Of all the sets released in the past year, The Lost Millennium has created more different potential deck types than any other set in recent memory. These include the Elemental Heroes, Reshef, Ancient Gear monsters, the Rock-Flip monsters, the Monks, and, of course, the Batterymen. Of course, most of these weren’t exactly playable straight out of the box. The Elemental Heroes are still getting plenty of support from the newest sets, and Ancient Gears got some help in Shadow of Infinity. The Batterymen started out with one monster (Batteryman AA) and one spell (Battery Charger), but now, four sets and two duelist packs later, fans of the Thunder-type powerhouses can march proudly to their local tournaments, confident in the knowledge that they can now ruin their unsuspecting opponents.

Monsters: 18

3 Batteryman AA

2 Batteryman C

2 Super-Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon

1 Sangan

2 Magician of Faith

2 Shining Angel

1 D. D.Warrior Lady

2 Marauding Captain

1 Tsukuyomi

2 Magical Merchant

Spells: 14

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Giant Trunade

2 Battery Charger

1 Level Limit - Area B

1 Reinforcement of the Army

2 Messenger of Peace

3 Inferno Reckless Summon

Traps: 8

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

3 Ojama Trio

3 Level Limit - Area A

I can hear the sound of thousands of players who are over-dependent on Cyber Dragon screaming in unison at the sight of three copies of Ojama Trio in the trap lineup. To be perfectly honest, the card drives me batty as well, but that’s primarily thanks to Jason and Curtis.

Anyway, the primary focus of this deck is to tie up your opponent’s monster zones with Ojama tokens, force those tokens into attack mode, then special summon 9000 points worth of ATK power with Batteryman AA and Inferno Reckless Summon. I think you can figure out what to do from there. The problem (as it is with all decks) is how to get to your ideal situation. Before I get into that, though, there are a good number of rules questions that can appear when you’re playing this deck.

First, we’re playing with Inferno Reckless Summon, so it’s a good idea to review when you can and can’t activate it. The main thing to remember is that you can’t activate Inferno Reckless Summon during the damage step. You aren’t going to be able to special summon Batteryman AA off of Shining Angel and immediately use Inferno Reckless Summon. It’s quite a shame, really, but Shining Angel is still quite useful for other purposes.

The next thing to know is that Inferno Reckless Summon doesn’t care what monster the opponent has face-up: only that he or she has a face-up monster. That means that if the only face-up monsters your opponent controls are Ojama tokens, you can activate Inferno Reckless Summon. Then he or she has to try in vain to summon more Ojama tokens from the deck. Obviously, this is impossible, meaning that you’re the only one who will reap any benefit from your Reckless Summon. A similar phenomenon occurs when the opponent chooses a monster limited to one for the effect of your Reckless Summon.

The other rules issue is more of a handy interaction to ensure your victory than anything else. Specifically, when you activate Giant Trunade to clear the field for your (hopefully) inevitable victory, if you chain to your own card by flipping up Level Limit - Area A, all face-up monsters of level 3 or less will be turned to attack position before all spells and traps are returned to their owner’s hands. This lets you wait until the last possible moment to reveal your plans. Just remember that if you activate Area A on your opponent’s turn to force his or her monster into attack position and that monster gets destroyed, your opponent can still switch the Ojama tokens back to defense position with the manual position change for the turn.

In terms of play style, the closest deck to this one would probably be the Cyber-Stein OTK deck. Unlike the Cyber-Stein deck, however, this deck doesn’t seek to win on the first turn of the game. It’s more of a slow-tempo deck that wants to lock down the field until it can achieve its win condition rather than try to get all the pieces on the first turn. It’s been a common trend in combo decks (and all decks, for that matter) over the past few months. The key cards to help you get the time you need to win with this deck are Messenger of Peace and Ojama Trio. The allowed copy of Level Limit - Area B is there as well, mainly because it’s just too good not to play in a deck of this type. The downside is that it prevents you from using your Super-Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon cards as a backup plan or diversion to keep your opponent from guessing your true intentions. Other than that, it works exactly like another Messenger of Peace with the added bonus of being free and stopping Don Zaloog from doing its sneaky “I-only-have-1400-ATK” dance past the nice man in Messenger’s art.

Ideally, you want your first-turn play to involve Ojama Trio, one of your combo pieces or a way to directly put it into action, and something to help you search out the rest. Cards that fall under this “search” blanket include Magical Merchant, the single Reinforcement of the Army, and Shining Angel. The rest would likely be either duplicates of cards you have, or other cards to help you bide your time or distract your opponent.

Now, there are two main ways that you can special summon your Batteryman AA. First are the two Marauding Captain cards in the deck. You’ll use them if you’ve got Batteryman AA in your hand. Alternately, you can special summon one using Battery Charger, if it winds up in the graveyard. Usually, a Batteryman will get to the graveyard thanks to an opponent’s attack or card effect, or you could tribute it to summon one of your Super-Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon cards. If you take this route, your opponent could be in serious trouble. 3400 is a very big number, and that’s how much ATK your Dragon would have if you tribute Batteryman AA to summon it. Doing so puts another gigantic roadblock into your opponent’s way. However, while it may be tempting to go to town on your opponent with Voltech Dragon, without the proper setup, it will likely get your shiny new Dragon toasted by a trap card that would otherwise be dead to your opponent, like Sakuretsu Armor. Thus, I recommend avoiding attacking with the Dragon unless you’re guaranteed to connect with it or if you have no other options left.

As I said above, Ojama Trio is absolutely necessary to help you survive long enough to gather your combo. Sticking your opponent with Ojama tokens on the first turn prevents them from playing Cyber Dragon, and since those tokens can’t be tributed for a tribute summon, you don’t have to worry about the tokens turning into Monarchs. However, the absolute best situation for you is sticking your opponent with five Ojama tokens. This is commonly referred to as an “Ojama-lock” and it prevents your opponent from winning by conventional means. If you achieve such a lock, you can just sit there and draw cards to your heart’s content, provided you don’t give your opponent the opportunity to kill those Ojamas in battle.

Without Dark Hole in the format, the only commonly played recourse to this tactic is Torrential Tribute. However, since you’re waiting for Heavy Storm or Giant Trunade, this should be irrelevant. Needle Ceiling is less commonly played, but it’s still effective. Finally, the most pressing threat to your plans is the new Voltanis the Adjucator. The only thing worse than having your win condition negated is your opponent being rewarded for doing so with a gigantic monster that has the potential to eliminate your entire board position at the same time. Fortunately for you, if the lock was down long enough, it shouldn’t matter, but if you’re playing against a deck that’s packing Voltanis, you probably would have lost a long time ago. A deck based around counter-traps is the combo deck’s worst nightmare, since you never know when or if one of your game-breaking cards is going to be negated.

Overall, Batteryman OTK is a fun deck for all you combo players out there who are sick of just playing Giant Trunade and paying 5000 life points for the win. Additionally, I’ve decided to avoid writing out the entire name of Super-Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon as much as possible from now on. It’s worse than those sentences that they made us type in grade school on those old “(Enter Name Here) Teaches Typing” programs.

I hope everyone who made it out to Nationals had a great time there, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

NEXT WEEK: The good, the bad, and the ugly from US Nationals.