Sadly, Andrew Bollinger, the innovator of the PACMAN variant of Camel Control, has taken another day of rough beatings. Weeks ago he shot me an e-mail wanting to discuss a hot prospect for the event. He’d helped Michael Radzwilla build an innovative deck that combined traditional PACMAN strategies and cards with some of the format’s best tech, like Ojama Trio. What’s the trick to tying it all together? A little-known rulings nightmare of a trap card that you veterans might be familiar with: Rivalry of Warlords.
The fifteen year-old Radzwilla is now 3-0, destroying three consecutive Chaos Return duelists and showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. A native Pennsylvanian, he’s from the North Eastern part of the state and plays with Team Voltage, a group that maintains members in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Here’s what he’s running:
Killer Rivalry — 41 Cards
Monsters: 16
3 Lava Golem
3 Golem Sentry
3 Des Lacooda
3 Swarm of Scarabs
3 Swarm of Locusts
1 A Cat of Ill Omen
Spells: 10
3 Wave-Motion Cannon
3 Nightmare’s Steelcage
1 Level Limit – Area B
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Graceful Charity
Traps: 15
3 Rivalry of Warlords
3 Ojama Trio
3 Wall of Revealing Light
3 Solemn Judgment
2 Gravity Bind
1 Mirror Force
Side:
3 Reversal Quiz
3 Fuhma Shuriken
2 Black Pendant
2 Magician of Faith
2 A Feather of the Phoenix
3 Pigeonholing Books of Spell
The deck’s main priority is getting out, and keeping out, Rivalry of Warlords. It’s a continuous trap that, when activated, requires both players to send monsters from their side of the field to the graveyard until they control only one monster type (that’s Warriors, Spellcasters, and so on). Then, as long as Rivalry of Warlords remains on the field, each duelist can only control one monster type. You cannot summon new monsters of a non-matching type, and any set monster not of the “active type” Rivalry is keyed to that would be flipped by an effect, is destroyed.
With duelists running Spellcasters, Warriors, Machines, and many more monster types in the average cookie cutter deck, Rivalry becomes an incredibly powerful card. Those decks rely on getting out multiple monsters in order to generate effects and attack, and if the deck can’t do that, it can’t win. Not only does Rivalry shut down Return, it also just randomly shuts down in-hand monsters that can’t be summoned. It’s a great tech card, but it’s even better with a complete deck built around it. Check out some of the ridiculous tricks that Radzwilla’s deck is packing.
First, and my favorite, is Ojama Trio. If an opponent controls nothing but Ojama tokens, and Rivalry of Warlords is flipped, all they can summon are Beast monsters. Beasts are hideously unpopular right now, with the only splashable Beast monster being Berserk Gorilla. Even Exarion Universe and Enraged Battle Ox, which do see limited play, are Beast-Warriors, and can’t be summoned when Rivalry is tuned to Beasts. In addition, Ojama Trio alone is a great card in this format. It keeps an opponent’s field clogged with useless tokens, blocking big offensive pushes, often alienating Chaos Sorcerer from the field, and blocking Return on the chain.
Lava Golem works along the same lines when it’s used as a complement to Rivalry; like Ojama Trio, it can leave the opponent with only a relatively unpopular monster type, Fiends, as their only on-field type. Then, when Rivalry is flipped and the opponent is locked into Fiends, they can’t really summon anything. While Slate Warrior is strong in this format, and could see a resurgence due to its recent re-release as a common in the Lord of the Storms Structure Deck, the only Fiends seeing significant play here today are Sangan and Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World.
At the same time, the deck runs a ton of lockdown cards to leverage more control over the field and reduce the opponent’s potential offense. The three Lava Golem and three Wave-Motion Cannons serve to give PACMAN what some would way it arguably lacked in many past incarnations: a win condition. All the stall and control potential that Rivalry of Warlords and the PACMAN engine generate can create card advantage, but while that’s PACMAN’s goal, it’s not Radzwilla’s. His primary intent is just to buy himself time, and control the field long enough for one of his six sources of burn to win him the game. When you can keep Mobius and Breaker out of the game, like Radzwilla can with Rivalry, your Wave-Motion Cannons are a lot safer.
I asked him how he came up with the deck, and the answer was a little bit surprising: “I was at a local tournament and this one little kid was running it. He didn’t know what he was doing, but I looked at the card and saw that it had potential.” From there, input from Andrew Bollinger and Radzwilla’s own brand of innovation got him to where he is.
I asked him how he was doing today, whether his matches had been crushing victories, or more eeked out wins. “It’s been back and forth,” he answered, seeming to be pretty humble compared to the reactions of his proud teammates. “I’ve had to side a bit, and it works really well. Most people side into Cyber-Stein, so I figured I’d mix it up.” If you can’t see the deck list yet because you’re reading this article live during the competition, know that Radzwilla’s side deck allows him to rotate into Reversal Quiz, with Fuhma Shuriken and Black Pendant. “It works really well, because the PACMAN monsters can hurl themselves into bigger monsters so I can take damage and stuff once the lock is in.” From there, it becomes a relatively easy matter for Radzwilla to lower himself into the sub-2000 LP zone where he can then pull off the Reversal Quiz combo, technically kill himself, and then swap LP totals with his opponent. Not only is it more synergistic than Cyber-Stein, it’s also more surprising. The average opponent is going to try and deal as much damage as possible whenever they can break Radzwilla’s lock, and that plays right into his plans.
Will the deck continue to win? That’s a tough call to make, but he’s confident in his strategy and himself. If this new breed of PACMAN variant can succeed where Bollinger’s original builds have failed, it will do a lot to redeem the deck type, and will wreak some havoc on the North American metagame.