If you came here expecting a Water Dragon deck, I’m afraid that you’re going to be disappointed. See, today’s “Chemistry 101” title came from the fact that I’m currently studying for my chemistry final, and quite frankly, it’s invading my life. I see hybridized molecular orbitals. They don’t even know they’re hybridized, and I see them all the time.* Given my current state of mind, it’s no surprise that as I sat there trying to think of a title for an article about a Water deck, chemistry popped back into my mind. From a scientific standpoint, water is one of the most interesting, basic, and abundant substances on Earth, and it’s formed by one oxygen atom bonding with two hydrogen atoms. In the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, Water is either the first half of Water Dragon, or one of the six main attributes that is home to many excellent Control-type cards. This week I’ve built a Water-based deck that lets you do plenty of drawing, summoning, destroying, and bouncing—and that’s just with your monsters.

“Tidal Wave”

Monsters: 20

3 Hydrogeddon

3 Mother Grizzly

2 Abyss Soldier

3 Poison Draw Frog

2 Mobius the Frost Monarch

1 Metallizing Parasite – Lunatite

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

2 Drillroid

1 Sangan

1 Exiled Force

Spells: 13

1 Salvage

1 Pot of Avarice

2 Creature Swap

3 Smashing Ground

1 Dark Hole

1 Snatch Steal

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Premature Burial

Traps: 7

3 Sakuretsu Armor

2 Widespread Ruin

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

Take the Gravekeepers, for example. With Necrovalley (and proper support), they become absolutely monstrous, but if you don’t draw Necrovalley or if you draw too many copies of Necrovalley, you’re going to be hoping that your opponent doesn’t have any way to remove your monsters and press the attack. It’s a bad situation to be in. That’s why the first thing that I decided once I settled on making a Water deck is that it wasn’t going to run or need A Legendary Ocean.

The next thing that I did was think about everything that Water monsters are good at. Most notably, they have lots of effects that are based on Umi, a bunch of effects that can bounce cards to their owner’s hands, a few destruction effects, and then some cards to help bolster your hand and field presence. Out of the bounce effects, the best one is probably the semi-limited Abyss Soldier. Mobius was an obvious inclusion due to its ability to take out your opponent’s spells and traps, and the only real question left for me was how I was going to keep an advantage over my opponents.

The obvious choices were Mother Grizzly and Salvage, as self-replacing monsters and two-for-one cards never go out of style. Less obvious, though, are Poison Draw Frog and Hydrogeddon. One helps you build your hand, while the other helps you build your field. The worth of Hydrogeddon is pretty obvious, but Poison Draw Frog’s is less so. Part of this comes with the restrictions and limitations place on its draw effect, but its lack of any real ATK or DEF strength is also a pretty big drawback. The real key to using Poison Draw Frog is to turn its weaknesses into strengths, and the perfect card to do it is Creature Swap.

Poison Draw Frog is a tricky monster to deal with. It has an optional effect, which means that it’s capable of missing its timing. That means that if you tribute a face-up Poison Draw Frog for Mobius the Frost Monarch, don’t expect to be drawing a card for it as well. The last thing that happened was not the face-up Frog being sent to the graveyard, so you can’t activate its effect. However, you can use Creature Swap to send a face-up Poison Draw Frog over to your opponent and then run it over with Hydrogeddon. In this case, both the effect of Poison Draw Frog and the effect of Hydrogeddon can be activated when the Frog hits the graveyard, so you can put the two effects on the chain in any order you wish. Most likely, you’d put Poison Draw Frog as the first chain link and Hydrogeddon as the second chain link so that you’d special summon another Hydrogeddon before drawing your card. Believe me when I say that it isn’t fun to draw your third Hydrogeddon with Poison Draw Frog’s effect.

Speaking of Hydrogeddon, you’ll need to be careful when you’re using it. Hydrogeddon needs to send the monster it destroys to the graveyard in order to claim its effect, which means you can’t go around beating up tokens and expecting to grab some bonus monsters. What you can do, however, is use Creature Swap to get Mother Grizzly over to the other side of the field and then beat it up with a Hydrogeddon. That way, you get another Hydrogeddon and a Water-attribute monster with 1500 ATK or less on your side of the field. Normally when your opponent attacks Mother Grizzly, you’re probably going to grab either another Mother Grizzly or Poison Draw Frog. If you’re attacking your own Grizzly, might I suggest grabbing the severely underrated Metallizing Parasite – Lunatite?*

Last time I checked, immunity to your opponent’s spell cards was a good thing, and the ability to give it to any one of your monsters is even better. Even better, Lunatite also gives the monster you equip it to the ability to withstand one otherwise fatal attack, further increasing your ability to keep monsters on the board. It may be a level 7 monster, but it also has the Water attribute, making it a valid target to pick up with Salvage or discard to Abyss Soldier. Combine that with your ability to recycle it back into the deck, along with a Mother Grizzly or three while drawing cards with Pot of Avarice, and I’d say you have an awesome piece of janky tech.

Remember, though, that just drawing lots of cards isn’t enough to win—you’ve got to be able to do something with them. That’s why this deck also packs the now-standard Smashing Ground and Sakuretsu Armor along with the recently popular Widespread Ruin. The goal would be to clear out your opponent’s monsters with your removal cards, and then constantly bounce his or her set cards with Abyss Soldier. Be careful, though, since you can only use Abyss Soldier once per turn. Also, keep in mind that Abyss Soldier has no specification as to whose cards you’re allowed to use it on. That means that it’s perfectly legal to bounce Premature Burial or Swords of Revealing Light back to your hand for even more opponent-aggravating fun.

If you’re going first with this deck, you’ll probably want to start off with a face-down Mother Grizzly with some sort of trap to back it up. From there, your goal will be to maximize the number of monsters on your side of the field while minimizing the resources you invest in them. Creature Swap is your best chance of doing this, especially if you’re swapping Mother Grizzly or Poison Draw Frog. In actuality, you’ll probably only need to do this once in order to set yourself on a path to victory. The main exception would be if your opponent has Dark Hole ready and waiting for you. Even in that case, you’ll have expended maybe one or two cards to get between two and four on the field.

Additionally, some of those monsters may result in you drawing a card when they’re destroyed, further reducing the overall advantage that your opponent would have garnered from Dark Hole. Essentially, once you get this deck up and running, it’s going to be hard to shut down—barring Dark Hole followed by Heavy Storm with a chained Return from the Different Dimension. That beats just about anyone, though, so don’t sweat it too much. In fact, you could just side deck in a couple of Wabokus if you know you’re playing against the Bazoo/Return deck.

That does it for me this week. I’ve got to get back to hitting the books, and I bet there are plenty of you out there who need to do so as well. Still, to everyone out there who has finals or work to do this month, don’t work too hard. Take some time out every once in a while to have some fun and play a game or two. Trust me, your body will thank you for it. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu

NEXT WEEK: I don’t have a preview available for you. Frown.

*I liked The Sixth Sense. Very good movie.