I can easily be inferred from the top decklists that this format is quick, and only fast decks make it to the top. Right now, we have to really watch out for Dark Armed Dragon Return, Six Samurai, Gadgets, and Diamond Dude Turbo decks, because they just dominate the format. Today I’m going to talk about what players can use in order to, like the title of this article states, “challenge” the Meta.
Dark Armed Dragon Return shows that it’s
extremely dependent on its Graveyard and its RFG zones. Dark Armed Dragon, the main card that finishes the opponent off in a DAD deck, truly depends on the Graveyard because it cannot be Special Summoned without exactly 3 DARK monsters in the Graveyard. This deck also focuses on the Removed From Game zone because it’s built around removing from play strong DARK monsters and then returning them to the field and attacking for the victory. The same can go for DDT.
Gadget, Six Samurai, and Diamond Dude Turbo (DDT) focus on rapidly swarming the field with monsters and taking away the opponent’s Life Points in huge chunks at a time. These decks also maintain field advantage and only depend on their support spell/traps and mainly their monsters. Gadget decks mainly focus on destroying their opponent’s monsters while, at the same time, constantly summoning multiple monsters in a turn and attacking. Six Samurai decks mainly control the field and the opponent’s options with the effects of the individual Six Samurai’s and their ability to Special Summon strong monsters. With the help of Reasoning and Six Samurai United, Six Samurai decks can prove to be extremely fast at times. Diamond Dude Turbo works somewhat in the same manner as Dark Armed Dragon Return, except for the fact that it’s speed comes from both its many spells and its ability to Special Summon a lot.
If you haven’t noticed, all of the decks that I mentioned above that were competitive in this new format rely on a draw engine to get their speed. Dark Armed Dragon Return and DDT depend on Destiny Draw, Allure of Darkness, and Trade-In, while Six Samurai depends on Six Samurai United, and Gadgets rely on their own effect of being able to search the deck for another copy of themselves. Every single deck that wants to be competitive in this format has to include a draw engine that draws more than one card at a time. Taking into consideration how often a player uses a draw engine and the possibility of them using them each turn, players can safely begin to side deck or even main deck Null and Void.
Null and Void never actually had a time in the Yu-gi-oh game where it shined, simply because draw engines never played such a huge role in maintaining speed in the game like they do nowadays. In my opinion, Null and Void is an extremely useful card, but it can cause numerous problems in when playing against a deck that is running three copies of Dark Armed Dragon, because if the player draws a DARK monster that is enough to make the number of DARK monsters in the Graveyard 3, then the player that activated Null and Void would be in deep trouble. However, that would rarely happen, and you should be very careful to make sure that it doesn’t. Null and Void is extremely capable when it comes to making sure that the opponent doesn’t get what they want, but only in DDT and DAD Return decks. Null and Void could come in handy almost whenever the card is drawn, because the odds of the opponent using a draw engine the next turn aren’t ever too slim.
Now, back to the overuse of the Graveyard that the Dark Armed Dragon Return and Diamond Dude Turbo decks are known for. We have numerous cards that we could take advantage of to take advantage of the overuse of the Graveyard. This definitely brings me back to a couple old favorites: D.D. Crow and The Transmigration Prophecy. Other cards that can also prevent cards from reaching the Graveyard come to mind like Dimensional Fissure and Macro Cosmos, but they can open up opportunities for an experienced DAD player to activate Dimension Fusion and go off even easier.
D.D. Crow comes in extremely useful
because of his great multi-trigger effect that can be activated any time that you want, even on the opponent’s turn. So, let’s take a look at when this card would come in especially handy and create that aggravated expression on your opponent’s face. When they’re trying to Special Summon Dark Armed Dragon, you can activate this card’s effect and Remove From Play one of the DARK attribute monsters in their Graveyard, preventing them from Special Summoning it that turn. This lets you know that they have it in their hand, and you can further prepare yourself for it. D.D. Crow doesn’t just stop Dark Armed Dragon from being Special Summoned as soon as the opponent would like, but it also prevents numerous other things from happening that the opponent would rather like to happen. D.D. Crow can chain its effect to Premature Burial’s and Monster Reborn’s, allowing for an important monster such as Destiny Hero – Disk Commander that it targeted to be removed from play, preventing it from being Special Summoned, and for the Spell Card’s effect to be wasted. D.D. Crow is just too useful right now to be ignored as both a main and side deck choice.
The Transmigration Prophecy can also come in handy in the same sense that D.D. Crow is useful for, but it works a bit differently. Instead of removing a monster from play for D.D. Crow’s effect, powering up Dimension Fusion, you can instead return it to the deck, making it more difficult for the opponent to get the card back to their hand/field. This card is pretty useful, and it can be used for many of the great plays that D.D. Crow can be used for. The Transmigration Prophecy can also be helpful for preventing Dark Magician of Chaos’s effect to properly activate, making sure that the opponent doesn’t obtain card advantage too easily.
Another card that I want to talk about is Book of Moon
. In previous formats, we’ve seen that Book of Moon is extremely useful for blocking attacks, switching a monster’s position, stopping some OTK’s, and to re-use flip-effect monsters. Well, in the new format, we find a couple new uses for it; They’re not entirely new, but Book of Moon comes in handy a lot more often now than before. First of all, Book of Moon can chain to the effect of Dark Armed Dragon’s destroying any card on the field. It is very likely that Dark Armed Dragon would target a spell/trap card before a monster, and Book of Moon would most likely be set on the field at the time. When the Dragon targets the facedown Book of Moon to be destroyed, the Quick-Play Spell Card can be activated in response, flipping the Dragon facedown, leaving the opponent with a weak facedown monster and allowing us to easily destroy Dark Armed Dragon. Book of Moon can also be used to stop Cyber Valley from activating its effect, because we all know that a copy of Cyber Valley is useless when facedown.
When we take a look at the top decklists from Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa, we notice that many players are running Magical Explosion, a very wise choice when everyone is running more than 15 spells in their deck. Because its effect can be devastating when activated at the right time, we have to consider some side-decking options for Burn. No, I’m not thinking of Des Wombat, because he’s only useful when playing against an all-out Burn deck, not a deck that just plays two or three copies of one burn card. I’m thinking Prime Material Dragon, which was reviewed earlier this week on the daily COTD section of Pojo.
Prime Material Dragon, when you think
about it, is an extremely useful card in the current state of the format. It stops Magical Explosion from damaging either player’s life points, which shouldn’t be a problem for you because you’re supposed to side-deck this in and take out Magical Explosion, if you’re even running it, and it has an interesting additional effect. Prime Material Dragon allows the player to negate the activation and destroy a card that has the effect to destroy a monster or more than just one monster on the field with the cost of discarding 1 card from your hand. This comes in especially handy against Gadgets and Dark Armed Dragon Return, as those are the two most competitive decks that run multiple removal agents.
Finally, about that Six Samurai deck type; Great Shogun Shien can be very troublesome when it doesn’t allow you to activate more than 1 Spell Card per turn, because those cards are the key to speeding up a deck. Lightning Vortex, Waboku, and more cards of the same theme that don’t specifically target 1 monster and destroy it are all useful when it comes to side decking against Six Samurai.
I hope that my article aided you all in finding more options when it comes to side decking against a deck that’s extremely powerful. If you have any suggestions, ideas, comments, or deck fixes, send them all to lightningsaphira94@gmail.com. Remember to follow my Submittal Guidelines for those deck fixes, and keep them coming!
Have Fun and Play Fair!
Ed
