When I originally decided to do an article series on combo decks, it was going to be in three parts and include a discussion about the Ben Kei OTK deck. However, Jae Kim has already written an excellent article on Ben Kei that you should check out before you head to any major tournaments. That leaves me free to focus on the last major combo deck in the current format: the misunderstood, misused Empty Jar deck.*

The purpose of the Empty Jar deck is to run an opponent’s deck out of cards so that the next time he or she tries to draw a card, he or she will lose. To achieve this goal within the span of a turn, the Empty Jar player has to be able to draw through almost all of his or her deck, forcing the opponent to do the same. Empty Jar decks have seen considerable success at the last couple of Shonen Jump championships, although an Empty Jar player has yet to sneak into the Top 8 of any of these tournaments.**

Jonathan Navarro’s Empty Jar Deck from SJC Los Angeles

Monsters: 6
3 Thunder Dragon
1 Cyber Jar
1 Morphing Jar
1 Sangan

Spells: 34
1 Card of Safe Return
1 Premature Burial
3 Book of Moon
1 Graceful Charity
1 Card Destruction
1 Pot of Greed
3 Giant Trunade
2 A Feather of the Phoenix
2 Upstart Goblin
2 Level Limit - Area B
3 Reload
3 Dragged Down into the Grave
3 Spell Reproduction
3 Book of Taiyou
2 Serial Spell
3 The Shallow Grave

For a Great Empty Jar, Flip up Every Jar

There are a few things that I’d like you to note before we go any further. First, do you notice anything weird about this deck? That’s right, there aren’t any traps at all. Traps are too slow, and you need to play all of the deck’s cards when you get them and not a single turn later. The second, more interesting thing that I’d like you to notice is that there are only six monsters, and none of them are Needle Worm. Long considered a mainstay of deck depletion strategies, Needle Worm doesn’t appear anywhere on this decklist. While Needle Worm may remove five cards from an opponent’s deck, the card does nothing to help your situation, whereas the monsters that are included in this deck will help you get more cards in your hand.

As for the operation of this deck, the most important thing is to get to Cyber Jar and Morphing Jar as quickly as you can. If you don’t have them in your starting hand, set any cards that you think you’ll need later on and play a copy of Reload. With Sangan, Reload, Upstart Goblin, Dragged Down into the Grave, and Spell Reproduction to help get cards into your hand, you’ll be hard-pressed not to get one of your Jars in the first few turns. After you get to Morphing Jar, or better yet, Cyber Jar, you’ll need to use Book of Moon and Book of Taiyou to flip the Jar up and down repeatedly. Plus, The Shallow Grave and Premature Burial can bring the Jars back from the graveyard when needed. You can also use cards like Spell Reproduction and A Feather of the Phoenix to recur the pieces of your combo. Eventually, you’ll either deplete your opponent’s deck down to ten cards or less, or you’ll have your opponent’s hand up to fifteen cards or more. That’s when you lay down Card Destruction and chain it with Serial Spell. You’ll discard your entire hand to get Card Destruction’s effect twice. Since you’ll have no hand due to Serial Spell, you won’t have to draw anything and will be safe from decking out. Your opponent, however, will be in trouble.

Disassembling the Combo

When facing this deck, you essentially have three options. The first option involves blocking the effects of Cyber Jar and Morphing Jar. The second option is to stop the Card Destruction/Serial Spell combo that usually ends the game. The third option is to end the game before the Empty Jar player can do the fatal combo. Currently, the first option is the most reliable and effective way to beat the Empty Jar player, so let’s look at that strategy first.

When dealing with flip effect monsters, there are two basic ways to eliminate them without activating their effects. First, you could remove the monster before it has a chance to flip over. The easiest way to do this is with Nobleman of Crossout. You could also get the job done with Mystic Swordsman LV2 or Sasuke Samurai, both of which can sneak under stall cards to get rid of the Jar before it can become a threat.

The sneakier way to do things is to use Creature Swap to grab your opponent’s Jar so that you can stop him or her from flipping it. However, I’d stay away from the Creature Swap solution, because the only way to prevent your opponent from flipping the Jar on your side with Book of Taiyou is to tribute the monster for something. But if you do that, your opponent can just bring the Jar back with The Shallow Grave and then flip it anyway. Just keep in mind that the solution is on the table, because you may need to use it in a tight spot.

The second way to eliminate a flip effect monster without activating its effect is to negate that effect entirely. Blade Knight is an excellent choice for this job. It’s a great monster in its own right, it has the Light attribute, and you can search for it with Reinforcement of the Army. Just remember that the Knight has to be your only monster on the field in order to negate flip effects, because you don’t want to blunder into a copy of Cyber Jar that you thought you were going to negate.

Another option available to those who play Metamorphosis is to get out Dark Balter the Terrible. Balter not only negates the effects of monsters that it destroys in battle, but it also lets you pay 1000 life points to negate a normal spell. Balter is an excellent answer to the Empty Jar deck, because the Fusion can absolutely shut it down unless Level Limit - Area B is active.  

If you don’t feel like leaving things to the monsters, you can always side in some traps to negate flip effects as well. An experienced Empty Jar player will rarely leave a Jar face down on the field during an opponent’s turn, so certain traps will be more reliable answers to the deck’s key combo. I’m a fan of the often-neglected Royal Command, because it puts a full stop to the Empty Jar player’s plans until he or she can find a copy of Giant Trunade to get the trap off the field. Another tactic is to play Skill Drain, which has a similar impact against the Empty Jar deck. You’ll probably want to run Royal Command, because it’s free, plus you can use it turn after turn as long as it doesn’t get discarded. However, Skill Drain is probably a better card overall, because it can deal with Tribe-Infecting Virus and Airknight Parshath, two important cards in some decks.

If all you need is a one-time solution, Ceasefire is the card for you. In addition to negating the flip effects of monsters that it reveals, it can deal a nice chunk of burn damage. Finally, if you’re looking for a multi-purpose trap that doesn’t need to stay on the field, I’d like to introduce you to Divine Wrath. It hasn’t made nearly as much of an impact on the tournament scene as I’d expected, but it certainly gets the job done (at least temporarily) against Empty Jar. The trap is also a much better choice than Royal Command or even Skill Drain against the new rolling TER-Lock deck, because Divine Wrath actually destroys the monster as well as negating its effect. Just make sure that you have Sinister Serpent or Thunder Dragon to help balance out the discard.

Veto Power

Almost as important as the two Jars is the deck’s roster of 34 spells. If you can shut them all down, the Empty Jar player can’t win. Imperial Order is currently on the Forbidden list in the Advanced format, but there’s another card that can do the job. Spell Canceller, first pioneered by Nate Nielebeck at SJC Houston, is capable of shutting down all spells on both sides of the field. Without spells, the only immediately playable cards for the Empty Jar player will be Morphing Jar, Cyber Jar, and Sangan. And those cards won’t do the Empty Jar player much good, as he or she will just collect a lot of useless spells. The exception is, of course, Cyber Jar, which can still mess you up.

For those of you who are less inclined to main deck or side deck Spell Canceller, there’s always Dark Balter the Terrible. As I mentioned before, if you can get the Fusion out, you’ll be able to block or negate nearly every card that the Empty Jar deck can throw at you. You could also side deck in a few copies of Magic Drain or Magic Jammer, but those solutions are a lot more extreme and a lot less useful. The best solution is to prevent the flip effects from activating. If you can do that, Empty Jar can’t beat you.

There’s just one more word of caution that I’d like to throw out there before I wrap things up. Be careful with Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity—if the cards you’re getting from them aren’t very helpful, all you’ve done is help the Empty Jar player out, and that’s the last thing you want to do.

The Gist of It

To sum things up, here’s an example of a good plan for beating an Empty Jar deck.

1.      Determine that your opponent is indeed playing an Empty Jar deck.

2.      In game 1, try to get to Nobleman of Crossout as quickly as possible.

3.      For games 2 and 3, side deck in your flip negation or spell negation cards.

4.      If you don’t get any negation cards, try to recycle your removal cards.

As usual, it’s impossible to guarantee a one-hundred percent win ratio against this deck or others like it. However, by following these guidelines, you should drastically increase your chances of winning against Empty Jar.

This is probably the last article of mine that you’ll read before U.S. Nationals. With that in mind, I’d like to wish all participants good luck this weekend. I’ll be competing as well, so feel free to drop by and say “hello” if you see me.*** Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Next Week: Rise from your grave! Or not . . .

** This is most likely because CO won’t touch the deck. It’s a shame, really. I’d love to see what they could make of it.

*** You might find that the picture next to my articles isn’t representative of what I actually look like (or so says Paul Ross). I have a lot more hair in real life.