Subject: Over before it starts? "OTK Decks."

Bass and Treble back again with yet another rant. This one focuses on one of my biggest pet peeves of the Yu-Gi-Oh!, one Turn Kill or (OTK) decks as they are commonly refered to. I'm sure with some of you Exodia comes to mind when I refer an OTK deck. Exodia is a OTK kill combo, but fortunately for the English players, they've not had to deal with the OTK problem until late. For those of you who don't know what the Basis of an OTK deck is, it's a deck designed to beat you before your turn even begins. Now, what makes OTK decks so dangerous is the fact that there are so many of them. For starters, let's examine two different OTK Exodia decks.

Note: If you don't know what some or all of the Japanese cards do, you know where to go.

OTK #1 Dagger of Butterflies Eruma/ Butterfly Dagger Elma + Iron Knight Gear Freed/Gearfried The Iron Knight + Royal Magic Library/Royal Magical Library.

This combo has been recently introduced into the English enviroment, with the release of Dark Crisis.
You'll need both Iron Knight Gear Freed and Royal Magic Library on the field and an Eruma Dagger in hand. Equip the Eruma Dagger on Iron Knight Gear Freed, which is immediately destroyed due to Gear Freed's effect. Royal Magic Library will receive a counter on it and Eruma will be returned to your hand.
Once Royal Magic Library has 3 counters on it, remove them to draw a card. Repeat this process until you have all 5 pieces of Exodia in your hand.

OTK #2 Manticore of Darkness + Manticore of Darkness + Reward of Rebirth/Card of Safe Return.

This combo is fairly easy to grasp. Just have one Manticore in your Graveyard, the other in either your hand or on the field, and a Reward of Rebirth on your field. Activate Manticore's effect during your End Phase and just watch your hand increase before your very eyes. Yet another OTK win.

Another OTK deck that works with those same combos is Big Bang Girl/Fire Princess + Blessing of God/Solemn Wishes. It uses the same deck concept, only it's more of a mass burner.

One key card in pretty much every OTK deck out there is Executioner Makyura. It's crucial for the speed that most of these decks need. In fact, one paticular OTK deck revolves around Makyura's effect.

OTK #3 Executioner Makyura + Cry of the Living Dead/Call of the Haunted + Black Scorpion Running Chikku/Dark Scorpion Chick the Yellow

To pull off this OTK, you'll need to have a Chikku in the graveyard, have your CotLD on the field or preferably in your hand and be able to send an Executioner Makyura to the Graveyard this turn. The way the combo works is like this... Revive Chikku with CotLD and have him attack for 1000. (preferably with a clear field, since you need do damage in order for it to work) Activate Chikku's effect to return CotLD to your hand, acivate it again and repeat the process until your opponent's lifepoints are at 0.

OTK #4 Devil Franken/Cyber Stein + Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon + Giant Growth/Megamorph combo.

We all know this combo, so I'm not going to bother to explain it. It's yet another OTK deck that's based around speed and mass removal.

OTK #5 Reversed Worlds

The basis of this OTK deck is to dump as many of your cards in the graveyard as possible. Using Hand Obliteration/Card Destruction, Metamol Pot/Morphing Jar #1, Distressing Choice/Painful Choice, etc. As you know, you need 15 cards in your graveyard in order to activate RW. You'll want as few cards as possible in your opponent's Graveyard or preferably remove them with Release of the Soul/Soul Release. In my opinion, this is probably the most lethal OTK deck of them all.
Probably because this one has schooled me the most, but then again, that's just my opinion.

Other OTK decks are as follows...

OTK #6 Chaos Emperor Dragon - Messanger of the End or Chaos Soldier - Messanger of Creation + Seeds of the Beginng + Toxin Tubes/Poison of the Old Man

OTK #7 Last Battle!/Last Turn + Sealing Wall of Light
+ Controller of the Dead/Jowgen the Spiritualist

OTK #8 Chaos Emperor Dragon - Messanger of the End + Black Forrest Witch/Witch of the Black Forrest or Critter/Sangan + Eight Giant Crows Yatagarasu/Yatagarasu

OTK #9 Magical Scientist + Catapult Turtle + Level 6 - 2000 attack or more Fusion Monsters.

Well, that's 9 different OTK decks up there. (11 if you count the BBG variants of the first two) The reason I'm not a fan of OTK decks, is simply because the game ends before it even starts. In a tournament, I can understand running an OTK deck, I've done it myself on several occasions. For casual play, let's let the OTK decks have a break. As always, if you guys have any comments or criticism, feel free to send it to visershock@hotmail.com

-B&T