JULY 2008

The Future of DAD - Matt Valdez

            Lately I have been wondering the best direction to take my Dark Armed Dragon deck. Obviously before the banning of Dimension Fusion and the limiting of Return from the Different Dimension it was clear what a DAD deck was supposed to do. Put three darks in your graveyard, unleash Dark Armed Dragon, and bring forth a horde of game ending monsters. Things have changed now though. You see back then removing a Jinzo or Dark Magician of Chaos from play with an Allure of Darkness was a good play because you could get it back easily with either of the afore mentioned cards. Now, however, it’s not so easy to rescue a card from the removed from play pile. Off the top of my head I can only think of three commonly played cards that summon a monster from out of play – Escape from the Dark Dimension, D.D.R. – Different Dimension Reincarnation, and a lone copy of Return from the Different Dimension. Each of these cards have there own weaknesses: Escape from the Dark Dimension can only target a dark monster, D.D.R. – Different Dimension Reincarnation requires a discard, and Return from the Different Dimension, in addition to being limited, cuts your life points in half. Not to mention the fact that Allure of Darkness has been semi-limited giving us one less way to put cards out of play.

            Going another route would be instead of using the removed from play pile to summon the big beaters you could use the graveyard. There are many drawbacks with this option as well though. First of all D.D. Crow is seeing an all-time high in play. Second of all there aren’t that many cards to use. The two staples, Monster Reborn and Premature Burial, are two cards out of 40. The only other commonly played card that special summons monsters from the graveyard is Light and Darkness Dragon, and he usually requires some dedicated support. The Dark Creator hasn’t seen much success at all, but is an option. The advantage of using the graveyard though is that it’s incredibly easy to put monsters there. Card Trooper, Armageddon Knight, Foolish Burial, and cards such as Phoenix Wing Wind Blast or Raigeki Break have been the most popular.

            Now that a few things about each type of play have been highlighted we can see some of the strengths and weaknesses of both. So, what if these two strategies were merged together. Imagine a play like activating Trade-In to discard The Dark Creator, summoning Phantom of Chaos to copy his effect, removing Jinzo to special summon Dark Magician of Chaos and then flipping Escape from the Dark Dimension to bring back Jinzo. You’d have a 2300 attacker in the form of the Phantom who, although couldn’t cause any damage, could still punch through almost any defense. Along with him would come a 2800 attacker, a 2400 attacker negating your opponents defensive traps, and a free spell of your choosing. Not bad for just two cards (the Phantom and Escape). Now, obviously this is a hypothetical situation and would probably not happen very often, but it is possible. I am excited for any discussion this article may bring and hoping that someone will take something from it and come up with an amazing new concept on how to run DAD. Thanks for your time; I hope I didn’t waste too much of it.