For those of you who haven’t checked out the US National Championships coverage, I would recommend that you do so. Specifically, check out the articles in that section entitled “New Things at US Nationals,”  “Failing Marks,” “High Marks,” “Lost in Space,” and “Darwinian Deckbuilding.” Notice anything weird about the author of those articles? Hmm . . . it seems that Metagame.com has begun to receive an infestation of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX impersonators. I think we’ll need to call an exterminator over to the site to take care of this minor problem.

All jokes about Dr. Vowler aside, his “Lost in Space” article during the U.S National coverage proved to be a very interesting read. So many players were excited at the prospect of running aggro-control decks based upon Macro Cosmos, and yet none of the big-name duelists that supported the idea of the deck actually chose to run it. Why is that? And why exactly should you care that Macro Cosmos exists? Those are profound questions, but the answers are actually pretty simple.

On the subject of what makes Macro Cosmos good, many veteran players were interested in abusing the card interactions this trap had with other monsters. Specifically, the primary build of every Macro Cosmos deck includes three copies of Dimensional Fissure and three copies of Macro Cosmos. Since those cards specify that all cards that would be sent to the graveyard are instead removed from play, this allows monsters such as D. D. Scout Plane and D. D. Survivor to effectively become better Treeborn Frog cards.

Whenever D. D. Survivor would be sent to the graveyard while Macro Cosmos is out, it is instead removed from play. This triggers the Warrior’s ability, allowing you to special summon it back to the field at the end phase. This means that, while either Macro Cosmos or Dimensional Fissure is out, you have a searchable 1800 ATK Warrior that will never die. You can tribute it to summon Mobius the Frost Monarch or Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, it can get smashed by an opponent’s monster, or your opponent can stop its attack with Sakuretsu Armor. It doesn’t matter how D. D. Survivor is sent to the graveyard, because Macro Cosmos will make sure it comes back again.

The same thing applies to D. D. Scout Plane. Whenever the little Machine would be destroyed while Macro Cosmos is out, it will come back in the end phase. While it’s not as threatening as D. D. Survivor, D. D. Scout Plane still does a good job of maintaining its user’s board advantage. When combined, the two monsters give the Macro Cosmos duelist a ridiculous outlet of card and field advantage that he or she can use to lean on the opponent. Through the aid of some Monarch tribute monsters, the Macro Cosmos deck is a solid aggro-control strategy that can quickly play out threats while countering its opponent’s plays in more ways than one.

However, the big reason why many big-name players chose to skip over Macro Cosmos for Chaos Return was because they felt Macro Cosmos was too inconsistent.

Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t Chaos Return a bit inconsistent, too? In fact, aren’t the matchups for that deck even worse when you’re playing a bunch of mirror matches all day?

The comment that the Macro Cosmos deck was too inconsistent for US National Championship competitors to seemed silly to me. Chaos Return packs a ton of horrendous draws. In fact, many players succumbed to the deck’s potentially poor start, all because of a bad opening hand. While Chaos Sorcerer, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, and Return from the Different Dimension are powerful cards, they can be pretty terrible when they’re part of the first six cards you draw. Most of the time they will simply remain as blank cards throughout your duel as your opponent bashes your life points down to zero without any resistance.

Now, factor that into playing against mirror match after mirror match at the US National Championships. In a mirror match, luck will likely have some factor in controlling the outcome. Sometimes, no matter how well one duelist plays against another, the one with the inherent advantage is going to have the smoother and more explosive draw. This isn’t to say luck is the only factor in the Chaos Return mirror match, because that’s definitely not true. Players who correctly play with the cards they are dealt will still have an advantage over a player who doesn’t know when to activate Smashing Ground. It just so happens that luck is a little bit larger factor if both players are running nearly identical decks.

Now let’s take another look at Macro Cosmos as a deck. If a player were to take the deck to the US National Championships, he or she would have six very powerful weapons against each Return-Chaos deck in the form of full play sets of Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure. While this strategy feeds Return from the Different Dimension, which is about two cards in a Chaos Return deck, it will also single-handedly destroy about eight to ten cards in your opponent’s deck. Chaos Sorcerer isn’t getting any Light and Dark monsters that are needed for its special summon. Premature Burial and Call of the Haunted aren’t that good when you don’t have any real targets. Magician of Faith likes returning good spell cards back to its user’s hand, and Macro Cosmos doesn’t really give it many choices.

Outside of the disruption that Macro Cosmos can cause for your opponent, it wouldn’t be tournament-viable if you couldn’t effectively use it to your own advantage. This is why D. D. Survivor is such an explosive and powerful card in the deck. You have monsters that provide you with limitless board advantage while your opponent’s best monsters are useless. Despite the inconsistencies of the Macro Cosmos deck, it seems that it was indeed the best deck choice for players to run at US Nationals. The reason why it was overlooked was because instead of competing with an untested explosive deck that had some consistency issues, most players chose to go with the proven explosive deck that had its same share of problems in consistency.

The entire reason why Chaos Return is so good is because it can change the conditions of the game. In a normal game, each duelist would summon monsters, use their spell and trap cards to protect their field while controlling the opponent’s monsters, and anything that is destroyed would be sent to the graveyard, where it was expected to remain for the remainder of the duel. Cards like Premature Burial and Magician of Faith fundamentally change that scenario. They treat the graveyard as an outlet of cards that can be used at the player’s disposal. Premature Burial encourages players to discard high-level monsters to the graveyard so they can be special summoned without tributes, while Magician of Faith lets players use cards limited to one per deck more than once per duel. This works really well with spells like Delinquent Duo and Raigeki. Chaos Return went one step further by utilizing the removed zone as well, usually in a way that is anything but sacred.

Macro Cosmos takes a leap above even those cards by eliminating the use of the graveyard altogether. At the same time, it creates ridiculous combo potential with two very abusive monsters that allow you to maintain some seriously powerful card advantage and tempo. The card is so powerful that it allows you to have 1800 ATK monsters on the field that just won’t die.

Despite the fact that Macro Cosmos made practically no showing at the US National Championships, you should be prepared to play against this deck—or better yet, play one yourself. All consistency issues and concerns of it being unproven aside, there is no denying that Macro Cosmos is one of the most powerful cards in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG—and a deck that’s built to use it to its full potential can easily devastate any dueling environment.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this or previous articles of mine, feel free to email me at Mrosenberg at Metagame dot Com.