We’re just a few days away from Shonen Jump Championship Baltimore, and I’ll let you in on the worst kept secret in dueling: players in the know are trading for Emergency Teleport cards like crazy. Whether it happens this weekend in Baltimore, later in Tulsa, or weeks from now in Seattle, Gladiator Beasts are going down. Monarch, Dark Armed Dragon, and Light and Darkness Dragon variants powered by Psychic monsters and slinging Synchros by the fistful are the future of the format, and it might all go down as soon as this weekend.
The reason? Emergency Teleport gets you tribute bait when you need it, or the right Tuner for whatever Synchro summon will break your opponent. But my favorite part about the Teleport support engine isn’t the plays that involve Teleport itself—it’s the plays you make when you draw the cards you actually want to pull from your deck instead.
We all know those nightmare scenarios. If a Gladiator Beast player draws Gladiator Beast Murmillo or Gladiator Beast Secutor, he or she is at a disadvantage. The same goes for the Dark Armed duelist who draws a second copy of Destiny Hero - Malicious, or even the Zombie player stuck with Ryu Kokki. But if a Psychic player draws Krebons, he or she just has a potent defensive wall to rely on. And if that same player draws Psychic Commander, well, things get downright nasty. Check it out . . .
Psychic Commander
Psychic / Tuner
Earth Level 3
1400 / 800
When a Psychic-Type monster you control battles, during the Damage Step you can pay Life Points in multiples of 100 (max. 500) to have the monster it’s battling lose that much ATK and DEF, until the End Phase.
Psychic Commander might not look like much at first. At level 3, it’s actually the most awkward level of Tuner you could muster—useless when paired with a level 4 Synchro material and far too large to work with the level 6 Destiny Hero - Malicious. It’s not nearly as good for Synchro summons as Krebons. But where Krebons dabbles in other territories, Psychic Commander dominates, and together they’re exactly what the Doctor (Cranium!) ordered to take down Gladiator Beasts . . .
. . . and just about everything else too.
The Reason? The Battle Phase
As Matt Peddle has been saying for weeks now, competitive play is currently centered on the battle phase. Gladiator Beasts work all their cheeky magic through successful attacks, and they’re the biggest guiding force in most metagames today, so control over the battle phase is at a premium. We saw duelists like Shonen Jump Championship Top 8’er Marco Cesario and World Champion Kazuki Mutsuoka exploit that fact by playing simple normal monsters, sending competitor after competitor packing with nothing but 1900 ATK beatsticks. If Gladiator Beasts can’t attack, they can’t win, and Lightsworn suffer a similar weakness. Many Zombie builds run into the same problem.
That’s what makes a Teleport engine with Krebons and Psychic Commander so powerful. Played with Teleport they set up big plays for tribute monsters or Synchros, but played on their own, each of these monsters stops your opponent from making conventional attacks. Krebons has the advantage of being able to stop anything, since its negation doesn’t really care what it’s up against, while Psychic Commander can only block a monster with 1850 ATK or less (trading against anything with 1900 ATK). Krebons will often be your default pick if you’re playing Teleport on your opponent’s turn to buy time. But the Commander does one thing Krebons can’t—it attacks.
When it’s played in attack position to brick wall the opponent, the Commander can stop the biggest normal summons any of the current top decks can kick out, save Elemental Hero Neos Alius. Gladiator Beast Laquari, Elemental Hero Stratos, Zombie Master, and even Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior can’t touch Psychic Commander once it reduces their ATK. So it’s passable as a defender, and will often save you some life points where Krebons wouldn’t. There’s no penalty for attacking Krebons, after all, so you will lose 800 life points for every monster your opponent can throw at it. Psychic Commander is different, threatening destruction of anything that attacks it.
However, it’s the fact that Commander can pose a threat on your turn that makes it so good. Use Emergency Teleport to bring out Krebons, and you’d better be preparing a Synchro summon or a tribute—you’re not getting any offensive power out of it otherwise. But Psychic Commander can press over a number of threats, giving you an answer to Laquari or Garoth when you wouldn’t have one otherwise. You’ll lose a card since you won’t get to keep the Commander on the field, but so will your opponent, and in the meantime you’ve eliminated a threatening monster instead of just giving up a card to block for a turn with Krebons. That’s far better.
Yes, there are answers to Psychic Commander—a Gladiator Beast player can activate Book of Moon to turn it down and attack it, contact Fuse for Gyzarus to blow it away, or even take it with Mind Control. But plays that force those options out of your opponent’s hand are good ones—nobody has an infinite quantity of answers. Krebons and Psychic Commander are two parts of a very powerful puzzle, and while Krebons is getting its props, some of the best players in this game are staying very quiet about Psychic Commander. Day 2 alums who will remain nameless have asked me not to write this article. I’m writing it anyway.
Don’t Get Me Wrong
I’m not saying that you should play Psychic Commander over Krebons. You should definitely run both. But if you’ve been 
tweaking your own Teleport deck and decided to play Mind Master over Psychic Commander because it gives better Synchro options—or even Destructotron or something—you should test the Commander instead. Since Krebons and Psychic Commander are similar, but different, they work extremely well together and you can afford to dedicate space to both since neither is a poor topdeck. Even in decks that are already running potential dead cards like Destiny Hero - Malicious, Monarchs, and whichever lame-duck Destiny Hero you’ve thrown in to get your copies of Destiny Draw off the ground (seriously, is anyone else having a tough time figuring out what Destiny Heroes to run now?), you can afford to run the Teleport engine as well simply on the strength of Psychic Commander. Mind Master and the rest don’t stand up nearly so well on their own, and it’s the key to successfully playing this new strategy.
Beyond All That
Going past Psychic Commander’s immediate value in an Emergency Teleport engine—which again, I think we’re going to see very soon at upcoming Shonen Jump Championships—its stats and attribute make it a very flexible card for future possibilities. Its Earth attribute and 1400 ATK make it the Tuner of choice for Ratbox decks, which are starting to see more interest thanks to shifts in current metagames. It mixes nicely with the also-tough-to-attack Injection Fairy Lily. You can search it out with Sangan too, and since its effect targets, you can send it after Spirit Reaper to blow the little pest to kingdom come. Heck, if you have two copies of Commander on the field, you can even stack their effects to take down much bigger monsters—a play that’s surprisingly viable given how searchable the card is.
In a dedicated Psychic deck, the Commander is an invaluable aid to bigger hitters like Destructotron and Psychic Snail, letting the Snail attack over a boosted Laquari or helping it trade off against a 2400 ATK beater. Its own resilience makes it easy to keep Destructotron from destroying itself, and it’s a strong turn-1 play for a deck that doesn’t actually have many good opening monsters.
Psychic Commander is one of the best Tuners in the game, and it’s a front-runner for the title of "Best Common" from The Duelist Genesis. This set has a lot of great low-rarity cards, but with so many ultra rares being highly playable too, it’s easy to lose track of them. Make sure that when you’re digging for those Charge of the Light Brigade and Emergency Teleport cards, you hold onto a couple of playsets of this guy. Psychic Commander is going to be around for a very long time, and right now, it’s one of the best answers to the most-played deck in the format.
—Jason Grabher-Meyer