There’s nothing quite like hoping and hoping for something new to come out for your favorite deck only to find at the next Sneak Preview that your dreams have been fulfilled. Personally, I get excited whenever I see a new counter trap or Fairy card, and I was thrilled when I first saw Zeradias, Herald of Heaven. The field card searchers weren’t the only new support for older cards that came in Force of the Breaker, however. Cleverly disguised as extra muscle for decks that rely on a lot of continuous cards like Crystal Beasts or slow burn decks, the real strength of Dweller in the Depths lies in its applications in Cyberdark decks. Yes, Dweller in the Depths, regardless of whether or not you can actually find it in the card art (I can’t), is the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG’s second-ever level 3, 1500 ATK Dragon monster. Combined with the recent release of Exploder Dragon, Cyberdark decks have received a huge burst of power. As we saw at Shonen Jump Championship Montreal, Cyberdarks were good enough to make it to Day 2 before Dweller in the Depths. Imagine how good they are when they can have more than one 2300 ATK monster on the field at the same time. It would probably look a little something like this:

Monsters: 24

3 Cyber Dragon

3 Cyberdark Horn

3 Cyberdark Edge

2 Cyberdark Keel

3 Masked Dragon

1 Twin-Headed Behemoth

2 Dweller in the Depths

3 Exploder Dragon

2 Cyber Phoenix

1 Jinzo

1 Sangan

Spells: 10

1 Snatch Steal

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Book of Moon

3 Smashing Ground

1 Premature Burial

1 Future Fusion

1 Overload Fusion

Traps: 8

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Call of the Haunted

2 Sakuretsu Armor

2 Deck Devastation Virus

Fusions: 9

3 Chimeratech Overdragon

3 Cyberdark Dragon

3 Five-Headed Dragon

It’s been a while since we took a look at Cyberdarks, so a quick refresher on their abilities is in order. The effects of each of the three regular Cyberdark monsters activate whenever they’re normal summoned. Upon resolution, these effects let you equip the Cyberdark monsters with a level 3 or lower Dragon from your graveyard. Your Cyberdark monster then gains the ATK of the equipped monster, and if the Cyberdark would be destroyed as a result of battle, the equipped monster is destroyed instead. This is why Dweller in the Depths is such a big deal for Cyberdark players. Dweller matches the highest ATK of any other monster that can be equipped to a Cyberdark monster and it isn’t Limited to one like Twin-Headed Behemoth. Sure, its special ability isn’t the greatest, since it only counts your own continuous spells, but that’s all right for a monster that you’d rather have in your graveyard anyway.

You should note that Pulling the Rug works against Cyberdark monsters, so be careful if you’re planning on playing them in a major tournament. Pulling the Rug is everywhere right now, and was close to inclusion in this deck as well. Rug is so good in most current metagames because the main decks we have to contend with are usually Monarchs with Raiza the Storm Monarch, Demise OTK, and Diamond Dude Turbo. Pulling the Rug puts the brakes on Demise in a flash (assuming your opponent doesn’t draw the entire combo in his or her first hand), in addition to shutting down any Monarch that tries to activate an effect. It’s not so good against Diamond Dude Turbo, where the only card it can block is Elemental Hero Stratos, but with the change to the Forbidden and Limited list that brings Magical Stone Excavation down to one per deck, I suspect that by the time we get to Minneapolis, people will have largely abandoned DDT for either the Destiny Hero powered Monarch decks or Demise OTK. After all, Spell Reproduction just doesn’t cut it when you’ve got a pair of monsters that need to be discarded. There is a card that can take out all of these decks and then some: Deck Devastation Virus. Don’t look now, but all the Cyberdark monsters are Dark and can easily increase their ATK above 2000, making them perfect for Deck Devastation Virus. They also start with less than 1000 ATK, making them perfect for Crush Card Virus if you happen to own that particular card.

The Cyberdarks are about as searchable as monsters come, but unfortunately, searching them out with Mystic Tomato would only end in tears, due to their normal summon needs. That’s why we’ll take the opposite (and more useful) approach of searching out the Dragons instead of the Machines. Masked Dragon is a monster in the same class as the more common recruiters, with a few key differences. First off, it searches by type rather than attribute, and second, it can special summon monsters in defense mode. It also has 1400 ATK like many other recruiters, but unlike the other recruiters, it’s only level 3! This has the excellent consequence of making each fallen Masked Dragon a candidate for resurrection as part of a Cyberdark monster big enough to outright beat Cyber Dragon in a battle. It also does fun things like bring out Dweller in the Depths or Exploder Dragon to force your opponent into a position where he or she really has to think about what he or she wants to achieve during this battle phase. Exploder Dragon is a miracle worker, giving the deck an out against any monster that doesn’t negate monster effects, all while keeping your life points protected should the opponent opt not to do the attacking on his or her own. This comes with the downside of not being able to press extra damage through with the Dragon, but considering that there’s no reason to even have an Exploder Dragon out if your opponent has no monsters, the concern over direct attacks is needless.

The primary focus of this deck should be on the Cyberdark monsters themselves and not any of the Fusion monsters the deck is capable of producing. Other variants such as Yannick Dubeau’s from SJC Montreal focus more on achieving a win by means of a massive Fusion monster, but today’s Cyberdark deck mainly wants to exhaust the opponent’s options by putting out more high ATK level 4 monsters than he or she can deal with. Cyberdark Horn and Cyberdark Edge put an oppressive amount of pressure on the opponent, who will likely have to focus on defense in an attempt to draw more removal. Defensive monsters are practically meaningless to the Cyberdarks, as they seek to punish the defenders for everything they do. All of the Cyberdarks—when equipped with anything as big as or bigger than Masked Dragon—can punch through Gravekeeper’s Spy, which is currently the absolute worst thing that your opponent could have down when you attack. Legendary Jujitsu Master? Whatever. You didn’t really stop my threat at all considering that I can just normal summon it again next turn and beat you up some more. Raiza the Storm Monarch can be a problem due to his ability to throw your equip cards back on top of the deck, but Deck Devastation Virus and some clever side decking are more than enough to keep the blustery fellow off your back long enough for you to win.

Against the combo decks, you want to try and push through damage as fast as you possibly can. Unfortunately, this also means somehow getting a big Dragon into the graveyard for you to equip to a Cyberdark. You also want to activate Deck Devastation Virus as early as possible in order to stop your opponent from claiming the effect of Ritual searchers or summoning Diamond Dude or Card Trooper. A bit of a clever trick you can use to help out on this is to hold cards until you have seven in hand, forcing you to discard one of your Dragons (oh no!). Unfortunately, this leaves you open to direct attacks for one or two turns. That simply won’t do, so the real alternative is to side in cards that make you discard in order to play them. Right now, Lightning Vortex is a frontrunner in that category, especially if your opponent has to try and pull a combo off without all the pieces or is playing Six Samurai. If you want to throw in some hand disruption that can also toss your Dragons into the graveyard, you can try doing it Zane-style with the new Ruthless Denial. Denial seems to have a lot of potential hidden in it, so make sure to pick up a couple of copies if you can find them. You never know what new decks people will come up with now that Force of the Breaker is out, so a neat discard spell might be just what you need in the near future.

Next time I’ll take a look at another deck made possible by Force of the Breaker, as well as bringing back The School of Duel after a finals-induced absence for the last couple of weeks. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: I finally remember to put the previews at the end! Also, Crystal Beasts.