Okay, we’re back again. While I will get to Force of the Breaker eventually, I want that one to be perfect, so I’m postponing it for an old classic. And I want to add that yes, Agent of Creation - Venus is a perfectly viable choice for Sky Scourge Norleras food. Now, let us move onto more current (actually, more old-school) issues.

Denying your opponent cards is a very powerful tactic—so powerful that two of the few existing cards that can force your opponent to skip his or her next draw phase have been Forbidden (Yata-Garasu and Time Seal). In fact, even Drop Off has gotten some attention and recognition: it too saw time on the Limited list. The success of Yata-Garasu prior to its placement on the Forbidden list is undeniable, and even Time Seal saw play by our own Mike Rosenberg at SJC Los Angeles 2005, where it was used with Tsukuyomi and Mask of Darkness to prevent the opponent from drawing cards.

While not quite an homage and definitely not improvisation (today’s deck is very different from the version Mike Rosenberg piloted to his Top 8 performance), this deck has a few similar elements. Oh, I haven’t mentioned the combo yet. Well, we can’t use Time Seal, and we wouldn’t want to because it’s slower than this deck’s choice, Drop Off. If you set Time Seal, the soonest you can activate it is during your opponent’s draw phase, after he or she has already drawn for that turn. Drop Off takes a card one turn earlier, making it much faster in exchange for the difficulty it might have with quick-play spells, Treeborn Frog, or Dark World monsters.

The recursion mechanic Mike relied on is more limited because we don’t have the powerhouse that is Tsukuyomi. While Mask of Darkness will work well in this deck, let’s instead focus on something that combines both it and Tsukuyomi in one efficient element. Enter [AswanApparition] and Drop Off! The combo works by getting two copies of Drop Off (one can be in the graveyard) and Aswan Apparition, preferably when your opponent has no cards on the field or in hand. You attack your opponent and put one Drop Off on top of your deck with the effect of the Apparition, and then you set your other Drop Off. Activate it when your opponent draws but does nothing else (or does something that doesn’t disrupt the combo). Then, you draw a Drop Off, set it, and attack your opponent again, putting the other Drop Off on top of your deck. Things are exactly as they started, except that your opponent is 500 life points in the hole. Rinse, lather, repeat!

The first thing to consider here is the weakness inherent in the combo. The first issue is that you are giving up your own draw phase, and that means that you have a much more limited means of taking down your opponent before he or she draws something that can disrupt you (I will get into this later). I don’t consider the size of the little Apparition to be a problem, since spell and trap cards can protect our Fiend friend. I do consider one more issue, though, and that is that certain cards and themes counteract the deck. There is only so much that can be done to mitigate that, though. It makes little sense to try and tech against Dark World when we should be focusing on making the deck more efficient. So, unfortunately, this deck will have serious problems against Dark World. If you like, you may alter it to fit your own local metagame. Other than that, the only commonly played card that hurts this nasty combo is Treeborn Frog. Some decks play Scapegoat, and that’s also something to consider. Dimensional Fissure solves problems one and two, making it an excellent choice for the side deck, and something like Asura Priest will help to mitigate any sheep-shaped road bumps. Considering the weaknesses of a combo-oriented deck like this one is not always necessary for the person playing it, but it does help to factor these things in. This is especially true for this deck, which pays great attention to detail.

Some choices to run alongside our powerful combo: Wave-Motion Cannon encourages your opponent to trade cards so that you can get potential answers out of his or her hand, and both Stealth Bird and Des Lacooda fit the description of cards that function well with Aswan Apparition. Since we also want to establish a method of clearing the opponent’s hand, we should add Spirit Reaper, and potentially Robbin’ Goblin or Don Zaloog. Another option that is easy to overlook is Decayed Commander. Here are some paths we could follow with the monster section of the deck.

First, we could focus on the fact that Des Lacooda, Spirit Reaper, and Decayed Commander are all Zombies, and throw a Pyramid Turtle or three into the deck—which also allows for powerhouse Zombies like Vampire Lord and Ryu Kokki to help establish dominance on the field. That complements Spirit Reaper and Des Lacooda, allowing us to control our opponent’s hand size and bolster our own, thus helping us to achieve the Aswan Apparition and Drop Off lock. Or we could run with Mystic Tomato, which would allow us to use a more robust but less focused group of search targets. For example, if we felt that the deck had weaknesses against face-down spell or trap cards, we could add a copy of Cliff the Trap Remover and put cards like Newdoria and other friends of solanum lycopersicum mysticalus (a.k.a. Mystic Tomato) to work. This option allows us to search out part of our core combo, as well as options like Don Zaloog that push toward locking the opponent. I chose the vegetable over the marvel of ancient architecture for that reason.

Since our deck is filled with a healthy serving of vegetables, I think it’s fair to add Swarm of Scarabs and Swarm of Locusts as search options for Mystic Tomato. They work toward getting your opponent in position for a lock. Cyber Dragon plays well with both Asura Priest and Mystic Tomato, especially since I saw fit to put Creature Swap in the deck.

From there, we need to figure out the rest of the build. Cards that trade with opposing ones are good here because we want to make sure the opponent has nothing on the field or in hand. Smashing Ground and Sakuretsu Armor are ideal here because they remove threats from the field so that your fragile but potent Aswan Apparition can live to see another day. Mystical Space Typhoon and Heavy Storm are obvious additions, since your opponent may see the lock coming and put the potentially dangerous cards in his or her hand down to the spell and trap card zone. These two gems are very, very useful in foiling that kind of scheme. Magical Hats somehow makes its way into one of my decks again, searching out copies of Drop Off when you need them. If you were playing around with my Norleras deck from a while back, you may have noted that Magical Hats and Mask of Darkness make a useful combo. You can flip Mask of Darkness to retrieve something like Mirror Force from your graveyard, and then use Magical Hats to pull a card that you need from your deck. And since activating your hat trick (pardon the pun) flipped the Mask face down, you can re-flip the Mask later on. It’s especially brutal if you sent a particularly good trap to the graveyard with Hats, because the Mask will let you retrieve it. Since both of these cards already fit the deck quite well, adding them in not only fleshes out the deck, but also gives us powerful synergy.

Among the various cards that work well with Magical Hats, at least one more is good with this deck. Welcome Dark Coffin with open arms. It makes an excellent target for Magical Hats, since when it’s destroyed by that card’s effect, its own effect triggers and forces your opponent to start clearing out his or her hand and field for Aswan Apparition. While it’s normally against all common sense to add a single copy of Solemn Judgment, that’s just what I intend to do. If you consider it a support card for the Aswan Apparition and Drop Off combo, it makes sense to add one copy as a target for Magical Hats. Drop Off is an obvious choice, and from there, the deck benefits from a few more options for clearing the field and getting the combo going. The trap part of the deck is quite large after all the additions, so let’s keep the next part pretty simple. We want defense and assistance for our monster lineup, but there seems to be plenty of it in the trap section already. Our traps runneth over with powerful choices, and the spell section should assist in setting up for the combo just as much while staying at ten cards or less.

Here’s how the deck turned out, focusing on setting up for Aswan Apparition and double Drop Off.

Aswan Aggravation—41 cards

Monsters: 18

3 Mystic Tomato

3 Aswan Apparition

2 Mask of Darkness

1 Stealth Bird

1 Swarm of Locusts

1 Swarm of Scarabs

1 Sangan

1 Des Lacooda

3 Cyber Dragon

1 Asura Priest

1 Don Zaloog

Spells: 10

1 Premature Burial

1 Snatch Steal

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Creature Swap

3 Smashing Ground

Traps: 13

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

2 Magical Hats

3 Drop Off

2 Sakuretsu Armor

2 Dark Coffin

1 Solemn Judgment

There are a lot of one-ofs in this deck, but it functions well in spite of that thanks to the Mystic Tomato and Magical Hats toolbox aspects. This deck reminded me that I have to build something around Magical Hats in the future. If you want to make one cut to get it to 40 cards or to make room for other cards, the Solemn Judgment is the first thing you should consider. But I left this fairly open-ended, as always, so that you have the opportunity to build off of it. I’ve shown you the tools (and the toolboxes), so go out and build decks to your liking with them. Until next time, duelists!

—Matthew “Coin Flip” Murphy