Normally, I’d use a Traditional format deck to talk about the tendencies of an Advanced format deck, or to simply outline a major Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG theory. Not this week.
I’ve been asked time and time again what deck I use when I play the Traditional format, and today we’ll be looking at that deck. It’s fast, it’s consistent and it’s extraordinarily cheap. Those tend to be just the qualities I look for in a deck!
The deck in question is a combo one-turn KO based on Makyura the Destructor and Exchange of the Spirit. Makyura allows you to play your entire deck, and Exchange of the Spirit forces your opponent to run out of cards . . . all on turn 1. This deck is extraordinarily fun to play, so if you don’t have the cards it’s highly recommended that you find them, make this, and start rolling over opponents at a Traditional tournament. The deck just became a lot more consistent with Reinforcement of the Army now playable in threes, allowing you to get to Makyura even faster.
The Monsters
The monster lineup is very, very small: all we really care about is getting Makyura into the graveyard.
The three copies of Armageddon Knight will send Makyura to the graveyard immediately, which is going to let you move on to the task of trying to draw your entire deck. This deck basically works in two modes: before getting Makyura to the graveyard, and after doing so. The use of cards completely shifts once you achieve your first goal (granted, this all occurs on the first turn). Armageddon Knight becomes one of our dead cards once Makyura has been sent to the graveyard, as does Reinforcement of the Army (though Reinforcement of the Army can grab an Armageddon Knight, so it would be double-counting dead draws to say that you had six dead cards in your deck).
The three copies of Thunder Dragon are going to grant you an extra card in hand, and two cards less in your deck. This will allow for easy activations of Hand Destruction, Magical Mallet, and Card Destruction.
The Spells
A majority of the spell lineup has two functions: getting Makyura to the graveyard during the first step of your game, and drawing cards once that has been achieved. The only exceptions are Card Destruction and Serial Spell, though Serial Spell can certainly be used with Pot of Greed or Graceful Charity to constitute additional draw power, and Card Destruction can just be activated to draw cards. That’s not their actual purpose though. Once you’ve played Exchange of the Spirit, your opponent might still have two or three cards left in his or her deck and you probably know that if the opponent has Monster Reborn in hand already, you probably helped him or her. The opponent also might be holding Fiber Jar, Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, or any number of cards that might beat you in the two turns remaining before he or she finishes drawing out his or her deck.
That’s why we’ve included Card Destruction and Serial Spell. Once you flip the decks over, you activate Card Destruction, chain Serial Spell (if you have to), and force your opponent to draw the rest of his or her deck. A lot of players switch this combo with playing Soul Release before activating Exchange of the Spirit, but it’s an otherwise dead card. Instead, we use cards with more utility. This means that they don’t only have one use, but many, which will make our deck more consistent than other builds.
The third copy of Reinforcement of the Army was of huge benefit to this strategy: now we can open with one of a whopping eight cards that send Makyura directly from the deck to the graveyard: Reinforcement of the Army, Armageddon Knight, and Foolish Burial. That means that a full fifth (twenty percent) of your deck will allow you to move into the second stage of the game, which means that approximately 74 percent of the time, you’ll start the game with a Makyura in the graveyard. Add to that the fact that you run multiple spells that draw cards, and you can expect to draw one of those three cards on the first turn in a vast majority of your duels.
Painful Choice has two uses here, depending on whether you’re on the first or second stage of the one-turn KO. If you haven’t gotten Makyura yet, you can search your deck for three copies of Reinforcement of the Army and two copies of Armageddon Knight, immediately forcing your opponent to grant you a Makyura in the graveyard and (if your opponent makes the mistake of giving you the Reinforcement of the Army instead of the Armageddon Knight) you’ve successfully thinned your deck by seven cards! If you’ve already gotten Makyura into the graveyard, you can simply thin your deck of dead draws.
Many builds run three copies of Toon Table of Contents and Toon World or Toon Cannon Soldier to continue the deck thinning. However, those have very low to no utility and automatically give us a dead card in hand. In the end, that isn’t really worth thinning the deck of three cards: we already have a plethora of ways to thin the deck that actually help us otherwise. Our spells work together. We have very few cards in our deck with only one purpose, meaning we can vary our play depending on the situation and make our deck more consistent, winning games even with horrible hands.
The Traps
Considering the effect of Makyura the Destructor, and the fact that our win condition is Exchange of the Spirit, we can expect our trap lineup to be essential for victory.
Everything in the trap lineup is for use in the second stage of the game. Once we get Makyura into the graveyard, we can use our whopping twelve card-drawing traps to draw through our deck extremely fast. The three copies of Jar of Greed and Legacy of Yata-Garasu become the other six copies of Upstart Goblin, something almost all one-turn KO decks wish they had. More importantly, Reckless Greed becomes our second, third, and fourth copy of Pot of Greed, which is inarguably one of the best cards in the game. Four copies of Pot of Greed is something just about any deck wishes it could boast.
The three copies of Good Goblin Housekeeping are going to help you reuse your copies of Thunder Dragon and dead copies of Reinforcement of the Army. This is one of the trickier synergies in the deck. What happens when you open up with three copies of Reinforcement of the Army, an Armageddon Knight, and two copies of Good Goblin Housekeeping? You play the Armageddon Knight, send Makyura to the graveyard, play two copies of Reinforcement of the Army to grab the two remaining Armageddon Knight cards and play both copies of Good Goblin Housekeeping, making your third Reinforcement playable and drawing you several fresh (and most likely useful) cards. That turns an almost dead opening hand into one that will probably achieve the one-turn KO.
Our greatest enemy is D.D. Crow, which can halt Makyura in his tracks. Side decking three copies of Burial from a Different Dimension is going to be a must. Royal Decree might also be a problem, but your opponent will first have to draw it and then go first in order to use it. It’s not necessary to waste time side-decking against it, though you can throw in Mystical Space Typhoon and a couple of copies of Twister if you’re looking for some fillers. Banisher of the Radiance is a similar problem, but again it needs to be drawn and played before you take your first turn: even then, Makyura has 1600 ATK and can kamikaze it, sending it to the graveyard without the need for another card. Your only real worry is being defeated before you take a turn, either by a mirror match or by a Magical Scientist OTK.
To be frank, it’s actually quite difficult to lose when playing this deck.
There are a lot of intricacies here that might go unnoticed: playing this deck is going to help you improve your ability to evaluate situations, find alternate paths to victory, and innovate during an ongoing duel. In a format with so many in-play options regarding Synchro choices and Gladiator Beast summons, those are essential skills to have. You might just be looking for a powerhouse Traditional deck to take to a tournament, in which case this definitely fits the bill. Or you’re an Advanced player who has stumbled upon a Traditional tournament in your area, and you need a cheap deck to start dominating a new venue. You’ll notice that an extra copy of Mirror Force can be traded off for this entire deck. In any of these cases, enjoy the list and the insight it brings to your game. Good luck (as if you need it) at the tables!
—Ryan Murphy