Bill: Argh! My life points have dropped to 0!

Tom: Big loss there . . .

Jeff: Yep. It seems I won the match.

Bill: I don’t get it. I run cards like Injection Fairy Lily, Magical Scientist, and Tribe-Infecting Virus together. How could I lose?

Jeff: Well, I run a nasty combination of Amazoness Warriors that can have a phenomenal effect against your monsters and life points, and it seemed to work rather well.

Bill: I’m switching! I’ll buy those three Amazoness Sword Women and those Amazoness Archers cards off of you for $80!

Tom: What?!

Jeff: $80!? They’re only . . .*miniature devil Jeff pops up next to Jeff’s ear*

Devil Jeff: Go ahead and sell those cards to him. He mocked you the entire time before you beat him, and he deserves to lose that money. You could always buy new versions of those Amazoness cards, plus some other cool stuff . . . um, why are you looking at me funny like that?

Jeff: Isn’t there supposed to be an angel version of me trying to fight your encouragement?

Devil Jeff: Heh . . . he’s in your brain right now planning on ways to use the $80, along with the $100 you saved up from other sales. I think he’s leaning towards a beach bonanza this weekend.

Jeff: (I’m convinced. My conscience rules.) Deal! You’ll never regret it!

Bill: Hurray! Now I have the advantage! Mwahahah!

Tom:  . . . moron . . .


Okay, so maybe I’m stretching the truth on how duelists would handle that situation. But I think that the main point was still emphasized. The Amazoness Warriors are indeed strong.

One day quite a while back, I received an email from Mark Wolanski, a duelist who felt that Amazoness Tiger was an underrated card. He gave me a few reasons why he thought the card was playable, but his explanation covered much more than just Amazoness Tiger. He also pointed out to be how vastly underrated the entire Amazoness theme is! Every single Amazoness card, when combined with the other Amazoness cards, can be deadly . . . actually, there is one exception, Amazoness Blowpiper. There are many cards that can take her place in an Amazoness deck, as her effect is hardly worth anything. However, the rest of the Amazoness cards should be added in. In this week’s card analysis, we’ll be going through each Amazoness card fit for an Amazoness deck, and at the end, we’ll have the final product: a nice Amazoness deck that can be fit for tournament play.


The Card’s Breakdown

Let’s start with the main attacker of the Amazoness theme. Amazoness Paladin starts off with 1700 ATK, but technically, this can be counted as 1800 ATK. This is due to Amazoness Paladin’s effect, where she’ll be powered up by herself. Summon another Amazoness monster, and you have yourself a nice 1900 ATK, level 4 Warrior. That’s not bad at all, especially with a few extra power-ups you can play, such as Gaia Power or The A. Forces. You’ll have an army of Amazoness ready to slice and dice your opponent’s monsters.

Amazon Archer is a much older card than the other Amazoness monsters, as she made her debut in Labyrinth of Nightmare. She’s similar to Cannon Soldier, and may work well as a game-ending card. However, compared to the other Amazoness monsters, you may want to limit Amazon Archer to one or two in your deck. The other Amazoness Warriors will need more priority.

Amazoness Fighter is a Warrior that just screams, “Please attack me, Injection Fairy Lily.” Her ATK and DEF are both relatively solid and allow her to be searched out by both Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan. Her effect is especially useful for keeping you alive, which can cause a duel to last a lot longer than with two typical tournament decks. You can either benefit from your life point protection with payment effects such as Delinquent Duo or Magical Scientist, or you can keep your life points up as much as possible and rip through your opponent when he or she has used up his or her best cards. It’s not going to be too hard for you to have two or three Amazoness Warriors out late in the game.

Amazoness Swords Woman is especially useful. Her DEF is 1600, which can be either good or bad under certain circumstances. This provides extra protection when defending against monsters like Tribe-Infecting Virus or the soon to be released Blade Knight, but she can’t be searched out of your deck by Witch of the Black Forest. This is hardly a drawback if you think about it, since there are so many ways to add Amazoness Swords Woman to you hand. Sangan and Reinforcement of the Army work well with her. Her effect is even deadlier than Amazoness Fighter’s. If she were to be attacked by a stronger monster, not only will she prevent damage from being dealt to you, but your opponents will end up losing the life points instead! This can make the opponent rethink playing anything remotely powerful against Amazoness Swords Woman, and may work for a decent stall. Her effect is especially useful against high DEF monsters. Every turn, you can attack those high DEF monsters with Amazoness Swords Woman, and your opponent will lose life points instead of you.

One of the advantages of the other two Amazoness Warriors is that they’re both 1500 ATK. (Please note that Amazoness Fighter’s ATK that is printed on the card is incorrect. The errata states that her ATK is 1500.) They’re both searchable via Sangan and Reinforcement of the Army, and they can also be special summoned by Giant Rat.

Amazoness Tiger is the true powerhouse of the Amazoness Warriors. This Beast can be searched by both Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan, and can be special summoned via Giant Rat. Its ATK starts off rather low at first, but can increase to a very high level with the right power-ups. If you have one Amazoness monster and Gaia Power on your field, then Amazoness Tiger is already 2000 ATK! The advantage to this effect is how easily it can fluctuate, where it will usually get much higher as the turns go by. Your opponent is also forced to either attack this monster or pass his or her attack, since your other Amazoness Warriors will be protected by this Beast.

Amazoness Spellcaster is an interesting spell card to play. It’s very similar to Riryoku in that it almost guarantees that you’ll destroy one of your opponent’s powerhouses. While the card may seem average, it can create a nice combo with either Amazoness Paladin or Amazoness Tiger. Amazoness Spellcaster only switches the original ATK of both chosen monsters. This means that your Paladin or Tiger will not only get the ATK of your opponent’s monster, but it will be modified by its own effects as well! If your opponent has a Jinzo face up, and you have an Amazoness Tiger, Amazoness Paladin, and Gaia Power on your field, play Amazoness Spellcaster. Jinzo will only have 1100 ATK, and with the modifiers to Amazoness Tiger, its ATK will be an astounding 3700! This situation obviously won’t always come up, but Amazoness Spellcaster is still a needed spell card for Amazoness decks, especially in an environment of Chaos monsters. This gives you another option to at least destroy Dark Magician of Chaos or Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. (As a note, this card is now overrated, unlike what one of my previous articles said at the time. It’s amazing what effect two months can have on the popularity of a card.)

The final two Amazoness cards out here in the U.S. are Dramatic Rescue and Amazoness Archers. Dramatic Rescue is the ultimate counter card for Amazoness monsters, and it proves how important it is for an Amazoness deck to make sure it has a decent-sized hand. If your opponent attempts to play anything that may turn the game against you, and it targets an Amazoness monster, activate this card to return that targeted monster to safety. In addition, you then special summon a different monster to the field. The advantage to Dramatic Rescue is that the monster you special summon isn’t limited to Amazoness monsters. You can summon any monster in your hand that can be special summoned at this time. This includes Jinzo, Vampire Lord, Witch of the Black Forest, or even Big Koala. It’s all up to you.

Amazoness Archers rivals Mirror Force in power for the Amazoness deck. In fact, I may have to admit that I’d leave Mirror Force out of an Amazoness deck just to run more Amazoness Archers. This card works best with Amazoness Paladin and Amazoness Tiger, as their ATK values are much higher than those of the other Amazoness monsters. Upon activation, Amazoness Archers will shut down all flip effects and force all monsters on your opponent’s field at the time of activation to attack your designated Amazoness monster. This is almost similar to a Raigeki that ends up damaging your opponent’s life point total, as, thanks to Amazoness Tiger, you have a decent chance of having a monster with greater than 2500 ATK. In fact, if your monster’s ATK is still not high enough to rival all of the monsters on your opponent’s field, you can activate another Amazoness Archers to reduce their ATKs again! The ATK reduction stacks, so attacking monsters will be 1000 ATK lower than their current values.


The Cards in the Metagame

The main reason I’m talking about Amazoness monsters in this week’s card analysis is because they have been left completely out of the tournament environment, even around the release of Magician’s Force. However, I asked a few members of the Metagame staff this question: “Do you believe that the Amazoness theme can compete in today’s tournament environment?” Here are a few answers.

Jason Grabher-Meyer: “Yes, they can compete. Amazoness may not be able to win, but it can definitely compete with other decks. Under certain situations, it can also compete against Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning.”

Alan Campbell: “Oh yes. Amazoness can definitely compete with other decks even today.”

It may be a bit repetitive, but these guys are Yu-Gi-Oh! experts that believe Amazoness Warriors have potential.


How to Use/Counter These Cards

When running the Amazoness theme, it’s necessary for you to run Reinforcement of the Army. This spell card thins your deck and gives you any Amazoness Warrior that you need. There’s no drawback to this card whatsoever, so it’s a must for any build of an Amazoness deck.

One of the themes you can use with Amazoness is to create a Warrior theme around them. Combine many of the Amazoness Warriors with Marauding Captain, Exiled Force, The Warrior Returning Alive, and The A. Forces. This abuses Reinforcement of the Army a little more than an Earth beatdown theme, but you may run low on space for non-Warrior monsters. Cards that appear in almost every deck, such as Tribe-Infecting Virus and Breaker the Magical Warrior, won’t find much available space in this theme. They may not fit the theme, but still manage to be useful against common tournament decks. However, using cards like Freed the Matchless General helps you gain a monster advantage over your opponent, and the two Marauding Captains can help lock down your opponent for a short period of time. This theme may require the Amazoness monsters to become a sub-theme, especially with the coming release of Command Knight in the 2004 Collector’s Tins.

Your other option with using the Amazoness is to work with a full-on Earth beatdown deck. The field spell, Gaia Power, is a must for this type of deck. Giant Rat will not only benefit from the boost of Gaia Power, making him a 1900 ATK monster just waiting to run itself into an Airknight Parshath, and making this deck fast and deadly. With one other Amazoness monster on the field at the time Giant Rat is destroyed through battle, you can bring out an Amazoness Tiger, already increasing its ATK up to 2000! That’s the same strength of Berserk Gorilla without any negative effects. If you’re using Dramatic Rescue in this deck, you may want to consider running Guardian Sphinx. There’s always a chance that your Gaia Power will be destroyed, and your opponent may end up gaining a field advantage on you. Combine Dramatic Rescue to summon Guardian Sphinx, which can act as a 2400 DEF wall for a turn, and then once it’s your turn, you can flip Guardian Sphinx face down, then flip summon it to bounce all of your opponent’s monsters back to their owners hands. (This works since your Guardian Sphinx never switched positions, but remember that Guardian Sphinx won’t go face down again this turn).

If you’re unfortunate enough to face the deadly and beautiful Amazoness monsters, then I wish you luck, and I hope your monsters are put down swiftly without pain . . .

Aw, come on! I’m kidding! There are ways to deal with these monsters, especially if you run a typical tournament deck (yes, I’m actually going to give advice for typical cards now). Tribe-Infecting Virus can easily rip the Amazoness Warriors to shreds, as it almost acts like a thunder bolt to all those Warriors. Even if your opponent has Amazoness Tiger out, by the time you destroy all of the Tiger’s masters, it will be left with an ATK lower than that of most monsters. It’s also wise to negate any spell in the Amazoness deck, since each one will most likely give it control of the field once again.

One of the hardest Amazoness cards to counter is Amazoness Archers, which is by far one of the deadliest traps in Yu-Gi-Oh! history. It combines the effect of Curse of Aging, the flip-effect negation of Ceasefire, and the forced attacks of Staunch Defender all into one card. The result is a blow so severe that it makes Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute about as valuable as a Thousand Eyes Idol in the midst of battle. However, if you can special summon a monster in the middle of the battle phase that can destroy the chosen Amazoness monster through the effects of Amazoness Archers, the effects of Amazoness Archers stop immediately. This means that your weakened monsters are no longer forced to run to their deaths. Unfortunately, the ATK decrease is permanent as long as those monsters remain on the field, so they’ll most likely be destroyed anyway. This is still better than having no monsters to protect your life points at all. The combo using Call of the Haunted and Jinzo also works rather well, as does trap negation such as Trap Jammer. If you have no cards that react well against Amazoness Archers, then it’s your best bet to have a side deck ready. Remember to switch out all your flip-effect monsters, as they’re not going to last at all against the Amazoness theme.


Are These Cards Overrated or Underrated?

Compare the amount of times you see Amazoness monsters in a tournament with the power that the actual theme possesses. Once you make this comparison, it will be obvious that the Amazoness Warriors are vastly underrated. I’ve made quite a few suggestions on which cards to use for Amazoness monsters during this article, and here’s a decklist that will combine all those cards into one playable deck.

Monsters
3 Amazoness Swords Woman
3 Amazoness Paladin
2 Amazoness Fighter
1 Amazoness Tiger
1 Amazon Archer
2 Marauding Captain
1 Exiled Force
1 Freed the Matchless General
1 Witch of the Black Forest
1 Sangan
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Raigeki
1 Dark Hole
1 Pot of Greed
1 Harpie’s Feather Duster
1 Graceful Charity
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Reinforcement of the Army
1 The Warrior Returning Alive
1 Monster Reborn
1 Premature Burial
3 The A. Forces
1 Amazoness Spellcaster
1 Dramatic Rescue
1 Imperial Order
1 Call of the Haunted
3 Amazoness Archers

Please remember that this is just an example of an Amazoness deck. It’s merely a starting point for an Amazoness Warrior deck. If you’d like to run an Earth rush deck, modify the cards a bit and give it a try. Your judgment and testing will be good enough for making an effective Earth rush deck.

The Amazoness Warriors are indeed a powerful theme. The support for them is quite good right now, especially for their Warrior type. Their Earth attribute is also easy to use and abuse. However, they’re not the only cards overlooked. Next week’s card is an expert duelist’s Swiss Army Knife. Whether you’re running hand control, running field control, or just trying to make your opponent scream in frustration, next week’s card can do it all. Remember to come back for a Card Analysis on Tsukuyomi—yes, Yata isn’t the only Spirit of Abuse.

I’m always looking for card analysis suggestions! If you have a request or a question, please email me at Mrosenberg@metagame.com! Ask questions, request cards to be analyzed, ask for advice on cards to use in a deck, or report success stories with underrated cards at your tournament. I’d love to hear any of it. Check back next week, Metagame readers!