To me, the real surprise from Crossroads of Chaos was the huge push received by Spellcasters. I’ve been a fan of Spellcasters for years now, and while I always make a point of trying them out in every format I can, they haven’t been seriously competitive since the days of Bazoo Return. Spoilers from Japan’s version of the set revealed Secret Village of the Spellcasters months ago—a promising new control card that raised eyebrows—but it took a pair of world-debut cards in the TCG version of the set to change everything. Tempest Magician and Night's End Sorcerer finish what the Secret Village started. Spellcasters are finally a serious contender.
I’ve had a lot of Spellcaster decks hit my inbox as a result, so I grabbed one of the stronger ones for a fix here in the Apotheosis. Here’s what Austrian reader Christian had to say about his build:While Crossroads of Chaos brought many cards for Plants and Zombies I especially like the small update for Spellcasters. I always enjoyed controlling my opponent with Sage of Silence and Royal Decree, and with Secret Village of the Spellcasters I can take this to a new level. This deck is what I came up with: my only problem is having enough cards in hand for Tempest Magician, particularly in the mid- and late game.
Thanks,
—Christian H, Austria
Christian’s build looks like this:
The Village People: 41 Cards
Why yes! I do take liberties with peoples’ deck names when they don’t provide one! So glad you asked…
Christian’s got most of the fundamentals of this deck put together. His primary goal is to get out Secret Village of the Spellcasters as quickly as possible, because he knows that doing so locks Teleport Dark Armed Dragon out of its most important plays. If you can activate Secret Village on turn 1 and back it up with a big beatstick like Skilled Dark Magician, there’s frequently nothing a TeleDAD player can do to fight back. You can slow down Lightsworn quite a bit as well, depriving those players of Charge of the Light Brigade and Solar Recharge. With that end in mind, Christian is playing three copies of Secret Village and three Terraforming cards. Over-committing like that isn’t as bad as it sounds, for reasons I’ll get into later.
The thing about Secret Village is that once it hits the table, you need to keep it active and locking down your opponent until you win. While Heavy Storm and Mystical Space Typhoon won’t be an immediate threat due to the Village’s effect, cards like Breaker the Magical Warrior, Snipe Hunter, Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, and Dust Tornado can all buy your opponent a turn of freedom. If that happens, all those spells you’ve been suppressing will come rushing at you in a single turn, and your control over the game will be jeopardized. Even just playing another Spellcaster is enough to stop the Village’s effect, and while TeleDAD runs very few Spellcasters, decks like Lightsworn have more than their share.
That means there are three threats to your lock: losing your Spellcaster field presence, opposing spell and trap removal, and opposing Spellcasters. Christian has done a solid job using a combination of big beatsticks and an Apprentice engine to try and maintain field control: big monsters like Skilled Dark Magician are difficult to attack over, while Apprentice Magician is another monster you can summon in face-up attack mode to keep the Village working, while placing yourself at minimal risk. Anything summoned by the Apprentice will come to the field face down—not fulfilling the Village’s requirement, but it’s still going to keep you on the table, and the more presence you maintain the better.
Unfortunately Christian is lacking in the other two departments: protecting the Village from removal and preempting opposing Spellcasters. Royal Decree could shut down opposing traps, but that doesn’t represent the full range of effects we want to stop. It also gets in the way of one of the most important cards in this deck.
That card is Magical Exemplar. When I first started building Spellcasters with the new cards, I really wanted to play to Tempest Magician and Secret Village. I envisioned the same combo Christian has employed here: Foolish Burial with Night's End Sorcerer. Just summon Exemplar, activate Foolish to send Night’s End to the graveyard, and the resulting Spell Counters on the Exemplar will let you bring up Night’s End for an instant level-6 Synchro summon. Easy Tempest Magician, right?
Well, that’s true, but that mentality I had earlier on was missing some important dimensions. First, summoning Goyo Guardian when you have Secret Village and another Spellcaster on the field is often going to win the game a lot faster than Tempest Magician. But beyond that, I wasn’t quite grasping the full impact of Magical Exemplar. When she gets going she can be incredibly hard to destroy, and when she’s getting you a free monster every turn it’s absolutely beastly. This deck will often win on the sheer power of Exemplar alone. It’s actually the centerpiece of this strategy, getting out your Synchros, fueling Tempest Magician’s burn effect, and swarming the field with a reverse toolbox of Spellcaster monsters.
The challenge you run into as a result (and the problem with Christian’s trap lineup) is that Magical Exemplar is difficult to search out. The only good way to search her from the deck is Magician’s Circle, a somewhat awkward (but effective) pick that directly clashes with Royal Decree. The sheer power of Exemplar is too great to ignore, so we’re going to need to restructure that trap lineup.
So I’ve got two concerns so far: there’s not enough work being done here to protect the Secret Village lock, and the trap lineup is counterproductive. Beyond that, there’s also too much conditional stuff going on: we’ll be dropping a lot of the l
ow-utility cards. Let’s get started!
First, as much as I hate to see them go, now is just not the right time to be playing Magical Marionette. It’s a dead draw and doesn’t actually do anything to contribute to our main game plan. We’re already going to have the occasional challenge of uneven draws, and the Marionette is really only useful if it’s being special summoned with Magical Dimension or Magical Exemplar: neither is easy to pull off. Cybernetic Magician is going to be dropped for the same reason.
Crystal Seer and Injection Fairy Lily are both solid cards, but I don’t think either is necessary for this strategy, and both conflict with the direction I want to take this deck. You’ll see why shortly. Sangan gets cut because it’s not a Spellcaster, and there’s nothing terribly important for it to search. Great card, wrong deck.
Next up on my list of cards that aren’t worth their low utility is Magical Dimension. I’ve talked about this card’s potential recently, but further testing has shown that it still suffers from all the problems it used to: in the late game and even in many mid-games it can be pretty useless, and it eats up cards very quickly. It’s awesome that it can get through Stardust Dragon, but for this particular strategy there are just better options amongst the ranks of quick-play spells.
Double Summon is a strange pick. I guess it allows the tribute summoning of monsters I cut from the deck, and increased swarm potential or a high-cost Synchro summon. But none of those are really worth giving up so much card presence, and they all amount to what are essentially three-card combos. Double Summon is unreliable, costly, and difficult to play. It’s just not worth it, even if Magical Exemplar is balancing it out by grabbing you free monsters.
The three copies of Royal Decree get cut since I’d really rather play some different traps, and I’ll cut one more card for the sake of space: the third copy of Terraforming. While the conservative deckbuilder in me initially wanted to run just one Terraforming, Magical Exemplar’s presence actually makes it pretty easy to run a second copy without suffering for it in the long run. You really want to get to this thing on your first turn in every game, and if you draw extra copies of Terraforming or Secret Village of the Spellcasters, you can always just activate them to get a free summon with Exemplar’s effect: those extra spells really aren’t wasted here. In addition, if you’re ever facing the drawback effect of Village and can’t get a Spellcaster down, setting a second copy to blow away the first will free up the rest of your spells.
We’ve cut fourteen cards total. That’s about the right amount of space I’m going to need, and I’m liking the remaining skeleton of the deck. From here, most of the list really writes itself, and it starts with one of the best Spellcaster monsters of all time.
Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer is great in the current format. Locking your opponents out of their spells is one thing, but locking players out of their graveyards as well is a crushing combination against TeleDAD. Kycoo’s ability to tear Dark monsters, Lightsworn, Zombies, and even Plants out of the graveyard is incredibly valuable: short of Little City, there’s virtually nothing competitive right now that doesn’t rely on its graveyard. Kycoo also has a very respectable 1800 ATK, bringing this deck up to ten beatsticks that can maintain field presence while the Village is on the table. This deck packs a lot of muscle.
Three Allure of Darkness cards are also a must, and they’re a big reason why I removed Crystal Seer and Injection Fairy Lily from the lineup. In a deck that has so many redundant cards, and that relies so heavily on hitting its field spell, more card filtering is a must. Every monster in the final version of the deck is a Dark monster, save Magical Exemplar.
With that said, the interaction between Allure and Exemplar begs a moment’s notice. Activating Allure while the Exemplar is on the field will give her two Spell counters while costing you nothing in card presence: that means an easy free summon, or a potential 1000 damage with Tempest Magician. We’re playing a very focused game here, and all the pieces work together.
One of the cool parts about building a modern Spellcaster deck is that you’ve got some wiggle room in the spell department, and what you decide to play beyond the obvious choices can have a big influence on your strategy. Christian made an awesome choice running one copy of Book of Moon. The Book is easy to activate, so when you just need more Spell Counters you can get them. It’s a strong defensive card that will neutralize any threat short of Judgment Dragon or Thought Ruler Archfiend, and it’s also got tremendous synergy with Secret Village. Remember how I said this deck didn’t do enough to disrupt opposing Spellcasters? Book of Moon can be played in response to the summon of a Spellcaster, and if that monster goes face down, your opponent will still find him- or herself under the Village’s spell embargo. From there the monster is likely easy pickings for your beatsticks. Combos abound: turn Old Vindictive Magician back down for another flip, juice an extra spell counter out of Apprentice Magician, or get a double-use out of Magical Exemplar if you really go off. Book is huge here, and fills an incredible number of gaps. I want to add a second copy as our first new line of defense.
From there I’ll add another defensive pick: three copies of Solemn Judgment. You don’t need me to tell you that Solemn Judgment is incredibly good in a format where ridiculous monsters hit the field in almost every duel, but here it’s more than that. It’s also a generic answer to anything that threatens Secret Village as well, and that alone makes it an auto-in. The fact that it can keep Exemplar on the field to pressure an opponent who’s not under the Village is another big plus.
Two Bottomless Trap Hole cards pick up where Book of Moon left off, answering Thought Ruler when Book can’t, and holding off almost any monster that can destroy the Village. Dark Armed Dragon, Breaker the Magical Warrior, Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress, and Snipe Hunter can all be eliminated with Bottomless, and only Dark Armed Dragon and Snipe will be able to get a shot off at the Village before being removed. Bottomless can also clear the way for your attackers, ensuring that you end games quickly.
Finally, two copies of Magician’s Circle search out Magical Exemplar early, or if needed, Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer as a surprise play that messes with your opponent’s graveyard when he or she doesn’t expect it. The Circles also perform a more subtle service: they draw Spellcasters out of your opponent’s deck so you can destroy them then and there, keeping your opponent from drawing them later.
That’s fourteen cards so far, leaving us with a 41-card build. Let’s look at the changes I made:
We’ve refocused the deck to make it faster, more reliable, and better able to answer threats that the average opponent will present. This deck has a ton of fancy moves and combos, but all it needs to do to win is get Secret Village of the Spellcasters out and keep it there. Here’s what the final build looks like:
The Village People—Jason’s Fix—41 Cards
I tweaked the Extra Deck a bit too, dropping stuff like Turbo Warrior and the extra Magical Android to fit in another Goyo Guardian, a second Colossal Fighter, and Red Dragon Archfiend.
Extra Deck: 15
This version of the deck is strong out of the gates, relying on the Apprentice Engine or big beatsticks backed by a defensive card to keep early field presence. Your number-one choice for an opening move should always be Secret Village, a high-ATK monster, and as much defense as you can pile on. If you can lock your opponent’s spells down from the get-go, your win percentage goes way up. But the Apprentice engine is a suitable back-up if that play isn’t available, because while a face-up Apprentice with Secret Village may still allow spells in your opponent’s main phase 2, it’ll also load your graveyard with that first copy of Apprentice.
And that’s important. This deck’s potential to abuse Magical Exemplar makes small monsters in the graveyard exceptionally good, and if everything goes to plan with Secret Village, you might run into a situation where you just aren’t losing monsters. Morphing Jar and Card Trooper are awkward fits here, so if you do make the strong opening play of a beatstick with Secret Village, a good follow-up is to summon Apprentice face up next turn. If you can slam him into something to load your graveyard, it’s usually worth taking damage from something like Elemental Hero Stratos to thin your deck and open up more plays. Magical Dimension can load you early on, but I just found that its pacing didn’t fit here. Maybe it’ll work for you instead.
If you get the lock early on, then focus all your efforts on keeping it and ending the game as quickly as possible. Force monster trades when possible: crashing Kycoo into Stratos can be well worth it when you know that you have a higher chance of drawing a decent attacker than your opponent. Magician’s Circle is a potent force that leaves you with another attacker, so set it early. Don’t hold back.
If the lock eludes you, an aggressive pace of play is still usually the way to go. Force your opponent to commit to the field and press on him or her as hard as you can: if you can draw out Solemn Judgment, then the game suddenly becomes much easier to win with Tempest Magician’s effect. Remember that even when your combos don’t come together, your monsters are just far larger than those of most opponents, and pressuring them into card exchanges will keep them from bringing out combo-driven monsters like Synchros or Celestia, Lightsworn Angel.
A deck like this can absolutely compete at the higher echelons of tournament play. While Psychics and Plants both have strong control mechanics on their side, neither of those decks is the perfect fit that Spellcasters currently are for competitive metagames. It’s rare to see an archetype that blends control and sheer utility so well: when such a deck comes along, it tends to win. Give this one a try, customize it to your tastes, and see what our friends in Japan are missing.
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Want to see your deck featured in the Apotheosis? Send your decklist, formatted like the one in this article, along with your name, location, and a short description of how the deck works, to metagamedeckfixes@gmail.com.