Over the past three months, I’ve seen one deck repeatedly pop up in the hands of highly creative players. Everyone from Vincent Tundo to several Level 3 judges has created their own twists on the same base strategy, and since the deck has received little to no press, I’m eager to feature it in The Apotheosis today!
The game plan? Use up almost your entire hand on your first turn by activating a stream of burn cards. Then replenish your supply with cards like Elemental Hero Bubbleman, and finish off the opponent with more burn over the turns that follow! Sound simple? It isn’t, and this strategy is probably one of the most difficult to play since the Life Equalizer/Blasting the Ruins deck. I’ll let today’s submitter, Devon, tell you about his build.
What’s up, Jason? Right now I’m working on a deck idea that is very difficult to play, very original, and a blast from the past, so to speak. It’s gonna need some assistance though, and I so hoped you’d be able to do it.
This deck is quite the surprise to the unsuspecting duelist, but it has its share of problems. The first thing I learned about the deck is to play it extremely carefully! Throughout testing, it has won some and lost some. It needs to be played very cautiously, and you don’t need to use every card you have just because you have them.
I usually start by getting the opponent down to 5000 life points. Then my hand determines how I act. Obviously the best option if you have Bubbleman is to rid yourself of your hand immediately, and use his effect to start running through your deck. This usually brings tempo into play and you’ll lose fast or win fast depending on how you play, so it’s quite the gamble. Since that’s the case, and not every card in the deck functions perfectly in any order, it’s important to be able to change your options. This is done by Magical Mallet. Bubbleman is one of the key cards in this deck to keep it going, so Reinforcement of the Army, and The Warrior Returning Alive can be important for maintaining the spree.
The deck basically uses up good ol’ burn cards faster than oil, and keeps the deck thinning and thinning to keep the burn steady, leading to the opponent’s end. You need to be extremely skillful—knowing when to hold your position, set a card, or play one—but this deck is very fun to play with either way you work it. It’s a real challenge.
If you have any thoughts or ideas to share, I would very much appreciate them. Keep up the good work.
Devon, Conway, Arkansas
Sounds cool, huh? This might be your first time seeing this type of deck, so I’ll get straight to revealing the list. By all means, click on any cards you aren’t familiar with—it’s pretty easy to get all those burn spells mixed up.
Blasting Bubbleman Burn!—39 Cards
Monsters: 6
3 Elemental Hero Bubbleman
1 Rapid-Fire Magician
1 Toon Cannon Soldier
1 Morphing Jar
Spells: 33
3 Tremendous Fire
3 Poison of the Old Man
3 Hinotama
3 Ookazi
3 Final Flame
3 Restructer Revolution
3 Goblin Thief
3 Misfortune
3 Toon Table of Contents
2 Magical Mallet
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 The Warrior Returning Alive
1 Meteor of Destruction
1 Graceful Charity
The deck would ideally open on turn 1 with a Bubbleman and five cards that can cause 1000 damage each. Early in the game, that’s Meteor of Destruction, Restructer Revolution, and Tremendous Fire. The five burn cards would drop the opponent to 3000 life points, Bubbleman could be special summoned to draw two more cards, and those would hopefully deal another 1000 damage each. From there, it’s just a matter of drawing for a couple more turns to polish off the last 1000 life points the opponent has.
Granted, that’s a hypothetical situation and the odds are against it being so simple, but something like it happens frequently enough that this deck can win reliably. The best part is that the format has slowed down a bit since its inception, which plays into this deck’s plans perfectly. More Monarchs and Creature Swap control means fewer Aggro Beatdowns and Warrior Toolboxes, the two decks with speed enough to rip this one apart.
However, having seen several different forms of this strategy in action, I think a few changes can be made to help Devon win more often. First, a key card is missing from the mix—one that’s integral to the deck’s success. Second, I think this strategy could work better if it’s played more as a turn 3, 4, or 5 deck, instead of a turn 2 or 3 deck. I’ll be dropping some of the less effective burn cards in order to accommodate some very careful choices that are a bit slower, but more damaging.
First up, I want to remove the entire Rapid-Fire Magician/Toon Cannon Soldier line. The whole plan here is to thin the deck via Toon Table of Contents, eventually drawing into Toon Cannon Soldier and launching it for 500 damage. If you can draw Rapid-Fire Magician first, then that’s 1700 damage total. There’s a pretty obvious problem though: if you draw into Toon Cannon Soldier first, then you’ve got three dead cards remaining in the deck. Also, a topdecked Rapid-Fire Magician after you burn your hand is practically worthless. I’m going to remove all five cards.
The pair of Magical Mallet cards will be tossed as well. Mallet loses you a card and, while it’s a boon to other combo strategies, this deck just can’t handle it: the card loss represents a direct impact on the amount of damage you’re dealing, and one lost draw phase can mean failure instead of success. Instead of trying to Mallet into the high damage cards, we just need to structure the deck differently to create more opportunities for big shots.
The Warrior Returning Alive can be dropped, since we’ll be adding another important draw card that simulates the effect of Elemental Hero Bubbleman. The problem with The Warrior Returning Alive is that if you get stuck with it in the early game before Bubbleman makes it to the graveyard, it’s worse than useless. It’s actually stuck in your hand. Then when you draw Bubbleman, you can’t use his draw effect, since you’ve still got Returning Alive. Ouch. While this deck needs to run a few tricky cards that can create this type of situation, there are simply better choices.
Finally, Hinotama, Final Flame, and one copy of Goblin Thief will all be removed. 500 damage simply isn’t good enough to warrant a place in this type of deck, and by replacing these cards with slightly slower ones, we can generate damage more efficiently.
On to the additions!
The first cards we need are three copies of Card of Sanctity! How often do you read that? “This deck needs Card of Sanctity!” It’s surprisingly true here, as Sanctity allows us to have three more ways of drawing cards once it burns itself out. In addition, unlike Elemental Hero Bubbleman, the Card can blow clean through any locked-up field, earning you a reprieve for particularly harsh draws or misplays. Card of Sanctity is a must-have for this archetype, regardless of the directions you might want to take it. Three Meteor of Destruction cards are important too. While they’re only effective up to a point, they’re another source of the magical 1000 damage that this deck needs to kick out.
In order to make this more of a mid-game strategy and increase its consistency, I’m going to run a few defensive cards that can provide burn damage. Three Giant Germ cards, a Magic Cylinder, and a Ring of Destruction can serve as huge damage providers, and all of them can block attacks. Sure, they also block your use of Elemental Hero Bubbleman, but that doesn’t really matter since they’re blocking attacks and getting you to more draw phases anyway. Barring Jinzo, there’s almost nothing that can make these a hindrance to your deck, and even if you really need to power forward, you can always drop Card of Sanctity to wipe them away. The Germs also have the advantage of thinning you towards key cards, so they take up some of the slack left behind by the removal of Toon Table of Contents. This is definitely the most unique addition I’m making, but I don’t think that it will have a negative impact.
Three Just Desserts cards are the last addition to the “you can’t use them immediately” stable, but again, being able to dish out 1000 to 1500 damage is incredibly valuable. They don’t delay you for very long, so they’re not a serious hindrance to the deck’s pacing: you can always set one, fire it off next turn after eating an attack, and then drop Bubbleman on the turn that follows.
Two Chain Strike cards are my last contribution to the deck, and they’re really a no-brainer over stuff like Hinotama and Final Flame. Even when you only have one of your own effects to chain to, Chain Strike will kick out 800 damage. Its ability to generate 1200 damage to match the 800 from Poison of the Old Man and Ookazi is especially nice, quickly creating a damage total that’s a multiple of 1000. That’s valuable, because you’ll usually find that your opponent is taking 1000 damage at a time, and nothing stinks more than seeing him or her sit at 200 life points while his or her monsters mangle you.
Here are the changes I made to the deck:
-1 Rapid-Fire Magician
-1 Toon Cannon Soldier
-3 Toon Table of Contents
-2 Magical Mallet
-1 The Warrior Returning Alive
-3 Hinotama
-3 Final Flame
-1 Goblin Thief
+3 Giant Germ
+1 Reinforcement of the Army
+3 Card of Sanctity
+2 Meteor of Destruction
+2 Chain Strike
+1 Ring of Destruction
+1 Magic Cylinder
+3 Just Desserts
The final build looks like this!
Blasting Bubbleman Burn!—Jason’s Fix—40 Cards
Monsters: 7
3 Elemental Hero Bubbleman
1 Morphing Jar
3 Giant Germ
Spells: 28
3 Tremendous Fire
3 Meteor of Destruction
3 Poison of the Old Man
3 Ookazi
2 Goblin Thief
3 Restructer Revolution
3 Misfortune
2 Chain Strike
2 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Graceful Charity
3 Card of Sanctity
Traps: 5
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Magic Cylinder
3 Just Desserts
It’s important to understand that my build of the deck plays somewhat differently from the original. While Devon’s version can drop Bubbleman at just about any time, the new one has a few more cards that can cause complications. The monsters being used here are more efficient than those in the original, however, and the higher average damage per card compensates the slight rise in complexity. You’ve also got Card of Sanctity to shred your own field and reset any unworkable situation.
How you play the deck depends partly on matchup and opening draw. If you happen to open with Giant Germ, by all means set it and pass! Just make sure that you can get rid of all of your traps in the first couple of turns in order to free yourself up for Bubbleman. If you open with Card of Sanctity, you can give yourself some leeway, but regardless of which draw card you encounter first, remember that you want to use all of the cards at your disposal.
The only penalty to slow-rolling the early game is that if you draw into a second Card of Sanctity or Bubbleman, you’ve lost the ability to use one of them. Also, drawing two Bubbleman or Reinforcement of the Army cards means you’ll have to get rid of a Bubbleman before you can draw cards through the other. Practice makes perfect, and you’ll need a lot of experience before you feel comfortable pulling the trigger.
When you do, be ready for the opponent to start attacking you as fast as possible. It won’t take him or her long to put two and two together, but luckily the opponent’s aggression plays into Giant Germ, Magic Cylinder, and Just Desserts really well. It’s at this point where luck comes into play, and you’ll be glad that you won’t topdeck into stuff like Final Flame or Hinotama.
This deck is ridiculously entertaining, and it’s so different from anything else out there that you really have to try it! It’s pretty inexpensive to build, with only Morphing Jar and Ring of Destruction clocking in at more than ten bucks, making it the perfect deck for an adventurous-yet-frugal duelist. It’s the perfect thing to whip out on a League night, and it’s a nice break from the Monarch grind.
That’s it for this week, but head on back next Wednesday for the final Apotheosis of the year!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer