I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Zombie decks these days draw a whole lot of cards. In fact, every time I think about Zombie decks at this point, there’s always one particular picture that comes to mind: the Shonen Jump Championship Washington, DC coverage for Matt Peddle’s round 4 feature match against Augustin Herrera. You know, the one where every zone but the field spell zone was filled and Matt had a ridiculously large hand? Actually, I’m unsure if his hand is even in that picture. The stack of cards that I think is the hand might be his side deck for all I know, but with three copies of Card of Safe Return on the field, you can see where I might be a bit confused. One of the first things I asked Jason when he got back from the Jump was exactly how much damage Secret Barrel would do to a Zombie player on average. Apparently this had been a running joke throughout the day at the Jump, but some players (namely Hugo Adame and Eric Wu) ended up having the last laugh. Both of them opted to bring a burn deck to the Jump, and both put up a Day 2 appearance as a reward. However, it seems to me that while their builds are fairly solid as is, there are so many more ways to abuse the way people smack them for massive amounts of damage with little to no personal effort.

One of the main things that makes burn so viable at this point is the huge number of other decks in the current metagame that help it out in their natural course of play. Specifically, decks seem to be drawing more and more cards, playing more and more cards, and attacking with bigger monsters more often. This creates a huge opportunity for burn decks to tear through the opposition, since burn players have access to cards made specifically for each of these situations!

My favorite part about the current evolution of the burn deck is Skill Drain: one of those cards that could help build a really nasty deck if someone ever found a way to do it right. Finally, we’re getting to the point where people are finding the real power of Skill Drain. Negating the effects of monsters with nasty drawbacks like Chainsaw Insect is something it waggles in front of your face to try and excite the little voice in your head that wants you to smash everything with the biggest monster you can find, just for laughs. The real power of Skill Drain is the ability to negate opposing effects while designing your deck in such a way that only your opponent suffers for it. Combining it with burn may have seemed crazy at one time because some of the best burn cards (Stealth Bird) didn’t like having their effects negated. We now have the opportunity to take advantage of the evolution of a new format in order to burn our opponents to a crisp in some of the most delightfully unpleasant ways ever devised.

Monsters: 10

3 Nimble Momonga

3 Giant Germ

3 Big Shield Gardna

1 Sangan

Spells: 12

3 Wave-Motion Cannon

3 Chain Energy

2 Messenger of Peace

2 Necrovalley

1 Level Limit - Area B

1 Scapegoat

Traps: 19

3 Ojama Trio

3 Solemn Judgment

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Mirror Force

1 Magic Cylinder

1 Gravity Bind

1 The Transmigration Prophecy

3 Skill Drain

3 Dimension Wall

2 Secret Barrel

This sort of deck happens to be extremely hazardous to players on both sides of the table, but with practice you should be able to manage it extremely well and secure some wins from the very first turn. Note that I’m not calling it an OTK, because it isn’t an OTK. However, it’s entirely possible that when going first, you can create a situation that’s virtually guaranteed to win you the game depending on what kind of deck you’re up against. A lot of this depends on the continuous spell Chain Energy. It was always a favorite since most people just don’t know how to play against it. Most players will respond to the activation in one of three ways: over committing to the field, playing nothing, or dropping Heavy Storm. It’s important to note that the removal they drop is invariably Heavy Storm, since most players are looking to use their Mystical Space Typhoon on the end phase of the opponent’s turn to potentially nail a chainable trap before it becomes chainable.

In the case of the opponent playing nothing, you could likely go to town delivering the beats with Nimble Momonga and Giant Germ, but the ideal situation comes when your opponent over-commits to the field. He or she has likely paid a lot of life points to use Chain Energy and thrown him- or herself into a position where your Dimension Wall and Magic Cylinder can strike at will (or at least enough to keep him or her from playing cards). That’s one of the very unpleasant things about Chain Energy. It’s not that the opponent is out of room to play cards, but the fact that once his or her life points get low enough, he or she simply cannot pay for the cards he or she wants. For the record, a card is considered “played” (and must be paid for according to the effect of Chain Energy) if it’s placed from the hand to the field. Discarding doesn’t count; nor does moving cards from the graveyard, deck, or removed from play area to the field. Setting a card from your hand obviously counts, but flipping it up at a later time doesn’t. You’ll never have to double pay to Chain Energy, but the effect stacks if multiple copies wind up on the field. That means a player could be paying up to 1500 life points per card! Nasty, especially if there’s a Wave-Motion Cannon on the field as well. You want to pay as little as possible to your own copies of Chain Energy, so the obvious thing to do once you have it is to play all the rest of the cards you want to use that turn and then activate. From there, you just need to be careful with managing your life points. Solemn Judgment and Skill Drain are both useful and necessary for keeping your infrastructure intact, so if you’re going to give this deck a go, get ready for a crash course in life point management.

One of the key points that the burn decks in D.C. didn’t quite take into account was the importance of the graveyard to the current top decks in the format. Zombies are all about the graveyard, and Perfect Circle tends to get most of its tribute material that way as well. Skill Drain, while amazing, isn’t going to stop your opponent from removing Destiny Hero - Malicious from play to get another one, nor will it stop him or her from using Book of Life to pull back Ryu Kokki or Il Blud for the umpteenth time. Skill Drain also isn’t going to stop your opponent from removing Warriors to bring back that Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade one more time or from summoning Doom Dozer to beat down on you. That’s what Necrovalley is for. In addition to being able to negate some effects (such as Magician of Faith), Necrovalley stops all methods of monster resurrection, as well as blocking anything that would require your opponent to remove cards in his or her graveyard from play. It’s incredibly handy, and it doesn’t take up a slot that could be holding a Wave-Motion Cannon or Solemn Judgment.

In general, you’d like your opening move to involve Big Shield Gardna and Ojama Trio. This way, you can lock your opponent out of playing cards like Cyber Dragon and force him or her into prematurely using a Nobleman of Crossout that will just be negated anyway. Even better, Big Shield Gardna has what might be the most beneficial interaction with Skill Drain imaginable. If Drain is up, it will still negate a spell that targets it while it’s face down, but after it flips up, it won’t switch to attack position after being attacked! Dark Magician of Chaos is the only monster that can break through Gardna on its own, and the fact that your opponent is likely down a Crossout makes it possible for you to set Giant Germ or Nimble Momonga if you so desire. Actually, if you have Dimension Wall, it might be better just to play them face up anyway and pull some damage transfer shenanigans. Just be warned that if you play this deck, your friends will get very, very upset with you. It’s funny for a while, but I certainly take no responsibility for any long-term vendettas that may occur from bringing a burn deck to hobby league. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: No previews, no hints, obscurity only, Final Destination.