Looking Under the Bed: Monarchs Revisited

 

When it comes to the types of decks out there, nothing compares to the power or the versatility of the Monarchs. From their introduction in Ancient Sanctuary with Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, the Monarchs have single-handedly revolutionized the game. Monarchs made major waves during the Goat Control cycle a few years back, and again in the form of Macro Monarch, Chaos Monarch, and now again with Frognarchs. In every single cycle we have seen the Monarchs power their way through the metagame and they've continually made it to the Top 8 despite coming up against some of the best, fastest and most powerful decks of each era.

 

But there's a simple reason for this: Monarchs single-handedly control the pace of the game, day in and day out. This is the main reason why Monarchs are so versatile and so fun to play – they slow down the game while at the same time providing you with a variety of different options for dealing with your opponent's threats. Against decks that like to utilize their turn and do a number of different moves in one Main Phase, Monarchs help to disrupt your opponent and continually work to dismantle your opponent's combos and powerful moves that can put you at a disadvantage. Truly, this is the allure of the Monarch deck – with many of the cards being incredibly easy to find and procure, and the sheer number of ways that a Monarch deck can be run successfully, it's no wonder that they have made as many waves as they have.

 

The deck that I am profiling in this article is by no means the only one that can be run effectively. Many people have found a way to utilize the under-appreciated Frog engine in conjunction with the Monarchs to make them run incredibly fast, bringing another element to the Monarch deck, but this one is much slower-paced. It focuses on keeping control of the field and is based heavily on synergy between them. I'll show the decklist, as usual, and then break down exactly why I chose the cards I did.

 

Monarchs Revisited

 

Monsters (21):

3x Caius the Shadow Monarch

3x Raiza the Storm Monarch

2x Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

3x Cyber Dragon

2x Breaker the Magical Warrior

2x Treeborn Frog

2x Krebons

1x Dark Armed Dragon

1x Gorz the Emissary of Darkness

1x Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

1x Sangan

 

Spells (14):

3x Enemy Controller

3x Smashing Ground

2x Nobleman of Crossout

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Emergency Teleport

1x Monster Reborn

1x Dark Hole

1x Foolish Burial

 

Traps (5):

1x Torrential Tribute

1x Mirror Force

1x Call of the Haunted

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

 

If you haven't noticed, the deck relies heavily on older, more established strategies to operate the way it does. For instance, it focuses heavily on the creature-exchanging properties of cards like Nobleman of Crossout and Smashing Ground, which the deck actually utilizes to great effect. But the best way to understand the way that the deck operates is to take each lineup – Monster, Spell, Trap – and break it down, like I've done in my past articles. So first, the Monster lineup:

 

Monsters (21):

3x Caius the Shadow Monarch

3x Raiza the Storm Monarch

2x Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

3x Cyber Dragon

2x Breaker the Magical Warrior

2x Treeborn Frog

2x Krebons

1x Dark Armed Dragon

1x Gorz the Emissary of Darkness

1x Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

1x Sangan

 

As you can see, the deck relies heavily on the Monarchs – it runs eight of them. But there's a major amount of synergy between the Monarchs and the rest of the Monsters in the lineup, and each Monster typically serves more than one purpose. The main win condition of the deck is to clear the field with your Monarchs and beat your opponent's face into the dirt, and the rest of the deck is built around that basic fact. Therefore, the three copies of Cyber Dragon are more than justified as they Special Summon to the field and can allow you to get a Monarch out on the first turn of the game (assuming you go second, of course). Not only that, but with two copies of Treeborn Frog, you have constant recursion – these cards are fairly basic in a Monarch deck and are typically staples, but the rest of the Monster lineup is really what I want to focus on.

 

The addition of Dark Armed Dragon has received both praise and prejudice – it's a great card that ran best in its own deck (Teleport Dark Armed, or TeleDAD), but the fact that it is an amazing card has not been lost in spite of the TeleDAD deck being nerfed. In this deck it works surprisingly well – with the addition of three Caius the Shadow Monarch, two copies of Breaker the Magical Warrior, two Krebons, a Sangan and a Gorz, Dark Armed Dragon has plenty of food with which to get it not only into play, but also to use its destruction ability. Gorz is a great addition to the deck as it works great as an offensive beatstick, but one of the best additions and the one that has helped the most during playtesting is actually Neo-Spacian Grand Mole.

 

If the point of the deck is to control the field, Mole does the best job of it aside from the Monarchs. It works perfectly in the early game, as that's typically when only one or two Monsters are on the field – this allows your Mole to wreak havoc with your opponent's field while you're gearing up for your Monarchs or your Dark Armed Dragon. Sangan obviously helps search out Krebons and Mole and Frog, but it also feeds Dark Armed Dragon and it also helps to thin your deck and get your bigger Monsters into your hand faster. Also, with Krebons, not only do we add the Synchro mechanic to the deck (which makes Monarchs even scarier), but we add a stall mechanic that can work well when you're in a situation where you have a lot of Tribute monsters in your hand and not much else. But you can't win the game on just your Monsters alone – you need Spell and Trap support to really make your deck shine, and that's where they come in here:

 

Spells (14):

3x Enemy Controller

3x Smashing Ground

2x Nobleman of Crossout

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Emergency Teleport

1x Monster Reborn

1x Dark Hole

1x Foolish Burial

 

The Spell lineup of the deck isn't as intensive as the Monster lineup (and the Traps are even less so), but they're still a crucial element in the deck. The three copies of Enemy Controller help in multiple ways – for starters, they're an amazing stall card, and the ability to switch your opponent's Monster's Battle Position is nothing to scoff at. It can buy you the time you need to Tribute Summon your Monarchs, but it also provides the effect of Tributing one of your monsters to take your opponent's – the main combo here being Tributing one of your Treeborn Frogs during your Standby Phase, sucking up your opponent's Monster, getting your Frog back, and Tributing your opponent's Monster for one of your own. This isn't the only combo with this card – they're all over the place – but after thorough playtesting I've realized that Enemy Controller is truly an amazing card in this deck.

 

As I've stated before, just because a strategy isn't in wide use anymore doesn't make it any less powerful – I speak now of the three copies of Smashing Ground, the two copies of Nobleman of Crossout and the two copies of Mystical Space Typhoon. Smashing Ground is a simple destruction Spell, while Nobleman of Crossout is best used for when your opponent is already on the down-and-out and you've gained control of the field. It also works in the early game, when you and your opponent are still feeling each other out in terms of the decks that you are playing – this can be a great early game offensive card that your opponent won't be expecting. Utilizing underrated and under-appreciated cards can help a lot when it comes to throwing your opponent off their game. Monster Reborn and Dark Hole are both staples in this format – they're inclusion should be obvious by this point. Recursion and mass destruction are hard to turn down, but Foolish Burial I'm sure has raised some eyebrows. It works best with Treeborn Frog but can also be used to throw something into the Graveyard for Dark Armed Dragon.

 

The Trap lineup is still fairly basic (as it usually tends to be).

 

Traps (5):

1x Torrential Tribute

1x Mirror Force

1x Call of the Haunted

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

 

Torrential Tribute, Mirror Force and Call of the Haunted are three of the best Trap cards in the game – their inclusion, like Monster Reborn and Dark Hole, should be obvious. Destruction and recursion cards of that caliber are often considered staples, and this is no exception. The two somewhat iffy cards in this lineup are the Bottomless Trap Hole, but their inclusion is warranted as well – they provide a great way to throw your opponent off as well as disrupting the overall strategy of their deck (if only for a turn). It acts as a Trap version of Smashing Ground, essentially, providing you with more destruction, which really is what this deck is based on.

 

With the synergy between the Monsters themselves, not to mention the synergy between the Spell and Trap card lineups, it's difficult to find a major flaw in the deck itself. This may seem a bit presumptuous for me to say, but it's true – the cards in the deck are designed to work together to achieve the final goal of disrupting your opponent's strategies and controlling the field. Every card in this deck achieves that goal in its own way, but because of the way the cards interact (their synergy), the whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts. It has that added kick to it that makes the deck really shine.

 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this deck profile, and you can always reach me at anteaus44@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

 

Thanks,

Anteaus