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.