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GeneralZorpa on Yugioh
Black Hole
October 3, 2008

She Can't Take Much More of This Captain!
 
Tele-DAD, Gladiators, Lightsworn and Zombies. These are the decks to beat right now. So the obvious question is how to stop them in their tracks. Well, you can negate their effects, but this is often unreliable and hard to do. You can stop them from having cards in their hand, but that doesn't really work against zombies and gladiators. You can have bigger monsters, but again, the Big 3 will just rain death and destruction upon your head.
 
So what to do? Well, we have to combine the three anti-metagame styles into one cohesive whole. The obvious choice for this is a warrior based strategy. They have the searchability and effects that we need to match the speed of the Tele-DAD and Lightsworn as well as the ATK strength to deal with Gladiators and Zombies. But how do we do this where all other decks have failed? I think that the answer is in Adam Corn's side deck from SJC Tulsa. He used Skill Drain and Destiny Hero Defender to shut down effects and the battle phase, which is extraordinarily effective against the top decks this format. I did the same thing, except I made it into a deck.
 
Kahn!
 
Monsters-18
 
3x The End of Anubis
1x Fusilier Dragon the Dual Mode Beast
 
3x Zombyra the Dark
3x Destiny Hero Defender
3x Destiny Hero Malicious
3x Krebons
1x Elemental Hero Stratos
1x Sangan
 
 
Spells-14
 
3x Destiny Draw
3x Allure of Dakness
3x Reinforcement of the Army
2x Enemy Controller
1x Monster Reborn
1x Heavy Storm
1x Brain Control
 
Traps-8
 
3x Solemn Judgment
3x Skill Drain
1x Crush Card Virus
1x Torrential Tribute
 
Extra
 
3x Goyo Guardian
2x Stardust Dragon
2x Colossal Fighter
2x Red Dragon Archfiend
2x Thought Ruler Archfiend
2x Magical Android
2x Gladiator Beast Gyzarus
 
I'm Giving Her All She's Got!
 
Well the deck plays very much like Tele-DAD, except minus the extremely expensive dragon. You race through your deck to get the Malicious/Krebons combo off asap. Then after we have a big monster on the field, Skill Drain shuts down opposing card effects. Mainly this is so that our Goyo Guardians and Red Dragon Archfiends can control the battle phase without fear of being blown away by Gyzaurs, DAD or Judgment Dragon.
 
The Skill Drain does negate your own effects as well, but that is less of an issue in this deck. This is all about ATK and DEF. You are going to dominate the battle phase, just by sheer brute force when you take destruction effects out of the picture. Once this happens, your opponent will need to rely even more on their Special Summon monsters as they have decent ATK. But it will be hard to get their effects off without using other monster effects to help them out. This means that your lone Zombyra can do some serious damage to your opponent's monsters and lifepoints while it is on the field.
 
I am going to devote a special place to the forgotten menace, The End of Anubis. I am going to say that it was a toss-up between this guy and Summoned Skull, really. But the extra 1200 DEF was not worth sacrificing an effect for. Even though his effect will not come into play very much, he does stop all recursion effects, which is especially potent against Lightsworn. As far as I know, Lumina, Wulf and Monster Reincarnation will be negated as long as this bad boy is on the field. Did I mention that he had 2500 ATK? yeah, that's enough to suicide with Stardust and take out a monarch or stuck Gyzarus. Plus he is almost as dangerous should Skill Drain come to the field.
 
Fusilier Dragon is another off the wall pick. But the ability to drop a 2800 ATK behemoth with just a Normal Summon is too good of an opportunity to pass up. 2800 is huge, and with Skill Drain, your opponent will need to get Judgment Dragon, Dark Armed Dragon or Goyo Guardian real quick or they're gonna be hurting. He is also a prime removal target with Allure of Darkness, allowing you to get an otherwise dead card without Skill Drain out of the way and preserving your more important DARK monsters for winning the game.
 
Zombyra the Dark is a card that I have loved since it's introduction in LON. The ability to take out any level 4 currently played is simply too good to pass up. Add in that he is searchable, a Warrior and a DARK monster and we have a winner all set up, and a bruiser when Skill Drain hits the field. I have written close to 3 articles where I have touted this guy's abilities and maybe now that a Shonen Jump Champ has used it, people will finally begin to see just how great he is. Thanks Adam, you ruined my tech card for the upcoming Regionals!

Beam Me Up Scotty!
 
Before we do any beaming, it is only fair to access the shortcomings of this deck. It is a lot less explosive than the traditional Tele-DAD, which makes it a lot less deadly int eh early game, but still more explosive than Gladiator Beasts. The ability to draw a lot of cards and thin the deck is the same though, being able to thin the deck by 15 cards with just spells is amazing. The average battle stats of monsters is going to be higher than the average bear simply because of Zombyra and Defender, but without Skill Drain those cards (along with Fusilier Dragon) are less than truly effective on their own.
 
This means that getting to Skill Drain early is almost the biggest priority of this deck, so that your superior ATK and DEF can take care of the game. However, Cold Wave use in Gladiator Beasts and teched in Lightsworn can totally ruin your day. Both of these decks are monster based, which is good for Skill Drain, but bad in that you can't activate it under Cold Wave. That is easily solvable, but Cold Wave's big brother, Giant Trunade, is a bit trickier to deal with. Along with Heavy Storm , Dust Tornado and Mystical Space Typhoon it will destroy/remove your Drains so that they can explode out and kill you.
 
To this I say "That's What Solemn's For!". Solemn Judgment is kind of like a catch-all counter to whatever is bugging you. Throw in it's relatively cheap activation cost and we have both the savior of the deck and it's Arch-Nemesis. Using Solemn on a Skill Drain is rough, as you often need the Drain to go off at that moment, completely ruining your plans and costing you 1000 lp in the process. There is no true answer to Solemn except, well another Solemn. and then you get into the Solemn Wars where there are 2 even 3 copies springing up on either side. Nobody likes those, because whoever pays the most will likely lose.
 
Anyway, besides spell and trap removal, the deck flies pretty solid. Shadow Mirror just makes your day easier, as you want your effects to be negated, and big monsters are rarely a problem with Enemy Controller forcing them to be in their weak state. In fact this deck is sooo anti-meta that I was considering dumoing the Synchro aspect and making it an Oppression style deck. That would have lost the deck so much of it's power and speed though, so I stuck with the Cornish version.
 
You can even add Dark Armed Dragon to the deck if you have the copies of it. It doesn't control the graveyard as well as previous DAD incarnations, but that is almost a non-issue. I would also suggest Jutte Fighter instead of Krebons if you are running into speed problems. The deck doesn't run Emergency Teleport, so it is hard to get the Tuner you need at the right moment. Reinforcements of the Army takes care of that, searching out the elusive Fighter. He doesn't have Krebons ability to negate attacks, but switching battle position is a very common trick in this deck, and more of it couldn't hurt all that much.
 
 
That is all for this article, but my next two should be interesting. In Getting In the Game, we will look at trading and the article after that will be about catching cheaters. Then after SJC South San Francisco (which I'll be at), I will take you through the months of preparation that I will have done to get ready for it.
 
Thanx for reading!