11.12.04  [Darkness/Fire Weenie Rush]

Fire & Darkness—is there anything more deadly? The Control versions of the pairing can pack more creature and hand destruction than you can hit with a stick, and the Rush versions employ two of the quickest hitters out of the gate—Marrow Ooze and Deadly Fighter Braid Claw. As a bonus, competitive versions of Darkness/Fire Rush can be built using only common & uncommon cards. Today Kane enters the Dojo with an ‘on-a-budget’ Weenie Rush deck:

This is my first ever Duel Masters deck, and it's a red/black weenie rush. The main strategy to winning to taking out the shields asap and basically over crowding my opponent with creatures. By second turn I can usually attack a shield. I use black to sorta slow down my opponent, but I place down shield triggers as mana if I draw them because I want to spend my mana on creatures. I can’t get expensive cards so I'd appreciate you fixing this deck without using rares and such.

Here’s Kane’s speedy destruction deck aptly named ‘Mob Rush’:
[Darkness--10]
1 Dark Reversal
2 Critical Blade
4 Ghost Touch
1 Bone Spider
2 Marrow Ooze, the Twister

[Fire--30]
1 Tornado Flame
2 Burning Power
1 Super Explosive Volcanodon
2 Artisan Picora
2 Brawler Zyler
2 Armored Cannon Balbaro
4 Cavalry General Curatops
4 Mini Titan Gett
4 Fatal Attacker Horvath
4 Deadly Fighter Braid Claw
4 Immortal Baron, Vorg
Total cards = 40

Kane certainly has his deck’s agenda mapped out. Even with some scattered card choices, Kane’s deck had some useful tricks up its sleeves. Deck fixes can’t substitute in cards above the uncommon rarity, which leaves the deck without the possibilities of cards like Terror Pit, Amber Piercer, more Tornado Flame, Rothus the Traveler, Magma Gazer and Armored Blaster Valdios. Also, I’m forgoing suggesting fixes that include Shadowclash Tin cards due to the nature of Kane’s fix request. Deck fixes are aimed at increasing the deck’s speed factor, adding more clearance, dropping ineffective hitters, and tightening the build to be more consistent for key card choices.

[Fire]
The majority of the deck’s hitters are Fire creatures. That doesn’t come as a surprise because of their drop quickness and pump effects. I’ll quickly go over Fire cards that made didn’t make the cut:

--Super Explosive Volcanodon: Mostly Volcanodon didn’t live to see past the turn he hit, and for that reason I decided to run smaller hitters that cost 1-3 mana that could hit quickly with nearly the same vulnerability.

--Artisan Picora: its effect made it more of a waste versus blockade decks and it was easily killed leaving a loss in a creature and mana.

--Armored Cannon Balbaro: playing it meant a decrease in field advantage for little reward. Most often it went down as mana.

--Cavalry General Curatops: overall it just didn’t do enough.

--Fatal Attacker Horvath: offered very little as its pump effect never happens in this deck. If more evo fodder was needed, might as well run more Brawler Zyler.

--Immortal Baron, Vorg: a very capable hitter. Just wanted to go for a bit more punch with Zyler/Gett—for chance to overrun some small blockers or tapped hitters. If Kane finds that he faces many blocker heavy decks, then he can place Baron back in the deck instead of Gett.

--Burning Power: this spell was actually useful in testing. But that was due to not having good kill choices in the deck.

--Tornado Flame: hit mid-sized blockers and hitters. Tornado’s a bit slow in that regard, and really only good off the trigger due to its 4000 and below target limitation. Blade would be better for blocker hits, Hammer cheaper for the low range guys, and Arrows for the 6000 and below annoyances. So fixes at this stage:

-1 Tornado Flame
-2 Burning Power
-1 Super Explosive Volcanodon
-2 Artisan Picora
-2 Armored Cannon Balbaro
-4 Cavalry General Curatops
-4 Immortal Baron, Vorg
+2 Brawler Zyler
+4 Crimson Hammer
+4 Volcanic Arrows

Fire provides early to mid game kill options for this deck, and two useful sources are merely common: Crimson Hammer and Volcanic Arrows. In testing, Kane’s deck needed ways to make the early game more effective—to push through shield hits. This was due to one of two things—blocker deterrence and losing board presence by having a hitter ready to take out Kane’s hitters once they were tapped. Hammer can peg off potential hitters, small blockers, and evo bait. Volcanic Arrows has a shield loss drawback, but it can help clear problematic early mid-sized blockers when a Critical Blade isn’t in hand, and it can target nasty 6000 and below hitters.

[Darkness]
Only 10 Darkness cards are in Kane’s unfixed build. They are so thinly spread over the deck’s strategy that they were marginally effective when played. After chucking a sizable amount of Fire cards from Kane’s build, I proceeded to test deck-enhancing resources from Darkness. The speed factor was increased by adding 2 more copies of Marrow Ooze. At best this guy hit and ran. At worst he was a puny little blocker. I added Bone Piercer for the chance to refill the hand with a Rush creature, and this comes at the loss of mana—something this deck can afford to do since it runs nicely on 4-5 mana. I then added more Bone Spider, which was a nice fixture of Kane’s first deck but severely underrepresented at 1 copy. As for the biggest threats to this deck, that would be anything running a sizable amount of blockers (also widespread kill, but most are 5 mana and above and a good Rush deck can slap hard before that if there are few obstacles like blockers). Two more Critical Blades gives Kane better chances of drawing that blocker-hate spell or having it pop off from the shield zone. Adding 4 Death Smoke gives the deck more kill options, as it can target blockers and hitters even though it’s ineffective against evolution creatures.

Ghost Touches: Was useful but dropped in favor of adding more destruction to pave the way for rushing.

Dark Reversal: There’s nothing wrong with this spell in the deck. It was very useful in testing and cheap recursion is great for a weenie deck. I opted to run a hitter that fished guys out of the mana zone, Bone Piercer, especially since Kane didn’t want rare suggestions like Amber Piercer or Gamil, Knight of Hatred.

-4 Ghost Touch
-1 Dark Reversal
+2 Critical Blade
+3 Bone Spider
+2 Marrow Ooze, the Twister
+4 Bone Piercer
+4 Death Smoke

With all of the above fixes, here’s the build:

4 Marrow Ooze, the Twister
4 Bone Piercer
4 Bone Spider
4 Death Smoke
4 Critical Blade
4 Brawler Zyler
4 Mini Titan Gett
4 Deadly Fighter Braid Claw
4 Crimson Hammer
4 Volcanic Arrows

40 cards

Here’s a post-Shadowclash version that I’m currently play testing, dubbed ‘A-Bomb Rush,’ that can give some ideas on how the new set might spice things up for this type of Rush:

4 Marrow Ooze, the Twister
4 Bone Piercer
4 Bone Spider
4 Critical Blade
4 Kamikaze, Chainsaw Warrior
4 Brawler Zyler
4 Deadly Fighter Braid Claw
4 Mega Detonator
4 Crimson Hammer
4 Volcanic Arrows

40 cards

Darkness now has an integral role in Kane’s deck and brings more speed and destruction elements. Kane may want to experiment with Creeping Plague (a rare), Magma Gazer (a rare), Wailing Shadow Belbetphlo (a common), Horrid Worm (a common) and Armored Blaster Valdios (super rare, if he wants some evolution punch) when he can get his hands on more cards. When Shadowclash hits, Kane can test out Mega Detonation (a rare spell that gives a number of creatures in your battle zone equal to the number of cards that you discard from your hand the double breaker ability until the end of the turn), Kamikaze Chainsaw Warrior for the chance of netting a free hitter, and Sword of Malevolent Death if he likes attack pump spells. As with any deck fix, keep tweaking your deck. Good Luck!