I mentioned Mark Garcia’s attendance here today in both the opening blurb and the Chain Strike Burn deck profile. As always, Garcia is running something that’s heavily teched against the expected metagame, and some of his choices are pretty surprising! Check it out.

Banisher of the Radiance and Hydrogeddon in the same deck? Yup! At three copies of each, no less. This deck is all about eliminating the opponent’s options while maximizing Garcia’s, so Banisher and Hydro are both highly important cards.

Banisher serves to shut down Mystic Tomato, Treeborn Frog, and Sangan, while also helping to alienate key spells from the opponent’s graveyard. That stops the opponent from reusing them with Magician of Faith, which you’ll notice is absent from Garcia’s monster lineup. He’s not running Sangan, either! One copy of Dimensional Fissure helps Garcia shut down the same problematic monsters, and it also turns Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial into dead cards. You’ll notice that Garcia is running Premature himself, but is not using Call, a fair choice to make when you’re the one controlling the remove from play effects. Not too conservative, but not too risky either.

Elemental Hero Wildheart creates situations where the opposing player has even fewer options, making stuff like Torrential Tribute and Ring of Destruction very difficult to play. Sakuretsu Armor and Mirror Force are totally dead cards when Wildheart is the only attacker, and direct attacks from the lone Wildheart are often game-ending: Garcia’s got a ton of removal to create that type of field condition. Three Smashing Ground, two Widespread Ruin, one Bottomless Trap Hole and more take out threats that this deck’s relatively small monsters can’t attack over, while two Rush Recklessly help Hydro, Banisher, and Wildheart survive.

Two Reinforcement of the Army search out a specialized set of Warriors. Wildheart is easily accessed despite only appearing as a one-of in the deck, and two Don Zaloog also take advantage of all of the field clearing power. Two Exiled Force and two Mystic Swordsman LV2 provide more field clearing power, taking a page out of Dale Bellido’s book from SJC Anaheim. D. D. Assailant and D. D. Warrior Lady provide even more power, but the most interesting Warrior in the deck is D.D. Survivor. Again, being run only as a one-of thanks to Reinforcement of the Army, it can take advantage of Dimensional Fissure and Banisher of the Radiance in the same way as it was abused by Kirk Leonhardt. Garcia’s managed to splash a full Dimensional Fissure strategy — pretty cool.

The deck needs to be played aggressively, since it isn’t strong on defensive options. Sure, it’s got traps, but it runs no recruiters, no Treeborn Frog, and it isn’t even running Sangan! Still, it can come out swinging and quickly builds field presence, maintaining it in the face of Mirror Force and Sakuretsu Armor thanks to three Dust Tornado. The deck hits incredibly fast, often taking advantage of an opponent’s conservative play style in order to free up the back row for attacks early on. Dust Tornado, and Mystic Swordsman LV2 or Exiled Force backing up a big hitter on turn 2 seems like it would be a common play, which is bad news for more than just Cyber-Stein. This deck doesn’t give Monarch or Dark World decks the opportunity to draw into their combos, and since it’s got more than twenty cards that usually create card-for-card trades it can simplify a duel incredibly quickly. It topdecks like a champ, but its aggressive design means that the opponent will usually be praying for lucky draws long before Garcia’s forced to do so.

The ability to control the size and complexity of the duel thanks to a wealth of removal (both monster removal and spell and trap tech) might be this deck’s biggest strength. In the hands of an experienced player like Garcia, who knows when to simplify and when to obfuscate, it’s definitely going to be a deadly weapon. This is one to watch for a possible Day 2 qualification.