Back in 2005, at SJC Charlotte, Jae Kim piloted a Zombie deck into the Top 8 and nearly won the whole thing before being shot down by Team Overdose’s Anthony Alvarado. The Trap Dustshoot/Mind Crush combo that Jae brought in from his side deck on occasion was seen as his trademark card combination. It could easily dismantle an incredibly powerful opening draw for his opponent, starting him or her with a four-card first-turn hand if Jae was able to go first. Sometimes, the opponent would start the duel with an even smaller hand, since Mind Crush could take out more than one card!
Fast forward to today. Mind Crush has once again become a powerful disruptive option in the Advanced format. It possesses a similar ability to the older card D. D. Designator. Back when the Invasion of Chaos booster set was released in March of 2004 and the advanced format was unheard of, I considered D. D. Designator a very powerful card. Thanks to other cards such as Witch of the Black Forest and Yata-Garasu, you could often get a look at one or more cards in your opponent’s hand. You could also occasionally see your opponent’s hand with a card like Confiscation, and in combination with D. D. Designator you could completely dismantle his or her early game. More importantly, this combo allowed you to discard spell and trap support while D. D. Designator removed the monsters you named from play. This was essential in a format of Chaos monsters. Mind Crush has a very similar effect, except that it can be activated as a spell speed two card!
While Mind Crush does not possess the “removed from play” line from D. D. Designator, it has the ability to discard a card (or two, or three) from your opponent’s hand during his or her own turn. Effects like these can be incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous to a game’s health, but Mind Crush lacks the danger that similar cards tend to cause. After all, you either need knowledge of your opponent’s hand in order to use Mind Crush effectively, or you need to be a very good guesser. The problem, however, is that guessing with Mind Crush is very dangerous. If you do not discard a card from your opponent’s hand with it, then you will lose a card at random. This turns what could be a highly disruptive effect against your opponent into a game-ender that you played on yourself!
Wait. Is it really a self-destructive drawback?
I have been intrigued with the Dark World monsters since their release last year. They can punish a player for relying too heavily on hand-disruption monsters such as Don Zaloog, and they can be easily abused with cards like Card Destruction or the deadliest of the Dark World card combos, Morphing Jar. They make discard effects painless when your opponent uses them on you, and your discard effects become pretty unfair, since they let you play powerful cards while nullifying the discards with special summoned beatsticks or extra deck cycling with Broww, Huntsman of Dark World.
In fact, one of the best decks to put Mind Crush in is, unsurprisingly, one that uses Dark World monsters. Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World and Sillva, Warlord of Dark World do a good job of making Mind Crush a one-sided trap card. An activated Mind Crush in this sort of deck can either cripple your opponent’s strategy, or give you a discard outlet through which you can summon your vicious Fiends. The best part about summoning a Dark World monster with Mind Crush is that you still get information about your opponent’s hand. You can get your big beater and you know what your opponent can do to you during the duel with his or her current cards. That’s certainly a fine trade-off for not discarding anything to the graveyard with Mind Crush.
The best place for Mind Crush is in the side deck of a strategy that abuses the Dark World monsters. For example, the deck I posted during my segment on Brain Control could have a side deck that contains three copies of Mind Crush and the maximum allowed number of Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World cards that are missing from the main deck. This strategy could help an aggro deck (such as the one posted a few weeks ago) take on heavy control decks such as Counter-Fairies and powerful combo decks such as Stein-combo and decks based on summoning Chimeratech Overdragon.
One of the other, more powerful uses for Mind Crush is to lock down a top-decking opponent by discarding the card he or she draws during the draw phase. Normally, this would require you to have knowledge of the top cards of the opponent’s deck, and cards that can provide you with tactical information are rarely worth running. However, the synergy that Mind Crush has with powerful spin effects such as Phoenix Wing Wind Blast can allow you to lock your opponent out of his or her turns while you win with your own attacks.
By activating Phoenix Wing Wind Blast on a monster or known continuous spell card while your opponent is top-decking, you can effectively set him or her back an entire turn by denying him or her both a play for the turn and a new card to draw during his or her next turn. Effects such as these give you a huge boost in tempo on their own, and were one of the best ways to completely throw a control deck off of its rhythm. When combined with Mind Crush, you can effectively deny your opponent multiple turns in a row! By activating Phoenix Wing Wind Blast on an opponent’s known card during his or her turn, you can lock that turn down and give yourself a chance to attack freely. Mind Crush can then be activated in your opponent’s draw phase to discard the card you just placed back on top of the opponent’s deck. This keeps him or her from doing anything for two turns: more than enough time to win the duel with a couple of attacks from your own monsters.
The synergy Mind Crush has with Dark World monsters may very well warrant their play once again. Many players at regional events right now are relying on more combo-based decks with Cyber-Stein and Overload Fusion since the general online populace believes that they are the most threatening decks in the format. Mind Crush is a strong answer to those combo-based strategies, and the Dark World monsters that go with it can punish other players for being too reactive in the new Advanced format. Expect both Mind Crush and the cards that have synergy with it to see play in the next six months, since they have the ability to push cards like Cyber-Stein out of popularity once and for all.
If you have any questions or comments regarding this or any previous articles of mine, feel free to e-mail me at Mrosenberg@metagame.com.