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For me, the most exciting part of SJC Houston back in March was Joey Skiles’ run with the Elemental Hero deck now known as Big City. Unfortunately, he never made it to day 2, due to his crushing misplay at the end of the round 7 feature match, but the soul of the deck lives on in the hearts of duelists today. Jeff Jones is one of many players here today running a variant of Big City that focuses a lot more on the City, and less on the Big. There are no Fusions in this deck, but what it lacks in muscle it makes up for in insane, repeatable effects. Here’s what our winner from last round’s feature match is playing:

Monsters:

3 Elemental Hero Ocean

This is an example of a deck where everything is done right, from initial concept to execution. Just like regular Big City, the purpose of the deck is to use and reuse Elemental Hero Stratos. Primarily you’ll use Skyscraper 2 — Hero City for this purpose, but the problem with older versions of the deck was that the bits of removal you couldn’t nail with Stratos would then destroy Stratos and make it impossible for Skyscraper 2 to do its thing. Not so now that Elemental Hero Ocean has hit the scene! As long as Ocean is on the field, all Elemental Hero monsters on your side of the field and in your graveyard will bear a striking resemblance to Sinister Serpent, in that you can return one of them to your hand for each Ocean you have out during your standby phase. Returning them from the graveyard makes perfect sense, but some people might initially have difficulty understanding why being able to pick them up from your side of the field is so good. Frankly, it’s because opponents tend to wise up. Once they see you pull your trick with Stratos and Skyscraper 2, they aren’t likely to attack Stratos again unless they absolutely have to. That’s why being able to normal summon him every turn becomes a huge boon, and Ocean lets you do that.

Speaking of things that Ocean lets you do, his recursive ability will let you have a free card from your graveyard every turn, and that’s great news for anyone who wants to play power effects that carry discard costs. Jeff runs three copies of Lightning Vortex along with a pair of Snipe Hunter cards to play off his ability to generate never-ending discard fodder, a decision that’s proven to be quite valuable throughout the day. Vortex is flat out better than Smashing Ground when you can recover the cost, and Elemental Hero Ocean users can do that easily! To help fetch and protect Ocean, Jeff is running three copies of E — Emergency Call and the two allowed copies of Reinforcement of the Army to make sure that Stratos and Ocean hit play. Once they’re in play Jeff resorts to a heavy disruption scheme to make sure that the opponent is playing Jeff’s game instead of the opponent’s own. Elemental Hero Wildheart is immune to trap based removal in addition to being able to attack through Jeff’s own Gravity Bind and being searchable by Stratos. Three main decked copies of Trap Dustshoot control the monsters that an opponent will be able to summon (used to great effect to block Banisher of the Radiance against Ryan Peddle) while Mind Crush can take out anything provided that Jeff knows it’s there. As I mentioned in the pre-game, I feel that Pulling the Rug is one of the defining cards of this event and of the format in general, and apparently Jeff agrees with that notion, choosing to main deck a set of them himself. On the subject of counter traps, Jeff main decks a set of Solemn Judgment as well to stop any threat that his other cards miss. It’s a nasty deck and once it gets started it’s really hard stop. Jeff Jones isn’t the only one to playing Big City today, but he’s certainly a favorite to bring the Elemental Heroes to Day 2!