Not all of the day’s innovation is coming out of Team GG. Bobby Williams, from Shreveport, Louisiana doesn’t play with a team at all, but he’s got a 4-0 record with one of the most unconventional decks here today. Dark World Burn.

The first question on my mind was why. Why did Williams decide to combine Burn, an ailing archetype that hasn’t placed in the Top 8 of a Shonen Jump since Durham, with Dark World, a deck that has never reached mainstream success? He knew his answer, a great sign, and was happy to share it with me.

“A lot of the times when you play against Chaos, you can get a quick swarm and do a lot of damage, but not finish the opponent. If you’ve got the Burn combination you can finish them off.” It’s a sound Reasoning on the theoretical level, and it’s played out really well on the table so far today.

The deck keeps itself near the 40-card minimum by sacrificing cards on the Burn side. It’s got a complete repertoire of Dark World cards: Three Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World, two Sillva, Warlord of Dark World, and two Broww, Hunstman of Dark World backed up by a pair of Dark World Lightning. The deck obviously doesn’t run any lockdown cards: that would just hinder its own rush of attacks. Instead, it uses defensive cards that can dish out more damage, like Magic Cylinder and Dimension Wall. It’s also got monsters that can double as sources of field presence and defensive walls, like Giant Germ, Stealth Bird, and Des Koala.

Those monsters are of particular note, because though each has relatively low ATK, they can contribute to the deck’s waves of attack when needed. In addition, they maintain board presence and act as tribute fodder, keeping Goldd and Sillva from being dead cards when Dark World Lightning just isn’t around.

The deck is packing 26 monsters, a huge number that pushes it up to 43 cards. It thins itself pretty aggressively though, with Giant Germ, Card Destruction, and Morphing Jar allowing it to cut itself down to size. It looks awkward, but it’s working, so I’m not sure that it can be argued against in this case.

There are some cool tech picks that look really random, but look at them twice and you’ll see how well they fit into the deck. Dark Magician of Chaos benefits from all the field presence and tribute support, just like the Dark World monsters too (the deck is also running Treeborn Frog). The Magician will often hit play, bounce a Dark World Lightning back to Williams’s hand, and then let him special summon Goldd or Sillva while destroying a set card in the process. That’s just brutal. Take another look at Protector of the Sanctuary too. Not only does it shut down the opponent’s Dekoichis, but it also acts as a defensive wall that later becomes tribute fodder as needed. Pretty cool stuff.

The deck is really aggressive, and while that might seem obvious, some of the aggro choices that Williams has made warrant discussion. Solar Flare Dragon is an inferior card in most Burn decks, but here, it functions as both a source of burn, as well as a potential attacker for when Williams makes a big press. A single Solar Flare Dragon can kick out up to 2000 damage per turn on its own, and that’s pretty impressive considering how often this deck can clear the opponent’s field. The single copy of Wave-Motion Cannon, usually an invaluable threat to be run in triplicate, is relegated here to the role of tankbuster. It’s a big threat that forces the opponent out of their shell, controlling them and making them do something when they’d rather hoard cards. Once they start to come out of their proverbial shell, Williams can make them pay for it by sucking them into an aggressive tempo that they can’t handle. The deck is full of little intricacies just like that, as it uses the threat of burn damage in order to manipulate the opponent’s gameplan.

I’ve said that in order to beat Chaos Return, you need to force it out of its comfort zone and make it play a game that it’s not ready for. This deck does just that, punishing a Chaos Return player for their slow tempo and forcing them to break it before they’re ready. If they don’t, they suffer Burn damage and the threat of attacks anyways thanks to Dark World Lightning. If they do, then they go into battle unprepared against a deck optimized for that situation.

It’s also worth noting that with all the Cyber-Stein being splashed here, Dimension Wall and Magic Cylinder are great cards to counter the metagame. While a dedicated OTK player will use something like Giant Trunade or Heavy Storm to clear an opponent’s back row before attacking, your average teched Chaos variant running a single Stein usually doesn’t have that luxury. Losing 5000 life points to summon Cyber End Dragon, and then losing the rest to Dimension Wall, hurts. It hurts a lot.