Every now and then, someone hits me with an idea that just looks fun. It’ll probably never win a Regional tournament, but it has a viable premise and looks entertaining. I love working with this kind of deck, and this week I was lucky enough to be provided with just such a thrill from reader Alex L., who’s a man of few words. Here’s what he had to say about his deck.
Dear Jason,
I’m Alex, from Chicago, IL, and I’ve read most of your articles! This is how my deck works: Try to give your opponent The Bistro Butcher and ram self-replacing monsters into it so that you can draw Exodia pieces.
—Alex L.
Chicago, IL
Simplistic, and yet quite amusing! Here’s the deck that Alex sent in.
Exodia’s Bistro: 42 Cards
Monsters: 22
1 Exodia the Forbidden One
1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One
3 The Bistro Butcher
3 Giant Rat
3 Flying Kamakiri #1
3 Troop Dragon
3 Howling Insect
1 Sangan
1 Emissary of the Afterlife
Spells: 14
3 Reload
2 Creature Swap
2 Upstart Goblin
2 Monster Reincarnation
1 Dark Factory of Mass Production
1 Graceful Charity
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Pot of Greed
1 Last Will
Traps: 6
2 Ultimate Offering
3 Waboku
1 Reckless Greed
This deck looks fun! However, I think we can make it a bit more efficient by switching up some of the monsters, spells, and traps to fit the strategic intent even more. As a shocker, the already high monster count is actually going to increase.
First, though, we need to drop some cards. The cool thing about this deck is that once Flying Kakamiri #1 or Giant Rat runs the course and you use all three, they can each grab another self-replacing monster! Kamakiri can bring out Troop Dragon, while Giant Rat can special summon Howling Insect as its last hurrah.
There’s a small problem, though. The Giant Rat-to-Howling Insect transition is fine, but Troop Dragon has a low ATK value. It’ll cost us 1100 life points every time we ram a Dragon into The Bistro Butcher. I’m going to drop all three copies of Flying Kamakiri #1 and all three Troop Dragons in favor of UFO Turtle and Masked Dragon. Masked Dragon has 1400 ATK, meaning we’re turning the loss of 1100 life points per attack with Troop Dragon into just 400. That’s a big difference, and it’s going to be really helpful in this deck.
Next, I’m going to remove the single Dark Factory of Mass Production and one of the two copies of Monster Reincarnation. I don’t think we need to worry too much about Exodia pieces being discarded. If it happens, it happens, and the deck folds unless it hits its last Reincarnation. The advantage to keeping the single Monster Reincarnation over the single Dark Factory of Mass Production is that Reincarnation can grab you Sangan or Emissary of the Afterlife for reuse, and that wins games.
The copies of Reload and Upstart Goblin are going to be pitched as well. The concept of having Upstart Goblin in a deck that’s over 40 cards is obviously flawed. Just drop the Goblins! They have the exact same effect, unless you’re factoring in cards like Skilled Dark Magician—and we’re not, so they’re gone.
Mystical Space Typhoon is going to bite the dust as well. There isn’t much that this deck fears in the opposing spell and trap zone, so cutting Mystical Space Typhoon is an easy choice. Finally, I’m removing all of the current traps. I don’t feel that any of them are right for this deck.
We’ve added in Masked Dragon and UFO Turtle. I want to keep working along those lines and add in Mystic Tomato as well, simply because the ability to search out Sangan and Emissary of the Afterlife is too valuable to pass up. Tomato fits perfectly here, giving us more fodder to slam into the Butcher while letting us search for the deck’s two most important monsters.
I feel like we need to get to The Bistro Butcher faster and pass it to the opponent in a more reliable fashion, so I’m going to add two Different Dimension Capsules and three copies of a new card from Cybernetic Revolution—Shien’s Spy. Shien’s Spy was practically made for this deck, as it does nothing but pass a monster you control to your opponent’s side of the field. Of course, it’s also a lot of fun with Giant Kozaky, but that’s a different deck! These two changes mean that we have five ways of getting at Bistro Butcher instead of just three, and five ways to pass it to the opponent, like the hot little potato that it is.
The one non-combo spell that I want to add to the deck is Lightning Vortex. Sometimes it’s going to take a while to draw into the cards we need, but we’ll almost always have extra cards hanging around. This is especially true once the combo starts working and we get more cards in hand than we know what to do with before the end of the turn.
Finally, I’m going to add two traps: Call of the Haunted and Mirror Force. Both of these extremely powerful cards, as well as Ring of Destruction, should be thoroughly considered for any deck. Ring of Destruction is notably absent here, because I think it would often be a dead card. It could hurt our chances of winning in the long run, due to how much damage this deck naturally takes. Mirror Force is great and will often save our hides, while Call of the Haunted gets back Sangan and Emissary of the Afterlife.
Here are the changes that I decided upon.
-3 Flying Kamakiri #1
-3 Troop Dragon
-1 Dark Factory of Mass Production
-3 Reload
-2 Upstart Goblin
-1 Mystical Space Typhoon
-1 Monster Reincarnation
-2 Ultimate Offering
-3 Waboku
-1 Reckless Greed
+3 Mystic Tomato
+3 Masked Dragon
+3 UFO Turtle
+1 Call of the Haunted
+1 Mirror Force
+1 Lightning Vortex
+2 Different Dimension Capsule
+3 Shien’s Spy
The final deck looks like this!
Exodia’s Bistro: Jason’s Fix
40 Cards
Monsters: 25
1 Exodia the Forbidden One
1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One
3 The Bistro Butcher
3 Giant Rat
3 UFO Turtle
3 Masked Dragon
3 Howling Insect
3 Mystic Tomato
1 Sangan
1 Emissary of the Afterlife
Spells: 13
2 Creature Swap
3 Shien’s Spy
1 Monster Reincarnation
1 Graceful Charity
1 Pot of Greed
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Last Will
1 Lightning Vortex
2 Different Dimension Capsule
Traps: 2
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Mirror Force
It’s a pretty simple deck to play, but it’s incredibly entertaining and is actually capable of quite a few wins. Let’s be realistic, though—bad luck can hose this deck into not pulling off its The Bistro Butcher combo. But even if you just put up a massive wall of monsters, you’re still thinning your deck and drawing pieces of Exodia while soaking up very little damage each turn. Consider running Premature Burial over Lightning Vortex if you find that your luck just never seems to come through.
Remember that Masked Dragon and Howling Insect can pull copies of themselves to the field in defense position, while monsters summoned by Mystic Tomato, Flying Kamakiri #1, and UFO Turtle have to come out in attack position. This is important to remember, because you want to minimize the damage you take from anything that isn’t The Bistro Butcher.
If you get whittled down before you manage to give the opponent a The Bistro Butcher, you might not have enough life points to work your combo when the time comes. Managing your self-replacing monsters is the most important part of playing this wacky deck, and deciding whether or not to spend them proactively (by sending them on kamikaze missions) or use them as defensive barricades is likely going to be the main decision you’ll have to make in each game. Play each duel by ear, and see what works best for you.
Thanks to Alex for sending in such a crazy, but well-conceived, deck idea! Here’s hoping the fix helps him out, and here’s hoping that you might give this deck a shot. With virtually every card in the deck a silver foil rare or lower, this is actually a fairly easy deck to build. It’s perfect for those times when you want to build a casual deck, but just don’t have the obscure foil cards that some themes demand.
—Jason Grabher-Meyer