If you have been playing the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG at any of the various regional events or Shonen Jump Championships over the past two weeks, then you should be familiar with the new card known as Card Trooper. If not, you’d better familiarize yourself with it. You’re going to be seeing a lot of this Machine around for the next few months. It is not only a powerful monster on its own, but it will also likely be one of the defining cards for the new Advanced format.
As always, new changes to the Advanced format give leeway to an aggressive or pro-active deck being the best choice to play at a premiere event. This is because the format is so wide open and undetermined that it’s nearly impossible to create a control deck ready for the new environment. You may have an idea of what to build, and you may be able to incorporate controlling strategies into your deck, but if you are running straight-up control, then you will typically have some problems getting through the Swiss rounds of a Regional.
Now before you go citing Monarchs and Gadgets as control decks, you must realize that both of those deck types aren’t totally control-oriented. Monarchs generally operate on a proactive game plan: you summon a few Monarchs, you hurt your opponent’s options, and then you attack for 2400 a couple of times. This is a pretty fail-safe strategy, strengthened when a player running the deck knows what to expect in the format (and can thus make optimal use of free card slots in the main deck). However, in a new format, a player can just design the deck to be as efficient as possible at tribute summoning Monarchs.
Gadgets work the same way, since they take on a broader control strategy. They aim to control all things related to the battle phase. Their deck punishes the opponent for attacking. They destroy monsters with effects like Sakuretsu Armor or spells like Enemy Controller. You keep on summoning Gadgets until your opponent eventually loses through continuous attacks, or he or she wipes out your field, at which point you just shrug and continue summoning the little mechanical roaches.
Even Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure decks have more of a proactive strategy than a reactive one. With focus primarily on Dimensional Fissure, instead of Macro Cosmos and its vulnerability to an aggressive Royal Decree, the deck can play a field-dominating game of getting Dimensional Fissure active with a D.D. Survivor.
It is important to note that these decks can all thrive if they focus on their own specific proactive strategies. However, after SJC Houston, they now have specific strategies to focus on stopping, and the cards they’ll want to tech for involve monsters like Card Trooper.
Emon Ghaneian managed to win his third Shonen Jump Championship in Houston just weeks ago. He ran a Bazoo the Soul-Eater/Skull Lair/Return from the Different Dimension deck powered by Card Trooper, which has significantly increased the power of monsters like Bazoo. It’s easy to see how he blasted through the Swiss rounds with such a deck. After all, he’s running a ton of efficient and powerful cards!
Among them, Card Trooper is by far the most efficient, and it makes many of Emon’s other cards work that much better. Card Trooper’s downside of making you drop the top three cards of your deck isn’t a downside at all if you plan carefully. It enables you to make better use of your graveyard and speed up your deck by activating cards like Bazoo the Soul-Eater and Skull Lair as early as the second turn! On top of all this, Card Trooper can crash into the opponent or another monster at 1900 ATK after thinning your deck. Where exactly is the downside?
All right, there are times when Card Trooper will end up hurting you. In the late game, you may not want to discard cards so aggressively, as there is a chance you will either deck yourself out, or discard something of real value. This is very important, and requires a player to know when and when not to use Card Trooper. The little Machine is also going to be stuck at 400 ATK during the opponent’s turn, making it a vulnerable target for an aggressive deck to trample over.
The benefits of Card Trooper far outweigh these downsides, however. If the 1900 ATK and free graveyard-loading weren’t enough, you also get to draw a card when Card Trooper is destroyed and sent to the graveyard. That means you draw if Card Trooper is destroyed in battle, destroyed by a spell, destroyed by a trap, or even destroyed by your own card effects. This lets you accelerate your strategy in more than just one way: not only can you pitch the top three cards of your deck to your graveyard, but your Card Trooper replaces itself with a draw when it is destroyed!
Along with Bazoo the Soul-Eater, the card has made for a very powerful aggressive deck. However, what gives a deck like this the punch it needs to win an SJC is its ability to run Return from the Different Dimension as its late-game blow-out. That trap card ends games when it is activated, even when the opponent is at his or her starting life points. Combining that sort of late game with the early game provided by the two monsters I mentioned leads to a very solid deck: it’s fast, it’s powerful, and it has ways to win at any time. Card Trooper is a real gem in the current metagame, so expect to see it often and for a very long time.