Every now and then, a special deck comes along that does more than just establish an archetype: it shows us a whole new way to approach dueling, and even as formats change, those lessons stick with us. Remember Vincent Tundo’s Life Equalizer deck? The draw engine he used, which consisted of Royal Magical Library, Archfiend’s Oath, Convulsion of Nature, and Giant Trunade, is still something inventive deck builders think of and occasionally attempt. That draw engine went the way of the dodo, but there are plenty of contemporary suites and engines that we can lift from one deck and adapt for new ones.

Today’s deck actually combines two suites of cards we’ve seen before. Diamond Dude Turbo’s support engine is a proven powerhouse that’s earned a lot of high regard, and duelists have tried applying it to Crystal Beasts before. But I’ve never seen anyone try what today’s deck submitter has attempted. Check it out!

Hey, how’s it going?

I have an interesting deck for you: my Ultimate Tyranno OTK . Here’s how the OTK works: activate Ojama Trio then summon Ultimate Tyranno (via Reasoning, Monster Gate, Mausoleum of the Emperor, or Destiny Hero - Dasher) and equip it with Big Bang Shot. Attack and destroy each Ojama token for 2700 points of damage (2400 points due to the piercing damage plus 300 for the Ojama token being destroyed). That’s 8100 damage total, enough to clear all of my opponent’s life points!

I’ve built my deck similar to Diamond Dude Turbo so it can move very quickly, letting me get all the combo pieces.

Thanks!

—Jacob, Phoenix, AZ

Cool idea, huh? Both of the concepts Jacob is working with—the Diamond Dude engine and last year’s Ultimate Tyranno OTK—have been tried in numerous ways before. But I’ve personally never seen them combined, and the results are pretty interesting. Here’s Jacob’s deck list.

Diamond Dude Dinos—40 Cards

Monsters: 14

3 Ultimate Tyranno

3 Destiny Hero - Malicious

1 Destiny Hero - Dasher

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

3 Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude

3 Card Trooper

Spells: 20

3 Mausoleum of the Emperor

3 Big Bang Shot

1 Premature Burial

1 Giant Trunade

1 Heavy Storm

1 Nobleman of Extermination

3 Destiny Draw

1 Magical Stone Excavation

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Terraforming

2 Monster Gate

2 Reasoning

Traps: 6

3 Ojama Trio

3 Waboku

Cool stuff! The deck is pretty well built, but I think I can make a few improvements.

My only big concern with Jacob’s build is the lack of normal spells. He’s only running thirteen total, meaning he won’t score a free spell with Diamond Dude even half the time he uses its effect. Marc Glass’s most recent build of Diamond Dude Turbo—which he played at Shonen Jump Championship Phoenix just this past weekend—had a whopping twenty normal spells! While I don’t think we can get quite that high (since this deck requires a couple more monsters and a few more equips), we can definitely do better than thirteen.

In addition, I’d like to build off some of the decisions we’ve seen players like Glass and Kris Perovic make with their DDT decks. There are a couple of decisions they made during their refining process that made their decks more effective, and we can benefit from our knowledge of the archetype’s history.

So with those goals in mind, I’ll start by dropping one Card Trooper. While this deck uses Reasoning in a very different way from the standard DDT (running more level 8 monsters than just a single Dark Magician of Chaos), many players will still call level 3 when Reasoning is activated, and for Perovic and Glass, it was enough for them to drop down to two Troopers. With the sheer number of monsters this deck is running, it seems like a good decision here too.

I’ll be removing Nobleman of Extermination. Sure, it provides spell and trap removal that can allow Ultimate Tyranno to strike for game, but it seems underpowered for what this deck needs to accomplish. I would rather run more special summoning power to achieve a possible win faster, rather than take more time and hopefully protect my situation with Nobleman. Focus and speed are important to strategies like this one, so this is an easy decision from my perspective.

Next, I’ll drop one copy of Mausoleum of the Emperor. Don’t worry: this card is highly important and I don’t plan to ignore it. But we can get the same level of efficiency out of Mausoleum without running so many copies, and it’ll wind up working to the benefit of our primary strategy. I’ll explain why and how shortly.

Finally, I don’t think the three Waboku cards are necessary here. Sure, they help to keep Diamond Dude around in order to exploit its effect, and they prevent damage while ensuring the integrity of your field, but they’re also trap cards. That creates conflict with Diamond Dude, and while we really need to run the three Ojama Trio cards, Waboku just isn’t integral to our plans. While slowing the opponent down with Ojama Trio may not help Diamond Dude stay on the field, those tokens will help keep our life points in a healthy range, so the Trio can actually provide some of the security that Waboku gave original DDT decks.

All right! We’ve cleared out six slots in this deck, and we’re ready to start adding cards. Let’s begin with a Perovic/Glass classic, Jinzo. When I lifted Nobleman of Extermination from the deck, it lost some of its control over the opponent’s defensive options. But while Nobleman can only stop a single card on the field, Jinzo can prevent anything short of Book of Moon or Enemy Controller from stopping a Bang Shot-strapped Ultimate Tyranno from winning the game. It helps us diversify our monster skew across differing levels for use with Reasoning, and it’s a big beat stick that can cause serious damage on its own. On top of that, though it does conflict with Ojama Trio, this deck no longer runs as many traps as it once did: Jinzo’s an easier inclusion than it was before.

From there, I want to add some more normal spells. Another Monster Gate helps speed this deck up, and it’s a proven three-of in DDT decks. A third Reasoning would be a bit too risky for most DDT duelists, but here—where level 8 is so unlikely to be called and yet so devastating—a third Reasoning seems perfectly logical.

A single Reinforcement of the Army will let us search out Diamond Dude and Elemental Hero Stratos at will. While most DDT decks run two copies of Reinforcement, we’re playing slightly fewer compatible Warriors, so one Reinforcement is perfect. It’s not just a nice way to dig for good cards—it can also be used to manipulate the odds on Reasoning or Monster Gate too, and that’s really valuable once you get some experience.

The last spell I’ll add is a second Terraforming, moving us from three Mausoleum of the Emperor cards and one Terraforming to two of each. The reason is hopefully clear: by balancing out the number of each card we use, we lose practically nothing since Terraforming just searches out Mausoleum anyways. But we gain another normal spell for Diamond Dude’s effect, giving us sixteen total—a sizable improvement over the deck’s original count.

The final card I would like to add is Mirror Force. Again, Perovic and Glass have judged this card worthy of play in competitive Diamond Dude Turbo builds, and I see no reason not to run it here. The opponent wants to make a lot of attacks, and Mirror Force continues to be the most devastating defensive card in the game. It’s definitely worth the 40th card slot we have available.

So here are the changes I’ve made to Jacob’s original version . . .

-1 Card Trooper

-1 Nobleman of Extermination

-1 Mausoleum of the Emperor

-3 Waboku

+1 Jinzo

+1 Terraforming

+1 Monster Gate

+1 Reasoning

+1 Reinforcement of the Army

+1 Mirror Force

The final build of the deck looks like this:

Diamond Dude Dinos—Jason’s Fix—40 Cards

Monsters: 14

3 Ultimate Tyranno

3 Destiny Hero - Malicious

1 Destiny Hero - Dasher

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

3 Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude

2 Card Trooper

1 Jinzo

Spells: 22

2 Mausoleum of the Emperor

3 Big Bang Shot

1 Premature Burial

1 Giant Trunade

1 Heavy Storm

3 Destiny Draw

1 Magical Stone Excavation

1 Swords of Revealing Light

2 Terraforming

3 Monster Gate

3 Reasoning

1 Reinforcement of the Army

Traps: 4

3 Ojama Trio

1 Mirror Force

I don’t think we could actually fit any more ways to special summon Ultimate Tyranno into this deck. I briefly considered Fossil Excavation, but we really want Tyranno to attack more than once, so that ruled out the potent trap. This deck has three copies of Reasoning, three copies of Monster Gate, and one Premature Burial, alongside what’s essentially four copies of Mausoleum of the Emperor and Destiny Hero - Malicious for normal summoning.

This deck? It can definitely get out Ultimate Tyranno. In fact, sometimes you may even have to slow yourself down in order to ensure that you have the support for your big OTK. Other times you may just say to heck with it: drop the first Tyranno to cause some havoc and build a combo around one of the other two you still have waiting in the wings. That’s what makes this deck so interesting: it can produce threats at times when DDT can’t, and it can do it multiple times without concern for its life points.

And it’s got, you know, Dinosaurs. Making it awesome.

Like most DDT builds, the goal here is to tear through your deck as quickly as possible while putting together your combo. With practice, you’ll be able to tease games out a bit, ensuring that you don’t commit important combo pieces to the field until you’re ready to secure a win. But for your first few games, just experiment with all that breakneck speed! This deck lacks some of the control options DDT benefited from, like Lightning Vortex, but it’s also a bit faster and more resilient, so learn to use those unique factors to your advantage. An opponent who approaches this deck the same way he or she would tackle Diamond Dude Turbo may find that things don’t go as anticipated, especially when Reasoning gets involved.

Is it fun? Check. Can it win a local tournament? Check. Does it drop really big Dinosaurs into the middle of an Ojama party? Check and check! If you’re looking for something surprising, competitive, and a blast to play, give this deck a shot. If you don’t have an extra Magical Stone Excavation, you can even run A Feather of the Phoenix instead: it’ll help you get at copies of Ojama Trio that you send to the graveyard with Reasoning and Monster Gate.

Try it yourself! Ultimate Tyranno will thank you, hopefully by sparing your life.

He likes to snack.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer

Got a cool deck that you think could benefit from some advice? Send me a decklist in the format shown in this article, along with your name, location, and a couple of paragraphs describing how the deck works. You can reach me at jdgmetagame@gmail.com.