So . . . you (and plenty of other players) had a great Chaos Return deck. It dominated your local area, reliably taking you to the Top 4 of your home store’s tournaments each week and doing pretty well at the Regionals. Life was good, even if the mirror matches were rough sometimes and the lucksacking occasionally broke your heart.

Then your deck got nixed by the new Advanced list. (Let’s be honest, though—it was about time.)

As players look through the newest list, several different camps have formed to champion a different deck as “the deck to beat” for the next format. Monarch Control, Machine OTK, and various others have all been heralded in game stores and on message boards as the next big thing, and all that anyone seems to agree on is that no one’s going to agree on anything until we see the first results from Shonen Jump Championship Boston (though I guess we can agree that we won’t be seeing any more of Chaos Sorcerer). Anyways, players are looking over a variety of interesting strategies for potential victories, but somehow, one of the defining cards of the last format seems to have slipped through the cracks.

Why are so few people talking about Return?

Though Chaos Sorcerer is gone, Return from the Different Dimension is still a card with extremely high potential. Consider it a “deck enabler”—it makes lots of different deck strategies possible. Today, I’m going to give you some ideas for running a Return deck that offers unique advantages over other strategies you might encounter. This isn’t a complete list and there’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’m not going to be too in-depth. Basically, I want to toss out lots of ideas in hopes that you might like a few of them and try them out. Here goes!

Bazoo the Soul-Eater:

The monster that put Return on the highlight reel to begin with is perfectly viable in the new format. The new Advanced list didn’t touch the monkey, and it’s still one of the best ways to remove monsters from the game for use with Return. In an environment without Chaos Sorcerer, its Earth attribute isn’t a drawback, and when it hits the field with 2500 ATK, it’s hard to get rid of—you can’t just pull Sorcerer now and remove Bazoo. While it fits well into a variety of Return variants, consider a Beast-heavy lineup. Enraged Battle Ox can ensure that when Bazoo launches an attack, it’s going to hit the opposing player regardless of his or her field presence. Besides, Returning a field full of piercing monsters can be a very, very good thing. Let’s all sit here for a few minutes and think about it. Mmmmm . . . piercing monsters . . .

Lady Assailant of Flames:

This Return combo saw experimentation at Shonen Jump Championship Arlington. (Go ahead and give the Lady’s name a click to see what it does—it’s pretty obscure.) The Lady doesn’t guarantee the removal of a monster from the game, but it can hit up to three monsters if you’re lucky, and it doesn’t have to wait for them to start hitting the graveyard. While it would be difficult to run a Return deck using the Lady as your sole means of removing monsters, consider it an added dash of speed to any variant you might think of playing. In addition, the Lady’s 800 burn damage shouldn’t be overlooked! Played aggressively, it can help keep a Cyber-Stein duelist at 5000 life points or less, preventing the opponent from using Stein’s effect. You know you want to get behind that.

Dark Necrofear:

Fiend Return was a decent deck in the last format, but Chaos Sorcerer put a crimp in Dark Necrofear’s style. The Sorcerer just walked all over what should have been a very difficult monster to deal with, since it could remove Necrofear from the game without incurring any sort of penalty. Flash forward to today, and Necrofear is much more useful. As a Snatch Steal-type effect in a format without Snatch Steal, Necrofear is a great way to steal away big monsters that your opponent thinks are safe. It removes three Fiends from your graveyard at once when it hits play, and it can be fuelled by recruiter-friendly monsters like Newdoria and Giant Germ. When you go for the win with Return, Necrofear can remove big hitters like Slate Warrior and Giant Orc from the game too, boosting the ATK of your field. Just do me a favor—if you’re going to play it, for goodness sake go study all those rulings so you’ll know when you’re playing it correctly.

Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade:

Warriors can do a lot of fun Return tricks—they can search out D.D. Survivor with Reinforcement of the Army and use Return to bring it back to the field permanently. They’ve got D. D. Warrior Lady and D. D. Assailant on their side, plus they’ve now got two Exiled Force cards to tribute, remove from the game, Return, and then reuse. One of their best tricks is one that hasn’t seen much play. Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade makes D.D. Survivor the same size as Cyber Dragon, and turns a properly-groomed Blade Knight into a 2300 ATK beatstick. At the same time, it removes plenty of Warriors from play, fakes out the opponent’s spell and trap removal, and can even act as the source of an effect to chain Return to: just activate it in the graveyard and chain your own Return to dodge Torrential Tribute and Bottomless Trap Hole. Jason’s had a lot of success with this deck.

Strike Ninja:

Speaking of Warriors and dodging, Strike Ninja is still one of the best Return combos around. With everybody playing Sakuretsu Armor over the past couple of months due to the threat of Recruiter Chaos, the Ninja’s ability to move on and off the battlefield is definitely valuable. Like Necrofear, it can be powered by recruiter-friendly picks like Mystic Tomato, Giant Germ, and Sangan, and the ease with which successful Ninja plays can be created gets to be downright frustrating. Strike Ninja is searchable with Reinforcement of the Army, can alienate cards like Creature Swap and Smashing Ground, and just generally acts like a pest. Expect to see much more of it in the new format, now that Chaos Sorcerer isn’t around to constantly threaten it off the field.

Freed the Brave Wanderer:

If Strike Ninja represents the Dark Yin, then Freed is its sunny Yang. Thriving off of Light monsters, Freed is perhaps the closest thing to Chaos Sorcerer in the new format, blowing away big monsters for no cost apart from thinning out your graveyard. Like its stealthy counterpart, Freed is searchable via Reinforcement of the Army (that’s important—very few cards that let you remove monsters from the game are searchable. Bear that in mind as you go down this list.)  Freed turns all your fallen Skelengels, Cyber Dragons, and Shining Angels into raw field control, blowing up the big monsters that are likely to see more play now that Snatch Steal is gone. In addition, it’s got some pretty great combo potential with the Majestic Mech monsters, especially when you throw in Miraculous Descent. Watch for Freed to become a true headliner once the Champion Packs arrive, because its synergy with the first set’s headlining ultra rare (Satellite Cannon) is going to make it even better!  

I think that’s enough to go on with—give these guys a try and see what you think. I’ll be back next week with a new list for you to consider. I expect to see a nice amount of variation from those of you who might be playing Return in Boston!