The World Series is almost upon us and there’s only one non-Light or Dark attribute deck for me to talk about. Surely there must be some way to connect the two. Of course there is: I wouldn’t even mention it if I didn’t have something in mind already. The problem with Fire-attribute decks is that Fire-attribute monsters never seem to work together in harmony with the rest of the Fire attribute. Instead, cards like Cyber Phoenix and Command Knight see play in their type-specific decks rather than a deck that relies on the strengths of the Fire attribute (specifically large ATK pumps and burn damage). Fortunately, there’s one monster that exemplifies both of these traits in one highly searchable and extremely dangerous package. I’m talking about Ultimate Baseball Kid. The question is, which aspect do we focus on: beatings or burn? I feel the main aspect of such a deck should be to attack the opponent relentlessly with less emphasis on the burn aspects of the Fire attribute. After all, Spiritual Fire Art - Kurenai can only burn for the original ATK of the monster you tribute, making it less than ideal when most of your monsters have a small original ATK to begin with. Maybe it’s just my own personal distaste for most burn-centric strategies, but the Fire deck I’ve been tinkering with lately is all about buffing your monsters up and creating more “must eliminate” targets than your opponent can reasonably deal with. Check it out:

Monsters: 22

3 UFO Turtle

3 Command Knight

3 Ultimate Baseball Kid

3 Solar Flare Dragon

2 Blast Magician

2 Inferno

2 Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Injection Fairy Lily

1 Exiled Force

Spells: 15

1 Graceful Charity

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Nobleman of Crossout

3 Rush Recklessly

3 Enemy Controller

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Last Will

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Book of Moon

1 Smashing Ground

Traps: 4

1 Ring of Destruction

3 Royal Decree

We want to emphasize combat between monsters when playing this deck. Specifically, we’re aiming for combat in which we always win. Thus, traps are not something that we want to deal with at all. Having your huge Ultimate Baseball Kid get wrecked by a silly little Sakuretsu Armor is a huge pain, and, thus, a set of Royal Decree cards—along with some standard spell and trap removal—makes sure that it’ll be a somewhat infrequent occurrence. The other problem is that in order to make your Baseball Kid huge, you need to get a lot of monsters onto the field first. Trap cards tend to make that difficult as well, so Decree is really a great fit for the deck. Deciding that the deck is going to play a set of Decrees makes it easy to play full complements of both Rush Recklessly and Enemy Controller, both of which are even more important to the function of the deck than they may initially seem. Let’s examine the monster lineup to see exactly what order we should do things in order to maximize the deck’s potential.

The most obvious monster choice for any attribute-based deck is three of whatever the recruiter for that attribute is. In this case it’s UFO Turtle and it can fetch your choice of Blast Magician, Command Knight, Ultimate Baseball Kid, Solar Flare Dragon, or another copy of itself. If you have a lot of spells in hand, your best bet is probably a Blast Magician. Spell counters can add up pretty quickly between two players, especially since you’re using quick plays. The main flaws with Blast Magician are that if you aren’t using quick plays it takes some time for it to gain counters and it’s a gigantic lightning rod for Smashing Ground. One of those flaws is basically irrelevant since both players will likely have the capability to play spells during both players’ turns. After all, you have eight quick-play spells in your deck. It seems to me that it would be pretty hard not to get any of them during the course of a regular game. Remember, Blast Magician only needs two counters to blow away a recruiter and only one to blow away Injection Fairy Lily or Spirit Reaper. It also only needs one counter to eliminate chump blockers like that silly Treeborn Frog. Thus, you really shouldn’t worry about hording up counters on your Blast Magician to try to destroy a Monarch or Jinzo. Doing so would be a total waste if the opponent finally does get a Smashing Ground through.

The best way to keep your Blast Magician from getting nailed by Smashing Ground is to come up with something more appetizing for the removal spell to go after. Command Knight is great at this, but it should be understood that Command Knight is more than just a Smashing Ground shield. It’s able to protect itself from opposing attacks as long as it isn’t the only monster on the field, and it also powers up Ultimate Baseball Kid by a mean 1400 points. The kid gets 1000 from its own effect, followed by 400 from the Command Knight, turning it into a 1900 (minimum) ATK, level 3 monster that can also deal some extra burn damage if necessary. In fact, expect many of the games you win to end with a lot of direct attacking followed by sending most of your field to the graveyard to activate Ultimate Baseball Kid’s secondary effect. Finally, the secondary effect of Ultimate Baseball Kid is a great way to trigger Last Will so that you can go fetch Injection Fairy Lily for a quick hit.

If you’re in need of a little quick damage, Solar Flare Dragon is your best bet. As long as you can keep it face up on the field until the end of your opponent’s turn, you’ll score at least 500 damage. If you can get two of them on your field, the opponent can’t attack either of them and he or she will take 1000 damage each time your turn ends. Combine them with a Command Knight to absorb stray Smashing Ground cards, and you’re in business. Obviously, Ultimate Baseball Kid would be the finisher in this situation, but it’s not even necessary at this point.

The problem is, of course, making sure that everything stays on the field. The best way to do this is to make strategic use of your quick-play spells. Rush Recklessly isn’t quite the original combat surprise (that would be Reinforcements), but it’s much better than Reinforcements thanks to the fact that it’s a quick-play spell. Thus, you can make an attack with your Solar Flare Dragon into the opponent’s Cyber Dragon and make him or her sit there and watch as you go to the damage step, drop Rush Recklessly from your hand, and take down the Dragon.

The other neat anti-Smashing Ground trick is to use Enemy Controller to tribute your monster that would be destroyed by the Smashing Ground to steal the highest-DEF monster on the opponent’s side of the field. Since Smashing Ground doesn’t target, upon resolution your opponent’s monster will be destroyed (assuming that it’s now the highest-DEF monster on your side of the field). Enemy Controller tends to do neat things like that.

Another important use of both Enemy Controller and Rush Recklessly is to allow Inferno to do its thing. I would definitely classify Inferno as a sinker (a monster that creates a continually worsening game state for your opponent) provided that you can back it up. For example, destroying a Treeborn Frog every turn with Inferno is amazing and will definitely make your opponent think twice about bringing it back as a chump blocker. Destroying Sangan or Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and its derivatives will still reward your opponent with a search or a draw, but it’ll also present them with a harsh slap to the face in the form of 1500 damage. Inferno is also a special summon, making it that much easier to put another Pyro monster onto the field to protect Solar Flare Dragon from attack, another Fire monster to pump the Baseball Kid, or another 1900 DEF monster to absorb opposing removal spells. Finally, you have a couple copies of Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch for when you really do need the raw numbers to keep the game moving at the pace you’re looking for. The discard helps too, as long as you don’t hit a Dark World monster.

Overall, the Fire deck starts off small, but quickly picks up speed before overwhelming the opponent. One might even say it spreads like wildfire. Regardless, this wraps up my look at the four non-Chaos related attributes. I’ve been on a bit of a deckbuilding spree lately, and I’ve rediscovered a lot of neat cards that just scream to have decks built around them. There’s an almost infinite wealth of ideas out there, and it was nice to see on oldie-but-goodie crop up in the Top 8 from Austin. Congratulations to Matt Stille for making it all the way to the quarterfinals with a Gearfried the Iron Knight deck! Maybe I’ll make one of my own in a few weeks, but until next time, play hard, play fair, and, most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: This deck is so cool that I am physically incapable of sharing it.