June 2007

Creating the Perfect Side Deck
 

Hello, there, I don't know if you've read my other aticle or not, but Dark Paladin submitted it to you a while ago with his blessings. I figured it might help expedite your decision process, or at the very least couldn't hurt if I were to send in another piece of my writing in an attempt to sway your decision in my favor.

Creating the Perfect Side Deck

As it has been established, if you want to play competetively, you need a stellar side-deck that can help you cope with any options your opponent might bring up that could potentially lose you the game. However, in my opinion, a perfect side deck is not what it is concieved to be today. If Monarchs are a major problem of mine, should I run Blast Held by a Tribute in my pouch? No, of course not, it's just not that useful. This brings up the point, why should you limit yourself to negating one deck with each side-deck card, why not bring multiple decks to their knees by means of a single card. That is what I will discuss today.

Let's start by listing the major threats in today's metagame, Perfect Circle, T Deck, Crystal Beasts (they're threatening enough), Big City, Standard Monarchs, Gadgets (somewhat), Burn, and dying threats like Demise OTK and DDT. Now, stop and think. If I were to group into a category Gadgets, Monarchs, and to some extent Big City, what one card could throw a wrench in their works? As everyone knows, it's Pulling the Rug, we'll put that in at one copy for each major deck it negates. Now, how about I group together Perfect Circle, Big City and to a lesser extent Demise OTK and DDT. Then, we can negate all of these threats and many more with a threesome of Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell. This will take out any deck that relies on any spell card for its win condition; no more Destiny Draws, Hero City, ARA, Dimension Fusion in some decks. Now, moving on to Monarchs, T Deck, and most theme decks/beatdowns, we all know how to take care of these. Mask of Restrict stops any sacrifices from being made: no pesky Phoenixes, T Beatsticks, whatever. Next up Crystal Beasts, Burn, and certain aspects of other decks we can all stop with the card Tornado (I think) with their ability to destroy a face-up spell/trap. These are only really worth two copies. Burn is just too obvious, stick in a Wombat. Finally, stop your opponent from doing things like Big City, Perfect Circle, and some other decks with your choice of Necrovalley or End of Anubis. Either one would work well on any Graveyard centered deck. I'll combine them.

So now, let's look at our perfect side deck:
Pulling the Rugx3
Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spellx3
Mask of Restrictx2
Tornadox2
Des Wombat
End of Anubis
Necrovalley
Cloak and Daggerx2

The idea of this side deck is that it can not only negate every threat you saw coming, but also every threat that you didn't. If it's a deck that uses Tributes, Spell Cards, Face-up Spell/Traps, the Graveyard, Burn, or one particular monster, than it's done for. Now you will never get shocked by that stray Zombie deck or Magical Explosion deck and be sorry you only teched against top-tier decks.

Dr. Strangefate