As I write this, Shonen Jump Championship Columbus is less than a week away. By the time you read this, Columbus will be a memory: another tournament come and gone, and in all likelihood another tournament won by a Dark Armed Return deck. Dark Armed Return has the same stranglehold on the format that Chaos decks had all the way back in Traditional format. It is the strongest and most devastating deck, and also happens to be the most consistent.
So how does one gain an edge over the competition? The key is to innovate. For Lazaro Bellido, that meant playing a bunch of tech cards that gave him the extra versatility necessary to power through a long tournament like Costa Mesa. Columbus marks the return to a shorter, regular tournament style, but players are still going to make sure their tech can last.
Pete Navarro was 11-2 at one point during the tournament in Costa Mesa, meaning he must have lost his last round and then didn’t make the Top 8 cut on tiebreakers. However, as with most tournaments, it’s always a good idea to take careful note of the decks that put up impressive records. This is the same way the Machine Beatdown deck was discovered last summer. Jens Erickson’s build put up impressive numbers but lost out on Day 2. So as I dug through the decklists and recorded listings to see how well Jens did, I realized there had to be something great about his build. The same goes for Navarro’s strategy, which has been lifted out of the pack and recognized by my team as one of the best decks at the tournament that day. Here’s what he played:
As you can see, Navarro played just as much tech as Lazaro did, sporting the single copy of Enemy Controller and two copies of Raigeki Break. However, the cards that make Navarro’s build so special are the three copies of Necro Gardna he played in his main deck. Necro Gardna, simply put, is one of the best cards in a Dark Armed Return mirror match. Being able to negate an opposing attack by removing a card from your graveyard can prevent your opponent from winning. Usually this will only stall the opponent for a few turns, but in a format where most victories are followed up with the opponent saying, "Ah dang, I had you next turn," a turn or two is often all you need.
What Necro Gardna does is essentially replace Destiny Hero - Dasher and the rest of the Destiny Hero crew as the primary Armageddon Knight target. Dumping Gardna instead of Dasher means you can’t randomly pull out a special summon for the win, but you can accurately stop an opposing attack for the save. In a long tournament where you’ll be encountering many Dark Armed Return decks, saving yourself multiple times is going to be what takes you to the top.
The Gardna also gives you perfect control over your graveyard. You could have as many as six Darks in your graveyard, and as long as three of them are Gardnas, you don’t have to worry at all about dropping the count to play Dark Armed Dragon. Simply remove copies of Gardna to negate attacks until you have only three left. You should only really be making this play for a game shot, but the coolest part about it is that you can wait until you have the game shot because you’re sitting on multiple copies of Necro Gardna.
is in the deck to turn into more Gardnas. Depending on how many Darks he wants in the graveyard, Navarro can search out Gardna itself, an Armageddon Knight to dump a Gardna in the graveyard, or another Mystic Tomato to search out an Armageddon Knight later on. Such a path can give Navarro three Darks quite easily, and because of the rate at which he can hit Armageddon Knight cards, he has a lot of safety in a format where going for game is the newest craze.
Dark Grepher is a cool card for Navarro’s deck, turning in-hand Gardna cards into discard fodder for fuelling the graveyard. We all know how much fun it is to cycle big Dark monsters in and out of the graveyard, but dropping Gardna is so much more exciting than dropping other Dark monsters. Grepher can jump start a Return like no other monster can, or can quickly fill your graveyard with Necro Gardna cards. Either way Navarro is sitting pretty.
Phantom of Chaos is the final off-beat monster you see in Navarro’s build. You’ll either love the Phantom or hate him. Some players look at him as another Dark Armed Dragon, and a great monster to have in the late game to get everything rolling again. Others believe the Phantom should be replaced with Strike Ninja, who can deal battle damage and has the same sort of control over the graveyard. Navarro played both cards, maximizing the ability to remove key cards from his graveyard.
However the main reason Navarro ran Phantom of Chaos was probably the synergy he has with Burial from a Different Dimension. Burial does a lot for Navarro in this deck and in today’s metagame. It can be used to counter Strike Ninja, Dimension Fusion, or Golden Sarcophagus, or it could be played to send your opponent from three Darks in the graveyard to six. Burial can also mean extra Gardnas, and can easily be chained to almost anything to save Navarro’s life points.
On the offensive end, Burial generates extra targets for Phantom of Chaos and Monster Reborn. Prometheus, King of the Shadows can be pumped by an extra 1200, and Strike Ninja can dodge up to two more times thanks to the Burial. The biggest prize, though, is using Burial from a Different Dimension with Dark Armed Dragon to wipe an extra three cards off the opponent’s field.
It’s devastating plays like that and the safety gained from the other tech cards that save games. Navarro’s build is very, very good, and one that should be emulated by players attending Shonen Jumps in the future. Do not underestimate how versatile
Necro Gardna can be: one day you might find yourself unable to destroy an opponent because of it. And it might happen sooner rather than later.
-Matt Peddle