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GeneralZorpa on Yugioh
A Cheap Deck That Works!
July 10, 2008

Take That Gyzarus!
 
What is the best way to take down the top decks this format? Well that's an easy one. Deny them their major resources, Special Summoning and the graveyard. There is another hurdle that we need to cross as well, the fact that not everyone has access to these high end cards. Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo is great at destroying all of the best cards this format, but costs about $50. I aim to have the most expensive card in the deck be Allure of Darkness. This means no Crush Card, no Dark Armed Dragon, no Heraklinos and no Judgment Dragon.
 
With those rules in mind, I pretty much have to turn to reprint cards that are not only easy to get, but work well. So brainstorming a list of cards, then mashing them together into a cohesive deck will certainly be a challenge. The key of course will be nullifying the top 3 decks this format, Gladiator Beasts, Dark Armed Dragon, Lightsworn and various Monarch variants. I think I did pretty well this time around, but see for yourself.
 
Go For the Groin
 
Monsters-17
 
3x Prime Material Dragon
 
3x Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
3x Reflect Bounder
2x Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive
2x Mask of Darkness
1x Don Zaloog
1x Sangan
1x Spirit Reaper
1x Jowgen the Spiritualist
 
Spells-11
 
2x Shrink
2x Book of Moon
2x Allure of Darkness
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Brain Control
1x Monster Reborn
1x Premature Burial
 
Traps-12
 
3x Solemn Judgment
3x Royal Oppression
2x Black Horn of Heaven
2x Dimensional Prison
1x Mirror Force
1x Torrential Tribute
 
Take That!
 
The idea of this deck is incredibly simple. Stop your opponent from doing anything except for battling. Prime Material Dragon will stop anything from destroying your monsters. Kycoo will stop Dark Armed Dragon and Strike Ninja, as well as pesky Necro Gardnas that get in your way. Jowgen the Spiritualist will stop AND kill Special Summons, at least until we get Thunderking (Raiou). Solemn Judgment negates everything that gets in your way. Black Horn of Heaven negates even more Special Summons while Royal Oppression does it continuously at a slower speed.
 
Part 2 of the deck is monsters with relatively high ATK. Reflect Bounder, Kycoo, Prime Material, and even Don Zaloog and Dekoichi will get the job done when backed by Shrink and Book of Moon. Heck, even Mask of Darkness can become an offensive weapon when backed by these cards, with both Lightsworn and Gladiators having such low DEF scores and the achilles heel of Monarchs has always been their 1000 DEF. It is formats like this where I wish that Tsukuyomi was back.
 
Phase 3 involves beating your opponent in the Battle Phase once they have literally no other options. The monsters mentioned above backed by Shrink and Book of Moon will do most of the work, but again Solemn Judgment will negate your opponent's summon. Then there is Dimensional Prison, which allows you to remove your opponent's threats form the field and teamed up with Black Horn and Oppression an opposing Gyzarus or Dark Armed will get hosed, making your Prison that much more effective. Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute also have a way of leveling the field if your opponent manages to get passed the barrage of anti-stuff being thrown at them. Oh, and also to punish an overzealous opponent, Reflect Bounder will make their life miserable by taking at least 1700 lifepoints from them at every attack and forcing them to waste their destruction. Spirit Reaper does this as well, he can discard like Donny Z, but comes with a built in invulnerability.
 
Phase 4 (yes there is a lot of thought that went into this deck) is denying your opponent possible options such as Brain Control and other cards that will mess with your strategy. Don Zaloog works well here, as he is backed by a ton of defense, so direct attacks should be second nature to him by now. Solemn Judgment of course is invaluable and if you can negate your opponent's one out, they might just scoop up their cards out of disgust.
 
I AM Playing With Your Mind!
 
The best way to win a game is to play with your opponent's head. Make them think you have Morphing Jar set when it's Reaper, that sort of thing. The sheer amount of spell and trap defense will leave your opponent reeling. Copies of Heavy Storm and Mystical Space Typhoon as well as sided Dust Tornadoes are not nearly enough to deal with all of them. This makes an opponent fearing the next Shrink to be thrown at them, or even just Jowgen beating them down.
 
making a hand full of excellent cards useless is also a great way to break an opponent. They will look at their copies of Judgment Dragon and friends with disgust as you beat them down with your 50 cent Kycoo and Royal Oppression. Not to mention that all of the differing effects of your monsters and your spell and trap cards will keep your opponent guessing as to what you are going to play next.
 
Weak Links
 
This deck is mostly about stopping monster cards, which leaves it very much open to a collection of unsavory spell and trap cards. Mirror Force, Solemn Judgment, Torrential Tribute and even Lightning Vortex all take a heavy toll on this deck. Fortunately, Prime Material Dragon is here to save the day. You won't always have Prime Material on the field though, so you might end up taking some wrong hits from a Torrential.
 
Crush Card Virus is always a big concern, but since half of your monsters are over 1500, that shouldn't be that big of a problem unless you happen to have them all in your hand. Solemn can negate it, but other wise you are just relying on the luck that they won't get it on you. Crush Card Virus is just one card though, so you should not fear it, plus again Prime can negate it when it's on the field.
 
Jinzo is your worst enemy. He will negate just about 1/3 of your deck. Fortunately, Shrink and Book of Moon should be able to take care of the mechanical android menace. Not to mention that people are playing less and less of the Android Psycho Shocker except in dedicated Jinzo decks. Solemn again will negate it, but you might not want to waste a perfectly good Solemn on a Jinzo. Royal Decree is even worse for you, as spell and trap destruction is at an all time low in this deck. That is why in the side deck for this you should play some Dust Tornado or even some Twister cards to also deal with the annoying Imprisoning Mirrors that will destroy you.
 
And of course as mentioned above the only thing worse than a Jinzo for this deck would be a Shadow Imprisoning Mirror or a Light Imprisoning Mirror. Good for us they are relegated to the side deck, allowing us to side many counters to them as every monster in the deck is either LIGHT or DARK. Luckily our traps should save us when a Mirror is out, still preventing your opponent from getting any momentum off of a lucky Mirror play.
 
Shoulda Coulda Woulda
 
There are many cards that I would love to play in this deck. Either for space reasons or for budget reasons these cards were all cut from the final build.
 
Crush Card Virus
Honest
My Body As A Shield
Enemy Controller
Lyla Lightsworn Sorceress
Elemental Hero Wildheart
 
Consider these cards if you find them important when building your version of this deck or you are lucky enough to have a copy of said card. In fact I would say that Crush Card Virus would be killer in this deck as there are 4 legal targets and 6 more if you have the nerve to use Shrink on your own monster. Caius the Shadow Monarch tears through this deck like butter. Instead of destroying your cards and triggering Prime Material Dragon's effect, it is just straight removal as the same is with Dimension Prison. As with anything that an opponent does that we don't like, Solemn Judgment takes care of it and Book of Moon can help, either by turning your own monster face down to protect it, or setting Caius up to be attacked next turn.
 
Originally this deck was intended to be a completely LIGHT deck using Honest, but I made a wager with myself not to use expensive cards, so this one came into being. If you happen to have a playset of Honest, go ahead and try it. I was using Skelengel, Honest and White Magical Hat to replace Dekoichi, Reaper and Donny Z. You may find that this one works better, I don't know.
 
Well that's it for this deck, contact me at raptor1k@hotmail.com where I will answer any and all emails. Oh, and don't forget that there are tournaments run every Saturday and Sunday in Davis California. Just send me a mail or a pm on the boards for more info.
 
Thanx for reading!
GZ