The September 1st Forbidden and Limited list was only revealed a few days ago, and duelists all across the globe are speculating as to what these new deck-building restrictions will mean for the game. Previously, Jason outlined the changes on the list from a mechanical standpoint. Today, I want to follow up on that by talking about what these changes will mean to the decks that have defined the game for the past five months and the decks that I feel have a chance to rise up due to the absence of certain cards that have been holding them down. Let’s get started, shall we?
Chaos Variants . . .
. . . no longer exist as of September 1st. The banning of Chaos Sorcerer marks the end of the era where many monsters are highly valued strictly because they’re either Light or Dark attribute monsters. Remember folks, there are six attributes in the game, and now that the phrase, “Remove a light and a dark” has been excised from the vocabulary of the Advanced format, maybe our SJC Top 8 lists will begin to reflect this. Some people will still run their “Recruiter” decks trying to find a replacement for Chaos Sorcerer, but really, there isn’t one. The monster that comes closest is Freed the Brave Wanderer, but Freed is nowhere near as good as the Sorcerer was. Recruiter’s only chance at making it through the switch is to change over to a straight Monarch Control engine, in which case we may see Shining Angel phased out in favor of either Giant Rat or Warrior Lady of the Wasteland. Without any need for light attribute monsters, Shining Angel really loses a lot of its luster and allows for a more toolbox-like approach to the Recruiter deck.
Think about Shining Angel for a second. What kind of cards do you usually get when your opponent attacks one? Chances are, it’s going to be either another Shining Angel or your D.D. Warrior Lady. Maybe a White Magical Hat. Maybe. Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of the good Light monsters with 1500 or less ATK that you’d want to special summon to the field in attack mode. Compare that with Giant Rat, which can go fetch Exiled Force (which you’re now allowed two copies of), Hero Kid (for decks that need lots of tribute material), Injection Fairy Lily, the very anti-Stein Amazoness Swords Woman, D.D. Warrior if you have one, Rescue Cat, Gyaku-Gire Panda, or even Warrior Lady of the Wasteland (if you need more Warriors for your Phoenix Blade). Heck, even UFO Turtle is starting to build up an impressive repertoire of monsters to fetch. Command Knight, Cyber Phoenix, and A-Team: Trap Disposal Unit are all great cards to call up with a UFO Turtle. Mother Grizzly still has its bag of tricks from before, including Poison Draw Frog, T.A.D.P.O.L.E., Yomi Ship, Treeborn Frog, Ameba (for all you Swap fans out there), in addition to decks based on Mermaid Knight and Amphibious Bugroth MK-3 for A Legendary Ocean. Finally, even Flying Kamakiri #1 can search out more good cards than Shining Angel. Hand of Nephthys, Gyroid, Chaosrider Gustaph, Lady Ninja Yae, Twin-Headed Behemoth, and Sonic Shooter can all be fetched out by the Kamakiri. We’re entering an era where you don’t have to be constrained to a specific set of cards just because they’re Light or Dark. If a particular attribute has more useful effects that its recruiter can fetch out, go ahead and play that attribute. Playing cards because they’re good, rather than because they could fuel Chaos Sorcerer if it wasn’t forbidden is going to in high style for the next six months, and it’s certainly going to improve the overall quality of the decks we see at the SJC level.
It’s also important to note that since Lightning Vortex has been completely unlimited, fields of Recruiter monsters are likely to be wiped out without the need for battle by decks built to make use of multiples of this powerful field-clearing card. Pot of Avarice also becomes useful again now that there’s no need to remove every single monster in your graveyard to summon multiple Sorcerers. We’re also sure to see a rise in Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial as ways to resurrect fallen behemoths in battle, but I’ll get to that later. Finally, it’s likely that traps may begin to see more use in the Recruiter deck due to the return of Ring of Destruction. Ring is an excellent card for every deck out there, including Recruiter-based decks. Will this be enough for Recruiter to lay off the Decrees? Or will it make them value their Decrees even more highly? My prediction is that the Decrees are here to stay. Recruiter will just toss Ring in regardless of whether or not it could be a potential dead draw.
Finally, what of Chaos Return? The headline deck of the last five months cannot survive in the new format without Chaos Sorcerer. Other Return variants will certainly pop up, but you can stick a fork in this one, because it’s done.
The Many Faces of Monarch Control
Monarch-based decks are going to cruise right through the format change with no problems. In fact, they’re going to be even better thanks to the lack of Tsukuyomi in the new format. Without a searchable, repeatable answer to a constant swarm of Monarchs, I’m predicting that Monarch Control will comprise at least half of the top 8 from SJC Boston in a few weeks. In addition to the lack of Tsukuyomi, Snatch Steal has also made its way to the forbidden list for the first time since its release, leaving one less answer to any big hulking monster in the game. This isn’t just good for Monarchs, but it’s also great news for anyone running a deck with a big monster as its win condition. Ancient Gear Golem? Sure thing! It’s not like they can just draw Snatch Steal and beat you over the head with your own monster. Creature Swap is still around, but it isn’t as potent as it was before without Tsukuyomi to wreck the rest of your field before it swaps over for your remaining important monster. Decks based around Mausoleum of the Emperor have an excellent shot at keeping their monsters where they belong. In addition, I think we’ll start seeing Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial again as ways to keep these monsters around for as long as possible even if they get destroyed. Decks based around the Apprentice Magician engine have one less Magician of Faith to work with, but they also have one less Nobleman of Crossout to deal with as well. The trade-off works in definitive favor of the Apprentice deck, since it’s a lot easier for the Magician to be searched out than it is for the opponent to hit anything with Nobleman of Crossout.
My final note for this section revolves around Metamorphosis and its role in Monarch decks. Many Monarch decks play the single allowed copy as a way to turn Zaborg or Cyber Dragon into Dark Balter the Terrible. It also provides a way to turn Sheep Tokens or spent copies of Magician of Faith into the obnoxious (and now forbidden) Thousand-Eyes Restrict. You see that? That’s the last remnant of Goat Control, gone. Good riddance, I say. It’s about time. Metamorphosis will still have uses in other decks based off of big monsters, such as Reasoning/Monster Gate, but no longer will anyone be able to start Thousand-Eyes Restrict loops to continuously deprive the opponent of the ability to attack or keep monsters on the field. Speaking of loops, decks based around various loops become a lot more difficult come September.
Flip-Flop, Toolbox, and Burn
Decks based around massive amounts of flip-effect monsters are looking at our new list as a bag of mixed blessings. The loss of Tsukuyomi makes it impossible to repeatedly loop a given flip effect, but in return, it’s become a lot more difficult to lose all copies of a flip monster to Nobleman of Crossout. However, with Exiled Force bumped up to two copies per deck, it’s likely to see play as a way to make sure that those flip effects don’t ever get to flip. The second copy makes it easier for most decks to make use of the card, but Warrior Toolbox type decks get a huge boost from this change. It gives Warriors another, very searchable way to get rid of gigantic monsters that they’d never be able to take down through battle. In our current format, those monsters would generally be Chaos Sorcerer, Monarchs, and Spirit Reaper. The Sorcerer is gone and the Reaper is now limited, and that gives Warriors a much better shot at stepping back into the limelight after five months in the shadows. Warriors also still have the incredibly powerful Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade to help them deal with the discard costs of powerful removal cards like Raigeki Break and Lightning Vortex, so if you’re a fan of these effects, Warriors may be the deck for you in September.
One thing that warriors have always been good at is swarming the field and causing massive damage while producing an insurmountable momentum. This is curbed a bit thanks to the un-limiting of Reflect Bounder and Lightning Vortex and the return of Ring of Destruction. Warrior decks should not be attacking Bounder with impunity. Burn effects are often very powerful, and if you discount them, you’re going to be in trouble in a couple of weeks. Attacking into a Reflect Bounder and then being hit with Ring of Destruction and Ceasefire can often be enough to take someone down even if their life points are still high. In fact, burn has done pretty well this time around, though a cursory inspection would suggest otherwise. Gravity Bind may have been limited to one, but that doesn’t mean that burn as a strategy is doomed to fall by the wayside. All it means is that the way we go about burn has to change. The limitation of Gravity Bind force peoples to pay attention and not blindly rely on luck of the draw to keep Heavy Storm at bay. If you intend to keep a Gravity Bind or Level Limit - Area B on the field, you had better be prepared to guard it with your life points if necessary. Alternatively, burn players could switch over to an aggressive burn strategy intended to knock the opposition off balance with wild aggression while silently chiseling away at the opponent’s life points with precise shots from the backfield. Either way, it just makes things more difficult for Cyber-Stein, and I’m all about making things harder for Stein players. Speaking of which…
Cyber-Stein and Other Combo Decks
Admittedly, I’m a bit confused as to why we still have Cyber-Stein. I thought that Calvin Tsang’s game 1 win in the finals of Canadian Nationals would ensure that Stein would not be returning in the fall. Limiting it would have been silly, since the random ones cause all the problems anyways, but even though Stein didn’t find a home on the forbidden list, we now have tools to combat against it. First off, Ring of Destruction makes Cyber-Stein players cry. There’s nothing like watching someone drop a 5000 life point down payment on a shiny new Cyber End Dragon only to have it blown away by Ring of Destruction along with the rest of his or her life points. The switch to two copies of Exiled Force helps Stein users out a lot, but the loss of one copy of Giant Trunade makes it harder for that Exiled Force to make a difference. With only three ways to clear the backfield (as opposed to four in our current format), there’s a greater chance that Stein players will need to win the game without clearing the field first, and that’s when they’re going to get nailed.
As for other combo decks, my Black Ptera deck from last week doesn’t work anymore, plain and simple. It’s far too much trouble to fetch that one Ultimate Offering out of the deck, making this another case of “stick a fork in it.” The more obscure combo decks, such as the Dimension Loop deck, are still around in full force. The more mainstream ones on the other hand, are in trouble. Specifically, it appears that preemptive measures have been taken to ensure that Chimeratech Overdragon doesn’t drop like a bomb on the metagame in a couple of weeks. While I would have probably gone after Overload Fusion in an attempt to curb the Overdragon, it’s undeniable that Future Fusion is both crucial to the combo deck’s inner workings and pretty crazy in its own right. Being able to dump approximately 75% of your deck into the graveyard on the resolution of a single spell card is incredibly powerful. Many have suggested Magical Merchant as a replacement for the other two copies of Future Fusion, but there’s really no fair comparison between the two. I challenge anyone to tell me about how their Chimeratech Overdragon deck lost because someone played Nobleman of Crossout or Exiled Force on their Future Fusion. The fact that this is impossible should give you a hint as to exactly how inferior Magical Merchant is in these decks. Finally, the Tundo deck and Reversal Quiz take a huge hit by losing that third Giant Trunade, making them a lot less likely to pull off their deck-drawing shenanigans.
New Horizons
Remember when I mentioned that there were six attributes in the game? Turns out that most of them have some great support cards to go along with them. Light monsters? I’ve got a counter trap deck chock full of them. Earth monsters? Plenty of them are warriors and most of them are big. How about Spellcasters? Sure, losing Tsukuyomi and a Magician of Faith is a bit of a pain, but keeping Dark Magician of Chaos from being randomly stolen by Snatch Steal for the win? Sign me up for that. Don’t forget that they still have Magician’s Circle for added search power! I hear that Water monsters tend to be really good at disrupting the opponent’s actions. Perhaps that’s something to investigate as well? As stated in the letter that went out to the judges regarding the new list, “It’s a whole new duel,” and I’m ready to enjoy it starting in a couple of weeks. Just remember as always to play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu