Everywhere you went on Saturday, everyone was talking about “that guy with the 50-card deck.” Kevin Hor charged up to me Saturday morning before the tournament even began, telling me I’d want to do a profile on his friend’s deck. It’s something I hear a lot: “So and so has this awesome deck! You’ve gotta check it out!” The person in question usually ends up showing me a cookie cutter deck with three pieces of tech in it. Your Warrior Toolbox with a pair of Strike Ninja might win tournaments, but it’s not exactly a shocking burst of creativity.

Well, Aaron Eaton’s 49-card mostly-monster deck was creative, and incredibly so. Now that the tournament has concluded, we can show you his awesome deck. Here’s what it looks like:

Monsters: 33

3 Giant Rat

3 Nimble Momonga

2 Pyramid Turtle

1 Exiled Force

1 Mystic Swordsman LV2

1 Kinetic Soldier

3 Mystic Tomato

3 Apprentice Magician

1 Sangan

2 Spirit Reaper

2 Old Vindictive Magician

1 Newdoria

1 Chaos Sorcerer

3 Magical Merchant

1 Magician of Faith

1 Time Wizard

2 Gren Maju Da Eiza

1 Vampire Lord

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch

Spells: 8

1 Premature Burial

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Book of Moon

1 Dark Hole

1 Confiscation

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Smashing Ground

1 Heavy Storm

Traps: 8

1 Widespread Ruin

3 Skull Lair

3 Sakuretsu Armor

1 Dust Tornado

Side:

1 Enraged Battle Ox

3 Swarm of Locusts

2 Swarm of Scarabs

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Fissure

1 Dust Tornado

3 Waboku

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Snatch Steal

Here’s how the deck works. Giant Rat, Nimble Momonga, Pyramid Turtle, Mystic Tomato, and Apprentice Magician all serve three purposes. First, they soak up hits, preventing the opponent from breaking through your ranks or getting card advantage in battle. Second, they search out other monsters for a sort of toolbox effect. Pyramid Turtle gets Vampire Lord; Giant Rat fetches Exiled Force and Mystic Swordsman; Apprentice Magician can even search out the lone copy of Time Wizard. This ensures that Eaton always has the right monster for the right situation.

Third, the self-replacing monsters let you fill your graveyard really quickly. That’s important, because it’s the first part of the deck’s win condition. It needs to get tons of monsters into the graveyard in order to fuel Skull Lair.

By the same token, the Skull Lairs perform two functions. Like the self-replacing monsters, they keep the field under control, turning your fallen monsters into monster removal that can quickly result in card advantage. Beyond that, the Skull Lairs allow the deck to move the in-graveyard monsters to the out-of-play area.

Once the monsters are out of play, they feed the ATK and DEF of Gren Maju Da Eiza, giving him 400 ATK for every card removed. If the opponent has been using D. D. Assailant or Nobleman of Crossout, the numbers pile up even faster; it isn’t uncommon to see Gren Maju come out with more than 5000 of each stat. Because this deck sets so many monsters, the opponent gets into a rut of attacking your facedowns. When you finally set your enormous Gren Maju to defense position, your opponent will probably attack right into it. If it’s got 4000 or 5000 DEF, that takes a big chunk out of your opponent’s LP. Of course, because the monster that attacked can’t turn to defense after attacking, the opponent usually gets wiped out on the following turn. It’s a completely brutal idea, and it really impressed all the players here this weekend despite the fact that Eaton fell short of the Top 8.

Because the deck maintains board presence so well, it works against virtually anything. Its only bad matchup is Lockdown Burn, since a Burn player can deal damage at a slow and steady rate without caring what’s happening on the field. That’s why Eaton is packing Swarm of Locusts and Swarm of Scarabs; they shred the opponent’s field in that particular matchup.

The deck is really cool because it presses its luck as far as it can before pulling off the win with Gren Maju. Holding out as long as possible before dropping Gren Maju ensures that it’s huge when it finally does hit the field, and letting the opponent attack 20 or so defense position monsters gets them into the routine of attacking facedowns blindly.

Once word of this deck gets out, players will be able to recognize it midway through a duel. What other deck runs Giant Rat, Mystic Tomato, and Nimble Momonga? For now, this is probably the best-kept secret in the game. When I watched Aaron Eaton playing in the feature match I decided to give him, I was close to regretting my decision. As his LP got lower and lower, I’d honestly thought he was going to lose the first duel, and my hopes for the second and third were sinking fast. My worries were unfounded, though; the deck is amazing, and with some practice and experimentation, it could easily hang with the likes of the top decks from this weekend.

If you’ve got the time, try this sucker out. It’s phenomenal, and it’s easily the most intelligent deck that has been created since Empty Jar deckout.