Sometimes, I like to write an article about a deck that needs massive changes. Remember last week? I dropped more than half the cards from Chris T.’s deck before rebuilding it from the ground up, and that’s pretty common. However, other times I’ll showcase a submission that only needs minor tweaks, simply because I feel that it warrants discussion. Today’s subject is definitely one of those decks.
Magical Hats has been a hot prospect for the newest format, and with recent rulings on the judge list about its interactions with Dark Coffin and Statue of the Wicked, many duelists have been searching for the best way to make use of it. The problem is that while the combos and capabilities of Magical Hats are easy to see, few people have found a definitive “best deck” in which to use those combos.
I think we finally have an answer. You might remember Steven H. from the article on his Summoner of Illusions deck that was posted in late June. He’s back, and he’s got an idea that holds a great deal of potential for the new Advanced format. Here’s what he had to say about the deck that he calls “Coffin Control.”
Hello again, Jason,
I was quite impressed with what you did with my Summoner deck. I took some of your ideas to improve the deck and I won a couple of tournaments with it. After looking at the articles over the last couple of days, I found the article on Magical Hats and its uses in a deck. That set my deck-making skills in motion. I wanted to see how you could improve on this newest creation.
I hope that you enjoy reading over this deck, and that you consider it for another one of your great articles in the future.
Thanks again for your time!
—Steven H
Here’s the decklist that Steven sent me.
Coffin Control
41 Cards
Monsters: 18
2 Mobius the Frost Monarch
2 Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch
2 Penguin Soldier
2 Mask of Darkness
1 Magician of Faith
2 Don Zaloog
2 Newdoria
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Sangan
1 Tsukuyomi
1 Cyber Jar
Spells: 12
2 Soul Exchange
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Enemy Controller
2 Creature Swap
1 Smashing Ground
1 Dark Hole
1 Confiscation
1 Snatch Steal
1 Premature Burial
Traps: 11
2 Magical Hats
3 Dark Coffin
2 Statue of the Wicked
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Torrential Tribute
2 Time Seal
This deck is basically an updated version of Evan Vargas’s Soul Control deck, but this deck blends the original design with Magical Hats combos and a few new tricks to provide answers to major threats in the new Advanced format. The overall idea is to gain card advantage through the use of several different strategies, and the first is Don Zaloog—it hits people and makes them discard cards. Not exactly rocket science there, huh?
However, things get more complicated from that point onward, and Don Zaloog is just the beginning. The combination of Soul Exchange summoning Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch allows you to make a one-for-one trade (your Soul Exchange for the opponent’s destroyed monster), summon a big beater (a neutral exchange of card presence in which Thestalos moves from your hand to the field), and then gain a piece of card advantage through Thestalos’s discard effect. The result is a piece of monster removal that can hit a face down or face up monster of your choice, summons a monster of your own, and the opponent must discard a card, to boot. It’s a classic combo, and the pieces have even more synergy than usual in this deck. The reason? The presence of Statue of the Wicked can give you tribute fodder with which to summon Thestalos without costing you any “real” monsters.
In addition, Magical Hats can net even more card advantage. First, if you bring out two copies of Dark Coffin with Magical Hats’s effect and both are destroyed by Magical Hats, your opponent loses two cards from their hand, two monsters, or one of each. In comparison, you’ve only lost Magical Hats itself, so that can be a fast two-for-one trade.
If conditions are just right, you can also return both of the cards that Magical Hats put on the field to your hand, provided your opponent attacks into a set Penguin Soldier. In this case, you’ll lose Magical Hats, and you’ll likely see the Penguin get destroyed as a result of battle—you’ll lose two cards and gain two in exchange. While trading two cards for two cards technically isn’t card advantage, it does provide you with two spell or trap cards of your choice, and that’s too good to be ignored.
Mobius the Frost Monarch can result in an easy two-for-one if you tribute one of your own monsters to destroy two cards in the opponent’s spell and trap zone. You can see it as a “zero-for-two” trade if the tribute fodder being fed to Mobius is a token from Statue of the Wicked.
In short, this deck can make advantageous two-for-one trades in some situations, and that’s incredibly good in the current draw-deficient Advanced format. However, it can also make more one-for-one trades than any other deck in the format, and that’s where it really shines. “Control” has now become synonymous with the concept of access to one-for-one cards, like Smashing Ground and Sakuretsu Armor. If you can control monster presence on the field, you can dictate how aggressive your opponent can be, and that translates to card advantage through battle. If your monsters can take out the opponent’s beasties, you’ll gain card presence while your opponent loses it.
This deck takes this concept off the battlefield and reaches as far as the opponent’s hand by using Confiscation and three copies of Dark Coffin. Ironically, this might actually be one of the few places where I tweak the deck. Still, take a moment to appreciate the level of control that this puppy can achieve. It can dictate the pace of battle by manipulating both the opponent’s monster count and their hand count. In doing so, it can slow down the aggressive decks that are currently so popular in the format, and then it grinds away at the opponent through two-for-one exchanges. This deck establishes a slow pace of play so you can get to those two-for-one combos on a reliable basis.
The other things I like about this deck? There are eleven trap cards, and that makes it vulnerable to the much-feared pair of Royal Decree that many duelists are running. However, two copies of Mobius the Frost Monarch provide answers to this potential problem, and the combo with Wicked tokens (as well as the synergy with Soul Exchange) make summoning Mobius a cinch. Drawing it might be a bit tricky, but remember that this deck tends to thin itself pretty aggressively. Mystic Tomato brings out a monster each time it uses its special summon effect, while Magical Hats clears out two non-monster cards each time it’s used.
This deck opens strongly with the possibilities of Mystic Tomato, Sangan, and Penguin Soldier, all of which are good or at least decent if you go first on turn one. From there, it can easily control a game through its abundance of one-for-one trades, and it’s difficult to envision a single matchup that is particularly troublesome.
Against Warriors, this deck has plenty of board control to keep itself from being overwhelmed. This deck loves to see Marauding Captain hit the field, because the Captain makes an easy mark for Don Zaloog. With no hope of topdecking Pot of Greed or Graceful Charity, a couple shots from Don Zaloog is usually enough to lay an opponent low. Should you lose control of the field, Magical Hats can be used as an emergency wall, blocking three monsters for the price of one. While this seems obvious, it’s a point that’s easily lost on the combo-enthused Magical Hats fans that have sprung up the past few weeks.
While the Machine matchup offers no easy targets for attack, the defensive potential of Magical Hats again becomes an asset. Has the opponent finally cleared a path for a Limiter Removal-charged attack? Drop Magical Hats and shut down that one-turn offense. Cyber End Dragon can be a problem, but there’s a good chance that the opponent will never have the necessary in-hand cards to bring out Cyber End Dragon, between Dark Coffin and [Thestalos]. In the days when Limiter Removal was not limited to one copy per deck, the threat of multiple Limiter Removals activated in the damage step would be cause for concern, because Magical Hats can’t be chained at that point in the battle phase. However, now that the speed of Machine decks is strictly a one-hit wonder, the deck can be slowed to a manageable pace.
The only strategy that might give this deck some trouble is probably Spellcasters. Magician’s Circle allows that deck to be unpredictable, even when the player’s hand has been run completely dry, and that can be a problem. Still, the Spellcaster build that can take this one down would need to depart from what appears to be the format standard. Tributes would need to be kept to a minimum in order to keep pressure on the Coffin Control player—dead draws just hand over the right to dictate tempo, and that’s lethal. At the same time, Dark Magician’s superior ATK value and ability to be summoned through Skilled Dark Magician becomes important. You’d probably have to play Dark Elf over Dark Magician Girl just to keep up, and few duelists would be willing to sacrifice the choicest target of Magician’s Circle for a monster that many would argue to be inferior*.
One-Turn Kill Cyber-Stein/Cyber Dragon decks (which many are finding to still be very powerful in the new Advanced format) have the same problem as Machine decks—they just don’t have the resiliency against hand disruption.
The four high-ATK tribute monsters are especially tough on Cyber Dragon, which will often just be a sitting duck if it hits the table. Even non-themed Beatdown decks are running three copies of it at this point, so the ATK values of Thestalos and Mobius are worth some brief props.
Now, it’s time for some changes! First, I’m going to remove Premature Burial. While it has a great deal of utility, I just don’t see it being as important as Swords of Revealing Light, and that’s exactly what I want to put in its place.
Swords of Revealing Light is going to add another layer of defense to this deck. While we likely won’t need it in the mid-game for the purpose of survival, it’ll be very useful against particularly aggressive players in the early game. In the mid-game it actually becomes a tool of aggression by allowing you to over-extend with key monsters, like Don Zaloog, without having those monsters wiped off the face of the earth a turn later. No, you don’t have to make such aggressive moves. But the option to do so can be a powerful one, and anyone who scoffs at having more options is just, well, not too bright.
Next, I’m going to remove one copy of Creature Swap for Brain Control. Creature Swap has the advantage of being able to affect any monster, regardless of that monster’s position. This deck can pass over tokens once it manages to set off Statue of the Wicked, and even before then it can send Sangan, Mystic Tomato, or Tsukuyomi across the field. In theory, the pair of Creature Swap is superior to one Creature Swap and Brain Control.
However, a reality of the current metagame is that many players will be putting forth unrelenting quantities of face-up monsters, and having an easy method of grabbing one to strengthen a series of attacks or to tribute away for Thestalos is going to be better than having to hand over one of your own at the same time. By making this change, we give the player more options for creating a sudden increase in tempo.
Finally, I’m going to drop one Dark Coffin for a third Magical Hats. While I’m in love with Dark Coffin’s potential, I think reliable access to Magical Hats is more important to ensure balanced play. While we only have enough “ammo” to power two uses of Magical Hats (two copies each of Dark Coffin and Statue of the Wicked), if we ever use two and then draw a third, it can still be used as a defensive wall and deck thinner. I’d like to pretend that two Magical Hats and two Mask of Darkness would be enough, but such a belief seems kind of short-sighted in the face of an aggressive environment.
Here are the tweaks that I made to the deck.
-1 Dark Coffin
-1 Premature Burial
-1 Creature Swap
+1 Swords of Revealing Light
+1 Brain Control
+1 Magical Hats
The final version is as follows.
Coffin Control: Jason’s Fix
41 Cards
Monsters: 18
2 Mobius the Frost Monarch
2 Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch
2 Penguin Soldier
2 Mask of Darkness
1 Magician of Faith
2 Don Zaloog
2 Newdoria
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Sangan
1 Tsukuyomi
1 Cyber Jar
Spells: 12
2 Soul Exchange
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Enemy Controller
1 Creature Swap
1 Smashing Ground
1 Dark Hole
1 Confiscation
1 Snatch Steal
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Brain Control
Traps: 11
3 Magical Hats
2 Dark Coffin
2 Statue of the Wicked
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Torrential Tribute
2 Time Seal
Would I play this? Absolutely. I’m actually just about to start digging through boxes of cards to get some of the more obscure picks. I’m pretty sure I taped all my copies of Dark Coffin to my dog and let him run around the house a few years ago . . .
The finesse of Magical Hats is what’s important in this deck, and you’ll constantly be balancing out the desire to defend your monsters and turn stuff face down with the option to resolve Dark Coffin and Statue of the Wicked. In the case of the latter, you’ll want to keep Magical Hats face down for as long as possible. When the opponent tries to leave his or her battle phase, priority will automatically shift to you, and you can activate Magical Hats. At that point, the opponent can respond on the chain, but he or she is already in the end step of the battle phase. If he or she has extra monsters that have not yet attacked this turn, those monsters cannot attack your newly-set Dark Coffins and Statues. The two spell or trap cards get set on the field, very little can disrupt them, and once the phase concludes, Magical Hats destroys them and you get their effects. Smooth sailing.
This balancing act (and the question of how and when to use Magical Hats) takes a great deal of skill. It’s the kind of strategic decision that simply wasn’t present in the previous format. It has been suggested that the new Advanced environment eliminates many of the benefits that skill had previously provided. Personally, I think that skill will just find new outlets, and decks like this may just serve as proof of that hypothesis.
Go ahead and try this one out. I’ll be doing the same . . . just as soon as I catch that dog. Thanks for sending this deck in, Steven!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Do you have an Advanced format deck you could use some help with, or just want to show off to the world? Want to see it appear in a future Apotheosis article? Send it to me, at Jason(at)metagame(dot)com and I might take a crack at it!
* I’m not one of them. I think Dark Elf has, and does, rock.