By the time you read this, Shonen Jump Championship Columbus will be over and done with, and more than likely, I will have had a lot to say about Advanced Ritual Art in the coverage from that event. In the ten days leading up to Columbus, I received no less than 40 different emails and forum messages telling me about this amazing new deck that I just had to see. The funny part is, all of those decks from all of those different people were basically the same. Many people put a lot of confidence in their ability to draw or otherwise get Advanced Ritual Art, Demise, King of Armageddon, Doom Dozer, and Megamorph or Metamorphosis into their hand before their opponent could drop them to 2000 life points or less. Personally, I feel that most builds using Doom Dozer have some serious stability issues, since once you get past Insect Knight there aren’t any particularly playable normal Insect monsters. I’m also a bit unhappy with the all-or-nothing one-turn win approach to the deck. Failure to win immediately after pulling off the combo means a nearly certain loss and allows Enemy Controller users to turn their nearly inevitable demise into a very possible victory by stealing Demise and chaining to his effect.

Vincent Tundo had a much more stable Advanced Ritual Art deck that made use of Earth attribute monsters rather than Insects. Gene-Warped Warwolf, Gemini Elf, and Insect Knight all made appearances in Tundo’s deck in order to fuel monsters like Gigantes and The Rock Spirit. Unlike Doom Dozer, any one of these particular monsters only requires one monster to be removed, rather than two—thus allowing you easier access to more monsters faster and more consistently than with Dozer. Additionally, burn cards make for more chances to strike a finishing blow even if the opponent manages to take control of the game after you summon Demise and wipe the field.

Compared to these Advanced Ritual Art variants, mine sits in an entirely different part of the spectrum. While Doom Dozer decks sit on the combo side, mine sits on the control side of things (with Tundo’s deck being closer to the middle, but still on the combo side). This is partially because I’m a fan of playing games that last longer than two or three turns, and it also probably has something to do with my desire to play Dark Master - Zorc. Also, unlike the other decks, I’ll be using some of the new Normal monster support that we got from Strike of Neos and Cyberdark Impact. There’s a kind of primal appeal to effectively playing multiple copies of Call of the Haunted and Mirror Force that using Metamorphosis to turn Doom Dozer into Cyber Twin Dragon lacks.

“Too Busy Destroying the World”

Monsters: 23

3 Dark Master - Zorc

2 Demise, King of Armageddon

3 Gene-Warped Warwolf

3 Gemini Elf

3 Insect Knight

3 Battle Footballer
3 Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands

2 Sonic Bird

1 Sangan

Spells: 9

3 Advanced Ritual Art

2 Nobleman of Extermination

1 Snatch Steal

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Scapegoat

Traps: 9

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Mirror Force

2 Justi-Break

2 Birthright

2 The Transmigration Prophecy

1 Ring of Destruction

First and foremost, I’d like to remind everyone of the errata issued to Justi-Break. The card is even better than it reads. You can activate it whenever an opponent attacks one of your face-up Normal monsters, and rather than it destroying all non-Normal attack-position monsters, it destroys all monsters except face-up attack-position Normal monsters. That makes it much more explosive than Mirror Force. In fact, it’s more like a selective Torrential Tribute, and, as avid users of Elemental Hero Wildheart will tell you, not having a bare field after Torrential goes off is great. Birthright, on the other hand, is completely straightforward, does exactly what it says, and is Call of the Haunted numbers 2 through 4 if you’re playing with Normal monsters.

If you’re familiar with other Advanced Ritual Art decks, you may want to do a healthy amount of un-learning before you pick this one up. Rather than trying to win in one huge push in the early turns of the game, this deck is set up to play a slow game and take advantage of all the removal that your opponent is almost certainly playing. Any deck that needs to build a large field presence to win is likely going to be in serious trouble, since most of the monsters played in those decks are quite small. Gravekeeper’s Spy, Cyber Phoenix, Card Trooper, Gadgets, and Hydrogeddon can’t even dream of attacking through a Gene-Warped Warwolf without help. Shrink will help, obviously, but you’re essentially playing three copies of both Call of the Haunted and Mirror Force. If your opponents attack your obviously larger monster with something like Hydrogeddon, you know that something’s up and that it’s time to use Justi-Break.

Moving on to the Ritual monsters, I’m of the opinion that Zorc and Demise are the best of them that can be easily summoned with Advanced Ritual Art without being forced to use Skull Servant in your deck. Reshef the Dark Being, with its Change of Heart effect, is good, but with a limited number of spells available and the importance of keeping monsters alive, a constant source of monster destruction is more useful than a “whenever you get a spell you don’t want” theft effect. I’m not a real fan of effects based on die rolls, but Zorc’s has a much greater chance of doing something useful than most. The 2700 ATK also helps out. Demise is already the monster of choice for most Ritual decks (Advanced and otherwise), so he’s obviously earned a spot in this deck as well. The biggest question I’m sure many of you have is, “Why do you have five Ritual monsters and only three Ritual spells?” It’s because the game rules only let me have three of the one I want, and I don’t want to clog my deck up with any more that don’t do the specific cool thing that Advanced Ritual Art does. That said, I’m also all about working around things like “limits,” and The Transmigration Prophecy lets me do exactly that.

Do you ever wish you could have more than three copies of Nimble Momonga or your recruiter of choice? The Transmigration Prophecy lets you do it. In my case, I want more than three copies of Advanced Ritual Art, and The Transmigration Prophecy delivers. Prophecy also lets you shuffle problem cards back into your opponent’s deck, so you could rid his or her graveyard of Treeborn Frog while setting yourself up for another Ritual summon. The deck is actually a pretty good place for you to keep those spells, considering that you have five ways to search them out between Sonic Bird and Manju. Manju also lets you pull out Ritual monsters if you need them, making it the ultimate support for Ritual-based decks. Even if you’re having difficulty bringing out your Ritual monsters you’ve still got a deck full of beaters ready to have a go at the opposition. Cyber Dragon will still present a problem, since there is little removal not attached to Demise. The removal you do have, however, is very powerful and should be used carefully.

In general, if you don’t get nailed by a combo deck yourself, you’ve got a good shot at winning a lot of games. Bad hands will obviously happen, as they will with any deck that uses Ritual monsters, but if you find it becoming a particular problem for you, go ahead and try to fit in a couple of copies of Card Trader to cycle cards you don’t need back into your deck. Nobleman of Extermination would be an obvious choice to switch out in this case, but I personally like it, since the deck doesn’t play any of the common traps that are seen in threes in most decks (like Sakuretsu Armor and Widespread Ruin). Alternatively, you could also try adding in some more regular removal or dropping down to just Zorc or just Demise. One of the best things about Advanced Ritual Art is that the only limits to what you can do with it are self-imposed. Go ahead, drop Dark Magician into the graveyard to pull out Legendary Flame Lord and start accumulating spell counters in a Spellcaster-based Advanced Ritual Art deck. Dump Skull Servant into the graveyard to bring out Relinquished while fueling a King of the Skull Servants. Advanced Ritual Art is the best Ritual spell in the game. Enjoy it, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: Shrink makes Ancient Gear Beast laugh at Cyber Dragon.