The School of Duel: US Nationals Part 2
by Jerome McHale
Welcome back to School of Duel’s special pre-Nationals lesson. If you haven’t read the first part, I would seriously suggest doing that since it covers the results of half of the hard work I’ve done since the start of the format. Make sure you check it out before continuing.
When we last left off, I was going to talk about Monarch decks for a while. Monarchs are by far the easiest deck to play in the game right now. You just generate lots of tribute material and drop Monarchs that help clear the field. Then you attack until you win. Simple. The real strategy with Monarchs is in the side deck. You can never go wrong with Pulling the Rug in your side deck. Monarchs are generally the default deck for players who are either unsure of themselves or not confident in the other decks they’ve been testing, so a counter to the deck is always a good side deck call. Rug is also great against Demise as I’ve noted multiple times before. If you aren’t running Card Trooper, you’ll probably want to consider Banisher of the Radiance for your side deck in order to take down your “Perfect Circle” rivals, in addition to Destiny Hero beatdown. My personal recommendation for your Monarch deck’s side deck (or really any side deck for that matter) is Solemn Judgment. Three of them to be precise. Judgment is a game-breaking card if you know how to use it, and if you’re going to be playing in Nationals with the intent to win, I would hope that you’d be well versed in its usage. Even if it doesn’t come into play at Nationals, we’ve seen from the last Worlds that Solemn Judgment is a popular card overseas, with a deck packing three taking second place at the event. For the most part, the remaining side deck slots should be used to either tackle whatever deck you feel you have the biggest problems with or to provide blanket solutions that cover a number of different decks. My picks were D.D. Crow and Royal Decree, so the side deck I used for my Monarch decks generally looked something like this:
3 Royal Decree
2 D.D. Crow
1 Confiscation
3 Solemn Judgment
3 Pulling the Rug
3 Banisher of the Radiance
That’s a good, generic side deck capable of handling a number of situations, especially ones involving Destiny Hero shenanigans. If you’re playing Destiny Hero Monarchs against a standard Monarch deck, you better hope they don’t side in and draw the Banishers. Otherwise, your inherent advantages are gone until you can get rid of that Banisher, and that’s why you need the Sakuretsu Armor and Bottomless Trap Hole cards that your average Destiny Hero beatdown deck won’t play. They give you a better matchup once everyone sides in the cards they need to wreck you. You can’t really stop D.D. Crow, so you’ll have to play around it. The best way to do that is to try and hold off on pitching a Malicious or Disk Commander for as long as possible. If you think an opponent sided in Crows, try to bait one out with a Dasher. Decrees can also be a pain if you’re running Trap Dustshoot, but the Decree problem can be alleviated a bit if you have a side deck to transform your deck into Destiny Hero beatdown. If you’re going to show up with Destiny Hero Monarchs—in any way, shape, or form—I recommend constructing your side deck in a way that allows you to switch seamlessly back and forth from Monarchs to beatdown.
Regarding Destiny Hero beatdown itself, I’ve had a bit of a revelation as of late that greatly improved my ability to play against the deck. The name Destiny Hero beatdown is a misnomer, since the deck doesn’t really play like a beatdown deck at all (with the exception of when it goes on the offensive with Card Trooper). In actuality, the deck is built on the same principles that made Goat control such a dominating force back in 2005. Essentially, you hide behind cheap, small monsters while you draw through your deck and try to come up with an OTK hand. You also steal your opponent’s monsters and don’t give them back; you just can’t do it with Thousand-Eyes Restrict anymore. Instead, the deck capitalizes on the level 6 Destiny Hero - Malicious to attack with a stolen monster and then tribute it for a tiny defender who can then produce more tiny defenders and/or tribute material.
Fortunately, all the things that used to work on Goat control work very well against Destiny Hero beatdown. Though they aren’t seen often, Airknight Parshath and Chain Disappearance elicit a cringe from Destiny Hero beatdown players, so if you’re having a problem with the deck, those are two cards to consider. If you’re playing the deck, you can quite literally beat anything if the right cards come up in the right order. The deck is a lot more random than Goat control, so victories frequently appear as if they came strictly from a series of fortunate events rather than any ability on the part of the player. In reality, it’s a test to see how far ahead you can successfully plan the game based on a series of probable plays from your opponent. Generally, the goal is to set your opponent up and create a situation in which your hand becomes the OTK. Playing against the deck, you just need to keep on being aggressive. Most players you face at Nationals will only have Torrential Tribute and Mirror Force to deal with fast monster swarms, though you should be wary, since people will be playing Crush Card at the event. Destiny Hero beatdown’s worst matchup is anything that mains cards like Dimensional Fissure and Banisher of the Radiance while it performs the best against Monarch decks. Six Samurai can also present problems thanks to Great Shogun Shien. As I advised above, I’d try to build your side deck in such a way that you can quickly change to a Monarch build in addition to playing a few blanket cards like Royal Decree and D.D. Crow. Actually, if you don’t want to build the conversion side deck, Shane Scurry’s side deck from SJC Minneapolis is a good one to look at for inspiration, since it covers all the bases quite nicely.
Finally, we come to the Six Samurai. Six Samurai, like Destiny Hero beatdown, possesses the ability to beat any deck in the format very quickly due to its suite of debilitating and (generally) searchable effect monsters. The biggest flaw with the deck, however, is that Grandmaster of the Six Samurai is largely required for you to pull off the mad swarms and combos that make the deck fearsome. To make up for this reliance on a specific monster, I believe that the best builds of the deck utilize a sort of “reverse toolbox” fueled by Card Trooper. Trooper dumps monsters into the graveyard that you can then bring back to your hand and field with The Warrior Returning Alive, Premature Burial, and Call of the Haunted. Heck, you could even play Return of the Six Samurai.
What you really want to do is establish something of a lock with The Six Samurai - Yaichi, Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, and Great Shogun Shien. Throw in The Six Samurai - Irou for good measure, and your opponent will be unable to set anything without it being destroyed, as well as being restricted to only one spell or trap a turn. It’s a lot easier to do than most people think, and it happens a lot more often than the critics would have you believe. Unfortunately, like basically every other deck that people are likely considering, Six Samurai gets wrecked by Banisher of the Radiance! The card is just amazing right now and will probably see insane amounts of play at Nationals. Seriously, anyone who doesn’t have Banisher somewhere on his or her decklist is just asking to get nailed by something unexpected. Basically every rogue deck out there uses the graveyard somehow, and not letting things go there is the key to beating them. Imagine what would have happened to Vincent Tundo and his Life Equalizer deck if one of his opponents had gone first and dropped Banisher. It wouldn’t have been pretty, I’ll tell you that much.
Back to Six Samurai, aside from Banishers I haven’t seen anyone side for the deck. In fact, the top complaint I received from people I played against when I used Samurai in Minneapolis was that it was “the one deck I didn’t side against.” Unless people start packing Kinetic Soldier cards in the side deck between now and Saturday (which isn’t such a bad idea actually), things are likely to remain that way. As for the side deck of a Six Samurai deck or perhaps some main deck tech, I’d recommend Mask of Restrict. It shuts down all Monarch decks and severely hampers Destiny Hero beatdown pretty well to boot. Flipping Mask in response to Brain Control or Soul Exchange is nasty and wins games. I wouldn’t be surprised if a Samurai deck (or two) sneaks into the Top 16 of Nationals.
It’s been a long journey since March 1st, but it’s finally time to find out what the last three months has amounted to as we begin our journey to find the four duelists who will represent the United States at Worlds this year. It’s going to be an incredible event, and Jason and Matt will be there to bring you all the top stories live. Good luck to all of you who will be playing, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
HOMEWORK: For all of you who aren’t going to be at Nationals this weekend, I want you to study the coverage very carefully. We’ll be talking about the whys and hows of the tournament results next time.