1 Ceasefire
Dale’s deck is certainly built with defense in mind. In fact, he almost always chooses to go second due to the reactive nature of the deck. It’s a risky strategy, especially if your opponent is running main-deck Drillroids. With less than the normal amount of attack blocking cards, there’s a good chance that his great opening monsters could bow out prematurely.

On the plus side, though, Dale has a lot of great monsters to open with. With a full compliment of D.D. Assailants to go with his pair of Mystic Tomatoes and Spirit Reapers, it’s difficult for Dale not to have a strong opening. Mystic Tomato is also put to great use in this deck, allowing Dale to search for monster removal, protection, and hand disruption. I’m pretty sure Dale’s opponents don’t appreciate it when he rams a Mystic Tomato into their Don Zaloog, clearing the fieldd an allowing Dale to seek out a Don Zaloog of his own.

The deck also has a huge focus on spell and trap destruction. Note the three copies of Dust Tornado and two copies Mobius the Frost Monarch, in addition to all the standard S/T removal. This is a key part of the deck. Tomato Control simply can’t afford to get hit by a Sakuretsu Armor or Torrential Tribute because they seriously interrupt the deck’s flow. One of the keys to playing the deck successfully is to flow from one card to the next until you’ve taken control of the field. Losing a Cyber Dragon or Don Zaloog or Spirit Reaper to Sakuretsu Armor is not part of the plan, and is very difficult to play around.

According to Dale, it has a good matchup against nearly all of the commonly played decks, slowing down the pace of Cyber Dragon/Warrior Beatdown and Warrior Toolbox. What it doesn’t excel against is any number of combo decks, most notably Cyber-Stein OTK. There may also be issues with some Lockdown/Burn variants, but so far nothing has come up that Dale couldn’t handle. He’s been playing extremely well today, and if he keeps it up, Tomato Control could see its first Top 8 in a major tournament.