If you can read the title to this week’s article, then chances are you’re either from Pittsburgh or quick with Google. For those of you not acquainted with the wonders of Pittsburghese, allow me to translate. “Dahntahn” translates to “downtown,” as in the central portion of a city. In Pittsburgh’s case, we have the county buildings, Heinz Hall, some sketchy shops, and Market Square—a glorious place where you can get delicious food and oftentimes listen to live music out in the sun while you eat. They have Primanti Bros. there!

Some cities, though, aren’t so lucky. For example, all you’re going to find downtown in Skyscraper 2 - Hero City is a bunch of Elemental Heroes that got whacked in battle and are waiting to be revived. But you know, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing after all. Big City took a huge win in the first round feature match of the DC Shonen Jump Championship over Zombies, the breakout hit of the format. That match was pretty one-sided, and it got me thinking, “Is Big City actually good against Zombies, or was that an aberration?” The answer, as I discovered at my local tournament the Saturday after the Jump, was that Big City was amazing against Zombies for a number of reasons . . . not the least of which was the fact that they were special summoning at a rate comparable to my own. It was seriously crazy!

Elemental Hero Stratos and Elemental Hero Ocean are undeniably good. Together, they create a constant source of cards that can attack, defend, pay costs, search the deck, and destroy spell or trap cards. It’s really crazy and—when added to the fact that the consistency of this engine is established by your opponent’s need to attack you—causes me to wonder why we don’t see the deck at the top tables more often. It’s true that Big City isn’t exactly the easiest deck in the world to run, but I’ve always believed that players like to both develop and demonstrate their skills. I know I do, and so I decided to put together my own Big City deck, working under the theory that it has an excellent natural matchup against just about everything that I would be likely to encounter at an SJC (with the notable exception of Six Samurai). The problem with Six Samurai is that, unlike Zombies, Samurai can remove my spell and trap cards every single turn, in addition to the fact that they possess a Cyber Dragon-like monster that can return himself to the hand every time I destroy him in the form of Grandmaster of the Six Samurai. It’s a real pain considering that the biggest monster I’m likely to play has 1800 ATK. Still, some creative side-decking can help out in that scenario.

Here’s the build of Big City that I’m currently working with:

Monsters: 12

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

3 Elemental Hero Ocean

3 Elemental Hero Wildheart

2 Exiled Force

1 Snipe Hunter

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

Spells: 17

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

3 Lightning Vortex

3 Skyscraper 2 - Hero City

3 E - Emergency Call

1 R - Righteous Justice

2 Reinforcement of the Army

2 The Warrior Returning Alive

1 Premature Burial

Traps: 11

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Gravity Bind

1 The Transmigration Prophecy

3 Solemn Judgment

3 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast

The first rule of playing with Big City is to find and summon Elemental Hero Stratos immediately. The repeated uses of Stratos will let you get all the monsters out of the deck and give you some free spell and trap destruction (not to mention the fact that Stratos has 1800 ATK, making him the perfect monster to attack with once you’ve done all that field clearing stuff). After you’ve got Stratos, your opponent is probably going to try to turn on the speed to beat you before you have a chance to summon him too many times. Your opponent will then likely commit the gravest error possible against the Big City deck: attacking Stratos. When he or she does, you will usually want to crash your Stratos into one of the opponent’s bigger monsters so that you can quickly re-summon him with Skyscraper 2, but if your opponent destroys him in battle for you, your life becomes much easier. Normally you’ll wind up bringing Stratos back in main phase 2 to fetch a Wildheart or an Ocean, but if your Stratos was actually attacked by a Cyber Dragon or whatever the opponent has out, you’ll be able to bring him back in main phase 1. This is critical to your plans, since it’ll let you summon a Wildheart or Ocean first and thus increase the number of Heroes you have out to power up Stratos’ second ability. After you’ve cleared out the backfield, you’ll want to drop a Lightning Vortex and start attacking. This in turn will force your opponent to attack back with whatever he or she can muster, and the cycle continues with the opponent taking a lot more damage than you.

The main reason I like Big City, though, is that it gives me another great excuse to play three copies of Solemn Judgment. There are a huge number of things that can go wrong for the Big City deck, and between Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and Solemn Judgment, you ought to be able to take care of all of them. Of course, the cost of Solemn Judgment can leave you open to some rough beats on the receiving end of Lightning Vortex and a Zombie swarm, but I feel like the power that Solemn Judgment grants you is well worth the risk, especially if you’ve practiced enough know when half your life points is worth it.

One of the things I really like about the trap lineup in this deck is that it’s largely chainable. This becomes incredibly important when you consider the immense popularity of Raiza the Storm Monarch. Given the choice between bouncing Elemental Hero Stratos to the top of the deck and leaving a set card in place, or bouncing the set card and then wasting Stratos with a removal spell, I’d wager that most people would rather guarantee that Stratos goes to the graveyard rather than sending him to my hand next turn. This provides an excellent opportunity to turn the tables on the Monarch and bounce him to the top of the deck with Phoenix Wing Wind Blast!

In fact, Wind Blast is just a general beating for any monster not named Jinzo. It’s especially good against Zombie decks, since Il Blud and Ryu Kokki generally aren’t cards that one would want to tribute summon. In fact, it’s so much easier to revive them or search them out of the deck that actually drawing them is bad. Wind Blast also wrecks Zombie Master, since it needs to stay on the field while its effect resolves (otherwise you don’t get the Zombie). Phoenix Wing Wind Blast is an all-around great card, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing it all over the place in short order.

The primary issue that Big City players have to deal with is the fact that if their monsters aren’t being destroyed in battle, their biggest tricks are basically worthless. This becomes especially relevant in matchups against Gadgets and any other deck that packs a lot of monster removal. In order to address this concern, I felt that adding a couple of copies of The Warrior Returning Alive was warranted. It doesn’t matter how the Warrior gets to the graveyard, you just get to take it back. It was a mainstay of the Six Samurai/Card Trooper reverse toolbox strategy that saw some play last format, and while that strategy doesn’t quite exist anymore, that doesn’t mean that The Warrior Returning Alive isn’t still useful. Even if you aren’t playing against a deck where lots of removal is a concern, you’ll be glad to get back those copies of Exiled Force with The Warrior Returning Alive to take care of whatever monster you can’t or don’t want to attack over at the time.

While it didn’t make Top 16 at the first SJC of the format, I’m thoroughly convinced that Big City is going to play an important part in the metagame, regardless of whether or not it actually makes the cut to Day 2. Like Demise, Big City is a deck that can tear apart unsuspecting players and influence the final cut in ways that aren’t always readily apparent. I think the deck has definite promise for another big finish sometime soon, so if I were you, I’d be familiar with how it works.

School of Duel is back, so go check that out if you’re interested in finding out more about these latest trends. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: Some decks don’t transfer between formats very well. Others can surprise you.