First, I’d like to thank everyone who wrote a response to last week’s article. I got some great feedback, and I’d like to share a couple of the ideas I received from readers.

Andrew Thompson has a tip for beating those obnoxious stall decks.

Giant Trunade can be someone's best friend in these decks. While you might have a set Gravekeeper’s Spy and Rite of Spirit face down, your opponent could just have Level Limit – Area B and another set spell or trap. If you played Giant Trunade, this would allow you to get that direct attack in, which might even be enough to win the game.

If Stall and Burn decks are popular in your local metagame, Giant Trunade is probably a good call to make. Even if there isn’t much Burn, Giant Trunade is still an excellent card to clear the field in preparation for one massive, swarming attack. Great idea, Andrew!

Jim McCullough doesn’t tolerate that “mass removal” garbage.

I tried playtesting a Gravekeeper deck for local tournaments and Regionals. I found that if you play three Solemn Judgments, it makes the deck much more consistent. Because of the swarming in this deck, Solemn Judgment says "No!" to Mirror Force, Tribe-Infecting Virus, and other cards that can wreck your day.

Solemn Judgment has long been underrated by many duelists, and it’s good to see that some people are finally giving the card the respect it deserves.A word of caution to whomever decides to try out Solemn Judgment: It takes some time to figure out when and how you’re supposed to use it, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t find immediate success.

The D.D. Deck

And now, on to the main issue of the day. When I first browsed through the checklists for The Lost Millennium, I immediately found D.D. Survivor to be quite fascinating. It always came out unscathed from confrontations with D. D. Assailant and D. D. Warrior Lady providing that the opponent didn’t use Enemy Controller or Book of Moon to turn it into defense position, and it also survived any encounters with the very popular Bottomless Trap Hole. In short, it did exactly what its name suggested.

Initially, it seemed that D.D. Survivor was only useful as a tech card, primarily in Warrior decks. However, a quick browsing through the “Jank Pile” revealed a way to potentially abuse D.D. Survivor’s ability to survive trips into the Different Dimension. I’m talking Different Dimension Gate here, folks.* Different Dimension Gate is what most TCG players refer to as a “symmetrical” card—that is, its effects are applied equally to both players. The key to successfully using symmetrical cards is to find a way to “break” their symmetry so that any ill effects are applied only to the opponent. So, in order to break the symmetry of Different Dimension Gate, I have to be able to remove my opponent’s monster from the game without losing my own monster; or, alternatively, I have to lose nothing of importance. This sounds like a job for D.D. Survivor!

Monsters: 17

1 Sangan

2 Tsukuyomi

1 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

2 Magician of Faith

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Apprentice Magician

1 Sinister Serpent

1 Tribe-Infecting Virus

1 Airknight Parshath

Spells: 19

1 Pot of Greed

1 Graceful Charity

1 Delinquent Duo

1 Premature Burial

1 Snatch Steal

1 Lightning Vortex

2 Different Dimension Gate

2 Scapegoat

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Metamorphosis

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Giant Trunade

1 Card of Sanctity

1 Reinforcement of the Army

Traps: 4

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

I’m a Survivor

This deck can do some unpleasant stuff to an unsuspecting opponent. The main combo in the deck is to remove any of the opponent’s monsters from the game with Different Dimension Gate along with your D.D. Survivor. At the end of the turn, your Survivor returns, but your opponent’s monster will stay in the removed zone until Different Dimension Gate is destroyed. Of course, it’s better not to let the Gate get destroyed, so the deck includes Giant Trunade to help you pick it back up, along with the rest of the spells and traps on the field. Remember, if Different Dimension Gate is somehow removed from the field without being destroyed, the monsters it took out of play will be stuck there permanently. Except, of course, for your face-up D.D. Survivor.

In general, the deck plays a lot like a Tsukuyomi Chaos/Control deck, featuring the Metamorphosis and Scapegoat necessary to perform a Thousand-Eyes Restrict lock. Adding Different Dimension Gate to the mix allows it to cause even more insanity with Thousand Eyes Restrict. Imagine that you have a face up, unequipped Thousand-Eyes Restrict that wasn’t summoned this turn. You could suck up a monster, then flip Thousand-Eyes Restrict face down and use its manual change to flip it back up and suck in another monster. Toss down Different Dimension Gate to remove Thousand-Eyes and another monster from play, then attack (most likely directly) with Tsukuyomi. Congratulations! Your Thousand-Eyes Restrict just took down three monsters. You don’t even need to pull the Different Dimension Gate off the field, because if your opponent destroys it, Thousand-Eyes Restrict returns and locks the field down once more.

You also have a little bit of search going for you with the single copy of Reinforcement of the Army. While D.D. Survivor isn’t exactly the most important piece of your removal engine, it’s a useful monster to have in a pinch, and chances are good that you’ll usually be glad to see it. If all else fails, it can become fodder to summon your Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning. The hard part here is getting Different Dimension Gate in the first place, and unfortunately, you’re basically out of luck on this front. However, once you do get it and maybe Giant Trunade to go along with it, you can repeat all your key spells with Magician of Faith. Nothing annoys an opponent more than using Giant Trunade every turn.

This deck also has the unique distinction of being one of the only two decks I’m aware of where Card of Sanctity is actually good. If you remove D.D. Survivor with Card of Sanctity, it comes back. If you remove your Different Dimension Gate with Card of Sanctity, the opponent’s monster is gone forever. Regardless of what you’re removing, you still draw two cards, and since you’re running three copies of D.D. Survivor, there is an excellent chance that you’ll have one out when you decide to play Card of Sanctity. You just have to be careful about when you play it. Playing Card of Sanctity at the wrong time is an excellent way to lose the game.

Voted Off the Island

So why did I end up not playing this deck? Quite simply, it was a consistency issue. You’ll notice how all the strengths I’ve mentioned involve two-card combos. It’s not the greatest idea in the world to bet your success at Nationals on a bunch of two-card combos that you may or may not draw. When the cards do show up together, they put a severe hurt on the opponent. However, in the large portion of time in which things don’t work out just right, you can be really hurting to draw either D.D. Survivor or Different Dimension Gate.

Scapegoat and Metamorphosis can sometimes help hold your opponent off until you draw the cards you need, but you’re equally likely to get nailed by Lightning Vortex and attacked by Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning before you get a chance to play your combos. On the flip side, you also have all the tools required to abuse the trinity cards that, as Nationals showed us, win games. Apprentice Magician helps you get to Magician of Faith, which you can then flip down repeatedly with Tsukuyomi.

On a similar note, the deck has absolutely no trinity resistance whatsoever. Even if you do have Sinister Serpent, losing anything else is absolutely devastating. Card advantage is very important when trying to play this deck. You need to have a lot of cards in order to properly operate your removal engine, and this is one of the major reasons the deck never did as well as I would have liked. That’s not to say that the deck isn’t any good at all. It was quite successful locally, but it didn’t really do much damage among the group of us that had qualified for Nationals. In the end, the deck’s failure to perform against a majority of the gauntlet caused it to get shelved for Nationals. In fact, the only reason I gave it a second look was because I did see people there trying it out in the LCQs. No one qualified with it, but the few people brave enough to run it came ever so close to making it.

So, if you’re looking for an interesting new deck to shake things up at the local tournament scene or even if you just have an unhealthy addiction to Jank, give this one a try. Of course, if you do decide to try it out, feel free to make any changes or additions that you think will make it better. As always, if something worked particularly well for you that I didn’t present here, please let me know. I’ll post the best ideas I get next week, and don’t worry, I’ll be sure to give credit where credit is due.

Well, that about wraps it up for me this week. Remember, all feedback, comments, suggestions, and questions should be sent to jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

NEXT WEEK: One big, scary, Egyptian dude!

*I’d just like to point out that Different Dimension Gate comes from Dark Crisis. Yes, the same, often-neglected set that everyone’s new friend, Tsukuyomi, is from. Perhaps there are more normal rare gems hiding in that set that we have yet to find?