This next article is about looking at the core principles of the Counter Fairy deck. Its aims and its basic win condition. In addition we will look at some of the key staple cards involved in the Counter Fairy deck.

Counter Fairies is named so because it utilises the activation of counter trap cards and the subsequent interaction with certain fairy type monster card effects. Hence Counter Fairy.

The premise of the deck is to gain card advantage while reducing your opponent’s options eventually leaving you with the greater choice of cards to end the duel while the opponent’s strategy has been so severely disrupted by your counter traps that they cannot recover.

In the past Counter Fairies struggled because once they had control over the duel and had successfully rendered their opponents deck and strategy useless, they failed to have a set of monsters that could be played in the end game with sufficient ATK to beat their opponent. In addition to this weakness, obvious cards such as Jinzo and Royal Decree stopped the Counter Fairy deck in its tracks. Only recently have these deficiencies in the Counter Fairy strategy been addressed by the release of new cards (as mentioned in the last article – Guardian of Order, Van’Dalgon the Dark Dragon Lord & Sky Scourge Invincil). Regardless the core strategy of gaining advantage from disrupting your opponents strategy still remains the main goal of any Counter Fairy deck, the difference now being they have a dangerous end game that can finish duels.

In order to create this additional advantage the Counter Fairy deck utilises some particular cards that can generate card advantage upon the activation of a counter trap these are described below:

• Bountiful Artemis – Level 4, Light Fairy 1600ATK 1700DEF
• Effect: While this card is face-up on the field, draw 1 card from your Deck each time a Counter Trap Card is activated.

This is the card that started the Counter Fairy deck off and is the core of the deck. Each time a counter trap is activated (note does not have to resolve) you can draw 1 card from your deck. Considering that general counter trap effects prevent the opponent from performing a particular gameplay action i.e. summon a monster or activate a spell or trap, you can see how by playing your counter trap while this card is on the field you are continually +1ing your opponent.

• Meltiel, Sage of the Sky – Level 4, Light Fairy 1600ATK 1200DEF
• Effect: Each time a Counter Trap Card is activated, gain 1000 Life Points, and if "The Sanctuary in the Sky" is on the field, destroy 1 card your opponent controls.
• The Sanctuary in the Sky – Field Spell
• Effect: Battle Damage to the controller of a Fairy-Type monster from a battle involving that Fairy-Type monster becomes 0.

Meltiel is the next card to consider in this deck. Each time you activate a counter trap you gain 1000 life points. However its secondary effect creates even more advantage. When The Sanctuary in the Sky is on the field and you activate a Counter Trap (again only need to activate, this is particularly important when Royal Decree and Jinzo are in play as they only negate the effect not the activation of a Counter Trap) you can destroy 1 card on your opponent’s field. It can be spell, trap, monster, face up, face down, it doesn’t matter. Now if you manage to have all 3 of these cards on the field then every time you activate a Counter Trap you are now +2ing your opponent every time (as long as they have a card on their side of the field). No deck can stand up against this kind of continuous gain in card advantage.

Let’s run through a little example of the potential of a Counter Fairy deck. The cards mentioned above in conjunction with some other useful cards can provide devastating effects have a look below:

If you think the above was impressive then we have barely even scratched the surface of the potential and power of the Counter Fairy deck, there’s plenty more to come in upcoming articles so watch out these innocent, angelic looking monsters can pack quite a punch.

Counter Fairies are now more competitive than ever and the above example is a clear indication of the power they can now possess. Next time we will look at an interesting debate I read about on the Pojo message boards. It appears a big question for those duellists more experienced with Counter Fairies is "To Meltiel or not to Meltiel".