The deck works something like this. Royal Oppression is an excellent card that can shut down most of the top decks. There are, however, ways to sneak around its oppressive effect. Gladiator Beast players used to side it in for mirror matches, using Cold Wave to prevent the opponent from using the effect of Oppression or any other traps long enough to resolve Gladiator Beast Gyzarus. Cold Wave requires that you build your deck in such a way that you can take advantage of it, and running the card just to turn off your own Royal Oppression seems awful. That’s why this week’s deck gets around its own Oppression by special summoning at the only point that Oppression cannot activate: the damage step.  Certain cards are never going to lose out to Royal Oppression. Oppression cannot be activated during the damage step since it’s neither a counter trap nor a spell or trap that alters ATK or DEF values.

Recruiter monsters like Mystic Tomato or (more relevantly) Giant Rat activate and resolve during the damage step, making it impossible for a player to use Royal Oppression to negate them. It’s also not going to negate anything that special summons itself during the damage step like Gorz the Emissary of Darkness or Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest. If you can put together a deck that uses a lot of special summons but only performs them during the damage step, you can safely run Royal Oppression as well. That’s the idea behind this week’s deck. We’ll take a lot of recruiter-esque monsters, add in some anti-metagame tech, toss in a set of Royal Oppression cards, and let the angry monkey loose. How can this possibly go wrong?

Extra Deck: 15

I’ve made a conscious decision in my build of the deck not to include any cards that can possibly backfire on me if I control Royal Oppression. I think it’s a good decision that softens up the learning curve of the deck and reduces the potential for dead draws. The main downsides to it are the loss of Monster Reborn and the total lack of any Tuners. There’s no reason to not have an Extra Deck, even if you can’t summon any of the cards in it, and you can always build the side deck in such a way that you can introduce Tuners to the deck for games 2 and 3 when your opponent doesn’t think you have access to that Extra Deck. It’s a cute trick that’ll probably win you a game every once in a while at locals, but at any higher level of competition, the decks are usually built in such a way that they don’t care whether or not you use Synchros. Well, I guess that’s a slight exaggeration. They prefer that you don’t touch the Extra Deck but will still be willing and able to bring the pain even if you do.

To combat these decks, the best thing to do is to not let them do the things they like. Things like "keep my big guy on the field long enough for him to be useful." That’s why I’ve got full complements of Bottomless Trap Hole and Solemn Judgment to go with the Royal Oppression cards. I’m also using Trap Dustshoot, Torrential Tribute, and Mirror Force. All three of these cards are fantastic now, especially when you take the Zombie match-up into account. Trap Dustshoot in particular is a real winner against basically everything at this point, especially now that Gorz the Emissary of Darkness is legal. After all, the best way to avoid Gorz is to know whether or not the opponent has it, and Trap Dustshoot makes sure that he or she doesn’t have it. It also does all the good stuff it always does, including sending freshly searched copies of Elemental Hero Stratos or Dark Grepher back to the deck. Using it after a search card resolves is even more brutal against these newfangled Gladiator Beast decks that only run ten Gladiator Beasts and rely entirely on Gladiator Proving Ground to fetch out monsters.

Speaking of search effects, I feel that Thunder King Rai-Oh is a must in any anti-metagame strategy right now owing to both of its effects that slap Teleport Dark Armed Dragon and Lightsworn in the face. Charge of the Light Brigade has been keeping Lightsworn relevant since its release, and stopping the deck from playing its best spell card is something to be thankful for. Additionally, stopping Teleport Dark Armed Dragon from being able to search its way out of bad hands is pretty good. I’ve seen many players get out of terrible hands by way of Reinforcement of the Army for either Stratos or Dark Grepher, especially because Reinforcement of the Army isn’t the kind of card that you’re going to waste a counter trap on. Once that Grepher gets to your opponent’s hand, you aren’t going to be able to stop him or her from dropping Destiny Hero - Malicious to summon it . . . unless you have Trap Dustshoot.

In terms of furthering the main strategy of the deck, your most important card is going to be Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter. If you haven’t drawn Green Baboon, Ryko is your best bet for getting it into the graveyard. In fact, you’re likely to find that lots of monsters find their way to the graveyard via Ryko, including Ryko itself. The best-case scenario is that Ryko gets hit by something, destroys it or a spell or trap card, and then flings Baboon from your deck to your graveyard. Then, when Ryko bites the dust from the attack, you can pay 1000 life points to bring back your monkey which will most likely be larger than anything your opponent can put out without special summoning. The fact that it’s also larger than Stardust Dragon is a major boon in games where opponents manage to pull off a Synchro summon before you can drop Oppression.

This is especially important as Stardust Dragon continues to hit the field more and more. For reasons why you’re going to be seeing a lot more of Stardust, be sure to check out Matt Peddle’s Battlefields article from last week. As for other methods of stopping Synchros, you’re running full sets of both Bottomless Trap Hole and Legendary Jujitsu Master. The Master will take out pretty much anything, and Bottomless can stop everything but Stardust Dragon. You can even try out a Phoenix Wing Wind Blast or two if you find yourself needing more ways to remove opposing cards. Nimble Momonga is excellent right now, since it takes advantage of the fact that no one plays Red Dragon Archfiend unless that player knows that he or she isn’t getting through your defense-mode monster.

Speaking of cards that are good owing to the lack of other cards being played, how about Pot of Avarice? D.D. Crow is basically nonexistent, especially now that people are taking out their singleton copies for Gorz the Emissary of Darkness. Being able to recycle your Rykos and Nimble Momonga cards while drawing cards is fantastic, and with hardly anyone actually running the one card that ruins you completely when you try, why not?

It’s a very interesting deck, and it presents a lot of fascinating side-deck choices for both players. If you’ve got a Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest, you should really give this a try sometime. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of new decks in Detroit this weekend, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

—Jerome McHale