It’s been only a few rounds, but we’re already seeing some new trends based on the results of the last Shonen Jump Championship. Let’s start off with the easy choice for the weekend that everyone and their dog saw coming a mile away, Royal Oppression.
Royal Oppression
When I look up the rules for a card and see that there’s at least a page of them, I normally decline to play said card because it almost certainly can’t be worth the trouble it takes to explain it to my opponent whenever I play it. Thus far, the only cards I’ve made an exception to this rule for are Light and Darkness Dragon and Royal Oppression. Oppression is quite literally the answer to everything we’ve seen thus far since the release of Phantom Darkness. Having problems with Dark Armed Dragon? Not if you’ve got Royal Oppression. How many times can they play Dimension Fusion? Once, but it’ll get negated. My favorite thing about Royal Oppression is that it negates special summons from any source regardless of whether the summon happens thanks to a built in condition (like Cyber Dragon) or if it’s as the result of an effect (like Dimension Fusion or Dark Nephthys). Objectively speaking, however, the best part of Royal Oppression is how easily it can be slipped into some already powerful decks.
The obvious choice for the player who wants to run Royal Oppression is the classic Fifth Gadget build we were talking about approximately a year ago. With nearly every other deck dependant on special summons of some sort, playing a deck that’s really into normal summons along with a card that negates special summons is pretty obvious and very good. Thus far, Oppression has worked wonders for the Gadget players here today, but they aren’t the only one’s reaping the benefits. James Pennicott is wrecking the competition by using Royal Oppression in his newest burn deck to shut down the potentially devastating blows of Dark Armed Dragon. Just be careful if you’re running Royal Oppression against a Six Samurai deck. If you use Oppression’s effect against Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, your opponent can just pick that Grandmaster up and play him again.
Kinetic Soldier
Speaking of the Six Samurai, if you’re looking for a nice main deck card to help hose the Samurai in addition to strengthening your matchup against Dark Armed Dragon decks I’d probably go with Kinetic Soldier, and apparently I’m not alone. As James Pennicott told Jason, one of the most common opening moves in the game right now against an opposing set monster is to summon Armageddon Knight, activate its effect, and then attack the face-down monster. If that monster is Kinetic Soldier, your opponent is going to be in a world of hurt. It’ll only get worse next turn when you can exploit the fact that Gadgets are the only deck playing defensive traps to attack that Armageddon Knight for even more damage! That’s not even counting the fact that, in general, every monster in a Six Samurai deck is going to be small, a Warrior, or both. The Samurai player has a small, single digit number of outs to your Kinetic Soldier, and of those, not many are going to let him or her escape your Soldier’s wrath with a majority of that player’s life points intact.
Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror
I was actually a bit surprised to see this one in the main decks of anything that isn’t Gadget based. Interestingly enough, people have been using it to great effect in Macro Cosmos decks as well, making use of the fact that D.D. Survivor and D.D. Scout Plane activate while they’re removed from play and thus get around the Mirror’s effect. At the same time, Mirror will shut down the vast majority of a Dark Armed Dragon or Diamond Dude Turbo player’s deck in addition to stopping any of the other combos that rely on Dark Magician of Chaos to cause infinite loops. My main reservation against Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror is that it really doesn’t do anything to help you against Six Samurai except make one Yaichi shot miss, and it also doesn’t help you out at all against Gladiator Beasts. Both of these decks have become much bigger impacts on the metagame than anyone had predicted previously, so we’ll just have to wait and see if the Mirror holds up or if it falls by the wayside.
That’ll do it for the round 4 tech update, but keep on checking back as there are many more features to come in our live coverage of the 50th Shonen Jump Championship!