By the time you read this, North America will have found itself a set of National Champions. Congratulations to everyone who qualified for the World Championship in San Diego, and may you represent your country well. With that out of the way, let’s drop all this competitive mindedness for a week and do something totally off the wall. I figure we all deserve that much after a tough couple of weeks with not one but two National Championships to take in. After that much of a fact overload, I feel that there’s only one way to achieve my goal within the confines of this column, and that’s by building a deck that utilizes TV show cards, huge monsters, and Return from the Different Dimension! The big question is how best to go about it. Personally, I’m a big fan of old-school Yu-Gi-Oh!, and as such, I think that the best classic monsters to bring back are the Magnet Warriors! For those of you who have never seen the original series, the Magnet Warriors were a series of monsters used by the Pharaoh during Battle City. At first, they only appeared separately as normal monsters without effect, but during the tag duel between the Yugi/Kaiba dream team and Umbra and Lumis, he combined the three Magnet Warriors to form Valkyrion the Magna Warrior.

Valkyrion is awfully big, clocking in at a massive 3500ATK. It falls short of Gate Guardian by 250 ATK, but it more than makes up for the slight power reduction by being possible to summon in an actual game. The numerous advantages that Valkyrion carries over its slightly bigger brother include having pieces that are level 4: searchable (in two of three cases) normal monsters that don’t necessarily need to be on the field in order for you to trade them in for the big bruiser. They also all happen to be Rock-type monsters, and that makes them perfect for removing to summon a monster that can potentially be even bigger than Valkyrion! Who here remembers Megarock Dragon? I know I do. There was a Shonen Jump Championship a while back in which a Megarock Dragon deck got some coverage, and since then, I’ve always kept my eyes open for ways in which I could use the card to wreak havoc. It was only by accident that I glanced at the Magnet Warriors and saw that they were in fact Rocks instead of Machines like their artwork suggests. Even better, there are some truly excellent other Rock-type monsters that will create legitimate early to mid-game threats that your opponent will have to deal with, leaving him or her open to a huge hit (or two!) in the later turns. Now, without further ado, here are the results from my self-imposed Yugi-therapy session.

Monsters: 22

3 Alpha the Magnet Warrior

3 Beta the Magnet Warrior

3 Gamma the Magnet Warrior

2 Valkyrion the Magna Warrior

3 Megarock Dragon

3 Legendary Jujitsu Master

1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

1 Sangan

3 Card Trooper

Spells: 10

1 Heavy Storm

1 Giant Trunade

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Snatch Steal

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Shrink

3 Smashing Ground

Traps: 9

2 Return from the Different Dimension

1 Mirror Force

2 Justi-Break

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

2 Sakuretsu Armor

It’s been a few months since Return from the Different Dimension has had a big impact on the metagame, but regardless, the basic principles of the deck remain the same. Return decks win by simplifying the field as much as possible while loading up the removed-from-play pile. Early decks used Bazoo the Soul-Eater as a way to place a must-remove threat on the board that came with a built-in remove-from-game effect that you could use once regardless of whether or not your opponent had something like Torrential Tribute or Bottomless Trap Hole. Back in Houston, Bazoo enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the Trooper Return deck that numerous competitors played with (and that Emon Ghaneian won with). In between now and then, we had the Chaos Return era, in which Bottomless Trap Hole and Chaos Sorcerer cards from both sides filled both removed-from-game piles at rapid speed while simplifying the field of monsters. Across the entire scope of the card pool, there are all sorts of cards that allow you to remove monsters in your graveyard from the game, and at least one Return deck can be made out of each of them. The possibilities are plentiful, but I figured that out of all of them, this one will probably be the least expected by your opponent.

There’s certainly something to be said for the element of surprise, especially after seeing the results of all the SJCs since March 1. A different deck has won each of them, and new decks appeared on Day 2 of each of them as well. I’d be willing to bet that the element of surprise helped to give many of these decks their breakout performances. Take the Diamond Dude Turbo deck with which Marc Glass blew through SJC St. Louis and SJC Columbus. Everybody thought that the deck had one foot in the grave after the Limitation on Elemental Hero Stratos, and as a result, no one really prepared for it. Then, in Houston, Kris Perovic took second place with it. For whatever reason, this cemented the belief that the DDT cause was lost in the minds of many, and wouldn’t you know it, just as soon as the memory of the deck’s overbearing presence at St. Louis had faded, Marc Glass snuck in and dominated with the deck once again. This was also the first tournament in which Demise OTK reared its ugly head, but as soon as the deck failed to win and had only a slight impact on Montreal, people once again got soft on their side decking. What happened at next? A new player came out of nowhere with the deck and won SJC Anaheim with—you guessed it—Demise OTK.

In a sense, this Magnet Warrior Return deck is all about surprises. It’s full of them. The main monsters of the deck are all normal monsters, and that gives you access to Justi-Break. Then, you have the capability to drop not one, but two huge monsters at any given time as special summons. Finally, once your opponents think that they’ve broken through all your defenses and beaten all your monsters, you still have the ability to come out of nowhere and win the game outright with Return from the Different Dimension.

While generally overlooked, the Rock type really has a lot of great monsters, some of which are even seeing tournament play (though not because they’re Rocks). Many people couldn’t understand the limitation on Neo-Spacian Grand Mole until they actually got it in their hands and played with it. I tend to be more of a hands-on learner when it comes to this type of thing, and after trying decks with multiple Moles, I quickly came to realize exactly why the card is where it is on the Limited list. Some things just aren’t fun, and absurdly slow games that take forever because of multiple copies of cards like Scapegoat and Neo-Spacian Grand Mole are definitely on the list of things that aren’t very fun. If you’re ever wondering why certain cards are Limited or Forbidden, then you should definitely sit down with some friends and play a couple games without those specific Limitations in place. It’ll be an enlightening experience. In fact, the first card I’d try it with is Metamorphosis. See how good Destiny Hero beatdown would be if it could have three copies of Metamorphosis. You’ll be smashing people left and right with Ryu Senshi and Dark Balter and Cyber Twin Dragon at breakneck speed.

Still, I digress. Despite the fact that Grand Mole managed to make the Limited list, the most prolific, popular, and generally successful Rock monster ever made has got to be the Legendary Jujitsu Master. With Raiza the Storm Monarch now in play, a lot of people have taken a good long look at the cards that can use the spin mechanic, and many are realizing how incredibly powerful it is. Stealing draw phases away from your opponent is great, especially if you can repeat the effect (as evidenced by the fact that Time Seal and Tsukuyomi are currently Forbidden, along with the dastardly Yata-Garasu). Still, these modern draw-stealing cards are very strong in their own right, and Legendary Jujitsu Master is one of the first and still one of the best. While it can’t return those pesky spell and trap cards to the top of the deck, Jujitsu Master can easily set your opponents back turns in board development, depending on what they attack it with. Attacking into Jujitsu Master with something like Sangan can be disastrous, but on the flip side, attacking into it with something like Card Trooper or Cyber Dragon can end up furthering your strategy rather than hindering it. Regardless, setting your opponent back one summon is big, especially if your deck wants minimal monsters around when you get around to winning the game.

With this deck, leaving opponents with one monster is usually all right, since you’re likely to have a huge Megarock Dragon breathing down its neck and forcing the use of a (preferably major) trap card to deal with it. After all, there are fewer and fewer quick removal options going around as a result of the popularity of Destiny Hero beatdown. Fortunately, the monster they leave lying around is awfully likely to be Card Trooper, and you can just imagine how much fun it’ll be for them when you don’t even need Return to win because your huge Megarock Dragon smashed through a puny Card Trooper for enough damage to take the game.

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m feeling much more relaxed having typed this article. U.S. Nationals was a lot of fun, but it took a lot out of me. Next week, I’ll take a look at the actual results of the event in School of Duel and will have a little more fun with Return from the Different Dimension, this time in a much more competitive capacity. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: What do Greek mythology, a classic Super Nintendo RPG, and Yu-Gi-Oh! have in common?