Gravekeeper decks were a rarity at Battle City Amsterdam 2004. Even rarer were female competitors sitting at table one, and that’s right where we found Marlias Keyzer in the third round of her pod. The traditional Gravekeeper deck would have had some serious handicaps in this environment, but luckily, Marlias’ deck had some clever innovations that turned the traditional Gravekeeper deck on its head.

Monsters
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Tribe-Infecting Virus
1 Cyber Jar
1 Guardian Sphinx
1 Jinzo
3 Gravekeeper’s Spy
3 Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier
3 Gravekeeper’s Guard
3 Gravekeeper’s Cannonholder
3 Gravekeeper’s Assailant
2 Gravekeeper’s Spy

Spells
1 Terraforming
3 Necrovalley
1 Harpie’s Feather Duster
1 Raigeki
1 Mage Power
1 United We Stand
1 Pot of Greed
1 Change of Heart
1 Swords of Revealing Light

Traps
3 Rite of Spirit
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Imperial Order
1 Mirror Force
1 Magic Cylinder

Side Deck
3 Vampire Lady
1 Vampire Lord
1 A Cat of Ill Omen
1 Kuriboh
1 Yata-Garasu
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Monster Reborn
1 Snatch Steal
1 Ceasefire
1 Graceful Charity
1 Slate Warrior
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
1 Royal Tribute

Marlias (pronounced Mar-leese) is seventeen, and lives in Holland near Rotterdam. She and a friend whom she taught to play Yu-Gi-Oh! attended the event together. When I asked her if she was at the event as part of a team she replied that she “wasn’t really here with a team, but I know a lot of the people playing here today.”

I was curious to find out how often Marlias played each week, since her deck was quite good and she seemed to know a lot of the players. “I play once or twice a week, mostly the whole day. I got to a shop where you can play the whole day, I go there from 12 o’clock and play until five,” was her answer. Marlias has played Yu-Gi-Oh! for quite a while and was likely one of the most experienced players in the RAI Center, period.

I wanted to know how Marlias ran her deck: how she used it and what she liked about it. I had a hunch that it was the Gravekeeper’s Cannonholder that tied everything together, but since I’m a Cannon Soldier fanatic I wrote that off as my own bias. Marlias didn’t disappoint me, though. One of her favorite plays? “Set Rite of Spirit on one turn, summon Gravekeeper’s Cannon Holder, so I can tribute a bunch of monsters. Then I use Rite of Spirit to Special summon them back and tribute them again.” Pretty cool.

Marlias also had a good explanation for why she chose to play Gravekeepers, and it’s an explanation often heard in North America. “Most people play with Chaos monsters, and Necrovalley prevents them from getting on the field. Also, the Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier can go through defense position monsters, and most people use Spear Dragon and Goblin Attack Force, so it’s really good against those. It’s good against Scapegoat too.”

Marlias’ deck was in tune with the European metagame, but I had to ask her how the Equip spells worked out for her, since Equips are generally eschewed in other parts of the world. “I think they work very well, especially with Spear Soldier. I tend to hang back, using my higher DEF monsters to stall out play until I’m ready to make a move. When I am, I attack with equipped Spear Soldiers, other monsters, and in the end, tribute everything to Cannon Soldier to win the game. I think Gravekeeper decks are very slow sometimes, so instead of trying to win fast and swarm I take my time to build a win.” That’s pretty smart, and definitely something that could be explored in Japanese or North American metagames where most Gravekeeper decks run as turbo swarms.

Though many of the decks that did well at Battle City Amsterdam 2004 would not be particularly playable outside of a European metagame due to various factors, Marlias’ deck is quite interesting. It would need a few adjustments (Sangan, Witch of the Black Forest, and perhaps a few other cards), but it introduces some interesting concepts that are somewhat revolutionary for the archetype. Watch for this approach to be exceedingly powerful in coming months when stores start hosting tournaments using the upcoming Forbidden List.