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Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043
Doomkaiser Dragon's effect isn't just for Zombie World duelists: remember that its effect can swipe copies of Plaguespreader Zombie, too!
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Bill: Argh! How do you keep beating me?
Tom: What is it, Bill?
 Bill: It’s Rob again. He keeps pounding me into the ground with his bizarre deck that’s based on some baseball-monster card . . . the “Supreme Baseball Whatzit,” or something like that.
Rob: The card is Ultimate Baseball Kid, and it isn’t invincible. It’s just a really good monster to build a deck around.
Tom: Rob’s right, Bill. You should already know what some of these cards are, since you’ve been playing for well over a year.
Bill: But, in my opinion, any monster with less than 500 ATK is useless and not worth my attention. For example, why would anybody want to run Sinister Serpent?
Bill looks through his deck, which includes Lightning Vortex, Tribe-Infecting Virus, three copies of Raigeki Break, and a few copies of Creature Swap.
Tom and Rob: . . .
Bill: Um . . . what? Why are you guys staring at me like that?
If you were to take a break from dueling and look around at a Shonen Jump Championship in order to see what other duelists were running, you would most likely spot a few stall decks that focus on reducing an opponent’s life points to zero outside of battle through a variety of monster, spell, and trap effects. This kind of deck is called a “burner” deck. Most burner decks at tournaments are Lava Burn variants that use stall cards like Level Limit – Area B with the powerful Lava Golem, who will slowly melt away your opponent’s life points.Burner decks also tend to use cards like Raging Flame Sprite, a little monster that starts out by toasting an opponent with direct attacks. However, if the Sprite isn’t removed from the field as soon as possible, the Fire monster’s growing ATK strength will incinerate your opponent. Despite the bad fire puns that I’m stealing from Jason and his articles, the Burner-stall deck has some powerful support!
However, one monster has been sitting on the bench, lying in the common boxes of many duelists who run burner decks. On the other hand, a few duelists have recognized that this card is a powerhouse, and they’ve tried to create decks based on the little heavy hitter. This card is the star slugger in today’s edition of Bill and Tom’s Binder! Today we’ll be analyzing Ultimate Baseball Kid, a common monster from Soul of the Duelist.
The Basic Breakdown
When tossed into a random deck, Ultimate Baseball Kid is going to be a dead draw and a dead monster within a turn of its arrival to the field. The little slugger’s 500 ATK value doesn’t get it anywhere, and its 1000 DEF is easily overcome by monsters like Breaker the Magical Warrior and Blade Knight. That being said, most duelists who look at Ultimate Baseball Kid know that the monster needs support from other cards. You can tell that the Kid needs support by looking at its effect, level, and monster type.
The first trait you most note when looking at Ultimate Baseball Kid is its effect. Every other Fire monster on the field will boost the Kid’s ATK value by 1000 points each—with just one other Fire monster, the Warrior’s ATK will be considerable for a level 3 monster. In addition, the Kid has a burner effect that’s similar to Cannon Soldier’s. However, the Kid’s effect doesn’t tribute the monsters that it sends to the graveyard, and only Fire monsters can be used as fodder. In addition, the Kid can’t swing itself at an opponent like Cannon Soldier can. Not to worry, however, because the slugger will be swinging at your opponent well enough with its huge ATK boost.
 Thanks to Ultimate Baseball Kid’s low level, the monster can sneak under stall cards such as Gravity Bind and Level Limit – Area B and break through the opponent’s monsters with ease. A monster with 1500 ATK can usually destroy most defense-position monsters seen in Chaos/Warrior decks, and Level Limit – Area B can make sure that an opponent’s monsters are in defense position. The fact that Ultimate Baseball Kid can reach 2500, 3500, and sometimes even 4500 ATK makes the card even more insane! Sorry, Kaiba, but who needs Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon? Ultimate Baseball Kid says that your Dragon is just an overgrown garden snake.
Ultimate Baseball Kid’s Warrior type is just a bonus attached to the card’s other strengths. The Kid can be fetched from your deck with Reinforcement of the Army, and a single copy of Command Knight will boost the slugger’s ATK to 1900. Ultimate Baseball Kid already makes a great choice for budget Burner decks that revolve around inexpensive Fire monsters such as Solar Flare Dragon and Raging Flame Sprite. Building a deck around Ultimate Baseball Kid will make the card even better.
Combos and Counters
There’s no better way to punish Swarm decks and duelists who love Scapegoat than by hitting them with Ultimate Baseball Kid and DNA Transplant. Since the Kid’s ATK-boosting effect works for all Fire monsters on the field, you’ll benefit whenever your opponent summons a face-up monster of any kind into attack position. Speaking of Scapegoat, the token generator is a great choice for the Baseball Burn deck—when combined with DNA Transplant, the sheep tokens can give the Kid an ATK boost of 4000 points!
You should take advantage of the stall cards available to you in your Baseball Burn deck. Level Limit – Area B and Gravity Bind can shut down most attacking monsters. Meanwhile, Ultimate Baseball Kid can attack under the stall cards and destroy most monsters. With only one or two other Fire monsters on the field, Ultimate Baseball Kid is the most powerful level 3 monster that you can play . . . well, aside from Injection Fairy Lily, but the Fairy is insane in a variety of decks. Plus, the Spellcaster is an expensive, secret rare card.
Starting on April 1, duelists will lose access to Change of Heart, one of the most powerful cards ever released in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. Unfortunately for the Baseball Burn player’s opponents, the deck won’t be missing anything, because it can exploit Mind Control as a substitute for Change of Heart. Mind Control lets you take control of any face-up or face-down monster, which can allow Ultimate Baseball Kid to swing for a grand slam against your opponent’s life points. By the way, any monster that you take with Mind Control can be removed from the field with Ultimate Baseball Kid’s burn effect, because the effect doesn’t tribute the monsters that it targets.
 Spell and trap removal is the best possible counter to an opponent’s Ultimate Baseball Kid, because DNA Transplant will be a nightmare if you leave it face-up for too long. However, if you have access to Mystical Space Typhoon or Dust Tornado, don’t play either card immediately. Instead, you should wait for your opponent to send Ultimate Baseball Kid into one of your monsters. Then, respond to the attack by removing DNA Transplant from the field, and the little slugger’s ATK value is bound to plummet. Without that continuous trap active, the opponent will have their bat boy destroyed and lose a perfectly good battle phase.
There’s a reason why Mobius the Frost Monarch is run in numerous side decks. Mobius will trash any form of stall deck, taking out any card that prevents your monsters from attacking. Be careful, however, because a stall deck is bound to pack some counter traps that can deal with anything that threatens the deck’s key continuous cards.
Final Thoughts
More duelists should follow James Sharp’s lead and try out Ultimate Baseball Kid. Much like the Gravekeeper theme, the Baseball Burn deck is fairly inexpensive to construct and relatively powerful against Chaos and Warrior decks in larger tournaments. I’m sure that there are many more cool combos that work with Ultimate Baseball Kid, but it’s up to you to discover them. Show off the Kid’s power at a local tournament, Regionals, or even a Shonen Jump Championship. You’re sure to be impressed by the card’s strength!
Be sure to come back next week for another combo-packed edition of Bill and Tom’s Binder. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or requests for cards to be featured in this column, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at Mrosenberg@metagame.com. Until next time, keep in mind that it takes approximately seven days to forget bad puns that you read. After reading today’s article, it might take about four weeks. Have a fun month! |
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