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Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043

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The Apotheosis: Fairies Prevail

Matt Murphy

December 05, 2007

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I honestly enjoy getting letters from around the world. It’s one of a few things that bring me some quiet, legitimate joy: knowing that people halfway around the world are reading my column and thinking “what a git.” (Languages occasionally inspire more colorful remarks as well.) I owe you a deck fix, and today’s comes from Australia. Let’s see what Harris B. has to say about his deck.

Hi Matt,

I’m having some problems with my new Fairy OTK deck and I was wondering if you could make any adjustments needed. It’s a new deck idea I got at a local tournament, and it can work well because it is fast and difficult to play against. First you use Celestial Transformation to get out one of the high-ATK Fairies in the deck, and then use Inferno Reckless Summon because the ATK of the monster summoned by Celestial Transformation gets halved. Then use Brain Control to get your opponent’s monster and attack with all four monsters dealing over 8000 damage; use Book of Moon on the halved monster and then flip it face up and attack with all three; or last, you can use Reasoning to get out another monster or Monster Gate by tributing the monster that was summoned by Celestial Transformation, or a monster you took control of with Brain Control.

—Harris B.

Australia

Here’s the deck Harris sent me:

Fairies Prevail—43 cards

Monsters: 16

3 Guardian Angel Joan

3 Majestic Mech - Goryu

3 Moisture Creature

3 Soul of Purity and Light

1 Dark Magician of Chaos

1 Airknight Parshath

2 Freed the Brave Wanderer

Spells: 22

3 Inferno Reckless Summon

3 Celestial Transformation

1 The Sanctuary in the Sky

1 Swords of Revealing Light

Traps: 5

From an initial glance, the deck appears to be about rush, and the glance does not deceive. Dark Magician of Chaos works particularly nicely with the Reasoning and Monster Gate supplement to the main theme. I have a soft spot in my heart for Inferno Reckless Summon, one of the best cards available to combo decks. It is also funny to refer to a card as "IRS" (an abbreviation for "Internal Revenue Service," the tax-collection agency for the United States). Here’s one of the keener uses of the card. It combines the merit of monsters with disconcerting amounts of ATK and the ability to get the monsters out fast to create a wonderful Step 3: Profit. There are a few points against this line of decks, and against anything with Inferno Reckless Summon. I will address them one at a time.

1) It only works on monsters with 1500 ATK or less. This one always peeved me, as it rears its ugly head quite a few times when the merits of the card are discussed. I don’t believe that one should focus on what a card can’t do, though. A card like Treeborn Frog is good even if it doesn’t also say, "While this card is in play, you win the game." And as I have discussed before, while Evil Hero Malicious Edge is a magnificent paragon of aggression, it doesn’t do my laundry for me.

2) It is two-way. Normally this isn’t too great a concern, as many of the monsters in your average deck are somewhere on the Semi-Limited or Limited list. This isn’t a comment on anything: the monsters are dangerously good, but it is sad when you spend all your time setting up a field to get three copies of Majestic Mech - Goryu in play and your opponent, who didn’t even do anything, gets a Cyber Dragon or two just for being nearby. There are ways around this.

3) Bottomless Trap Hole.

But in general you can’t complain too much—you have a quick-play spell with very amicable conditions for activation that your opponent is probably glad to assist in facilitating. A face-up monster on his or her side and one guy you can summon, and suddenly the world is a very bright place. A challenge in deckbuilding, however, is tweaking the deck with so few genuine options available. Consider here—the lynchpin combo of the deck is an unsearchable card alongside, believe it or not, another unsearchable card and any one of three other unsearchables. Going over 40 cards at all makes the deck much less likely to succeed, and since you have to keep full sets of cards, it makes no sense to sub out a Moisture Creature for, say, a Spirit Reaper because Moisture Creature is in here exclusively because it is a fattie Fairy with fair ATK. This means that deckbuilding is a real challenge for the condition we’ve chosen, and if it doesn’t work, there’s not much we can swap out to amend things. But there is plenty of room for change.

First off, I removed all copies of Soul of Purity and Light because the opportunity cost of keeping it in is not worth the cost of losing, well, everything below level 5. This deck and the one I have slated for next week both have odd monster lineups, and this one will honestly regret not having a monster on the field to work with.

The next change is simpler—Moisture Creature is replaced by Majestic Mech - Ohka. In an aggressive build with a heavy combo base, having a backup plan or even just a plan at all will usually help keep the deck running smooth. It also gives some creative outs against both Monarchs and Light and Darkness Dragon. Light and Darkness Dragon, in particular, has problems with the card: simply normal summon Ohka without tribute, and during the end phase the Dragon will lose 500 ATK and DEF when it negates the self-destructing effect of Ohka. Then Ohka tries to off itself again and again, until the Dragon runs out of DEF and can’t negate anything anymore.

For purposes of room, a lot of these changes simply reduce the number of cards on the decklist. We want to remove options that aren’t important. Dimension Fusion has narrow usage in this deck, and would be much better if we played cards like Banisher of the Light in addition to Soul of Purity and Light and Freed the Brave Wanderer. It may be wise to keep Dimension Fusion in the side deck, particularly for the third item listed at the start of my comments. A similar situation exists for The Sanctuary in the Sky, which would be better with Nova Summoner and more copies of Airknight Parshath. Both are removed. Magical Mallet is a point to consider. It speeds the deck up, but it reduces the overall number of cards in your hand, and unless the deck wants to be a one-trick pony, it needs to be able to win without Inferno Reckless Summon, so it would be wise to remove it for options that give the deck less of a “this thing plays way different” and more of a “this strategy plays like other decks but better because it uses Fairies.” And the latter statement is quite honestly something I think most people can go by. The best Gravekeeper deck, in my opinion, is one that can win after Necrovalley gets negated by Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell because every part of a build is not necessary for victory but contributes overall. The concept is something I call the surplus option in deckbuilding or playstyle, and I have won many games I could not otherwise have hoped to win simply by using it to deck my opponent out. Ohka helped. Now let’s see about the rest. Majestic Mech - Goryu will be much better with more low-level monsters to help maintain the field. Consider Magician of Faith in this deck, recycling Monster Gate, Brain Control, or better, a Celestial Transformation/Inferno Reckless Summon.

Long story short, +1 on Magician of Faith, Treeborn Frog, Marshmallon and Spirit Reaper plus Call of the Haunted to help recycle anything lost with Inferno Reckless Summon. To make room for the new defensive options, we cut Threatening Roar. Now we can hope for a much stronger field and maintain more presence on it over the course of each duel.

To help draw through the deck and keep the hand full, Morphing Jar could stand for an addition, and because of the stacked levels of our monster lineup (seven level 8 monsters), I reason that Reasoning should be dropped for a third Monster Gate. And finally, to help the deck keep monsters off the opponent’s field (at least the kind of monsters we don’t want, i.e. the face-down kind), in goes a copy of Nobleman of Crossout. The resulting deck looks a lot better to me, and I think you’ll agree. Size reduced, options and more consistency added. While the first list was a shot in the dark, praying that you got the cards you needed and leaving a weak back-up plan in the hands of Freed the Brave Wanderer, the new list offers you a legitimate (albeit meager) stall strategy with options slightly more permanent than Threatening Roar and a more normalized monster lineup, which gives the deck more reliable options.