Spells: 12
2 Creature Swap
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Brain Control
2 Enemy Controller
1 Premature Burial
1 Monster Reborn
1 Pot of Avarice
2 Foolish Burial

Ratbox is a really cool deck right now because it has favorable interactions with some of the game’s top strategies. If you’re kind of new to dueling, you may have missed its glory days—it was never a top pick by any means, but it used to be a pretty commonly known control variant. It blended a superior range of options with aggressive pacing, and it still resurfaces from time to time, such as at Shonen Jump Championship Columbus feature match between Samantha Randall and Jeiby Vizcaino. Right now happens to be a particularly good time to play it, which is why I want to feature it.

The deck uses Giant Rat to block shots and set up the perfect counterattack—kind of like a boxer who rolls with your punches and then hits back right at your weakest spot. Like I said before, it’s especially good right now: Exiled Force and Neo-Spacian Grand Mole devastate Gladiator Beast Heraklinos, Green Baboon can throw a big monkey wrench (no pun intended) into the plans of Gladiator Beast Gyzarus or Dark Armed Dragon, and few decks are prepared for Injection Fairy Lily. While the threat of Gladiator Beast Murmillo would often trump other recruiters, Giant Rat can search out Card Trooper if the Rat’s destroyed, neutralizing Murmillo’s impact on your card presence.

Maintaining field presence to tribute for Light and Darkness Dragon is easily done through Nimble Momonga, Lily, and the Rats themselves, since all three serve to repel attacks. The same cards that feed Green Baboon to the graveyard can also serve to set up special summons with Light and Darkness, or contribute to its summoning through Treeborn Frog. Not bad.

But with that said, there are some definite ways we can improve this deck. For one, Solemn Judgment and Injection Fairy Lily just don’t mix—you can’t keep halving your life points and still keep Lily’s effect online. Once you can’t pay for her ATK pump she’s useless, so something needs to be cut. In addition, there’s really no reliable way to defend Green Baboon from D.D. Crow, so as things stand right now, it’s relatively safe to assume that the Baboon will only get to explode out of the graveyard if luck is on your side. Finally, a new card from Light of Destruction could be taking this deck to whole new levels, but Thomas seems to have overlooked it. We’re going to fix that.

First, we need some elbow room. Raiza the Storm Monarch has little place in this strategy, and while he benefits from the tribute support, he doesn’t really fit with what we’re trying to achieve. At best, he could draw away Bottomless Trap Hole from Green Baboon, but that doesn’t make it worth a card slot: not when we need that space to do other things. Raiza is my first drop.

From there, the three copies of Solemn Judgment are an obvious cut. I basically have to choose between Lily and Solemn, and I’m going to choose Lily for a number of reasons. First, she presses over anything the Gladiator Beasts can throw at her, including Heraklinos. Second, she‘s impossible to approach from the Gladiator’s side, since nothing short of Waboku, Book of Moon, or Enemy Controller will let a Gladiator take her on safely—not even Shrink.

Beyond that, she gets over Judgment Dragon, Dark Armed Dragon, and Dark Magician of Chaos, and can even press through a monster backed by Honest if she’s the aggressor. When Lily attacks a Light monster, her controller retains priority in the damage step to activate her effect—do so, and your opponent will have to chain Honest then and there if he or she wants to use it. The cool part? Honest’s boost will only equal Lily’s un-boosted ATK, since the chain resolves backward. So Lily’s mark will gain 400 ATK, she’ll gain 3000, and your opponent will likely lose both Honest and the monster he or she was trying to defend. These factors (amongst others) keep Lily in the build over Solemn Judgment.

So, we’ve got four card slots cleared out thus far. I want two more, and the only real wiggle room lies in the pair of Enemy Controller cards and the one copy of Trap Dustshoot. Dustshoot is going to help early-game presses with Lily and other aggressive monsters, and it’ll also help fend off D.D. Crow, so it definitely stays. Enemy Controller, on the other hand, isn’t nearly so important, and can always be sided should you feel a need for it. With two Bottomless Trap Hole cards already main decked, I don’t see that happening very often.

So, what am I adding to Thomas’s deck? I have a few goals. The first is to allow for heightened use of the deck’s toolbox. Being able to search out Exiled Force or Card Trooper once is great, but the deck only runs one copy of all of its Rat targets save Lily. In addition, I want to deal with the D.D. Crow concern by the only method I believe in: brute force. I want to throw so many D.D. Crow targets at the opponent that he or she simply can’t stop them all, and if the opponent chooses to hold back, I want to punish that player for it.

Those two goals make Limit Reverse an absolute no-brainer. The much-feared trap card really brings Ratbox into competitive viability, and not playing it in this strategy is practically criminal. Never-ending access to Lily, incredible monster control with Exiled Force and Grand Mole, plus vengeful Nimble Momonga cards and the massive synergy of multiple copies of Card Trooper are all made possible by Reverse. Card Trooper alone is ridiculous in this deck, feeding Treeborn Frog and Green Baboon to the graveyard while making attack after attack, and drawing you plenty of free cards. It also acts as an insurance plan for those times when your opponent plays something like Mystical Space Typhoon or Gyzarus to target your set Limit Reverse: chain it for Card Trooper and you’ll at least get to draw.

I’m going to go overboard because I think Limit Reverse is so useful here: while a strong argument could be made for playing two copies, I’m going to run three. It’s going to be a very rare situation that Limit Reverse will be a dead card, and every copy of Reverse that my opponent stops is one less D.D. Crow he or she has to throw at Green Baboon later.

With three copies of Limit Reverse being added, and two copies of Foolish Burial, three copies of Ryko, and one Card Trooper already in the deck, Destiny Hero - Disk Commander becomes a must-play. Again, we want to draw out D.D. Crow as often as possible, or, failing that, have another defensive target for a chained Limit Reverse. Disk Commander accomplishes both. Like Sangan and Card Trooper, he also provides an all-weather target for Limit Reverse when we just need to get Reverse off the field so it won’t get in the way of Treeborn Frog.

The final pair of cards that I want to add is actually inspired by Han-Wei Tang’s Lightsworn decklist from the UK National Championships. I feel like both Tang and Lazaro Bellido did interesting things with their high-profile Lightsworn decks (Tang at UK Nats, and Lazaro at SJC Saint Louis, especially with their opening options. While Lazaro ran Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter, Tang played main-decked Threatening Roar cards to defend his field, and I couldn’t help but notice how good those two cards would be if they were played in the same build.

I was thinking about Lightsworn when I made that observation, but the same idea should hold true here: Threatening Roar can protect this deck from OTKs, shield monsters to be used as tribute bait for Light and Darkness Dragon, and even combo with Ryko on early turns. Playing Ryko and Threatening Roar together means flip summoning Ryko instead of losing it to an attack. That translates into a much higher chance of using Ryko’s effect to destroy a spell or trap and set up a secure play with Creature Swap. Two Threatening Roar cards are my final addition.

. . . At least to the main deck. I actually want to add a Fusion deck as well, consisting of just Sanwitch and Elemental Hero Grand Neos. It’s unlikely that they’ll be needed, but the reason for their inclusion is as simple as it is universal: in the event that this deck steals a copy of Elemental Hero Prisma with Brain Control, these two Fusions let the deck’s controller send either Sangan or Grand Mole to the graveyard with Prisma’s effect. Then they can be immediately special summoned through any of five compatible cards the deck wields: Monster Reborn, Premature Burial, or Limit Reverse.

Considering the high number of Gladiator Beast decks in the average metagame these days, the low cost of these two cards, and the sheer special summoning power this deck has, adding a Fusion deck certainly doesn’t hurt. It could mean the difference between tributing Sangan and getting a free card, or tributing something less useful. Everyone should probably have a Fusion deck of Prisma-friendly monsters regardless of what they play right now.

So, my changes to Thomas’s deck are as follows:

My version of the deck looks like this:

Spells: 10
2 Creature Swap
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Brain Control
1 Premature Burial
1 Monster Reborn
2 Foolish Burial
1 Pot of Avarice

Like most decks I work on, this one is incredibly strong opening the game. While you won’t usually want to set much in the spell and trap zone on turn 1, you’ll have Nimble Momonga and Giant Rat as valid plays in nearly any situation. Treeborn Frog, Sangan, and Card Trooper can also be used in conjunction with Torrential Tribute to bait an opponent into giving you an easy direct shot on turn 2. The prize of the lot, however, is usually going to be Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter. A definite star in the Gladiator Beast matchup, it’s good with or without Threatening Roar to back it up, and it really gets you on your way toward the recursive effects this deck thrives on.

From there, your early game should be spent harassing the opponent’s field presence while building your graveyard. You don’t necessarily need to be dealing damage, but you want to keep your opponent from building a base of monsters. If you can play aggressively, by all means do so, but Giant Rat and Nimble Momonga should give you ample defense to help you get a few turns in.

It’s at that point, the mid-game, when your plans start coming together. Limit Reverse starts offering an incredible range of choices, and Giant Rat does the same in different ways. Green Baboon may be loaded and ready, either in your hand or graveyard, while Light and Darkness Dragon becomes a threat thanks to your maintained field presence. Creature Swap starts opening some crazy doors, and if your graveyard started getting a little too thick, you can thin it out and bring Giant Rat’s options back online with Pot of Avarice. No matter which options are available to you, you have two goals that remain constant: create an opening with your toolbox of precision answers, then take advantage of it with Lily, Card Trooper, Baboon, and Limit Reverse. Do that, and victory will be within your grasp.

Should a duel proceed to topdecking, play to your strong defense: Giant Rat and Momonga will allow you to stabilize and out-option your opponent when neither player has the cards to pull off big combos. Ideally, duels won’t reach this point, but if they do, you’re still in very good shape barring a topdecked Dark Armed Dragon. Even if a big monster does hit the field on the other side of the table, Threatening Roar and Lily can get you room to breathe.

Ratbox isn’t on many duelists’ radar nowadays. In fact, the only person who’s voiced thoughts about the deck to me recently was Billy Brake in a short conversation after Saint Louis: no surprise since he was the first duelist to take Green Baboon to Day 2 back at Indianapolis last year. But there’s a lot of potential here, and exploring the deck and making it your own can be very rewarding. If you want to give this list a try, be sure to customize it to fit your own style—it has a lot of flexibility, and can do very well in competitive metagames.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer