The Sneak Preview for Shadow of Infinity has come and gone, and I hope that everyone who went to it had a great time. As for the rest of you who didn’t, there’s always next time. Just let the smug sense of superiority that your friends who went are currently wielding be a reminder to you of what you missed over the weekend. One of the things you missed was, of course, the rise of Insects out of total obscurity to a newfound level of not sucking anymore (as Jason put it). I’m going to take advantage of this newfound power in just a few moments with a shiny new Insect deck featuring some of the new monsters, but I’d like to first make an observation or two about a specific Insect monster that I think we’ll soon see popping up in side decks. I’m talking, of course, about Silent Insect.

For the benefit of those who didn’t go to the Sneak Preview* and haven’t seen this card yet, it’s a tiny little Insect that switches itself to defense position when you normal or flip summon it. Afterwards, it negates all continuous spells and traps as long as it remains on the field. I don’t know about you, but I see this as an excellent card to side in against stall/burn decks. Negate that pesky Level Limit – Area B and Gravity Bind to let your monsters attack freely. Heck, you can negate Mask of Restrict long enough to tribute the Insect off for Mobius, destroying two of their spells or traps and reactivating the Mask so that they can’t tribute your monsters for Lava Golem. The main downside is the terrible DEF value that even a Stealth Bird can beat. The upside of the downside is that if a burn deck ever makes an attack, all your copies of Sakuretsu Armor that used to be dead to you are now useful again.

Another fun card from Shadow of Infinity that might see a little play in side decks is Memory Crusher. There are some players out there who think it’s incredibly cool and intimidating to sit down and plop a 128-card fusion deck on the table, even though they have no way to summon any of the monsters in it. As a judge who does deck checks sometimes (and a reporter who types decklists sometimes), these people drive me crazy. Gone are the days where it can’t possibly hurt you to play three of every Fusion monster in the game, because now a single poke from a single level 3 monster can ruin you for what you thought would be the most hilarious joke in the world. Who’s laughing now, Mr. “I’m Going to Play Every Fusion Monster in the Game Just to See if the Judges Will Check Them All”? Enjoy your carpal tunnel with a side of shame.

Finally, I want to note Success Probability 0% for being the first card to hit our shores that can take monsters directly from the Fusion deck and put them into the graveyard. It seems fairly useless at first, but after a close second look, it can be a good side deck card against those budget Cyber-Stein OTK decks that run around your local tournaments. There’s an excellent chance that in a local setting, players will just run one Cyber End Dragon or Cyber Twin Dragon or even a single Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon for the purposes of achieving their win condition. You can capitalize on their inability (or choice) to run more than one copy of each by discarding them to the graveyard with this trap, thus eliminating the deck’s chances of doing anything constructive.

Now that all that’s out of the way, here’s what you’ve been waiting for.

“Bug in the System”

Monsters: 20

2 Doom Dozer

2 Millennium Scorpion

3 Insect Knight

2 4-Starred Ladybug of Doom

2 Gokipon

1 Sangan

2 Pinch Hopper

2 Skull-Mark Ladybug

1 Exiled Force

1 D. D. Warrior Lady

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Mystic Swordsman LV2

Spells: 12

1 Dark Hole

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Snatch Steal

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Smashing Ground

2 Insect Imitation

1 Book of Moon

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Premature Burial

Traps: 8

3 Sakuretsu Armor

2 Widespread Ruin

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Curse of Anubis

We have a deck that likes to play in three different phases. During the early game, you should be focusing on building up your hand and grabbing the cards you need with Gokipon while fending off your opponent’s attacks as best you can with 4-Starred Ladybug of Doom and Insect Knight. In the mid-game, you should focus on bringing out one of your copies of Millennium Scorpion, whether it is by Pinch Hopper or Insect Imitation. Finally, during the endgame, once everyone’s resources and removal have run low, it’s time to pull out Doom Dozer to wreck some face while leaving yourself open to minimal numbers of Smashing Grounds and Sakuretsu Armors. The exact details are soon to follow, but first, as always, let’s get a little insight into some of the rules issues that might arise when you’re playing this deck.

First, I’m using a copy of the often-neglected Curse of Anubis.** The main thing you need to remember with Curse of Anubis is that the monsters switched by it can’t have their positions manually changed later that turn. So if Mobius blows up Curse of Anubis and you chain it, none of the opponent’s monsters can be switched back. Obviously, Mobius couldn’t be already, but any Cyber Dragons or D. D. Assailants or other monsters can’t switch either, and their DEF becomes 0 for the turn. The second thing you need to remember is that Curse of Anubis doesn’t negate any effects. I’ve had some dealings in the past with people who didn’t quite read the card and thought it negated all monster effects for the turn as well, and as you might imagine, those people weren’t particularly happy that day.

The other main rulings issue that results from this deck is the age-old problem of “Missing the Timing.” Simply put, one of your “sent to the graveyard” effects can miss the timing, and the rest can’t. Which one is it? Sadly, it’s Pinch Hopper and its special summoning effect. Both Gokipon and Skull-Mark Ladybug are mandatory effects that are going to happen, regardless of what else occurs before they get a chance to start their chain and resolve. On the other hand, Pinch Hopper has that nasty word “can” sandwiched in its text that stops you from activating its effect, unless its unfortunate demise was the last thing to happen in the game.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at how this deck functions. As I said above, this is the kind of deck that has a different objective in each part of the game. During the early game, you should be focusing on building up a supply of the cards you’ll need to win the game. This means using Gokipon’s Sangan-like ability to search out Pinch Hoppers and Skull-Mark Ladybugs (and even a 4-Starred Ladybug of Doom if need be) to get yourself set up to start taking control of the game. Not only does Gokipon help you to search out your smaller Insects, it also helps fill your graveyard with plenty of Insect monsters which will become important later on. As many have noticed, it’s like an Insect-only version of Sangan, and last time I checked, Sangan was a pretty good card.

Some of you may be wondering why I’m using Gokipon here instead of Howling Insect from Soul of the Duelist. It’s because most of the monsters that I want to search out with Gokipon would be fairly useless to me if they were immediately attacked. Granted, that’s a good thing when it comes to Pinch Hopper, but I want to try to avoid having a need to use Pinch Hopper’s effect as much as I possibly can, because that would mean I had a Millennium Scorpion in hand. Ideally, I want to grab a Hopper or a Skull-Marked Ladybug and then tribute it off to Insect Imitation next turn to fetch the Scorpion out of the deck.

Finally, I’d like to point out that 4-Starred Ladybug of Doom can be absolutely killer against Warrior Toolbox or Tomato Control, as long as you can stop it from being hit by Nobleman of Crossout or Mystic Swordsman LV2. Most of the warriors being played these days are level 4, as is Mystic Tomato. Newdoria is level 4 as well, so the Ladybug of Doom can take it out as well without incurring any harm to itself or others on your field. However, it can’t do any of that if it gets special summoned to my field face-up by Howling Insect.

If you can manage to force out some removal during the first few turns of the game with Insect Knights and grab a card or two off of Gokipon or Sangan, you’re in pretty good shape to start out the mid-game. Your goal here is to get a Millennium Scorpion on the field and wreak some havoc. You can do it easily if you still have an Insect Knight or any other level 4 monster on your field and an Insect Imitation in hand. Of course, that’s the best-case scenario. Most often, you’ll probably have to tribute for it, which is an absolute pain. Fortunately, the Scorpion tries its hardest to be worth the investment, as every monster you destroy with it makes it 500 points more imperative that your opponent destroy it. If they can’t, and you can take care of any pesky Spirit Reapers the opponent might draw, you’ll probably win the game outright. If your opponent does get rid of it, which is more than likely, you’ve still got another line of offense in Doom Dozer.

Remember how people liked to use Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the End as the ultimate finishing move once both players were low on resources? Doom Dozer takes up the cause in this deck, but rather than removing a Light and a Dark to summon it, you take out two Insects to summon your biggest hitter. Not only is Doom Dozer a huge, essentially free special summon, but it also takes one card off the top of your opponent’s deck every time it deals damage to your opponent, lowering the number of possible outs in the deck. Nothing says victory like attacking with Doom Dozer and watching as your opponent flops Snatch Steal into the graveyard as a result of your monster effect, so make sure you do it often.

This deck is all about the timing. If you drop your huge monsters too early, you risk losing them to simple removal or Snatch Steal. The main problem occurs if you’re forced into moving your timetable up due to an early hit by Spirit Reaper or if you just get completely overpowered by a particularly strong start by the opponent. Then again, that beats just about any deck, so don’t sweat it if it happens.

Once again, I really hope everyone is enjoying their new cards from the Sneak Preview. I know I am, and I also know that there are definitely a couple of cards in the set that are going to become sleeper hits. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: Three shall be the number in the graveyard, and the number in the graveyard shall be three!

* Shame on you if you didn’t. Well, unless you had no way to get there. In that case, you have my deepest condolences.

** Curse of Anubis is one of Curtis’s favorites. I was really surprised the first time he played it against me.