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Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043

Doomkaiser Dragon's effect isn't just for Zombie World duelists: remember that its effect can swipe copies of Plaguespreader Zombie, too!
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Combination Attack! — Flaming Fat and Monkey Fires

Matt Murphy

August 26, 2007

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Combination Attack! — Flaming Fat and Monkey Fires

by Matt Murphy

One downside to writing about combo decks is that so many ideas have been discussed already that I worry I’ll bore readers when I think of something that people have seen and done before. Of course, it’s inevitable that with the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of players in this great game, I’ll eventually do something that someone else has done. My last article was a fair example of this.

I try to keep mainstream stuff out of the column, but occasionally I’ll find something awesome that used to be mainstream but is now getting no attention at all. Right now, that something is an old project of Chris Moosman’s revolving around two cards I’ve always found quaint: Lady Assailant of Flames and Return from the Different Dimension. Since many Metagame.com readers are already familiar with the deck, I’ll try to twist some new and unique cards into it for you.

The combo is fairly simple: part of an overarching theme of removing things from play to smash face with them later. Lady Assailant of Flames is a good tool here—she removes three cards from play, will gladly feed your rush if she is removed by Nobleman of Crossout, and is not exactly a slouch in battle with 1500 ATK.

We can expand this general theme by including other tools too. The first (which I have already added to the deck) is Card Trooper, which does plenty to fill your graveyard but is unfortunately quite useless without some way to remove cards from play. The obvious options are Bazoo the Soul-Eater and Skull Lair, and each carries the deck in a different direction. Skull Lair supplies removal, and Bazoo supplies face smashing. The rest of the deck will determine which one we’ll want, so that choice will require more analysis of our options.

Bazoo would favor cards like Exiled Force or Mirage Dragon, which work well on their own and help discourage the opponent from establishing a field presence. This would also require us to use cards like Smashing Ground or the recently (pre)released Shield Crush, which will be available soon in Premium Pack 1. Skull Lair would focus more on the deck’s ability to put fat guys like Jinzo, Dark Magician of Chaos, and Mobius the Frost Monarch into the graveyard, because it takes care of monsters but requires more work than Bazoo does. I very much doubt that there is a “correct” choice because both decks are entirely viable. If a road forks to monkeys and fat guys, which do you choose?

The answer became obvious after some classical music and meditation—take both paths. Here is the fatty version of the deck.

Flaming Fat from a Different Dimension: 41 cards

Monsters: 25

1 Dark Magician of Chaos

2 Frost and Flame Dragon

2 Mobius the Frost Monarch

1 Jinzo

2 Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch

3 Lady Assailant of Flames

3 Card Trooper

Spells: 9

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

Traps: 7

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

3 Return from the Different Dimension

This deck is wacky to the extreme, and it’s awesome. There’s a surprising amount of synergy here, and much of it comes from the weird combos.

This deck explodes onto the field after burning away life points. Fair enough. There are other options available here, though. Two that come to mind are Cyber Phoenix and Ultimate Baseball Kid, who plays very nicely with the return effects of Dimension Fusion and Return from the Different Dimension for extra burn. Among other things, they back up your heavy hitters with some powerful monsters that replace themselves through card drawing or summoning other cards to the field. From here, we can see some weaknesses—there is little in the way of removing monsters from the graveyard, and it is difficult to summon some of the monsters in the deck. A balance is difficult to reach without Bazoo. This deck plays the new Frost and Flame Dragon from Tactical Evolution, though, which is an upside in my book, and that particular card is very helpful when going in for the kill.

Bazoo removes the need for many of our fatties, acting the part of fatty himself and offering up a method of killing things and an extra remove-from-play mechanism. He also allows us to duplicate a loop you saw me use two weeks ago in a much less interesting fashion, but I’ll get to that later.

We need to focus on our initial combo, which is burn and rush. The burn is supplied by Lady Assailant of Flames and the rush is provided by Return from the Different Dimension. The above deck strayed from that, as shown in the lack of focus on the original combo (although I still like the deck).

There are a number of paths to take with the next deck. The first would be to add Banisher of the Radiance, which would conflict with Card Trooper, Hydrogeddon, and any recruiter monster like UFO Turtle, and the second would be to add those monsters without any concern to our friendly Banisher. The middle path did not apply here, so I added one of each.

Hydrogeddon is another card I enjoy here, since it supplements beatdown with swarm and graveyard fodder for Bazoo the Soul-Eater, who in turn works well with Card Trooper. All three hit for a fifth of the opponent’s life or more. Cyber Dragon is sketchy, since I don’t think the deck will have an empty field very often. At max on all of these, we hit ten cards, and with the given six copies of Lady Assailant of Flames and Return from the Different Dimension, we have sixteen total. From here, I will begin making interesting choices.

To supplement aggression with protection, I’m adding two copies of Pitch-Black Warwolf, and to supplement burn I’m adding two copies of Wave-Motion Cannon and a Ceasefire. With some basic support, we’re almost at 30 cards, and from there I’m adding Dark Magician of Chaos and Cannon Soldier. This is to help with a damage loop that can burn through the last few thousand LP—get five monsters on the field, including two Bazoos, Cannon Soldier, and a Dark Magician of Chaos. If you’ve played around with that deck from two weeks ago, then you have the idea already—tribute all your monsters but one Bazoo, and then remove Cannon Soldier, the other Bazoo, and a third monster from play (Dark Magician of Chaos is already removed from the game because of its effect). Then use Dimension Fusion again and tribute the Bazoo you used—as well as three other monsters—leaving you with a new Bazoo and a Dimension Fusion still in hand. Pay 2000 life points and your opponent loses 2000 life points. This is very handy when your deck focuses on burn, and it’s easy because of the increased burn damage. On top of that, it’s burn plus rush, and we like that combo.