One of the strongest budget decks ever created has been making a splash recently. Although Plant one-turn KO decks haven’t made a successful appearance at a major event yet, they’ve taken lower-level tournaments by storm. They provide an incredibly affordable way to pursue entrance into the tournament field (a very difficult transition to make for a casual player). By using a Plant deck successfully, you just might win enough cards to afford a new, perhaps more competitive deck. This week, casual players looking to expand their horizons and enter into the tournament circuit will be given a shimmer of hope, and a cheap one at that!

The Plant OTK deck is very similar to the Dark Magician of Chaos deck that was rendered unplayable with the Forbidding of Dimension Fusion. You’ll cycle two copies of Gigaplant by tributing them over and over for the effect of Mass Driver. With a copy of Superalloy Beast Raptinus on the field, you’ll be able to do this until you completely deplete your opponent’s life points. Since this is a four-card combo, you’ll need to draw a lot. If your local tournament is held in the Traditional format, you’ll be able to use cards that expand the deck’s consistency and speed. If not, you’ll have to change the list we talk about today to adhere to the Advanced format’s requirements.

The difficulty with assembling this deck is getting past the skeleton of the combination. Many players revert to playing trap cards out of necessity, such as Jar of Greed and Legacy of Yata-Garasu. This is merely settling for the rest of the deck, as running cards that can’t be played until turn 2 doesn’t reflect well on a one-turn KO strategy. We’ll be drawing inspiration from an old combination we explored for use in Exodia—don’t worry, it’s all common as well! We’ll use Ojamagic to get an extraordinarily large hand, which we can then use with Reload and Magical Mallet.

The Monsters

Obviously, the Ojama monsters are merely dead cards we wish to shuffle back into our deck with Magical Mallet and Reload. Take care not to discard any of them early in the game, as you can’t activate the effect of Ojamagic unless you can search out a copy of each Ojama. While one might argue that this makes the card too conditional, an eleven-card hand on turn 1 is just far too good to pass up in an OTK deck that already runs most of the cards necessary for the draw combo (those being Dark World Dealings and Hand Destruction, which are primarily meant to discard Blazewing Butterfly).

The Gigaplant cards are our win condition. With Superalloy Beast Raptinus, they’ll be able to return each other to the field and be continuously tributed for the effect of Mass Driver. It’s already been pointed out (by people far more observant than I) that Superalloy Beast Raptinus is a Dragon, which enables the combination to work. Because it is a Dragon, you’ll be able to summon it using Dragon’s Mirror, which is why we’re running the three copies of Blazewing Butterfly. We can discard the Blazewings for the effects of cards like Card Destruction, Dark World Dealings, Hand Destruction, and Graceful Charity. Finally, we have the three copies of Lonefire Blossom, which will let us search our deck for Gigaplant and special summon it. This makes our combo more accessible, which is always a good thing for a one-turn KO.

The Spells

We have six spell cards that constitute our actual OTK combination (Mass Driver and Dragon’s Mirror). Ojamagic, Reload, and Magical Mallet are all part of our secondary combination (which is meant to fuel the first). However, the Reload and Mallets are also buffers that protect us from horrible hands. Our third card group is Dark World Dealings, Hand Destruction, Card Destruction, and Graceful Charity, which works with both of our two main combinations. These cards can discard copies of Blazewing Butterfly to allow us a Dragon’s Mirror or discard Ojamagic to give us an enormous hand. Finally, we have a generic spell card group, which consists of Pot of Greed and Painful Choice (the latter of which can throw our three copies of Blazewing Butterfly straight into the graveyard).

When playing this deck, you’ll have to worry about D.D. Crow quite a bit. After side decking, many opponents will have a total of three Crows to play against you, meaning you may want to side into D. D. Designator (or, in the Traditional format, Confiscation and The Forceful Sentry). Notice that if you play this deck in Traditional, you also gain another advantage: you’re playing against Delinquent Duo. Your opponent may activate Duo, expecting you to only have four cards when it resolves. However, you choose to discard your Ojamagic, and suddenly have as many as ten cards in hand instead!

Considering the very low cost of this deck, it can be used by players looking to transition from casual play to tournament play very easily. If you fall under that category, good luck at the tournaments, keep trying, and don’t be discouraged!

—Ryan Murphy