By the time you read this, U.S. Nationals will be less than a week away. At this point, I’m assuming that everyone already has their main decks nailed down pretty solidly. If not, I’d really consider doing that in short order. The biggest thing to worry about now is finalizing your side deck, likely based at least in part on whatever happened at Canadian Nationals this past weekend. Unfortunately, without the aid of a time machine, I’m unable to offer any advice based on the top decks from that event. I can, however, tell you everything I know based on the evolution of the metagame at the last six Shonen Jump Championships and Italian Nationals.

The most interesting deck out of the Top 8 from Italy is definitely the full-blown Macro Cosmos Monarch deck. Riccardo Gardi correctly predicted that a vast majority of his opponents would run decks heavily based on using Card Trooper repeatedly and putting specific monsters into the graveyard. Thus, he built his deck to counteract all of those shenanigans while putting forth a strong strategy of his own . . . in this case, a Monarch deck. He certainly had the right idea, but in the end, Riccardo was unable to take home the title. It’s hard to see why without the context of the matchups he faced, but I suspect that the loss was caused at least in part by drawing too many of the wrong cards at the wrong time (for example, by picking up D.D. Scout Plane when he really needed a Monarch). I also expect that a large part of the problem was that the deck was running a bit too slowly because about a third of its monsters are flip effects and another third are useless without Dimensional Fissure or Macro Cosmos on the field. There’s plenty of room for aggressive play to beat the deck, especially when backed up by Royal Decree (which likely occurred because seven of the players in that Top 8 could side in Decrees).

Still, removing all the monsters from play is a good option right about now with the Destiny Hero supremacy we’ve been seeing lately. This week, I want to take the idea in a more aggressive direction, focusing on delivering the beats as fast as possible, all while stealing a couple of tricks from Destiny Hero beatdown’s playbook. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Monsters: 19

3 Cyber Dragon

3 D.D. Survivor

3 Elemental Hero Wildheart

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

2 Exiled Force

3 Banisher of the Radiance

1 D.D. Warrior Lady

2 Airknight Parshath

1 Jinzo

Spells: 18

3 Dimensional Fissure

3 Brain Control

2 Metamorphosis

2 Smashing Ground

2 Shrink

2 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Book of Moon

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Snatch Steal

Traps: 3

3 Royal Decree

Fusion Deck: 12

2 Dark Balter the Terrible

2 Ryu Senshi

2 Dark Blade the Dragon Knight

2 Karbonala Warrior

2 Dragoness the Wicked Knight

2 Cyber Twin Dragon

Last week, I talked about how Destiny Hero beatdown can’t stand up to decks that can beat it before it draws all the cards it needs to whack you in one turn. This deck continues the tradition by creating a wall of attackers rather than a wall of defenders. The catch (for your opponent) is that this wall of attackers will never go away, even if it gets nailed by Crush Card Virus. Of course, there’s a catch to the catch: you need something on the field that will remove your D.D. Survivor cards from play. In this deck, your removal agents will be Banisher of the Radiance and Dimensional Fissure. While I’m personally a fan of Macro Cosmos, it might just be too slow to cope with the decks that people are playing right now. Specifically, I want the ability to slap down Fissure or Banisher and swing away at whatever monster my opponent has, getting results right then.

Back at SJC Minneapolis, I was almost totally convinced that Shane Scurry was going to lose his Top 16 match to sided-in Dimensional Fissure and D.D. Survivor cards. In fact, you can click over to his feature match against Tong Thao to see just how badly he got beaten once the Fissure came out. Sure, it didn’t end up happening, but that second game gives you a pretty clear picture of what this deck is supposed to be about. Unlike Thao, though, I’m not relegating the strategy to the side deck of a build based around recruiter monsters. Rather, I’m incorporating it as a part of one of the classic strategies of the game, a Warrior toolbox. Toolbox decks using Elemental Hero Stratos and a set of Elemental Hero Wildheart cards first started appearing back in the most recent SJC in Houston, but the deck didn’t make it past the Top 8. Since then, it’s kept cropping up on Day 2, each time failing to achieve victory. My thought on this is that while it has versatile options for removing threats and getting around traps, this is, in essence, exactly what the opponents want you to do. Sure thing! Go ahead and waste my defense-position Disk Commander with whatever big monster you have. I won’t take any damage and I’ll revive it later on to draw two cards. It’s like a searchable, Warrior-type Sheep token that you can revive and hide behind almost indefinitely thanks to the fear it instills in opposing duelists. All the while, the Destiny Hero beatdown player draws more cards anyway, eventually gaining the means to carry out whatever he or she is planning to do this game. Including the Dimensional Fissure strategy in your main deck nullifies this: even if opponents won’t take any damage from you beating down their little Destiny Heroes, they won’t get any effects either.

Of course, why settle for just negating the effects when you can deal damage and draw cards too? If we’re to treat Disk Commander and Fear Monger like Sheep tokens, then we might as well go all the way back to when Scapegoat was allowed in threes and pull out the card that made goat-huggers cringe every time they saw it: Airknight Parshath! I keep going over everything in my head, and I can’t help but believe that now is the perfect time to bring back the Airknight. People are hiding behind small monsters to give themselves free draws, so why not beat them up through those monsters for free draws while leaving yourself a window of opportunity to use Metamorphosis and claim Dark Balter the Terrible? After all, the only thing that Destiny Hero–based decks like to do more than throw things in the graveyard and hide behind puny monsters is use lots of normal spells and get you to activate their monster effects. Conveniently enough, these are the two things that Balter simply doesn’t allow. It’ll cost you 1000 life points to negate a normal spell—a paltry sum—but all you have to do to negate a monster’s effect with Balter is attack. Easy stuff when you have Royal Decree to back you up.

Royal Decree is easily the aggressive deck’s best friend. Why bother dealing with guessing games, worrying about whether or not your opponent has a set Mirror Force or Torrential Tribute, when you can pile all your monsters into the party van and drive it across your opponent’s face while he or she is helpless to do anything about it? Decree offers you that power as long as you don’t use traps yourself. I’m okay with that in this case, especially since you can just throw down as many spells as you need to keep things in your favor. Getting nailed by Trap Dustshoot or Solemn Judgment or letting your opponent lock you down with Gravity Bind are all occurrences that you’re better off preventing. Specifically, you don’t want to get hit by Dustshoot, especially when you only have one monster in hand and no way to get another. Between Stratos and Reinforcement of the Army, the threat of this should be reduced, but make no mistake—it’s still there. Also, while Airknight Parshath is an excellent way to apply pressure to the opponent while earning extra draws, there are a couple of problems you could face: specifically, Cyber Dragon and Card Trooper, one of which becomes a moot point while Dimensional Fissure or Banisher of the Radiance are in play. Cyber Dragon, on the other hand, can be dealt with in a number of ways, the most productive of which would be stealing it with Brain Control and tributing it off either to Metamorphosis or to summon your Airknight in the first place!

Nationals is the biggest event of the year in most countries, and the U.S. is no exception. Hopefully, those of you attending are well-prepared by now and just need a little fine tuning for the event. If that’s not the case, well, better late than never, right? Ready or not, I’d recommend this week’s School of Duel, if only to get a second opinion on what we’re going to see on the 23rd. Starting next week, we’ll wind down with some fun decks, but until then, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: I wonder how many people will even remember the cards in question.