroe

Rhode Island

Here’s what Dylan’s deck looks like:

Nightfallen Harvest—40 cards

Monsters: 20

2 Evil Hero Malicious Edge

1 The End of Anubis

1 Doom Shaman

2 Cyber Dragon

2 Mist Archfiend

2 Goblin Elite Attack Force

3 Evil Hero Infernal Gainer

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Snipe Hunter

2 Mystic Tomato

1 Sangan

1 Spirit Reaper

1 Treeborn Frog

Spells: 13

1 Veil of Darkness

2 Double Summon

2 Soul Taker

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Lightning Vortex

1 Premature Burial

1 Heavy Storm

1 Smashing Ground

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Brain Control

1 Scapegoat

Traps: 7

1 Deck Devastation Virus

3 Dark Bribe

1 Mirror Force

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Torrential Tribute

That name is really, really cool. There’s also a deck beneath the title, though, so let’s focus on that. This build focuses on damage and lots of it. The usage of cards like the astonishingly aggravating The End of Anubis and the even more astonishingly aggressive Evil Hero Malicious Edge add some nice face-beating. And oh, what a bright designer Dylan is! When asked what’s better than an Evil Hero Malicious Edge, he gave a correct answer: an Evil Hero Malicious Edge that attacks twice!

There are a lot of good choices made here. There is a surprising level of synergy between Evil Hero Infernal Gainer and Goblin Elite Attack Force, for example, because the Goblins don’t switch to defense position until you have left the battle phase entirely, unlike Spear Dragon. Veil of Darkness helps you filter through the deck, and Mist Archfiend is an insanely fast addition. There’s some synergy between Doom Shaman and Gainer as well, since you can special summon the Gainer using the Shaman’s effect, and then remove your newly summoned monster from play to boost your Shaman. As a side benefit, if the Doom Shaman is destroyed, then Evil Hero Infernal Gainer is safe from trouble because it is removed from play the entire time.

Then there’s some perfectly viable things like Double Summon which helps you keep the field full or gives you the opportunity to use Doom Shaman’s effect. All in all, the deck seems to work well, with both obvious and subtle amounts of synergy present.

My main criticism is that it doesn’t mesh with themes that support it. You could easily implement a Bazoo the Soul-Eater/Return from the Different Dimension sub-theme, and you could probably gain from meshing the deck with Dark World as well. Whether or not any of my changes will be along that vein is yet to be seen. Let’s get to work!

I cannot stress enough how good a card Morphing Jar is for aggressive decks. It allows you to completely wreck an opposing control strategy after you’ve burned your hand, and at the very worst beats for 700 ATK while Card Destruction and Veil of Darkness sit there and look silly. There is no reason this card should not be in the deck. I cut Veil of Darkness for Morphing Jar.

Then I have to review a few more choices . . . Ultimate Offering offers a re-usable effect alongside a nifty combat trick of waiting for your opponent to summon a monster stronger than whatever you put out and then tributing that monster for Evil Hero Malicious Edge. Imagine putting Mystic Tomato out, searching for Sangan, and then tributing it for Malicious Edge plus searching for, say, Spirit Reaper or Morphing Jar. You push for more cards in your hand, fewer in your opponent’s, and a fair amount of life point damage. It is at least worth considering over, say, one of the two Double Summon cards, despite the lack of synergy with Treeborn Frog.

The next consideration is that of a sub-theme. I normally dislike adding themes to decks. In this case, the options of a Dark World or Bazoo sub-theme to complement the main focus will be quite useful, but I will not be making those changes. This deck could be really good if it used Bazoo and added Cannon Soldier and the like, but it would be a Bazoo deck using Fiends and Infernal Gainer, not a Fiend deck using Bazoo.

Instead, I want the deck to focus more on Doom Shaman, because the alternative is not focusing on Doom Shaman. The card is amazing. In this deck it smashes things and opens doors for its friends. It’s like a house-crasher who reminds you why you should only allow people with invitations in (or in this case, why you should invite him more often). I added another copy of the card.

As a follow-up, there is something to be said about doing all this without proper protection or set-up. The deck has plenty of ways to deal with a defense-position monster, so the addition of Nobleman of Crossout is unnecessary. Soul Taker seems counter-intuitive, and that’s a fair justification for removal of it considering the amount of removal already present in the deck from plain old attacking people’s faces. Dark Bribe is good, but it can only protect so much. I think it would be fair to add Solemn Judgment to the deck to help protect your face-bashers, or at least more counter traps. The combo-oriented nature of this deck makes it a lot more painful to lose a monster like Evil Hero Malicious Edge, because you invest in the card. Focusing on the combo nature means that stuff like Goblin Elite Attack Force that doesn’t directly support the theme and merely contributes to it (Mist Archfiend also qualifies here) has to be taken into consideration again. One copy of the goblin squadron and The End of Anubis are removed, since the 2500 ATK Fiend interferes with Doom Shaman and the Goblins are less valuable than the support the deck needs.

Finally, despite my efforts to keep the deck tight, I don’t think it’s wise to remove Card Trooper. In the more Doom Shaman-based list, the deck purging supplied by the super Trooper is far too valuable to pass up. 41 cards isn’t too bad, eh?

Cut:

-1 Veil of Darkness

-2 Soul Taker

-1 The End of Anubis

-1 Goblin Elite Attack Force

Added:

+1 Morphing Jar

+1 Ultimate Offering

+2 Solemn Judgment

+1 Card Trooper

+1 Doom Shaman

The final build looks like this!

Nightfallen Harvest—Matt’s Fix—41 cards

Monsters: 21

2 Evil Hero Malicious Edge

2 Doom Shaman

2 Cyber Dragon

2 Mist Archfiend

1 Goblin Elite Attack Force

3 Evil Hero Infernal Gainer

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Snipe Hunter

1 Morphing Jar

1 Card Trooper

2 Mystic Tomato

1 Sangan

1 Spirit Reaper

1 Treeborn Frog

Spells: 10

2 Double Summon

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Lightning Vortex

1 Premature Burial

1 Heavy Storm

1 Smashing Ground

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Brain Control

1 Scapegoat

Traps: 10

1 Ultimate Offering

2 Solemn Judgment

1 Deck Devastation Virus

3 Dark Bribe

1 Mirror Force

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Torrential Tribute

Until next year, duelists!

—Matt Murphy