Based on the coverage from Shonen Jump Championship Boston, I think it’s fair to say that we’re looking at a pretty quick format. Between quick Warrior swarms, powerful, splash-able, burn effects, and Cyber-Stein and Injection Fairy Lily, life point totals are shrinking faster than they have since the introduction of the Forbidden list. Due to the relatively undefined nature of the current metagame, the environment is skewed towards supporting various aggressive and combo-oriented decks. Slower decks have yet to make an appearance, most likely because the popular tools of slower decks in the previous format are now Forbidden or Limited. Of course, all that really means is that “control” players can’t sit there behind Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and Magical Merchant until they get Snatch Steal, Tsukuyomi, and some number of Chaos Sorcerer cards.

A couple weeks back, Jae came up with a deck based around using Destiny Hero - Double Dude with Robbin’ Goblin to wreck an opponent’s hand. This week I want to take things a step further and try to eliminate any chance the opponent has to even draw a card that can beat you, let alone use it. Check this out!

Monsters: 21

3 Hydrogeddon

3 Submarineroid

3 Mother Grizzly

3 Nightmare Penguin

2 Mobius the Frost Monarch

2 Abyss Soldier

2 Fenrir

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Sangan

Spells: 8

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Confiscation

2 Enemy Controller

2 Rush Recklessly

Traps: 12

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Mirror Force

3 Robbin’ Goblin

2 Spiritual Water Art - Aoi

2 Mind Crush

3 Ojama Trio

Many decks these days are based around attacking repeatedly with Cyber Dragon cards and using random flip monsters and recruiter monsters that force the opponent  to deal with cards which have either already replaced themselves in some way or didn’t cost the aggressor any of his or her standard actions for the turn. Thus, the attacking player should have a firm grip on the game, barring the use of any powerful cards like Torrential Tribute or Mirror Force. Even then, the defender is still usually in a bad spot due to the opponent’s ability to keep command of the field while committing minimal resources to maintain it. This deck seeks to sink such strategies by turning all those recruiters and flip effects into huge liabilities that cost the opponent far more than one monster off the field.

How does one go about this? First off, don’t bother wasting removal on silly things like Dekoichi. You can do far worse things to your opponent in retaliation for playing that little train. For example, you could attack it with Fenrir! Sure, they’ll still draw a card from Dekoichi’s effect, but they certainly won’t be drawing one next turn. They also probably won’t have a monster on the field either (with the possible exception of Ojama Tokens). Fenrir doesn’t care whether a monster was sent to the graveyard or removed from play. As long as it destroys the monster in battle, your opponent skips his or her next draw. This turns each of your Ojama Trio traps into 900 damage and three skipped draws as long as you can keep Fenrir alive. Cards like Enemy Controller and Rush Recklessly help make sure it happens, even if they pull out something like Cyber Dragon. Treeborn Frog? Bring it on.

Cards like Fenrir can sink any strategy involving monsters (provided you back it up properly), and this deck delivers with even more “Sinker” monsters (monsters that create a continually worsening game state for your opponent) in addition to a plethora of vicious bounce and discard effects. One of the most important cards in this regard is Robbin’ Goblin. Robbin’ is pretty nasty with cards like Gravekeeper’s Spy (or, in this case, Nightmare Penguin), but when you combine it with other “Sinker” monsters, like Hydrogeddon, its true power becomes clear. For example, let’s say I attack your Mystic Tomato with Hydrogeddon, aided by Robbin’ Goblin. The attack goes through. Now you’re in the deepest darkest trouble of your dueling career. At the very least, your Tomato is gone and you lose a card from your hand. In addition, if you take a bit of damage, I get another Hydrogeddon from my deck. Now you have a couple of options: either take 1600 and lose another card from hand, or search for something with the Tomato and try to soften the blow. Most likely, you’ll go fetch Spirit Reaper if you haven’t used it already, but that isn’t going to stop the pain. You’ll still take damage from that Hydrogeddon and you’ll still lose another card from your hand. Spirit Reaper isn’t even guaranteed to make it to your turn thanks to all the targeting quick-play spells in this deck.

“What about all my Sakuretsu Armor cards and the like?” you may ask. Well, here’s the thing. Remember how I said that some traits that are exemplified by a given attribute often bleed into that attribute’s allies? Water is Wind’s ally, and the trait that bleeds into it is “nasty bounce effects.” Abyss Soldier and Nightmare Penguin can bounce any card on the field to the owner’s hand, making that card a sitting duck for a Robbin’ Goblin-aided attack. In fact, if you know what card you just bounced, why not take advantage of the fact and just force it out of the opponent’s hand with Mind Crush?

This deck has a large number of non-defensive traps in it, so many that you’d think Royal Decree would be a huge problem if your opponent were to set it on the first turn. In reality, that’s not quite the case (due to your many effect monsters and spells that can either bounce or destroy it), but there are a still lot of traps in this deck. What are they for? More discard. As far as the person playing this deck is concerned, the only good opposing threat is one that you plucked out of the opponent’s hand before he or she could play it. The easiest way to do this is with Spiritual Water Art - Aoi. Did they play Smashing Ground on your Mother Grizzly? Don’t let it go down without a fight! Chain with Aoi to see the opponent’s hand and ruin whatever plans he or she had for the rest of the turn. Now that you know what he or she is holding, you can even follow up with Mind Crush to discard any other potential threat. Did the opponent just play Giant Trunade? I smell a Cyber-Stein coming. Chain with Mind Crush and guess which card he or she is most likely holding. Cyber-Stein and Exiled Force are usually what you’d want to call. Only three things can happen then. One, you’re right and your opponent’s strategy is toast. Two, you’re wrong and you’re going to lose anyways. Three, your opponent had absolutely no business playing that Trunade, and you’re probably going to win off the sheer bizarreness of that move (regardless of having to discard something from your own hand).

Now that you know how truly unrelenting this deck can be, let’s see how to set some of this stuff up. You’ll want to get a copy of Robbin’ Goblin running as soon as you possibly can. Once you do, your opponent will have to think twice before attacking you. Is that set monster a Nightmare Penguin? Or even a Submarineroid? Most of the popular non-Cyber Dragon monsters have less than 1800 ATK, so each failed attack is going to cost that monster’s controller big time. If it’s a Penguin, a card gets bounced back to the hand and then discarded. If it’s a ‘roid, the opponent loses a card right then and another on your turn when you swing in directly with Submarineroid. The earlier you can force Ojama Tokens on to your opponent’s field, the better off you are. While it’s possible to take out Cyber Dragon cards with your “Sinker” monsters, it tends to be a bit more difficult than picking off the little flip effect monsters. It’s better to just deny your opponent the opportunity to special summon any Cyber Dragon cards. Once you’ve whittled away the opponent’s hand and stuck him or her with at least a couple of tokens (it’s even better if they play Scapegoat), it’s time to make sure the opponent never draws during the draw phase again. Once Fenrir starts munching tokens, you can sit back and develop your field until the tokens run out, at which point you win the game. Once it gets to that point, there isn’t much the opponent can do to stop you. It’s almost like the old Yata-lock without any of that Raigeki/Harpie’s Feather Duster craziness to make it dirt simple to achieve. You’ll have to work at this one, but trust me, it’s worth it if you pull it off. There’s nothing like forcing your entire local metagame to abandon their Chaos-without-Chaos holdover decks from last format with a deck made almost exclusively from commons and rares. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and, most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: The third part in this cleverly disguised series on Attributes That Aren’t Light Or Dark!