Metagame.com - Take Your Game to the Next Level

I need to come clean with everyone. The moment I set foot into the press area to help bring you live coverage of U.S Nationals, I asked every judge I found to keep an eye out for anyone running Morphing Jar #2. I really, really wanted to see someone running Tim Wiloughby's Ghandipants deck to success today.

While on my journey in search for Gandhi's missing pants, one of the judges made a note that somebody was doing very well with a copy of Life Equalizer in their deck.

Yes, that's right. I just said Life Equalizer. Feel free to click the link to that card's text and refresh yourself. I am sure a lot of you will have to do that—I had to.

Vincent Tundo was bold and daring enough to run that card in his deck. But it's not a typical deck at all. Vincent isn't trying to play Return from the Different Dimension with his Chaos Sorcerers in an effort to reduce his life points to a Life Equalizer equation. That would be silly. He's instead running a combo deck based on winning through activations of Blasting the Ruins after you use...yep, that's right. Life Equalizer.

Monsters: 6

3 Thunder Dragon

3 Royal Magical Library

Spells: 32

2 Reload

3 Convulsion of Nature

3 Archfiend's Oath

2 Magical Mallet

3 Toon Table of Contents

1 Level Limit - Area B

1 Toon World

1 Heavy Storm

3 Pigeonholing Books of Spell

Traps: 2

1 Life Equalizer

1 Blasting the Ruins

"I was split between running this or a Chaos return deck," said Vincent. "I was still trying to decide on a deck when the judge was collecting lists. I decided Chaos-Return was a 50/50 chance today and this deck was 80 percent, so I went with this figuring this is my only chance in the whole year to run something different and do well."

The deck is based on going off either on the first turn or as soon as possible. The Royal Magical Library monsters in this deck are the draw engines Vincent uses to find his combo pieces. Not only does Royal Magical Library give you something after playing enough cards, but it's also a ridiculous method of drawing a ton of cards through the combination of continuous spell cards and Giant Trunade. Vincent and play Convulsion of Nature, Archfiend's Oath, name the top card of his deck and add it to his hand, and then play Giant Trunade to return both of these cards. Royal Magical Library will then draw him a card, and the Convulsion/Oath combo will net him another card to use in getting towards his win condition of Life Equalizer and Blasting the Ruins. Cards like Pigeonholing Books of Spell not only give your Royal Magical Library spell counters, but also stack your deck so you draw the most relevant cards first.

I could go on forever about the kinds of ways this deck can draw cards with Royal Magical Library, but that would get really repetitive. The basic objective of this deck is to just sift through their deck and make the life point difference between you and your opponent 8000, and then activate Life Equalizer and Blasting the Ruins during your opponent's draw step. This may not have Morphing Jar #2, but I love it!

The other joy of this deck is that it probably costs a total of four dollars to actually construct. "I make a lot of decks made just out of commons and can win tournaments," said Vincent with a smile. Not only is this deck effective, but it's also inexpensive. That's music to the ears of a cheap guy like me.

Now, before you criticize this deck, I should remind you that as of writing this report he is 5-1 at the tournament, and this may be one of the most innovative decks to see in the top 8. Vincent Tundo has a good chance of pulling off what every innovative deck-builder in the U.S can only dream of doing; going to the World Championships with an innovative and off-the-wall combo deck. His gamble of going with a combo over what was established may very well pay off for him today.