One of the most common complaints against high-level monsters—especially level 7 and 8 monsters—is that they aren’t worth the trouble you go through to bring them out. Sometimes these complaints are justified, but in most cases, these cards don’t see play due to incompatibility with current game trends. For example, when the Flaming Eternity set was released, Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys was all over the place and widely considered to be an excellent card to deck. Nowadays, we hardly see the Phoenix anywhere, even after it was re-released as a special edition promo. Why? When the Phoenix was initially released, monsters that came back after they were hit by removal were extremely popular. Vampire Lord often found its way into decks alongside a pair of Spirit Reaper cards and a teched Pyramid Turtle. Thus when the Phoenix was released, players were able to build an entire deck around summoning monsters that regular removal cards just couldn’t handle.
The new rage these days is removing all your monsters from play and then using Return from the Different Dimension to win. Monsters that need to stay in the graveyard for their effects to activate have no place in most decks, with the obvious exception of Treeborn Frog. Thus, cards like Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys and The Creator have all but vanished from the current metagame. Today, I want to bring them all back. I want to put all the tribute monsters that have fallen out of favor into one deck and make it work. Is there a strategy that can incorporate my hefty demands? You bet, and it’s all thanks to one little common from the Ancient Sanctuary set: Monster Gate.
“Gateway to the Past”
Monsters: 20
1 The Creator
1 Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys
1 Vampire Lord
1 Airknight Parshath
1 Jinzo
1 Dark Magician of Chaos
2 Apprentice Magician
2 Old Vindictive Magician
2 Magician of Faith
2 Chiron the Mage
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Sangan
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
1 Treeborn Frog
1 Time Wizard
1 Hand of Nephthys
Spells: 14
3 Monster Gate
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Graceful Charity
1 Snatch Steal
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Smashing Ground
1 Scapegoat
1 Pot of Avarice
1 Book of Moon
Traps: 6
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Mirror Force
1 Ceasefire
1 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Magic Cylinder
This is a deck dedicated to old favorites that haven’t seen much (or any) play over the past year. The primary focus is to try and pick up a high-level monster with Monster Gate so that you not only get it for free, you also don’t have to draw it later on. Of course, Monster Gate requires that we tribute a monster in order to activate it. When I find myself in need of monsters, three cards tend to come to mind. First, Scapegoat is the international standard for creating a bunch of free monsters. While the Sheep tokens can’t be used to tribute summon any of my big monsters, they can be used to activate Monster Gate or pay for the ignition effect of Hand of Nephthys.
The second method of keeping your field filled with tribute material is the excellent Treeborn Frog. The Frog will keep on coming back to you as long as you don’t have any spells or traps on the field, which makes it ideal if you have to tribute summon one of your heavy hitters.
Finally, the last monster that immediately comes to mind when I want to keep my field presence up is Apprentice Magician. The Apprentice Magician toolbox is quite possibly one of the best ways to create large swings in momentum in this format. It’s the only card in the game that can search out Magician of Faith and get it on to the field face down at the same time, and that’s not all it can do. Apprentice Magician can also fetch Old Vindictive Magician for that one monster you really don’t want your opponent to have, and it can also get Hand of Nephthys to give you easy access to your Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys.
Finally, since coin-flipping seems to be back in style (as evidenced by the three Sasuke Samurai #4 and single Fairy Box played by James Laurent in his Top 8 deck from Atlanta), I figured I’d include a copy of the original coin-flip card, Time Wizard. It’s a Light monster that’s searchable by both Sangan and Apprentice Magician, and one of the riskiest moves in the game. The drawback is serious business, but it’s a lot more likely to succeed with Time Wizard once than it is to pull your Graceful Charity out of 25 or so remaining cards and pull the exact cards you need to win the game while discarding Goldd and Sillva . . . which is something that John Jensen actually did.
Now that we know about the support monsters for this deck, let’s have a look at the main players. First up is The Creator. Last seen in competitive play in Gustavo Reyes’s top 8 deck from the first Shonen Jump Championship in Columbus, The Creator can turn dead cards in hand into free special summons of your fallen monsters. This is especially handy in a deck like this where you would rather keep your monsters on the field instead of in the removed from game pile. The Creator also has an enormous DEF, making it completely unassailable by any commonly played monsters. Of course, you’ll still have to watch out for removal spells and monster effects, but then again, you run that risk with nearly every monster ever created.
Dark Magician of Chaos shows up from time to time in a Top 8 deck, but it’s almost never seen as the sole focus of a deck. That’s mostly because it’s been limited to one copy, but back before it hit the list, there was an exceptionally nasty deck built around three copies of Dark Magician of Chaos. It sought to dump them all into the graveyard through a combination of Painful Choice, Graceful Charity, Card Destruction, and Dragged Down into the Grave. The deck would then find its Monster Reborn and special summon one of the Magicians. Barring outside interference, the effect of Dark Magician of Chaos would then retrieve Monster Reborn and the other two Magicians would be brought to the field. Finally, the last Magician would fetch back Raigeki or Harpie’s Feather Duster or some other equivalent spell to clear the opponent’s field so that all three Magicians could attack directly for game. It was a difficult deck to pull off, but with all the power cards available at the time, it was a lot easier to handle than the other deck that was based around Dark Magician of Chaos.
The last time that Dark Magician of Chaos was the focus of a serious tournament deck was during the Shonen Jump Championship in Houston. Mike Powers used it as the focal point of a deck that repeatedly played Dimension Fusion for free (thanks to Spell Economics) to bring Dark Magician of Chaos into play, recycling the Dimension Fusion and allowing him to tribute the Magician to Mass Driver or Cannon Soldier to damage the opponent. This would send the Magician back out of play, and then the loop would begin. The last time I saw this deck was back at this year’s Shonen Jump Championship in Columbus, when I saw a dazed Nikitas Katsourakis stumbling around in front of the stage mumbling something about Mass Driver. I asked him why he looked so out of it, and he described to me the exact sequence of events that caused this deck to go off on turn 2 and leave him at X-2. It doesn’t do anything quite so nasty in this deck, but it’s still an excellent inclusion in any Monster Gate build.
Vampire Lord, Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys, and Chiron the Mage are throwbacks to a year ago before the battle position change rules switched over to their current version. All three cards saw a large amount of play before the metagame was flooded by Goat Control decks packing Metamorphosis, Thousand-Eyes Restrict, and Tsukuyomi. Chiron the Mage is especially important to this deck, since it turns spells you can’t use into spell and trap removal so that your big monsters can keep on smashing. Finally, Jinzo and Airknight Parshath are in there not only because they’re amazing monsters in just about any play environment, but also because from the time of Airknight’s release to the time of Mobius the Frost Monarch’s release, they were the only two tribute monsters considered for any mainstream deck. It’s hard to believe that they were almost entirely absent from the metagame for seven full months.
Finally, I’ve also included three “old-school” spells and traps in my lineup to round things out. First off is Pot of Avarice. Seen everywhere back when it was allowed in threes, its use has dropped off to almost zero thanks to the new dominance of decks based on Return from the Different Dimension. Back when it was released during the Labyrinth of Nightmare era, Magic Cylinder could go for $30 on the secondary market due to its game-ending power. It’s always been a good card, but it began to decline in popularity once the incredibly powerful (and now forbidden) Ring of Destruction exploded on to the scene.
Last but not least, Ceasefire has withstood the test of time, having been an important part of the tournament scene since its initial release in November of 2002. Sometimes it’s used as part of a burn strategy and sometimes it’s used as an anti-combo strategy, but most recently, Ceasefire has been used as an excellent side deck choice against the wildly popular Return from the Different Dimension.
Playing the deck is pretty simple. Thin your deck out with the Apprentice Magician cards, and then either tribute summon or special summon your giant hitters with Monster Gate. Clear the field and go to town. It’s a pretty simple deck to play, but it can be very prone to bad hands and slow starts. It can be a real blast, however, especially when you win the game with Magic Cylinder.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, and I also hope that you’ll dust off those old cards that have been recently discarded as “useless.” (Reflect Bounder forever!) Remember, good cards never actually become bad. The circumstances and situations in which they are used may change, but a good effect is a good effect, no matter how old or outdated it might seem.
Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
NEXT WEEK: Adventures in Time and Space.