As promised last week, I’ll be continuing with the theme of combating the overpowering Dark Armed Dragon deck, the success of which in the Advanced format is forcing it to be carried into Traditional. We’ll have to remember the tendencies of the deck to attempt the creation of countermeasures: it wins quickly, it draws a lot of cards, and it involves the graveyard. So we’ll want to disrupt the graveyard, have the ability to stop the overwhelming card-drawing power (or at least keep up with it), and survive a quickly executed one-turn KO (hopefully punishing the overextension afterward). That’s a lot to take care of, but I’ll be revisiting a deck that might be able to do the job: Gravekeepers.

That’s right, the long-forgotten deck that probably seems too slow at this point. Gravekeeper decks have been used for their aggressive capabilities in the past, swarming the field quickly and overwhelming an opponent. However, we’ll be focusing on a new way to play the deck: in a lockdown manner.

The first thing to note is that since the deck last saw major tournament play (to my knowledge, the most recent time being Shonen Jump Championship Indianapolis 2004 when it made the Top 8), it’s improved a lot. We’ve been given Gravekeeper’s Commandant, Dark Bribe, and even Allure of Darkness. About a quarter of the deck is going to be Dark monsters, so we’ll be able to utilize the additional card-drawing capabilities. We’ll be focusing on the deck’s power to make Dark Armed Dragon and Dark Magician of Chaos into monsters without effects (albeit, very large monsters without effects) so we can deal with them accordingly. We’ll also be using Waboku to deflect game-winning turns (saving our mass monster removal for when this happens) and slowing our opponents down by using well timed copies of Solemn Judgment and Dark Bribe. All the while, we’ll be deflecting attacks from everything but our opponent’s strongest monsters with our Gravekeeper’s Spy.

The Monsters