When I first heard about Dillon’s deck, I couldn’t quite believe my ears. The list of cards I saw didn’t seem to work together in any recognizable fashion at all! Amazingly enough, however, the cards combine to form a formidable hand control engine that has proven quite successful in today’s main event. Here’s a quick peek at Dillon’s list:

Monsters: 16
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
3 Magician of Faith
3 Gravekeeper's Spy
1 Sangan
2 Night Assailant
1 Silent Swordsman LV5
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
1 Tribe-Infecting Virus
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning

Spells: 15
1 Graceful Charity
3 Different Dimension Capsule
1 Heavy Storm
1 Pot of Greed
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
3 Serial Spell
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Scapegoat
1 Snatch Steal
1 Premature Burial

Traps: 9
2 Magic Jammer
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
2 Solemn Judgment
2 Bottomless Trap Hole

Side Deck: 15
2 Dust Tornado
3 Neko Mane King
3 Wave-Motion Cannon
1 Royal Command
1 Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell
1 Airknight Parshath
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
1 Enraged Battle Ox
2 Cannon Soldier


When I asked Dillon how he came up with the deck, he told me that he, along with his friend Ryan Goff, came up with the idea while looking over decklists from high profile Japanese tournaments. “It won one of their biggest tournaments,” said Dillon, “so I decided to adapt it for my own use.” I still couldn’t figure out exactly what the deck was supposed to do, so I asked him to elaborate further.

It turns out that the purpose of the deck is to copy Pot of Greed or Delinquent Duo to create huge card advantage. The idea of basing your deck entirely on one card blew my mind for a moment, until Dillon told me that he also ran Different Dimension Capsule to ensure that he got his combo pieces fast enough. Dillon also runs plenty of counter-traps to help keep the Capsules on the field until their job is done.

Dillon says that his deck doesn’t really have any bad matchups and that it defeated plenty of standard Zombie control decks today. “Zombie decks are really easy for me,” laughed Dillon, “but stall/burn decks are really annoying. That’s what my side deck is for.” This deck tries to win as fast as it can, and stall cards like Level Limit – Area B can be a real hassle if Dillon doesn’t have a Magic Jammer or Solemn Judgment waiting in the wings.

Stall isn’t the only thing that can cause him trouble, though. Dillon relies on Gravekeeper’s Spy to help stall long enough to draw Serial Spell and get a Pot of Greed or Delinquent Duo into his hand. As such, Nobleman of Crossout can really hurt sometimes, but Dillon is not afraid because he packs plenty of counters.

He may be playing a rogue deck, but Dillon came extremely close to Top 8. He went 7-2 for the day and ended up in 34th place.

If I had to sum up this tournament with just one word, it would be “innovation.” Creative decks have done well all day, and it seems that one or two rogue decks making the Top 8 will become a mainstay of tournaments under the new Advanced format.