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ShineSoldier on
YuGiOh
Deck Analysis: System Shutdown
May 1, 2006
Advantage is important, that’s a fact. Advantage through
card effects is nice. An even better way of gaining
advantage is to get it through battle: All monsters you
destroy with one of your monsters in battle are 1-for-0’s in
your favor, and that’s the best type of advantage you can
get: Decreasing your opponent’s amount of resources without
using any of your own. What fascinated me, was the ability
of a small group of monsters to return monsters they
destroyed in battle to the top of the owner’s deck. With
this ability, you won’t only generate advantage, but you’ll
also let your opponent draw the same monster over and over
again, meaning that he/she can’t get new resources to get
rid of your monsters.
There aren’t many monsters in the game
with this kind of effect. Actually, I can only count three
of them that are actually playable: Mystical Knight of
Jackal, Winged Sage Falcos and Mystic Swordsman LV6. The
Mystical Knight can return any monster it destroys to the
top of your opponent’s deck. A great effect. Winged Sage
Falcos can do the exact same thing, only with a small
drawback added. The monster that Winged Sage Falcos destroys
has to be in attack mode, which could form a problem. Then
there is Mystic Swordsman LV6, who requires the destroyed
monster to be in face-down defense position.
As you can see already, the last two monsters don’t work
well together. The first one has to destroy an attack mode
monster, while the second one needs the monster to be in
defense mode. That’s why we have to make a choice: Are we
going to include Falcos or the Mystic Swordsman in this
deck?
I’m going to create this deck by using Mystical Knight of
Jackal and Winged Sage Falcos, so no Mystic Swordsman. This
is because the Mystic Swordsman requires its own deck to
work in. It needs to be summoned through the effect of
Mystic Swordsman LV4 in order to attack in the turn he’s
summoned, because if he’s not, he’ll be turned face-down
first. The drawback that Falcos has is easily cured. Final
Attack Orders is the perfect cure for this. Even if you
attack a defense position monster, it’s still going to be
switched into attack mode as soon as it’s flipped face-up by
the attack.
System Shutdown (40)
Monsters: 18
3 Mystical Knight of Jackal
3 Mirage Dragon
3 Spirit Reaper
2 Winged Sage Falcos
2 Gravekeeper’s Spy
2 Magician of Faith
1 Kaiser Seahorse
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 Sangan
Spells: 12
1
Confiscation
1
Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Graceful Charity
1 Premature Burial
2 Rush Recklessly
1 Snatch Steal
1 Scapegoat
1 Swords of Revealing Light
2 The Shallow Grave
Traps: 10
3
Blast with Chain
1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Solemn Judgment
2 Dust Tornado
2 Final Attack Orders
Deck Summary
This deck is obviously focused on returning monsters to the
opponent’s deck by destroying them with either Mystical
Knight of Jackal or Winged Sage Falcos. Even though the
Mystical Knight is a two-tribute monster, I still chose to
add him three times. I did that, because he’s absolutely
necessary in this deck. Two copies of him is just too less
to let this deck work properly. In order to ease the way of
summoning him, I also added two copies of Gravekeeper’s Spy
and one of Kaiser Seahorse. They both make the Mystical
Knight a lot more easier to summon. I also included
Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted and two copies of The
Shallow Grave. This might sound like a bad idea, but if you
think about it, it makes sense. All of those cards can bring
monsters from the Graveyard back to the field so that you
can tribute them for the Mystical Knight, or you could bring
the Mystical Knight back himself. The Shallow Grave also
lets your opponent Special Summon a monster, that’s true,
but this deck can take advantage out of that situation very
easily. If you were able to bring out the Mystical Knight
during that same turn, you could take out the opponent’s
monster with it, and in case you think you won’t have a
problem dealing with it multiple times, then you could
choose to return it to your opponent’s deck and begin your
lock.
I’ll explain the strategy behind this deck now.
The focus of this deck is to bring out Mystical Knight of
Jackal and Winged Sage Falcos. As soon as you get one of
them out, you´ll need to support them by using cards like
Final Attack Orders, Blast with Chain and Rush Recklessly.
All of them work amazingly well with Winged Sage Falcos. His
attack is boosted so he can take out any monster that tries
to attack him and then, if your opponent is going to play
defensively, you play Final Attack Orders to get the lock
going. Mystical Knight of Jackal is harder to bring out, but
needs less support than the Winged Sage Falcos. He already
boasts a wonderful 2700 ATK points, so he can take out
almost anything he wants to. Plus, he can return defense
mode monsters as well. Obviously, Spell and Trap Cards
remain a threat to you, but as soon as your lock gets
active, your opponent will have to take you down with the
Spell and Traps he/she has left, since the only cards he/she
will draw are monsters for the remainder of the duel. This
is why there are three copies of Mirage Dragon in this deck.
It can negate oftenly played cards like Mirror Force and
Sakuretsu Armor. To counter Bottomless Trap Hole, I included
two copies of Dust Tornado, but you could also use Solemn
Judgment for this. Although, I would recommend saving your
Solemn Judgment to counter Spell Cards, since this deck
doesn’t run a lot of cards to negate them.
Because there isn’t a lot of protection against Spell Cards,
I chose to use three copies of Spirit Reaper. He can serve
as tribute fodder for your Mystical Knight, but when you
already have that guy out, you can use Spirit Reaper to
decrease your opponent’s options even further.
Something you might’ve noticed is the absence of Torrential
Tribute. I´ve got a very good reason for that. It´s mass
removal, which is good most of the time. But it isn´t in
this deck. Sure, Mirror Force is in, but that one only hurts
your opponent´s Attack Position monsters. Torrential
Tribute clears the entire field of all monsters and that
drastically decreases the usefulness of your lockdown
strategy. Unlike Mirror Force, this card wipes out all of
your opponent’s monsters, which isn´t something that could
be called ‘good’ in this deck. That is why I left that
‘staple’ Trap Card out.
Strengths of the ‘System Shutdown’ Deck
One thing that this deck can do extremely well is obviously
locking down your opponent. The abilities of this deck to
force your opponent into drawing the same card over and over
again is not only annoying, but also gamebreaking when used
correctly. The fact that your opponent won’t be able to
collect new resources to find new ways of taking down your
monsters so that he/she can recover from your assault is
something that shouldn’t be underestimated. If your opponent
isn’t holding any monsters, which is very well possible if
you got off some direct attacks with a Spirit Reaper, you
can always force your opponent to bring a monster back with
The Shallow Grave so that you can still get your lock
started. Another card that has great synergy with some other
cards in this deck is Blast with Chain. It is often
overlooked, but in fact, it’s a very useful card. In this
deck, it’s able to boost your Winged Sage Falcos to a 2200
ATK monster, which means that he can take out a Cyber Dragon
that’s attacking him. If that’s the case, you can return
that Cyber Dragon to the top of the opponent’s deck and your
lock is placed.
You see how easy it is to pull this lock? The right cards
are all in this deck multiple times so that the odds of
drawing them are pretty high. This deck uses a lot of
combinations between cards that can hurt your opponent very
badly if you just use them correctly.
Weaknesses of the ‘System Shutdown’ Deck
This deck has a lot of potential, but only when you get the
right cards together. Like I said earlier, this deck is
pretty combo-orientated, especially Winged Sage Falcos needs
a lot of support. If you aren’t able to combine Winged Sage
Falcos with some ATK-boosting cards, you’re stuck with a
1700 ATK monster that won’t last very long. The same goes
for Mirage Dragon. It’s a very good card to include in this
deck, because it adds protection to your bigger monsters,
but when you’re in a tough situation, this card won’t help
you out, since its effect is useful only when your opponent
is the one in the tough situation. That’s why this deck can
fail when you can’t seem to draw the right support cards.
Several things have been done about this, though. Spirit
Reaper was added, a card that has one of the best stalling
effects ever. It’s able to stick around quite a long time,
which might buy you the necessary time to draw the right
support cards after all. Gravekeeper’s Spy is a monster with
a reliable 2000 DEF. She will keep her stand for a while
also. Still, Cyber Dragon forms a main threat to her. I also
included Scapegoat, together with Swords of Revealing Light.
Both are able to keep your opponent from attacking for a
while so that you can still get the necessary support cards.
As you can see, I tried to cure this problem as well as I
could, but at certain times, you just can´t draw any of
these cards. The odds of this happening have been decreased,
though, but it can still happen.
Theoretical Dueling Tips
In a duel in which you use this deck, you will most likely
want to open with a defender. Spirit Reaper and
Graveleeper´s Spy are both reliable cards to open a duel
with. Another opening move could be to summon Winged Sage
Falcos and back it up with two face-down cards. One
of them is either Rush Recklessly or Blast with Chain
(preferably Blast with Chain, since it stays on the field
after activation) and the other one is Scapegoat. This is a
perfect opening move, since you can defend yourself very
well. If your opponent throws a big monster at you, play the
Blast with Chain. If your opponent activates Smashing
Ground, chain Scapegoat so that you’re still defended. If
your going second and you make this move, then your opponent
doesn’t want to activate Heavy Storm, since you can chain
Blast with Chain then to destroy one of his/her cards. Once
you brought out a decent defense, you can start planning the
arrival of Mystical Knight of Jackal. It would be a good
idea to back him up with a Solemn Judgment or a Mirage
Dragon to make sure he’s not being destroyed in the very
same turn that you brought him out. You can then start with
your lock: Use Mystical Knight of Jackal to consistently
return opposing monsters to the top of their deck to give
your opponent dead draws all the time. The Mirage Dragon
will prevent your Mystical Knight from falling prey to
in-battle-triggered Trap Cards, that are very popular at the
moment, and Solemn Judgment can always serve as solid
negation. Even if your opponent manages to destroy your
Mystical Knight, you’ve still got 4 revival cards left. Now
you might think that The Shallow Grave is a card that isn’t
very useful to bring back the Mystical Knight, since he only
has a small 1200 DEF, but together with a face-down Final
Attack Orders, that might be an even better choice than to
bring him back with Premature Burial or Call of the Haunted.
Your opponent thinks that he/she will take your monster out
in battle, but instead, you activate Final Attack Orders,
which switches your Mystical Knight to attack mode as soon
as he’s flipped up by the attack. This’ll mean that the
opponent’s monster will most likely be destroyed and thus it
returns to the top of the opponent’s deck. Again, your lock
has been placed.
The best way to duel with this deck would thus be playing
calm. Never overextend, unless you’re completely sure of the
fact that your lock has been timed well and that your
opponent can’t catch you of guard with a Torrential Tribute.
Remember that if you’ve got Mirage Dragon out and your
opponent has multiple face-down cards and he/she chooses not
to activate any of them when you attack, that doesn’t mean
that they’re all in-battle-triggered Trap Cards, not at all.
Torrential Tribute and Bottomless Trap Hole could be there
as well. This is a mistake that is oftenly made, don’t let
it catch you off guard.
Final Words
The Deck List of this deck looked entirely different when I
first created it. I chose to use Anti-Spell Fragrance, along
with Chiron the Mage to make an end to your opponent Spells
so that your lock would be even better than it already was.
This was a mistake. Anti-Spell Fragrance is a wonderful
card, but only in a deck that is built around it, and only
around that one card, not around other cards as well. In
this deck, we’ve got mutiple Quick-Play Spells, like
Mystical Space Typhoon and Rush Recklessly. The old version
of the deck also ran Book of Moon, My Body As a Shield and
Enemy Controller to lighten the downsides that Anti-Spell
Fragrance has (since it forces you to put down Spell Cards
first as well). But still, it slowed the deck itself too
much, since you couldn’t use Premature Burial or The Shallow
Grave on the turn you drew them, which means that you would
have to take the risk of setting them on the field first.
The Deck List that I use now is far more useful than the
older one. It has found ways to deal with bad draws very
well and also changed its main focus towards the Mystical
Knight instead of Winged Sage Falcos.
I know some of you might think: ‘Why didn’t you include Back
to Square One or Phoenix Wing Wind Blast?’ Well, that’s
because this deck focuses on returning monsters to the deck
by battle, not through the effects of cards. Both
Back to Square One and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast are –1
disadvantage-cards, while the monsters in this deck all
provide you with +1 advantages. So that’s why.
This deck gives you great pleasure during duels and that’s
what Yu-Gi-Oh is all about. Winning of course is fun as well
and that’s something that this deck can do also. Have fun
with this deck and I hope you enjoyed this article.
All of your comments, suggestions, reactions or anything
else can be sent to
ShineSoldier@gmail.com
*One last thing: I’ve got quite a lot positive e-mails about
my Card Creations idea, so you can expect such an article in
the near future. Since it’s almost finished already, I won’t
be able to put in cards that are sent to me now anymore. All
cards you send to me will be placed in my second article of
that serie – that’s a promise ;)
‘Til next time,
~ShineSoldier~ |
