Back when the first Exclusive Pack came out, there was one card that really piqued my interest, and no, it wasn’t Return from the Different Dimension. Rather, I was more excited about Inferno Tempest. A card capable of removing all monsters from both decks and graveyards is something that had never been done before and hasn’t been done again since. The thing is, it’s really difficult to engineer a situation where you can take 3000 battle damage or more from one attack and still be able to win the game, so Inferno Tempest never saw any real play. Still, the thought of removing all monsters from the game is certainly an enticing prospect, especially if you can find a way to make this mass removal one-sided. Think about the many decks these days that are based on using monster effects to take control of the field and then using spells and traps to make sure the opponent can’t do anything about it. What would happen if Monarch decks had no Monarchs, or if an Apprentice Magician engine had no Apprentice Magician? The strategy would completely collapse.

Over the Sneak Preview weekend, I asked many players what they thought of some of the new cards, and I found a few constants in their opinions. First off, everyone wanted to find a way to fit Vanity’s Fiend into his or her deck. Honestly, I’m not surprised at all. Vanity’s Fiend is a brilliant card for opposing the various Monarch decks that everyone seems to play lately. With Monarch decks generally based on using spent flip effect monsters and special summoned monsters as tribute material for their namesake monsters, Vanity’s Fiend can take more than half of their potential tributes out of contention. It also has the bonus of stopping Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted, Scapegoat, and Cyber-Stein, and stopping your opponent from using those cards is always good.

The other card that seemed to attract a lot of attention is the aptly named Degenerate Circuit. Many players tend to shy away from bounce effects because there isn’t much stopping the opponent from just bringing down his or her monster again next turn. Sure, Forced Back can be an exception to that rule when it comes to Monarchs, but that doesn’t stop them from flipping up an Old Vindictive Magician or Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and claiming its effect first. Wouldn’t it be better if we could just stop them from getting that effect altogether? Of course it would, but that would involve using Forced Back on the flip summon of a monster, something generally not advised due to the ease with which the opponent can simply set it again. Sure, the opponent is being set back one turn’s worth of summons, but if you still can’t stop him or her from carrying out his or her plan, it just won’t matter. With Degenerate Circuit on the field, this isn’t an issue because the opponent’s flip monster will be gone forever once you return it to his or her hand. If I could combine the restriction on special summoning with total removal thanks to Degenerate Circuit, the resulting deck would in theory invalidate many current strategies. Let’s see how such a deck might be built.

Monsters: 22

3 Vanity’s Fiend

3 Golem Sentry

3 Kelbek

3 Hyper Hammerhead

3 Exarion Universe

3 Penguin Soldier

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

1 Magician of Faith

1 Magical Merchant

Spells: 10

3 Degenerate Circuit

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Unity

1 Book of Moon

Traps: 9

1 Waboku

2 Dust Tornado

1 Mirror Force

1 Ring of Destruction

2 Forced Back

2 Compulsory Evacuation Device

With this deck (as was the case with the Begone, Knave! deck from last week) you’ll want to find and use Degenerate Circuit as quickly as you possibly can. At first, your opponent will likely leave it alone due to the non-optional 500 life point payment. Instead, he or she will go after your set cards, likely a bad idea. After all, Waboku, Dust Tornado, Ring of Destruction, and Compulsory Evacuation Device are all chainable and exceptionally bad targets for Mystical Space Typhoon or a counter from Breaker. Adding Degenerate Circuit to the mix tends to make things worse, especially if the opponent happened to hit Compulsory Evacuation Device. Last time I checked, it was a bad plan to use removal on a chainable card that effectively reads “remove one monster on the field from play.” Once your opponent finally figures out that Degenerate Circuit is the real problem, the damage will be long since done, and all the monster removal in the world won’t help him or her win. One reason for this is that Vanity’s Fiend has one of the lowest DEF scores of any monster in the deck, causing Smashing Ground to miss most of the time. You’re also packing quite a bit of spell and trap removal. Exiled Force could definitely be a problem if the opponent draws into it, but judging from what Jason has been observing at Shonen Jump Championships lately, players seem more likely to throw the Force at a face-down monster instead of a real threat.

The really neat thing about the deck is how you can expand the problems created by Degenerate Circuit to every card in the opponent’s deck. I already mentioned above that spell- and trap-based monster removal isn’t necessarily useful against this deck, but I didn’t really elaborate on why. Yes, Dust Tornado can help you take out a Sakuretsu Armor or a Widespread Ruin or two. Maybe you’ll hit a Mirror Force if you’re lucky. But the main reason this deck likes to laugh in the face of monster removal is that you can essentially control what it is used on. Smashing Ground will always go after Kelbek or Exarion Universe before it’ll hit your Vanity’s Fiend, and Sakuretsu Armor will have to be used on the first appearance of Hyper Hammerhead. Your opponent might even be forced to use it on a Golem Sentry just to stop its vicious 800 ATK beatings with a side of total, repeatable monster removal. It’s almost like bringing the removal effect of Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning back into the game without all the extra baggage that made it a real thorn in everyone’s side. Threats like that have to be removed, but, as with any good deck, once the number of threats on the table greatly exceeds the number of answers, the game is practically over.

How do you manipulate the game conditions to your favor? Well, in general, you would like to start off with a turn 1 Degenerate Circuit. If you find the card in your opening hand, you should be pretty well off as long as your opponent hasn’t started with Heavy Storm and Nobleman of Crossout. Just activate it, set a Kelbek, Hyper Hammerhead, or Penguin Soldier, and a trap, and let the opponent go. If your opponents are anything like mine, they’ll probably start off with a Cyber Dragon and maybe a set monster or Breaker. If it’s Breaker, you have a good chance to start an immediate counter-offensive. Breaker’s ability is almost never used on face-up cards unless said face-up card is a stall card or Wave-Motion Cannon. So Breaker will most likely try to destroy a chainable trap that has a good chance of taking the Magical Warrior down with it.

Next comes the part where your opponent attacks your face-down monster, and that’s where things start to go horribly wrong for the other guy. Let’s say he or she has Cyber Dragon and any other monster out. Maybe it’s a Sangan or a Mystic Tomato. The opponent’s Dragon attacks your face-down monster, and it’s a Penguin Soldier. Just like that, two of his or her best cards are gone forever and you can start attacking next turn. As the turns go by, the opponent eventually finds that the only thing he or she can do is try to defend, at which point you bring out Vanity’s Fiend. With it and Hyper Hammerhead on the field, all you have to do is force your opponent to act. When he or she does and those actions fail, the rest of your monsters can clean up as they see fit. Even if you didn’t get the Penguin Soldier move off on the first turn, each turn your opponent takes is likely to end with one or more of his or her monsters removed from play, and that type of situation is very difficult to play out of.

Drawing no monsters at all is a really common way for someone to lose a game against a deck he or she would otherwise have no trouble beating, but playing against a deck whose sole purpose is to create that situation for you every single game has to be one of the most difficult matchups that anyone will ever face. As time goes by, I fully expect some of the more dedicated teams and players to try to expand upon this concept, as it seems to be a very viable strategy against the mainstream. Remember, playing the exact same deck as everybody else isn’t good for anyone involved, so if you’re looking to maximize the value of your skills in the current metagame, do it by playing something that’s naturally good against all the people running Monarchs. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: not having to send the rest of your cards on the field to the graveyard after playing Overload Fusion is a good thing.