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The Apotheosis: Uria Unleashed

Jason Grabher-Meyer

July 18, 2006

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I’ve been looking at some pretty competitive decks in this column lately, but I noticed we’ve never had a dedicated Uria, Lord of Searing Flames deck on the site. Seriously, what’s up with that?

With that thought on my mind, I feel obligated to take a nice cheerful dive into the jank tank and set the world right. Uria, Lord of Searing Flames is by far the best of the three Sacred Beasts released in Shadow of Infinity, and with its built-in protection plan and game-shaping effect, it deserves a little bit of respect. Reader Lee D. from Louisville had just that in mind when he built the deck that he submitted for today’s column.

Hey Jason,

I love your articles and I’ve built a deck that I think is tournament-worthy. Basically, when Shadow of Infinity came out, I thought about how to make a deck using one of the Sacred Beasts. My conclusion is that Uria is pretty much broken when it comes out. 3000 ATK is more dominant than any monster in the game and Uria’s ability means it’s almost untouchable when it comes to the field! I’ve played this deck in one tournament and came in second. It has beaten Chaos Control, Macro Cosmos, and many other decks. Could you please help me with some fixes?

If you notice, there are a lot of weird cards in this deck. Trust me—do not underestimate their power. Second place in a Louisville local tournament is not easy. This deck is hurt by Royal Decree and Jinzo but has still been able to win!

Please fix my deck, Jason!

—Lee D., Louisville, KY

If you’ve never really read Uria’s effects closely, take a peek at it now. “This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card cannot be Special Summoned except by sending 3 face-up Trap Cards from your side of the field to the Graveyard. Increase the ATK of this card by 1000 points for each Continuous Trap Card in your Graveyard. Once per turn, you can destroy 1 Set Spell or Trap Card on your opponent's side of the field. Spell and Trap Cards cannot be activated in response to this effect's activation.”

Those last two lines are really important, because they make Uria what it is: the only Sacred Beast that can’t be stymied by Torrential Tribute or Bottomless Trap Hole.As soon as Uria comes into play, you want to immediately use your priority to activate its effect. That way, the opponent can’t add any spell or trap cards to the chain. By the time Uria’s “destroy one spell or trap card” effect resolves, your opponent has missed his or her chance to use point-of-summoning cards like the two mentioned above. Considering that Bottomless Trap Hole has taken over for Sakuretsu Armor in most decks, that’s a pretty great effect.

Here’s Lee’s deck.

Uria Unleashed: 44 Cards

Monsters: 13

1 Uria, Lord of Searing Flames

1 Sangan

Spells: 16

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Reload

2 Wave-Motion Cannon

1 Guard Penalty

1 Scapegoat

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Level Limit - Area B

1 Poison of the Old Man

Traps: 15

1 Interdimensional Matter Transporter

1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

2 Waboku

1 Ordeal of the Traveler

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Curse of Darkness

I really like the idea of combining Uria with traditional Burn cards. Uria is a late game cleanup hitter, and it works best when you’ve already smacked the opponent for some damage. That way, it swings once and ends the game. In addition, Burn decks need to use continuous effects in order to keep their defenses up, and there are plenty of continuous traps that can do that. They then become fodder for Uria’s special summoning requirement in the late game, letting you glide to an easy victory.

Good deal.

With that said, there are some concerns with Lee’s focus. A lot of cards in here don’t seem very important, and only six of the 44 are continuous traps. That’s bad news for Uria. Granted, he’s only running a single copy of The Lord of Searing Flames, but I’m not sure that, “Well, it probably wasn’t gonna work anyway,” is good reasoning. We need to bring this deck down to a tight 40 cards and refine some of its variety into a more focused strategy.

Let’s start by making a few drops. Blowback Dragon, Medusa Worm, and Swarm of Scarabs are all very good at controlling monsters on the field, but we don’t really need to do that. By the time I’m through with the deck, it will have enough continuous traps to do our stall work anyway. In my opinion, Solar Flare Dragon is inferior to Stealth Bird, since it gives the opponent something to do with Smashing Ground, so the one copy of Flare Dragon is going to be removed as well.

Guard Penalty and Reload don’t really make a whole lot of sense in this deck. Sure, we’d like to get to cards we need when we need them, but we’re already over the 40-card mark. We can make the deck more efficient by dropping these two spells and just running a smaller deck.

Hammer Shot, Prohibition, Scapegoat, and Lightning Vortex are all basically defensive monster control cards, and can be removed from the deck for the same reason that I removed the controlling monsters. The only monster we really want to destroy or name with Prohibition is Jinzo, and a few basic pieces of monster control will work just fine for keeping it subdued. As it stands, the deck is actively being hurt by the huge amount of monster control that’s clogging it up.

The last spells I want to drop are Poison of the Old Man and Soul Absorption. I can’t imagine very many situations when Soul Absorption would be relevant. Most of the deck’s monsters won’t be face up all that often, so Chaos Sorcerer isn’t a big threat. While Nobleman of Crossout can remove our monsters from play, running Soul Absorption to try and juice a few life points out of two cards seems unnecessary. As for Poison of the Old Man, it’s just a call I have to make to reduce the deck’s size. There are better sources of direct burn damage available, and I need to keep the card count down.

Now we hit the trap lineup. I’d prefer it if most of the deck’s traps were continuous. That way, we can get the most mileage out of Uria when it hits the field. I’m going to drop Interdimensional Matter Transporter, Curse of Anubis, Magic Jammer, Compulsory Evacuation Device, the pair of Waboku cards, and Gravity Bind (the deck was running three, and Gravity Bind is semi-limited).

I’ve managed to cut 20 cards from the deck, which gives me ample space to reinvent it. Stealth Bird is an ideal source of renewable burn damage, so I’m going to add another one of those. Its high DEF is also an asset, a quality it shares with Des Koala. I’ll be adding a pair of those cuddly little burn-bears too, as well as another Spirit Reaper. That creates a situation where our monsters can not only kick out plenty of burn damage, but also stand on their own if trap-based defenses give out.

The last monster I want to add to the deck is another two Lava Golem cards. Not only is the Golem a good source of burn and a great way to keep the opponent’s monster count under control, but it’s going to combo really nicely in this deck. More on that later.

We’ll need a few more answers to Jinzo, in addition to Lava Golem. A pair of Smashing Ground cards can destroy the android, and Book of Moon will flip it face down at key times in order to turn our defensive traps back on. Book of Moon will also let us reuse Mask of Darkness and Des Koala while turning vulnerable face-up monsters back to the comfy face-down defense position. It’s a high utility card, and it’s going to be a lot more useful than some of the specialized spells that Lee was previously running.

We’ve got eight slots left in the deck, which is a good number to commit to continuous traps. In my mind, Ordeal of the Traveler is an auto-include card for any Uria deck. It can stop an onslaught of attackers dead in their tracks, undo several turns of the opponent’s build-up, and protect your monsters in the process. Two copies will do well, so long as you manage your cards carefully and make sure to keep a couple in your hand.

Next, I’m going to add two Fairy Box cards, which cause attackers to crash into your defense position monsters and bounce off. When you’ve got high-DEF monsters like Des Koala and Stealth Bird, that can really count for a lot. You can even punish your opponent for trying to attack freshly flipped Koalas or Mask of Darkness cards. The 500 life point cost that this card incurs is really minor, given its potential to cause havoc and save you from damage.

One Pole Position is going to function as an answer to Mobius the Frost Monarch, while also making sure that your opponent’s Smashing Ground and Snatch Steal fail while they have an empty field. Losing Stealth Bird to Smashing Ground is really, really bad. Pole Position lets us rule out that situation at least some of the time, while also harassing Mobius. Be careful though, because if you need to use Smashing Ground on something controlled by your opponent, Pole Position could get in the way. Play it very carefully, and try to think a few turns ahead if it’s going to be on the field for a while.

One more Curse of Darkness seems like a cool addition. My build of Lee’s deck is going to wind up packing ten spells, fewer than most decks it will come up against. Once the burn machine gets going ,it won’t really need to activate spells very often. Forcing the opponent to pay 1000 life points for Graceful Charity or Nobleman of Crossout is really useful, because it makes the job of burning your way to a win quite a bit easier. Each spell your opponent activates saves you a shot with Stealth Bird or a turn of waiting with Wave-Motion Cannon.

Finally, I want to add two copies of Embodiment of Apophis. I tend to add this into any deck that runs Uria, because even if you deploy an Embodiment to the field, it still retains the characteristic of a continuous trap. That means you can attack with it, or stave off a potential attack, and then send it to the graveyard later to special summon Uria. Heck, even if it’s destroyed in battle, it’s just another continuous trap to fuel Uria’s rage when it hits the field.

Whew! That was a lot of changes! Here’s the list of all the alterations I made to the deck.

-1 Blowback Dragon

-1 Medusa Worm

-1 Swarm of Scarabs

-1 Solar Flare Dragon

-1 Reload

-1 Guard Penalty

-1 Hammer Shot

-2 Prohibition

-1 Scapegoat

-1 Lightning Vortex

-1 Poison of the Old Man

-1 Soul Absorption

-1 Interdimensional Matter Transporter

-1 Curse of Anubis

-1 Magic Jammer

-1 Gravity Bind

-1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

-2 Waboku

+1 Stealth Bird

+1 Spirit Reaper

+2 Des Koala

+2 Lava Golem

+2 Smashing Ground

+1 Book of Moon

+1 Ordeal of the Traveler

+2 Fairy Box

+1 Pole Position

+1 Curse of Darkness

+2 Embodiment of Apophis

The final decklist is as follows.

Uria Unleashed: Jason’s Fix

40 Cards

Monsters: 15

1 Uria, Lord of Searing Flames

1 Sangan

Spells: 10

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Wave-Motion Cannon

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Level Limit - Area B

Traps: 15

2 Ordeal of the Traveler

1 Call of the Haunted

2 Fairy Box

1 Pole Position

2 Curse of Darkness

2 Embodiment of Apophis

That looks a lot better! The deck now plays like any other Lockdown Burn deck in the early and mid-game, racking up damage as it controls the opponent’s options for attacking. At the same time though, it doesn’t go too heavy on hard attack denial, running just Level Limit - Area B and Gravity Bind. It will frequently let an attack go through, but then stop it with Fairy Box or Ordeal of the Traveler.

Ordeal is especially entertaining when the attacking monster is Lava Golem. If Ordeal manages to bounce the Golem, it’s going to return to your hand, which means you can use it again later to get rid of even more of your opponent’s monsters. The three copies of Lava Golem are really cool here: not only can you eliminate two of your opponent’s monsters with the first one, you can then use the first to tribute for your second and then the third. That lets you continually remove monsters from your opponent’s side of the field without giving them multiple 3000 ATK beatsticks.

Uria can be tricky to play, and it takes a bit of practice to use effectively. It’s a great late game card when the opponent doesn’t have any potential blockers. At that point, it can end games with ease. However, don’t underestimate its power in the mid-game. If you think your control over the duel is a bit shaky, don’t hesitate to bring out Uria and see what happens. It’s part of the fun of using this deck, and if the opponent has an attack-position monster that they might not be able to defend, go ahead and see if you can blaze a nice big flaming hole right through the center of it. The times a premature Uria costs you the game are balanced out by the glory of those games you win with it.

As far as match-ups go, this deck is basically a Lockdown Burn. Depending on how you draw, you can put away a Chaos Return or aggressive beatdown deck from the beginning of the duel, or you could get overwhelmed by attackers and a flood of spell and trap removal. Regardless of how lucky your opening hand might be, remember that giving up free cards to your opponent is bad. Keep your monsters face down whenever possible, and be wary of Chaos Sorcerer. Turtling is your friend for a long list of reasons, not the least of which are Ceasefire and Secret Barrel. If you can establish a slow tempo and kick out some damage here and there, by all means do so.

Is this a highly competitive deck that’s going to be rocking Shonen Jump Championships any week now? Of course not. But it’s a heck of a lot of fun to play, and with some effort and clever side decking, it can win more than its share of local tournaments. It’s built on the solid fundamentals of Lockdown Burn—fundamentals that have proven to be successful—and twists them just enough to be original and interesting. If you’re tired of cookie-cutter decks and want to play something totally different, try this thing out. It might surprise you, and any win you score with an Uria deck is going to be really memorable.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer

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