Well, the Sneak Preview weekend has come and gone, and I hope that everyone who went had a great time with the new Cybernetic Revolution cards. Now that you’ve got some of these cards in your hands, you may be wondering what you can do with them. In particular, I’ll bet you’re wondering at this very instant what you can do with the Cyber Dragon family of monsters. Fear not! My mission today is to design a deck that summons out Cyber End Dragon as fast as possible and send it on a destructive rampage through your opponent’s life points.

The Cyberpunk Deck

Monsters: 7

1 Cyber Jar

3 Cyber Dragon

3 Cyber-Stein

Spells: 29

1 Pot of Greed

1 Graceful Charity

1 Snatch Steal

1 Lightning Vortex

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Nobleman of Crossout

3 Reload

3 The Shallow Grave

3 Book of Taiyou

3 Limiter Removal

2 Megamorph

3 Giant Trunade

3 Messenger of Peace

1 Swords of Revealing Light

Traps: 4

3 Waboku

1 Ring of Destruction

Fusions: 3

3 Cyber End Dragon

The basic goal of this deck should be quite easy to spot. All you have to do is clear your opponent’s field and summon Cyber-Stein, then use its effect to bring out Cyber End Dragon. From there, use either Megamorph or Limiter Removal to pump your Dragon up to 8000 ATK and attack to win the game. Sounds easy, right?

“Wait!” you might say. “Cyber-Stein was the prize card from the Shonen Jump Championships, right? How am I supposed to have even one of them, let alone three?” Well, you’re sort of right on that point. Cyber-Stein was indeed the prize for the first season of Shonen Jump Championships, but it has recently been released to the public as a rare in the Dark Beginnings 2 set, making it possible for anyone to acquire the requisite three Cyber-Steins for this deck. Cyber Dragon and Cyber End Dragon are probably going to be a lot harder to get, given the newness of the Cyber Revolutions set and the fact that they’re so awesome. If you can’t get any Cyber End Dragons, you could also use Master of Oz as your Really Big Dude. Unfortunately, this would weaken the deck considerably, and I don’t recommend it.

Some Assembly Required

As with all combo decks, your goal while playing it should be to assemble the pieces of your combo in hand as fast as possible, and hopefully to find them before your opponent can do something to stop you. Usually, this means that you want to go first in order to maximize the chance of winning before your opponent gets a chance to go. Of course, this assumes that your combo is based on winning without a need to deal battle damage.

This deck is quite the opposite. Since the goal is to attack for over 8000 damage, the earliest that you can do it is turn 2, so make sure to go second if you’re given the option. In fact, chances are that you will always get to go second in game 1 of a tournament match, regardless of whether or not you win the coin toss or die roll.

Next, you need to know what cards you’re looking for in order to win the game. You’ll definitely need Cyber-Stein, as it’s the card that will special summon Cyber End Dragon. You’ll also need some way to get rid of your opponent’s spells and traps, so either Giant Trunade or Heavy Storm is required. If your opponent has only one card face down on the field, which is quite a common opening move nowadays, Mystical Space Typhoon should be sufficient. If your opponent has set a monster, you’ll want to have a way to get it out of the way so that Cyber End Dragon can do its thing. For this, you’ll probably want Nobleman of Crossout. However, you can’t rely on just two cards to do the job out of the 40 in the deck, so I’ve also included Book of Taiyou and the new Cyber Dragon to help remove that pesky first-turn monster from the road to your opponent’s face.

Cyber Dragon is an excellent card for this deck, especially considering that you want to play second most of the time. Assuming that your opponent sets a monster on his or her first turn, you can use the effect of Cyber Dragon to summon it to the field for free as an extra 2100 ATK that can be used for either clearing your opponent’s monster zones or finishing the job that Cyber End Dragon starts. While Book of Taiyou can certainly be used to flip your own Cyber Jar if the need arises, its real purpose in the deck is to flip an opposing monster into attack position so that you can see what it is. Knowing what your opponent has on the field is enormously helpful when you’re deciding on the proper course of action to pursue for the turn.

Finally, you’ll need either Limiter Removal or Megamorph (since you’ll definitely have lower life than your opponent after using Cyber-Stein) in order to pump your Dragon up to 8000 ATK. I recommend Limiter Removal, as it will also pump up Cyber-Stein and even Cyber Dragon, if you happen to have one out.

Now that you know all the pieces, you need to know how to get them. For this, I’ve borrowed a page from the Cookie Jar deck and decided to revive and flip Cyber Jar a bunch of times until I get the required cards for the combo. If you get an absolutely awful hand, even after a bunch of Cyber Jars, set whatever cards you need and use Reload to try again. If you still have nothing at all, set Waboku if you have one and activate it on your opponent’s draw phase to get a free turn. You can also drop Swords of Revealing Light or Messenger of Peace to help buy some time until you get the cards you need.

“System Error: Reboot? Y/N”

When you get the combo, just about the only things your opponent can do are either disrupt your hand during their turn or chain whatever card or cards they have face down on the field to try and stop you. Whether or not this will hurt you depends on what those cards are. For example, if your opponent chains Scapegoat, you’re going to win. Cyber End Dragon will pierce through one of those Sheep tokens for 8000 damage.

However, if your opponent hits you with Delinquent Duo on the first turn, you’re in trouble. If he or she chains Waboku, you aren’t sunk right away, but you’ll be in for a rough ride if you want to win the game. In this case, you’ll have just wasted one of your three Giant Trunades or your Heavy Storm, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find another one without your opponent counterattacking. Kuriboh can also be a huge hassle for this deck—if your Cyber End Dragon that’s affected by Limiter Removal gets stopped by Kuriboh, the counterattack against your empty field next turn will probably obliterate you.

Unlike other variations on this deck (Master of Oz, I’m looking at you), this version of the deck can still win even without the Cyber-Stein combo. It’s difficult to pull off, but if you can get a combination of two Limiter Removals or a single Megamorph followed by Limiter Removal on a regular Cyber Dragon and have it attack directly, you can still win in one hit. However, this is a very unlikely scenario, and you will most likely not want to play the game out if your life points drop below 5000.

Your final concern when playing this deck is the side deck you want to use along with it. As with all combo decks, you have two main options for it. You can change the deck entirely, and you can try to put cards in the side deck to negate the cards that counter your deck. If you want to go the route of changing your deck entirely, you can side into Cookie Jar rather easily seeing as this deck already uses the Cyber Jar engine that is the key to Cookie Jar’s success. If you want to try to counter your opponent’s side decking strategy, some good choices are Gravekeeper’s Watcher and Share the Pain. The Watcher can negate Kuriboh’s effect, and Share the Pain is an excellent piece of monster removal. Capable of removing face up or face down monsters, Share the Pain also lets you rid yourself of Cyber-Stein, which could be a liability if your opponent survives your attack.

Sadly, this deck isn’t quite ready for regional play yet. Cyber Dragon and Cyber End Dragon aren’t legal for high-level play until September 1, but they are legal for your local Hobby League. Feel free to try this deck out at your next local tournament, and if you have any massive revelations about it, drop me a line at jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

—Jerome McHale

NEXT WEEK: Celebrate eight months of Shonen Jump Championships with Metagame.com!