With the metagame so totally defined, players were able to test their anti-metagame strategies against the expected field with lots of success. With expected matchups almost assured, their decks could be changed again and again so they were focused only on beating the top archetypes. The problem with anti-meta decks is they often take losses to strategies that the more common, expected decks will handle easily. Despite knowing what to expect, players always show up with decks that just can’t win, and ironically enough it’s these decks that will beat the anti-meta builds.

Last Indy was won by CO Burn, a lockdown Burn deck that aimed to abuse conditional traps to the point where the opponent couldn’t do anything but wait until Wave-Motion Cannon dealt 8000 damage. One year later, with the majority of players wielding Dark Armed Dragon, Lightsworn, or Gladiator Beasts, the metagame was ripe for such a deck to break into the spotlight once more.

"Little City" made its Shonen Jump debut thanks to Paul Levitin, after the ruling change on Royal Oppression. Being able to respond to a special summon meant that Oppression was a card-for-card trade at its worst, and a deck-breaker at best. However being unable to special summon your own monsters forced the player using it to run a beatdown strategy of sorts. Paul opted to play a deck based around Light monsters. He wasn’t very successful, but Michael Sherkin of Card Masters Gaming in Toronto was. At SJC Toronto he went 7-2, missing out on the Top 16 because of a first round loss. The losses he took? First round to Elemental Heroes, and last round to Paul Levitin, the deck’s creator. Several players from the store looked to expand on his success at SJC Indianapolis, including myself and the store owner Marco Cesario. This was our most recent version:

Monsters: 15

The idea is simple: beat the opponent down while preventing him or her from fighting back by making the opponent’s monsters useless. Gladiator Beasts and Dark Armed Dragon both require a lot of special summons and monster effects to win. Lightsworn lean just as heavily on these elements, though the high ATK power of all their monsters means they have the potential to win without their effects. This deck is built to take down all three, and Marco rode the success all the way to the Top 8, where he was only stopped by Jerry Wang and a series of unfortunate events.

Let’s start with the trap lineup: they’re the most important. Skill Drain and Royal Oppression are the cards that create the lockdown condition. Gladiator Beasts can’t do anything unless they are special summoning monsters and using their effects. Both of these traps can be chained when the opponent tries to use monster effects or special summon, allowing you to make them card-for-card trades while establishing them as a continuous presence. You get a positive trade to start off and you negate your opponent’s answers later on.

The popularity of Cold Wave had created a metagame where players must use monster effects to solve problems. Relying too heavily on spells and traps means you risk being completely shut out by the second effect of Cold Wave. It’s bad enough to lose your on-field cards to the Wave and Gladiator Beast Gyzarus, but not being able to fight back on your own turn is what kills you. This meant Marco could put up Skill Drain or Royal Oppression and be confident that his opponent could only respond with monster effects, which are always negated by Skill Drain and usually stopped by Royal Oppression before they can be activated.

From there, your opponent is going to be stuck trying to use his or her monsters’ ATK power. Of course Marco knew this would happen, and made sure he played monsters with more ATK than anything else he expected to see. Elemental Hero Neos Alius and Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior exist in the deck for the sole purpose of being larger than 1800 ATK. 1800 is the benchmark for most metagames right now, with each deck possessing monsters of that size. Elemental Hero Stratos, Gladiator Beast Laquari, Zombie Master, and Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner are the biggest monsters you’ll be confronted with that can be normal summoned. Marco’s main monsters can’t be destroyed in battle by any of them, and so, without effects or sufficient ATK power to do anything, the opponent’s monsters are going to be useless.

Before long, opponents will be losing so many life points that they can’t afford to save their monsters in hopes of drawing an answer to your Skill Drain. They’ll begin setting monsters with no defensive power, whose purpose becomes nothing but blocking one attack. You can’t make too many negative trades like that without losing the game.

To protect this setup are three copies of Solemn Judgment. Most decks will only have a copy of Heavy Storm and Mystical Space Typhoon to get around Marco’s lockdown, and with three copies of Judgment Marco can stop them. Solemn is the most versatile answer card, and can even stop opposing Solemn Judgment cards that are trying to prevent you from setting up to begin with.

The rest of Marco’s deck is devoted to having the biggest monsters. There are several monster removal spells and traps, each of which is usually saved until the opponent can muster something big. Even with Skill Drain up, Judgment Dragon is still troublesome because of its high ATK, but without its effect, a simple Mirror Force can take it down. My Body as a Shield is one of the monster removal options that can double up as an answer when you don’t have Skill Drain. If you have no monsters, your opponent is free to make direct attacks, so the 1500 life points Shield costs will actually be less than the damage you’d take from accepting a loss to Torrential Tribute and allowing your opponent to swing in with Gladiator Beast Darius or Elemental Hero Prisma.

The last chunk of the deck is devoted to taking down monsters that are bigger than the ones your deck can produce. Mask of Restrict is in place so that your opponent can’t tribute for stuff like Jinzo or Vanity’s Fiend, and Prohibition can achieve the same goal. Finally, Skyscraper is in place to boost your Elemental Heroes over bigger monsters should they make it onto the field. Searchable by Elemental Hero Captain Gold, who is in turn searchable by five spells, you can reliably play only one. Furthermore, the Captain can boost himself up to 3100 ATK when attacking something bigger than himself. You won’t face anything higher than 3000 ATK, so it’s comforting to know that this deck can actually take out any monster. Honest works even better than the Skyscraper, pushing your Light monster over anything in attack mode.

Little City is perhaps one of the best anti-metagame decks the game has ever seen. Able to take on not one, but three popular decks is quite a feat, and Marco’s Top 8 finish was really only cut short due to a run of bad luck against Jerry Wang. There’s no doubt that in the future, anti-metagame decks will be successful, and those who wish to duplicate Macro’s success can learn a lot from this deck. Being able to stop your opponent’s main strategy is no good unless you’ve got ways to take advantage of the new conditions of the game. Marco’s deck does exactly that.

—Matt Peddle