I have done some tournament reports for Pojo’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Site, but this is my first submission to Pojo’s Vs. site. Enjoy!
After beating a well-made X-Men deck with a stack of random common/uncommon Doom cards, I realized that Doom had great potential. But choosing which cards to put in the deck and which to keep out was really hard. So to help you in your decisions, I have put together two Top 5 lists. One is the top 5 Doom cards, and the other is the top 5 cards thought to be a good Doom card.
5. Mystical Paralysis – Being able to stop your opponent from attacking with a big character, such as Sabertooth: Feral Rage or Thing: Heavy Hitter, is really good. This card has a good combo that goes with it that you will probably want to use on turn 5 or 6: during your Build Phase, play MP on your current Dr. Doom, exhausting either a potential reinforcer or a big attacker, then play either another 4-drop Dr. Doom, flipping MP down for another use, or play your 6-drop Dr. Doom so you can attack with your Dr. Doom that turn. Doom is all about control, so this card is great for controlling your opponent’s attacks.
4. Faces of Doom – Most Doom players know that getting Doom out on the field and kicking butt is first priority, and this card helps tremendously. With Doomstadt and Kristoff Von Doom being two ways to be considered to control Dr. Doom early on, this card can find Dr. Doom for your 4-drop if you don’t draw him, plus it can fetch either your 6-drop or 8-drop Dr. Doom so you’ll be prepared for the late game. Be sure to try this combo with Dr. Doom to gain card advantage and make your opponent want to rip their hair out: put a FoD face down in your resource row, play your 4-drop Dr. Doom and chain to his recruitment by playing FoD to get your 6-drop Dr. Doom, then use his effect to flip FoD face down, then play it again to get your 8-drop Dr. Doom. Not only have you gotten all the Dr. Doom’s you’ll need for the rest of the game, but you’ve also thinned out your deck and gained an extra card. What do you do if you draw this card and you already have all of your Dr. Dooms in your hand? Just play it so you’ll have an extra copy of Dr. Doom to discard from your hand as a power-up.
3. Reign of Terror – This card acts as a mini-Gamma Bomb for Doom decks. The ideal turn to play this card is on turn 4 after recruiting your 4-drop Dr. Doom. Getting rid of your opponent’s 1, 2, and 3 drops by playing two RoT is almost unfair. You make them lose all of the characters they’ve spent the last 3 turns putting out, and most of the time you’ll never see those characters again since your opponent will spend the rest of their turns putting out their bigger characters. Now thanks to RoT you have field advantage and you only have to deal with their 4-drop. Here’s a killer combo to use late game with this card: make sure you have a copy of RoT in the KO pile, attack a 1-, 2-, or 3-drop with your Dr. Doom: Lord of Latveria, get back RoT from the KO pile via Dr. Doom’s effect, play it on the defender during the attack, the defender is sent back to your opponent’s hand making your attack illegal, thus reading your Dr. Doom, who is now free to attack again. You can keep doing this combo until your opponent has no more 1-, 2-, or 3-drops left on the field, then proceed to attack their bigger characters. I owe many victories to RoT, I don’t know what I’d do without it.
So far all of the best Doom cards have been plot twists, which is obvious since Doom decks are made to control and manipulate plot twists in many different ways, but first you need those plot twists in your hand in order to use them!
2. Boris: Personal Servant of Doom – Boris is not only one of the best Doom cards, but also one of the best cards in the game. Since all Vs. decks must have at least 60 cards, there’s a good chance that several cards will never see the light of day during a match, even with four copies of it in your deck. Boris totally eliminates the odds of drawing a card you need, he goes and gets it himself! He’s a great filler if you miss a drop; for example, on turn 5 you don’t have a Robot Destroyer to play, so instead you can play a Doom-Bot and Boris, which more than makes up for not having RD. There are so many good things about this card! There is no cost to play him, in fact, his effect puts him back in your deck so you can draw him later on and use him AGAIN! He can be played on almost any turn thanks to Kristoff Von Doom and Doomstadt, which makes him even more versatile.
You thought Boris was good? Wait until you see this guy…
1. Dr. Doom: Diabolical Genius – If a Doom deck was a jelly sandwich, the plot twists would be one piece of bread, the support characters would be the other, and Dr. Doom would be the ooey-gooey yummy grape goodness that holds it all together. Not only does this Dr. Doom allow you to play all of the great cards listed above, but he has his own killer effect built right in. Doom can change the flow of the game by playing one single plot twist, and this card lets you use one twice! There are so many combos that this card can pull off (some listed above) that I’d have to write a whole entire other article in order to discuss them all. All you need to know is this card is a MUST for a Doom deck, or any deck involving Doom. He’ll have your opponent cringing the moment he hits the field, and he’ll be very hard to get rid of if you play him with Doomstadt on the field.
Now that you have an idea of what a good Doom card looks like, here’s a list of ones that might look good at first glance, but really have no place in a competitive deck.
5. Robot Seeker: Army – This card has mediocre stats for a 3-drop, and an effect that you might get to use, but since most Doom decks want the even initiative and he is a 3-drop he’ll just get mowed over by a bigger and better 3-drop, and he only gets the +3 while attacking, so he won’t put up much of a fight. The other Doom army 3-drop, Doom-Bot, simply out classes this card.
4. Robot Enforcer: Army – This card has no place in a standard Doom deck since your 4-drop should ALWAYS be Dr. Doom no matter what. His below average stats don’t make him that much more attractive either. His effect is dependent on having another Doom character on the field, which shouldn’t be that hard, but the payoff is only one card being discarded, which doesn’t have that much impact in a game where you get two cards per turn.
3. Bitter Rivals – Flying Kick without that extra kick added in. This card is almost like a Robot Seeker in plot twist form. It just doesn’t have enough impact on the game to cause that much damage. Once you use Dr. Doom’s new power to destroy whatever character you named, your opponent will probably just let their character be KO’d so you don’t get the extra boost. Some of the time this card will be good when you play against a deck that uses either multiples of a character (Wild Sentinel in a Sentinel deck) or several different versions of a character (3-drop, 5-drop, and 7-drop Wolverine in an X-Men deck), but you don’t want to run a card in your deck that will only be good some of the time.
2. Micro-Size – -1/-1 is hardly makes an impact, so –2/-2 isn’t going to make that much more. If it were –3/-3 then we’d be in business, since most attack/defense modifiers are in increments of three (Acrobatic Dodge, It’s Clobberin’ Time, and Lost City). Most of the time –2 DEF just won’t be enough. This card should only be in aggressive Doom decks, and aggressive isn’t a word that should really describe a Doom deck in the first place. If you really wanted to cause some extra damage I’d go with a good o’l Savage Beatdown, not many cards can stop a +5 ATK boost.
1. Doom Triumphant – Wow! Their hand is gone! Making your opponent lose their ENTIRE hand is game breaking. There’s little hope for a comeback after something as devastating as that happens, even in a game where you get 2 cards per turn. If it’s that good, then why don’t you see it in every Doom deck out there? Well, let’s take a look at what it takes to play it. They have to have 3 stunned characters on the field, and your Dr. Doom has to be ready. If you can stun THREE of their characters and still have your Dr. Doom ready, then it seems to me that you are already winning and there’s no need to make them discard their hand. I’d rather attack with my 6-drop Dr. Doom and cause 13 more damage. The only deck I see this card being effectively played against is a Sentinel deck. Play Flame Trap, hopefully stunning a lot of Wild Sentinels, and then DT to make them lose their hand. Keep in mind that that is ONE deck, and a deck that is not seen very much in competitive tournaments. Keep this one in the trading binder.
I hope I gave some unique insight into the different Doom cards available for play. Please feel free to e-mail me with any comments at josh_a_y@hotmail.com.