Today I’m going to be talking about a deck that I built quite a while back, but never got around to presenting. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it or didn’t think it was good enough—I just never found a good time to write about it. The thing is, it’s an Elemental Hero deck, and most people think that the Heroes can’t even win a game, let alone a match or a tournament. That makes them the underdogs of the game, and if I learned anything from the Steelers’ victory over the Colts last week, it’s that underdogs are dangerous. Actually, there’s another thing I learned from that game that can be easily applied to Yu-Gi-Oh! It’s that in any given game, anybody can win. All it takes to bring the best players down is a solid game plan and the will to win. What does this have to do with the Elemental Heroes? Read on and find out.

Whenever a discussion about the Heroes pops up, the first thing out of a vast majority of the Internet’s mouth is that the Elemental Heroes promote bad hand management and that the fusion monsters aren’t worth the resources that it takes to bring them out. This is called an overly broad generalization, and it’s highly inaccurate. The real key to playing the Hero fusions isn’t what you’re doing (fusing them), it’s how you’re doing it. The statement I outlined above only applies to one situation: using Polymerization to fuse from your hand or field. This is the main factor that drags people away from playing with the Elemental Heroes.

In our current Advanced format, having a resource advantage over the opponent has become so important that people aren’t willing to try anything that isn’t immediately going to net them some sort of advantage. I’ve told many people who are trying to create competitive Hero decks that if they’re using Polymerization, they’re doing it wrong, and I stick by that. I agree that it’s sheer lunacy to give up three cards from your hand or field to get a monster that’s probably going to be immediately destroyed, and that’s why I just don’t do it in this deck. Before I go any further with the strategy employed here, check out the deck.

“Turbo Miracle”

Monsters: 22

3 Magical Merchant

3 Elemental Hero Clayman

3 Elemental Hero Sparkman

3 Elemental Hero Wildheart

3 King of the Swamp

2 D. D. Assailant

1 Sangan

1 Mystic Swordsman LV2

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Exiled Force

1 D.D. Survivor

Spells: 14

3 Miracle Fusion

2 Skyscraper

1 Dark Hole

1 Snatch Steal

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Smashing Ground

2 Reinforcement of the Army

Traps: 5

3 Sakuretsu Armor

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Bottomless Trap Hole

Fusion Deck

3 Elemental Hero Wildedge

3 Elemental Hero Thunder Giant

3 Elemental Hero Shining Flare Wingman

3 Elemental Hero Rampart Blaster

Returning to my football analogy, how exactly was it that the Steelers (who basically had to win out through their last three games of the season) were able to beat the Colts, who seemed to roll through every opponent, finishing with the best record in the league at 14-2? It’s because they had a solid game plan that had been developed largely based on the tactics employed by the San Diego Chargers, one of only two teams to beat Indianapolis in the regular season. You can do the same thing when you’re preparing your deck for Regionals or a Shonen Jump Championship, as long as you have an idea of what decks you’re likely to face.* If I had to pick only one deck to try and prepare against, I’d probably pick Cyber Dragon/Warrior Beatdown. It’s been well represented in the past couple of major tournaments, both in the States and worldwide, and it’s the standby deck of choice for many players who can’t quite get their ideas to work in time for the big show.

Now, how does one go about beating Cyber Dragon/Warrior Beatdown? The most obvious answer is to out-resource your opponent and try to leave him or her topdecking as much as possible. Looking at the above decklist, how can we achieve this goal? There’s no hand disruption in the deck, so our advantages are going to have to come from other sources. I’ve got plenty of removal cards in the deck, so the one-for-one trades aren’t that much of a problem. The problem is how to get the leg up on your opponent that lets you win. One good avenue to do it is combat. With Skyscraper, your monsters can essentially attack anything and destroy it. Another excellent avenue to gain advantage is by making the cards your opponent does have useless. Elemental Hero Wildheart is all about this, and in conjunction with Skyscraper, it becomes amazing. Mystic Swordsman LV2 is an obvious choice for any deck that plays Reinforcement of the Army, and this one is no exception.

The next avenue through which we’ll be trying to gain advantage is monster effects. D. D. Survivor is pretty good at this, as it will ensure that any encounter with an Assailant or Warrior Lady will end in your favor. Magical Merchant’s purpose is two-fold. First, it lets us get an extra spell or trap in our hand that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Second, it tosses extra copies of monsters into the graveyard. Now, this deck has no copies of Premature Burial or Call of the Haunted in it, but with three Miracle Fusions, the graveyard is certainly where we want most of the basic Heroes to end up.

This leads to the final and most important way that this deck can gain an advantage over the opponent: getting more use out of the resources it has than the opponent can get out of the resources that he or she has. This is the real key to the deck. Any basic Hero lost to the graveyard is another Hero that can be used as fusion material for Miracle Fusion, which we might very well have gotten from the card effect that put the Hero there in the first place. It’s almost like Magical Merchant picked up more than one card for us. Polymerization can’t do this, and that’s what makes it such an inferior choice for Hero decks.

As I said above, thanks to Miracle Fusion, a basic Hero is never really lost. Rather, it’s just waiting to be called again. This goes not only for the Heroes that are sent to the graveyard by Magical Merchant, but also those that end up there thanks to your opponent’s card effects and attacks. The key strategy of the deck, then, is to make the cards that you do have into a credible threat to the opponent, so that he or she is forced to spend cards to get rid of them. If I’ve got an Elemental Hero Wildheart running all over the place and I’m keeping it protected, then my opponent must use a removal card on it. If my Sparkman is going to take out Cyber Dragon (thanks to Skyscraper), my opponent has to use a removal card on something. If he or she goes and get Mystic Swordsman LV2 with Reinforcement of the Army and use it to strike down your King of the Swamp, your opponent has done you an enormous favor by using two of his or her best cards in the same turn to do exactly what you want him or her to do. In essence, you’re drawing out the opponent’s removal cards, but you’re also using them to set up your win condition: Miracle Fusion.

Assuming that the opponent hasn’t drawn every single removal card in his or her deck, you should be able to safely play Miracle Fusion after you see one or two Smashing Ground, one or two Sakuretsu Armor or Widespread Ruin, and probably a D. D. Assailant or Exiled Force. Once you deem the environment safe and you have the ability to do it, plop down Miracle Fusion and pick out the best monster for the situation, removing the material monsters from the graveyard.

Did your opponent overextend in an attempt to deal a lot of damage to you before you’d have the chance to fight back? Wildedge is your man—just strike down that opposing field in the same battle phase. Is he or she keeping you at bay with Level Limit – Area B? Then he or she probably has no removal anyway, so pull out Rampart Blaster and start pinging for 1000 every turn. Need a climactic deathblow to end the duel? Shining Flare Wingman is on the case. Really, it should be pretty easy to tell which fusion you’ll need, based on the state of the field. If your opponent manages to get out of the mess you’ve put him or her in for whatever reason, don’t fret. As long as it wasn’t a topdecked Snatch Steal, you’re still in pretty good shape with two more Miracle Fusions in your deck (or maybe even in your hand).

All things considered, this deck still isn’t championship material . . . yet. However, if you have the will to win, you know the game plan, and you’ve prepared properly for the environment, who says it can’t be? Every dog has his day—even the underdog. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!**

Jerome McHale

jcmchale AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu

NEXT WEEK:

Jerome’s Plan for Success:

1. Put Amoeba into deck.
2. Play Mystic Box
3. ???????????????
4. Profit!

*An important reason why the Top 8 decks are and continue to be posted for all major trading card games, and something that Internet pundits easily forget.

**That goes for the Steelers as well. Good luck in the Super Bowl!