June 2007 - Hamon Deck - Cameron

Hey everyone, glad to see you guys are reading and thanks to those of you who have e-mailed me your comments. Speaking of which, someone recently e-mailed me about my Crystal Beast Deck and reminded me of the fact that you can use Continuous Spell-form Crystal Beasts to satisfy the summoning condition of Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder. Despite the fact that I already knew this I didn't include it in my Crystal Beast Deck. Why? I'll tell you exactly what I told him; Hamon does not belong in a Crystal Beast Deck (especially a pure one like mine), but Crystal Beasts have a place in a Hamon Deck.

That's right, I have a Hamon Deck for you guys. Thanks to the Crystal Beasts, Hamon can now be summoned easier than either of the other two Ancient Beasts. It can now draw from two types of cards instead of just one like the others. Uria can only be summoned with Traps, Raviel can only be summoned with Fiend-Type Monsters, but Hamon can be summoned with crystalized Crystal Beasts and Continuous Spell Cards. Here's my version of the Hamon Deck:

40 Cards

Monsters: 20
Crystal Beast Amber Mammoth x3
Crystal Beast Amethyst Cat x2
Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus x3
Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger x3
Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder x3
Stealth Bird x3
Volcanic Shell x3

Magic Cards: 18
Card Trader x3
Crystal Blessing x3
Level Limit - Area B
Messenger of Peace x3
Monster Reincarnation x2
Prohibition x3
Wave-Motion Cannon x3

Trap Cards: 2
Royal Decree x2

Side Deck: 15
Archfiend's Roar x3
Confiscation
Convulsion of Nature x3
Mirror Force
Nightmare's Steelcage x2
Ring of Destruction
Spell Absorption x3
Torrential Tribute

That's right, you even get an example Side Deck too. Alright, I'm sure there's some 'splaining to do so here it goes...Hamon needs Continuous Spell Cards to be summoned, there's 3 in this deck. Yes, there are 13 Continuous Spells in the deck so with those alone you can summon all 3 Hamons. The problem with the deck when Hamon originally came out was that you could easily draw a lot of Continuous Spells and no Hamons, thus making them practically useless. Or you could draw 2 or 3 Hamons and next to no Continuous Spells, much worse than the first scenario. So I've included only the most useful Continuous Spells in the Main Deck and plenty of them so the latter scenario doesn't happen.

The fact that Crystal Beasts will be blocking your Life Points and dying to feed your Hamons helps prevent a lack of summon-material too. Card Trader is there to help with bad hands like the ones mentioned above, as well as to be used in conjunction with Volcanic Shell to essentially draw 2 cards per turn and mitigate the loss of card presence that comes with summoning Hamon. Level Limit and Messengers help stall out of bad hands as well, Prohibition stops Heavy Storm/Mobius/etc. from ruining your day, and Wave-Motion Cannon helps with the burn aspect of this deck (more on that later). Monster Reincarnation is used to dump Volcanic Shell into the Graveyard and re-use Hamon. Crystal Blessing is in there to re-use Crystal Beasts and summon Hamons number 2 and 3 easier.

The monsters are easy to understand, the Crystal Beasts are there to give Hamon more summon fodder, and both Amethyst Cat and Stealth Bird are there for the same reason. Hamon has 2 effects meant for 2 different strategies, this deck makes use of both of them. The first effect is that it burns 1000 of your opponent's Life Points when it kills a monster, Royal Decree helps it do this. The second is that when it's in Defense Position it's the only monster your opponent can attack. When the opponent has face-downs and you are without Decree, just put Hamon in Defense Mode and flip Stealth Bird and attack with Amethyst Cat to kill the opponent.

The reason I included a Side Deck was because I wanted to display a few other ways the deck can go. First of all, when I first made the deck a long time ago (way before Crystal Beasts), we lacked the Volcanic Trader draw engine, so when summoning Hamon costed you 3 cards you usually lost if it didn't win you the game. I used to use the Archfiend Convulsion draw engine to help with the loss of card advantage, but it was less consistent, let the opponent see what I drew and both pieces were practically useless when drawn separately. The Volcanic Trader engine is much better, but if you find it's not enough then side in the other engine as well and hopefully draw 3 cards per turn.

Spell Absorption is there for tech against burn decks (every deck has its own useful tech, Des Wombat would be better but it doesn't feed Hamon). Nightmare's Steelcage is for very aggressive matchups, and the others are staples I left out of the Main Deck but can still prove useful in some matchups. When playing this deck, the first thing you wanna do is set up the Volcanic Trader engine to gain a few cards of advantage before you lose it summoning Hamon. Card advantage is all well and good, but it doesn't win you the game. It's what you do with that advantage that wins you the game, and this deck uses it to summon up to 5 Hamons in every game.

Send your questions, comments, etc. to cjrwaud@cogeco.ca. Please no hate mail, I'm really a nice guy once you get to know me.