Marcus Spanier made waves at this past Summer’s Canadian National Championships, piloting an innovative evolution of Tomato Control to a Top 4 finish after defeating the most famous player of the original deck, Dale Bellido. Spanier’s build ran Cyber-Stein and three copies of Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World, and he called it “Emmanuel Golddstein Control”, an allusion to the Orwellian novel 1984.
Now he and his team are back, armed with a brand new killer deck that’s been ripping up matches here today. It’s called “The Deck of Threes”: “It originally had three of everything,” explained Mike Powers, one of the teammates running the deck. “We had to cut stuff down though.” The end result of those cuts is one of the more promising decks here today, and it runs probably the coolest piece of tech I’ve ever seen: Cliff the Trap Remover.
“Cliff is such a team player!” remarked Spanier. The reason he’s in the deck is to keep the team’s Solemn Judgments and Sakuretsu Armors reliably functioning. In an environment packed with Royal Decree, Cliff is a one-shot answer that can thrive on the safety Decree provides for attackers. Once Cliff scores a shot he can destroy the Decree that would otherwise cause dead cards. Cliff’s aided in his efforts by two Rush Recklessly, which also help push up the ATK of Don Zaloog to cause card-stripping mayhem.
Protecting the Sakuretsu Armors is very important, because this deck looks to trade spells and traps for monsters as often as possible. “We took some inspiration from Japanese deck building,” remarked Jordan Denk, The Creator of the deck who was unfortunately the first member to take a loss here today. Creating lots of non-monster for monster exchanges allows the deck to do two things. First, it’s going to create field advantage more often than not, allowing the team to attack directly. Second, when they manage to start causing hand disruption and costing the opponent in-hand cards, they amplify the effect of that strategy by then initiating exchanges and upping the tempo. Eventually, the other player runs out of cards to trade and they get walked on.
“The side deck is extremely important,” remarked Powers, now coming off his fourth consecutive win. “You side in Royal Oppressions against standard Chaos and they can’t really do anything. Against Swap Control, side in Zombyra and Deck Devastation Virus.” They do that because Banisher can’t stop Apprentice Magician, a staple of most Chaos Swap Control decks being played here today. My favorite tech is for the Recruiter and Decree matchups though.
“Dark Scorpion — Meanae the Thorn is serious Recruiter tech,” explained Powers. Against a Recruiter the deck will side in Meanae to use as a defensive wall. When a monster like Mystic Tomato or Shining Angel crashes into it the Recruiter monster’s controller will take battle damage and trigger Meanae’s effect. That allows Meanae’s controller to search out another Meanae, or Cliff the Trap Remover in case of Decree. Brutal stuff.
So far the deck’s done exceedingly well, with Powers scoring a 4-0 finish just moments ago. He and Spanier are both solid bets for this tournament, and might be able to take the deck all the way this weekend!