Metagame.com - Take Your Game to the Next Level

Decide between my favorite articles? My editors have asked me to do many things. “Matt, can you write an article? Matt, can you write another article with a special deadline? Matt, we’d like you take over this weekly column. Matt, could you slay Infanticide, the Uber-Dragon of Chimeravaldt? Matt, we need you to sing karaoke.” (Toby Wachter is really good at Rock Band, if you were interested). I carry out these tasks loyally because I like my job and my editors. But deciding between my favorite submissions to Metagame.com? ’Twas a difficult task, and slaying the dragon wasn’t a cake walk (the Hostess Pastry 5k was, however).

I enjoyed covering a round at the U.S. National Championships and my favorite line ever written is also in that coverage. I liked writing Combination Attack! and I like my gig at The Apotheosis. And each of my articles are anecdotal adventures into the realm of Amusing-to-me-but-REALLY-boring-to-anyone-who-really-only-wanted-to-ask-me-the-time-of-day Land. Conversing with me is apparently the definition of the word “autoimmure.” From what I hear, the poor guy is still asleep. When he wakes up, I’ll give him the time of day like he asked . . . and then finish the story.

Anyway, as I fretted over the wholly arduous decision, I was reminded by my inner circle of peace and wisdom that superlative qualities were open to interpretation. So I decided on this one, chosen because the reaction to the idea was amazing. I heard stories of tournaments composed of around twenty people, twenty-two of them playing this deck (it makes sense in quantum). I still hear people talking about how much they like this combo, and it was probably first on the list of the most well-received. Enjoy, as I did.

Welcome to a special edition of Combination Attack! Unfortunately for you Jae Kim lovers, he’s absent this week. So instead, you get another dose of Matthew Murphy. For you Matthew Murphy lovers out there, this is good news. For you Matthew Murphy haters, my apologies.

While the scheduling is a bit off, the combos are always right on time! This week, we have what I taunted you with in my last edition. For those of you with a short attention span, I said we’d be looking at an often-overlooked Gravekeeper card. I have no intention of denying this pleasure to you, so this week we’re going to build a deck around Royal Tribute! The other half of the combo is a bit open-ended; first you have to take a good look at what Royal Tribute does. It forces both players to reveal their hands and discard all monsters present. However, it can only be activated when Necrovalley is in play. Royal Tribute received a bit of attention in years past as an excellent method of providing additional control to the already disruptive theme of Gravekeeper beatdown. The supposed “downside” of discarding your own monsters was fairly easy to play and build around. Guess what? It still is.

I’m not quite done looking at new cards from Strike of Neos, and next week I’ll give Force of the Breaker some TLC. For now, I’d like to point out the most blatantly powerful use for Royal Tribute. It’s a card that forces you to discard monster cards. I’m quite, quite sure you can put two and two together, especially since I just said we’d be working with Strike of Neos. Yeah, we’re going to work with Dark World monsters.

I’m sure some of you had the world’s largest grin on your faces at the thought of filling your fields with 2000+ ATK monsters while clearing your opponents’ hands of monsters at the same time. That same grin certainly appeared on my face when this combo first entered my mind.

The build for this deck is going to be a bit easier to put together than our last one, since we are already starting with plenty of support for both Gravekeepers and Dark World monsters. The first inclusion is obviously three copies of Necrovalley and three copies of Royal Tribute. From there, we have to look carefully at a monster build. Three copies of Gravekeeper’s Spy is almost a must because of the incredible power of the little Spy that could, but from there we have to balance out additions very carefully, since we already have nine cards in the deck. With the addition of three Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World cards, three Sillva, Warlord of Dark World cards, and three copies each of Gravekeeper’s Assailant and Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier, we have 21 cards, and we haven’t even added any additional support! To make room for other cards, we will cut the additions down by adding only two copies each of Sillva, Warlord of Dark World and Gravekeeper’s Assailant. So we’re at a rough 19-card build.

From here, we’re going to flesh out the deck by adding powerful support. Mystical Space Typhoon allows your new army of monsters to hit the field without fear of Torrential Tribute, Bottomless Trap Hole, or Mirror Force. Nobleman of Crossout will allow your large monsters to hit the opponent’s face instead of his or her set monsters, and the addition of two Deck Devastation Virus cards allows you to destroy smaller set monsters and any low ATK monsters your opponent draws for three whole turns, giving you an awesome follow-up to a rush and reducing your opponent to dangerously low life points. Morphing Jar is a tough addition, since it works very well with the Dark World monsters in the deck and is very one-sided (your side, that is) when combined with Deck Devastation Virus. But it also allows the opponent to draw more cards, which works against the Gravekeeper half of the deck (and Royal Tribute, which is what we are supposed to be building a deck around). Since this is a Gravekeeper deck augmented by Dark World, we will sacrifice some of the Dark World support to make the Gravekeeper half more consistent. This also goes for Night Assailant, which doesn’t mesh well with Necrovalley.

Torrential Tribute and Mirror Force allow the deck to clear the field before it rushes, and two copies of Dust Tornado allow the aggressive side of the deck to function unimpeded by defensive traps while also answering problem cards like Swords of Revealing Light or Macro Cosmos. Ring of Destruction is the perfect tool for this deck, dealing damage to both players and destroying a monster. This can target your own monster if you are close to defeating your opponent, or target your opponent’s monster if you need to clear his or her field. Since we are already running a monster that can dish out piercing damage (the Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier), it is no stretch to say that Robbin’ Goblin would be excellent in this deck, especially in combination with Gravekeeper’s Spy and her high DEF value. We’ll add one copy. After that, it couldn’t hurt to add more tools to support Dark World, so we’ll add Dark World Lightning, which also ties into the rush theme. From there we add a shiny new card from Force of the Breaker: Gravekeeper’s Commandant. He is an incredible multi-purpose addition to Gravekeeper decks because he acts as a Terraforming that also smashes face. This really is win-win for us. Three copies are added to the deck. For the purpose of keeping this build tight, one Necrovalley is cut. In the event that we have multiple copies of anything in our hand, I would much rather have the beatstick than the redundant field spell.

We need to augment the deck with more answers to broad situations, so the addition of three copies of the ubiquitous Smashing Ground seems quite reasonable. Spirit Reaper will give the deck a stall plan so that it can pull out its combo pieces, and Giant Trunade helps the rush aspect. Two copies of Cyber Dragon flesh out the deck and provide redundancy for the already powerful rush. From there, we can add one of two cards in the game with the wordism* “Gren” in its name. Yeah, we’re adding one copy of Gren, Tactician of Dark World to the deck. His light brown counterpart, Kahkki, Guerilla of Dark World, has as much reason to be added as not, since he conflicts with the rush aspect of the deck. Since you are forced to destroy a monster when he is discarded, there are times when you will actually have to destroy your own monster with the effect. I chose not to add him because I felt he was unnecessary. Your mileage may vary, so feel free to add these cards to your personal build.

From there, we add the immensely powerful Snatch Steal. What happens when there is a disruptive card in the opponent’s hand that you can’t answer? It’s always nice when you see a Snatch Steal and you have a Deck Devastation Virus, but what do you do if there is a Lightning Vortex or Brain Control in the opponent’s hand and you really can’t do anything against it? So, to finish the deck out, I added Card Destruction, which will let you send the opponent’s hand to the graveyard if you are displeased by its content.

I also added one Mind Crush. As much as I want to add D. D. Designator to two decks in a row, Mind Crush has too much over the spell card with the beautiful art. It has the distinct and notable advantage of being spell speed 2, so you can call something like Lightning Vortex or Mirror Force in your opponent’s draw phase and also see what he or she drew for the turn, or you can call some nasty spell or trap that couldn’t be handled by your Deck Devastation Virus. To seal the deal, it’s also capable of discarding a Dark World monster from your hand in a pinch to develop your field. That finishes my rough draft of the deck.

An interesting note: none of the Gravekeeper monsters are really Gravekeepers. Rather, they seem to be servants or soldiers of one single Gravekeeper, as indicated by the apostrophe present on every Gravekeeper card. In this regard, Gravekeeper’s Spy and Gravekeeper’s Assailant are, respectively, a Spy and an Assailant who seemingly owe allegiance to a Gravekeeper or the ideals of a Gravekeeper. This might give additional insight into the thematic presence of Gravekeeper monsters, which I always found to be quite cool. Some of you, however, are just wondering when I’m actually going to get to the aforementioned “interesting” part. Well, here’s a deck for you to stare at.

Running 45 cards seems a bit iffy, however. I need to re-examine what I’m trying to do here, because this theme is already very tight and every card counts. While Deck Devastation Virus is a powerful addition, why do I have Robbin’ Goblin in a deck already eliminating so many cards in my opponent’s hand? When I first tinkered with this, I also included Swords of Revealing Light as a stall plan and Enemy Controller, but I cut them because they conflicted with the theme. While you don’t always have to cut cards to get close to 40, this is one time when your deck may truly suffer if you don’t. Card Destruction does nothing to help the monster-intensive Necrovalley theme, whereas Dark World Lightning does because it still lets you get a direct attack in when you might not be able to otherwise. I reconsidered how the deck was supposed to play, and I cut some support for Dark World (we already have six tools in this vein) and the Robbin’ Goblin, which I felt was too win-more. Here’s what I ended up with.

I personally consider this a very tight build that is excellent to build off of, and I think that it ended up working well. As always, feel free to change this version to match your own personal tastes and touches.

*: Wordism is a term meaning “made-up word,” usually used in the context of one word evolving from another. A wordism is something of a cross between a portmanteau (a real word based on a French term) and absolute gibberish. You will be tested on this.