I love creative decks. A field full of Chaos and Warrior variants is bound to give some awesome competition to watch, but there’s nothing I love more than watching an original idea stomp on a conventional archetype. I admit, I’m twisted like that.

Considering that over 700 duelists showed up to strut their stuff and duke it out at the Columbus Shonen Jump Championship, I figured there would probably be some neat, well-constructed decks to discover. I decided to set out on a quest to find those decks! I would travel from the darkest cave to the top of the highest mountain, to find the most promising, creative, ingenious decks that Columbus had to offer!

I walked three feet and Jeff Boeing popped up in front of me, offering to show me his deck and promising that it would sate my unusual appetites. I was robbed of my epic quest, but in return I got to see the first cool deck of the day.

Jeff Boeing’s Mill

Monsters
3 Needle Worm
2 Tsukuyomi
1 Guardian Sphinx
3 Magician of Faith
2 Spear Cretin
1 Morphing Jar
1 Cyber Jar
2 Penguin Soldier
2 Morphing Jar #2

Spells
1 Reload
3 Book of Moon
1 Pot of Greed
3 Book of Taiyou
2 Level Limit – Area B
2 The Shallow Grave
2 Giant Trunade
1 Card Destruction
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Serial Spell
2 Monster Recovery

Traps
2 Acid Trap Hole
2 Waboku
1 Torrential Tribute

Jeff Boeing is, among other things, an immensely talented airbrush painter. He looks like a road-warrior, street thug type, but he’s got a heart of gold and a creative, brilliant mind. I had the pleasure of checking out one of his portfolios at Gen Con Indy over the summer and his stuff is remarkably cool. The leather jacket he was sporting today was tricked out with some nice paint jobs.

This isn’t a fashion review, but Boeing’s creativity and high standards of perfection show through in this deck. It’s something he’d been testing out and found a lot of recent success with, so he wanted to see how it would do against the more varied metagame of the Shonen Jump tournament. A lot of people build Mill decks, but rarely do you find one as well-thought-out as this.

For the uninitiated, a Mill deck grinds away at an opponent’s deck instead of their lifepoints. They attempt to run an opponent out of cards to achieve a win. It’s an under-utilized strategy, but one that can be deadly when it’s executed correctly.

Needle Worm is the epicenter of the deck’s strategy. It gives the deck its most renewable and immediate source of decking power, and coupled with Tsukuyomi, it can quickly burn through all of an opponent’s cards.

Tsukuyomi can also aid Cyber Jar, Morphing Jar and Morphing Jar #2. All three can tear apart an opponent’s deck while providing field and hand disruption.

Guardian Sphinx and Penguin Soldier also provide board manipulation, keeping the opponent’s monsters off the field. Tsukuyomi again comes in handy here, allowing the monsters to cycle for multiple bounces every turn. Once Tsukuyomi is in-hand and Sphinx is on the table the deck almost gets a sort of soft lock. Few normal summoned monsters can even hope to break through the Sphinx, and with Tsukuyomi recycling a Penguin Soldier to back it up, even a single good attack probably won’t be enough in the long run.

Magician of Faith serves to reinforce the deck’s key spell strategies. Several of the deck’s spells either directly or indirectly contribute to the Milling theme. Magician of Faith is invaluable as a random defender, a way to mill more of the opponent’s cards, and for its use as a sort of reverse toolbox in the mid- and late game. Like most cards in this deck, it’s also easy to abuse with Tsukuyomi, trading your one normal summon per turn for an extra card.

Spell-wise, Book of Moon serves the same purpose as Tsukuyomi for combo potential, but it also has its normal uses. It can set weak defenders up for an attack, it can turn an attack position monster of your own into an impromptu wall, and it can interrupt attacks by turning an intended attacker to defense position. It’s one of the game’s most versatile cards in any deck, but here it also contributes dangerously to the deck’s main theme.

Some of the cards in the deck are self-explanatory, so I won’t touch on them (“Pot of Greed gives card advantage? Wow!”), but it’s of note to mention Card Destruction. When it’s recycled with Magician of Faith, Card Destruction is often an easy way to tear through your own deck, searching out what you want while costing your opponent cards and drawing closer to victory. Book of Taiyou also fits the Mill theme, and it’s used to get multiple flips out of major flip effect monsters like Needle Worm and Magician of Faith.

Level Limit – Area B and Swords of Revealing Light give the deck some defense, but it doesn’t use as much as other decks of this type might. You’ll notice the deck doesn’t use Gravity Bind at all. It relies more on controlling the contents of the board than preventing attack, essentially dealing with the root of the problem (an opponent’s board presence) instead of the symptom (the opponent’s ability to turn that presence into an offense). It’s another way in which the deck is tightly focused.

Finally, The Shallow Grave and Monster Recovery serve to bring back key flip effect monsters that contribute to your win condition. Spear Cretin accomplishes this as well. It gives you more longevity and more moves that add to your attempts to win without pigeonholing the deck. Although Monster Recovery’s cost is a bit much at times, it definitely fits into this deck and is a smart move.

As for the traps, Waboku and Torrential Tribute explain themselves. They’re defensive cards that can be used creatively to take distinct advantages in the correct situations. However, Acid Trap Hole is a card that’s well understood by veterans of Mill but often overlooked by those who’ve never played it. In essence, Acid Trap Hole is a chainable spell speed 2 Book of Taiyou. You use it to turn your flip effect monsters face up when you really, really need it. In the case of a threat of Nobleman of Crossout they can be a lifesaver, often being the difference between a win from milling away the last few cards of a deck, and a loss of all your Needle Worms resulting in defeat. It’s a highly important card with lots of interesting uses in a pinch, and though at first glance it can look very limited in its utility, this deck makes it incredibly versatile.

Because the deck is not as reliant on lockdown strategy as some of its contemporaries, it opens a bit stronger than other Mill decks and has fewer dead cards. It topdecks quite well, though it can be in trouble in the late game if a duel ends with both players controlling very few cards. That said, not many duels are ever going to end that way. The deck can do a great job of controlling an opponent, so that late game topdeck finishes never occur.

If you’ve got some Needle Worms kicking around and have been itching to try them out, this is a great deck to take for a spin! Jeff Boeing’s build is easily one of the best out there, and worthy of playtesting and imitation.