In this week, brave duelists, ‘tis mine mission to provide thee with the means to smite thy opponents with a great Warrior of Light. Though this Warrior may be slow to speak, verily it possesses extraordinary power.
Or, if you’re not feeling particularly medieval today, I’m here to examine the Silent Swordsman deck and compare it to last week’s Horus deck to see which one will give you a better shot in our new environment. Keep in mind that the Atlanta Shonen Jump Championship has come and gone, so we have our first set of Top 8 decks to look at. Before I get to the main topic of this week’s article, I’d like to take a few moments to talk about what these decks mean for us.
If you’ve been looking around the message boards, you’ll know that there’s a lot of controversy about exactly how the results from Atlanta relate to the new metagame. Do these results mean that we’re going to see nothing but neutered Chaos decks and themeless Beatdown decks for the next six months? I highly doubt it. When I look at the Top 8 lists from Atlanta, what I don’t see is an accurate representation of what we’ll be seeing for the next few months.
What I do see is a transition from the old format to the new one. Clearly, this is going to be a more aggressive, field-oriented environment. You can certainly see the beginnings of that style if you look at the decklists of Marcial Bode, Ryan Cerda, and Jason Holloway. However, you can also see that these players haven’t fully adjusted to the new format yet. Take a look at Jensen’s winning deck. That’s about as close to the previous format’s Chaos/Thousand-Eyes Restrict Lock deck as you can get in this new format. Anyone who’s been reading my column for the past few weeks knows that I’ve been proclaiming this new Forbidden list as the death of Chaos—yet the winning deck from Atlanta was, in fact, a Chaos deck. How do you think I’m going to explain this?
Quite simply, it’s because the Top 8 decks from Atlanta aren’t very good. Now, I don’t want anyone to read that like I don’t think that the players themselves aren’t very good. Obviously they are, as they made the Top 8, whereas all the rest didn’t. The point that I’m trying to make (and I think that those Top 8 players would back me up on this) is that with the very limited time in which they had to build and playtest decks, there’s no way any of these players could find the truly best deck to play in the new format. They probably already have a fair idea of what’s going to be good in a month, but there’s no way that they could have an ideal build ready in just two weeks. That would be the equivalent of sitting down with a pen and paper a couple days before the 2003 World Championship with a pen and paper and coming up with Ng Yeu Leung’s deck with no outside help or playtesting. I’m no stranger to deckbuilding, so I can say without a shadow of a doubt that things don’t work like that. You can’t build the perfect deck on your first try. I don’t care who you are—you just can’t do it.
One of the things that many players don’t understand is that progress doesn’t just happen like magic. This is largely because a large percentage of players don’t build their own decks: they simply take the latest winning deck from the coverage and bring it to their local tournaments, Regionals, or the next Shonen Jump Championship without realizing all the work that went into creating and testing those decks.
All decks start out as an idea in the mind of a deckbuilder. The deck could be based on some type of theme, or a synergy between a specific set of cards, or even on a specific combo. From there, the builder comes up with an initial decklist and begins to playtest the list. Over time, he or she finds the problems and weaknesses in the deck, and begins to fix them until the deck is finally ready for serious tournament play. Then if, and only if, a player who’s using that deck makes it to the Top 8, does the deck even register on the community’s collective radar.
The point is that there simply wasn’t enough time to go through this whole process, so instead, these players took what they knew about the new format and applied it to what they already knew about the last format. The result is what we saw in Atlanta. It’s not quite where we came from, but it’s certainly not where we’re going to be in a month. Chaos is kind of like a lame-duck president—it’s still technically in power, but it’s on its way out.
And Now, our Featured Presentation
Now that I’m done with my little rant, let’s begin with today’s deck. Last week, the Horus deck focused on locking down all your opponent’s spells and traps while allowing your own spells to go through. Silent Swordsman decks don’t work like that. Since Silent Swordsman LV7 negates all spells, much like Imperial Order, we need to have something going for us in order to make this work. In short, we need traps—and lots of them.
“Admiral Ackbar’s Art of War”
Monsters: 18
2 Silent Swordsman LV3
2 Silent Swordsman LV5
1 Silent Swordsman LV7
2 Cyber Dragon
1 D. D. Warrior Lady
2 D. D. Assailant
1 Mystic Swordsman LV2
1 Drillroid
2 Shining Angel
1 Zombyra the Dark
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Exiled Force
1 Sangan
Spells: 7
1 Dark Hole
1 Snatch Steal
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Heavy Storm
2 Reinforcement of the Army
Traps: 14
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted
2 Embodiment of Apophis
2 Dust Tornado
1 Magic Cylinder
3 Sakuretsu Armor
2 Widespread Ruin
3 Solemn Judgment
It’s easy to see that this deck can’t create as much of an absolute lockdown on the opponent as last week’s Horus deck did. This is mostly because of the absolute nature of Silent Swordsman LV7’s effect. Since you can’t play spells, the extremely high trap count is necessary in order for this deck to win. While this seems like a pretty big disadvantage when compared to the Horus deck, it’s actually a blessing in disguise. Because you’re only locking down the spells, you can afford to run plenty of traps, which means you can keep your monsters better protected from harm than you could with the Horus deck. Three copies of Solemn Judgment ensure that you can stop whatever you need to stop to make sure your plans continue undisrupted. You also have six different traps that can stop an attack—and, with only one exception, destroy a monster to boot.
Of course, the price you pay for this is very high. Life point management becomes crucial when you’re playing three Solemn Judgments, and Jinzo and Royal Decree are the scariest cards in the game if you can’t get rid of them immediately. It also doesn’t help that all your spells become dead draws once you get your big hitter on the field. Fortunately, there’s plenty of good to counteract all those drawbacks. Playing lots of traps means that your opponent always has to fear the face-down cards, and he or she will probably make a few bad moves because of that. You also have traps that can do just about anything you could possibly ask of your cards. Within those fourteen traps, you’ll find attack stopping, mass removal, targeted removal, non-targeted removal, burn, negation, spell and trap removal, recursion, and even tribute bait! In my opinion, that’s well worth the risks that you take from playing all these pink cards.
Now, let’s take a look at how you would pilot such a deck. Ideally, you want to have Silent Swordsman LV5 out by your second turn. To achieve this, you can do a couple of things. One would be to set or summon Shining Angel and get the opponent to destroy it in battle so that you can have Silent Swordsman LV3 out at the end of your opponent’s turn. Then, during your standby phase, it can level up to Silent Swordsman LV5. Another good trick is to set Sakuretsu Armor or Widespread Ruin and summon Silent Swordsman LV3. Barring Breaker the Magical Warrior (or any other huge power play from the opponent), you should have Silent Swordsman LV5 during your next standby along with an opposing field that’s free of monsters. Moves like this are the best way to get Silent Swordsman LV7 out as fast as possible. But what if your opponent started with all of his or her mass removal cards in his or her hand? If that’s the case, then you could be in trouble.
It’s pretty clear that Heavy Storm is not your friend. I know it seems obvious, but it’s almost as bad for this deck to get hit by Heavy Storm as it is for a Burn deck to get hit by Heavy Storm. That’s why it’s important not to overextend your traps too much, unless one of them is Solemn Judgment. That way, if the opponent has Heavy Storm you can stop it, and if he or she doesn’t, you can stop whatever other nasty trick he or she might try. Learning how to use Solemn Judgment effectively is quite possibly the hardest part about playing this deck—it truly is an acquired skill. I could sit here and tell you about every single situation in which I’ve used Solemn Judgment, but that wouldn’t do you a bit of good when you sit down to play. The only way to go is to keep playing until you know what to do in any given situation.*
However, bad things can sometimes happen when you don’t have a counter ready. What do you do in this case? Rebuild as best you can with the tools available. I’ve included Cyber Dragon in this deck so that you can more easily recover from an early Dark Hole, and additionally, Cyber Dragon can help you normal summon Silent Swordsman LV5, if necessary. You also have access to the toolbox of Warriors through Reinforcement of the Army, allowing you to speedily find about half the monsters in your deck. Finally, Embodiment of Apophis** can serve as a tribute, a blocker, or even an extra attacker if you’re ready to go for the win. Your Shining Angels are also excellent ways to hold off an oncoming assault, and they can also potentially throw you back into control of the game if you manage to have a Silent Swordsman LV3 out at the end of your opponent’s turn.
Finally, you need to know what to do once you’ve summoned Silent Swordsman LV7. Your priority list should look something like this:
- Have a Solemn Judgment down. You don’t want that topdecked Exiled Force or Tsukuyomi to ruin your life.
- Drop Drillroid or Mystic Swordsman LV2 to take out any set monsters.
- Hope you don’t draw the remaining spells in your deck.
Other than that, you should be swinging with your monsters until you win. You’ve already attacked the opponent directly once (with Silent Swordsman LV5), so it should take no more than two turns to finish the game once Silent Swordsman LV7 is on the field. I’ve also known some players to simply concede once the level 7 Swordsman hits the field due to their over-reliance on spells.
Let’s take a look at a simplified, ideal game for you as a Silent Swordsman player. On turn 1, play Silent Swordsman LV3, then set Dust Tornado and Sakuretsu Armor. The opponent summons, attacks into your Sakuretsu Armor, then sets another card and ends. On the opponent’s end phase, use Dust Tornado to wipe out his or her spell or trap. On your turn, attack directly, set a card and maybe a monster, and dare the opponent to do something to Silent Swordsman LV5 that isn’t spell-based. If he or she fails to do so, you level up again on your turn and bring the beats.
Silent Swordsman’s most difficult matchup is probably Cyber Dragon or Warrior Beatdown. If the opponent has the means to clear out your field and swing with Don Zaloog on the first turn, he or she will probably do it, and in doing so, even out the card count between the two of you. If you can get Silent Swordsman LV5 out, though, you’ll probably be in good shape as the opponent becomes reduced to ramming D. D. Whatevers into your Swordsman to get rid of it. Just be careful of opposing traps, and don’t be afraid to go for a win earlier than you’d normally like. It’s not like Dark Hole or Snatch Steal next turn is going to make you regret swinging with your Silent Swordsmen.
Burn is a pretty good matchup for you, as all the Silent Swordsman cards can slip through any stall except Gravity Bind. Silent Swordsman LV7 also stops the opponent from getting any use out of Wave-Motion Cannon. Here, you just need to be careful about running into stuff like Magic Cylinder or Dimension Wall, because it just might bring you low enough for Secret Barrel or Des Koala to kill you.
Zombies are about 50/50 against Silent Swordsman. It basically comes down to whoever gets a bigger monster out faster and manages to protect it. For some unknown reason, people are shying away from Ryu Kokki, so Silent Swordsman LV5 gets to run over as many Vampire Lords as the Zombie player cares to play. Mystic Swordsman LV2 and Drillroid also play important roles in this matchup by eliminating Spirit Reapers and Pyramid Turtles.
Head To Head
Now that we know how both the Silent Swordsman and Horus decks work, which one is better for the current Advanced format? Well, as I said before, Atlanta isn’t the best indicator of what the metagame is going to look like for the next six months, so it’s difficult to predict which style of gameplay is going to be more effective.
With that in mind, I’m going to go ahead and predict that the Horus deck is going to be the more powerful force in this format. Silent Swordsman is an excellent deck, but it doesn’t provide the total lockdown power that Horus can, and with everyone else running plenty of Sakuretsu Armors, the chances of being able to counter everything you need to in order to protect your Swordsman is low, so why not just negate everything. To Silent Swordsman LV7’s credit though, it’s immune to Dark Necrofear, whereas Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8 is not. Take that, Horus.
If you’re interested in trying out any of the decks I present, please feel free to do so. Just remember that, like the Atlanta lists, my decklists don’t always represent the ideal build for the environment. If during your testing you find ways to improve upon the decks you see here, I implore you to drop me a line at jcmchale AT Andrew DOT cmu DOT edu. If your idea works, I’ll be sure to include it in a future article, and of course you’ll receive proper credit for it. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
—-Jerome McHale
*I like Solemn Judgment. It’s a card that rewards hard work and testing, which are two things that many players seem to have forgotten about.
**Embodiment of Apophis is worth mad style points. Even more than Bubble Shuffle.