Earlier we looked at Gary Miotke’s Lockdown Burn deck. When I saw him playing the way he did, and the fact that he had two kids in tow that seemed to think he was the coolest dad in the world, I knew I had to talk to him.

A 42-year-old lawyer from Dearborn Heights, Michigan, Gary was more than happy to talk to me about his deck, his life, and any other sort of intrusion I felt like asking him. He’s an interesting player who I’d never encountered before, so I was eager to learn all I could about him in the small amount of time we had.

He started playing Yu-Gi-Oh! after watching his eldest son play it with his friends and in tournaments. He decided he wanted to give it a shot. “It looked fun, and it looked mentally challenging, too.” They started playing around the release of Magic Ruler, but only really started playing competitively a year ago. At the time I interviewed him, he was the only Lockdown Burn player at 5-1, and having just finished dissecting his build of the archetype, I was intrigued to ask him about it.

“I’ve been playing the deck on and off for about the past year. I feel I can aggressively side deck with it better than most out there, and I can manipulate a matchup by doing so. I mean, after any game one I always see the opponent’s side deck come out. I’ve played a lot of different decks, so I know what they’re generally going to be doing to try and beat me. When their Trunades and Mobius come in, I rotate my deck too, bringing in Tribe-Infecting Virus, Creature Swap and some other tricks.” He paused and made what I think was a little Mobius-stealing hand motion. “Creature Swap! C’mere Mobius!”

“So far I’ve got an invite from a regional, and UDE just told me I had one for ranking too. I’m feeling good about things. I’m hoping my son [running a Chaos Machine deck, which I personally approved of] can get an invite today; he’s doing okay so far.”

I asked him about some of the choices in his deck, particularly the lack of Gravity Bind, which is pretty unconventional. “So many people run Jinzo right now. Some people even run Decree. Not many, but some do. Because of that, I keep all my lock cards to spells, Messenger of Peace and Level Limit – Area B, and I run Magician of Faith too. So that lets me get my lock cards back in case they get destroyed.” It’s a smart move that lets him get a great deal of longevity out of his engine.

He felt Magic Reflector is a safer form of protection than the traditional negation engine. It was an interesting statement because it really showed just how good his results were from aggressive side decking. He didn’t seem to fear Giant Trunade at all, because he knew he could react to it accordingly if an opponent side decked in a pair.

I’m sure Miotke will see a great deal of continued success in the future, and with an awesome, innovative deck and play style, he may just take it all in Columbus!