Agent Fairy/Agent Angel Deck September 2012 (TCG)

As you can see from the headline, this is a TCG Agent deck, so sorry at all OCG players, but you will be able to play it in near future I think. I built a Chaos Agent deck (not that Chaos with just 1 BLS lol), that’s one of the most frequently used Agent Decks in TCG, although mine is more a control build.

Like Dinos Agents do have occasions were you have terrible hands like double Ball, MST, Heavy and other random stuff; I guess that can’t be avoided with 100%, although I prefer to have a 1900 ATK beater than a 500/500 vanilla. (ノ￣△￣)ノ ~ ┻━┻

Decklist:

Monster (22)

3x Master Hyperion (LV 8)

2x The Agent Of Mystery – Earth (LV 2 – Tuner)

3x The Agent Of Creation – Venus (LV 3)

3x Mystical Shine Ball (LV 2)

2x Herald Of The Orange Light (LV 2 – Tuner)

1x Archlord Kristya (LV 8)

1x Gorz The Emissary Of Darkness (LV 7)

2x Tour Guide From The Underworld (LV 3)

1x Tour Bus From The Underworld (LV 3)

1x Sangan (LV 3)

1x Genex Ally Birdman (LV 3 – Tuner)

1x Black Luster Soldier – Envoy Of The Beginning (LV 8)

1x Honest (LV 4)

Spell (9)

2x Pot Of Duality

1x Cards From The Sky

1x Monster Reborn

1x Dark Hole

1x Heavy Storm

1x Book Of Moon

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

Trap (9)

2x Torrential Tribute

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

1x Solemn Warning

1x Mirror Force

1x Solemn Judgment

1x Compulsory Evacuation Device

1x Starlight Road

Extra (15)

1x Number 96: Dark Mist (R 2)

1x Gachi Gachi Gantetsu (R 2)

1x Wind-Up Zenmaines (R 3)

1x Leviair The Sea Dragon (R 3)

1x Number 17: Leviathan Dragon (R 3)

1x Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord Of Heliopolis (R 8)

1x A.O.J. Catastor (LV 5)

1x T.G. Hyper Librarian (LV 5)

1x Gaia Knight, The Force Of Earth (LV 6)

1x Ancient Fairy Dragon (LV 7)

1x Ancient Sacred Wyvern (LV 7)

1x Black Rose Dragon (LV 7)

1x Stardust Dragon (LV 8)

1x Scrap Dragon (LV 8)

1x Mist Wurm (LV 9)

Side Deck

2x D.D. Crow (LV 1)

1x Effect Veiler (LV 1 – Tuner)

2x Thunder King Rai-Oh (LV 4)

1x Hanewata (LV 1 – Tuner)

1x Mystical Space Typhoon

2x Night Beam

2x Soul Taker

2x Mind Crush

1x Solemn Warning

1x Dimensional Prison

Strategy and Explanation

Agent Fairy was a real common deck in the last few years so normally I wouldn’t have to explain that much, but I’ll still do it and explain everything from the beginning.

Master Hyperion

Of course we’ll be starting with your boss monster, Master Hyperion. This guy is pretty easy to summon and in fact even easier than Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. The once per turn destruction effect along with his good stats makes him a really good card. Normally it’s not a big problem to get out an Agent monster in this deck, so most of the time you’ll be able to summon him when you get him into your hand. I thought about adding Jupiter, but then I decided not to, because Jupiter slowed me down instead of being useful.

Agent Of Mysteries – Earth

Earth is the searcher of your deck and adds Venus to your hand to do explosive plays in the next turn. As the build is a control build it’s very likely that she survives until your next turn to do some Synchro stuff too. I’ve never tried a Sanctuary build, but I think it’s possible to do some nice things with the Sanctuary.

The Agent Of Creation – Venus

Venus summons your 3 vanilla Mystical Shine Balls to do some tricks with them. In a T.G. splashed deck you can Special Summon T.G. Striker (LV2 – Tuner) first and then Normal Summon Venus to Special Summon the Shine Balls, synch them for whatever you need at the moment. Here in my build you can do pretty much the same thing with Genex Ally Birdman in hand, except that you don’t even need your opponent to Special Summon Genex Ally Birdman (thinking about adding a 2nd one):

Return 1 Mystical Shine Ball to Special Summon Genex Ally Birdman, Summon the Shine Ball in hand again with Venus and do some Synchro/Xyz stuff:

• Birdman + Shine Ball = Catastor/T.G. Hyper Librarian ->Shine Ball + Shine Ball [Overlay] = Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
• Birdman + Shine Ball + Shine Ball = Ancient Fairy Dragon/Ancient Sacred Wyvern/Black Rose Dragon
• Birdman + Shine Ball + Shine Ball + Shine Ball = Mist Wurm
• Birdman + Venus = Gaia Knight, The Force Of Earth -> Shine Ball + Shine Ball (+ Shine Ball) [Overlay] = Gachi Gachi Gantetsu (/Dark Mist)
• Birdman + Venus [Overlay] = Zenmaines/Leviair/Leviathan Dragon -> Shine Ball + Shine Ball (+ Shine Ball) [Overlay] = Gachi Gachi Gantetsu (/Dark Mist)
• Birdman + Venus + Shine Ball = Stardust Dragon/Scrap Dragon -> Shine Ball + Shine Ball [Overlay] = Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
• etc.

Herald Of The Orange Light

I prefer Orange over Effect Veiler, because it’s a Fairy, you can activate it in almost every situation, it destroys the monster and it works against all kinds of monster effects (not only those on the field). Orange fills the grave quickly with Fairies for Kristya (dumping useless Shine Ball)

Archlord Kristya

The answer to all swarming decks you might face; if you’re doing it right you’ll have a field of Hyperion, several Synchros/Xyz and finally Kristya to lock up your opponent.

Tour Guide From The Underworld

She’s one of your main Xyz engine and DARK material for BLS. You can call Leviair to Special Summon Birdman/Venus/Earth back from the banished zone or go into defense and Special Summoning Zenmaines. I did think about adding one Chaos Sorcerer, but decided to add Book Of Moon instead.

Tour Bus From The Underworld

Somehow just a replacement for the missing 3rd Tour Guide, works better in Wind-Ups, but has the same purpose here: Bouncing your Xyz/Synchros back to extra or bounce back annoying monsters from your opponents grave, I wouldn’t play Assailant here.

Cards From The Sky

Serves as the 3rd Pot Of Duality, it’s ok to fall back a turn if you have enough backup and can thin out your deck or at least pick out the best card among the coming 3 cards. Sure thing that Duality is better if you have a full field, but as we all know Duality is now semi-limited. (I’m referring on the situation where you have a field of Hyperion, Kristya, Gachi Gachi and Venus or something smiliar; that’s when a Duality is broken)

Additional Comment

I think that’s all I wanted to post about Agent Fairy/Agent Angel, if there’s something I forgot, let me know and I’ll update it; of course I’ll update this post, if something comes into my mind.

Edit:

You can’t Xyz Summon Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord Of Heliopolis with Kristya (unless there’s Skill Drain), it’s the same as not being able to Xyz Utopia with Fossily Dyna

Editing these Dueling videos takes so much time, that it’s almost a pain in the ass. Tried several programs to edit my videos and began to render everything just to notice that the quality is totally crap or gives me a green screen…

Tested Lightworks 11 Free (bullshit, can’t even cope with a different fps rate), Pinnacle VideoSpin Free 2.0 (works, but far too blurry and crappy quality with a fixed Proportion 700 x 500 something) and finally tried Cyberlink PowerDirector 10 Ultra. PowerDirector still has it’s issues, but when you manage to make it work, you’ll be satisfied; just make sure you have 6GB RAM (Win7 64-Bit), as it sucks on my laptop (ACER Aspire 7745G 4GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Quad-Core), but when I tested it on my friends desktop PC with 6GB RAM it worked perfectly. There are just some minor freezes for a few seconds although (on my laptop), so nothing really grave and worth mentioning, but still annoying. The price of 50 bucks isn’t really that expensive compared to other Video Editors, only big problem I experienced was not being able to activate the MPEG2 and H.264 codecs, but I found the solution while searching for a while. Took me a good amount of time although, as everybody was only providing cracks (-.-), but I didn’t even need one and the support was far too expensive to rely on (what company charges you for customer services except Windows?!? That’s not how good customer services should be)…

Well this is the solution for everybody who needs it: You have to replace the file called Simkey (no extension; is located in C:\Programs\CyberLink\PowerDirector10), if somebody needs it, I’ll upload it, as I don’t think it’s illegal just to upload that file to solve that idiotic issue.

As usually all pictures are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and DuelingNetwork.

Mermail Atlantean September 2012

Changes:

Main:

Out:

• -1 Dragon Ice

In:

• +1 Atlantean Heavy Infantry

Side:

Out:

• -1 D.D. Crow
• -1 Soul Taker

In:

• +1 Twister
• +1 Snowman Eater

I already posted a few versions of my Mermail Atlantean builds, but this build is more or less my final one. The only things I’m not sure about are Dragon Ice and Dewloren, maybe I’ll replace Ice for a 3rd Armsman and Dewloren for Gaia Knight, The Force Of Earth. Mermails will definitely be Tier 1 in OCG, they’re super fast and have amazing combos, can’t wait for them to be released in TCG. Their explosive playstyle reminds me of Inzektors and the numerous amount of combos reminds me of Infernities, so a really cool archetype, Konami did an amazing job by creating Mermails and Atlanteans.

Ah, and sorry for taking so long for the next post 😉

Decklist

Monster (26)

2x Mermail – Abyssgunde (LV 3)

3x Mermail – Abysspike (LV 4)

2x Mermail – Abyssturge (LV 4)

3x Mermail – Abyssmegalo (LV 7)

3x Deep Sea Diva (LV 2 – Tuner)

3x Atlantean Heavy Infantry (LV 2)

3x Atlantean Marksman (LV 3)

3x Atlantean Dragoons (LV 4)

3x Mermail – Abysslinde (LV 3)

1x Gorz The Emissary Of Darkness (LV 7)

Spell (8)

2x Salvage

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Pot Of Avarice

1x Monster Reborn

1x Heavy Storm

1x Dark Hole

Trap (6)

3x Abyss-Sphere

2x Torrential Tribute

1x Solemn Warning

Extra (15)

1x Armory Arm (LV 4)

2x A.O.J. Catastor (LV 5)

1x Dewloren, Tiger King Of The Ice Barrier (LV 6)

1x Gungnir, Dragon Of The Ice Barrier (LV 7)

1x Stardust Dragon (LV 8)

1x Scrap Dragon (LV 8)

1x Gachi Gachi Gantetsu (R 2)

1x Wind-Up Zenmaines (R 3)

1x Number 17: Leviathan Dragon (R 3)

1x Evigishki Merrowgeist (R 4)

1x Snowdust Giant (R 4)

1x Number 39: Utopia (R 4)

1x Mermail – Abyssgaio (R 7)

1x Number 11: Big Eye (R 7)

Side (15)

1x Snowman Eater (LV 3)

1x Effect Veiler (LV 1 – Tuner)

1x Night Shot

1x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Twister

1x Soul Taker

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

1x Mind Crush

1x Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror

1x Light-Imprisoning Mirror

2x Imperial Iron Wall

1x Royal Decree

Strategy and Explanation

I did explain all cards in some posts before, if you want to read it, click here. In this post I’ll talk about combos and rulings about some Mermail cards, but I’ll explain some cards I recently added too.

So first some card explanation:

Snowman Eater

Typical Rai-Oh killer and helps against Laggia too (assuming there’s no Dolkka on the field). Can be added back by Salvage, but I’m thinking of adding a second one to the side.

Twister

Against the usual side cards which are used vs. Mermail (Macro Cosmos, Dimensional Fissure, Soul Drain), the 500 LP are worth the price, if you can get rid of those sides.

Imperial Iron Wall

This is my ultimate weapon against Dino Rabbits/Verz Rabbit, as it blocks off Rabbit and shuts down their sided Macro Cosmos, in addition to that you’re not affected at all.

Dragon Ice

Ugly guy, but I think he could be useful in combo with Atlanteans as a hand trap. Wasn’t really useful most of the time, but I still hope to resolve the combo in the future 😉

Combos would be either opponent Special Summoning, trigger him with discarding Armsman to destroy one face-up card, you could also discard Marksman to blow up a set card, ditch Seahorsemen/Dragon Riders to add a Sea Serpent or drop Abyssgunde to Special Summon a Mermail from grave. This Special Summon is an Effect Summon, therefore you can activate the Atlantean effects.

Dewloren, Tiger King Of The Ice Barrier

Returning monsters ain’t that bad, if you’re returning Atlanteans, but it’ll be probably more useful to return face-up Spells/Traps; too bad that there are not that much except Abysssphere. You can do a pretty good combo with Sphere and Dewloren although.

Activate Sphere, summon Linde, return Sphere, Linde is destroyed and from there on you can do all kinds of combos depending on your hand and your deck.

• Hand with Atlanteans and grave pretty empty? -> Summon Pike, discard an Atlantean, add a LV 3 WATER monster, trigger the Atlantean effect
• Hand with Gunde and some Mermails in grave? -> Summon Pike/Turge, discard Gunde, add LV 3 or lower WATER monster from grave, trigger Gunde’s effect, Special Summon a Mermail (even Megalo is possible)
• Not really good hand cards or no hand? -> Special Summon Megaloabyss for a big Beater
• much more combos possible, just think carefully about your options

Now we’re moving to the rulings part

Abyssphere

Effect:

Special Summon 1 “Mermail” monster from your Deck, but its effect(s) is negated. While this card is face-up on the field, you cannot activate Spell Cards. When this card leaves the field, destroy that monster. Destroy this card during your opponent’s next End Phase after activation.

This card let’s you summon a Mermail from your deck with its effects negated (only on the field!) and is chainable to MST, Heavy Storm and similiar (means that you can still Summon Linde from deck and get her effect to Special another Mermail; just the same as when you chain Call Of The Haunted to MST/Heavy; cause Sphere will be Chain Link 2 and resolve before MST/Heavy). The part that says to destroy itself at the opponents End Phase will trigger in the same turn if you activate it before your opponents End Phase (Draw Phase, M1, BP or M2) (see Ruling here).
Sphere is clearly the best Trap card in Mermails, so make sure you run 3.

Mermail – Megaloabyss

Effect:

During your Main Phase: You can discard 2 WATER monsters, except this card; Special Summon this card from your hand. When this card is Special Summoned by this effect: Add 1 “Abyss” Spell or Trap Card from your Deck to your hand. You can Tribute 1 other face-upAttack Position WATER monster you control; this turn, this card can attack twice during the Battle Phase.

Although the translation of the japanese card text sounds exactly as Swap Frog (which is an Inherent Special Summon) this card’s Special Summon is an Effect summon, as Konami stated:

Special Summoning this card from the hand is an Ignition Effect that activates in the hand. (Source: Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia)

That means that the summon can’t be stopped by Rai-Oh, Laggia, Solemn Judgment or Black Horn Of Heaven, as all of them can only negate Inherent Special Summons (Special Summons which doesn’t start a chain). And an effect clearly starts a chain, therefore you can chain Maxx C to the summon of Megalo. The add part of Megalo is obligatory, don’t forget that.

Edit:

Joel reminded me of an important thing considering Megaloabyss that I forgot: If you tribute an Atlantean on the field and send it to grave, their effects will also be activated.

Mermail – Abyssturge

Effect:

When this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can discard 1 WATER monster to target 1 Level 3 or lower WATER monster in your Graveyard; add it to your hand. The effect of “Mermail Abyssturge” can only be activated once per turn.

This is also from Joel: You can also add the WATER monster you just discarded to the grave, although I’m not sure whether the effect of an Atlantean/Gunde will activate or not.

Additional Comment

Well that was everything for today I guess, maybe I’ll upload some DN dueling videos of Mermails when I’m done editing them. Didn’t even use Dragon Ice once, but maybe 1 copy of it is too little to make some cool moves, but I won’t add more cause it’s really a dead draw if you’re in a pinch.

Next deck will be the revived TCG Agent Fairies, so look forward to it.

All images are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and DuelingNetwork.

Dark World Turbo Deck

This is a TCG Dark World Turbo deck and not the Fabled Raven build like some guys running in OCG. The original deck idea (this build) is from Joseph Truong who got into Top 8 at YCS Toronto 2012 (September 2012 list – was held on September-01-2012 I think) with this deck and in addition to that, he was the only Dark World player who accomplished that. So you might ask yourself what’s the difference between a standard DW deck and the Turbo Version? Well Turbo means, that you’re using some additional Draw Power like Upstart Goblin and Reckless Greed to get most of your combo pieces as fast as possible into your hand and thin out your deck. I tried to use Hope For Escape too, but didn’t had the amazing results I was hoping for so I dropped them for some protection tech (Torrential, Starlight, Book Of Moon).

Decklist

Monster (15)

3x Grapha, Dragon Lord Of Dark World (LV 8)

3x Broww, Huntsman Of Dark World (LV 3)

1x Beiige, Vanguard Of Dark World (LV 4)

3x Snoww, Unlight Of Dark World (LV 4)

1x Sillva, Warlord Of Dark World (LV 5)

2x Trance Archfiend (LV 4)

2x Tour Guide From The Underworld (LV 3)

Spell (17)

3x The Gates Of Dark World

2x Dark World Dealings

3x Dragged Down Into The Grave

1x Allure Of Darkness

1x Card Destruction

1x Monster Reborn

1x Dark Hole

1x Heavy Storm

1x Book Of Moon

3x Upstart Goblin

Trap (8)

3x Reckless Greed

1x Dark Smog

1x Starlight Road

2x Torrential Tribute

1x Solemn Judgment

Extra (15)

1x Stardust Dragon (LV 8)

1x Scrap Dragon (LV 8)

1x Wind-Up Zenmaines (R 3)

1x Leviair The Sea Dragon (R 3)

1x Number 17: Leviathan Dragon (R 3)

1x Maestroke The Symphony Djinn (R 4)

1x Number 39: Utopia (R 4)

1x Number 50: Blackship Of Corn (R 4)

1x Photon Palilloperative (R 4)

1x Gem-Knight Pearl (R 4)

1x Adreus Keeper Of Armageddon (R 5)

1x Gaia Dragon The Thunder Charger (R 5)

1x Number 15: Gimmick Puppet Giant Killer (R 8)

1x Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord Of Heliopolis (R 8)

1x Number 22: Fran Ken (R 8)

Side (15)

1x Dark World Dealings

3x Mystical Space Typhoon

2x Twister

2x Deck Devastation Virus

2x Eradicator Epidemic Virus

2x Skill Drain

1x Dark Smog

2x Royal Decree

Explanation and Strategy

There’s not much esplanation needed concerning the Dark World monsters I guess, so I’ll try to keep it short (you know what’s happening when I try that lol). Please be aware of a few things before you play this deck or a similiar build (especially beginners): Dark World effects do NOT activate when they’re discarded as a cost (for example Hand Destruction; this card doesn’t trigger the DW effects for more info click here).
For more infos concerning costs click here. Most important part there:

In the lore of a card whose effect requires a cost, the cost description is separated from the effect description by a comma (“,“), a period (“;“) or the word to.

I don’t really like Fabled builds although they offer the possibility to sync, cause they lack the ability to take back a banished Fiend, which Trance Archfiend offers (ok, maybe 1 Trance and 1 Raven would be ok too, but I still like Trance more). The biggest problem of DW would be of course the Game 2 of a match and the mirror match (as the effects of a DW monster will be much better when your opponent makes you discard).

For the mentioned Game 2 there’s a lot of Spell / Trap hate in the Side Deck, cards that hurt you are for example: Macro Cosmos, Dimensional Fissure, Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror and some other cards. These cards should be removed from the field as fast as possible. Most of the players won’t have those cards in their main decks (except maybe Verz/Dino Rabbit or Macro Monarchs/ D.D. decks), but all decks that aren’t affected by these cards will probably side them in after the 1st game. But let me tell you one VERY important thing concerning Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror for a DW player: This card does NOT stop you from Special Summoning Grapha from grave, as it is not an Effect Summon, but only an Inherent Special Summon, the returning of a DW monster is the Summoning Condition.

Grapha, Dragon Overlord Of Dark World

Grapha is your boss monster in the deck like Master Hyperion in Agent Fairy or Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon in Chaos Dragons. He’s easily summonable from the grave, just returning 1 DW monster from your side of the field to summon him back from grave is one of the best Summoning Condition in the game in my opinion (most of the other similiar guys are just once per duel). Destroying one of your opponents cards when discarded is something you shouldn’t underestimate too. The Hornet loop might be a rare sight now, but a rampaging Grapha isn’t something you want to mess with. Just be careful that you don’t get hit by a D.D. Crow, if that happens you still have Trance Archfiend to take Grapha back, don’t forget that. Awesome thing about Grapha is that you don’t lose any hand cards at all when you summon him from grave so he’s basically a +1 every turn and it’s really hard to get rid of him in game 1 (mostly Chaos Decks will have the upperhand here).

Broww, Huntsman Of Dark World

This guy’s your advantage generator, he will make you +1 most of the time, if you discard him (or at least +0 and not make a -1). He’s a target for Tour Guide too, if the other copy is either in your hand (and you don’t want to lose hand advantage) or in your grave. There aren’t really much more purposes besides returning for Grapha and banishing for Gates.

Beiige, Vanguard Of Dark World

Beiige summons himself from grave if he’s discarded. Not much to say about this card except that you can probably call out 2 Graphas in 1 turn with him.

Snoww, Unlight Of Dark World

She’s your main searcher in the deck and can search for almost everything you need: Grapha, Gates, Dealings.

Sillva, Warlord Of Dark World

Had twisted feelings about him, I didn’t want to put him inside at the beginning, but tests proved that he’s good, if there’s no Grapha or Snoww in sight (Sillva‘s great in Mirror Matches too; he will trigger his effect after your opponent draws from Dealings or Card Destruction, don’t forget that; returning 2 cards to the deck is great)

Trance Archfiend

Like I said, I prefer him over a Raven, because of his ability to get a banished Grapha back (or any other fiend; but I would save 1 Archfiend for emergency cases. My extra deck is stuffed up too, so I would have to make some space for him that I don’t really have. In my opinion those Xyz’s are more than enough, DW doesn’t even need an Extra Deck at all (is better with one although)

Tour Guide From The Underworld

Your Xyz engine and also a Fiend monster. I don’t play Sangan alongside because there are already 3 Browws for additional targets and Sangan doesn’t really have a good target here and is way too slow for a turbo deck. Trust me Sangan is not needed here 😉

The Gates Of Dark World

This field spell should always be on your side as it makes you plus so much and it is one of the reasons why we are running Reckless Greed without having a problem of not drawing cards for 2 turns. Always remember that it boosts your monsters with 300 ATK / 300 DEF, I always forget that lol.

Dark World Dealings

Dealings is one of the best cards in a dark world deck, so why do I only play 2 copies? That’s because of fearing a Mirror Match, if I see that it’s not a Mirror Match, I side in the 3rd Dealings instead of a Trance, sometimes it’s much better to have Dealings than Trance in hand (you have to Normal Summon him, but you also want to Normal Summon a DW to return for your Grapha).

Dragged Down Into The Grave

Dark World is the only deck that can abuse this card so hard and to that extent (I think so). It will definitely give you an advantage of knowing your opponents hand, while you’re setting every Spell/Trap, leaving only the DW monsters, whose effects will trigger when discarded. I tried to squeeze in Mind Crushes (cause of Dragged Down), but they slowed me down or rather didn’t come at the right time, so I kicked them. Setting all your S/T is funny because most of the time it will only be Reckless Greed or Dark Smog, Reckless can be chained (in case of MST) and Smog isn’t really a must on the field. In addition to that a Heavy Storm will be punisshed by a Starlight Road (this happens so often, you won’t believe it lol; the amazing deck thinning abilities of DW could be a reason for always getting Starlight when needed).

Card Destruction

This card is maybe the best advantage generator you can get in a DW deck (well only if your hand’s not full of S/T 😀 ). Nothing else to say here, except that you can choose the order your DW effects activate, but remember that they all activate after you and your opponent draw the cards.

Upstart Goblin

Thins your deck out, the 1000 additional LP for your opponent are peanuts. Makes your deck more speedy 😉

Reckless Greed

This card makes your deck going into Turbo Mode, always try to activate multiple Reckless Greed instead of just 1, as the turns you’re unable to draw do NOT stack, so if you’re playing 2 Reckless Greed in the same turn, you will just be unable to draw for 2 turns. Also don’t activate this card in your opponents turn if it doesn’t get destroyed, always wait for your draw in your own turn first and then decide, if it’s really necessary to activate them because you’re running out of options or if you might be able to kill your opponent with 4 additional cards. Never succeeded in having 3 Reckless at the same time, but 2 Reckless happens really often.

Dark Smog

Dark Smog gives you a huge advantage against decks that abuse the grave like Chaos Variants and some other stuff. Your opponent will most likely have 1 or 2 monsters in their grave, that you can remove and dropping one Fiend monster isn’t a bad thing either. Very expensive in TCG although, I don’t know the price in OCG.

Starlight Road

As we’re playing with a full set of Dragged Down, it will be most likely that we’re setting all our S/T, therefore I think Starlight is definitely needed and will punish all careless Heavy Storm players who doesn’t expect a Starlight in a DW deck (I know, it’s not really usual, but makes sense; I do the same in my Bubble Beat Deck too). With all those Mirror Forces running around Starlight is even better.

Torrential Tribute

Most of the DW players don’t play techs like Torrential or Bottomless, I like Torrentials although, cause they give me the reset option I need when a BLS or something similiar hits the field and Grapha is always easy to revive.

Number 15: Gimmick Puppet Giant Killer

Effect:

2 Level 8 monsters
Up to twice per turn, during your Main Phase 1: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target 1 Special Summoned monster your opponent controls; destroy that target, and if that target was an Xyz Monster, inflict damage to your opponent equal to its original ATK.

Giant Killer’s stats are not that amazing, but gives me the ability to destroy annoying monsters in late game, when all Graphas are already in grave or on the field and you can’t use their effects to get rid of your opponents monsters.

Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord Of Heliopolis

This guy’s a much better choice than Giant Killer, but sometimes you might be in a situation where you don’t have any monsters to tribute or can’t afford doing so, these are the rare times you’ll need Giant Killer.

Number 22: Fran Ken

Effect:

2 Level 8 DARK monsters
Must be Xyz Summoned, and cannot be Special Summoned by other ways. Once per turn, during either player’s turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card and send 1 card from your hand to the Graveyard to target 1 face-up card your opponent controls; change this card to Defense Position, and if you do, negate the target’s effect(s) until the End Phase.

Whopping 4500 ATK are amazing, although his DEF are meager 1000. Has a nice effect, but the resulting defense switch leaves him vulnerable. I think the name is a pun about Franken (Stein)?

Mystical Space Typhoon

I didn’t consider it to be necessary to main deck MST cause of Grapha, but triple MST’s are definitely needed in Game 2, as there are several anti-DW cards that are always popping up.

Twister

Why that, you might think, Twister is a bad card, you have to pay 500 LP cost and it only destroys face-up S/T cards. But hold on a minute and think: Almost every side deck cards against DW are continious cards (except maybe D.D. Crow). Therefore it is an awesome choice, as it is a Quick-Spell and gets rid of every annyoing card you might face. You definitely have to side in Game 2, I can’t emphasize this point enough, and S/T hate will be your main side choices.

Deck Devastation Virus

A little tech against decks that like small monsters (there aren’t many right now, maybe Mermail and Junk decks).

Eradicator Epidemic Virus

Amazing tech against Exodia and Burn decks, works against some decks with heavy backrow like Dino Rabbit or Hero Beat too. Against Exodia decks: Call Spell; Against Burn decks: Call Trap.

Skill Drain

Doesn’t affect you at all (except Trance Archfiend and Tour Guide) and stops/slows a bunch of decks (Inzektor, Agent Fairy, Mermail, Six Samurai)

Royal Decree

Together with all your other S/T hate this card completes your side decking. Including this card you have 9 cards (3x MST, 2x Twister, 2x Eradicator Epidemic Virus, 2x Royal Decree) that helps you in case of Macro Cosmos, Dimensional Fissure and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror.

Additional Comment

So now that we know what to side in, what should we side out? Well I’m usually doing this or something similiar, depending on the opponents deck and his ability to side:

Usual Dino Rabbit siding (or anything else that relies heavily on Traps), the most fearsome opponent in my opinion.

Out:

• -1 Trance Archfiend
• -3 Reckless Greed
• -3 Upstart Goblin
• -1 Book Of Moon (depends on Synchro/Xyz deck or not)
• -1 Dark Smog

In:

• +3 Mystical Space Typhoon
• +2 Twister
• +2 Royal Decree
• +1 Dark World Dealings
• +1 Eradicator Epidemic Virus

I do lose some speed with this siding, but with Macro or something similiar out you can’t do anything at all, so better losing some speed than dying to their side deck cards.

You got some comments or ideas? Feel free to post a comment here or on my Facebook page.

All images are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and DuelingNetwork.

DuelingNetwork Down

Sander Van Doorn – Chasin’

Update:

DuelingNetwork is online again (September-11-2012, 01:26 GMT+1).

Due to still unknown reasons Duelingnetwork one of our favourite Duel simulators is currently down (20:37 GMT+1 here). I checked the pages availability with this page tester too:

• http://www.websitedown.info/

This is what I get with the tester:

So in the meantime while DN is down and I still didn’t finish my Dark World article, here’s a funny music video from a cool track from the dutch House DJ Sander Van Doorn:

Sander Van Doorn – Chasin’

I’ll keep you guys updated if there’s something new.

Big Thanks For Hitting The 10,000 Views Mark

I want to shout out a big thanks to all my readers and fellow bloggers for hitting the 10,000 view mark.

Yuru Yuri: Akari~n  >.<

Thanks to you readers for supporting me with your views, comments and spreading the address of my blog. Thanks to all my fellow bloggers who linked my blog on their pages (I still don’t know how to make wordpress display your most recents posts in a blogroll like it works on blogspot; if somebody knows how to do this on wordpress I would be glad if you could tell me that; it isn’t in the widgets part -.-‘ )

Now what else could I write? – Well concerning myself, I will try to keep up the detailed work and continue posting monster articles with 2000+ word count to keep you guys up to date. Feel free to comment on every post I make, I’ll try to answer all comments you make, only annoying thing is the more or less hidden comment part, you can comment if you click on the bubble on top of every post (dumb designer of this open source layout did this 😀 ) ; the Facebook page is also open for discussions just post something there and I’ll answer you (hope you found that Facebook Like button on the right upper corner of my blog; you don’t have to like it to comment 😉 I know that some of you guys might feel too embarressed to like it; it’s not that big problem for me, you can still join the discussion if you click on the page’s name instead of the like button).

Special thanks goes to Lee Scyu, AndrewNg, Clarence, K’yde Ren, Chaosygo, AwesomeHazelNuts and Yu-Gi-Oh! Estragia for adding my blog on their pages, arigatou gozaimasu 😉

Wish me good luck for my exams in the following weeks 😀

Oh, and before I forget to tell you the next Meta candidate: the next post is about Dark World, an archetype that many people are talking about right now whether it will make an impact and reach the Tops everywhere in the world or not. My build will be a Dark World Turbo deck so look forward to it (will be up in a few days I think; few days means 1-3 days 😀 ).

Verz Rabbit

This is the part 2 of my Dino Rabbit/Verz Rabbit post. The first decklist here is not a real big impact, I just changed 3 Kabazauls to 3 Evilswarm Heliotrope, 1 Dolkka to 1 Evilswarm Ophion and 2 Thunder King Rai-Oh for 2 Effect Veiler (because Ophion often falls prey to Monster effects, rather than S/T destruction). Just to mention it again, I still don’t call them Evilswarm, but Verz, cause Evilswarm sounds stupid to me.

Verz Rabbit (Dino Focus)

Decklist

Monster (18)

3x Evilswarm Heliotrope (LV 4)

3x Sabersaurus (LV 4)

2x Rescue Rabbit (LV 4)

3x Jurrac Guaiba (LV 4)

2x Tour Guide From The Underworld (LV 3)

1x Sangan (LV 3)

1x Spirit Reaper (LV 3)

2x Effect Veiler (LV 1 – Tuner)

1x Gorz The Emissary Of Darkness (LV 7)

Spell (12)

1x Heavy Storm

1x Dark Hole

1x Monster Reborn

2x Pot Of Duality

3x Forbidden Lance

3x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Book Of Moon

Trap (10)

2x Compulsory Evacuation Device

1x Starlight Road

1x Mirror Force

1x Torrential Tribute

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

2x Solemn Warning

1x Solemn Judgment

Extra (15)

1x A.O.J. Catastor (LV 5)

1x Stardust Dragon (LV 8)

1x Wind-Up Zenmaines (R 3)

1x Leviair The Sea Dragon (R 3)

1x Daigusto Emeral (R 4)

1x Maestroke The Symphony Djinn (R 4)

1x Blackship Of Corn (R 4)

1x Photon Papilloperative (R 4)

1x Gem-Knight Pearl (R 4)

1x Number 16: Shock Master (R 4)

1x Evilswarm Ouroboros (R 4)

2x Evolzar Laggia (R 4)

1x Evolzar Dolkka (R 4)

1x Evilswarm Ophion (R 4)

Side (15)

1x Hanewata (LV 1 – Tuner)

2x Maxx “C” (LV 2)

2x Thunder King Rai-Oh (LV 4)

1x Snowman Eater (LV 4)

2x Forbidden Chalice

2x Dimensional Prison

3x Macro Cosmos

1x Skill Drain

1x Mind Crush

Strategy and Explanation

There isn’t that much to explain except the Verz part, as I think. The rest is pretty similiar to the Dino Rabbit deck. Well first of why Verz (Evilswarm)? Just because of one single card:

Evilswarm Ophion

While this card is on the field no player can Special Summon monsters with LV 5 or higher (Has to have at least 1 Xyz material to apply this effect). Does it ring a bell? Yes? Yeah, probably: This card doesn’t affect you at all (except maybe your Gorz and Stardust Dragon) and stops many decks when it’s out, especially Hieratic, Chaos Dragon, Dark World (Still gets blown up by a discarded Grapha – Debunk as a side deck choice??). Too bad that it’s still unknown when it will come out in TCG or if it will ever come out. The reason why I don’t play Pandemic Contagion Infestation: I just have 3 Heliotrope and 1 Ophion, so if I draw Infestation Pandemic Virus it’s pretty dead in my hand, therefore no Infestation card in this build; just using it in the more Verz focused build, which I will present you now.

Verz Rabbit (Verz Focus)

Decklist

Monster (18)

3x Evilswarm Heliotrope (LV 4)

3x Kabazauls (LV 4)

2x Rescue Rabbit (LV 4)

3x Evilswarm Castor (LV 4)

1x Evilswarm Mandrago (LV 4)

2x Tourguide From The Underworld (LV 3)

1x Sangan (LV 3)

1x Spirit Reaper (LV 3)

1x Effect Veiler (LV 1 – Tuner)

1x Gorz The Emissary Of Darkness (LV 7)

Spell (12)

1x Heavy Storm

1x Dark Hole

1x Monster Reborn

1x Book Of Moon

2x Pot Of Duality

1x Forbidden Lance

3x Mystical Space Typhoon

2x Infestation Pandemic Infection

Trap (10)

2x Compulsory Evacuation Device

1x Mirror Force

1x Torrential Tribute

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

2x Solemn Warning

1x Solemn Judgment

1x Starlight Road

Extra (15)

1x A.O.J. Catastor (LV 5)

1x Stardust Dragon (LV 8)

1x Wind-Up Zenmaines (R 3)

1x Leviair The Sea Dragon (R 3)

1x Daigusto Emeral (R 4)

1x Maestroke The Symphony Djinn (R 4)

1x Blackship Of Corn (R 4)

1x Evilswarm Bahamut (R 4)

2x Evilswarm Ophion (R 4)

1x Gem-Knight Pearl (R 4)

1x Number 16: Shock Master (R 4)

1x Evilswarm Ouroboros (R 4)

1x Evolzar Laggia (R 4)

1x Evolzar Dolkka (R 4)

Side (15)

1x Hanewata (LV 1 – Tuner)

2x Maxx “C” (LV 2)

2x Thunder King Rai-Oh (LV 4)

1x Snowman Eater (LV 4)

2x Forbidden Chalice

2x Dimensional Prison

3x Macro Cosmos

1x Skill Drain

1x Mind Crush

Strategy and Explanation

Normally Verz players use Evilswarm Thunderbird instead of what I use, but I’ll explain all my choices later. This build is a much more Verz focused deck as you can see, so I use 2 Pandemic Contagion Infestation, cause the card isn’t a dead hand card anymore in this deck; there are more than enough Verz monster you can protect with this card. I think the strategy will become a bit more understandable, when you read the effects of the monsters I used.

Evilswarm Castor

This guy is your Double Summoning engine (to call out Ophion), I do think that you can’t Veiler the effect away, as it is a condition for being able to summon like Swap Frog and in addition to that look at this ruling:

If Skill Drain is activated after this card is Normal Summoned, the effect that performs an additional Normal Summon can be applied.^[1]  (Source: Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia)

That means that if your opponent chains Skill Drain to the Normal Summon of your Catastor you will still get your additional Normal Summon, so I think it’s the same with Veiler, too.
BUT: Don’t mix it up with Skill Drain already being active BEFORE you Normal Summon Castor this is different from the ruling before:

If this card is Normal Summoned while Skill Drain is active, the effect that performs an additional Normal Summon cannot be applied.^[1]  (Source: Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia)

Because of that I didn’t use Skill Drain in my Side Deck, but added 1 additional Mind Crush. Castor is according to the wikia the counterpart of Constellar Pollux (the infected twin brother of Constellar Pollux to be exactly).

Evilswarm Mandrago

This card’s pretty cool, it is a bit like Photon Thrasher or Cyber Dragon, but much better for Rank 4 Xyz. You can even Special Summon this card, if you have a monster on your field. The only condition you have to fulfill is having less monsters than your opponent, so a really awesome card to call out your Ophion or Bahamut. According to the wikia Mandrago is an infected grown-up Naturia Cosmobeet.

Pandemic Contagion Infestation

Strange name there on DuelingNetwork Infestation Pandemic Infection … Sounds weird lol. Nonetheless a great card in a Verz deck as it protects your monsters from almost all Spell/Trap threats and doesn’t have a bad side effect too (only that you can’t use your own spell/trap on them). The important thing to remember here is that it just Pandemic Contagion Infestation only protects cards that are already on the field, so if you have 2 Heliotrope on the field and play Pandemic Contagion Infestation, then summon Ophion, your Ophion won’t be protected by Pandemic Contagion Infestation. This card is searchable with Ophion, so don’t forget to search for it after you’ve summoned Ophion, as it will protect your Ophion. As we already talked about Ophion before in the other decklist, I’ll skip Ophion and go straight to Bahamut. Pandemic Contagion Infestation seems to be the virus responsible for all monsters evolving into corrupted Verz monsters, but I’ll tell you the story later.

Evilswarm Bahamut

Bahamut is so good if you are in a pinch and your opponent has a board full of monsters, just steal away your opponents BLS lol. Don’t forget that it’s a permanent stealing, the cost of dropping one Evilswarm for that effect should be peanuts, right? 😀 Bahamut is the infected Brionac, who was infected by the Pandemic Contagion Infestation (a virus; I’ll post the story behind the Verz later)

Evilswarm Ouroboros

Effect:

3 Level 4 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; activate 1 of these effects. Each of these effects can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field. ● Target 1 card your opponent controls; return it to the hand. ● Send 1 random card from your opponent’s hand to the Graveyard. ● Banish 1 card in your opponent’s Graveyard.

Just to round up our Verz monsters: This card can activate 3 different effects, but only one of them each turn and you can only activate each of them once while it is face-up. This card is like I said in the Dino Rabbit post the infected Trishula and their effects do resemble, did you notice that?

Evilswarm Thunderbird

The last part of our Verz guide that I found worth mentioning. I didn’t use this guy, cause I think he’s too slow and your opponent can play around his banishing effect or you have to waste resources to make him banishing. Therefore I replaced him with a Mandrago, but he’s a good card.

Additional Comment

Ophion alongside with Laggia/Dolkka are one of the best lockdowns you can have, so I think there will be some decks in OCG coming up once Dolkka is released in OCG. Finally we’re at the end of this post and as I promised here’s the storyline of the Verz and how they came to life and were defeated. This was originally a post of akoe2 on pojo regarding the Gusto, but it also explains everything else really good, so I’ll just use this post here.

Once upon a time…

there were the Gusto, a tribe that lives with the wind and worships the bountiful land they’ve lived on since ancient times. Against their various outside enemies they link their hearts together with and battle along animals that live around in order to protect their land through the generations. Whilst the Gem-Knights and Lavals war was interrupted by the Vylons, the Gusto face a new foe, one the likes of which they’ve never face; the Gishki. The Gishki wanted the bountiful resources of the Mist Valley marshlands, the home of the Gusto. To this end, they invaded the Marshlands to take these resources by force. In the midst of this intense battle, the Steelswarm rose from the depths of the abyss to regain their lost power.

With the Steelswarm threat ravaging the land and no way to stop it, the Gusto joined forces with the other tribes under command of the Vylons. The Vylons offered power to a selected few from each tribe to increase fighting potential. Among them, was Reeze, Whirlwind of Gusto who combined with Vylon Sphere to create Daigusto Sphreez. And so, the final battle began.

After the great battle, the Vylons saw the Tribes go back to war immediately afterward. They ruled that if the world could not change, it would be destroyed. Facing anihilation, the four tribes once again banded together to survive. In doing so, they shared among each other the great powers they had kept secret among themselves. Chasing the Vylons back to the heavens from which they came, war broke once more.

However, though the Steelswarm was gone, their plague spread like Wild Fire. Members of all nation, including Gusto Falco were infected. This new Virus gave rise to the Verz, and they began to wreak havoc on the war torn land. With the tattered remains of the Lavals finished off by the Gishki, the Gishki in a panic do to their dwindling resources and the Gem-Knights locked in battle with the Verz, the Gusto prayed to the heavens that the ancient Messiahs would descend. Some lent aid to the Gem-Knights, though it seemed all for naught until the descent of the Constellar. The Constellar was evenly matched with the Verz giving the Gem-Knights and Gusto time to retreat. As war raged between light and darkness, the Gishki gave in to the Verz in order to survive. The Gem-Knights joined the Constellar in battle to defend Justice. As all hope resting on the last of the Gem-Knights and the power of the Constellar and the Verz threat looming ever so close to the Marshlands, the Gusto sent out a final prayer. As some of the worn-out Gusto prepared for battle to defend themselves, their last hope went to their Diety. Hell broke loose around the Shrine of the Mist Valley, and the Gusto’s last prayer was answered by the Genesis Star God, Sophia. Seeing as how there was no hope left, Sophia reset the world.

Additional additional Comment 😀

Thx for reading this much and I hope you liked it.

All images are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and DuelingNetwork.

Dino Rabbit Decklist

Time for a new meta decklist, today’s post is about one of the top deck(s) of the past format in TCG: Dino Rabbit; I’ll talk about Verz Rabbit too, that’s a kind of Tier 2 deck in OCG.

Both decks were hit more or less from the new banlist, to specify it: the semi-limit of Rescue Rabbit, Tour Guide and Pot Of Duality.

I still think that this deck is one big candidate for the new meta and it’s popularity in OCG will rise too as both Tour Guide and Dolkka will be finally released in the Extra Packs. So today I got unbelievable 3 decklists (!) for you. First one’s a pure Dino Rabbit like many TCG players builds although I got a triple Jurrac Guaiba, which I will explain later; second deck will be a more Dino focused Verz Rabbit deck; last one’s a more Verz focused deck (still refusing to call them Evilswarm, Verz sounds better and is much shorter so I’ll stay with this name 😉 )

It’s funny that they changed Evolkaiser to Evolzar, guess TCG branch of Konami likes Russian more than German lol

Decided to split up the posts in order to make it more readable and not having to scroll for ages to get to a certain deck, as the Dino Rabbit post got unexpectedly long; so I’ll post both Verz Rabbit decks in a few days.

A pure Dino Rabbit deck is what most TCG players use, but there are some differences in the choice of tech cards: you can either choose to run Jurracs, Photon Thrasher, Cardcar D, Spirit Reaper, Thunder King Rai-Oh or Veiler, even Neo-Spacian Grand Mole are in some decks. All those techs have their own reasons and give you a vague hint how each player is using their deck.

Decklist

Monster (18)

3x Kabazauls (LV 4)

3x Sabersaurus (LV 4)

2x Rescue Rabbit (LV 4)

3x Jurrac Guaiba (LV 4)

2x Tour Guide From The Underworld (LV 3)

1x Sangan (LV 3)

1x Spirit Reaper (LV 3)

2x Thunder King Rai-Oh  (LV 4)

1x Gorz The Emissary Of Darkness (LV 7)

Spell (12)

1x Heavy Storm

1x Dark Hole

1x Monster Reborn

2x Pot Of Duality

3x Forbidden Lance

3x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Book Of Moon

Trap (10)

2x Compulsory Evacuation Device

1x Mirror Force

1x Torrential Tribute

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

2x Solemn Warning

1x Solemn Judgment

1x Starlight Road

Extra (15)

1x A.O.J. Catastor (LV 5)

1x Stardust Dragon (LV 8)

1x Wind-Up Zenmaines (R 3)

1x Leviair The Sea Dragon (R 3)

1x Daigusto Emeral (R 4)

1x Maestroke The Symphony Djinn (R 4)

1x Blackship Of Corn (R 4)

1x Photon Papilloperative (R 4)

1x Gem-Knight Pearl (R 4)

1x Number 16: Shock Master (R 4)

1x Evilswarm Ouroboros (R 4)

2x Evolzar Laggia (R 4)

2x Evolzar Dolkka (R 4)

Side (15)

1x Hanewata (LV 1 – Tuner)

2x Maxx “C” (LV 2)

1x Snowman Eater (LV 4)

2x Effect Veiler (LV 1 – Tuner)

2x Forbidden Chalice

2x Dimensional Prison

3x Macro Cosmos

1x Skill Drain

1x Mind Crush

Strategy and Explanation

Ok, so I’m just gonna start with this list: Like you all know the main point in Dino Rabbit is getting your Rabbit as fast as possible out to Special Summon 2 Vanilla Dinos with the same name in order to Xyz them to Laggia or when the situation depends Dolkka. The Tour Guides are there to Xyz summon Leviair, who can Special Summon your banished Rabbit, then you can Special Summon 2 Vanilla Dinos again, ready to Xyz into Laggia/Dolkka. Reaper and TKRO are there to stall / beat your opponent down until you get your Laggia/Dolkka out. Oh, and a Vanilla hand sucks, takes skill to know how to play with them in hand 😀 Well, that was the basic strategy of Dino Rabbit, now we’re moving to specific tech choices:

Jurrac Guaiba

This card’s not that good anymore as it was in the last format, but Guaiba and a set Forbidden Lance is still really good, was thinkin of Shrink too, but triple Lance is just better. If you can resolve Guaibas effect, this will result in a Laggia/Dolkka so the additional Dinos are quite good for the deck in my opinion, although Guaiba will have a hard time against HEROs and Dark World. I still like having him, if I had the space, I would put a Shrink inside just for Guaiba. Mike said one time that playing 41 cards in a Dino Rabbit deck would decrease the chance of getting multiple Vanillas in your hand, but that means also that my chance of getting Rescue Rabbit also decreases, so I’m not really happy with that idea, but I’ll try it (adding 1 Shrink raising the total number of cards to 41).

Spirit Reaper

Like I said before this card’s just there for stalling and maybe stealing one hand card if everything works well and you got backup. It will definitely costs your opponent some effort and resources to get rid of Reaper, so it has its good aspects in your deck. If you don’t need it anymore, you can still Xyz him into Leviair/Zenmaines. This card is really good in mirror matches if you don’t have the best outs right now, assuming they don’t have Photon Papilloperative or Blackship Of Corn (that’s the reason for both of them in my main deck too).

Thunder King Rai-Oh

Rai-Oh didn’t really had the chance to play a major role in the last format due to Inzektors blowing him away in an instant, so it was just a mere side deck slot in some decks and most decks didn’t even had him. As this format’s gonna be a little slower, I think TKRO can be main-decked again in some decks. 1900 Beater and Inherent Special Summon-negating ability is still good, so I replaced the 2 Effect Veilers for 2 TKRO (I don’t think that Veiler will be that good anymore with HEROs and Dark World dominating the field, so I just sided them out, just in case of Wind-Up/Mirror Match).

Forbidden Lance

Forbidden Lance is a great card here, as it protects your monsters from your opponents cards and can also decrease your opponents monster’s attack, so that your Guaiba can overrun it to summon another guaiba ready to Xyz. That’s the reason for triple Lance. Luv the versatility of this card.

Book Of Moon

Also a really versatile card you can do so many things with it: Stop an attacking monster, prevent your opponent from using an Ignition effect, stop a Synchro summon (flip the tuner face-down), stop Xyz Summon (same as Synchro), Protect your own monsters from effects that affects face-up monsters (Mirror Force and stuff) etc. So this card has a staple status in my control decks.

Mirror Force

Finally this card has become useful again, as the Inzektors are disappearing from the front lines 😀 I’ve seen many players maining this card again and I fully agree with that. Although this card isn’t really chainable, this effect is still awesome like in the past days, if it goes through. Getting hit by a MST isn’t really a problem if you have some other traps for backup, just pay attention to a coming Heavy Storm. The increasing count of mained Mirror Force is also the reason for me to play Starlight Road, but I’ll come to that later.

Starlight Road

I said it in my HERO post before, this format plays a lot of mass removal, so you got to counter that somehow. Starlight Road is not the optimal choice as it can be blocked by Solemn Warning, but if you can resolve it, you have an amazing advantage to your opponent; the only “bad thing” is that you can’t Special Summon Stardust Dragon back from Grave once he used his own effect or gets destroyed, because he wasn’t Synchro Summoned properly (Source: Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia). You can decide to use The Huge Revolution Is Over instead of Starlight, if you don’t like the point of getting negated by Solemn Warning. Remember there a quite a lot of mass removal in this format: Heavy Storm, Dark Hole, Torrential Tribute, Black Rose Dragon, Mirror Force and other stuff. Ah and one cool thing that you can do if your opponent plays Starlight Road to your Heavy Storm and tries to summon Stardust Dragon: You can chain MST to Starlight Raod to destroy your own Heavy Storm in  order to prevent him from summoning Stardust.
Why that? It’s because of a certain ruling: If you negate an effect with “Starlight Road” but cannot destroy the card, you cannot Special Summon “Stardust Dragon.”^[1] (Source: Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia)
So what happens here exactly? We’ll just split it into the Chain Links and see what’s happening:

Chain Links:

• Chain Link 1: Heavy Storm activates (attempt to destroy all S/T)
• Chain Link 2: Starlight Road (Trying to negate Heavy)
• Chain Link 3: MST destroying your own Heavy Storm (You can target Spells/Traps that are activated at that time, cause they are still on the field, they just don’t lose their effects, so normally nobody’s doing that)

Resolution (resolving backwards):

• Chain Link 3: MST destroys your Heavy Storm (Heavy going straight into grave; not on the field anymore)
• Chain Link 2: Starlight Road negates Heavy Storms EFFECT (!) and tries to destroy Heavy Storm, but Heavy isn’t there anymore (this is where the ruling from before kicks in: Stardust DRagon Can’t be Special Summoned if you can’t destroy the card; the effect of Heavy Storm is still negated although)
• Chain Link 1: Heavy Storms effect tries to resolve, but gets negated by Starlight Road (The effect of Heavy Storm will still try to resolve, even though it isn’t there on the field anymore)

BUT: The only thing you can’t do is MST targeting itself (same as a destroyed Penguin Soldier targeting itself with its FLIP-effect), because Konami says so:” (…) [W]hen you activate “Mystical Space Typhoon“, it cannot target itself.^[6]  (Source: Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia)

Puuh talked got too much about this topic, but whatever, now it’s already here. 😀 The other trap lineup should be clear, it’s the standard lineup for control decks.

Photon Papilloperative

Papilloperative’s purpose is just to stop Stallers like Spirit Reaper, Gellenduo or Marshmallon; destroys Reaper immediately due to his effect of being targeted and allows you to deal Damage to those other stallers.

Number 50: Blackship Of Corn

I liked the name “Black Corn” more, but it seems that the TCG branch of Konami has a faible for shitty names, so this card’s called Blackship of corn nowadays. Has almost the same purpose as Papilloperative, although it’s the better choice against Marshmallon and Gellenduo.

Gem-Knight Pearl

This guy’s here as a strong beater and he’s useful if Skill Drain’s out (you can still use Rabbit, as you can still activate effects and the effect resolves in the banished zone). Prefer him over Utopia cause of his attack and if I need protection, I’ll use Maestroke (said that in HEROs post too).

Daigusto Emeral

Effect:

2 Level 4 monsters
Once per turn: You can activate 1 of these effects. ● Detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target 3 monsters in your Graveyard; shuffle those targets into your Deck, then draw 1 card. ● Detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target 1 non-Effect Monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon that target.

This guy’s pretty neat if you know when to summon him, he can shuffle back 2 of your Dinos and Leviair (to reuse them; Leviair summoning Rabbit back, etc.) for example and you can even draw 1 card too, just pray that you don’t draw one of the shuffled vanilla Dino 😛

Evilswarm Ouroboros

Effect:

3 Level 4 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; activate 1 of these effects. Each of these effects can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field. ● Target 1 card your opponent controls; return it to the hand. ● Send 1 random card from your opponent’s hand to the Graveyard. ● Banish 1 card in your opponent’s Graveyard.

Somehow really blurry card, but this should represent the infected counterpart of Trishula. 😉 The reason why I chose this card is because of his versatility, it has multiple effects that you can activate once this card’s face-up and you can only activate one of them during a turn. Still a good card in my opinion, if there’s some space left.

Number 16: Shock Master

A must have against random decks like Exodia (just call spell and they can say gg if they don’t have the outs to get rid of Shock Master), not that good against Burn decks although, they can activate the effects in your Standby Phase, so not really good. This cards popularity surprisingly rose during the past months, was always playing it, but seems like some people finally realized Shock Masters potential (the prize went up to 55 bucks) 😀

Hanewata

Just there against Burn decks, had a space left and was thinkin about having no out against Burn Decks except Laggia, so I decided to put 1 Hanewata in my Side.

Maxx “C”

Tech against Hieratic, Wind-Ups and all other swarming decks.

Snowman Eater

Mainly for the Mirror Match, just awesome against Laggia and the other dinos, except Dolkka.

Effect Veiler

Just got a Side Deck slot, because the playability of her decreased due to the increase of Hero Beat and Dark World, bad against Mermail too.

Forbidden Chalice

Sometimes the Chalice is better than Veiler, because you can activate it in your turn and it boosts your own monsters ATK too. Works good against Gorz (to prevent him from Summoning a token).

Dimensional Prison

Thought about maining this card, but I didn’t found the space for it, so just a Side Deck slot. Works good against Dark World (if it doesn’t get popped by Grapha), Chaos Dragon (Same with Lyla and Ryko) and HEROs.

Macro Cosmos

So good against so many decks. Dark World, Chaos Dragon, Lightsworn, Mermail and other stuff will be wrecked when they face this card without some way to remove it. I think it’s one of the main reasons why Dino Rabbit is successful like that: Dino Rabbit can virtually side against every deck, assuming they have the right cards in their Side Deck.

Skill Drain

Your Rabbits will still work under this card, while your Jurracs don’t, so be careful. This card’s still great against some decks (Gadgets, Inzektor, Mermail – not that great in particular but in combo with Macro)

Mind Crush

Great cards against Exodia decks, just be careful that they don’t have Dark Factory Of Mass Production, good against Gadgets and all other searcher decks too.

Additional Comment

Well I promised you 3 decks, but I guess that was a bit too much for one post so I’ll post my other decklists (Verz Rabbit V1, Verz Rabbit V2) in a few days and take a break for now, 2400+ words now lol

Thinkin of adding 1-2 Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror to my side but still not sure what to kick for it.

The post about Dino Rabbit got bigger than expected, so to make it more structured I’ll discuss Verz Rabbit in a separate post 😀

Did I forget something, you disagree with me in a certain point or you just want to state your opinion? – The comment section is wide open for you, you can either post your comment here on WordPress (click on the bubble at the top of the post or visit my Facebook page to discuss there (upper right corner of the blog or here).

Thanks for reading this big post and have a nice day 😉

All images are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and DuelingNetwork.

Hero Spark

Promised that Heros would be the next topic, right? Now I decided to go for a more control based version rather than the OTK Bubble variant.

This deck is originally from Shigure who won a 128 man tourney with his deck, congrats to him for this win. Now why did I pick this deck rather than any other standard Hero deck? Well you might know that I like control decks (I like OTK decks too, but I like playing mindgames with the opponent more, than just swarm and kill him in 1-2 turns).

There are really a lot of control elements in this build, which really suits my playstyle, but could not be the right thing for other people. One special thing is that this HERO deck uses Cardcar D, which is rather unusual, but it works with me and seems that it worked for Shigure too lol. In addition to that there are 2 Dualities and you might ask yourself: Why that? HEROs are supposed to Special Summon! But lemme tell you one thing:

This deck isn’t really focused on Special Summoning The Shining and the other Fusion Heros out, but rather controlling and gaining advantage with Gemini Spark and Hero Blast along with your Trap lineup and then you might explode and kill him off, but you could just sit down and drain your oppponents life slowly. You can Xyz and you should definitely, but sumetimes controlling the field a bit more is better than a risky try to OTK and overextend. Good thing is that you can keep up with strong monsters when they’re needed (just use Miracle Fusion or Super Poly his monsters away)

Now that I might have made you a lil bit curious, here’s the decklist (not the complete original one but a little tweaked for my own playstyle, but the concept is the same; I advise you to do the same, as nobody will play 100% similiar with the same deck, so don’t netdeck 100%, only try to follow the concept of the deck and try to build your own version)

Decklist

Monster (9)

2x Cardcar D (LV 2)

1x Elemental HERO Stratos (LV 4)

1x Elemental HERO Bubbleman (LV 4)

2x Photon Thrasher (LV 4)

3x Elemental HERO Neos Alius (LV 4)

Spell (19)

2x E – Emergency Call

1x Heavy Storm

2x Pot Of Duality

1x Monster Reborn

1x Reinforcement Of The Army

1x Dark Hole

3x Miracle Fusion

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

2x Super Polymerization

2x Book Of Moon

3x Gemini Spark

Trap (12)

2x Compulsory Evacuation Device

2x Torrential Tribute

1x Mirror Force

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

2x Hero Blast

2x Solemn Warning

1x Solemn Judgement

Extra (15)

1x Elemental HERO Gaia (LV 6)

1x Elemental HERO Absolute Zero (LV 8)

1x Elemental HERO Escuridao (LV 8)

1x Elemental HERO Great Tornado (LV8)

1x Elemental HERO The Shining (LV 8)

1x Elemental HERO Nova Master (LV 8)

1x Gem-Knight Pearl (R 4)

1x Evigishki Merrowgeist (R 4)

1x Steelswarm Roach (R 4)

1x Blade Armor Ninja (R 4)

1x Maestroke The Symphony Djinn (R 4)

1x Number 16: Shock Master (R 4)

1x Number 50: Blackship Of Corn (R 4)

1x Heroic Champion – Excalibur (R 4)

Side (15)

2x D.D. Crow (LV 1)

2x Maxx “C” (LV 2)

2x Thunder King Rai-Oh (LV 4)

1x Gorz The Emissary Of Darkness (LV 7)

1x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Super Polymerization

1x Mirror Force

1x Transmigration Prophecy

2x Skill Drain

2x Mind Crush

Strategy and Explanation

Well there are a few odd choices, first one would definitely be Cardcar D. This card is really popular in OCG and many TCG players still haven’t realized its potential yet. Why do I think so? Now first of a +1 is always a good thing, but the backside of this plussing? Yeah, you can’t Special Summon, waste a Normal Summon, so basically you can’t summon any monster this turn.

BUT: sometimes you don’t even have to because your backrow will be protecting you. If you have bad luck, your opponent will have multiple MST or Heavy Storm and you don’t have Starlight Road at all, but this won’t happen most of the time, so your backrow will be protecting you while your opponent has to use up his resources to get rid of your backrow (either summon as many monsters as possible to waste up all your backrow or destroying everything with effects). In case that this doesn’t apply you will end up plussing, while your opponent had to use up resources for nothing and still has a blank field. You see my point (and Shigures) now?

It does take some skill to know when to play a certain backrow card and what to target, but if you can read your  opponents cards well, this deck will give you very high chances to win the game. Just to make it clear this deck is not the appropriate deck for a beginner, it’s not that Autopilot as other decks might be, here you have to think carefully what you are going to do and what cards you might get; knowing how and when to gain advantage is helpful too (stupid example: you shouldn’t play Cardcar D when you’re thinkin that your opponent has enough cards to OTK)

Btw Duality and Cardcar D is an amazing combo; never forget to set your traps before playing Cardcar D! (Rule-Sharking is a worldwide known phenomena)

Book Of Moon is still an awesome card, you know? Most of the recent monsters have ignition effects and this card stops all of them. You can stop Synchros, Xyz Summons and fuck up a Dino Rabbit player, as he won’t be able to Xyz and both will selfdestroy in the End Phase (doesn’t matter that it’s face-down) 😀

Compulsory Evacuation Device is also a great card like I said in the past posts. Why? Well you’ve definitely heard about using chainable cards if possible, right? If that’s the case you’ll definitely make their MST or similiar stuff a -1, as you’re still getting your effect cause you’re chaining your card to their MST and stuff. Many players only think about the One-Normal-Summoned-Monster-On-The-Opponents-Field-Situation, but there are much more situations like your opponent already having monsters on the field, preferably Xyz and Synchros, and you can just activate the Compulsory when you want or when you need it unlike Bottomless or Solemn Warning which can only be activated on the summon. To be honest Compulsory is one of my favourite techs and if I’m not running an OTK deck I’ll always run some Compulsory. So to summarize: The best thing about Compulsory is that you can activate it anytime making it more versatile than any other similiar card.

Next strange thing would be the missing Utopia/Hope; well this monster was left out intentionally by myself. In my opinion you got much better options than going to Utopia: If you need protection, go for Maestroke, he’s much better than Utopia at this and has an awesome Book Of Moon-like effect, too. You need some damage or a big beatstick? Either go for Pearl/Excalibur if you need something big (for example running over an Ophion), or make some more damage with Blade Armor. Utopia will always fall prey to Dark Hole and stuff; Blade Armor and Excalibur too, but at least they will make more damage then your Utopia did. Merrowgeist and Roach are there to counter certain other decks (Merrow: effects that resolve in grave; Roach: Inherent Summoning decks)

Skill Drain is there to stop effect based decks like Inzektors or Mermails, it doesn’t affect you really (except maybe Stratos/The Shining) and shuts them down effectively for a certain time.

Crow will slow down Dark World and Chaos Dragon; still thinkin about using Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror.

Maxx “C” will help you dealing with swarming decks like Hieratic or Wind-Up, to make sure that you plus and can refill your backrow that was used up to stop their field.

Did I already mention it? Rai-Oh is an awesome card against Mermails and Machina Gadget. Shuts down effectively Pike and Seahorsemen/Dragon Riders, works against all Gadgets and Gearframe, too. Can also negate Fortress’ Special Summon as it is Inherent Special Summon/a summon which doesn’t start a chain.

Well Gorz just made it to a side deck slot, as I didn’t had the space for him and when I tried to make space for him the synergy of the deck decreased; so just using him against aggressive decks.

Mirror Force’s importance will rise in this format as the fear of Hornet is almost gone, so this card will probably be an awesome card again; good thing that it is at 2 nowadays. For that reason 1 copy in main and 1 in the side just in case of a swarming deck. Ah and by the way Starlight Road will be more important in this format as I think, cause there are so many mass removal cards, that it might be a good idea to play Starlight in the main deck.

Transmigration Prophecy will remove annoying monsters from your opponents grave or even recycle some important cards for you (Banished zoone nowadays seems more accessable than your own deck lol).

Mind Crush is good against Gadgets, Mermails and all other decks that love to search; works wonders against Exodia decks.

Thinkin about something against Burn decks too, first cards that came into my mind were Royal Decree and Hanewata, but Decree will affect you too, so maybe Hanewata will make it, although I don’t have any space right now for it. But I think that Burn decks will gain popularity now that Magic Cylinder and other stalling cards are released from the banlist. Just one strategy against burn decks if you don’t have anything in your main and side:

Set MST and Gemini Spark every turn when you have the chance in order to destroy their set cards in their End Phase, therefore not giving them the chance to chain the effects.

Additional Comment

You got any other ideas or something to improve? Just write it here in the comments part (Bubble at the top of the post) or write it on my Facebook page (link is on the right upper corner of the blog or here).

Next deck will be Dino Rabbit AND Verz Rabbit, so double decklist next time, stay tuned.

All images are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and DuelingNetwork.

Next Meta Decks With The New Banlist?

So finally the new Banlist kicks in and some of us have to/want try some new decks or new variations of their old decks. Just looking at shrieks tourney deckilsts gives me a vague feeling what will be or could be the new Meta decks with the September 2012 banlist. I’m not ranking them according to tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.), but I’ll try to present you all candidates that I think have some potential to turn the tide to their favor. From now on I’ll post you the decklists of all decks I think could be strong this format every few days, so stay tuned.

Now most obviously would be the Meta decks that weren’t hit that badly (Just to say, the order isn’t related to the chances of getting Meta; it’s just how they come into my mind):

Elemental Heros:

This includes all versions of Bubble Beat, Hero Spark, and the likes. With just E-Call at 2 and A Hero Lives at 2 Heros didn’t really get hit that badly and are still a powerful force to be reckoned. Superpolymerization is still trolling every time and Miracle Fusion still at unbelievable 3 copies (like that although, Heros are just balanced that way now; ok maybe powerful, but not unfair).

Dino Rabbit/Verz Rabbit

Well they are really a bit more inconsistent, but those Dino Rabbits are still strong (I think Rabbits have the best chances to be Tier 1, because they have the best Siding options). You can go to Verz Laggia the second duel (against Hero), side in some Macro Cosmos (Chaos Dragon, Mermail, Dark World, Inzektor) or even using Skill Drain (Rabbit still works with Skill Drain) would be an option. Rabbit Dino is such a versatile deck Type, so it wouldn’t be wrong to gamble on this one. Backside is that Rescue Rabbit is still expensive as hell and Laggia and Dolkka are expensive too; good thing is that Laggia and Dolkka are reprinted in the Wave 1 tins in TCG now (Dolkka gets his own Tin and Laggia comes together with Excalibur as a Super-Rare; OCG is finally printing Dolkka in the new Extra Pack). Only sad thing is that Ophion is still a OCG-only card and for what I know it’s still uncertain if there will be printed for TCG in near future.

Dark World

Back from the backyard of your minds these guys are trying to top some events again after they were overpowered by Inzektors, Wind-Ups and Dinos. Still dying to Rabbits although and not really pleasant in case of Mirror Matches. Could be powerful if some people are thinking of siding Dark Smog, still seeing so many people who don’t even have this card in their side (Works against so many decks; Main is sometimes good too).  Like the Trance Archfiend build more than the OCG Raven build; I think that the Turbo build has more chances to top something although almost nobody seems to play it in tourneys.

Mermail Atlantean

I’ve seen Mermail decks quite often in the Top 4 of some different Japanese Tournaments, and not only Tournaments with 10-20 participants, but with 60-200 and still topping is really something you shouldn’t underestimate. There are a few different builds like Mermail Atlantean Hybrid builds, Genex Undine builds, Dragon Ice builds and some other stuff, but all in all a very promising archetype and one of my favorite decks at the moment. Definitely think that this will be one of the Top Tiers this format and I can’t wait for them to release Mermails here in the TCG zone.

Hieratic

Got hit by the semi-limit of their Seal and limit of Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, but that’s not a big problem, because they can still swarm the field full with monsters, just not to that extent like they did before the September Banlist. Did you ever face a good Hieratic Deck with the new banlist? Well I did and I have to say: Still powerful as ever.

Six Samurai

They were somehow underestimated last format, but still present as Tier 1.5 – 2. now that the threat of encountering a Hornet on Rampage is minimalized, they may be gaining some strenght again. I’ve seen some really good Dojo/Asceticism builds, and this deck has swarming and controlling capabilities so could be some worthy opponent.

Machina Gadget

Lost one Ultimate Offering, but with Tin Goldfish and Double Summon still powerful. In addition to that, it’s a really cheap deck, so there are many budget players, who will place their bets on Gadgets.

Agent Fairy

As Earth is now Semi-Limited instead of limited, many players are thinking of playing Agent Fairys again, all I gotta say is, it was a good deck and it still is a good deck.

Wind-Up

Can still pull off some hand rape, but not to that extent like before and you have to have a lot of resources. Seeing it as a Xyz swarm deck now, as it has easy access to many Xyz monsters and it is fast too.

Additional Comment:

Well there are some decks that are still powerful like Chaos Dragon, Inzektor, Blackwing and stuff, but both Chaos Dragon and Inzektors are losing their players due to the nerf and becoming too bored of playing one deck over and over again. Blackwing will definitely get in some Top 16, but I think it will just be some random toppings, unless a Blackwing hype breaks out. (it has potential to top, but the question is, are there players who want to play Blackwing?) Not sure what to think of Spellbooks although, they have some good combos and the card advantage you can gain is amazing, but it’s still somehow inconsistent in my opinion.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think there will be some other Archetypes taking over the meta or did I forgot  a decktype?

First deck coming in a few days will be a September 2012 Hero Deck (I think it will be a Gemini Spark deck and not Bubble Beat, but still not sure)

All images are taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and Duelingnetwork.