This deck utilizes many of the same drawing powers as the Advanced deck, attempting to special summon Destiny Hero - Disk Commander multiple times. You’ll summon the Dragon and either defeat your opponents or strip them of most their cards, then use the advantage you gained to overwhelm them. After summoning Light and Darkness Dragon, almost no card (Traditional or not) will be able to stop you. In fact, fewer cards that see play in the Traditional format will stop it than in Advanced. (Cards like Treeborn Frog and Asura Priest don’t see nearly as much play in Traditional.)

The Monsters

The deck resembles a Chaos build. It also features a Destiny Hero backbone, allowing it to draw more cards than others thanks to Destiny Draw. Also, the inclusion of Malicious will give us an easier Light and Darkness Dragon summon, locking down the opponent and creating a quick win.

Monsters: 19

1 Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End

1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning

3 Light and Darkness Dragon

2 Destiny Hero - Malicious

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Destiny Hero - Fear Monger

1 Witch of the Black Forest

1 Sangan

1 Card Trooper

1 Marshmallon

1 Morphing Jar

1 Destiny Hero - Disk Commander

1 Sinister Serpent

1 Treeborn Frog

1 Magician of Faith

Adding Witch of the Black Forest allows us to search for Stratos in another way, as well as synergistic cards like Morphing Jar, Card Trooper, and Destiny Hero - Fear Monger. As always, the movement to Traditional gives you better hands, and this deck is overwhelming when it has a good hand.

Obviously, the strongest monster in this deck (and the one you should focus on summoning) is Light and Darkness Dragon. For this reason, we’re running Treeborn Frog to complement Malicious. Together, they’ll offer you plenty of free tribute summons.

This deck also makes Card Trooper simply amazing. It’ll dump Malicious and Treeborn into your graveyard (allowing you an extra card), it’ll dump Disk Commander for recursion, and it’ll even dump Lights and Darks for the Chaos monsters. All together, the deck has six Light monsters and eight Dark monsters.

The Spells

The spells in the deck are rather congruent with normal Chaos builds, with a few exceptions. This deck includes three copies of the dreaded Destiny Draw, giving you the power to draw extra cards and dump Malicious or Disk Commander into the graveyard. It also features Reinforcement of the Army, to give you a quick Elemental Hero Stratos. Brain Control is also included, giving you a total of three cards that take your opponent’s monsters. This will give you easier Light and Darkness Dragon summons, as well as fast one-turn KOs that leave your opponents wondering what happened.

Spells: 16

1 Heavy Storm

1 Pot of Greed

1 Graceful Charity

1 Painful Choice

1 Harpie’s Feather Duster

1 Raigeki

1 Dark Hole

1 Monster Reborn

1 Premature Burial

1 Change of Heart

1 Snatch Steal

1 Brain Control

1 Reinforcement of the Army

3 Destiny Draw

As is often the case, good spells become ridiculous when included in a Traditional deck. Painful Choice dumps Treeborn Frog, Disk Commander, Malicious, and Sinister Serpent, plus Lights and Darks. It’s almost always the best card you can draw, giving you an incredible edge over your opponent.

The Traps

Many of my recent articles have proposed strange trap lineups. This one (sadly) is not so. It includes what many players would consider the typical Traditional traps. I was only able to include the most powerful cards in the trap lineup to fit the monsters and spells, and they call for little justification.

Traps: 5

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Imperial Order

1 Call of the Haunted

Playing the Deck

The goal of the deck is to quickly cripple an opponent. Here, having more cards than your opponent means something. No matter how amazing his or her draws are, if the opponent can’t play them, then he or she can’t win. Light and Darkness Dragon sets up a situation in which an opponent with few cards becomes an opponent without any answers. In fact, if your opponent is out of cards and you summon Light and Darkness Dragon, you are almost guaranteed victory.

I suggest spending the early game attempting to build a significant graveyard and hand presence, allowing you amazing draws in the late game. You’ll draw a lot of cards rather quickly, but that doesn’t mean a guaranteed win. Don’t expect a single Light and Darkness Dragon to win the game: in fact, a Tsukuyomi summon can take away all of the Dragon’s power to negate. The same goes for a single Treeborn Frog during the standby phase. Consider the Dragon useful only as a complement to the rest of the deck.

You need to watch out for any Remove from Play (RFP) strategies when using this deck. RFP punishes almost anything, and your opponents know it. I suggest side decking a lot of spell and trap disruption, such as Twister and Dust Tornado. If your opponent can successfully stop you from using the graveyard, you’ll probably end up with a loss.

Until next week, I suggest you invest in a few copies of Light and Darkness Dragon. At a Regional I attended just last weekend, I saw so many copies it made my head spin. It’s already making its mark on the game, and I’m sure it’ll continue to do so. Good luck, and enjoy the hilarity of watching an opponent activate five cards that just get negated!

—Ryan Murphy