Exodia decks are going to be hot in the new Advanced format. While they may take some time to build up a following, Turbo Exodia decks that rely on Emissary of the Afterlife, Sangan, and Spear Cretin are once again set to rule metagames near and far. The Turbo Exodia strategy is resilient and open to creativity, and it can be blazingly fast. Plus, the removal of The Forceful Sentry and Confiscation from the environment means that there will be little standing in the way of Exodia-based wins. A Turbo Exodia deck is a great bet in the new Advanced format.

However, we’re not here today to discuss Turbo Exodia. Instead, we’re going to focus on the deck’s under-appreciated cousin. Russel from New York City sent in a unique Exodia build.

Here’s what he had to say about it.
 
Well, Jason, this is my deck. As you can see, it’s an Exodia build, but it’s not your usual Lockdown Exodia deck. While my deck is extremely limited in what you can do to it, I was wondering if you could improve it in any way. It relies heavily on two spell cards, Heart of the Underdog and D. D. Borderline. The rest of the deck is made up of normal monsters. I hope that you have fun with it!

Thank you,

Russel B.
New York, N.Y.

I’m always up for a challenge, and Russel has certainly given me one! Here’s the decklist that he sent in.

Russel’s Heart of Exodia: 40 cards
 
Monsters: 34
1 Skull Dog Marron
1 Inpachi
1 Dark Blade
1 Soul Tiger
1 Island Turtle
1 Charcoal Inpachi
1 Nin-Ken Dog
2 Neo Bug
2 The Dragon Dwelling in the Cave
2 Battle Footballer
2 Luster Dragon
2 Giant Soldier of Stone
3 Harpie Girl
3 7 Colored Fish
3 Gagagigo
3 Mad Dog of Darkness
1 Exodia the Forbidden One
1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One
 
Spells: 6
3 Heart of the Underdog
3 D. D. Borderline

There isn’t a lot of cool tech in this deck, and I can’t make controversial decisions regarding deckbuilding priorities. This deck is what it is. In its current form, you either draw Heart of the Underdog or you will lose—and hopefully, D. D. Borderline will hold off your opponent in the meantime. However, despite the deck’s apparent narrow focus, there are a lot of things that I can do to make it more reliable.

First, the normal monster roster could use a lot of tweaking. For non-effect monsters of level 4 or lower, the highest ATK value available is 1900, so I’m going to use that as the baseline for any offensive monsters that the deck might include. As for normal monsters with high DEF values, the best that we can get without having to tribute is 2100, with the standard “high” DEF being 2000.

I’d like to balance the deck between defensive and offensive monsters, which I’ll take into consideration once I start adding cards. That being said, first I need to make some drops.

Essentially, any monster with less than 1900 ATK or 2000 DEF needs to be cut. Therefore, I’m dropping Inpachi, Dark Blade, Nin-Ken Dog, Neo Bug, Harpie Girl, 7 Colored Fish, and Gagagigo. I’m also dropping the 2100-DEF Battle Footballer and the 2000-DEF The Dragon Dwelling in the Cave, because those cards have superior counterparts.

Next, I want to drop all three copies of D. D. Borderline. While Borderline can be a powerful defensive card, this deck doesn’t have any way to protect the spell—and once one copy gets destroyed, the other two are essentially dead draws. With so many decks packing large amounts of spell and trap removal, running D. D. Borderline isn’t a particularly safe play.

Now, we have a lot of wiggle room, and I want to add some tech-y cards to the deck. We need to do everything we can to get at least one copy of Heart of the Underdog in the early game, so I’m going to add some cards that will help thin the deck. First, let’s add three copies of Thunder Dragon. While it would stink to draw a copy once the Heart engine is going, as soon as we draw Thunder Dragon, we’ll be able to get rid of the other copies from the deck. The risk of drawing Thunder at a bad time isn’t a huge concern.

Second, I’m going to add three copies of Reload. Once Heart of the Underdog hits the field, a spell is going to be a bad card to draw, but you can always save the first copy of Reload that you draw and leave it until the next turn. Then, if another card, like Thunder Dragon, Exodia the Forbidden One, or another copy of Reload, blocks your string of normal monsters, you can activate Reload and start the cycle again. The best part? When you use Reload while Heart of the Underdog is on the field, only one of the cards that you pull from the spell’s effect needs to be a normal monster to set off the Heart cycle again.

Next, we need some more normal monsters to replace the ones that I’ve removed. For offense, I’m going to add one copy of Luster Dragon, three copies of Archfiend Soldier, three copies of Insect Knight, and a single copy of Gemini Elf. These are all 1900 ATK monsters, and we’re running a specific number of them to keep the deck balanced between attackers and defenders. Note that this build only uses one copy of Gemini Elf, because it’s the only pricey card out of the bunch. If you’ve got more copies of the Elf but don’t have enough copies of another 1900 ATK monster, feel free to use more Elves!

Next, I’m going to add two copies each of Charcoal Inpachi and Soul Tiger, because both cards have superior DEF values of 2100. The rest of my defensive picks have 2000 DEF and were chosen based on their ATK values, just in case we wanted to do some attacking—I’m adding two more copies of Skull Dog Marron and one copy of Giant Soldier of Stone.

The final changes to the deck look like this.

-3 D. D. Borderline
-1 Inpachi
-1 Dark Blade
-1 Island Turtle
-1 Nin-Ken Dog
-2 Neo Bug
-2 Battle Footballer
-3 Harpie Girl
-3 7 Colored Fish
-3 Gagagigo
-1 The Dragon Dwelling in the Cave

+3 Reload
+3 Thunder Dragon
+1 Luster Dragon
+3 Archfiend Soldier
+3 Insect Knight
+1 Gemini Elf
+2 Charcoal Inpachi
+2 Soul Tiger
+2 Skull Dog Marron
+1 Giant Soldier of Stone

Here’s the final version of the deck.

Russel’s Heart of Exodia: Jason’s Fix
40 cards

Monsters: 34
3 Thunder Dragon
3 Luster Dragon
3 Mad Dog of Darkness
3 Archfiend Soldier
3 Insect Knight
1 Gemini Elf
3 Charcoal Inpachi
3 Soul Tiger
3 Skull Dog Marron
3 Giant Soldier of Stone
1 The Dragon Dwelling in the Cave
1 Exodia the Forbidden One
1 Right Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Left Arm of the Forbidden One
1 Right Leg of the Forbidden One
1 Left Leg of the Forbidden One
 
Spells: 6
3 Heart of the Underdog
3 Reload

Russel’s deck is still luck-based, because we need to draw Heart of the Underdog before turn 3 against most decks. Any deck that works quickly will be a risky matchup against Russel’s deck, so one thing that we’ll want to avoid is a Warrior deck running Marauding Captain. That being said, this deck can afford three to four turns against almost any other deck, especially if our raw power can stave off an opponent’s offense. We can usually count on drawing eight or nine cards, which gives us a 50 to 55 percent chance of seeing a copy of Heart of the Underdog. Those are the odds without even considering the deck thinning introduced by Reload and Thunder Dragon. That’s good news, because if we can activate a Heart and survive until the next turn, we’ve got a reasonable shot at winning.

How do you play this deck intelligently? Basically, there are two things that you can do to maximize the possible number of draws you’ll make¾which is a more pleasant way of saying that there are two things that you can do to survive longer. You can draw out your opponent’s spell and trap removal so that Heart doesn’t get destroyed the moment it’s activated, and you can maintain field advantage so that you can protect your life points.

You’ll want to use your offensive monsters to wipe out an opponent’s monsters whenever possible, but you’ll need to be careful about threats posed by cards like Mirror Force and Sakuretsu Armor. Snatch Steal is particularly difficult for this deck to deal with, because the life points protected by your monsters may come under heavier fire than you’d anticipated. Be aware of the major threats against you and try to read an opponent to see if he or she can hurt you. If you think that an opponent has Snatch Steal, you should set a defender—even if your opponent takes it, he or she will probably have to attack the monster first to flip it over, and that’s one more turn of breathing room for you.

Against a Lockdown Burn deck, you can basically go to town. Lockdown Burn decks will rarely be able to outpace this deck, and since none of Lockdown Burn’s monsters are big enough to punch through your raw stats, you won’t be particularly threatened. Obviously, you still can’t afford to do anything stupid. Make sure that you always have at least one face-down defender to block Lightning Vortex weenie rushes. However, you have far less to worry about against Lockdown Burn than you do against a Tribal Beatdown or Chaos variant.

As for the side deck, just add in normal monsters with 1900 ATK or 2000 DEF. That way, you can play with the balance of attackers and defenders in the deck, making adjustments according to what you’re playing against and the aggressiveness of your opponent. This might be the only deck where you’d consider side decking three copies of Aqua Madoor after the first game.

Thanks for sending in your decklist, Russel. Hopefully the fix will help, and hopefully readers will have fun with it!

-Jason Grabher-Meyer

Are you interested in seeing your deck featured in this column? Send a decklist formatted like the one in this article, your name, and your hometown to Jason@metagame.com, and your deck might be used in a future Apotheosis article!