Jae Kim, a.k.a. “Jaelove,” is one of the most recognizable duelists on the Internet.A writer and well-respected player, Kim is renowned for his contributions to creative themes like Strike Ninja. At SJC LA, he ran a revamped, and very smart, Chaos variant tailored for the new format.

Jae Kim’s New Age Chaos: 40 cards

Monsters: 18
1 Jinzo
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
3 Thunder Dragon
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Tribe-Infecting Virus
2 Night Assailant
1 Morphing Jar
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
2 Slate Warrior
1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
1 Magician of Faith
1 Magical Merchant
1 Sangan
1 D. D. Warrior Lady

Spells: 16
1 Graceful Charity
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Pot of Greed
1 Premature Burial
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Snatch Steal
2 Scapegoat
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Monster Reincarnation
2 Metamorphosis
1 Card Destruction
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Enemy Controller

Traps: 6
3 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ring of Destruction
1 Mirror Force

Fusion Deck: 24
2 Thousand-Eyes Restrict
2 Dark Balter the Terrible
1 Fiend Skull Dragon
2 Ryu Senshi
2 Reaper on the Nightmare
2 Dark Blade the Dragon Knight
2 Dark Flare Knight
1 Dragoness the Wicked Knight
1 Darkfire Dragon
3 Super Roboyarou
1 Giltia the D. Knight
1 Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon
2 Last Warrior from Another Planet
1 Gatling Dragon
1 King Dragun

Side Deck: 15
2 Hallowed Life Barrier
2 Zombyra the Dark
1 Book of Moon
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
2 Nobleman of Crossout
2 Kinetic Soldier
2 Swarm of Locusts
1 Cyber Jar
1 Ceasefire
1 Torrential Tribute

With a heavy Control theme, the deck takes advantage of many of the format’s top tech options. While a lot of the cards speak for themselves, there are a lot of really cool and intelligent picks, so instead of focusing on every card in the deck I’d like to look at the more intriguing ones instead.

The deck’s three copies of Thunder Dragon give it an easy way to get Light monsters into the graveyard for Black Luster Soldier, as well as a nice way to get a quick additional card, from a hand advantage point of view. That hand advantage can then be spent on Lightning Vortex, or used to gain more raw card advantage through Graceful Charity and Card Destruction. Two useless cards becoming two useful ones is a darn good thing.

Night Assailant can also be abused in such combos, while at the same time giving a strong piece of monster removal and keeping up the deck’s count of Darkness monsters. It’s especially nifty with Monster Reincarnation, too.

Two copies of Slate Warrior make an appearance, and it’s easy to see why. For ages, Slate Warrior has been one of the most ridiculously under-played beatstick monsters in the game, for no reason other than its slight vulnerability to Nobleman of Crossout and its lack of a Chaos-compatible attribute.

And Magical Merchant? There’s something I’ve never seen in a serious player’s deck. It makes a lot of sense here, digging for defensive options as needed and giving card advantage. It buries strong candidates for recursion via Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial, effectively turns Monster Reincarnation into a limited form of monster search—a great way to dig for Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning in an environment without Mirage of Nightmare—and it sticks Light and Dark monsters into the graveyard. Heck, it even is a Light monster itself, and since it’ll be quickly wiped off the field in many matchups, that can be valuable.

Finally, Jae was packing three copies of Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, a card that has seen a lot of play at today’s tournament. Again allowing him to abuse his hand advantage monsters, the Wind Blast lets Jae manipulate his opponent’s deck and thus control the game’s tempo. In the hands of an experienced player like Jae Kim, that’s deadly.

Overall, the deck plays in a similar fashion to other Chaos Control builds. It’s less focused on actually using Light and Dark monsters as the basis of its lineup and instead employs discard effects to get a more limited lineup into the discard pile when needed. As a result it has a stronger variety of monsters not usually seen in Chaos decks, like Slate Warrior. The result is a versatile deck that can be played to varying degrees as a Control deck, but that can also go into Beatdown mode as needed. Pretty cool.

The deck doesn’t really maintain board presence particularly well, but the three copies of Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, Lightning Vortex, Enemy Controller, Swords of Revealing Light and Scapegoat take care of that. That said, it’s not weak, and does have some nice opening plays like Sangan and D. D. Warrior Lady. Business seems to pick up in the mid-game, where tempo management really starts to pay off and the deck’s range of options can shine. It tends to win most of its games in this period, but it can also do exceedingly well in the early and late game.

Kim’s side deck was a nice blend of tech, primarily looking to stymie Lockdown Burn but also running some defense against particularly aggressive opponents. While the environment seems to be a bit slower than the previous Advanced format, Kim is not taking any chances.

His Fusion deck has a wide variety of options for Metamorphosis, giving him a complete range of options not available to most decks. It’s not something integral to his success, but it’s a nice finishing touch on a masterpiece of a deck.

United with other star players under the banner of Team Savage, Jae Kim is a star amongst stars. Watch for him to be huge this year, as he continues to innovate both with new decks and with teched-out spins on classic archetypes.