I have to admire the dedication of some players to their favorite obscure themes. They keep on playing their Frog decks or Batteryman decks or Pikeru/Curran decks set after set without any sign of further 
support on the horizon strictly for the fun of it, eagerly awaiting the day when a new card will finally come their way and propel them onto the competitive scene. For the supporters of at least two of the above decks, that time has finally come. Rejoice Batteryfans: your prayers have been answered!
The major problems with the Batteryman deck as introduced in The Lost Millennium (and slightly bolstered in Enemy of Justice) is that it didn’t really have any standout cards or a win condition that didn’t involve the eternally sketchy Inferno Reckless Summon. The incredibly verbose Super Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t really the kind of monster that you’d look at and think, "Gee, I really don’t want this guy smashing me in the face." Chances are you don’t really want to take a face smashing anyway, but given the choice between getting wrecked by Judgment Dragon or Super Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon, one is clearly preferable to the other. What the Batterymen really needed in order to take off were (in this order) a huge closer, better ways to fetch monsters from the deck than Inferno Reckless Summon, and other new spell and trap cards that give them an edge over the currently popular strategies.
In the field of finishers, the Batterymen have made out like bandits, landing not one but two massive game-ending monsters, only one of which is actually a Batteryman. Let’s start with Batteryman Industrial Strength. On a level of power ranging from Super Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon to Judgment Dragon, Industrial Strength definitely weighs in on the Judgment Dragon end of the spectrum. Batteryman Industrial Strength is basically the Batterymen’s answer to Dark Armed Dragon. You summon it by removing two Batterymen in your graveyard from play, but once it’s on the field you can remove a Thunder-type monster from your graveyard each turn to destroy a spell or trap and a monster on the field. Attach this to a level 8 2800 ATK body, and you’ve got yourself an instrument of destruction ready to ravage the field. If you don’t mind going off theme for a fantastic card, I would highly suggest you make use of those Guardian of Order cards you picked up at the Sneak Preview. I’ll get into more detail after the decklist, but let’s just say that out of the three categories I outlined above, monster-fetching special summon tactics is the one that the Batterymen are strongest in. You can easily manage to get two Light monsters on the field in a single turn without even resorting to the Limited Monster Reborn and Premature Burial. When I want to swarm the field with Batterymen at a moment’s notice, this is how I do it.
One of the new tricks the Batterymen have learned from Light of Destruction is how to completely wipe the opponent off the field with a single card. Short Circuit is basically the same thing that Frog decks had in Des Croaking except it’s easier to play and will almost always be backed by a game-winning blow. Croaking required you to have three copies of a level 5 1900 ATK monster on the field. Sure, that monster had a trick that helped it pull its buddies to the field, but in terms of bringing friends to the party, Batteryman Charger has Des Frog beat by a landslide. You’ll need three Batteryman monsters on the field in order to activate Short Circuit, and a quick way to get two out of the three required is to tribute a Batteryman for Batteryman Charger. Doing so allows you to grab another Batteryman from your hand or deck and dump it directly onto the field.
Let’s say you have Batteryman D and a set Batteryman Micro-Cell. Your opponent decides to swing on the set monster because attacking Batteryman D would be pointless. Imagine his or her surprise when you proceed to pull Batteryman AA out, draw a card for Micro-Cell, draw 
again once it’s your turn, and tribute the Batteryman D for Batteryman Charger. At the end of it, you’ll have Charger on the field with two AA cards in attack position, which is enough to activate Short Circuit and wipe your opponent clean. It also happens to give you an open shot for 6700 damage. That’s not quite game, but if we throw down a free Guardian of Order, that’ll be all she wrote for your opponent.
Guardian of Order isn’t even your only option in the above situation to bring the game to an abrupt close. You still have seven revival cards in the deck to bring back one or more Batterymen between Premature Burial, Monster Reborn, Battery Charger, and Portable Battery Pack. Monster Reborn and Premature Burial are well known at this point, but Battery Charger is a card that I’ll bet a number of you had completely forgotten about. The name was familiar to me but I had to go look it up since I completely forgot what the card does. For 500 life points, Battery Charger lets you pull a Batteryman in your graveyard back to the field in attack or defense position. Charger is a solid recursion option that works well with Batteryman AA, Batteryman D, or Batteryman Charger depending on the situation you’re in. It’s especially relevant in the time period immediately following the tribute summon of Batteryman Charger, since that’s the period of time in which you’re most likely to pull off the win.
If you’re looking for something more along the lines of a free revival of two 2000+ ATK monsters, I’d point you in the direction of Portable Battery Pack. This trap lets you get two Batteryman monsters back in attack position, making it quite possibly the most potent themed revival card we’ve seen yet. Call of the Haunted has been done and redone many times and in many ways, but never before has a revival trap brought back two monsters at once. Two Batterymen is enough to drop Guardian of Order right away, and it puts you one normal summon away from being able to activate Short Circuit to likely win the game. Even if your opponent has something like Threatening Roar to try and keep you from winning, you might just have a Solemn Judgment waiting there to ensure your victory. Remember folks, counter traps are your friends and you should definitely be playing them if you want to be able to break up huge power plays and force through your own.
Another problem that always used to plague the Batterymen is that you really need two Batteryman AA cards on the field before you have any sort of credible threat. One would just get run down in an instant, and if you tried to add Batteryman C to the mix to give yourself more targets for recursion cards, you’d be brought down by the fact that C doesn’t even help Batterymen since they aren’t Machine-type monsters. In the end, you’re left with a problem. How do you keep Batteryman AA alive long enough to be tributed for Charger or joined by another AA? The answer is my favorite card from the entire Light of Destruction set: Honest! In case you didn’t get the message from my preview article, Honest is an incredible card. To cut a long story short, Honest makes one of your Light monsters automatically win a battle against an opposing monster in attack mode in addition to dealing damage equal to its ATK and effectively ending the opponent’s battle phase if he or she was the attacker. It’s basically Sakuretsu Armor and Magic Cylinder stuck on to a Kuriboh with all the benefits and none of the drawbacks of any of those cards.
Honest also has this neat ability that lets it bounce back to your hand during one of your main phases. This makes it ideal to use for quick damage against an empty field without leaving any extra cards for your opponent to sweep away next turn, while also cutting off his or her potential attack options due to the now known presence of Honest in your hand. In this deck, it also serves the purpose of acting as a temporary second Light monster to allow you to summon Guardian of Order. Once the Guardian is down, you can pop Honest right back to your hand to keep your other Light monster (probably a Batteryman) from getting pounded in battle! The Batterymen sure have come a long way since their introduction in The Lost Millennium, and the dueling world now has a new competitive low-budget deck to play around with. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
—Jerome McHale