Eight rounds have passed at the Yu-Gi-Oh! National Championships, and as I look down the tables, one question comes to my mind.

Where is Macro Cosmos?

The idea of three quick-play Dark Holes in the form of Grand Convergence was enticing to many duelists; coupled with the power of a recurring troop of D.D. Survivors, who are also great foils to the ever-popular Bottomless Trap Hole and Chaos Sorcerer, Macro Cosmos has power that even a slacker can see. So why didn’t any duelist have the courage to pilot a deck based on this planetary powerhouse?

Inconsistency seems to be the common fear among players. Any student of deck probability theory could tell you that having three copies of Macro Cosmos in a 40-card deck gives you about a one in three chance to draw it. That’s the same odds as drawing Return from the Different Dimension in the popular Chaos-Return Deck, but without it, your D.D. Survivors lose that extra edge, and your Grand Convergences are regulated to decoy tactics for your opponent’s spell and trap removal.

I talked with the latest “flavor of the month” duelist, Emon Ghaneian, to find out why he backed out of his promise to duel with the Cosmos at Nationals, like a spineless Slifer slacker. One of his biggest fears was how a side deck heavy with trap destruction could ruin the deck’s massive potential. Since Macro Cosmos is a trap card, it is vulnerable to being destroyed before you get any benefit out of it. An opponent with an array of Dust Tornados and Frost Monarchs could spell doom for a Cosmos deck’s tricks. Emon expressed his frustrations best when he said, “What was I supposed to do, run Fake Trap?” (Right after this, the head judge was asked a rules question about Fake Trap, by the way.)

Most of the side decks here at Nationals weren’t filled with extra Tornados, so this fear looks to be unfounded—most people weren’t preparing for Macro Cosmos and built their side decks to handle more pedestrian threats like Cyber-Stein.

A lack of time to play Macro Cosmos in a sanctioned testing environment before Nationals may have scared off other duelists. Enemy of Justice has only been legal for premier events for three days, and that’s not enough time for even a diligent Obelisk Blue student to get a feel for the deck in a competitive environment. The competitors I talked to weren’t sure how many tribute monsters to run, if they should add D.D. Scout Plane to their D.D. arsenal or include one copy of Helios – The Primordial Sun for an instant defense and added tribute fuel.*

Duelists are falling back on tried and true (i.e. boring) decks today, but maybe a creative deck-building prodigy (like a younger version of myself) will come with the cosmic power of Macro Cosmos to tomorrow’s Regional side event and win the brand-new Regional playmat for the 2007 tournament season. Either way, it won’t be long until adventurous stargazers find a way to draw out the full power of Macro Cosmos. My superior education leads me to believe it will be a Gravekeeper/Cosmos combo to totally lock out Chaos Return’s Graveyard searching staples and benefit from A Cat of Ill Omen’s trap-searching instincts.

*Start studying this—it will be a discussion question on my next exam!