From: Sephiroth The Dark
Subject: Five-Headed Dragon: Some perhaps overlooked ideas - By Rob Gray.



Hello everyone!

I just read some of the Card Of The Day comments, and one in particular caught my eye: Five-Headed Dragon. I have noticed that many of the comments state that this Fusion Monster is "impractical" and "difficult to play". I am surprised by these statements, because I am a Dragon-user (and all of you who have read my previous posts will be saying "Yeah, duh!" at the obviousness of that statement...), and Five-Headed Dragon is an incredibly important feature in my deck plan. Its simplicity to use and practicality are both what earn it a place in my deck.

And now to elaborate. A card that it seems many people have overlooked in their reviews of this card is Future Fusion. Activating this card means that you can send the fusion materials from your deck to the graveyard, and in two turns you can special summon (counting as a Fusion Summon) the selected Fusion Monster from your Fusion Deck. Now, two turns might seem a long time, but most of the time (and I will stress this point) YOU DO NOT WANT FUTURE FUSION TO WORK!

I'm expecting a few strange looks here. Well, here's an example using my deck; your hand includes one Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Graceful Charity, Future Fusion, and Dragon's Mirror (a lucky hand, but one I've had a few times). None of your other Blue-Eyes have been taken from your deck, and you have two in there, for a total of three. However, the one in your hand is stopping you from using Future Fusion to call one of your Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragons to the field. You're currently behind on life points, and you're quite confident that your opponent doesn't have a trap on the field to stop a heavy hit, but if you wait one more turn you could give them the time they need. What do you do?

The answer is simple. Future Fusion gets an activation, sending the two Blue-Eyes White Dragons and any other three Dragons from your deck to the graveyard to summon Five-Headed Dragon. It won't appear for two turns, but you don't need it to. Now Graceful Charity can activate, sending your last Blue-Eyes and one of the cards you draw with it to the graveyard. And now you can summon a Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon happily to the field. Better yet, if you have drawn a Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon with Graceful's effect, then presto! An even bigger monster! And if nothing's done about it, in two turns you'll have a Five-Headed Dragon to pound on your enemies with!

I'm sure plenty of you are very sceptical about this whole idea, but it's worked for me on multitudinous occasions. If your deck has plenty of discard cards in it (like one of my favourites, Dark Core, perfect for getting rid of Jinzos or other big beasties if you need to) then getting any Blue-Eyes that get stuck in your hand into the graveyard is child's play, so Graceful Charity isn't a must. Future Fusion is a fairly multi-purpose card anyway, since it can summon any monster you have all the components in your deck for, so it's worth using anyway, just in case you get stuck in the situation where all you need to win is one fusion monster, and you have none of the materials in your hand or graveyard to get it. And if you're using a pure (or close to pure) Dragon-based deck then you should have an abundance of Dragons anyway. So why not run a Five-Headed Dragon?

Pretty much all of the above suggests an idea where Five-Headed Dragon is neither needed nor expected to hit the field. But, it does, and it's one of the easiest Dragon Fusions to summon. It's just another one of those misunderstood cards, like Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon (which I might add, I also have the opportunity to bring to the field on regular occurances). If you've built your deck right, you can make simple use of both of these cards, no problem!

I also recently acquired a Dragon Master Knight, but have as yet had no opportunity to test it. I shall either completely rebuild my deck into a Dragon/Warrior deck, so as to make use of Blue-Eyes and Black Luster Soldier together, or just stick with the Dragon deck using a Light - Hex-Sealed Fusion. Probably the former, as my Dragons have had a pretty good streak so far. Here is my current deck list, for you to browse through at your
perusal:

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Tribute Monsters:

Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon
Blue-Eyes White Dragon x3
Kaiser Glider
Armed Dragon Lv.5
Mobius The Frost Monarch (which I will hopefully be removing soon for another Dragon)

Monsters:

Luster Dragon x3
Spear Dragon
Mirage Dragon
Divine Dragon Ragnarok
Masked Dragon x3
The Dragon Dwelling In The Cave
Armed Dragon Lv.3
Lord Of D.
The Light - Hex-Sealed Fusion
Sangan
Magician Of Faith

Spells:

Lightning Vortex
Dark Core x2
Mage Power
Heavy Storm
Mystical Space Typhoon
Stamping Destruction
Future Fusion
Dragon's Mirror x2
Swords Of Revealing Light
Graceful Charity
Brain Control

Traps:

Dust Tornado
Curse Of Royal
Seven Tools Of The Bandit
Cursed Seal Of The Forbidden Spell
Bottomless Trap Hole
Magic Cylinder
Raigeki Break
Call Of The Haunted
Waboku
Return From The Different Dimension

Deck Count: 45 cards (unless I counted wrong...)

Fusion Monsters:

Dragon Master Knight
Five-Headed Dragon
Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon x2
King Dragun

Side-Deck:

Horus The Black Flame Dragon Lv.8
Horus The Black Flame Dragon Lv.6
Horus The Black Flame Dragon Lv.4
Kaiser Seahorse
Kaibaman
Twin-Headed Behemoth
The Dragon Dwelling In The Cave
Burst Stream Of Destruction
Level Up!
Monster Reincarnation
Megamorph
Card Destrucion
Dragon's Rage
Sakuretsu Armour
Chain Disappearance

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For the most part, this deck has worked very well so far (I say for the most part, because I moved my second Dragon Dwelling from my deck to my side-deck to use the Light - Hex-Sealed Fusion). I've lost approximately one in fifteen of my duels with it, and each loss was because of a bad opening hand (when your first hand has no monsters OR traps, you know you've got problems. Especially when your opponent's opening move is to set three traps and summon Skilled Dark Magician...). Still, I'm always looking for improvements.

If anyone has any comments or questions, please contact me at the address below.

Thanks for reading.

Rob Gray (aka sephiroths_champ, aka "Funky Kaiba")
<sephiroths_champ@hotmail.com>

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