Combo decks are always fun to play. The only way to not care about the metagame is to always win on turn 1. Of course, even if there is a deck that can do that, it will be short lived as the ban list will quickly come and steal away a few key cards. We can always try though, and the two major combo decks right now are Demise OTK and DDT. In this blog, I will discuss Demise OTK and the lesser known DDT: Cloudian Edition.

Demise OTK

For those who still do not know, Demise OTK focuses on summoning Demise, King of Armageddon followed up with a sequence of moves that result in attacking for 8000 damage. In the current format, special summoning Doom Dozer via its effect or Metal Armored Bug via another card then tributing the special summoned monster for a Great Maju Gazette. The 2400 damage from Demise and 5600 damage from Great Maju Gazette neatly equals 8000 damage.

Demise is playable where other decks are not because Advanced Ritual Art and Demise, King of Armageddon are still very powerful even without the rest of the combo pieces to complete the OTK. All the pieces are highly searchable giving the deck speed, and that speed forces the opponent to devote a large field to attempt to beat the Demise OTK player down. This allows the Demise OTK player to summon Demise, King of Armageddon blowing up the field for large card advantage. At this point, the Demise player no longer needs the OTK to win.

The strategy was sound at first but when the deck became popular, side decked cards nullified its effectiveness. Both Mind Crush and Trap Dustshoot stops Demise from ever hitting the field, and this was doable even if the Demise OTK player attacked the back field with Heavy Storm and Giant Trunade first. Pulling the Rug also attacked the searching infrastructure of the deck.

Yugioh is a game in the process of evolution. Demise OTK then in order to survive needs to attain more speed. This is done via redundancy. If there are more ways to set up the combo, then the chances of setting up the combo should logically increase. At SJC San Mateo, David Rodriguez did this with Swing of Memory, a full play set of Metal Armored Bug. Instead of depending on the lone Premature Burial to revive Metal Armored Bug, Swing of Memory act as the second and third Premature Burial. I'd like to take the deck further by adding more redundancy to the deck:

3 Demise, King of Armageddon
3 Doom Dozer
3 Manju of Ten Thousand Hands
3 Metal Armored Bug
2 Great Maju Gazette
2 Insect Knight
2 Senju of Ten Thousand Hands
1 Sangan
1 Sonic Bird

3 Advanced Ritual Art
3 Swing of Memory
3 Trade-In
1 Dimension Fusion
1 Giant Trunade
1 Heavy Storm
1 Megamorph
1 Premature Burial
1 Swords of Revealing Light

2 Reckless Greed
1 Magic Cylinder
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute

There very little stall in the deck because the point of the deck is to perform the OTK as fast as possible. There are many ways to fill in the last 5600 LP:

1. Doom Dozer + Dimension Fusion
2. Doom Dozer + Swing of Memory / Premature Burial
3. Doom Dozer + Great Maju Gazette
4. Doom Dozer + Megamorph
5. Swing of Memory / Premature Burial + Megamorph
6. Swing of Memory / Premature Burial + Great Maju Gazette

The redundancy in the deck is very high, with the maximum number of copies in each deck. Keep in mind I haven't actually tested the deck so refinements are obviously necessary. The list is just to show the general idea.

DDT: Cloudian Edition

I came across a deck that combined a D-Hero engine with Cloudians. I think has a lot of potential so I stuffed it together as DDT: Cloudian Edition. It combines Cloudians with Destiny Heroes. It does this using Cloudian - Turbulence and Cloudian - Smoke Ball as fuel. Here's Turbulence's card text as I reckon not many people are familiar with it:

Cloudian - Turbulence
Level 4 / Water / Fairy
800 ATK / 0 DEF
This card cannot be destroyed in battle. If this card is in face-up Defense
Position, destroy it. When you Normal Summon this card, place 1 Fog
Counter on it for each "Cloudian" monster on the field. You can remove
1 Fog Counter from this card to Special Summon 1 "Cloudian - Smoke
Ball" from your Deck or either player's Graveyard.

Cloudian - Smoke Ball is a level 1 200 ATK / 600 DEF normal monster. Upon summoning, Turbulence is able to summon another Smoke Ball to replace itself. The beauty of this is that Smoke Ball can be summoned from either the deck or graveyard which means it's usually accessible.

The Smoke Ball can now either be offered via Monster Gate or Fog Control. Fog Control trades a Cloudian monster for 3 Fog counters. In effect, Fog Control turns 1 Smoke Ball into 3. These Smoke Balls can now be used as more fuel.

2 Destiny Hero - Dasher
1 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Destiny Hero - Dreadmaster
1 Jinzo

3 Cloudian - Smoke Ball
3 Cloudian - Turbulence
3 Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude
1 Elemental Hero Stratos

3 Destiny Draw
3 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade
3 Fog Control
3 Lightning Vortex
3 Monster Gate
2 Reasoning
2 Reinforcements of the Army
1 Dimension Fusion
1 Heavy Storm
1 Magic Stone of Excavation

1 Mirror Force
1 Threatening Roar
1 Torrential Tribute

This is also a deck in making. There are still a few kinks to be worked out. The major problem here is that Reasoning and Monster Gate are horrible when Smoke Ball comes up when Fog Control and Turbulence are not in hand. The bright side is that Turbulence and Fog Control is a two card combo that generates a +2 card advantage, even if Smoke Balls aren't that useful. A good opening hand will be able to summon perform the combo on turn 1 so that Monster Gate and Reasoning can no longer hit Smoke Ball. It can still hit Turbulence which is still pretty bad.

The deck also only has 7 Warriors which could be problematic when the deck has 3 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade. The reason for this is that the deck wants to be able to remove enough Warriors to go for game quickly. Having 3 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade means this can be done. Testing might prove running fewer copies of it will be better.

I encourage you all to try this deck and then post any ideas that you might have. In the mean time, I hope you all develop a powerful combo deck to dominate the format. The existence of combo decks keeps the format in check from going to a slow format and is healthy for a diverse metagame.

P.S. Even if the Cloudian engine makes no sense in DDT, I'm sure that it has potential elsewhere, combined with Card of Safe Return to generate a +6 every time the Turbulence + Fog Control combo is pulled off. For those who don't see the +6,

Summoning Turbulence, fetching Smoke Ball (+1) in graveyard. Draw 1 card from Card of Safe Return (+1). Play Fog Control, tributing Smoke Ball (-2).  Special summon 3 Smoke Balls from graveyard (+3), draw 3 cards (+3). That's a total of +6.

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Yugioh reminds me of Magic: the Gathering right now. Not modern day Magic but several years back when there were essentially two decks: Affinity and anti-Affinity. Now you don't have to know what Affinity, but let's just say it warped Magic's metagame so badly that Magic constructed tournaments essentially had two decks. Now Yugioh isn't that bad yet but two decks were being played a lot at the last SJC.

SJC San Mateo has showed us that the deck to beat right now is Light and Darkness Dragon Perfect Circle (LADD PC). The runner up is Macro, which is the anti to the first deck. The rest of the top 16 that weren't these two deck types were Monarchs, Burn. Except for the lone Demise OTK and Zombie of course.

What does this mean? If the deck that theoretically should beat LADD PC didn't end up beating it, what can? Granted, there were a lot of LADD PC and it could be by shear number that one of them ended up as top dog, but if there were so many of them, then it would be worthwhile to specifically play a deck that beats it. Wait, doesn't Macro do that? Well, let's play a deck that beats Macro too. While we are doing that, let's beat Burn too.

With so many Monarchs running around, main decking 3 Pulling the Rug is an obvious metagame choice. As a side effect, it stops Volcanic Rocket, Breaker the Magical Warrior and Gadgets. There's a high chance that it will be useful game 1 and can be sided out when not needed.

Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure are the most obvious ways to attack Perfect Circle's infrastructure so they are in. But then aren't we suppose to beat Macro too? Playing the mirror match isn't exactly beating them, but we'll worry about Macro later.

Macro still lost to LADD PC though at SJC San Mateo, so let's put in more hate. Royal Oppression essentially says "no" to LADD PC's tribute fodder engine. Premature Burial? No. Call of the Haunted? No. Cyber Dragon? No. The list goes on. It even stops Light and Darkness Dragon. Cool. Oh, Royal Oppression completely hoses Demise OTK and negate D.D. Survivor.

That should be enough hate to take down LADD PC, but what about Macro. Royal Oppression negates D.D. Survivor and effectively shuts down the engine, but builds that run D.D. Scout Plane still has tribute fodder for their Monarchs. It's pretty hard to stop D.D. Scout Plane when the deck is playing Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure itself, but we'll do the next best thing: beat the life out of D.D. Survivor. Enter main decked Kinetic Soldiers, which happen to beat Six Samurais and inflicts much damage on Elemental Stratos as well. That's good because we know everyone loves teamwork and all that good stuff. Macro also runs a lot of negation, so let's just show them some end phase Royal Decree goodness. Don't we run Pulling the Rugs too? Well, they have a lot more traps than us.

But if we play Macro, then D.D. Survivor is an obvious inclusion, but Royal Oppression negates our own D.D. Survivor and Royal Decree negates our own Royal Oppression. So we have an off switch for Royal Oppression but that's still pretty bad. the thing I want to say now is that if D.D. Survivor can be negated by Royal Oppression, the removal engine is in place which means your opponent's graveyard infrastructure should be removed hence no special summoning. That means no need to activate Royal Oppression. The opposite is I activate Royal Oppression when my removal engine isn't in place so D.D. Survivor doesn't need to be negated anyway.

Now Burn is probably the hardest deck to beat just because it operates differently. Removing stuff from play, warrior beaters and rug pulling doesn't really do much against Secret Barrel, Ojama Trios and Wave-Motion Cannon. Are we defeated then? Pretty much if we don't have first turn Royal Decree, at least for game 1. Game 2 begins after a lot of side decking.

3 Twister, 2 Mei-Kou Master of Barrier and 3 White Magician Pikeru are... White Magician Pikeru? Now some, perhaps all of you are like this guy is obviously the biggest loser ever but seriously, White Magician Pikeru attacks under pretty much every stall card printed except Wall of Revealing Light. It's also a must answer card for any Burn deck because 400 LP per monster makes Ojama Trio useless and an unanswered continuous stream of Life Points makes the game un-winnable for the Burn player.

So if we put all that together with some basic good stuff then bake for 30 minutes, we get the following deck:

2 Cyber Dragon
2 Mobius the Frost Monarch

3 D.D. Survivor
3 Kinetic Soldier
2 Exiled Force
2 Gravekeeper's Spy
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Morphing Jar
1 Snipe Hunter
1 Spirit Reaper

3 Dimensional Fissure
2 Enemy Controller
2 Reinforcements of the Army
1 Brain Control
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Scapegoat
1 Twister

3 Pulling the Rug
3 Royal Oppression
2 Royal Decree
1 Macro Cosmos
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute

Sidedeck:
3 White Magician Pikeru
2 Mei-Kou, Master of Barriers
2 Solemn Judgment
2 Twister
1 Book of Moon
1 Cyber Dragon
1 Enemy Controller
1 Green Kappa
1 Heavy Storm

The Mobius the Frost Monarch helps out with Burn, if it for some reason does not get negated, and kills the random Blaze Accelerator or anything.

The LADD PC player will almost always side into D.D. Survivor, especially if s/he doesn't see Kinetic Solider game 1. What happens now is that you can beat him down with Kinetic Solider or Enemy Controller him to your side to somehow get rid of him or play Book of Moon on it then attack. You can also use Royal Oppression to negate its summon when things becomes bad then just beat him down with your own D.D. Survivor which hopefully can't even be removed from play because they have nothing to actually kill it.

If the Macro player does an early Solemn Judgment, then Kinetic Soldier can easily take down the remaining Life Points. I don't even know what the Macro player is going to side in but Lightning Vortex to kill Kinetic Solider and Jinzo/Mobius to stop our traps are most likely. Pulling the Rugs stay if they are running Macro Monarchs but go out if they just go the aggro path. The Twister can be sided out for an Enemy Controller to stop both D.D. Survivor, Jinzo and Mobius. You can also side out your own Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure. If s/he sides them out as well, we get the upper hand because of Kinetic Solider. If s/he they don't, then we got the upper hand because we don't need to waste our cards on a removal engine.

Against Burn, just side in all the S/T removal but keep the Pulling the Rugs if they seems they would side into Monarchs. If they do play Monarchs it shouldn't be too bad because of the continuous stream of D.D Survivor. Enemy Controller is a help here because it kills Monarchs. Keeping Pikeru online is pretty crucial here. Solemn Judgment comes in as well. Activate only when you're low on Life Points of course.

This deck is obviously really anti-meta because it main deck cards that are mostly seen in side deck. It also runs several cards that negate each other, but because the player of this deck gets to control when to activate these effects, the contradiction can be minimized, though it takes good judgment when to activate an effect or not because it can have dire consequences later in the game.

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I thought I would do a tourney report this time instead of the other duel theory stuff I've been writing.

My friend built the deck for me and I looked over the deck list. It seemed decent so I played it. The deck was Perfect Circle with Light and Darkness Dragon.

3 Raiza the Storm Monarch
2 Light and Darkness Dragon
2 Cyber Dragon
2 Destiny Hero - Malicious
2 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

2 Mystic Tomato
1 Destiny Hero - Disk Commander
1 Destiny Hero - Fear Monger
1 Elemental Hero - Stratos
1 Magician of Faith
1 Marshmellon
1 Sangan
1 Snipe Hunter
1 Spirit Reaper
1 Treeborn Frog

2 Destiny Draw
2 Lightning Vortex
2 Soul Exchange
1 Brain Control
1 Foolish Burial
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Pot of Avarice
1 Premature Burial
1 Reinforcements of the Army
1 Scapegoat

1 Call of the Haunted
1 Mirror Force
1 Phoenix Wing Windblast
1 Torrential Tribute

Round 1: Six Samurai
This guy ran Six Samurais without Grandmaster of the Six Samurai but had some of the good stuff from Gladiator's Assault.

Game 1, he went first, set 2 cards and summon Zanji. I played Heavy Storm, Cyber Dragon and Spirit Reaper and it went all down hill for him. I also had Foolish Burial and 3 Monarchs so that was pretty bad for him. He put a few Six Samurais in my way to protect Life Points and then got out Enishi, Shien's Chancellor to put on some pressure but Lightning Vortex took care of him. He got top decked Great Shogun Shien and special summoned him with that card from Gladiator's Assault that lets you special summon a drawn Six Samurai. Of course, he couldn't do that because Great Shogun isn't a Six Samurai but I didn't notice until after the game. Fortunately, the end came very quickly when Great Shogun got spun to the deck by Raiza.

Game 2, I had a +4 card advantage over him and thought I had complete contorl but he activated Back to the Wall to get out 5 Six Samurai. He took me down to a 100 LP on the turn he activated it. I drew next turn and my hand was stuck with Brain Control, a Monarch and some other stuff that just didn't save me.

Game 3, he had a all Six Samurai hand. He looked at the top card when he drew his initial 5 cards and asked if I wanted him to shuffle his deck. I said no because that obviously showed that his hand was horrible, so I said that I should look at the top card as well, which is the correct judge ruling for this incident. Needless to say, I won.

Round 2: Final Countdown
This guy always has the weirdest decks and always uses paper and pencil when calculating life points. His Final Countdown deck uses Final Countdown, main decked Mask of Restrict and some flip effect monsters.

Game 1, he went first and set 2 facedown cards and a monster, then played Final Countdown. He activated Mask of Restrict during my Standby Phase. It didn't matter though as Heavy Storm took care of that and Cyber Dragon with Zaborg the Thunder Monarch took down his set Dekoichi and he took 2400 damage to the face. He just set cards the next few turns as he took much damage from my monsters.

I sided in 2, Mei-Kou, Master of Barriers

Game 2, he went first and didn't have Final Countdown. Cool. He had a Messenger of Peace though but luckily my Mystic Tomato kept his flip effects in check. But then he played down Level Limit Area - B. That stalled for about 6 of my turns until I drew Snipe Hunter. Luckily, he still didn't have Final Countdown. He then had Skull Lair which proceeded to kill off my monsters. But Skull Lair ran out of monsters to remove quickly and after 2 Mei-Kou activations later, Light and Darkness Dragon hit the field and proceeded to decimate him. By this time he drew Final Countdown but I beat him after the 10th turn.

Round 3: A Legendary Ocean
This water deck was not that bad. He used A Legendary Ocean to power out Terror King Salmon. He also had Hydrogeddon, Mobius the Frost Monarch, Levia-Dragon - Daedulus and Fenrir.

Game 1, he went first and set a card with no monsters. I summoned Spirit Reaper and it actually went through to discard a Mobius. He did nothing again and I went for another card. This time he used Compulsory Evacuation Device to return Spirit Reaper to my hand. He set this entire hand the next turn and I just beat him down with Mystic Tomato. He drew Fenrir but couldn't summon him. Spirit Reaper then took it away from his hand and it was on to game 2 the next turn.

Game 2, he had a nicer hand and managed to have a field of 3 Hydrogeddon and a Mobius on the field. He also had 1 facedown spell or trap, Royal Decree and A Legendary Ocean on the field. I actually drew all 4 of my traps so that was pretty bad. Luckily, I got Destiny Hero - Malicious out and offered it for a Raiza the Storm Monarch. I opted to bounce Mobius instead of Royal Decree. Looking back, this was a horrible misplay because I could've used Mirror Force on this entire army the next turn then being in a very good position with my traps available. Luckily, Back to back Raizas was enough for me to win. He had Pot of Avarice but drew into nothing.

Round 3: Beatdown
I don't see how this deck went 3-0 but it did. He played Berserk Gorilla, Goblin Attack Force, Slate Warrior and stuff like that.

Game 1, he summoned Slate Warrior and I was expecting Dark Necrofear Return or something like that. Luckily for me, all he did was play large beat sticks which were rendered useless by first turn Foolish Burial coupled with Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. He lost that rather quickly.

Game 2, he set a Slate Warrior and I attacked it with Mystic Tomato for a +1. He attacked my red plant with Berserk Gorilla and I got Snipe Hunter. I dumped Malicious with Snipe Hunter, summoned Zaborg offering my searched out Malicious and proceeded to beat him down from there. Perfect Circle was surprisingly aggressive so far and felt more like 15 Gauge Monarchs. Oh well, can't argue against wins.

So cool, I topped 8.

Quarterfinals: Perfect Circle
This was a poorly built deck. It had all the pieces and everything but the deck wasn't fluid and the player made too many misplays.

I don't remember much about this match probably because both games ended so quickly. The one thing I did remember is that I got out Light and Darkness Dragon both games, and in both games he had to waste 3 cards just to lower its attack to kill it, then in both games I got to special summon Destiny Hero - Disk Commander with it.

I also got double Destiny Draw and Foolish Burial on game 1. Good hands rule.



Semifinals: Zombies
This was a fairly decent Zombie deck with all of the typical good stuff.

Game 1, I had opening hand of 2 Raiza's, 2 Destiny Hero - Malcious, Elemental Hero - Stratos and Scapegoat. I top decked into a Monarch, summoned Stratos to fetch Destiny Hero - Disc Commander. He killed by Stratos with Pyramid Turtle searching into Ryu Kokki. I draw nothing for the next few turns and watched as my Sheep tokens met oblivion as I sat there saying "Go ahead" for 3 consecutive turns.

I sided into 3 D. D. Crow and 2 Royal Oppressions.

Game 2, he had absolutely nothing so I proceeded to just beat him down with Stratos. He tried to Book of Life but D.D. Crow shut him down. I guess this balances out game 1.

Game 3, I had Royal Oppression on turn 1 and rendered his hand useless. The most memorable thing here is that I negated his Giant Rats and Pyramid Turtles. If you don't see the problem with that, it's time to get up to date with your rulings. He didn't put much of a fight in this round and Cyber Dragon goes all the way.

Finals: Demise OTK
I never saw this guy before and didn't know he was playing Demise OTK until game 1.

This deck was the toughest deck I faced so far. My first lost to Six Samurai was pretty much a fluke and my second loss to Zombies was thanks to a horrible hand. But in game 1, I actually had a decent hand but still went very close to losing. I started out just beating his down with Mystic Tomato and Elemental Hero Stratos. He then brought out Demise and blew the field, dropping to
himself down to 2000 LP and leaving me with one card in hand with nothing else. I top decked Treeborn Frog and discarded it to Lightning Vortex to kill off Demise. He summoned Sonic Bird and attacked me down to 1000 LP and played a face down spell or trap. I drew nothing relevant but had Treeborn Frog on the field. I prayed he didn't draw a monster and my wish was granted. I was praying for a Raiza the Storm Monarch now and luckily, the heart of the cards gave it to me. I chose to bounce his face down card instead of Sonic Bird and attacked him down to 1000 LP. He set his face down card again. I prayed for another Raiza the Storm Monarch and it came. Cool.

I sided in 2 Wobaku and 2 Royal Oppressions.

The last game of the tournament was rather anti-climactic. He opened with a face down spell or trap and summoned Insect Knight in attack mode. I had nothing to kill the Insect Knight, except Breaker the Magical Warrior but had Stratos, Destiny Draw and Destiny Hero - Fear Monger in my hand. I wanted to kill the Insect Knight that turn so I played Destiny Draw discarding Fear Monger, hoping for a Cyber Dragon, and it came to me. Cyber Dragon hit the field along with Breaker. Breaker broke and my monsters hit for 1800 damage. I had Royal Oppression and activated on his turn. He set a card and passed. I top decked Mystical Space Typhoon to destroy his face down Dimension Fusion, then summoned Stratos, searching for then discarding Malicious to Destiny Draw. I removed Malicious from the graveyard to get another one and attacked for game.

He revealed to me he had game if I didn't have Royal Oppression. I'm such a lucky player. I had Foolish Burial in my opening hand an unusually large percentage of the time, as well as Destiny Draw with Stratos and Premature Burial.

The odd thing was I never once saw Magician of Faith.

The prize was 2 booster packs (contained nothing but the powerful Lucky Pied Piper!) and a promo Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer. Nothing fabulous but there was a mat tournament next week so yeah, that had a nicer prize and that tourney report is coming to you next week.

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I figured that this time, instead of just slapping a deck list out, I'd talk about playing techniques. That is, I want to talk about making the right moves and such. This is a long article so I'll put headings to break the article about to make it more readable.

Introduction:

People dislike to lose. Some people more so than others. Have you ever seen a person who yells at this cards when he loses? "Why didn't you come when I needed you!", yells the angry duelist. If you haven't see one of these players, I'd suggest trying to meet one. It's a hilarious experience. Many of these players are blind to their own misplays, or they overrate their deck and playing skills. They blame their lost on luck, even when they consistently lose. It's not luck, it's either bad deck, bad playing or both. This article discusses bad playing and how not to do it.

Really Bad Obvious Misplays

I'm not going to talk much about obvious misplay. For example, I've seen a player starring down an opponent with 500 LP with 4 Sheep tokens and no backfield. He has Hydrogeddon on the field and an Enemy Controller in hand. He does this: attack Sheep token with Hydrogeddon and sets Enemy Controller. Now if you don't see what's wrong with that play, I'd suggest reading this paragraph again, focusing on 400 LP, no backfield and Enemy Controller's position changing effect.

If you know or at least think you're making these bad plays, have an experienced player watch you play and point out your mistakes. Eventually, these misplays will stop happening. Just for your entertainment, here's a misplay I've recently encountered:

Player A has face up Il Blud and a Ryu Kokki revived via Il Blud, no backfield and 1 card in hand which he did not play last turn. All he did was use Book of Life on Il Blud, normal summon Il Blud and special summon Ryu Kokki.

Player B has a Treeborn Frog, no backfield and 2 Monarchs, Raiza Zaborg, in hand amongst other useless cards in hand. It is Player B's main phase. If you were Player B, what would you do? Answer before continuing on.

So what should you do? The best play here is to summon Raiza, bouncing Il Blud to the top of the deck destroying Ryu Kokki in the process and attacking for 2400 damage. Since Player A did not play the card in hand last turn, it's quite probable that card is useless in the situation, like Creature Swap. That'll provide a high chance for another direct attack next turn.

Another option was to play Zaborg to destroy Il Blud. This is a less optimal play in my opinion because it gives the chance for Player A to draw something that will save him. It could be argued that if the Player A drew a monster and set it, Player B could following up next turn with Zaborg to inflict more damage than the previous scenario.

The worst moves to make are to summon Raiza or Zaborg and target Ryu Kokki with their effects. These play reduces the amount of damage your opponent will take with no significant chance in result. The player I witness summoned Zaborg targeting Ryu Kokki. A horrible misplay.

A Harder Play

But these plays are rather easy to spot. I want to go over a type of play that is much harder to make

Player A is playing Macro Cosmos beat down and has 2 Banisher of Radiance on the field with 1 cards in hand. He has nothing else on the field and has 1300 LP remaining.

Player B on the other hand is playing a unique Dragon Burn hybrid. Its strategy is to get some Dragons out for quick beats then burn the rest of the LP away with cards like Secret Barrel, Just Desserts and Magic Cylinder. Right now, Player B has Twin Headed - Behemoth on the field and Dragon's Gunfire in hand. Player B has used both Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute. Player B has 3500 LP remaining. It's Player B's main phase 1. If you were player B, what should you do?

Many people will say play Dragon's Gunfire to destroy a Banisher of Radiance and shift Twin-Headed Behemoth into defense mode to last the turn. However, this is not the optimal play. The optimal play is simply to burn the opponent with Dragon's Gunfire and defend with Twin-Headed Behemoth. Why? Here's why:

If you do the first play, your opponent will end up with a Banisher of Radiance on the field with 2 other cards and you would have nothing on the field. Let's say he drew another monster, like D.D. Survivor. He could summon him and attack, reducing you to 1700 LP and you essentially have to top deck something to save yourself.

The second play leaves you with nothing on the field and at most 1900 LP. If your opponent drew a monster like D.D. Survivor, you would drop down to 100 LP and have 1 turn to save yourself.

The difference here is that the second play leaves your opponent with 500 LP. As said earlier, you've got stuff like Just Desserts and Secret Barrel. Any burn card will essentially win the game. In the first play, let's say your your opponent has drawn a D.D. Survivor. He has 1300 LP and 2 monsters on the field. Neither Just Desserts, Secret Barrel nor any other burn card will save you. The first play only delays in the inevitable whereas the second play gives a chance of victory. If the opponent instead drew a dead card, the analysis still applies: the first option gives little chance of winning (probably only Magic Cylinder will save you) whereas the second option gives considerably higher chance.

There is a third play in this scenario, which is to simply set Dragon's Gunfire as a bluff. This probably won't work very well since Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute are gone and there's a big incentive for Player A to attack. The incentive, by the way, is a game win if it wasn't obvious already.

Questions to Ask Before Each Play

That would have been a difficult play for many players and players who chose the first, less optimal play can never realize what went wrong. If you're in a difficult situation, ask yourself these questions:

1. Is there any card(s) that will save me?
2. How should I play so that I can maximize the chances of me drawing those cards?
3. How should I play so that if I do draw one of those cards, it will have the greatest effect?

In the earlier scenario, the answer to question 1 is yes. Any burn card will save you.

The answer to question 2 is to burn the opponent instead of destroying Banisher of Radiance. In both plays, you get 1 turn to draw the card you need, but in the second play, you've increased the number of cards that you can draw to save you (any burn card instead of just Magic Cylinder). That increases the chance of drawing a life saving card.

The answer to number 3 is that both plays have the same effect if you do draw the life saving card (both plays win the game when the correct card is drawn).

Knowing Your Decks and Rulings

The analysis is much harder when you are unfamiliar with the deck the opponent is playing. It's hard to figure out the worst case scenario without knowledge of the opponent's deck. This is why play-testing and information gathering is important. These actions will increase your knowledge of various deck types and improve overall playing skills. It also helps to see the moves the player of the deck types usually make.

Lastly, learning the correct rulings will prevent you from performing misplays. Here's an incident I've seen. The Six Samurai - Zanji attacks a Mystic Tomato when the attacker controls a Six Samurai - Yaichi. The owner of Mystic Tomato did not search for another monster. Why? It is because he thought that Zanji's effect destroys it instead of by battle. Another example is in the last format when a player controlled 2 Card Trooper. His opponent asked what it did and the Card Trooper owner said it gets 500 ATK boost for each card milled off the deck. He then proceeds to send 6 cards from the top of the deck to the graveyard (3 for each Card Trooper). The opponent now thinks each Card Trooper is 3400 ATK (400 + 6 * 500) and destroys his 2 Gravekeeper's Spies. As we can see, not knowing the rules makes you lose. The Card Trooper example seems far fetched, but it seriously did happen, and at a Regionals tournament too.

Conclusion

I hope this has inspired you readers to study your own plays and optimize them. Random bad hands do occur, but a large portion of games are loss because of rotten plays instead of rotten luck.

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I'm still figuring a deck out for Forced Back, but in the mean time, here's another idea: Pyro.

Royal Firestorm Guards is well, amazing. It's an automatic +2 upon summon as long as there are 4 Pyro monsters to send back to the deck. I think this is the card that makes Pyro a playable deck type, like how Zombie Master made Zombies viable again.

It's quite fortunate this card is printed right after the release of Volcanic support. The Volcanic theme is already able to generate a lot of advantage by themselves, but with this in the mix, there's now even more advantage and more times to perform the advantage engine in a single duel. Combine that engine with high attack power, Pyro should become a worthy deck in the metagame. Here's a deck list:

3 Cyber Dragon
3 Thestalos the Fire Monarch

3 Royal Firestorm Guards
3 Volcanic Rocket
3 Volcanic Shell
2 Magical Merchant
2 Mystic Tomato
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Card Trooper
1 Sangan
1 Snipe Hunter
1 Spirit Reaper
1 Treeborn Frog

2 Lightning Vortex
1 Blaze Accelerator
1 Brain Control
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Premature Burial
1 Wildfire

2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
1 Mirror Force
1 Sakuretsu Armor
1 The Transmigration Prophecy
1 Torrential Tribute

The deck is capable of generating large amounts of hand advantage which
can be converted into field control through other cards in the deck. 

This deck isn't chuck full of Pyro based cards. There are 2 reasons: there isn't that much support for Pyro outside of Volcanic monsters and a Pyro deck doesn't need 20 Pyro cards. I think a popular mistake beginner players make is that if they decide to make a theme deck, they use only cards of that theme. For example, if they built a Gravekeeper deck, they would use nothing but Gravekeeper monsters. That's obviously a bad idea as there are generic cards like Sangan that tie together many decks.

This deck has only 12 Pyro monsters so it may seem that getting Royal Firestorm Guard's effect is difficult, but Volcanic Shell effectively serves as 3 Pyro monsters. So as long as a single Volcanic Shell and another Pyro monster is drawn, Royal Firestorm Guard's effect should be able to be used.

The Blaze Accelerator and Lightning Vortex gives this deck enough monster removal. Thestalos can easily be used instead of the other more field oriented Monarchs. The Mystic Tomato may seem completely random but it searches for Snipe Hunter as a discard outlet or searches Sangan which then searches for Volcanic Shell as a card to be discarded.

 
When playing the deck, keep in mind there's nothing wrong summoning Royal Firestorm Guards as nothing more than a 1700 attacker. It is capable of taking down many other monsters with its high attack as well as being content to lure away a Sakuretsu Armor.

What messes up this deck up the most has to be Pulling the Rug as it destroys 10 monsters in the deck -- that's almost half the monster line up. The side deck can address this. While I have not posted a side deck, swapping out the Sakuretsu Armor and Bottomless Trap Hole for Solemn Judgment and exchanging something for 3 copies of Nobleman of Extermination is worth considering, although a problem is that the LP requirement would probably be too much for the deck.

Another option is to use two Royal Decree  instead of Bottomless Trap Hole and Sakuretsu Armor and to swap a Phoenix Wing Wind Blast for a third Lightning Vortex. The high attack of your monsters along with the large amount of monster removal should be able to pressure the opponent when Royal Decree is in play.

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There are 2 central concepts of a good position in Yugioh: card advantage and tempo. Card advantage is the most discussed one because of its effect on the game and it can be easily obtained by counting. Tempo on the other hand, is less discussed because tempo is so easily lost that it hardly guarantees a win in a normal deck and it's also harder to measure because there is no unit of measurement.

But tempo is still crucial to the game. If a player is holding a 5 card all monster hand with nothing on the field staring down nothing but 2 E-Hero Blade Edge, she will be hard pressed to win. S/he surely has advantage, a +3 to be exact, but the fact that s/he can't keep up with the pace of 2 E-Hero Blade Edge spells doom for him/her. Of course, I'm not saying that tempo alone can win. It's usually better for tempo to be mixed with card advantage.

But achieving a fast tempo usually requires a heavy commitment to the field and that's extremely risky in a game where cards like Lightning Vortex, Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute are rampant. So a deck based on tempo must run cards that neutralize these threats. Solemn Judgment excels in this category, but now another problem arises: there's only 3 Solemn Judgments in a deck. Soul Exchange / Brain Control with a Raiza the Wind Monarch or Zaborg the Thunder Monarch is a horrific move no decks want to face, and particularly painful when a player has committed to a field. Solemn Judgment might negate it, but then that player can just now play down Lightning Vortex to clear the field. Having another Solemn Judgment is considerable less likely after using one.

But surely there is a way to make tempo work and the key lies in playing a lot of cards on to the field without emptying the hand. That way, if the field does get cleared, a second wave of assault can be promptly dispatched. Zombies does this through Card of Safe Return with a lot of recursion. Players in the last ban list did this with Card Trooper and Machine Duplication. But Zombies are quite vulnerable to graveyard hate or just random bad hands and Card Trooper is now restricted to one.

Six Samurai does this through another method. Special summoning a a lot of monsters with a built in protective effect in a turn can make it difficult for an opponent to mount a comeback. Grandmaster of the Six Samurai also allows for a second assault if the first on fails. Sadly, Six Samurai are inconsistent in that it is hard to win without Reasoning or Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, and drawing multiple copies of the same Six  Samurai is often lethal, as seen in the Canadian Nationals when Matthew Lai drew 3 copies of Six Samurai - Irou.

Next we have Gadgets. They are able to replace themselves for the second assault, but they also suffer from the occasional random bad hands. 5 Gadgets starting hand? Well, I never got one but I did start with 4 before. They also lack means of special summoning so it's quite slow compared to the other decks, relying on 1 to 1 trades of removal with monsters to speed up the game.

So what deck is fast, has a lot of special summoning ability, doesn't use up cards as it commits to the field and uses high utility cards to minimize bad hands? DDT of course. But wait, doesn't DDT suffer from the occasional horrible hand? Well, yes, but...

2 Jinzo
1 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Destiny Hero - Dreadmaster
1 Destiny Hero - Dasher

3 Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude
1 Card Trooper
1 Destiny Hero - Disk Commander
1 Destiny Hero - Fear Monger
1 Snipe Hunter

3 Destiny Draw
3 Lightning Vortex
3 Monster Gate
3 Reasoning
2 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade
2 Reinforcements of the Army
1 Brain Control
1 Card Destruction
1 Dimension Fusion
1 Heavy Storm
1 Magic Stone of Excavation
1 Premature Burial

1 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Mirror Force
1 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
1 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Torrential Tribute

Half of the monsters that are actually normal summoned pay for themselves in terms of cards. Diamond Dude does this by flipping a spell card. Although it doesn't always do this, the fact that flipping a Destiny Draw or something similar gives a +2 instead of a +1 in card advantage offsets the times when it doesn't flip a spell. Stratos immediately replaces itself with a search or destroys S/T. The other 2 monsters that are normal summoned, Snipe Hunter and Fear Monger (which is usually set instead), do not replace themselves. However, Snipe Hunter adds utility to the deck and Fear Monger's potential of reviving another Destiny Hero gives it the ability to replace itself as well as setting up a lethal field next turn when no monsters suddenly turn into 5. The rest of the monster line up are just dumped to the graveyard through various discard outlets or special summoned for the kill.

One thing to note is that there is no Destiny Hero - Malicious. I find it leads to very inconsistent draw because it's just so bad without a discard outlet. I opted for the slower yet more utility Disk Commander + Fear Monger combo instead.

The spell line up is rather generic so I'll skip it. For the traps, I chose to run one of Bottomless Trap Hole, Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and Sakuretsu Armor rather than Threatening Roars because both Bottomless Trap Hole and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast stop Zombie Master. The Sakuretsu Armor is there as a random surprise, stopping a Mystic Tomato or something from destroying Diamond Dude.

So where's the utility in the cards? There's not much really in the individual cards, but it's based on the discard outlets. However, there will be randomly bad hands if no discard outlets are drawn. An opening hand of 2 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade, Monster Gate, Destiny Hero - Dreadmaster and Dark Magician of Chaos is nearly auto lose (Destiny Draw or Card Destruction can save you). However, over 1/5 of the deck is a discard outlet so it's not that bad,although Destiny Draw requires a Destiny Hero discard but 1/5 of the deck are Destiny Heroes so it's not that hard to get one.

Everyone who has played against DDT will know that the deck is fast, and goes from slow tempo to extremely fast in a single turn. It's many card advantage engines mean that there will be cards to mount a second attack. It's weakness is probably it succumbs to random bad hands, but this is where bluffing comes in, which I will probably write about in my next blog.

Right now, I'm trying to design a deck using Forced Back. It's a powerful card that can make Perfect Circle cry. But more on that after it's been more developed.

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For those who do not know, DMoC refers to Dark Magician of Chaos and OTK stands for one turn kill.

Despite what a lot of people are calling the deck, Zombies are not OTK. Technically, any deck can perform an OTK (given the deck is not made of an army of 500 ATK monsters, but the term OTK should be reserved to decks whose goal is an OTK or can consistently produce an OTK, usually with speed.

Demise OTK is an OTK because although it can win through just beatdown, it's primary goal is to perform its OTK and can do it quite consistently. Zombies, on the other hand, is not an OTK because it's primary goal is not an OTK nor is it able to perform is consistently.

DMoC infinite burn OTK has been around for some time as it revolves around 4 rather old cards: DMoC, Mass Driver, Spell Economics and Dimension Fusion. For those who do not know the combo, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out it works. It shouldn't be too difficult.

The beauty of this OTK is that it does not involve battle and so can be performed even without a S/T clearer as the only commonly played S/T that can stop it are Dust Tornado, Mystical Space Typhoon and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast. It also is able to win without a clear monster field.

The deck has 1 goal and 1 goal only: find the combo pieces and win. Of course, we'll have to include a bit of resistance for our opponents or they'll just ram the deck down with monsters but the speed of the deck should take care of most of that problem. Before I go any further, here's the deck list:

1 Dark Magician of Chaos

3 Lightning Vortex
3 Mass Driver
3 Monster Gate
3 Reasoning
3 Soul Exchange
3 Spell Economics
3 Toon Table of Contents
3 Upstart Goblin
2 Magical Mallet
1 Brain Control
1 Card Destruction
1 Dimension Fusion
1 Giant Trunade
1 Magic Stone of Excavation
1 Premature Burial
1 Scapegoat
1 Spell Reproduction
1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Call of the Haunted
1 Mirror Force
1 The Transmigration Prophecy
1 Torrential Tribute

Sidedeck: 15
3 H - Heated Heart
3 Dark Bribe
2 Solemn Judgment
2 Jinzo
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Heavy Storm
1 Limiter Removal
1 Megamorph

The monster line up is rather obvious, but no other monster can be played as it'll mess with the Monster Gate and Reasoning results. The spell line up is quite long, but they all either are a combo piece, get out the combo pieces, or stop the opponent from dishing out damage. The trap line up is rather small. Most notable here is the use of Transmigration Prophecy, as there just times where DMoC will be drawn and Premature Burial and Call of the Haunted just won't come. However, if Transmigration Prophecy is used, Reasoning can not be used unless you suspect your opponent does not know what you are doing yet.

There seems to be very little resistance in the main deck but if you start out with an early Reasoning, the opponent will almost always call 4 or 6, and when DMoC comes out then it's pretty much game as hopefully by then, you'll either have drawn Dimension Fusion or have dumped Dimension Fusion into the graveyard to recur with DMoC. If neither of those happen, then hopefully you can dig into it as a major part of the deck should have been dumped into the graveyard leaving the deck size rather small. Of course, there's always the chance the plan will fail, but that plagues all combo decks and it's impossible to make the deck invincible.

There are 2 options for side decking: counter your opponent's side deck and win with the same plan or change plans.

Option 1 can be done by siding in Dark Bribe, Solemn Judgment and Heavy Storm and siding out Reasoning among other stuff for obvious reasons. This plan is considerably slower as Reasoning provided a lot of the speed in the deck.

Option 2 relies on the following combo: get out Jinzo, play Megamorph, H - Heated Heart and Limiter Removal in that order and attack for game. This plans allows Reasoning to still be played and is immune to Twister and Dust Tornado, both which are probably sided in game 2. This route will have to side out Upstart Goblin, as there's no infinite damage anymore, and the previous continuous combo pieces, as they no longer do anything.

The deck plays rather fast but is extremely difficult to play. It is able to consistently win in the first few turns of the game but only if all the moves are perfectly made as usually every single card will be used, so every card counts. Expect to spend a few weeks playing the deck over and over again just to learn all the right moves to make.

A major problem with this deck is the potential bad hands. An opening hand of multiple copies of Toon Table of Contents and Mass Driver is pretty bad for example. Fortunately, those don't come up very often but can disable the deck during a long tournament.

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Today I'm writing on a topic that few article writers will ever touch on: how to take advantage of end of match procedures.

What are end of match procedures?

End of match procedures are used to end a match quickly when a match is taking longer than the allotted time for a match. For those who are familiar with how this works, here's the procedure summarized:

1. End of match procedures are used at the end of the allotted time limit for a match. This is usually 40 minutes.

2. Players play for an additional 3 turns, counting from the start of the next turn.

3. The player with more life points at the end of the 3 turns wins the game.

4. If both players have equal life points, then play is continued until the first change in life points. (If life points change in a chain, the entire chain resolves first before game ends.) The player with higher Life Points wins the game.

5. If after the game, a player has more wins in the match, that player is declared the winner of the match. If both have the same number of wins, start a new game with a 4 turn time limit. The winner is determined similar to the previous game.

Making the deck

So how can we take advantage of this? We need to do 2 things:
1. Stall the game.
2. Deal quick damage when end of match procedures are in effect.

Before I continue, I want to say that stalling the game and win via end of match procedures is perfectly legal. That said, we still can't slow play in order to go to end of match procedures. So how do we stall the game then?

First, we have the generic continuous spell / trap stall in the form of Level Limit Area - B and the like. Next, we back it up with Self-Destruct Button to repeat the process for about 40 minutes.

To win, we either need to deal quick damage or gain life points. Using both is obviously the best course of action. Here's the deck list before I go any further:

3 Morphing Jar #2
2 Mystic Tomato
1 A Cat of Ill Omen
1 Magician of Faith
1 Morphing Jar
1 Sangan
1 Spirit Reaper

3 Inspection
3 Lightning Vortex
3 Nightmare Steelcage
3 Upstart Goblin
2 Messenger of Peace
1 Level Limit Area - B
1 Scapegoat
1 Swords of Revealing Light

3 Self-Destruct Button
3 Solemn Judgment
3 Threatening Roar
1 Gravity Bind
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Wall of Revealing Light

Sidedeck:
3 Emergency Provisions
3 Dian Keto the Cure Master
3 Dimension Wall
3 Poison of the Old Man
2 Wobaku
1 Magic Cylinder

Playing the deck

This deck focuses on stalling for as long as possible then activate Inspection or Wall of Revealing Light and Self-Destruct Button, or just Self-Destruct Button if your opponent manages to attack you two the correct Life Point difference.

About 2 to 5 minutes before the end of the match, tie the game then side deck in all 15 cards and remove everything that requires Life Points are gives Life Points to your opponent.

The major enemy against this deck is Jinzo and Royal Decree so your Solemn Judgments are mainly for those. It's still a tough match up if your opponent has all 4 of them though, so try to stall game 1 as long as possible before they can side in Jinzo and Royal Decree.

If you're able to choose between going first or second in game 1 and manage to tie every single game, then you can have your opponent go first in the last game (if the previous game is a tie, the player who chose to play first or second in the previous game gets to choose again). When this happens, they have a single battle phase to defeat you, which can easily be rendered useless through Wobaku or Threatening Roar.

If you lose a game, then try to tie every single game until the clock has around 5 minutes left. Then side deck in the burn and hope that you can win that game and the next through end of match procedures to win the match 2 to 1.

End of Match Procedure Deck Version 2

If stalling is not your type, you can try this speedier version:

3 Royal Magical Library
3 Thunder Dragon
1 Card Trooper

3 Inspection
3 Magical Mallet
3 Nightmare Steelcage
3 Toon Table of Contents
3 Upstart Goblin
1 Card Destruction
1 Giant Trunade
1 Level Limit - Area B
1 Magic Stone of Excavation
1 Reload
1 Scapegoat
1 Spell Reproduction
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Toon World

3 Self-Destruct Button
3 Threatening Roar
1 Gravity Bind
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Wall of Revealing Light

The side deck is similar to the previous version. This deck can out speed Jinzo with a good hand but at the cost of having the chance of having horrible opening hands. This version tries to cycle through the deck until it gets both Wall of Revealing Light / Inspection and Self-Destruct Button. It plays considerable more games than the previous version which increases the number of opportunities to get undesirable opennng hands.

I hope this increased your understanding of end of match procedures and helped your formulate your own end of match procedure deck.

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There were 3 Monarch decks in the last SJC top 16.

The first one was Apprentice Engine Monarchs, using the Apprentice Magician engine to bring out flip effects and tribute fodder. The second is Perfect Circle which uses Destiny Heroes to cycle quickly through the deck while gaining advantage and tribute fodder. The last one was a less conventional one, running a Mystic Tomato tutor box and 3 Sasuke Samurai with a single Flying Kamikari #1.

I personally think that Perfect Circle is the strongest of the trio, but that's not the topic right now. I'm here to talk about how many Apprentice Magician work best in Apprentice Monarchs. To do this, how it works has to be understood.

Apprentice Monarchs require the opponent to attack Apprentice Magician in order for it to search out a Spellcaster with a flip effect. If the opponent does not attack, like against Burn matchup, then Apprentice Magician becomes a completely dead card short of adding a counter to Breaker the Magical Warrior. The good news is that with so many settable monsters, it will be difficult for an opponent to read when to attack a face down monster or not. A face down monster could be a Apprentice Magician but could also be a Magician of Faith. Only the most expert of players will be able to make the read to attack or not.

Sadly, one of Apprentice Monarch's greatest enemy is at 2 copies right now: Nobleman of Crossout. If the opponent is holding one in hand, then the decision to attack or not is greatly simplified:

Option 1: Attack. If the face down monster is an Apprentice Magician, use Nobleman of Crossout on whatever they search out. If the face down monster wasn't an Apprentice Magician, then the advantage change is still 0 at best.

Option 2: Use Nobleman of Crossout then attack. It's damage and a 1 for 1 trade.

Both options are not bad and this can be a major problem for Apprentice Monarchs. The solution is, then, to not play many Apprentice Magician at all. A lone copy of Apprentice Magician will be less expected than a full set. Even just one wrong attack into an Apprentice Magician can spell doom for the opponent. Mystic Tomato can be used to search out Apprentice Magician. Mystic Tomato's larger body can absorb more damage and deal it as well when the time calls for it.

One can argue that an Apprentice Monarch with a single Apprentice Magician isn't an Apprentice Monarch at all. However, I think the single Apprentice Magician with Mystic Tomato and many different flip effect monsters would be the best variation of it just because it does not get destroyed by Nobleman of Crossout.

The use of Soul Exchange in this version is also rather crucial just because some aggressive decks will just not allow any monster to remain on the field long enough to be sacrificed. The lone Apprentice Magician just won't always be drawn, but that's okay because not all games will require Apprentice Magician. If an opponent attacks one in game 1, then they'll be much more hesitant to attack in game 2 and that allows flip effect monsters to be set and flipped without being attacked.

Apprentice Monarchs is still rather slow and very reactive. For this reason, I think that Perfect Circle can be stronger than it, but that's a topic for another day.

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