With the expected First-Turn KO and One-Turn KO decks failing to achieve the success that many believed they would at Shonen Jump Championship Houston, creative duelists are turning to new, often even more outlandish strategies here this weekend to try and out-speed the high-impact builds of Dark Armed Dragon. Surprisingly enough, one of the most popular of these burgeoning strategies is also one of the oldest in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG: Exodia!
Several players approached me with their Exodia builds over the past several days, but the most promising (and the most well-reputed) is this deck from Chris Moosman. Representing Team ETC and yugiohetc.com, the Canadian-turned-Californian is renowned for his creative stylings and Day 2 success with cards like Prickle Fairy. Now, he’s setting his sights on yet another qualifying performance, and there’s more at stake than ever before. Here’s the deck he’s placing his hopes on:
The deck uses two different draw engines to try and accomplish its goal of gathering five pieces of Exodia. The first engine couldn’t be simpler: three copies each of Trade-In, Destiny Draw, Allure of Darkness, and Reckless Greed. With a whopping twelve effects that let this deck draw two cards through spells and traps, it’s extremely easy to draw toward pieces of Moosman’s win condition, as well as the combo components that make up the deck’s second suite of draw effects.
The second draw engine is what sets this version of the deck apart from a lot of the others being run today. Plenty of duelists are running Exodia with a lot of “draw two” cards. That strategy can win, but it fizzles out more often than not, often mourning the loss of its fifth and final Exodia piece to the bottom of the deck. But Moosman is one of the few who’s also playing the Spell Economics / Cyber Valley draw suite that Vincent Tundo was piloting at Shonen Jump Championship Houston, powered by Dimension Fusion. Moosman is running the necessary three Cyber Valley, but he’s only running one copy of Spell Economics — a fine line he’s well-equipped to walk due to the massive draw power offered by his first draw engine. It’s a cool interaction and it might set his deck apart from others.
The three copies of Trade-In are also a big deal-breaker. They’re powered by three copies of Destiny Hero – Dogma and three Destiny Hero – Plasma, giving more hits for Destiny Draw than Tundo had. Trade-In also means Moosman won’t have to rely on Magical Mallet or Reload to get to his combo, something Tundo did and that is quite common in the other Exodia builds this weekend. Moosman is going for pure draw power — there aren’t any hand-randomizing effects in this deck whatsoever.
It’s important to note that though Moosman is borrowing elements of a First-Turn KO deck, he’s not planning to press himself toward a win on turn 1, and doesn’t need to take the risks associated with doing so. Reckless Greed makes this a turn 2 deck, and that’s going to give Moosman a lot more freedom than other Exodia players.
This deck appears to be deathly consistent, and eliminates the random factors that contributed to a lot of the failures we’ve seen from previous combo decks in this format. I think Moosman may have finally cracked the code, and if he can make it to the Top 32 here this weekend, the dueling world may never be the same.