From: Will Chisholm
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 3:37 AM
To: yugiohcrew@pojo.com
Subject: New Decks For A New Brginning; Deck 1-Magician of the Inferno

From: Will C. (mail to: billywhiskers@gci.net)

Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006

To: yugiohcrew@pojo.com

Subject: New Decks For New Beginnings; Deck 1-Magaician of the Inferno

    Aloha, again, Pojo fans! Soulmaster52189 is back again with new ideas for a new beginning of the game...or so we all hope. As everyone knows sorcerer is gone as well as the favored tsukuyomi and snatch steal, not to mention thousand eyes restrict. Chaos return is gone, and even flip-flop control has declined obviously. With the most popular deck gone now, most people will wonder what to turn to. Most will wait it out and see what does well at SJC and regional tourneys, then netdeck or create some variant of the most popular decks and so on and so fourth. But there are hopefully players out there like me that see this as a sparking new opportunity to take the bull by the horns and create brand new deck ideas. So for those having trouble with ideas, i will hopefully try to give you some innovations and maybe inspire you to create something original and mindblowing of your own. So anywho, on with the first deck: Magician of the Inferno

    There have always been those cards that have good effects but just seem unusable because they are either too slow or just plain hard to pull off. Well, Blast Magician is one of those cards. Always seen as pretty good but never really "tourney worthy" because of his slow effect. His text reads:

Blast Magician

Level 4, Fire, Spellcaster

1400 ATK, 1700 DEF

-Each time you or your opponent activates 1 spell card, put one spell counter on this card. By removing any number of spell counters fromthis card, destroy 1 face-up monster on the field with an attack equal to or less than 700 points x the number of removed spell counters.

    Now this is indeed slow, like a sloth climbing up a 500 foot tree slow (well, maybe im overexaggerating; that's like the Petit Moth/Cocoon of Evolution family, which is unfortuneatly completly unplayable, the the dismay of some insect lovers; but i digress), as you would generally activate no more than 1 or 2 spells a turn at MAX, and this creates problems as BM needs to have at least 3 to become a threat. However, now that chaos is gone, and he can't be put facedown by tsukuyomi or snatchedand used against you, he gains a little more playability.

    I've found that with this deck there are several different options to go with, which is what makes BM that much better. I will go with the control build, but there is also a speed build and even a burn-stall style, but more on that later. For now lets focus on the control build of BM. First, the deck:

Monsters: 20

1 Mobius THe Frost Monarch

3 Blast Magician

2 UFO Turtle

2 Apprentice Magician

1 Old Vindicitve Magician

1 Magician Of Faith

1 Magical Merchant

1 Night Assailant

1 Morphing Jar

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 D.D. Warrior Lady

1 Exiled Force

1 Spirit Reaper

1 Treeborn Frog

1 Tenkabito Shien

Spells: 13

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

1 Confiscation

1 MST

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Scapegoat

1 Smashing Ground

1 Brain Control

1 Swords Of Revealing Light

1 Rush Recklessly

Traps: 7

1 Call Of The Haunted

1 Mirror Force

1 Magic Cylinder

1 Ring Of Destruction

2 Dust Tornado

1 Pitch Black Power Stone

    Now, before you go "why does he have that" or "why doesn't he run this," remember something improtant: this is the first sketch of the deck. It does not mean you have to netdeck it or use this same exact build and then go "whoop-de-do!, this deck works perfectly!" or "this deck doesn't work like I want it. It sucks!". No, it's nothing like that. It is a skeleton of what it could be, as I metioned before that there are several builds of this deck. First of all, here is why this is the control variant: (if you think you can understand why everything is there, and are the greatest player in the world knowing every possible decktype and every combo and can learn nothing from a little extra reading, then just skip the two honking big paragraphs and go to the starred* one; otherwise read on and try to see something, if you can see, that is)

    First, this deck has some good synergy. Not the best in the world, but still some decent combos. For example, UFO Turtles not only get BM but they can get Tenkabito, who is immune to traps, and works with the not affected by Call combo, and is a decent beatstick in a pinch. Apprentice not only speeds and thins the deck, but gets MOF for re-use of spells and Old Vindictive for control and monster destruction. Merchant helps speed up the deck, as it is half monsters half spells and traps. Good ratio, if I do say so myself. Morphing allows you to, if you have BM on the field, draw into and play more spells in one turn to use BM effectively. Reaper stalls to get the spells for BM, and  the Frog can be dumped by Merchant or stall if needed. Mobius is our big tribute, keeping the spell and traps of the opponent at bay. The staples are self explantiory, as well, and notice that this is a spell counter deck, so Breaker fits right at home here (but most of you probably already knew that; so i apoligize for the "doy" or "duh" concept working here for you veterans.)

    Most spells and traps are self-explanitory, staples like Graceful, Heavy, Mirror and Ring, so I'll skip all those. Brain Control is used with BM, kind of like a cannon solider thing, take their monster, attack w/ both, main phase 2 blow it up if you have the resources, and blah blah blah. Last Will combos w/ Exiled, but also helps BM by giving him a counter, then after the bomb search an Apprentice for a counter or even that Reaper for the cards in their hand. Nobleman Of Extermination just serves as another form of s/t removal, but notice the deck doesn't have Torrential in it. Kind of good if you hit theirs and don't worry about losing yours (haha, you lose Torrential, and I don't! Loser!! sorry about that...). Swords provides stall and gives BM another counter. Rush Recklessly is an interesting choice, as you can play Last Will, w/ BM on the field, ram a Turtle with RR, search Tenkabito atk then use Last Will and you know the rest. Or jsut use it to pump anything, jike TS to run over Cyber Dragon. Dust Tornado is there for more s/t control, as BM covers the monster destruction. Finally, Pitch Black Power Stone is for providing BM counters as well as Breaker if that so appeals to you. It's slow, but can work if combo'd correctly. 

    *So, as long as that was, it was meant to help the people who did not understand how and why everything was there. Now as I said before there are different variations, but I do not need to list them out. You can use a stall variant, that uses Solar Flare Dragons, Level Limit, Gravity BInd, Messenger Of Peace, and other stall/burn cards and use the BM's for control, or you could go the speed route, running multiple copies of cards like Toon Table Of Contents, Brain Control, Poison Of The Old Man and so on to give the deck more speed and pressure on the opponent ot get rid of BM.

    So just some starting ideas on how to use the new meta wisely, and even an interesting deck to boot. I don't know if this deck is exactly "region worthy", but who knows? Try it out, test it hard, then show the world what you can do with an original deck. Remember that the new metagame has not been chosen yet, and even though the future seems bleak because of the release of the Chimeratech OTK (arrgh!, freakin future/ overload fusion combo! blast you, cyber dragons! more godlike support to add to your already brokeness!!!). Don't fear it, as it has not won a SJC yet. Try new stuff out, experiment, and enjoy the game so it doesn't go down the toilet like a big pile of rotten, nasty festering...well, you know. So until the next exciting idea, keep dueling and maybe even try listening  to music as you do. It personally helps me to concentrate, plus it's just fun to jam whilst you play. Rock on, pojoers!!!

                                                     -Soulmaster52189 :p