I’m quite certain that I was a “noob” for a longer period than you. While I like to sit here in my Metagame.com seat espousing the ideals of competitive play, I haven’t been a good player for very long. In fact, last year’s Gen Con So Cal was one of my first Regional experiences, and certainly the first one where I qualified for Nationals. I’ve only been a certified professional for a little more than a year.

And prior to that, oh, what a newbie I was. I was scouring websites for reviews on cards like Ameba and Monster Recovery. It was by sheer fortune and happenstance that I managed to improve my play. After all, the Metagame.com revolution hadn’t taken place, and decklists were scarce.

The History of Exodia (Through My Eyes)

While Mike Rosenberg was dominating the international competition at Worlds 2003, I was busy working on my favorite deck. This deck attempted to harness the awesome powers of Exodia the Forbidden One. I tried every variant, including speed mill (in the era of two copies of Graceful Charity), stall with Gravity Bind and Messenger of Peace, and thinning with Jar of Greed, Nimble Momonga, Bubonic Vermin, Giant Germ, and others.

Needless to say, when the era of hand control began with Ng Yu Leung’s Drop Off deck, I decided to take a break from the game. Cards like Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, The Forceful Sentry, and monsters like Yata-Garasu, Don Zaloog, and Spirit Reaper made it difficult for the Exodia player. Being the ultimate combo deck, it’s badly hurt by early hand disruption. In addition, back in those ancient times, losing the head of Exodia usually meant losing the duel. The only way to get it back was some ridiculous combo involving a set Penguin Soldier and either Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted, Monster Reborn, The Shallow Grave, or Pharaoh’s Treasure.

Thus, I lurked in the shadows, biding my time and waiting for Exodia to return in full glory! Dark Crisis brought some hope. After all, Des Feral Imp finally gave another “out” in case the Exodia head got discarded. Then, Chaos Emperor Dragon arrived and every combo-based deck cried, including Water builds and burn variants. My beginner’s heart wept for the loss of my best friend. I had named my Exodia the Forbidden One “Toby,” and oh, how I wept for him.

Toby got a new friend with the release of Rise of Destiny, which coincided with the banning of Chaos Emperor Dragon. Monster Reincarnation gave another means of returning the head to hand upon discard, and a lot of the really powerful thinning agents were in play. By this time, of course, my skills had improved noticeably, to the point of placing solidly at both the Anaheim and the Vegas Shonen Jump Championships.

So, what’s the point to my story of the history of Exodia? Does anybody care? Well, I do. And now that I’m not a beginner, I would like to do proper justice to a fully competitive Exodia deck. Is it possible? Yes. Pot of Avarice has given hope to Exodia users everywhere!

Different Avenues for the Exodia Deck

Again, there are different flavors. You can go for a speed turbo variant, which involves using multiple Cyber Jar and Morphing Jar flips. I feel any deck focusing that much on the Jars should simply use decking out the opponent as the win condition. You can also choose to use traps and spells to stall the board. Gravity Bind, Messenger of Peace, and Level Limit – Area B are all viable options. Unfortunately, this build suffers against both Heavy Storm and Mobius the Frost Monarch. You might as well go with full burn.

I think the best option here is to use the tools that were given to the savvy Exodia player. A perfect build will require a balanced mixture of deck thinning, searchability, and field presence. Take a look at the monster lineup.

Monsters: 22

1 Exodia the Forbidden One

1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One

1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One

1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One

1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One

3 Peten the Dark Clown

1 Sangan

3 Magical Merchant

3 Spirit Reaper

2 Mystic Tomato

2 Gravekeeper’s Spy

2 Treeborn Frog

1 Night Assailant

The idea here is to thin the deck out as much as possible while still maintaining some semblance of field presence. The primary means of doing this is Peten the Dark Clown, a card that’s immune to Mystic Swordsman LV2, which will generally wreck your field. It’s one of the safest plays, falling prey only to D. D. Warrior Lady and Nobleman of Crossout. It also provides two draws’ worth of thinning upon destruction, and enables a safe launching point from which you can set your Merchants. The idea with the Merchants is to mill numerous monsters to the graveyard. Exodia pieces are generally useless in your hand until you assemble all five of them, so you want to mill through as many as possible.

The Tomato is used to thin to Sangan, Peten, or Spirit Reaper. Reapers will stall out for quite a bit, as will Peten. Your goal here is to assemble a large number of cards in your hand.

Spells: 13

1 Dark Hole

1 Lightning Vortex

1 Scapegoat

1 Metamorphosis

1 Book of Moon

2 Pot of Avarice

1 Monster Reincarnation

2 Dark Factory of Mass Production

2 Upstart Goblin

1 Swords of Revealing Light

You can see here that we have two pieces of heavy monster removal,  and Dark Hole, which should be conserved as long as possible. If you use Dark Hole early, your opponent is likely to overextend. After that, you can drop Vortex to buy a few more turns. The Scapegoat and Metamorphosis stall engine will help you quite a bit. Upstart Goblins provide deck thinning, Reincarnation lets you bring back key support, and the Factories let you retrieve limbs. This is all pretty straightforward.

Traps: 7

3 Jar of Greed

1 Torrential Tribute

3 Sakuretsu Armor

I once believed that Exodia decks should never run a single piece of monster removal. However, the stunning rise in play of Mystic Swordsman LV2, along with the ever-present Spirit Reaper, has made three copies of Sakuretsu Armor quite necessary. The Jars are chainable, Torrential is another reset button, and everything has good synergy with the monster and spell lineups.

Mechanics of Advantage: The Exodia Deck

Beads of sweat will form on your opponent’s face the moment that he or she realizes what you’re trying to do. After that, the only thing left is a race against time. Can he or she reduce your hand size or whittle your life points to 0 before you draw the five-card combo? After all, the mechanic of advantage is this: once you draw all five pieces, you win the duel. This has nothing to do with card advantage, or life points, or theory. It’s quite simple.

The goal is to hold on. Take life point damage if it doesn’t cause you to discard your hand. Save your defensive traps for those pesky Spirit Reapers. Use your own Reapers to skillfully slow the game down. Drop Thousand-Eyes Restrict also, to slow the game down. Remember, your opponent only has about four or five pieces of monster removal, assuming that you don’t attack.

If the field gets too hectic, use your pieces of mass removal to simplify it. Otherwise, simply thin your deck and keep drawing, and you should carve out a few wins.

Ability to Counter the Metagame

The trick to playing Exodia is to always hide your motives. Your opponent should not even know you’re playing the deck unless he or she plays Confiscation or Morphing Jar. Your Sangan effect, unless it has the chance to go for game, should not be fishing out a limb of Exodia. The limbs are terrible to draw and can be extreme liabilities—they basically mean you’re playing the duel with one less card.

Assuming you play your cards right and don’t run into a slew of unlucky Spirit Reaper hits, the deck is solidly constructed and should give your opponents fits.

Strategies to Use in a Matchup with the Cookie-Cutter Deck

The idea is to carve out as much field presence as possible. Whenever this presence is threatened, use your cards to simplify it. For example, you’ll either want to open with a Tomato, Peten, Reaper, or Merchant. All of these cards lend themselves well to the set, set, set strategy that you’ll employ. Your goal is never to push through for damage. Instead, you want to set a monster each turn and gradually thin your deck.

Of course, your opponent will be looking to complicate things. Mystic Swordsman LV2 and Spirit Reaper are two huge threats in the early game. Later on in the duel, Cyber Dragon overextensions, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, and Chaos Sorcerer will all cause huge problems for you if you haven’t been keeping a solid-sized hand. Reaper walls hold up quite nicely, but Zaborg and Chaos Sorcerer pierce through them pretty quickly.

Always be ready for the Smashing Ground that will obliterate your tempo. Keep monsters down to conceal them, generate some semblance of advantage, and only burn the monster removal cards when they’re absolutely necessary. Instead of viewing each life point loss as a blow, think of your 8000 life point pool as one continuous stream. Only when you hit 0 does the duel end, since you don’t need those life points for anything but to last long enough to try to draw Exodia.

Mixing up the side deck is also important. You can either delve into Chaos control (cut the Exodia-specific cards), burn, or Cyber-Stein OTK. A good opponent will side in Exiled Force, Confiscation, more hand disruption, and other such cards that will make it very difficult for you to take game 2 or 3. The Exodia deck is usually a casual theme deck, but it can actually become immensely powerful with the right amount of luck.

The New Grounds Verdict: Upon testing, this deck is missing something that keeps it from being in the top tier. However, that doesn’t keep it from being a very fun and solid deck to play!