There’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I’ve put together the Top 4 decks from U.S. Nationals, and played around with them to see exactly how they work. Three of them are fairly straightforward. One of them isn’t. The only word I can use to describe Justin Womack’s Worlds-qualifying deck is “aggressive.” It just keeps looking for opportunities to win the game in one fell swoop with little regard to its own safety or stability. Safety, I can understand living without. T-Hero does it all the time and gets away with it in grand style. Stability, though, is something I tend to be a big fan of. In most cases, players use Snipe Hunter to run a high number of low-utility cards successfully. But in Justin’s case, his outlet for dead cards was Dark World Lightning: limited to face-down cards, but guaranteed to blow something up (otherwise, you don’t have to discard). The thing with Dark World Lightning is that it’s one of the few offensive cards that involve you discarding not as a cost, but as an effect. Most cards that duelists initially wanted to use with Dark World monsters—Tribute to the Doomed and the like—were incompatible due to the fact that they involved discard costs rather than effects.
Some sets (such as Invasion of Chaos) are obviously powerful from word one, but others (like Dark Crisis or Ancient Sanctuary) had to wait a good long while before they received the recognition they deserved. Actually, I’m not even certain Ancient Sanctuary has gotten its “props” yet, but hopefully today will at least expedite the process. A major part of the Ancient Sanctuary set was devoted to improving Fairy decks by giving them an entire new concept to work with, which was based on having more life points than your opponent. Such decks were vulnerable to the huge amounts of monster removal still available at the time, and as such, the introduction of the theme came along with a card designed to help you get through games when you only drew a few monsters early on. The card was Beckoning Light, and I somehow doubt that anyone has ever used it in its intended capacity. If you take a look at the card, you’ll see that Beckoning Light tells you to discard your hand and replace it with that many Light attribute monsters from your graveyard . . . but unlike Tribute to the Doomed, that discard isn’t a cost. The entirety of the card’s text is an effect, and a very well-protected effect at that. Short of Royal Decree, it’s difficult to stop the card once it’s activated. Your best bet if you haven’t got hard trap negation is The Transmigration Prophecy, but you can see for yourself exactly how many people play that card.
It occurs to me that I’m skirting around the issue of why all this matters. The answer lies below.
Monsters: 21
3 Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World
3 Broww, Huntsman of Dark World
3 Beiige, Vanguard of Dark World
3 Cyber Dragon
3 Skelengel
3 Reflect Bounder
1 D.D. Warrior Lady
1 Sangan
1 Morphing Jar
Spells: 10
3 Dark World Lightning
1 Heavy Storm
1 Snatch Steal
1 Card Destruction
3 Brain Control
1 Premature Burial
Traps: 10
2 Beckoning Light
3 Forced Back
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Call of the Haunted
3 Solemn Judgment
The real challenge I face here is trying to convince you that you’d much rather play this deck than Womack’s. After all, he qualified for Worlds, and this deck is just showing up on a weekly column. I suppose I’ll tackle the problem on three fronts, starting with cost. Thanks to Champion Packs and Structure Decks, this deck is dirt cheap to build. Reflect Bounder and Solemn Judgment went from ultra rare cards hoarded by less-than-scrupulous duelists to easily accessible rares. You can pick up Goldds in the newest Champion Pack, and while you’re at it, you may even pick up some super rare Gravekeeper’s Spy cards to wow your friends with. The most expensive cards you’ll need to put a copy of this together are the Cyber Dragons, and those aren’t very hard to get these days. The key selling point, however, is the total lack of Card Trooper in this deck. Trooper with Machine Duplication is the big combo that everybody seems to be trying to pull off these days, and most of them are aided greatly by the fact that everyone else is trying to do it too. With this deck, you won’t burn a hole in your wallet and you won’t unexpectedly shoot yourself in the foot either (two good things as far I’m concerned).
My second selling point here is that it’s a lot easier to win with this deck without comboing off than it is with Womack’s. In all my time practicing with Womack’s deck, I really needed to draw into Trooper-Duplication in order to win consistently. Otherwise, I only won when I could use Brain Control on an opposing Trooper. Still, the Trooper-Duplication combo requires that you draw one (and only one) copy of Card Trooper, or else you can’t get the full value out of your cards. That’s one of my major problems with playing decks that use the combo. Maybe it’s just me, but I had a huge number of games ruined by starting with a gorgeous five-card hand including the Trooper-Dupe combo only to draw into a second Trooper on my first draw phase and a third on my second. This deck doesn’t require any specified numbers of any particular card as long as you have a hand, a graveyard, Beckoning Light, and a normal play style throughout the rest of the game. Furthermore, you never actually need to draw the combo since you can win just by keeping monsters off of the opponent’s field with Forced Back, Solemn Judgment, and Brain Control. Even more importantly, you have a solid late-game with this deck in case you don’t win as soon as you play Beckoning Light. The trap card refills your hand with Light attribute monsters and you should be able to see how good this is just by looking at the decklist. Recovering even one Cyber Dragon or Reflect Bounder can tidy up the game nicely for you, or at the very least force your opponent not to attack until he or she can get rid of the Bounder.
At this point, I need to stress exactly how good Reflect Bounder is in general. Its status as a level 4 Machine-type monster with 1700 ATK makes it the perfect companion to go along with Cyber Phoenix, since the easiest way for an opponent to get rid of the thing without crashing into it involves Brain Control or Soul Exchange and a tribute monster. Good luck with that if the Bounder player also has a Cyber Phoenix. The card can fit nicely into the Machine beatdown decks that have been all the rage lately as an extra way to put the game away. The setup in general is a deterrent to Card Trooper shenanigans, since the opponent is forced to choose between taking out the Cyber Phoenix and letting you draw in return or taking 1700 damage minimum by swinging on the Bounder—1900 if he or she decides to keep the Trooper around for another turn. You get all that in a non-Limited card. Give it a try sometime. I suspect you’ll like it.
Finally, my third point regarding why you’d want to play this deck over Womack’s is that this one is cooler. You get to play Beckoning Light! You also get to play Solemn Judgment and Reflect Bounder! Even better than that, you get to put all these cards in a deck with Dark World. It’s the kind of deck that causes your opponent’s jaw to drop when you win with it, and in my estimation, that makes it all worth it. Leaving those copies of Card Trooper and Machine Duplication at home, and showing up at your local store with something that your friends have never seen before is something that makes the Hobby League experience worthwhile for everyone. It also expands your horizons and gives you a new perspective on what’s currently possible in the game. You’ve probably noticed that no single deck has won two Shonen Jump Championships since March 1st, and that’s largely because more and more players have been exploring what the format has to offer. It’s going to be a sad day in September when this is all over, but hopefully it will mark the beginning of something even better. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
NEXT WEEK: Preview time again!