Mark Steele is 4-3 going into Day 2 and is hoping to place highly, just to prove that conforming is not the only way to make a huge impression in this year’s National Championship. He also actually owns his own Des Voltsgalph from the Pharaoh Tour Finals, which he bough from Jamie Stafford; and he’s side decked it today for comic value. Along with Joe Whittaker, he has made a deck focusing around Final Countdown, which he’s worked on for the last four months. Here’s a look at his decklist.
Mark Steele
40 Cards
Monsters: 8
1 Maharaghi
3 Winged Kuriboh
1 Morphing Jar
2 Des Lacooda
1 Spirit Reaper
Spells: 14
1 Lightning Vortex
3 Final Countdown
1 Swords of Revealing Light
3 Nightmare’s Steelcage
1 Heavy Storm
1 Level Limit – Area B
2 Upstart Goblin
1 Scapegoat
1 Graceful Charity
Traps: 18
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Mirror Force
3 Thunder of Ruler
3 Threatening Roar
3 Waboku
3 Frozen Soul
2 Solemn Judgment
2 Jar of Greed
As you can see, Mark has an extremely clever build here. If he draws Final Countdown early, there’s an immense amount of stall, which could easily bring him ten turns later to victory. Cyber-Stein decks really look forward to playing against Mark—can’t you tell? Mark uses multiples of every stall card in the game, other than Swords of Revealing Light which is limited. Frozen Soul is amazing tech, considering Final Countdown’s activation cost is 2000 life points. Mark’s also a huge fan of the fact that missed battle phase’s stack, so multiple activations don’t matter!
Using only eight monsters, Mark uses a mixture of stall and draw power to force the game in his favor, and really annoy his opponents! Maharaghi is Mark’s signature card, and he loves playing it to manipulate his next draw. The stall factor in his deck and high amount of chainable trap cards make spell and trap removal such as Heavy Storm virtually useless against him, which can be a huge advantage.
Mark is doing well here today and is currently on table 25. Could he make the Top 8? Possibly, but to find out you’ll have to stay tuned here at Metagame.com and see how the Final Countdown fares!