Gladiatorial combat was seriously brutal. Remember Russell Crowe leading a group of random slaves who had never fought a battle in their lives to victory despite overwhelming odds? Now take that picture, remove Russell Crowe, and show all those slaves being hopelessly slaughtered, and you have a more realistic picture of gladiatorial combat. There were lions too, but if memory serves, they were generally reserved for members of religious minorities. The point is, the gladiators were always swift and merciless . . . well maybe not swift, since that wouldn’t have entertained the crowd so well, but they were definitely merciless.

What I find even more interesting is how the brutal, grinding combat of the gladiators was translated into cardboard form for the Gladiator Beasts in Gladiator’s Assault. The Beasts flaunt their superiority over other monsters by appearing in a vulnerable state, but as the opponent helplessly attacks into them, their superior preparation and training makes all attacks futile.

The Gladiator Beasts are second only to the Six Samurai in providing a versatile suite of effects to choose from. However they’re vastly superior in terms of gaining access to those effects. While a Six Samurai deck is frequently at the mercy of a random effect like the deck discarding of Card Trooper or the flip effect of Magical Merchant, as long as you can come up with one Gladiator Beast on the field, you have access to every other Gladiator Beast in your deck. It may take a turn or two to get to the one you want, but it’s going to happen one way or another.

Also, unlike the Six Samurai, each Gladiator Beast can carry out its job on its own without any help from a teammate. This means you may never have to normal summon after the first turn, and it frequently forces your opponent into suboptimal plays with his or her most powerful removal cards. I, for one, would not want to blow my Torrential Tribute or Lightning Vortex on a single monster that keeps tagging its buddies in and out of the duel just to mess with me. In Japan, one of the biggest weaknesses that the Gladiator Beasts had was a lack of any real muscle and a terrible weakness to swarms. As anyone who went to the Sneak Preview likely saw, however, the rest of the world doesn’t have this problem. The new trap card Defensive Tactics makes it possible for your lone Gladiator Beast to outlast even the fiercest Zombie deck assault, and for added value, Defensive Tactics even goes back into the deck to be used again!

I tinkered around with a number of different builds for the Gladiator Beast deck—some of which even used A Cat of Ill Omen to maximize the number of times I could play Defensive Tactics in one game—but in the end, here’s the one I liked the best.

Monsters: 21

2 Gladiator Beast Octavius

1 Gladiator Beast Alexander

2 Gladiator Beast Secutor

2 Gladiator Beast Dimacari

2 Gladiator Beast Laquari

2 Gladiator Beast Bestiari

2 Gladiator Beast Murmillo

2 Gladiator Beast Hoplomus

2 Test Ape

1 Sangan

3 Test Tiger

Spells: 8

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Gladiator Beast’s Respite

2 Pot of Avarice

2 Gladiator Beast’s Battle Manica

Traps: 11

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

3 Defensive Tactics

3 Waboku

3 Solemn Judgment

Are you not entertained? You’ll notice that there are a lot of Gladiator Beast monsters in the deck, and very few of those one-of monsters that end up in almost every single deck that people make. This is because, like the Six Samurai, the more you dedicate yourself to the strategy and avoid cards that don’t mesh well, the better the deck functions. Gladiator Beasts picked up some serious support thanks to the world-premiere cards Test Tiger and Defensive Tactics. Defensive Tactics is what I would call a theme-stamped version of Waboku, which incidentally is probably the best protective card you can possibly have for the Gladiator Beasts. They actually need to make it through an entire battle in order to tag out, so Mirror Force won’t cut it in terms of protection if you want to do anything more than halt your opponent’s aggression.

Tactics also has the added perk of going back to your deck when it’s finished protecting you, so you’ll never run out of ways to protect yourself provided you’re continuously shuffling the deck with your Gladiator Beasts’ tag effects. While it won’t save you if your field is completely bare, you can still chain it to a card that would destroy it or your only Gladiator Beast and still receive the benefits of the trap. This is especially helpful when cards are targeted by Raiza the Storm Monarch or Phoenix Wing Wind Blast. Part of the problem with getting the card bounced is that even if you can replay it next turn, you still have to take all the damage this turn: not something you can afford when you’re playing with Gladiator Beasts.

Individually, some of the Gladiator Beasts are more suited to being played without their effects than others. In the early game, Gladiator Beast Hoplomus is a good choice for a set due to its ability to repel the attack of a Cyber Dragon and then tag out for Gladiator Beast Murmillo (which can then take out the Cyber Dragon at the end of the battle phase before your opponent gets another shot at using Smashing Ground or Soul Taker). Normally, an attack on Hoplomus would also give you the opportunity to summon Gladiator Beast Spartacus and claim an equip spell, but in this particular build, I’ve opted to ignore Spartacus in favor of maintaining what I consider a much better strategy than using either of the Gladiator Beast Fusions or equip spells other than the Battle Manica.

Also, on the subject of first turn plays, summoning Test Ape in attack position is a potentially useful play as it forces your opponent to either spend removal on something that isn’t a Gladiator Beast or risk letting you start your powerful search engine. All it takes is Test Ape into a Gladiator Beast followed by Test Tiger on your own turn, and things could go very badly for your opponent. Speaking of Test Tiger, when I was at the Sneak Preview, people were saying that this card is to the Gladiator Beasts what Grandmaster of the Six Samurai was to the Six Samurai. That’s sort of exactly correct. Test Tiger provides a way to activate your Gladiator Beast effects without needing one to both battle and survive, but at a cost of a card from your hand. Compare this to the Grandmaster who only enables the monsters you already have in front of you, but does so with 2100 ATK of righteous fury and a terribly vengeful secondary effect that’s sure to punish any opponent who dares take him down. The differences are pretty obvious, but the fact that the card is an incredible boon to the entire strategy is even more evident, and it’s one ultra rare that I would certainly try to get ahold of as quick as you can if you intend to give the Gladiator Beasts a spin.

The specific strategy I’ve chosen to employ with this deck is akin to the way that Gadget decks are generally supposed to work. Basically, you want to use Murmillo and Bestiari to grind your opponent down until you can get a clear shot with Gladiator Beast Secutor (or at least force your opponent to attack Secutor). Then, after you make the attack fail, you get to pick two more Gladiator Beasts from your deck and summon them. Guess which two I would pick? If you said both copies of Gladiator Beast Octavius, you’re looking at pounding your opponent for 5000 damage next turn in addition to clearing out two of his or her set backfield cards. I sure like the sound of that, and Octavius is a good card to bring out in many phases of the game. He may not be able to tag out on his own, but you always have Test Tiger to work with should the need arise.

If your opponent doesn’t have anything set and isn’t likely to have anything to set in main phase two, might I recommend that you use Secutor’s effect to bring out two copies of Gladiator Beast Dimacari? When tagged into the duel by another Gladiator Beast, each Dimacari can attack twice for a potential 3200 damage apiece. It’s brutal, and as I mentioned back at the start, that’s what the Gladiators were always known for. It’s history, and cardboard, and a lot of fun all at once, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: I break out my sets of The Sanctuary in the Sky and Zeradias, Herald of Heaven yet again.