The secret rares from Strike of Neos have been getting a lot of mixed reviews. While some of them clearly have a spot waiting for them in all sorts of decks (Gellenduo), others seem odd or out of place, even with the rest of the secret rares. There’s one thing that everyone agrees on, however, and that’s how good Meltiel, Sage of the Sky would be if there were a consistent way to fetch The Sanctuary in the Sky without needing to resort to Terraforming. Force of the Breaker provides players with the power to do this in the form of Zeradias, Herald of Heaven, one of the cycle of monsters that can be discarded from the hand to search for its relevant field spell. With the Sanctuary on call, Counter Fairy decks reach a whole new level of awesome as they gain the ability to smash through the opponent’s field while gaining life points and drawing cards—just for countering something the opponent wanted to do. I was shocked when Zeradias didn’t get any attention during our preview weeks, and now I’m going to set things right by showing you a deck that says “NO” to your opponent louder and prouder than any deck has before.

Monsters: 19

3 Zeradias, Herald of Heaven

3 Bountiful Artemis

3 Meltiel, Sage of the Sky

3 Banisher of the Radiance

3 Skelengel

2 Harvest Angel of Wisdom

2 Freed the Brave Wanderer

Spells: 5

2 The Sanctuary in the Sky

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Snatch Steal

Traps: 17

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

3 Solemn Judgment

3 Magic Drain

3 Forced Back

3 Pulling the Rug

2 Negate Attack

The main reason that Meltiel is so good is that it solves the biggest non-Decree or Jinzo problem that Counter Fairy decks tend to have: an inability to remove opposing cards once they’re on the field. With Meltiel and Sanctuary on the field, each new threat you counter gains you some life points in addition to allowing you to destroy something that you weren’t able to nail the first time around. Negate Attack turns into a battle-phase-ending Raigeki Break. Magic Drain can take out an opposing card regardless of whether or not your opponent forces his or her spell through, and a last ditch Solemn Judgment actually improves your field position rather than simply hastening your demise. It’s not surprising that players have been waiting for a way to get all this in a form that supports the deck well, and Zeradias certainly fits the bill—it’s a Light-attribute Fairy monster with 2100 ATK. For this deck, I’ve opted to run three copies of the search monster and only two copies of the field spell it searches out. I used this particular setup because once you get one copy of Sanctuary out, it’s tough to destroy thanks to your counter trap setup. If all goes well, future copies of Zeradias become huge attackers, and even if it doesn’t go so hot, you can just pitch the next Zeradias for the other Sanctuary, knowing full well that your opponent no longer has Heavy Storm or Mystical Space Typhoon—the cards most likely to get through your traps.

As with most Counter Fairy builds, this deck is meant to be played slowly—very slowly in fact. The longer you can string out the game without anything major happening, the more time you have to crack your opponent’s field open with Meltiel. Remember, you can’t search out Meltiel, so all the extra card drawing you can do with Skelengel and Bountiful Artemis will come in handy as you collect counters and look for your key cards. Keeping your important monsters in defense position is an absolute must—while you’ll want to test your opponent by attacking, you’ll also want to avoid heavy losses to Mirror Force. Skelengel is really great for this purpose, and with backup from The Sanctuary in the Sky, you can attack into all the defense-position monsters you want with Skelengel without fear of losing life points if you hit Gravekeeper’s Spy or Legendary Jujitsu Master. Many players forget that Sanctuary grants you protection from damage in battles involving Fairy-type monsters, but if your opponent ever manages to bust out Chimeratech Overdragon on you while you have Sanctuary out, you’d do well to remember its effect as a field card.

Once you have Sanctuary, Meltiel, and whatever you consider an acceptable number of counters, you want to start forcing your opponent to make moves that you can counter to simplify the duel. Start attacking with everything and don’t be afraid to use your Solemn Judgment cards. Remember, you gain the life points for Meltiel after you pay for Solemn Judgment, so you might get to a point in the game where you actually gain life points by playing Judgment in addition to all the other fun benefits of the card.

If you can counter a Sakuretsu Armor here or Mirror Force there, you can likely clear out either all of your opponent’s monsters or all of his or her backfield cards. I recommend taking out the spells and traps, since those are generally more difficult for this deck to remove than monsters (especially considering that this version of the deck doesn’t main deck any copies of Seven Tools of the Bandit or Trap Jammer). Still, if your opponent just lost a Monarch to Pulling the Rug, you may find it prudent to destroy a Gravekeeper’s Spy instead of the spell or trap behind it. It’s always good to have a few monsters in the graveyard to use for Freed the Matchless General. In fact, pitching Zeradias to fetch a Sanctuary and then losing one of your three Banishers somewhere down the line is enough to put Freed online should his services be required.

Speaking of Banisher of the Radiance, the results of the last Shonen Jump Championship have me thinking that now is the time for Banisher to be required in threes somewhere in every deck meant for high-level competition. The huge number of Destiny Hero-powered decks in the Top 16 from Philadelphia—along with the large numbers of Card Troopers flying around and the thread from the new version of Big City—means that Banisher is almost never going to be useless. Main it or side it, it’s your choice, but Banisher is too good to ignore at this point in time. It’s also a Fairy, making it perfect for this deck.

One of the things that I considered for a while when putting this deck together was the potential of Trap Dustshoot now and shortly in the future when Force of the Breaker becomes legal. Dustshoot saw a lot of play in Philadelphia and set up a lot of wins for a lot of players. It’s definitely something that I’ve considered main decking in my Counter Fairy builds, but I have yet to find a spot for the card among all the counter traps. Trap Dustshoot can stop summons from happening completely, but that’s not necessarily what I want. Take the case of Monarchs for example. I’d love for that Monarch to be summoned. I’ll just counter him, gain life, draw a card, blow up a card, and feel happy that my opponent is down one Raiza the Storm Monarch. If I were to use Dustshoot to send him back to the deck, that would only be a temporary fix, and I wouldn’t gain any of my bonus effects either. Still, there’s always room in the side deck for Trap Dustshoot, just as there is for Forced Back.

The decision of whether to main Forced Back or Trap Dustshoot is a tricky one, and it largely depends on what you expect the metagame to be like at whatever event you enter. Right now, it looks like Monarchs are back on top for the time being, so I’d main Rug over Forced Back. If, however, burn decks like the one Team Overdose has built become popular, Forced Back might be a better choice due to its ability to keep Stealth Bird off the field while allowing you to destroy other cards with Meltiel.

Probably the neatest aspect of Meltiel (and Bountiful Artemis for that matter) is that they both sport continuous effects. Despite the fact that they feel like trigger effects, you draw your card for Artemis, gain life, and destroy cards for Meltiel as soon as the activated counter trap resolves. This lets you do cool things like get rid of chainable cards such as Ring of Destruction or Book of Moon without giving your opponent an opportunity to chain them. Similarly, you can claim their effects regardless of whether or not your counter trap does anything. Royal Decree doesn’t actually stop you from activating traps, and that lets you blow it away with Meltiel as long as you try to counter something while Decree is active. This doesn’t work with Jinzo, but your opponent shouldn’t even have a chance to bring Jinzo out in the first place thanks to all your counters. I’ll bet that someone is going to try out a deck like this at SJC Minneapolis, and if you’re wondering what else you should look out for at the last SJC before Nationals, make sure you check out this week’s School of Duel for a primer. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: The field card frenzy continues.