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ShineSoldier on YuGiOh
Deck Analysis: The Bounce Deck
April 17, 2006 

Today’s article will show you a ‘Bounce’ Deck. Bouncing means returning cards from the field to the hand or deck. Cards like Compulsory Evacuation Device and Giant Trunade are good examples of this kind of cards. A problem that most of these cards share is that they provide you with a –1 disadvantage, except for the cards that return other cards to the top of the decks. Why? Because ‘bouncing’ to the hand doesn’t decrease your opponent’s amount of resources; it switches Field Advantage into Hand Advantage, but their total amount of resources remains the same. Still, you used one card which means that you have suffered a –1 disadvantage.

Luckily, there are Monsters that can bounce as well.They won’t lead to disadvantages at some times. For example, one of the greatest Bounce Monsters ever, Guardian Sphinx. When flipped, all of your opponent’s monsters will return to his/her hand while you don’t suffer disadvantage at all! Penguin Soldier is another example. When you flip him, you won’t lose Penguin Soldier himself and thus you won’t get into a disadvantage.

A deck that uses this strategy as its main strategy will discover that the opponent will be left with no field at all. Since Bounce Monsters don’t ‘destroy’ the cards, they are less effective than actual removal cards and thus their effects can be a little bit more devastating. For example, there isn’t a single monster in the game that destroys all monsters on your opponent’s side of the field when flipped. However, there is a monster that can bounce all of your opponent’s monsters (Guardian Sphinx). Also, Heavy Storm is only allowed once per deck, while its counterpart, Giant Trunade, can still be used three times in a deck. This gives Bounce Decks a lot of gamebreaking cards, if you just use them correctly.

Since Bounce Decks can empty the field so easily, you could attack directly most of the time. With cards like Don Zaloog and Spirit Reaper, that could be really devastating. They both provide you with a +1 advantage when they attack directly, so they will get you back the card you lost in order to bounce the entire field. If you used Guardian Sphinx, you didn’t lose a card at all, so you will gain some advantage.

Like I said earlier, there are a lot of bounce cards. Guardian Sphinx, Compulsory Evacuation Device, Giant Trunade, Penguin Soldier, Legendary Jujitsu Master, Gravekeeper’s Guard and Spiritualism are all great examples of them. Since most of them return cards to the hand and not to the deck (except for Legendary Jujitsu Master), I would like to add Trap Dustshoot. It’s a Normal Trap that can be activated when your opponent holds at least 4 cards in his hand. Then, you look at the cards, select a monster and return it to the deck. It’s a solid 1-for-1 that gives you some extra information on what your opponent is about to throw at you. Confiscation and Mind Crush would be great choices for this deck as well, but we’ll see what to add later on.

Another card that works well with the Bouncing Strategy is Treasure Map. It has been released not too long ago, so I’ll write down its effect for you.

Treasure Map

Trap / Normal

“You can only activate this card in response to the activation of an effect that would return this card from the field to your hand. Draw 2 cards from your Deck and discard 1 card from your hand.”

Since it can only be activated when a card is activated that would return Treasure Map to the hand, you won’t be able to chain it to the activation of Guardian Sphinx’s effect. However, you can chain it to your own Giant Trunade. Note that Treasure Map will still be sent to the Graveyard after its activation. It doesn’t return to your hand. But if you do get off its effect, you get to draw 2 cards, but you’ll have to discard 1 as well. With some mathematics, you will find out that this situation leads to a –1 disadvantage:

You lose Treasure Map, Giant Trunade and one other card that you discarded, while you only get two new cards. But the effects of Giant Trunade and Treasure Map itself make up for this loss of advantage. When you returned all the S/T Cards to the hand, you will be able to attack without having to fear Mirror Force or the like. Just attack with Don Zaloog or Spirit Reaper and you’ll get back the card you lost. Treasure Map will give you two new cards which is good, and the discarding part isn’t really a problem.

Well, the strength of a deck like this lies in its capability of clearing the field so easily. The fact that you can get rid of all of your opponent’s monsters by just flipping Guardian Sphinx is insane, and with the right support cards, this deck could be really deadly. But in order for this deck to work, you will have to overextend sometimes, since your opponent will be able to play all the cards you returned to his/her hand in his/her next turn anyway. So make sure you’re well-prepared when you’re going to bounce a lot of cards.

To weaken the weakness of this deck, which is its disadvantage that is brought along when activating certain Spell Cards, adding Morphing Jar would be a very good idea. You see, if your opponent has got 2 or 3 Spell or Trap Cards face-down and 3 cards in his/her hand, you could activate Giant Trunade to increase his/her hand size to 6 and then flip Morphing Jar to gain huge advantages, especially because you get to draw five new cards as well.

A great threat to this deck would be Nobleman of Crossout and Bottomless Trap Hole. Since your Guardian Sphinx and other Flip-Effect Monsters will be face-down most of the time during your opponent’s turn, Nobleman of Crossout can mess very badly with your strategy. And since it’s allowed twice per deck now, you will need to make sure that you are prepared. My Body As a Shield is a good way to defend yourself against this card, and not only this card. It also protects your other monsters from the famous Trap Cards, like Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute.

Bottomless Trap Hole could be a danger because of the fact that you’ll keep flipping your Guardian Sphinx in attack mode. And since he has 1700 ATK, he meets the requirements to be destroyed by Bottomless Trap Hole. Luckily, this deck has already got plenty of ways to get rid of it, mainly through Giant Trunade and possible Spiritualism.

Before we continue now, let’s write down a sample monster line-up first.

Monsters: 17x

2 Guardian Sphinx
3 Gravekeeper’s Guard
2 Don Zaloog
3 Legendary Jujitsu Master
1 Penguin Soldier
1 Spirit Reaper
1 Morphing Jar
1 Magician of Faith
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Tsukuyomi
1 Sangan

Guardian Sphinx, as one of the main cards of the deck, is in twice. His abilty to clear the entire opposing field of monsters is just so good in this deck.

Gravekeeper’s Guard is another great card. Its 1900 DEF means that he can last pretty long. He’s able to defend you against Don Zaloog, D. D. Assailant, Breaker and a lot more. His Flip-Effect however, is what makes him that important here. He supports the deck theme very well, by returning a monster when he’s flipped. Together with Tsukuyomi, you could gain some Field Control, which is this deck’s main goal. Three copies of him will work fine.

Don Zaloog has been discussed earlier. With an open field to attack in, he can ‘destroy’ all of those cards that you bounced back into the opponent’s hand and give you back some advantage. Legendary Jujitsu Master is also a card we’ve already looked at. It has a nice 1800 DEF and supports the bounce theme very well, since this card actually provides you with a +1 advantage, assuming it survived the attack. That’s why I put him in three times. And above that: His 1800 means that he’ll last long enough to tribute him on the next turn for Guardian Sphinx. We would be foolish not to use Penguin Soldier in this deck. It can be brought out without tributes and its bounicng abilities are amazing. Spirit Reaper works best when attacking on an open field, just like Don Zaloog. He also gives you back some advantage. Morphing Jar has been discussed as well: decreasing your opponent’s hand size after bouncing a lot of cards is a pretty nice and original strategy to use. Magician of Faith is to get back precious Spell Cards, mainly Giant Trunade and Graceful Charity to get advantages. Breaker doesn’t really support the bounce theme, but he does a great job as a S/T Remover in order to make sure your Guardian Sphinx stays out a bit longer. Tsukuyomi is in for the heavy Flip-Control that this deck needs. Together with Penguin Soldier and Gravekeeper’s Guard, the bouncing abilities of this deck become just insane! Finally, there is Sangan. It’s a must in this deck: It can search out 13 out of the 17 monsters, which is defenitely good.

The monster line-up is obviously focused on the Bouncing Strategy. Most of the monsters have the effect of removing cards from the field, which is what bouncing is all about. You’ll also notice that this deck runs a pretty high amount of monsters with a high DEF. Guardian Sphinx, Gravekeeper’s Guard and Legendary Jujitsu Master are very hard to destroy in battle, and with the right protection, Spell and Trap Cards won’t take them out that easily too. Although this deck runs 2 Tribute Monsters without any cards that help bringing them out easily (like Brain Control for example), you shouldn’t have a hard time getting them out. With all the high DEF monsters, you will be able to maintain the Field Presence and use those monsters as tributes for your Tribute Monsters.

The Spells are very important to this deck. They provide the speed to this deck, which is something it defenitely needs. Let’s write down the Spell line-up before we continue.

Spells: 13x

1 Scapegoat
1 Confiscation
1 Heavy Storm
3 Giant Trunade
1 Book of Taiyou1 Graceful Charity
1 Premature Burial
1 Smashing Ground
1 The Shallow Grave
1 My Body As a Shield
1 Mystical Space Typhoon 

Scapegoat is in here to provide some extra solid defense. Confiscation has already been talked about. It shows you what your opponent is planning to do, but it enables you to discard cards you bounced back to the opponent’s hand also. Heavy Storm is Giant Trunade’s big brother. It gets rid of all S/T on the field – permanently! Book of Moon is nearly a Staple in this deck. If you somehow are stuck with an attack position Guardian Sphinx in your opponent’s turn, this is the answer. The high amount of Flip-Effects makes this card very handy as well. Then there is Giant Trunade, one awesome card that is in here three times! That might seem like a lot, but since your opponent can set all of his/her returned S/T cards the turn after you’ve used this again, you will need multiple copies of this so that you can do another turn of swarm when you’ve already done that once before. Graceful Charity doesn’t really need to be explained. The big version of Treasure Map, that’s how you could see it. But unlike Treasure Map, this card doesn’t need a specific situation to occur to be activated, no. This card can be activated without needing something else to trigger it. And besides that, it’s just so versatile, one of the most combo-orientated cards ever, and this deck likes that. Premature Burial also works wonders in this deck. Bringing back Guardian Sphinx is something that’s absolutely amazing with this deck, since Guardian Sphinx will flip himself down, which destroys the Premature Burial, but leaves himself on the field. Not to mention how well this card works with Giant Trunade! Even when Giant Trunade returns Premature to your hand, the equipped monster will still remain on the field, since the card text on on Premature Burial states: ‘When this card is destroyed, the monster is also destroyed.’ This does not include returning from the field to the hand. Smashing Ground is a card that I put in to form some sort of back-up. When your opponent has a monster that just won’t get away (since it can be summoned over and over again when returned to the hand), this card is the answer to it. The Shallow Grave is another solid Spell Card choice in this deck. Since most of your monsters are Flip-Effects, you want them to be face-down most of the time. This card lets you do that. My Body As a Shield is in for protection, like said earlier. It helps you dealing with the overpopular Nobleman of Crossout, but with many more cards as well. And finally Mystical Space Typhoon. Another form of S/T Removal that is absolutely fantastic in almost every single deck. It helps with the protection of your monsters as well.

As you might have noticed already, I didn’t include some of the so-called Staple Cards. Snatch Steal isn’t in here. Nobleman of Crossout wasn’t included as well. Why? Because this deck will make your opponent have a clear field most of the time, which makes these two cards useless at some times. And besides, this deck has a lot of Monster Removal already in the monster line-up. Although the destruction of monsters is better than the bouncing of them in general, this’ll work just fine. I also chose to exclude Spiritualism. With Heavy Storm, Mystical Space Typhoon and 3 copies of Giant Trunade, that card wasn’t really necessary.

And then we come to the Traps. With 17 monsters and 13 Spells, we will have about 10 Traps to add, but that won’t be too hard. Let’s take a look at the line-up first.

Traps: 10x

1 Mirror Force
1 Robbin Goblin
1 Treasure Map1 Trap Dustshoot
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Call of the Haunted
3 Compulsory Evacuation Device

Wow, exactly 10 Traps! Mirror Force is in, even tough it isn’t really necessary. But in case you aren’t able to get out Guardian Sphinx, this card might save you at some times. Robbin Goblin works just great in this deck! With the open field you can attack into all the time, this card can lead to drastic advantages. And it’s a nice thing to activate when your opponent attacks your Gravekeeper’s Guard with a used Breaker, or when you attack direcly with Don Zaloog. Treasure Map has already been discussed: Combines well with Giant Trunade, actually, it’s the only card it combines with and that’s why I decided to include one copy only. Two of them might result in bad hands, since this card can only be activated in response to your Giant Trunade. Trap Dustshoot is another card that comines well with the bouncing cards. As said earlier, bouncing increases the hand size of your opponent and thus you will meet the requirements of this card quite often. And just like Confiscation, this card gives you some ‘inside’ information about what your opponent is planning. Torrential Tribute is just stapled. When things aren’t going the way you planned, this card can be a game safer. Combine it with Scapegoat in the End Phase, or just activate Scapegoat to force your opponent into summoning more monsters to the field so that he/she can finish off the Goat Tokens faster. Solemn Judgment is a card that helps this deck a lot. It can negate almost any card in a situation in which one of your main monsters is about to be destroyed. Call of the Haunted is another staple card, just like Torrential Tribute and Graceful Charity. It allows you to bring back a lost monster to the field to use it once again. Together with Tsukuyomi or Book of Moon, you can even make good use out of Attack Position Flip-Effect Monsters. And then, 3 copies of Compulsory Evacuation Device! Now that might seem like a lot, but this is just a typical example of a card that supports this theme as good as possible. A Trap Card that’s very simple: ‘Select one monster on the field and return it to the owner’s hand.’ It clears the field for Don Zaloog and Spirit Reaper. On top of that, it also allows you to return your flipped Flip-Effect Monsters to your own hand so that you can use them again. And the best part of all: It’s a chainable Trap, meaning that you can get off a 1-for-1 trade with this card when it’s targeted by Mystical Space Typhoon or Dust Tornado! So in short, this card rocks.

Well, now that I have explained each and every choice I made when creating this deck, I think it’s time to make you a familiar with this deck before even playing with it by telling you how to duel with it.

Tips when dueling with the Bounce Deck

When you’re using this deck, make sure that it fits your own playstyle. This deck focuses on building up a solid defense to bring out Guardian Sphinx. That’s when the massive Bounce Strategy can begin. From that point, the deck becomes a bit more aggresive in its playstyle: playing Don Zaloog and Spirit Reaper to take control over your opponent’s hand and decreasing his/her amount of resources very quickly. The targeting hand removal (Confiscation and Trap Dustshoot) will make sure that you can get rid of the right cards, unlike with Spirit Reaper and Don, since they blindly discard a card out of your opponent’s hand. When you succeeded in bringing out the Guardian Sphinx (this could be done very easily by setting a Gravekeeper’s Guard or Legendary Jujitsu Master, who both have pretty solid DEF so that they will survive one turn) and at least one Hand Disruptor (Don or Spirit Reaper), you must maintain the Field Presence you managed to get. Use Compulsory Evacuation Device and Giant Trunade to prevent your monsters from being annoyed by opposing cards. Then, at a certain point, you should’ve got that many advantages through the Reapers and Don Zaloogs that your opponent won’t be able to recover anymore. You’re dominating the field then, with all of your powerful monsters, so that your opponent will keep losing Life Points.

Main threats to the Bounce Deck

A real threat to this deck would be a heavy Aggro Deck. Because of its enormous speed, this deck might not be able to gain control of the field. Even the high DEF monsters won’t stand a chance to the multiple Cyber Dragons and Monarchs. That brings me to the next point: Cyber Dragon. Your Compulsory will be completely useless against this card, since he can be Special Summon again during the exact same turn. Luckily, Guardian Sphinx has a rock-solid 2400 DEF, which makes him virtually invincible. Now you might think: ‘Well, the Monarchs can’t take him out, so why does Aggro form a threat to this deck?’ I’ll try to explain. The problem that this deck faces when dueling against an Aggro Deck is that it becomes very hard to bring Guardian Sphinx out. All your other monsters have 1900 DEF at max, and that’s easily beaten by Cyber Dragon. Maybe this explains the addition of Mirror Force: It counters certain threats that can’t be dealt with by Compulsory. But if you manage to get it out (by using Graceful Charity to dump it and revive it afterwards with The Shallow Grave for example), you will have a good change of winning the duel. Since Guardian Sphinx will be face-down most of the time, even Soul Control will have a hard time dealing with it. The Flip-Down/Up effect makes him immune to a lot of cards, like Brain Control, Snatch Steal and of course Smashing Ground. When dueling against an Aggro or Soul Control Deck, make sure that you have a well-built side deck prepared so that you can change your dueling style a bit after the first match. Siding a Spell Shield Type – 8 and multiple Sakuretsu Armors/Widespread Ruins/Bottomless Trap Holes won’t hurt.

Bottom Line: This is a deck with a lot of potential. Thanks to the Bouncing Effects, you can attack on a clear field and gain massive advantages that way.

That’s it for this article. I hope you enjoyed; at least I enjoyed writing it.

If you want to share any of your comments, thoughts, ideas, decks or anything else with me, feel free to send me an e-mail at ShineSoldier@gmail.com

I assure you: Your mail will be answered.

‘Til next time,

~ShineSoldier~