The recent release of Magician’s Circle and the impending release of the Spellcaster’s Judgment Structure Deck aims to change all that, with cards that provide high utility for Spellcaster-focused decks. My general rule of thumb for using any themed card is the “Smashing Ground Litmus Test.” See, Smashing Ground is a one-for-one trade, every time, at the time it is used. Yes, I know it can destroy a tribute monster or actually cause you to lose advantage, but for all intents and purposes, it’s one resource in hand used to destroy a monster on the board. Themed cards are usually more complicated, mainly because they pack very powerful, yet tricky effects. However, you can boil each card’s advantage down to raw numbers, and then decide if it passes the Smashing Ground Litmus Test.

For example, Magician’s Circle can be broken down into a few components. It uses a card in your hand to give both you and your opponent a monster. However, your opponent will likely be bringing out Magician of Faith or Breaker the Magical Warrior, both of which are unquestionably two of the best monsters in the game. If you’re running different Spellcasters, like Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, your monster will likely destroy your opponent’s monster. Thus, you’re trading Magician’s Circle to put a monster on the field and remove one of your opponent’s best monsters. If you take away the situational nature of the card (it requires a Spellcaster to attack), it’s basically a one-for-one trade.

Magical Dimension, on the other hand, is a whole lot more complicated. As I explained in the preview article, it has a multi-tiered effect that requires a trigger condition (Spellcaster on the field) and a separate tribute monster (anything on the field). Using its effect will allow you to summon a Spellcaster monster from your hand and destroy a monster on your opponent’s field.

Is it a powerful card? More importantly, does the card deserve to have an entire deck theme based around it? Compromising the overwhelming power of the stable cookie cutter deck, especially in this format, requires a combo that justifies the commitment to a solid strategy that might falter without the pieces in play. A combo like Soul Exchange and one of the Monarchs is a perfect example. It creates an immediate two-for-one trade that justifies the problems with drawing multiple copies of either tribute monsters or the exchange monsters.

Because of the slim support pickings, our deck is forced to embrace Magical Dimension. The monster lineup requires a steady stream of monsters to tribute, tribute monsters, and Spellcasters. Let’s take a look.

Monsters: 21

2 Gravekeeper’s Spy

2 White Magical Hat

1 Sangan

3 Apprentice Magician

2 Old Vindictive Magician

1 Tsukuyomi

1 Magician of Faith

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

2 Chaos Sorcerer

1 Injection Fairy Lily

2 Magical Merchant

1 Spirit Reaper

1 Toon Gemini Elf

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch

A great lineup! All of the monsters in this deck are either self-replacing or provide a one-for-one trade. You can set up early and easily with either Apprentice Magician, Old Vindictive Magician, or Gravekeeper’s Spy. If any of these effects trigger, you can use the next turn to attack your opponent’s life points directly! Here are a few sample scenarios.

Apprentice Magician triggers, bringing out either Magician of Faith if your opponent has only one monster, and Old Vindictive Magician if he or she has two. Once you flip the effect, you sacrifice the spent effect monster for Magical Dimension’s effect, allowing you to destroy your opponent’s monster and continue the attack! At this point, it’s a one-for-one trade.

However, if you’re able to bring out White Magical Hat, Injection Fairy Lily, or another such card, you can actually net even more advantage! Now the pressure is on your opponent to either cancel out the Hat’s advantage, or try to stave off rapid life point loss by countering Injection Fairy Lily. You can also use cards like Sangan, spent Chaos Sorcerers, and other cards as tribute for the effect. It’ll start as a one-for-one trade, and build more life point loss on the tower as a trade-off! Now, let’s take a look at the deck’s spells.

Spells: 13

1 Scapegoat

1 Premature Burial

1 Snatch Steal

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Magical Dimension

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Smashing Ground

1 Dark Hole

1 Enemy Controller

1 Pot of Avarice

All of the picks here are easy. We can’t add more than one copy of Pot of Avarice, because of all the bad draws that the deck can suffer from. Scapegoat and Brain Control should both help ease the burden of the Magical Dimension cost, and everything else is rather self-explanatory.

You can use your flip effects, poke with them for damage, and then set Magical Dimension. Now if the opponent declares an attack, you trigger Magical Dimension, thus nullifying his or her battle phase. You might want to summon a card like Toon Gemini Elf or White Magical Hat from your hand. The opponent just lost his or her monster, so unless he or she has Smashing Ground, this threat is very ominous.

Because of the constant threat of hand disruption, the traps should aim to immediately jump all over your opponent’s lack of defenses.

Traps: 8

3 Dust Tornado

1 Robbin Goblin

1 Call of the Haunted

3 Sakuretsu Armor

Remember, this deck has a lot of advantages that go with experience and knowing exactly when to trigger your win condition. According to the matchup and the hand that you draw, the deck can either play a very slow and careful strategy of setting a monster and a piece of defense each turn, or move all in with Injection Fairy Lily, tributes, and spell or trap removal in the form of Dust Tornado.

However, the deck packs the two most solid ideas to combat the metagame: hand disruption and end game prominence. Between Robbin’ Goblin triggering off Spies, direct attacks, and swinging back around with perhaps a Smashing Ground to clear the offenses, as well as your natural hand disruption monsters, your opponent will constantly have to be on his or her toes. White Magical Hat is basically the same as Don Zaloog, a popular card in this format, in the fact that with monster removal, it falls to your opponent to negate the advantage. While Don is susceptible to a renegade Mystic Tomato (which will probably bring out Sangan), White Magical Hat is almost as bad because of Sangan. You’ll have to be very careful when summoning it!

Magical Dimension can be used at any phase of play with effective results. You can even use it in the battle phase of your or your opponent’s turn, effectively turning it into a Tribute to the Doomed with no discard cost on one side and a Sakuretsu Armor on the other. Playing Magical Dimension in the end phase and fetching either Toon Gemini Elf or White Magical Hat is a great strategy, and one that will serve you well. In fact, even using Call of the Haunted on those options, or on Sangan, lends itself well to the theme.

Quick-play spells like My Body as a Shield and Book of Moon are prized for their versatility. Ironically, we are not going to include either of them in this deck, but Magical Dimension works in the same way. You can use it in a variety of situations to achieve great ends, and this rough build of a solid Spellcaster deck aims to show what can be done with a little innovation and originality.

Seeing as how this was sketched out in a very short period, imagine what people like you can do by taking more time and effort in playtesting! It wouldn’t be very surprising to see a top-tier Spellcaster deck do well at a Shonen Jump Championship near you.