For all the hubbub surrounding Jinzo’s newly Semi-Limited status, few duelists are really taking advantage of the option to run two. While the Top 16 of a Shonen Jump is never representative of the complete field, those decklists are always worth examining, and if we do, we can see that the only duelist to pack two copies of Jinzo at Shonen Jump Championship Washington, DC was Jon Labounty, who relegated them to his side deck.
The challenge that Jinzo (and to an equal extent Royal Decree) face in this format is that they’re very low on the surprise scale. You won’t be chaining Jinzo to anything unless you’re special summoning it with Call of the Haunted, and a good player will read that move and judge the risk. Decree moves at a faster spell speed, but once it’s face up, it’s there and your opponent can work to get it off the field. Neither offers the flexibility or psychological impact of Dust Tornado, and that’s making a lot of players favor card-for-card removal over long-term negation.
The advantage Jinzo and Decree have over Tornado, though, is that they’re capable of doing more in a short period of time. If the field is complicated with lots of set cards in the opponent’s spell and trap zone, a single Decree or Jinzo will give you the opening you need to make a big, very surprising attack. If we accept that as true, then all we need to do to take advantage of Decree and Jinzo is to play them in a deck that can explode out of a complicated game state by dropping lots of attackers on a single turn. That’s what today’s deck contributor sent me.
I was wondering if you could help me on this Earth deck with some old-school flair. I’ve really been wanting to run an Earth beatdown competitively, without needing to make it a Rock removal deck, and what better time than this new format? This deck is about keeping hand and field constantly stocked with cards, which allows a constant flow of monsters. It also has a good amount of special summons, so you can potentially overrun your opponent in one major hit. On paper, it looks like it should work without flaw, but it doesn’t. So I was hoping you could tweak this a little bit, because it ends up slowing down after a while.
Basically, this deck matches and destroys monsters until it gets the chance to unload a massive hit to the opponent, since the new Forbidden list makes traps almost useless because of the two Jinzo cards and two Royal Decree cards that can now be used. As you can see, I’m trying to make use of that trap negation, while keeping my hand size and options open with the thee copies of Good Goblin Housekeeping. I keep the flow of monsters up with nearly free special summons like Spell Striker and Gigantes (which can be used for tribute summons), and search with Reinforcement of the Army and Elemental Hero Stratos. Also, I was trying to make good use of the new Double Summon card.
I try to keep my opponent’s monsters to a minimum with my D.D. monsters, Exiled Force, and Kaiser Glider (not to mention the beautiful ability of Mormolith, who takes out all Monarchs on his own).
—Kez B.
Albuquerque, NM
Here’s what Kez put together.
Earth Rush—45 Cards
Monsters: 24
2 Kaiser Glider
2 Jinzo
3 Cyber Dragon
1 Goblin Attack Force
2 Gigantes
2 Exiled Force
2 Mormolith
2 Spell Striker
1 Elemental Hero Stratos
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Magician of Faith
Spells: 14
2 Reinforcement of the Army
2 Nobleman of Crossout
2 Double Summon
2 Enemy Controller
1 Brain Control
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Pot of Avarice
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Premature Burial
Traps: 7
1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
2 Royal Decree
3 Good Goblin Housekeeping
Kez has some great ideas here, but unfortunately they’re buried under conflicting card choices. I think my task should be to simplify the deck a bit, remove those conflicting factors, and replace them with stability so that Kez can get to the complicated mid-games he should thrive on without, say, getting torn apart by Zombies.
Let’s start by removing some monsters. Kaiser Glider is a cool card, and it fits the deck’s attribute theme, but it just doesn’t match the strategy I want to move toward. It’s not a very fast card, and though it can stop Monarchs, we’re already running two Exiled Force cards and two Mormolith cards . . . the latter of which basically offs Monarchs for a living. Both copies of Kaiser Glider can be removed, which will streamline the deck and eliminate a couple of dead draws.
While I respect the special summoning power of Spell Striker, it just doesn’t seem to fit here. This deck can drop Gigantes into that same monster zone and deal way more damage in the process. Spell Striker certainly has some potential, but I just don’t think this is the right deck for it. Short of creating tribute bait for Jinzo, I don’t know what I’d do with it. If I want an emergency defender, I could run Scapegoat.
I’ve always been a fan of Goblin Attack Force, but I don’t think its presence here is helping the deck’s stability issues. Losing a monster to Old Vindictive Magician’s effect, then losing the Attack Force to an attack from him, would be physically painful to me. I know I’m dropping a lot of Earth monsters, but that’s going to make room for a few more that will help the deck perform better.
The last monster I’ll drop is Magician of Faith. The Magician is certainly a powerful card, but with all the good, splashable monsters now on offer, she shouldn’t be regarded as an auto-in for every deck. For a strategy like this, it seems as if Magician of Faith would just slow us down, so I’m not keen on her being here.
Pot of Avarice conflicts with Gigantes, removing monsters from the graveyard that I’d prefer to use as fuel for a big game-winning swarm. Two copies of Double Summon seems excessive, and while it can help create the big hordes of attackers this deck wants to generate, we won’t aim to do that until the mid-game anyway. With one copy of Double Summon, we should be able to draw it in a good number of games. Drawing it early on is usually pretty useless, since the loss of card presence it demands is only really justified if it scores you a win. Can Double Summon be useful? Sure. But it’s a high-risk card that needs a lot of thought behind it in order to be run efficiently.
Finally, a deck with two Royal Decree cards and two Jinzo cards really doesn’t have any business running three copies of Good Goblin Housekeeping. As Mike Rosenberg explained in his excellent article a few weeks ago, the strength of Good Goblin is only truly unleashed when all three copies are resolved in a single duel, and that’s basically impossible when you have four cards that are negating traps. It would be great to get Earth monsters into the graveyard without losing card presence, but Housekeeping just isn’t feasible here.
So far I’ve dropped eleven cards, which means I can add six back before I put this deck into the “over 40” range. I really want to limit my build to as few cards as possible because Gigantes and the trap negation are going to be so important. In addition, it’s just harder to play a deck with 45 cards. The math becomes convoluted and the whole concept is less reliable because your draws are all over the place.
My first addition is a third copy of Gigantes. I plan on winning by letting loose with multiple special summons when the opponent won’t see them coming, and Gigantes is the easiest way to do that. Though I’ve removed a bunch of Earth monsters during the course of this fix, I’m going to replace them with . . .
. . . two Giant Rat cards! Giant Rat is awesome here because it gives us Earth monsters for use with Gigantes, without demanding a loss of card or field presence. Giant Rat will also let us toolbox for Mormolith, Exiled Force, and Elemental Hero Wildheart. It’s a total no-brainer for any Earth deck, especially one that needs to strengthen its opening and get past the first few turns.
Card Trooper will be an excellent little buddy for Giant Rat too, giving us another way to get Earth monsters into the graveyard for removal later on. Even without that factor going for it, Trooper is one of the best beatdown cards in the game, and should probably be considered for anything that looks to win through battle. It’s also going to give us field presence without losing card presence, fulfilling Kez’s original plan.
Smashing Ground will help clear the way for the big rushes we’ll create, and Scapegoat will provide stability in emergency situations. Sure, Scapegoat could also block us from deploying multiple attackers, but since this deck is already running a pair of Enemy Controller cards, it seems safe. Chaining Scapegoat to the opponent’s Creature Swap is also a very nasty surprise in this format, where Creature Swap seems to be steadily gaining popularity.
So, my changes to the deck are as follows:
-2 Kaiser Glider
-2 Spell Striker
-1 Magician of Faith
-1 Goblin Attack Force
-1 Pot of Avarice
-1 Double Summon
-3 Good Goblin Housekeeping
+1 Gigantes
+2 Giant Rat
+1 Card Trooper
+1 Smashing Ground
+1 Scapegoat
The final version looks like this:
Earth Overload—Jason’s Fix—40 Cards
Monsters: 22
2 Jinzo
3 Cyber Dragon
3 Gigantes
3 D. D. Assailant
2 Elemental Hero Wildheart
2 Exiled Force
2 Mormolith
1 Elemental Hero Stratos
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
2 Giant Rat
1 Card Trooper
Spells: 14
2 Reinforcement of the Army
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Double Summon
2 Enemy Controller
1 Brain Control
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Premature Burial
1 Smashing Ground
1 Scapegoat
Traps: 4
1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
2 Royal Decree
Kez’s deck is now slimmer, more focused, and doesn’t create a ton of dead cards for itself through strategic conflicts. Before the fix, the build demonstrated some great ideas, but I’m not sure they were a cohesive strategy. Now his path to victory is clear: get to the mid-game, negate the opponent’s defenses, and crush him or her thanks to a bunch of special summons.
The deck also has a better chance of reaching that scenario, since it can open with recruiters in the form of Giant Rat, or press early with Card Trooper or Elemental Hero Stratos. Scapegoat provides an alternate opening that staves off early game attacks and the result is a deck that will survive a lot longer on a per-duel basis. Should Scapegoat ever get in the way, Enemy Controller or Mormolith can free up the field while dishing out some nasty effects for your opponent to deal with.
Currently, it seems like the dominant decks in this format are ones that can live through an aggressive early game while still putting up a fight against slower, more synergy-driven strategies. Perfect Circle can defend itself with Destiny Heroes and Mystic Tomato in the early game, while recovering through Raiza the Storm Monarch and Destiny Hero - Disk Commander later on. Zombies clog up the field with an ominous recruiter presence while building toward explosive draw combos, and the latest Comic Odyssey burn deck throws up a wall and then hucks threats over it once it stabilizes. This deck has a strong early game with an explosive, unpredictable mid-game, and that’s a winning combination. Thanks for sending it in, Kez!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer