I don’t know about any of you, but watching Joey Skiles play at Shonen Jump Championship Houston was inspiring. I knew Elemental Hero Stratos was good, but I had never actually seen someone play the card in his namesake deck. It’s probably for the best, considering that before Strike of Neos was legal, Stratos would likely have been a one-trick pony excepting revival through Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial. Nowadays however, Stratos is so much better than that. Thanks to Skyscraper 2 - Hero City, the new field spell for your Elemental Heroes, Stratos isn’t so much a monster as it is an experience. Gadget decks get their kicks out of always having a monster to play, especially once the opponent has run dry. Elemental Hero decks could pull off a similar feat under a couple of specific conditions. The first would be if you were still allowed three copies of Stratos and played The Transmigration Prophecy to keep recycling them into your deck. Prophecy really shines when it comes to creating loops of recruiters and other self-replacing monsters, but it’s probably for the best that it was never legal at the same time that Stratos wasn’t Limited.

The other condition by which we could play Stratos at least once a turn is if we could consistently bring it in and out of play without needing more than one normal summon. Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial are both Limited and O - Oversoul only works on normal monsters, so without Strike of Neos, we’d be out of luck on the constant recursion front. Fortunately, all this “No Strike” stuff is idle speculation. We have Skyscraper 2 - Hero City, and the Elemental Heroes may finally have the trick they need to hit it big on the SJC scene. After I got back from Houston, I quickly put together my own interpretation of what I call the “Big City” deck, and the results were a pleasant surprise. If you’ve never seen the face of a hardcore player who was just beat by Elemental Heroes, I recommend you do so. This week’s deck will help.

Monsters: 21

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

3 Elemental Hero Sparkman

3 Elemental Hero Clayman

3 Elemental Hero Wildheart

3 Cyber Dragon

3 The Earth - Hex-Sealed Fusion

2 Exiled Force

1 Don Zaloog

1 Sangan

1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

Spells: 15

1 Mystical Space Typhoon     

1 Snatch Steal

1 E - Emergency Call

2 Reinforcement of the Army

3 Skyscraper 2 - Hero City
3 Miracle Fusion

2 Smashing Ground

Traps: 5

1 Mirror Force

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Call of the Haunted

2 Sakuretsu Armor

Fusions: 18

3 Elemental Hero Thunder Giant

3 Elemental Hero Rampart Blaster

3 Elemental Hero Wild Wingman

3 Elemental Hero Wildedge

3 Elemental Hero Shining Flare Wingman

3 Cyber Twin Dragon

The first order of business is to drop a Fusion substitute into the graveyard for use with Miracle Fusion later on. Next on the list of things to do is to pull all the Elemental Heroes out of your deck to complement your Fusion substitute. For that, we need Stratos, and we need him fast! Between Reinforcement of the Army and E - Emergency Call, getting Stratos shouldn’t be any problem at all. Once we have him, the goal is obviously to play him repeatedly. The ideal move once you have Stratos depends on what the field looks like and what you have in your hand. If you have Elemental Heroes on the field already, you’ll likely want to clear out your opponent’s backfield with Stratos. From there, you have free rein depending on your hand. If you’re holding Hero City already, go ahead and ram Stratos into a Cyber Dragon or a Monarch and recur him to claim a Hero from your deck. If you don’t have Hero City but you do have removal, clear off your opponent’s monsters and start attacking. Do whatever you can to force your opponent to attack Stratos. Remember, he only has a DEF of 300, making him very difficult to destroy with Smashing Ground, and his effect makes him difficult to catch with a Sakuretsu Armor or Mirror Force. The more times you recur Stratos via Hero City, the better your odds of winning the game once you pick up a Miracle Fusion.

Once you do hit Miracle Fusion, your actions should be dictated once again by what the field looks like. Hopefully, Stratos will be in your graveyard waiting to be called back into action. If he is, you’re in a good position. You’ll probably want to normal summon a Wildheart or Sparkman and then bring Stratos into play to destroy at least one spell or trap. Then, if your opponent has only one monster, Elemental Hero Shining Flare Wingman is probably your best bet. If the monster is in attack position, your attack will deal damage equal to your Wingman’s ATK, and if that doesn’t win you the game, then the attack of Stratos and any other monsters you have probably will. There’s also the chance that the reason Stratos is in your graveyard is because your opponent swarmed the field and ran over you a lot. Games against Gadgets will likely go that way at one time or another, and that’s why you’re also playing Elemental Hero Wildedge. Wildedge is an absolute wrecking ball, similar to Asura Priest in his effect. Unlike the Priest, however, Wildedge makes up for his Fusion status with his massive size and ability to stay on the field even past the end of the turn. Gadgets hate Wildedge because he represents a huge amount of damage that they can’t easily avoid without the aid of the Shrink they probably had to use to beat Wildheart or Stratos. The biggest problem with this tactic though, is that Wildedge is unlikely to end the game for you unless the opponent has a lot of small monsters in attack position. In that case, you might not have any life points by the time you get your Miracle Fusion.

As for the expected matchups should you decide to take this to a tournament, you’re definitely going to have to deal with Bazoo/Card Trooper Return at some point. Fortunately, Card Trooper can’t take down Clayman, giving you the ability to stall somewhat. Additionally, if you play Miracle Fusion early and attempt to terrorize the field with your Fusions it’ll be more difficult for a Return or Dimension Fusion to win the game. After all, both of your main Fusions will likely have more ATK than the biggest monster the opponent can produce (Bazoo), and you will also have been clearing his or her field out with Stratos, reducing the opponent’s chance to even pull off such a maneuver. If the opponent does get it off successfully (and has removal in hand), you’re sunk, but then again, so is just about any deck in that situation.

Against Diamond Dude Turbo, you absolutely must rush. Attack with anything and everything to try and get the opponent below that magic number of 2000 life points. If your opponent is running a version similar to Kris Perovic’s, you don’t have to worry about things like Destiny Hero - Dasher, so siding in Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer and never removing anything with him is a valid strategy. Against both Monarchs and Gadget variants, you’ll definitely want to side in Pulling the Rug for games 2 and 3. I’m not particularly confident in the matchup in game 1 though, especially if your opponent is playing something like 12-Gauge and he or she finds Treeborn Frog. Last, but not least, Six Samurai is probably one of your better matchups thanks to Wildedge. Most builds are siding Shogun rather than main decking him at this point, and that leaves your opponent wide open to some serious shenanigans with Miracle Fusion and Hero City.

All things considered, I’m not quite sure if Elemental Heroes are ready to win an SJC yet. Certainly, they’re good enough to make Day 2 if the person running them is on top of his game, but mistakes are going to hurt you tremendously if and when you make them. Take this as an opportunity to tighten up your gameplay, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: Victory Advanced.