We’re opening up today with one of the biggest surprises of the weekend. Repeated Shonen Jump Top 8’er and the winner of Shonen Jump Championship Columbus, Marc Glass, is one of several notable duelists here today packing Crystal Beasts. Glass has made Day 2 at three of the five Shonen Jumps he’s competed in, so his chances for success seem pretty dang high.

Here’s what he’s running:

Monsters: 17

3 Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus

3 Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger

3 Crystal Beast Amethyst Cat

2 Crystal Beast Ruby Carbuncle

2 Rescue Cat

2 Exiled Force

1 Sangan

1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

Spells: 23

3 Ancient City - Rainbow Ruin

2 Terraforming

3 Rare Value

3 Crystal Beacon

3 Crystal Blessing

3 Crystal Abundance

2 Smashing Ground

2 Lightning Vortex

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Card Destruction

If you’re reading this coverage live, you won’t see one of the major elements that makes Marc Glass’s deck so unique. And if you are reading it live, you might be here on-site waiting to see this article, so I’m not going to give it away. But, if you’re reading this post-event, you’ve noticed a glaring difference between this deck and virtually every other here today, and it shows how dedicated and innovative Marc Glass can be when he’s trying to make a new strategy work.

With maxed out copies of Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus, Topaz Tiger, and Amethyst Cat, Glass is perfectly aligned to take advantage of the pair of Rescue Cat he’s running. Make no mistake: with three Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins, two Terraformings (one more than most duelists usually run), and the Rescue Cat engine to back it up, this is a control deck first and a combo-driven OTK second. The power of Rainbow Ruin simply cannot be over-stated. While the negation and draw effects are obviously powerful, the damage-reducing effect is incredibly underrated and can buy an experienced duelist like Glass a ton of time to put together big plays.

In addition, the dedication of five cards to Rainbow Ruin, which would be a liability with any other field spell, is a safe move here, since extra copies of Rainbow Ruin can be played to get another draw if the Ruins’ controller has four or more Crystal Beasts in his or her back row. Glass has taken advantage of this fact and built his deck carefully to benefit from that ruling.

Experienced Crystal Beast players will be familiar with what is arguably their one weakness: size. While the Crystal Beasts can be explosively fast, they just don’t have the raw ATK to match up to Cyber Dragon or Monarchs. The experienced duelists playing Crystal Beasts here today are compensating for this inherent challenge by running plenty of monster removal, and Glass is no exception. Two Exiled Force, two Smashing Ground, and two Lightning Vortex provide a ton of simple, high-utility monster removal for various situations. Lightning Vortex is a particularly edgy pick that has seen a fair amount of popularity so far this weekend, allowing Glass to turn extra copies of Terraforming and Rainbow Ruins, or just dead combo cards he doesn’t need, into big simplifying sweeps of monster destruction. That kind of power is good when you’re under the gun and need to defend yourself, but even better when you have control of the game: when you’ve got an extra draw each turn thanks to Rainbow Ruins, leveraging that into mass monster removal is nothing short of incredible. A lot of competitors today are banking on Lightning Vortex to make their Crystal Beast decks work.

Despite all the defense and all the careful precautions evident in Glass’ list, the deck is still blazingly fast. Three Crystal Beacons and three Rare Values mean that the deck will consistently have access to its most powerful tricks. Beacon is used over Crystal Promise and coincides with the use of two Crystal Beast Ruby Carbuncles instead of the more common single copy. Though three Crystal Blessings can create dead draws in the early game, they also insure that a strong opening with Rescue Cat can’t be reversed and decimated by an errant Heavy Storm: all those Beacons and Rare Values would be liabilities otherwise. In fact, Crystal Blessing is one of the lynchpins that holds this deck together, and is too important not to be run in threes.

Crystal Abundance acts as the deck’s primary win condition, and the fact that Glass is running three copies of it essentially sets the tone for his strategy. Speed is key, and Glass has built the deck to be as redundant and consistent as possible. Again, this portion of the deck profits from the inclusion of three Crystal Abundances, allowing it to go off at the most unexpected of times.

Card Destruction is the last card of note, and again, it allows for a fast early game that benefits from Crystal Blessing. Set Blessing, activate Card Destruction to discard multiple Crystal Beasts, then return them to the field in spell form with Blessing.

Right now Glass is in the midst of his first match, having won the first duel in a dominating fashion. With Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell losing its popularity as side deck tech, and Crystal Beasts flying below the radar of most competitors, he’s a very strong bid for a day 2 qualification.