When I first looked at Enemy of Justice, one of my favorite combos involved Herald of Purple Light, Herald of Green Light, and Layard the Liberator. The idea was to negate the opponent’s moves with Heralds, remove the discarded cards from play, and then return the Herald and its companion Fairy to your hand with Layard’s effect. In theory, you’ll turn an effect that would normally trade two of your cards for the negation of one into a recyclable source of endless control over the opponent’s actions.
That’s a tempting proposition, huh?
Reader Andy felt the same way, and that combo is the centerpiece of the deck he submitted to me. Here’s what he had to say about it.
Hey Jason,
My name is Andy, and I’m a long-time reader of your articles. I was looking through the rare cards at my local card shop when I saw Herald of Green Light and Herald of Purple Light. Their effects intrigued me: being able to negate spells and traps without your opponent’s interference (Breaker, end phase Mystical Space Typhoon, etc.) seemed pretty good. I’d already been working on a Fairy counter-trap deck, and I thought of this deck.
Your goal is to get Layard the Liberator out onto the field, a Herald and another Fairy in your hand, and Dimensional Fissure or Banisher of the Light face-up. When your opponent activates a spell or trap that could wreck your plan, use the Herald in your hand to remove it and another Fairy from play. Next turn, play a counter-trap, retrieve the Heralds from it, and reuse their effects. However, the deck has a lot of trouble getting all the combo pieces out. I’ve tried to use cards to increase consistency, slow down tempo, and get the cards out as soon as possible, but it doesn’t work all that well. I’m thinking that it might be the 42 cards, so I’ve tried to cut back on it. Also, I don’t have accessibility to Cyber Dragon. Well, here’s the deck . . .
Thanks again,
—Andy M
Here’s the decklist that Andy sent me.
Herald Control
44 Cards
Monsters: 21
2 Herald of Purple Light
1 Herald of Green Light
3 Skelengel
2 Shining Angel
3 Layard the Liberator
2 Voltanis the Adjudicator
2 Bountiful Artemis
2 Banisher of the Light
1 Sangan
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch
Spells: 13
2 Dimensional Fissure
2 Nobleman of Crossout
2 Smashing Ground
1 Book of Moon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Premature Burial
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Graceful Charity
1 Snatch Steal
1 Confiscation
Traps: 10
2 Negate Attack
1 Return from the Different Dimension
2 Forced Back
1 Magic Drain
1 Divine Wrath
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
The first thing you may have noticed is the card count on the deck: while Andy states in his email that it has 42 cards, it’s actually a 44-card deck. That goes a long way towards explaining the consistency issues that he’s having.
Unfortunately, he’s got a second problem. That combo that he’s built his deck around—the one I so admired when I first caught whiff of it? It doesn’t work. In order to use its effect, you need to be able to send a Herald and its partner in crime to the graveyard. If that’s impossible (due to, say, Banisher of the Light or Dimensional Fissure), you can’t even activate the Herald’s effect.
That makes people like me (and Andy) sad.
Even without that concern, I’m worried that the deck tries to do too much. Bountiful Artemis and Voltanis are their own deck. Layard the Liberator and Voltanis are their own deck, too. Return can be splashed, but it seems tricky when it’s played side by side with Layard, essentially making it a third deck theme that’s been awkwardly jammed in with the rest. To top it all off, the deck even runs Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, which I assume is intended as an answer to Jinzo. Jinzo is a big concern for any deck running a large number of traps, but it’s probably one we’re just going to have to side deck against. Hopefully Voltanis, Forced Back, and a few other cards will be able to keep it under control.
With that said, my first drop is Zaborg. This deck has a tendency to bomb its field presence to Voltanis, and it doesn’t have many big monsters that can stay on the field in an aggressive matchup. Zaborg the Thunder Monarch is going to be a dead draw quite often, and since we’ve already got a lot of synergy-oriented cards with relatively low utility, we can’t risk having dead cards that we don’t absolutely need.
Next, I have to make the obvious sacrifice of Banisher of the Light and Dimensional Fissure. These cards actually lock Andy out of his intended negation, so they can’t stay here. Of course, this leaves us with our primary challenge: figuring out a way to remove Fairies from play in order to get that negation loop we want to achieve.
Beyond that, the next drop I want to make is the pair of Bountiful Artemis cards. Sure, it would be really cool to have Layard and Artemis on the field at the same time to get massive card advantage out of every counter-trap you activate, but I just don’t think that’s realistic. Both are relatively small monsters, with Artemis packing 1600 ATK and Layard only having 1400. That makes maintaining board presence very difficult, and if Artemis gets run over the first time you use its effect, you’re not really getting much mileage out of your wacky non-cookie cutter deck theme. Since Layard is the key to the deck’s negation engine, the Artemis cards are an obvious drop. They’ll be replaced by something with a bit more muscle.
Speaking of Layard, it’s searchable with Shining Angel and Sangan. I don’t really see any reason to run three, though you can certainly side deck a third for particularly aggressive matchups. Normally I’d shy away from dropping an extra copy of a key card, but I’m going to balance that out later once I start adding cards to the deck.
Smashing Ground and Premature Burial need to be removed strictly for the sake of deck space. Smashing Ground is an easy drop, save the Jinzo concern I mentioned earlier—it should definitely be in the side deck. Premature Burial is a bit tougher. On one hand, it can bring back Voltanis or another Fairy to get more out of its effect. On the other hand, it’s a recursion card in a deck that will often have very few monsters in the graveyard. Add to that the fact that few monsters in the graveyard are actually worth bringing back, and you’ve got a mix of factors that don’t seem very good to me. Having said that, this particular drop may just be a case of personal taste. If you’d like to run the deck with Premature Burial, go ahead. Just don’t ask me what to drop instead, because the deck is packed pretty tight!
The last card I want to remove is Divine Wrath. Again, this is a personal taste call that might not fit your metagame, and if you’d prefer to main deck it, just rotate out the counter-trap of your choice to the side deck. As it stands, I think this is more of a tech pick for Cyber-Stein OTK and Chaos matchups where the opponent is running three copies of Chaos Sorcerer. It’s nice to be able to toss dead cards, but to me, the deck’s other counter-trap options are better for an open metagame.
We’ve cleared out eleven slots from the deck. I’d like to try and add just eight more, in order to keep the deck down to a reasonable 41 cards.
The first thing I want to add are some cards that will let us remove used-up Heralds from play. Drawing off of previous work done on Light Return decks, I’m going to run a pair of Freed the Brave Wanderer and a single Soul of Purity and Light. Not only will both of these let us get Heralds into the removed zone, but they’ll also help address the deck’s big monster concern: Freed can destroy them with its effect, and Soul of Purity and Light can shut down a potential attack. The Soul is even a Fairy-type monster, so it can be discarded for a Herald’s effect or special summoned and then tributed for Voltanis with its counter-trap ability.
Next up is Night Assailant. This will give synergy with Graceful Charity and Divine Wrath (if we side deck it in), but we’re really running the card for its ability to answer big threats on the field (it basically replaces the second Smashing Ground in Andy’s original decklist). It’s a great card in the current environment, and it helps this deck compete in both aggressive and slow-tempo matches.
Scapegoat is another great addition. This deck can’t maintain board presence with its natural stats as well as some others might. It’s not using Cyber Dragon, nor does it run Gravekeeper’s Spy. It needs fast, efficient defense, and Scapegoat is always good for that. If an opponent ever Goat-locks you (leaving all four tokens on your side of the field to clog up your monster zones), remember that you can feed them to Voltanis. You won’t get anything extra out of its effect, since flying Sheep aren’t classified as Fairies per se, but you will get them off the field.
One copy of Reinforcement of the Army will search out Freed when you need him. It’s like running a third copy of Freed, without actually forcing the commitment of running three copies. That keeps you flexible: you can always search out D. D. Warrior Lady if you pull Reinforcement of the Army in the early game.
Finally, Magic Drain is just incredible with Layard or Artemis. This deck won’t whittle down the opponent’s cards through battle very often, so we’re relying on negation to do that instead. Since we’re only running one copy of Herald of Green Light, extra spell negation is just irresistible. I’m going to max out the deck’s count, adding two more copies.
Here are the changes I made to the deck.
–1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch
–2 Banisher of the Light
–1 Layard the Liberator
–2 Bountiful Artemis
–1 Smashing Ground
–1 Premature Burial
–2 Dimensional Fissure
–1 Divine Wrath
+1 Night Assailant
+1 Soul of Purity and Light
+2 Freed the Brave Wanderer
+1 Reinforcement of the Army
+1 Scapegoat
+2 Magic Drain
The final build looks like this.
Herald Control: Jason’s Fix
41 Cards
Monsters: 19
2 Herald of Purple Light
1 Herald of Green Light
3 Skelengel
2 Shining Angel
2 Layard the Liberator
2 Voltanis the Adjudicator
1 Sangan
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
1 Night Assailant
2 Freed the Brave Wanderer
1 Soul of Purity and Light
Spells: 11
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Smashing Ground
1 Book of Moon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Graceful Charity
1 Snatch Steal
1 Confiscation
1 Scapegoat
1 Reinforcement of the Army
Traps: 11
2 Negate Attack
2 Forced Back
3 Magic Drain
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Return from the Different Dimension
Your ideal openings are Skelengel or Shining Angel. They can get to pieces of your negation combos, and they can also start building Fairy-oriented field presence for Voltanis to take advantage of. Sangan, Night Assailant, and D. D. Warrior Lady, are also acceptable, so this deck opens pretty strongly.
This is a reactive deck, so beyond turn 1 it’s difficult to say how it should be played. In general, you’ll want to get Layard the Liberator—a card that lets you remove things from play—and a Herald as early as possible. From there, you need to protect Layard with Negate Attack, Forced Back, and Mirror Force in order to keep the negations coming. Once you can do that, life becomes incredibly difficult for your opponent.
The tricky part is transitioning that control over the opponent’s spell and trap cards into an actual win. You’ve got two ways of doing it. First, you can use bigger monsters and field control to smack away at the opponent and just approach the game from a beatdown/control style of play. In this case, Forced Back becomes incredibly important because you don’t have an infinite number of ways to actually destroy monsters: preventing them from ever hitting the field becomes a precious option. Alternatively, you can always whittle down the opponent’s card and field presence to a manageable amount, and then drop Voltanis with its effect. A couple of Fairy monsters will power enough card destruction to wipe the field and leave the opponent vulnerable to a Voltanis-Brand™ beating on the turn that follows. Voltanis and virtually any of your mid-level monsters should be able to swing for 4000 with relative ease. Two shots like that and it’s game, even if you hadn’t previously done any damage.
A fair portion of your side deck should be counter-traps, oriented towards a variety of matchups. You may want to side Solemn Judgment and Seven Tools against Return, or Divine Wrath and a third Forced Back for Monarch Control. A third Negate Attack can be gold against Warriors as well, staving off Mystic Swordsman LV2 long enough to flip summon its intended target on the following turn.
This is not an early game deck: even if you take the beatdown approach, you won’t be scoring game-winning damage in the first few turns. Don’t aim to do so: Voltanis isn’t particularly valuable if it runs straight into Sakuretsu Armor or Mirror Force. Be patient, and only drop the hammer when you know that you’ll be able to follow up.
If you’re looking for a Fairy deck that’s a little more complicated and higher risk than the straight Voltanis/Artemis build, you’ll enjoy playing this. While it takes a bit more practice, its raw control potential has a lot of appeal.
Big thanks go out to Andy for sending it in. Hopefully he finds my suggestions useful!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Do you have an Advanced format deck you could use some help with, or that you just want to show off to the world? Do you want to see it appear in a future Apotheosis article? Send it to me at Jason(at)metagame(dot)com, with your name, location, and explanation of how the deck works—I might take a crack at it!