In my estimation, the most interesting change that took effect on September 1st wasn’t a new Limitation or Forbidding. It was one of the Limitations that has been loosened for the next six months. Specifically, I’m referring to Jinzo’s newfound status as a two-per-deck card. The actual gameplay impact of the second Jinzo has yet to be seen, but we can make an educated guess based on the card’s psychological impact. The predominant viewpoint regarding Jinzo at the moment is that it is a “Royal Decree on legs”—interesting, especially considering that Royal Decree just became Semi-Limited as well, allowing a grand total of four possible cards in any given deck that will lock both duelists out of their traps. Actually, there were four possible cards last format which could lock down all of your traps, but in the previous case, three of them were Royal Decree and only the last was Jinzo. As we can see from the results of various Shonen Jump Championships, trap usage went down significantly as time passed. The low point for traps hit right around the time that T-Hero took off, likely due to the ease at which the deck could summon Ryu Senshi (who is, for all intents and purposes, a second Jinzo). Now we’re left to think of what would happen if that “second Jinzo” became a second Jinzo without the quotation marks: the “real deal” as they say.
Many players are likely thinking to themselves, “I wish I could put more traps in, but anyone playing two copies of Jinzo will just wreck me!” The result of this—regardless of whether or not people actually go ahead and play both copies of Jinzo—is that the deck slots that would have been taken up by extra traps will now be devoted to spell cards, and that’s something we can exploit with a little help from Force of the Breaker. You see, I’m not entirely convinced that people will actually go ahead and play two copies of Jinzo, especially considering the beating Machine beatdown took as a result of the latest Forbidden and Limited list. T-Hero has basically been done in by the Limitations on Snipe Hunter and Card Trooper and the loss of Metamorphosis, so I’m not quite sure what decks people are going to plug Jinzo into. I am convinced, however, that people are going to flock toward the Apprentice Magician engine once again, especially since Crystal Seer is now legal and Magician of Faith is back in the card pool. All those tiny monsters are just begging to be infected by the now un-Limited Deck Devastation Virus, and for the ultimate in irony, I feel that a Spellcaster deck should be the one to infect the Apprentice Engine Monarch decks. Without three copies of Brain Control and a Snatch Steal, Monarch decks are going to have to rely on the little monsters and Soul Exchange if they want to get their Monarchs out quickly, and I’m not going to let them do it. Heck, I’m not even going to allow Soul Exchange to happen if I can help it . . . or any spells for that matter if Eradicator Epidemic Virus has its way.
Monsters: 19
1 Dark Magician
1 Dark Magician of Chaos
2 Magical Marionette
2 Apprentice Magician
2 Old Vindictive Magician
2 Crystal Seer
1 Magician of Faith
3 Skilled Dark Magician
1 Sangan
1 Treeborn Frog
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
2 Injection Fairy Lily
Spells: 14
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Brain Control
1 Scapegoat
1 Book of Moon
1 Smashing Ground
1 Premature Burial
1 Pot of Avarice
3 Magical Dimension
3 Enemy Controller
Traps: 8
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Eradicator Epidemic Virus
2 Deck Devastation Virus
2 Magician’s Circle
This deck is designed to do the thing that Spellcaster-type monsters do best: play tricks on people! Specifically, Spellcasters tend to move cards around from one place to another, often with interesting side effects. The two main examples of this are two of the best cards that Spellcaster decks have ever received: Magician’s Circle and Magical Dimension. The Circle pulls monsters out of the deck and to the field while simultaneously forcing your opponents to put some of their best monsters out on the field without any way to activate their effects. This is especially true once people start playing with their Crystal Seer because Magician’s Circle forces you and your opponent to pull an appropriate Spellcaster out of your deck if you have one, regardless of whether or not you want to. While you have plenty of Spellcasters you’d like to bring out (including copies of Magical Marionette that you will likely never tribute summon) your opponents are stuck pulling out things like Magician of Faith, Crystal Seer, or Breaker the Magical Warrior that they’d really rather play on their own terms instead of yours.
Magician’s Circle is pretty excellent, but now more than ever, Magical Dimension is where the magic is at. Remember how the T-Hero deck used to produce huge wins out of a hand and field full of seemingly unrelated cards thanks to Metamorphosis? Magical Dimension lets Spellcaster decks do the same thing provided they have a Spellcaster on the field and one in hand. This is especially evident when you take the full potential of Magical Dimension into account, especially the part where it doesn’t actually have to tribute a Spellcaster in order to do its thing. That lets you do some crazy things with Treeborn Frog, especially if your opponent has a clear backfield. As a quick-play spell, you can use it any time during your turn, including your standby phase. Combine that with the fact that you can bring Treeborn Frog back from the graveyard as many times as you like during a given standby phase and you’re ready to pull off some really crazy stuff, likely involving Injection Fairy Lily. One of my favorites is swinging directly for 3400 damage with one Lily, then trading it out for the other with Magical Dimension and hitting for another 3400 damage, likely winning the game.
Interestingly enough, however, this deck isn’t really built to take people out with one-turn KOs. The actual intent is to peel all the monsters out of the opponent’s hand with a Deck Devastation Virus and wipe his or her monsters off the field with Magical Marionette. It’s not preferable to actually tribute summon Magical Marionette, but Frog and Apprentice Magician tricks make it less painful. Speaking of Frog and Apprentice Magician, I would consider summoning these cards instead of setting them. It’s currently unclear whether or not people are going to jump on the opportunity to play both, but for now I’d play it safe and take the opportunity to use that ability of Apprentice Magician that everyone always forgets about. Yeah, you know, the one that lets you put a spell counter on a card that can use it? That’s an extra spell or trap destroyed with Breaker, an extra counter to put toward an already existing Magical Marionette to either boost ATK or destroy a monster, or another counter toward fetching out your Dark Magician with Skilled Dark Magician. You can even use this effect when you search Apprentice Magician out with Magician’s Circle, so your magicians can perform even more crazy tricks at unexpected times! Finally, regarding spell counters, keep in mind that the Marionette and the Skilled Dark Magician gain spell counters regardless of who activates a spell card. It used to be really difficult to exploit this, since most of the spells your opponent could play were either Brain Control or removal, but with only one copy each of Fissure, Smashing Ground, and Brain Control, it’s a lot easier to glean counters off of unrelated cards like Pot of Avarice.
With the Gadget monsters down to two of each Gadget per deck, any hits from Deck Devastation Virus will be that much more, well, devastating! Similarly, opposing Apprentice Engine decks aren’t equipped to deal with Deck Devastation Virus, and at the very least, will try to hold off on playing Pot of Avarice until the Virus has worn off. Ideally, this deck would also have a Crush Card Virus, but seeing as I don’t actually own the card, I don’t really feel justified in using it here. Eradicator Epidemic Virus, on the other hand, is something I do have in hand that can take advantage of the potentially huge upswing in the number of spells people are playing. Hands filled with Monarchs and useless spells are pretty bad, but if you then lose the spells and any you might have drawn for the next few turns (like any copies of Soul Exchange you might be waiting for), things get awfully ugly. In general, you’ll always want to call for spells with the Epidemic Virus, but if you’re facing a huge backfield, traps might be the call to make. Regardless, you get to check the back row, and the information gained from that could be enough for you to cobble together an impressive combo win that your opponent couldn’t see coming.
We’re getting closer and closer to the first SJC of the season, and I can’t wait to see what people finally settle on playing for the big event! Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
NEXT WEEK: Exploding yellow van?