Well, I’m about ready to call this one: of all the current deck types that Gladiator’s Assault supports, the Six Samurai are the big winners. Between Cunning of the Six Samurai, Spirit of the Six Samurai, and Enishi, Shien’s Chancellor I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to reasonably deny the power of the Six Samurai. Not that anything I say will stop people from doing exactly that: it’ll just require moving to a very special level of denial to do so. Rather than try to simply force the point, I feel that the best way to explain it all is by making a controversial sweeping statement: Cunning of the Six Samurai is the best card in Gladiator’s Assault, hands down.

“Surely you’re joking, Mr. McHale,” you might respond. “What about Necroface, Soul Taker, and Enishi? Those cards all do crazy things. Heck, one of them is Chaos Sorcerer!” It’s true. Those cards do do crazy things. Necroface even does two entirely different but not quite unrelated crazy things. Cunning of the Six Samurai, however, does a number of crazy things equal to the number of different Six Samurai monsters you have in your deck. Just look at the spread of abilities you can have access to at quick-play speed thanks to Cunning of the Six Samurai. This isn’t even considering the battle implications of the card, which are also quite insane if you think about it. Sure, Enishi is good, and you certainly shouldn’t forgo using him in your Samurai deck, but I think you’ll find that more and more of your huge plays will hinge on the ability to swap out Samurai between your field and your graveyard. It’s the ultimate manifestation of the Six Samurai “reverse toolbox” strategy that attempts to load the graveyard with Samurai, where they’re relatively easy to bring back with Call of the Haunted, Premature Burial, and The Warrior Returning Alive.

Of course, with only one Card Trooper available in the deck, it tends to lose a lot of its speed in loading the graveyard and a number of decent turn 1 plays. In fact, Samurai tend to be at their weakest during the first turn or two . While they do play as a swarm deck, the swarm is usually reactive and based on holding the right cards to counter plays from the opponent. It’s led many to believe that Six Samurai constitute a control deck rather than an aggressive strategy, though I would submit that the Six Samurai is the most completely aggressive deck around (especially if you devote some deck space to counter traps like Dark Bribe and Solemn Judgment to take care of any difficult situations). This week, let’s take a look at a Six Samurai build that attempts to maximize the power of Cunning of the Six Samurai.

Monsters: 22

3 The Six Samurai - Yaichi

3 The Six Samurai - Zanji

3 Grandmaster of the Six Samurai

3 The Six Samurai - Kamon

3 The Six Samurai - Irou

1 The Six Samurai - Nisashi

1 Spirit of the Six Samurai

1 Enishi, Shien’s Chancellor

1 Card Trooper

1 Sangan

2 Magical Merchant

Spells: 11

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Reinforcement of the Army

3 Cunning of the Six Samurai

3 The Warrior Returning Alive

1 Premature Burial

Traps: 8

1 Mirror Force

1 Call of the Haunted

3 Dark Bribe

3 Solemn Judgment

One of my favorite things about Cunning of the Six Samurai is that it affords me the ability to play Six Samurai monsters that I don’t really like (such as The Six Samurai - Nisashi) as one-off cards with the same efficiency that I would get if I were running three in the deck without taking up the extra space. In turn, this means I can run even more effects that are accessible by Cunning and increase the overall versatility and synergy of the deck at the same time. Normally, you have to give up one in order to get the other, but the whole point of the way the Six Samurai effects are structured is to create a cohesive team of monsters that work the same way every game while maintaining the flexibility to overcome any given situation. The way to set the game up to make this possible is generally known as the “reverse toolbox” strategy. Normal toolbox strategies run plenty of effects to fetch particular cards from the deck and put them either into your hand or onto the field. Reverse toolbox strategies run cards that throw things into the graveyard (preferably en masse), and then use various recursion cards to get them into the hand or on the field from there. This used to be really easy to do back when Card Trooper wasn’t Limited, but without access to three copies of the card, Magical Merchant comes in as a replacement.

While the Merchant isn’t as aggressive as Card Trooper and will fall to Shield Crush without being able to replace itself, its effect is arguably much better than Card Trooper’s in this instance. In this deck, you definitely want to draw into as many of your spells as possible, since they’re the cards that get you the effects you need. Magical Merchant can dump a load of Samurai into the graveyard before picking up The Warrior Returning Alive or Cunning of the Six Samurai to immediately turn all those cards in the graveyard into viable plays for the future.

Many of you may be wondering why I’m not running Double-Edged Sword Technique since I’m repeatedly loading the graveyard with various Samurai. Quite frankly, that particular trap card is a bit too double-edged for my liking. It’s a win-the-game-or-die card in a deck that can win the game just fine without doing anything particularly life-threatening to itself. In fact, the most life-threatening thing that the deck will inflict upon itself is the life point payment of Solemn Judgment, and that can never cost you the game. A failed push with Double-Edged Sword Technique due to something like Threatening Roar or Scapegoat can easily move you to the next duel or match, especially if you’ve used a Solemn Judgment at some point.

The main factors usually cited as reasons not to play Six Samurai include Zombie decks, Raiza the Storm Monarch, and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast. With the advent of Cunning of the Six Samurai, The Wind Blast isn’t as much of an issue since when the opponent tries to bounce a Samurai to the top of your deck, you can just chain and get a fresh one or even fetch the same one back from your graveyard. Wing Blast is effectively thwarted, so you can keep your copies of Dark Bribe and Solemn Judgment for bigger threats like Book of Life and Raiza.

Spirit of the Six Samurai is a unique monster in that it’s one of the few times in the game’s history that a Union monster has actually included a potentially victory-sealing effect. The first thing you need to understand is that it does count as a Six Samurai thanks to having those words in its name, and that means that Spirit into Grandmaster is a viable play that you can follow by gearing up your Grandmaster. With the aid of Spirit, he will pump up to 2600 ATK, become indestructible (once), and earn you a card every time he destroys a monster in battle. Even after the equip is gone, if your opponent destroys Grandmaster with an effect, then you can get a Samurai back from your graveyard. That said, Spirit still suffers from the fact that it’s tiny and not useful on its own, or at least wouldn’t be if it didn’t have Six Samurai in its name. Since it does, even if you don’t have a use for it at the moment, it can still be any Samurai in your graveyard via Cunning.

Finally, I promised back in my preview of Enishi that I’d tell you about why Skill Drain doesn’t worry me at all despite the fact that if it successfully resolves, the Six Samurai should be sunk. As expected, my confidence comes from a fun little trick that’s only possible thanks to Cunning of the Six Samurai. If Skill Drain comes up (which it most likely will thanks to burn’s popularity), Kamon is more than capable of taking care of the problem . . . provided he isn’t face up on the field when his effect resolves. Let’s say you have Kamon and Grandmaster on the field and any other Six Samurai in the graveyard. Activate Kamon’s effect targeting Skill Drain, then chain with Cunning of the Six Samurai to swap out Kamon for the other Samurai in your graveyard. Since Kamon isn’t on the field anymore, his effect won’t be negated, much like how Exiled Force works in the face of Skill Drain. It’s a neat trick, and I guarantee it’ll come up if you play Six Samurai in a competitive environment.

I hope everyone enjoyed their time at the Sneak Preview, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: The Yu-Gi-Oh! equivalent of a cage match.