These new Hobby League cards are driving me crazy. Just as soon as I think I’ve finally made a given deck as shiny as it can possibly be, Hobby League goes and says otherwise. Of course, these new parallel foils are quickly welcomed with open arms. I was thrilled when I saw that Crystal Beast Ruby Carbuncle had received the Hobby League treatment, since it meant that I was now two steps closer to having a second deck capable of blinding a man at twenty paces if the sun were to strike it right. Imagine how happy I must be now that Crystal Beacon has been released as the newest card to grace the Hobby League. Beacon is a welcome sight just about every time it’s drawn, since every time you resolve it successfully, something huge is going to turn in your favor. Have you been unable to get your hands on a Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus all game? Not to worry, provided you have two Crystal Beasts in your spell and trap zone. Pull out that Pegasus and set yourself up to use the third effect of Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins. Or maybe you’ve already used a Pegasus or two and you’d really like to lock up the game in your favor. Just pull a Ruby Carbuncle from your deck with Crystal Beacon and launch an all-out offensive while replenishing your spell and trap zone with more Crystal Beasts. Crystal Beacon is to Crystal Beasts as Reinforcement of the Army is to Warriors, and you’ll probably want to load up on as many copies of the Hobby League promo as you can, considering how much better Crystal Beasts have become since September 1st.
If you have yet to consider giving Crystal Beasts another try (or a first try if you’re just now getting Sapphire Pegasus from the tins), now is most certainly the time to do it. One of the great things about the Crystal Beasts is how they turn any opposing card that destroys a monster into fuel for powerful effects. The problem was that this was only useful when your opponent was actually destroying your monsters. In the last format, it was much more likely that your monster would be stolen with Brain Control or Snatch Steal and then tributed for a Monarch. Your only real recourse was to send a Crystal Beast to the graveyard with Ancient City’s third effect to negate the theft effect. This was frequently impractical, since it would then leave you wide open to getting nailed by Card Trooper and Machine Duplication. Neither of those situations is a major issue at this point, and furthermore, the Crystal Abundance win condition is now better than ever with decks beginning to commit more and more cards to the field in order to cement their presence. In fact, this is going to let you get around the huge monster swarms that Zombie decks are capable of producing, provided you manage to survive the initial onslaught and are able to draw through to Abundance.
For this week’s deck, I’m going to work through a Crystal Beast build from the point of view of someone who is picking up Crystal Beasts for the first time thanks to the new tins, with an emphasis on maximizing power while minimizing cost.
Monsters: 17
3 Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus
3 Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger
3 Crystal Beast Amethyst Cat
2 Crystal Beast Ruby Carbuncle
1 Crystal Beast Amber Mammoth
1 Rescue Cat
1 Magician of Faith
1 Snipe Hunter
1 Sangan
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
Spells: 22
3 Crystal Beacon
3 Crystal Abundance
3 Crystal Blessing
3 Crystal Promise
3 Lightning Vortex
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Scapegoat
3 Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins
1 Terraforming
Traps: 1
1 Torrential Tribute
As far as I’m aware, it isn’t possible to make a Crystal Beast deck any more accessible than this. The deck is completely devoid of any card you can’t get as a rare or a common in a Structure Deck, Champion Pack, or Force of the Breaker (with the exception of the three copies of Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus). However, you can easily pick those up thanks to the tins. The downside of this is that it excludes cards like Mirror Force, Green Baboon, and Rare Value from the deck when they would likely be included otherwise. While this can present a unique set of challenges when playing the deck, it has the hidden benefit of helping you focus your play more by truly utilizing the power of the Crystal Beasts. Over the course of a game, you’ll likely draw many more cards thanks to Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins than you would from playing Rare Value, even more so considering that playing Rare Value without having Crystal Blessing in hand will shut down the more useful powers of the Rainbow Ruins (specifically the third and fourth). Mirror Force would potentially be excluded anyway since it’s a trap card with an activation condition that you can’t trigger yourself.
The exclusion could become a pain in some matchups, but even more so, it could become a pain in many matchups. Against a well-educated player, if a Crystal Beast player sets something in the spell or trap zone, play basically freezes up until the non-Crystal Beast player comes up with a way to win in one turn after removing the obstacle. If that set card is something like Mirror Force, you might be all set to win the game with a huge Crystal Abundance, but you won’t be able to pull it off because your opponent won’t attack until he or she’s hit your Rainbow Ruins with Raiza and the rest of your field with Heavy Storm. This can lead to some clever plays that involve setting cards like Crystal Abundance or Crystal Beacon and then revealing them after your opponent has already played into your hands, but for the most part, it’s recommended that you only set cards like Scapegoat or Torrential Tribute.
Speaking of setting cards, in general you just want to completely avoid doing so if at all possible when you’re playing Crystal Beasts. You need to get that spell and trap zone filled up as quickly as you can, and it isn’t going to happen if you set Crystal Beast Amber Mammoth and lose it to Nobleman of Crossout next turn. Similarly, you want to try and force your opponent into setting monsters so you can nail them with your own Nobleman of Crossout. With a full set of Lightning Vortex cards and a pair of Crossouts, opposing decks (especially Monarchs) will need to rely on instant tribute material in order to bring out any of their high-level monsters. That means using their copies of Cyber Dragon as quick tribute bait instead of leaving them out as attackers, or at the very least walls that your Topaz Tigers can’t get past.
Similarly, you’ll force decks like Perfect Circle to take their one free Destiny Hero - Malicious a lot sooner than they’d like to otherwise, and additionally force them to play their weak monsters in attack position in order to avoid getting knocked out of play by a Nobleman. You’ll want to apply constant pressure all the time, and the best way to do that is by getting all three copies of Sapphire Pegasus out of the deck as quickly as you possibly can.
The first thing you should always search out of your deck when you summon a Sapphire Pegasus is another Sapphire Pegasus. If you can follow it up with Crystal Promise to summon that Pegasus, you can then fetch the third from your deck and have all three out within the first turn. This puts your opponent in a tight spot, because if he or she destroys those monsters without already having Heavy Storm in hand, you have everything you need to lock out opposing spells and traps with Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins. Even better for you, if you have three copies of Pegasus in your spell and trap zone and you pick up a Crystal Beacon, it’s fairly obvious what you’re going to go after. Ruby Carbuncle in this situation puts 5400 ATK worth of flying horses on your field while reloading your spell and trap zone and giving you the opportunity to negate up to four opposing spell and trap cards with Rainbow Ruins. It also lets you draw all sorts of bonus cards and wipe the field at will if your opponent is foolish enough to oppose you (effectively allowing you to end the game at any time). That’s pretty darn good if you ask me, and it’s what you should strive for most games.
Sometimes, however, you won’t get a Pegasus early on or things will go a lot slower than you’d like. Having Scapegoat is incredible in these situations, since it usually gives you two or three turns to find the cards you’re looking for without clogging up the spell and trap zone like Swords of Revealing Light would. These are also the circumstances when you would like to have your Torrential Tribute, and also when you might want to be a bit more generous with your use of Lightning Vortex, even if you don’t have a huge attack force to follow up with. If you now own a set of Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus cards, I strongly urge you to give this deck a try. It’s a lot of fun to play with, and some of the moves you’ll end up making will make your heart smile. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
NEXT WEEK: Something I’d seriously consider playing given the results of the latest SJC.