It’s no secret that Chimeratech Overdragon is perhaps the hottest card from the Power of the Duelist set. While Regional events and Shonen Jump Championships are still safe from the mechanical terror until September 1, those lucky enough to pull one (or savvy enough to trade for one) at the sneak preview have been tirelessly working to build their Chimeratech combo decks to clean up at local tournaments. Side events at Gen Con Indy weren’t safe either, as many Best Side Event Player raffle tickets fell into the hands of those who managed to put together their version of the deck. In fact, it’s been difficult to surf the forums lately without everyone lamenting over their lack of an Overdragon or announcing their desire to have an Overdragon, or bragging about their Overdragon.

With that said, this week’s deck has nothing to do with Chimeratech Overdragon. While I’m not exactly what you would call a “fan” of combo decks, I am a fan of seeing the look on the face of a player who has just experienced the wrath of a new, complex card interaction for the first time. That’s why I’m drawn towards decks like the Life Equalizer deck and the Dimension Fusion loop deck. This week I’ll be talking about the new combo deck that’s sure to induce that look of shock and awe that all true combo lovers strive to see.

“Seriously, this deck has no Chimeratech Overdragon”

Monsters: 14

3 Black Ptera

3 Mysterious Puppeteer

1 Trap Master

1 Sangan

1 Tsukuyomi

1 Morphing Jar

2 Cannon Soldier

2 Magician of Faith

Spells 20

1 Graceful Charity

2 Dragged Down into the Grave

2 The Shallow Grave

3 Messenger of Peace

1 Swords of Revealing Light

3 Nightmare’s Steelcage

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Book of Moon

1 Last Will

3 Mass Driver

Traps: 6

3 Ultimate Offering

3 Solemn Judgment

I suppose the best way to start off is to describe exactly what the deck is supposed to do. Basically, your goal is to deal 8000 points of damage to your opponent with Mass Driver or Cannon Soldier. You achieve this by starting up a loop whereby you can summon Black Ptera an extremely large number of times and then tribute it to Mass Driver or Cannon Soldier that many times to win the game. This is possible thanks to the effect of Black Ptera and the wondrous power of Ultimate Offering, which grants you the ability to make as many normal summons per turn as you’d like as long as you pay 500 life points for each summon after the first.

This also presents a problem. Since you’re only causing either 400 or 500 damage every time you run the loop, and you are paying 500 each of those times, you’re likely to run out of life points before your opponent does. To solve the problem, we hop into the Wayback Machine™ and travel all the way to 2002 when the very first Yugi and Kaiba Starter Decks were released. Back in those days, pickings were slim when it came to quality effect monsters. The best we had at the very beginning was probably Wall of Illusion, closely followed by Man-Eater Bug and, to a lesser extent, Lord of D. and Trap Master. Even then, we had a sense of what was clearly good and what was, well, not so good.

One of the cards in that category was the Mysterious Puppeteer. Long the victim of confusing text, the basic function of the Puppeteer was to give its controller 500 life points whenever a monster was normal or flip summoned. I still can’t believe that at one point in time I (and just about every other player out there) believed that the Mysterious Puppeteer was a great card in any deck. (Some of you out there may be shaking your head saying, “I never thought it was any good.”  Quit lying to yourself. You know you used to play it, if only for the first few weeks you played the game. Remember, admission is the first step to recovery.) The funny thing about this is that four years later, the Puppeteer is actually good. In fact, it’s the only reason this deck can guarantee a win once it starts recycling the Black Ptera. As long as we have enough life points left to make the initial investments required to get Mysterious Puppeteer and Black Ptera on to the field together with a Mass Driver or Cannon Soldier, we win the game—barring any Royal Decree cards or burn effects that drop us below 501 life points.

As always, the first question we need to ask ourselves is, “How do we get to the point where we can pull this off?” The first step is to not get our face smashed in by the opponent’s monsters. I’ve got a bunch of stall spells in there to help out with this exact problem, in addition to a pair of Magician of Faith cards with which to recycle them and a Tsukuyomi to get extra uses out of my flip effect monsters. As long as we can prevent all of our opponent’s attacks, we should be able to sit there and draw cards in relative peace until we get what we need to do the combo. Three copies of Solemn Judgment help to shut down any immediate danger to our stall setup or our combo. Reinforcement of the Army lets us directly search out the Mysterious Puppeteer and The Shallow Grave lets us fetch the Puppeteer (or just about any other monster) back from the graveyard if, for whatever reason, it is destroyed. In fact, the biggest problem we face with this deck (other than our opponent’s attacks) is the possibility that our opponent will have a Royal Decree waiting for us when we spring our combo. Due to the reliance on Ultimate Offering (a trap), this is a definite problem. Giant Trunade and Heavy Storm aren’t particularly effective in this deck due to the continuous Ultimate Offering. Mystical Space Typhoon is still good thanks to its quick-play nature, but it’s still just one card out of 40. Fortunately, back when I was fetching my Mysterious Puppeteer cards, I found another little gem that actually was good back in the day. I’m talking, of course, about the Trap Master.

The Trap Master is a lot handier than it seems to have any right to be. As a Warrior, we can fetch it out of the deck with Reinforcement of the Army if need be, and thus it’s a solid one-of card for this build. Using it will most likely force us to delay our plans for one more turn, but if we’ve assembled the rest of the combo this shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, I say that now, but every time I try it, there’s a Nobleman of Crossout waiting for me in my opponent’s hand. Hopefully, you’ll get better mileage out of the move in question. Additionally, we’ve got three copies of Solemn Judgment in the deck, and if we have any of them down when our opponent plays Decree, we’re still in business. It’s also nowhere near as messy as the Trap Master solution, so try to save one Solemn just in case your opponent seems to have a thing for Royal Decree.

Against most decks, the main deck should be sufficient to claim the win, almost regardless of what the opponent may side in. You may consider cards like Horn of Heaven for the side deck due to its favorable interaction with Black Ptera and its ability to completely destroy an opponent who relies too heavily on Monarch effects. The Horn can also take out Chaos Sorcerer and Cyber Dragon, which is always a bonus. I’d probably also include some burn cards in my side deck to help combat decks based on Cyber-Stein. And you’ll want to switch up your strategy a bit and take a few more shots with Mass Driver and Cannon Soldier than you normally would before your deck goes off in order to try and drop them below 5000 life points.

Giant Trunade is another one of those cards that can wreck this deck, and it’s a definite candidate to use a Solemn Judgment on if you feel it’ll be followed up with a Cyber-Stein win if you let it through. Other than that, your best ally with this deck (as with any other non-standard deck) is practice. I can’t begin to describe how important it is to know the ins and outs of your deck and how to respond in any given situation. It’s relatively easy with this sort of deck, but depending on its complexity, it becomes more and more difficult to avoid mistakes. As a quick example, it took me about three matches playing this deck to realize what I need to do and what I need to keep my opponent from doing in order to succeed. That’s nothing compared to my counter-Fairy deck, which took about two months of building and tweaking and testing before I stopped making blatantly terrible moves.

Chimeratech Overdragon may be the card that everyone is talking about, but that certainly doesn’t make it the only good card from Power of the Duelist. The new set is full of great cards, as long as you look at them with an open mind and an open card database. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

Next Week: Chaos Return is like a spoiled child: it always expects to get its own way. Next time, I introduce a little tough love into the metagame.