The biggest drawback that most otherwise excellent cards face is their cost. Raigeki Break was an absolutely brilliant card back when the cost was negligible due to Sinister Serpent, but nowadays, it hardly sees play. Similarly, before Treeborn Frog was released, tribute monsters were barely seen at all in decks. Monsters that required two tributes were absolutely unheard of, with the exception of Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys. Now that we do have the Frog, tributes are everywhere! Thanks to the little rare that could, level 5 and 6 monsters were back in the game, and when Power of the Duelist came along, players who wanted to play level 7+ monsters without tributing valuable monsters finally had their wishes granted.

Ever since I first saw the previews for Mausoleum of the Emperor, I’ve wanted to build a deck around its incredibly powerful effect. The strengths and weaknesses of high-level monsters are all very well known. They usually have large ATK strength and killer effects, but you usually have to tribute one or two monsters in order to put them into play. It’s difficult to get the most out of your investments if the monster you tribute for is immediately (or almost immediately) destroyed. That’s why my version of the Mausoleum deck is going to be all about hitting your opponent hard and fast—making sure that every monster you play does something quite unpleasant to the opponent either before he or she has a chance to destroy it or regardless of what happens to it. Normally, players would use Monarchs to do this since they nearly always do something when tribute summoned. I’m not planning on doing that much tribute summoning though, so Monarchs are out. Instead, I’ll be calling on cards that can negate opposing cards, offer some kind of recursion ability, or otherwise become detrimental to my opponent/beneficial to me without simply falling back on their hugeness. I also have a particular fondness for a Destiny Hero card that will afford me certain luxuries that Mausoleum cannot provide on its own. Here’s what I’m going to be trying out at a local event near me:

Monsters: 23

1 Dark Magician of Chaos

1 Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys

1 Jinzo

3 Dark Ruler Ha Des

3 Destiny Hero - Dasher

3 Nimble Momonga

2 Mystic Tomato

2 Apprentice Magician

1 Treeborn Frog

1 Hand of Nephthys

1 Old Vindictive Magician

1 Magician of Faith

1 Morphing Jar

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

Spells: 8

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

3 Mausoleum of the Emperor

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Book of Moon

Traps: 10

1 Call of the Haunted

2 Widespread Ruin

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

2 Dust Tornado

2 Jar of Greed

You didn’t read that decklist wrong. There are nine high level monsters in this deck and none of them are Cyber Dragon. This is primarily due to the fact that I’m planning to always have a monster on the field of some description, be it face up or face down, in attack or defense position. Furthermore, I expect to be able to pump monsters on to the field with either Mausoleum or Dasher. Use of the latter ensures that I’ll have a monster on my field during the draw phase, making it a less than solid plan to have a bunch of 2100 ATK monsters that I’ll only play in a theoretically rare situation. The thing that disturbs me is that I’m playing Treeborn Frog in a deck that’s reliant on field spells. A while back in the School of Duel, when I talked about choosing appropriate cards for your deck, I presented a problem that I’ve retroactively named The Frog Dilemma. It goes something like this:

If you’re playing three Mausoleum of the Emperor cards, no Dashers, and one each of Call of the Haunted, Premature Burial, and Swords of Revealing Light with eight tribute monsters (half level 7 or higher), should you play Treeborn Frog? My answer to that is no you shouldn’t, but if you start to change the parameters of the question, that “no” can become an “absolutely” very quickly.

The biggest difference between that problem and this deck is that, rather than running about four level 7 or above monsters, I only have Dark Magician of Chaos and Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys, one of which has its own special summon method. There are also three copies of Destiny Hero - Dasher in this deck, which is the main reason for the Frog inclusion. You need to get Dasher on to the field as early and often as possible to facilitate future summons. Treeborn Frog assists very well with that and helps you to keep a presence in the game until you get one of your Mausoleums out or a Dasher in the graveyard. It would seem at first glance that Dasher is just an extremely fragile tribute monster with a less than solid primary effect and a nasty drawback. Really though, the secondary effect is everything with this card, allowing normally bad topdecks to become instant threats without even taking up your normal summon. To aid this cause, I’ve also included a pair of Jar of Greed cards as well. Jar of Greed is another card that doesn’t seem worth it on its own, but once you consider its interaction with Dasher and the fact that you can chain it to cards like Mystical Space Typhoon to render them essentially worthless, it’s actually quite useful. Also, in case you’re unaware of the interaction with Dasher, you can use the free summon effect of Dasher at any point during the draw phase, regardless of whether the monster is drawn due to your normal draw or as a result of an effect played during the draw phase.

The overall goal of this deck is to negate as many of your opponent’s monster effects as possible by means of Dark Ruler Ha Des. As such, the entirety of the deck is devoted to playing Ha Des as early and often as you possibly can—preferably after clearing out your opponent’s backfield first. While there are plenty of other viable tribute options, I feel like Ha Des is the best one available in threes (considering that, as it stands, nearly every deck is totally reliant on monster effects in order to do anything relevant to the game). Airknight Parshath is an excellent card, as is Vampire Lord, but both have an unfortunate weakness to Cyber Dragon and neither one will truly dominate an opponent. Ha Des, on the other hand, destroys strategies, defeats Monarchs in battle, and generally ruins lives. Jinzo protects itself and others from trap cards in addition to having a hefty 2400 ATK. Dark Magician of Chaos can give us back a valuable spell card in addition to removing everything it destroys from play, and Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys responds to the rampant removal in the environment by replicating the effect of Heavy Storm every time it returns to life. This also conveniently makes your Treeborn Frog relevant again, in addition to wiping out an opponent’s protective spells and traps. Even Dasher itself can be a real pain in the neck for an opponent. 3100 ATK is nothing to scoff at and even if Dasher ends up getting destroyed in the next turn or in response to the attack, that just sets you up to continue dropping tribute monsters whenever you please.

Overall, the biggest single card threats to you are Ring of Destruction and (potentially) Royal Decree. You’ll need to be quite careful with your life points given that both you and your opponent are likely playing Ring and, at this point, people just side in three Decrees against anything that plays more traps than they do. There’s a chance that sided Decrees could help you more than it helps them, but that assumes that they aren’t packing a load of spell-based removal and a pair of Exiled Force cards. Either way, you’ll need to be careful when dealing with an opponent using Decree.

That’s going to wrap it up for me this week, but make sure you check out the School of Duel as well, especially if you’re testing for Shonen Jump Championship Orlando. I’ll be back again next week with another new deck, but until then, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: If Just Desserts is going to hit me for 2500 damage, it’s going to be because I have five monsters out there beating my opponent down.