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ShineSoldier on YuGiOh
Deck Analysis: Skull Servant’s Empire
April 28, 2006 

Today’s subject will be Skull Servant, a card that has been around since the beginning of the game and one that I have always liked for some reason. He was released back in the days of Legend of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon and just like a lot of other cards in that package, this card totally sucked. Being a 300 ATK / 200 DEF monster isn’t bad in general. Spirit Reaper is still popular, isn’t he? Being an effectless 300/200 monster certainly is bad. With only so few attack points, and even less defense points, almost all monsters in existence will wipe it out in battle, meaning that he can’t defend its user properly and it gives the opponent a very easy way to gain advantage. This is why Skull Servant isn’t a good card that sees a lot of play.

Fortunately, The Lost Millenium was released. A package that introduced the Elemental Heroes to us. It also gave us Brain Control and Card of Sanctity, who was made a whole lot worser than it was on the television serie. But along with all of those notable cards, we also got a new form of Skull Servant support: King of the Skull Servants.

It gave Skull Servant fans a reason to actually play a decent Skull Servant Deck, and for all of those people out there (and all the other people), I’m going to construct one.

Here is the Deck List:

Skull Servant’s Empire (41)

Monsters: 20x

1 Jinzo

1 Sangan

1 Morphing Jar

2 Spirit Reaper

2 Vampire Lord

3 Skull Servant

2 Pyramid Turtle

1 Night Assailant

1 Magician of Faith

2 Magical Merchant

3 King of the Skull Servants

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

Spells: 12

2 Book of Life

1 Scapegoat

1 Double Attack

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Smashing Ground

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 My Body As a Shield

1 Graceful Charity

1 Snatch Steal

Traps: 9x

2 Chain Destruction

2 Solemn Judgment

1 Deck Devastating Virus

1 Gravity Bind

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

Fusions: 1x

1 Thousand-Eyes Restrict (it’s useful when you side-deck a Metamorphosis)

Deck Summary

This deck focuses on King of the Skull Servants. It´s a card that gains 1000 ATK points for each copy of Skull Servant or itself in the Graveyard of its controller. It´s a Dark and a Zombie, which certainly gives him some decent support. He only has 1 Level Star, which is also a good thing. It makes him able to attack under both Level Limit Area-B and Gravity Bind. Then he has a second effect. Whenever he’s destroyed as a result of battle, you can choose to remove one Skull Servant or another King of the Skull Servants in your Graveyard from play to Special Summon this card back to your side of the field. This makes him a little bit harder to kill, but with the in-built ATK-increasing abilities, he won’t be destroyed in battle most of the time. Because of this, we’ll need to protect him from threats in S/T/M form. Smashing Ground, Mirror Force and Chaos Sorcerer still form a major threat to King of the Skull Servants. Especially Chaos Sorcerer is a tough card to deal with, since it can remove your King of the Skull Servants from play so that it won’t power up other Kings later in the duel. Solemn Judgment does an extremely well job when defending your monsters. It can negate a threat in any form (S/T/M). This makes it very hard for your opponent to take out your King of the Skull Servants. My Body As a Shield is another card that can provide some solid protection for your monsters. It can negate a lot of cards for a smaller cost than Solemn Judgment (assuming you’ve got over 3000 Life Points left) and can be played even on the turn you drew it, unlike Solemn Judgment.

The fact that King of the Skull Servants has ‘?’ ATK points means he can’t be searched out by Sangan or Mystic Tomato. However, Pyramid Turtle is able to search for him, since his defense is 0, which is lower than 2000. That’s why Pyramid Turtle is in this deck: To provide more search abilities to it so that getting out the King of the Skull Servants at the right time will be a bit easier.

In order to increase the utility of Pyramid Turtle, I decided to add Spirit Reaper and Vampire Lord both 2 times. They can both be brought out by Pyramid Turtle, which gives that card 11 cards to look for in total. Now Pyramid Turtle won’t be a dead draw anymore. But Spirit Reaper and Vampire Lord aren’t in this deck solely for increasing Pyramid Turtle’s utility. They both have their own abilities that are very much appreciated in this deck. Spirit Reaper can either provide you with a solid wall of defense or a way of drastically decreasing the opponent’s hand size. Especially when you’ve got both King of the Skull Servants with a quite high ATK value and him out. You could then take out all opposing monsters with the King and get off direct attacks with Spirit Reaper.

Vampire Lord has several positive points in this deck besides increasing Pyramid Turtle’s utility. He also helps with creating some sort of protection for your King, since he can remove threats before they’re drawn by your opponent, thanks to its second effect. When you can inflict damage with him, make sure to call ‘Trap’ with its effect. Most Traps that are seen nowadays have the effect of destroying monsters. Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute and Bottomless Trap Hole are good examples of this. When you can discard them from your opponent’s deck, you can get rid of one possible future threat. Vampire Lord also makes your opponent’s removal cards he already has useless. But even though he does that, your opponent is sometimes forced to activate a Sakuretsu Armor when Vampire Lord attacks, since he/she would take too much damage otherwise. This leads to an instant +1 advantage, which is certainly nice. And above that all, it draws monster removal away from your King that’s going to hit the field later on. The third point is that Vampire Lord also increases the utility of one other card in this deck: Deck Devastating Virus. With him and three copies of the King (who only needs two copies of the right monster in the Graveyard to get 2000 ATK), you’ll have enough monsters to use the effect of Deck Devastating Virus.

That’s the next card I would like to discuss in this article. Deck Devastating Virus is a really nasty card to use when your opponent has finally found a way to get rid of your Vampire Lord or King of the Skull Servants. Let’s say your opponent activates Smashing Ground to take out King of the Skull Servants (highly unlikely, thanks to its 0 DEF). You can then chain Deck Devastating Virus and tribute the King. This’ll lead to a –1 disadvantage, but Deck Devastating Virus has such devastating effects that it could easily result in a +1 or +2 advantage. It shows you your opponent’s entire hand and all of his/her monsters on the field, plus all the cards he/she draws in the next couple of turns. You could destroy all Spirit Reapers, Exiled Forces and Injection Fairy Lilies, who all form some sort of threat to this deck.

The next and final card I would like to mention apart from the other ones is Double Attack. It’s a Normal Spell Card that allows one of your monsters to attack twice during this turn, as long as you discard one other monster from your hand that has more Level Stars than the selected monster. This is a card that works extremely well in this deck, ‘cause if you’re able to pump a King’s ATK to 3000 or 4000 points, you could take away a lot of Life Points. Because I included this card, I also needed to add other ones that can give you back some of the cards that you lose in the process, since this card is basically gives you a –2 disadvantage to deal with. This is why I included Night Assailant. If you send it to the Graveyard with Double Attack, you can retrieve one Flip-Effect Monster from your Graveyard and add it to your hand. This could allow you to get more advantages through either Morphing Jar or Magical Merchant, or you can get precious Spell Cards (even Double Attack) back by regaining Magician of Faith.

Strengths of the Skull Servant Deck

King of the Skull Servants is a monster with a lot of potential. Its ATK could easily raise to about 3000 or 4000, which is enough to take everything out. The easy ways of getting Skull Servants in the Graveyard (through Chain Destruction, Magical Merchant or Morphing Jar), it shouldn’t be that hard to pump the King up to a real beaststick. This makes it a very dangerous card for your opponent. High ATK Monsters are highly underrated. With all the solid removal cards we’ve got, they’re easy to deal with. In some cases, this is true, but this deck has enough ways to negate such cards. Solemn Judgment and My Body As a Shield negate pretty much any card that forms a threat to the King, while Vampire Lord draws gets rid of potential threats in the future. The potential of a combination with the King and Double Attack shouln’t be underestimated either. With a single Chain Destruction that was used on Skull Servant earlier in the duel, you can pump the King to a 2000 ATK monster right away. Knowing Skull Servant, he won’t stick around for long, meaning that you’ll get your King as a 3000 ATK monster almost immediately. Use this with Double Attack and you can do a potential 6000 points of damage. If you managed to attack directly with Vampire Lord once before this, then you’ve won the duel. This deck can get out a real big monster pretty easily, and that’s something for your opponent to fear.

Weaknesses of the Skull Servant Deck

Even though there are easy ways to bring out the King with a high ATK value, you’ll have to have some sort of defense in order to defend yourself properly. And even though Pyramid Turtle, Spirit Reaper and Gravity Bind have already been added to do this, there still is a major problem with this deck: Loss of advantage. Chain Destruction and Double Attack both generate disadvantages, and sadly enough, those two cards are two of this deck’s main cards. With the addition of Morphing Jar and two copies of Magical Merchant, this weakness was made slightly less dangerous, but it still remains present. If you’re now being careful enough with your resources, you won’t be able to maintain field presence and defend yourself, which is going to leave you undefended for opponent’s attacks. For this problem, I’ve also added certain cards. Scapegoat, Gravity Bind (as stated earlier) and Mirror Force can all protect you in a very nice way, but sometimes, it’’s just not good enough. However, when you do manage to get out the King with a high ATK value, you can take control of the game very fast. Combine him with a Jinzo to cancel out all Trap Cards (this is when you should begin calling ‘Spell’ with Vampire Lord’s effect) and a Book of Life in your hand so that you can revive him whenever he’s destroyed. If you do so, you’ll be just fine.

Theoretical Dueling Tips

A duel with this deck is going to be a bit slow in the early part of the game. You’ll be defending yourself most of the time so that you can get the right cards to summon the King. When your opponent is getting too many monsters on his/her field for your liking, then set a Torrential Tribute or Mirror Force to balance the duel again. You could even use Gravity Bind or Scapegoat to but you some more time. Then, when you are fully prepared, try to bring out a Jinzo. But make sure that it doesn’t get destroyed the next turn right away. You should have already drawn away 1 or 2 Smashing Grounds and it would really help to get rid of the opponent’s Snatch Steal in the early game too. If you’ve got Jinzo out, your opponent won’t be able to defend himself/herself with Traps, and thus the monsters become the main form of protection. Bring out King of the Skull Servants (while you hopefully have three copies of Skull Servant in the Graveyard), activate Double Attack, take out the last monster your opponent has with Jinzo and deal a nice 6000 points of damage. Next turn, you just take out the monster with the King to ensure it’s going to be destroyed (unless it’s Spirit Reaper) and finish the duel with Jinzo.

If you’re just not able to bring out the King, then you should use strategy B, which would be focused around Vampire Lord to buy you mass amounts of time. If you’re lucky, you might get out that King after a couple of turns anyway. If you don’t, then you should use Vampire Lord (possibly combined with a Deck Devastating Virus) to take control over your opponent. It’s true that Cyber Dragon is Vampire Lord’s worst enemy, but Mirror Force, Solemn Judgment and Night Assailant can take care of that.

Even though Vampire Lord forms a nice target for Deck Devastating Virus, you should only use it when completely necessary. A perfect scenario would be you summoning Vampire Lord, the opponent activating Bottomless Trap Hole and then you activating Deck Devastating Virus. That way, you get massive advantages (assuming your opponent is holding a couple of 1500- ATK Monsters and your Vampire Lord will be sent to the Graveyard, meaning that he can be revived later on with Book of Life or something like that.

In short, you should open a duel defensively, but as time goes by, you should become more agressive so that you can take control over the field and eventually over the entire duel.

Final Words

I know that I left some options out. I completely ignored Royal Decree, since he doesn’t work with a deck like this. Chain Destruction and Deck Devastating Virus would both be negated by it, and those two cards are absolutely necessary in this deck. It’s true that Jinzo negates these cards, but even if you’ve got these down and Jinzo out, you’ll still have a 2400 ATK beaststick to defend yourself.

I also skipped Premature Burial, since it would make your King weaker. It’s then vulnerable to S/T removal as well, and that makes him easier to destroy. Book of Life just brings him back without attaching itself to him.

This deck should be a lot of fun to play with, especially because Skull Servant is the card that’s considered to be the worst card ever (this isn’t true at all), so it would be nice to take out your opponent with a deck based around it.

If you’re ever going to construct a deck like this one, make sure to think about having fun. Even though you might not win all the time, you’re at least dueling with one of the most original decks out there, which makes you an automatic winner. You were able to use an original deck, instead of a Cookie Cutter Deck that’s only focused on winning.

Anyway, that does it for this article.

I hope you enjoyed it.

All of your suggestions, reactions and/or comments can be sent to ShineSoldier@gmail.com

‘Til next time,

~ShineSoldier~