I’m absolutely certain that someone out there played Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror in his or her main deck. It makes for a nice fit in certain Gadget builds, though you run the risk of a dead draw by using such a specific card in the main deck. That’s why if I wanted to main Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, I’d come up with a strategy that works together with the Mirror to ensure that it’s always good. “But wait! Couldn’t you just make a Skill Drain deck?” Well, I could, but then I’d be completely shutting myself out of effects as well. Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror doesn’t make me pay life points and doesn’t stop continuous effects from working, so I could still play cards like The End of Anubis to wreck plans involving graveyards or effect monsters of other attributes to do fun things like search out key cards. Of course, other decks will be able to do the same thing, but the number of decks that use Elemental Hero Stratos for their monster searching is far greater than the number of decks that do not. Offhand, the only one I can think of is the Volcanic Monarch deck that runs Volcanic Rocket and Crystal Seer, and that isn’t a very likely matchup until more people get their hands on Royal Firestorm Guards. So why not? Let’s grab a bunch of cheap secret rares from Force of the Breaker, a set of Infernal Dragon cards, a couple of copies of The End of Anubis, and a set of Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror cards, and go to town!

Monsters: 19

3 Infernal Dragon

3 Mist Archfiend

3 Giant Orc

2 The End of Anubis

3 Magical Merchant

3 Crystal Seer

2 Cyber Dragon

Spells: 9

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Premature Burial

1 Card Destruction

2 Lightning Vortex

3 Recurring Nightmare

Traps: 12

3 Solemn Judgment

3 Forced Back

3 Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

As strange as it may seem, I find myself playing fewer and fewer spells as time goes on, opting instead to use powerful trap cards in their place. Sure, Jinzo and Royal Decree can be real pains, but the power these traps hold is often enough to make me use them. I’m not reaching Counter Fairy levels of trap usage, but I’m fairly convinced that somewhere from twelve to fourteen is the right number of traps for a Six Samurai deck.

The primary culprits for my recent trap frenzies have, of course, been counter traps. Dark Bribe still isn’t very accessible, but players who have Champion Pack Solemn Judgment cards and piles of Forced Back laying around on the floor clearly don’t know what they’re adorning their carpet with. Solemn Judgment and Forced Back easily fit into nearly any deck and have such a profound effect on a duel that I find it difficult not to include them in every deck I make. In particular, aggressive decks that like to hit directly with huge dudes (such as this week’s deck) are prime candidates for Forced Back. What’s better than negating your opponent’s Monarch or Light and Darkness Dragon summon and leaving him or her with a bare field while you have a swarm of 2200+ ATK monsters waiting to take him or her down? Not very much (unless you’re the sadistic type who enjoys watching children cry when they can’t do any damage to you through your Cloudians while Final Countdown is running). If you’re going anywhere near a serious tournament in the near future, you should definitely consider main decking these cards. Properly used, they will win you games.

The main strategy here is to keep on coming at your opponent with huge monsters you can summon without tributing. Of course, most of them have a nasty side effect after you get a turn of use out of them, but that won’t matter thanks to Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror. Once you get the Mirror in play, you can attack freely with Infernal Dragon without it ever self-destructing, keep Mist Archfiend on the field indefinitely, and attack with Giant Orc without consequence. I haven’t included it in this build, but you could even take the new Goblin Black Ops card from Gladiator’s Assault and attack directly with it till you’re blue in the face and never have to switch it to defense.

Playing these cards while Light and Darkness Dragon is on the field makes them an even bigger kick, even if you don’t have Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror out. Mist Archfiend trying to explode on you? The opponent’s Dragon will negate it, and conveniently drop its ATK. Is Jinzo causing trouble? It doesn’t really matter as long as you have a Mist Archfiend to trade for him or some sort of removal. You end up going through a lot of monsters with this deck no matter how you slice it, so you need a useful way to get them back. Well have no fear, because Recurring Nightmare is here! This card is a twist on Dark Factory of Mass Production, a twist that I find much better than the original. Dark Factory was restricted to normal monsters, but it could take any normal monsters. Nightmare only gets you Dark monsters with 0 DEF, but if you take a look at the list of monsters that meet the criteria, you’ll see that all the cards on it are both useful and fragile. When you’ve got monsters that do lots of damage and then explode (along with a card to get them right back), you’ve got yourself a recipe for mayhem, and that’s exactly what this deck seeks to throw down.

Of course, I’d rather not lose any monsters I don’t have to, and we can’t rely on our opponent actually playing that big old Dragon that negates stuff. Thus, the Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror cards come into play. They aren’t just for being mean to people who like Dark monsters! Actually, that might be a lie. You’ll need to judge for yourself whether or not negating all Dark monster effects is “mean,” but before you get to make that distinction, you’ll have to fish out a copy of the Mirror from your deck. This is where the big decision came between using Mirror and Skill Drain. Magical Merchant and Crystal Seer both have effects that are going to help you get to the cards you need faster. Merchant has a lot more synergy with the rest of the deck, especially with the three copies of Recurring Nightmare, while Crystal Seer gives you a lot more control over what you’re pulling out of the deck. In both cases, it would be really nice to use these cards while my negation tool is in play. That means Skill Drain is out, and thus this deck was born. The Mirror works like a selective Skill Drain, negating any effect from a Dark monster that activates on the field or in the graveyard. You can flip Mirror in response to an activating effect and still have it negated, since the negation doesn’t use the chain. It does not, however, negate any continuous effects a Dark monster might generate, and that’ll let you sneak The End of Anubis by! End is particularly nasty since it’ll negate those nasty graveyard-targeting effects like Pot of Avarice and Call of the Haunted in addition to being huge, Dark, and easy to recur with Recurring Nightmare.

Speaking of recurring nightmares, I keep having this one about going to do coverage for a Shonen Jump Championship when all of a sudden I get an email from the editor. “Congratulations,” it says, “we sent someone to help you out!” At this point, I think that this particular event’s coverage is going to be outstanding . . . until the “assistant” shows up, and it’s John Madden. Good luck with finals to all of you who have them, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: Now here’s a guy who summons Royal Firestorm Guards, shuffles some Pyro monsters back into his deck, and draws some cards!