A bunch of new cards are being released and the effect is quite astonishing. I’ll get to some of those in a few weeks, but I want to give everyone a chance to look at them before I go off building “holycow.deck.” Send me a deck with a recently released card in it (preferably Light and Darkness Dragon) to showcase your bright ideas for these new powerhouses, and I’ll see about putting it up. Today, we look at something more conventional, at least in the sense of having very few new cards in it.
Hey Matt, here’s a deck to look at.
The focus is most definitely on the monsters, and there are quite a few odd choices. Marauding Captain is very odd indeed, but he works surprisingly well. The extra 1200 or 2400 damage he supplies can be game winning, especially when I play Cold Wave, Cyber Dragon, Marauding Captain, Exiled Force, and then Gigantes in one turn. The thing that can make him really valuable is his “you can only attack me” effect. With that in mind, you can summon Exiled Force and not use its effect for several turns! That essentially prevents your opponent from setting monsters for fear of them being destroyed. Sasuke Samurai #4 is another odd choice, but I think it’s proven its worth since it appeared in Donald Myers’ deck in SJC Chicago.
—Dylan M.
Conway, Arkansas
Here’s what Dylan’s deck looked like . . .
Earth’s Assault—40 cards
Monsters: 22
3 Cyber Dragon
3 Gigantes
3 D. D. Assailant
3 Sasuke Samurai #4
3 Marauding Captain
3 Exiled Force
1 Card Trooper
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole
1 Sangan
1 Morphing Jar
Spells: 9
3 Cold Wave
1 Heavy Storm
1 Giant Trunade
1 Premature Burial
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Smashing Ground
Traps: 9
3 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
3 Solemn Judgment
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
Dylan has a deck quite similar to one I experimented with at Shonen Jump Championship Anaheim this past April, and there are some things I like and some things I don’t like about his build. The basic premise is fairly simple and fluid: build up a strong field presence and you win. The deck can operate without any of the lynchpins in other strategies like Marauding Captain or Cold Wave, but is greatly helped by their presence. It plays simply enough—put out D. D. Assailant and Gigantes as beatsticks that also take something with them when they are destroyed. Cyber Dragon, Marauding Captain, and Gigantes all supplement the heavy destruction with rush, making this pretty efficient though unfortunately useless when confronted by an Aqua Madoor.
Okay, perhaps that is a stretch, but any monster with 2000 DEF will cause trouble. The main problem with this deck is a lack of flexibility—critically important in this kind of strategy due to how differently it plays in certain matchups. While it might play exceptionally well against Gravekeeper decks, Gladiator Beasts, or Crystal Beasts, it basically dies in ashes against Macro Cosmos or even defensive themes, and plays poorly against the aforementioned Light and Darkness Dragon. Solemn Judgment is a godsend in this regard since it offers an emergency shut-off switch when your opponent starts blowing things up in your face, but the gas line is still there even if you shut it off. So that’s the problem we’re going to try to fix here.
The monster lineup is the one most in need of assistance. I told you a few weeks ago that Evil Hero Malicious Edge was the new face of awesome when it comes to beatdown, and I think that I was right in my estimations. This deck requires something that can get past a Monarch without wasting a normal summon, and we’re drastically low on cards that can do that. So we’ll add two copies of the bad-to-the-bone Evil Hero and move along to some other issues.
This deck needs a good amount of speed: more than the forces of Marauding Captain, Gigantes, and Cyber Dragon can provide alone. So how do we add diversity without cutting speed? The answer is something that puzzled me when I tried building other decks as aggressive as this one. No matter how many different builds I started with, the end result was a sort of toolbox supplementing an otherwise solid block of cards—mostly in triplicate—and some base support cards. I noticed it again when thinking over the changes to this deck. We can’t add anything to the build without first removing cards unless we want to greatly increase the deck’s size. I searched for options, and found three directions I deemed viable: Gaia Power and a Giant Rat toolbox; Reinforcement of the Army and a return of the current toolbox to account for this plus a different lineup for the two-thirds of the deck that wasn’t all monsters; and, oddly enough, a Gladiator Beast theme. I chose the Warrior toolbox because it wasn’t that far from the original theme.
I dislike Phoenix Wing Wind Blast in this deck. Problematic opponents will be running powerful tribute monsters like the Monarchs, Jinzo, or Light and Darkness Dragon. If they get a tribute monster out, you will have to toss away a normal summon for Exiled Force and often times you won’t benefit from putting a card on top of the opponent’s deck, since it offers no solace against a set monster the turn you draw it. It is just not at its best in this case, and while it makes for creative temporary removal, the thing you wanted to get rid of will come back. I don’t consider it adequate enough by itself to justify replacing either Dust Tornado or Forced Back. It also requires a discard, and while that may not always be the end of the world (as proven by successful decks playing Lightning Vortex), it does cut away from the fuel this deck needs.
Many of the “three-of” cards in this deck should either not be here or should be played with fewer copies. Neo-Spacian Grand Mole is a star here because it repeatedly guarantees a clear field and will often mess with people summoning tribute monsters (or better yet, players trying to use some powerful effect monsters that require time to use efficiently like Apprentice Magician or Gravekeeper’s Spy). Sasuke Samurai #4, while amazingly fun, is still an element of chance and thus something we want to reduce. I do like the continuous field control in this deck, and I think we could use more options in that vein. So the goals of cutting and adding cards should be achieving diversity and speeding the deck up. Marauding Captain, while another cute option, is not much of an addition to the rush present in the deck, and I felt it wise to replace all copies of him and a copy of D. D. Assailant (removed because the deck needed field presence more than conditional removal) with three Hydrogeddon cards.
I said I’d keep it short, so here are the changes, the decklist, how to play it, and my signoff, plus one relevant observation.
Cut:
–1 D. D. Assailant
–3 Marauding Captain
–2 Sasuke Samurai #4
–1 Giant Trunade
–3 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
Added:
+2 Evil Hero Malicious Edge
+3 Hydrogeddon
+1 Mystic Swordsman LV2
+2 Reinforcement of the Army
+1 Brain Control
+2 Forced Back
+1 Ultimate Offering
Here’s the final build:
Earth’s Assault—Matt’s Fix—42 cards
Monsters: 22
2 Evil Hero Malicious Edge
3 Cyber Dragon
3 Gigantes
2 D. D. Assailant
3 Hydrogeddon
1 Sasuke Samurai #4
1 Mystic Swordsman LV2
3 Exiled Force
1 Card Trooper
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole
1 Sangan
1 Morphing Jar
Spells: 11
3 Cold Wave
2 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Heavy Storm
1 Premature Burial
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Smashing Ground
1 Brain Control
Traps: 9
3 Solemn Judgment
2 Forced Back
1 Ultimate Offering
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
This deck focuses more on keeping cards in the hand and monsters on the field so that you can beat face and disrupt the opponent’s plays, but does so with more efficient cards than the previous version. How to play it? The deck actually runs in an identical fashion to the original build: swarm as fast as possible, build field presence, and win. Nothing too complicated, but this new build will run more smoothly. Until next time, duelists!
—Matt Murphy