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Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043
Doomkaiser Dragon's effect isn't just for Zombie World duelists: remember that its effect can swipe copies of Plaguespreader Zombie, too!
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| Metagame Profile |
| Jason Grabher-Meyer |
| July 30, 2004 |
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In certain regards, the 2004 World Championship metagame wasn’t particularly surprising: of the 31 competitors who attended the tournament on July 24 for the first six rounds, 26 were playing Chaos decks. However, of the five that were not Chaos decks, there were some definite surprises, and the Chaos variants that were played were different in many cases from those seen at U.S. and Canadian Nationals.
Let’s look at how the field broke down:
Chaos Variants (26 decks), spanning mixes of Chaos Control, Chaos Beatdown, and Turbo Chaos strategies.
 Beatdowns (two decks), which included strong monsters with a generally high utility and solid to good synergy—no Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End or Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning included.
Control (one deck), which included weak to medium strength monsters with high synergy, tied together by the priorities of maintained field presence and hand destruction.
Remove from Play (one deck), which included a variety of monsters and spells that take advantage of cards being removed from play: Gren Maju Da Eiza and Bazoo the Soul Eater provide lynchpin synergy.
Warrior (one deck), with unpredictable speed due to Marauding Captain and a strong variety of effects and flexibility.
Chaos was obviously a strong choice heading into the tournament - it’s reliable, fast, resilient since it maintains board presence well, and has crushing, if not always reliable, synergies. Generally a Chaos player will use one of three themes:
Control: The player uses a framework of Shining Angel and Mystic Tomato (usually a pair of each) in conjunction with D. D. Warrior Lady, Don Zaloog, and Spirit Reaper to control the opponent’s hand, often also using Time Seal or Drop Off. The deck can face down other Chaos builds with a relative advantage if it goes off, discarding an opponent’s Chaos Emperor Dragon and Black Luster Soldier (if they’re drawn in the early game) before they can be special summoned.
Beatdown: The duelist utilizes high-ATK monsters and sacrifices some of the synergy of the Control variant for a higher level of average single-card utility. Shining Angel and Mystic Tomato may be used in small numbers, but the deck’s focus is slanted more towards Berserk Gorilla, Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, Reflect Bounder, and sometimes Archfiend Soldier. Apprentice Magician and Magician of Faith can make wise splashes to give the deck some resiliency, and D. D. Warrior Lady is key, as it is in all Chaos variants.
 Turb The goal of a Turbo Chaos deck is to thin the deck as much as possible to get to a Dragon or Soldier as quickly as possible. Shining Angel and Mystic Tomato are big priorities, giving the deck maintained board presence, effective thinning, and lots of options. Thunder Dragon sometimes makes an appearance, and Mirage of Nightmare is, in some duelists’ views, a staple of the archetype. Card Destruction (and in a normal format, Painful Choice) gives the deck even more speed, and Apprentice Magician can be used for extra thinning. Turbo Chaos basically clogs up the field with monsters that are difficult to deal with, all the while racing through the main deck to get to the Chaos monsters as quickly as possible. It lacks an offensive edge in the early game, but it can dominate the mid-game exceedingly easily with a bit of luck.
Sometimes two of the above approaches will be combined—it’s common to see an advanced player do such a thing and switch styles on the fly during a game. A player who combines the above styles can reap the benefits of both approaches if his or her deck is built properly and he or she has enough skill in playing it. World Champion Masatoshi Togawa’s deck is a great example of this. While the deck’s monsters suggest a Beatdown approach, some of the deck’s spells are more often seen in a Control variant.
This is a common enough phenomenon, but what isn’t common is seeing players combine all three play styles, mixing big monsters with control cards as well as Mystic Tomato and Shining Angel for a turbo approach. Though the Top 4 duelists each combined only two of the Chaos variants, many players made attempts to create a hybrid of all three, with varied success. Unfortunately, the resulting decks seemed to lack a bit of the speed that two-way hybrids had. The decks were utterly fabulous, but it was a field of National Champions and the two-variant hybrids just seemed to have a bit of a leg up on the three-way splits when it came to speed.
Of the two normal Beatdown decks present, American competitor Sang Bui’s exemplified the strengths of the deck exceedingly well. A relatively simple monster lineup was complemented with some clever and focused traps and spells. All the staples were pretty much present, but Bui went slightly lighter than most would on monsters in order to pack two copies of Book of Moon, two Nobleman of Crossout, a Mirror Wall, and a Compulsory Evacuation Device. The choices are obviously good ones, but because they were unconventional, they often took opponents by surprise. Bui showed the true strength of the Beatdown concept—because each piece of the deck primarily focuses on its own singular use, cards can be easily substituted in and out of it. It’s difficult to side deck against but very easy to side deck with, and tricky selections such as the aforementioned spells and traps can be incorporated into the deck and “click” very easily. The deck rarely had poor opening draws. since virtually every card in it was extremely high in utility, and Bui gave a stellar performance in the competition.
Rodrigo Togores solved the age-old problem that Warrior decks face in the current environment: with so many people using Mystic Tomato, Shining Angel, and D. D. Warrior Lady to maintain board presence Warrior decks just seem to burn out too fast. Togores, apparently wisely anticipating this problem, main decked two Sasuke Samurai, giving the deck five monsters (including the two D. D. Warrior Ladies and one Exiled Force) total to deal with Chaos’s ability to keep monsters on the field. The deck he ran was built exceedingly solidly, except for the lack of Reinforcement of the Army. An ambitious move, not including Reinforcement cost the deck some reliability, but Togores definitely earned the respect of those in attendance for being the only person competing in Worlds to play a Type-themed deck.
 Lastly, the Control deck played by Markus Jaeger was similar to the decks popular a year ago, with a few upgrades. Jaeger included Berserk Gorilla and Breaker the Magical Warrior for extra muscle instead of last year’s Gemini Elf. He played a single Rush Recklessly, which is quite a good idea, saving Don Zaloogs and the deck’s other underpowered attackers from being attacked as well as giving them some extra oomph with which to deal damage (and in Don Zaloog and Spirit Reaper’s case, cost the opponent a card). Jaeger was one of the many players using the popular Smashing Ground as well—an excellent card for Control given the fact that high-DEF monsters are so often the deck’s bane. Beyond that, the deck was standard Control fare and performed reliably.
So, that was the metagame at the Yu-Gi-Oh! 2004 World Championships in Anaheim California. Duelists saw a lot of Chaos mixed with a healthy dose of innovation, and a few classic decks that made an impact as well—the metagame, all in all, was surprisingly fresh. Player feedback to the banned list was nothing but positive. No one was crying any tears for the loss of Yata, though some missed old favourites like Fiber Jar and Injection Fairy Lily. The general consensus was that the ten cards which were banned were banned for the best, and spirits seemed high in regards to the metagame of the 2004 World Championship!
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