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Deck Analysis:

Relinquished’s Revenge
May 8, 2006

Stealing opponent’s monsters is always fun and advantageous. Your opponent loses a monster, you get a monster, sounds like advantage to me. Most of today’s cards that can do this are either restricted, banned or have a great drawback. Brain Control is one of the very few cards that is still allowed in threes, just like Change of Heart did. Snatch Steal, who can steal one’s monster permanently, has been limited to one per deck, but many people want it to be banned (and for good reason). Reshef the Dark Being (a card around which Jerome McHale has created an entire deck at Metagame.com a while ago) is another card that can steal monsters, but he has a big drawback and needs an entire deck built around him to work. That’s completely possible, but I’m going to construct a deck around another monster that has the ability to steal opponent’s monster. This one does it a little bit different than we’re used to, since it isn’t actually stealing. It’s more like using opponent’s monsters to boost his own strengths. Oh, in case you didn’t notice yet, I’m talking about Relinquished.

Relinquished is one of my favorite monsters in the game. It has been hanging around from the release of the Starter Decks. It was Pegasus’ favorite card (this should give you a nice idea in which Starter Deck he can be found) and for a good reason. He’s a Ritual Monster, which is mostly considered to be a bad thing, because of the massive loss of advantage you suffer by bringing one out. However, Relinquished is a Ritual Monster that doesn’t provide you with that many disadvantages at all. He’s a Level 1 monster, which means that you only need to tribute a Token and then you can summon him. Scapegoat anyone? Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands is probably the best Ritual Support Card ever created. It can get you a Ritual Spell or Monster Card when it’s Normal Summoned, which nets you with a +1 advantage. Scapegoat gives you a +3 advantage (you give up 1 card and get 4 cards in return). The summoning of Relinquished only costs you two cards: Black Illusion Ritual and a Token. Relinquished isn’t lost in the process, so he doesn’t count as a ‘lost card’. This makes the entire situation result into a +2 advantage in your favor. Of course, there are a lot of other ways to bring out Relinquished, this is just one of them.

Now before I continue, I’ll write down the Deck List for you. Here it is:

Relinquished’s Revenge: (40)

Monsters: 17

1 Jinzo

2 Relinquished

1 Anteatereatingant

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch

3 Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands

2 Mirage Dragon

2 Magical Merchant

2 Magician of Faith

1 Tsukuyomi

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

Spells: 13

2 Black Illusion Ritual

1 Monster Reincarnation

1 Swords of Revealing Light

1 Book of Moon

1 Scapegoat

1 Fulfillment of the Contract

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Snatch Steal

1 Graceful Charity

1 Premature Burial

1 Nobleman of Crossout

Traps: 10

2 Draining Shield

2 Solemn Judgment

2 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Magic Cylinder

1 Mirror Force

Deck Summary

This deck can be really deadly in the right hands. It can bring out its main card, Relinquished, very quickly. That is because of the addition of Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands. It can get you a Ritual Spell Card or Ritual Monster Card, it’s up to you. So if you’re holding Black Illusion Ritual, you can summon Manju to add Relinquished to your hand. Sangan also helps with the summoning of Relinquished. Not only is it perfect fodder to use for the Ritual Summon since you get to search a card from your deck, but it’s also capable of searching out Relinquished if it was destroyed. It can even get you Manju, in case you’re already holding Relinquished in your hand. This deck also uses multiple draw engines to get the needed cards in your hand quicker. Magical Merchant and Graceful Charity tin your deck and allow you to increase your options. That way, you can get out Relinquished even faster.

Tsukuyomi and Book of Moon are great cards in this deck as well. With the ability of Relinquished to steal opponent’s monsters and attach them to itself, you can get a lot of advantage. However, Relinquished can only be equipped with one monster at a time, which slightly decreases the utility of Relinquished. But when Relinquished is destroyed in battle while he was equipped with a monster, then only that monster is destroyed, meaning that you can ‘absorb’ another monster on your own turn (and that monster will be stronger than the one you ‘absorbed’ earlier, since it was able to take it out in battle). So actually, you’re forcing your opponent to play weaker monsters than the one you stole, since you could just suicide into a stronger monster to ‘absorb’ it afterwards. If your opponent is playing weaker monsters, then you can always use Tsukuyomi and Book of Moon to flip Relinquished face-down and thus destroying the monster that was equipped to him. If you then Flip Summon Relinquished again, you can take over the weaker monster, and even though it’s weaker than the previous one, you will still get a +1 advantage and you’ll force your opponent to play even weaker monsters!

I’ll now explain the high amount of Tribute Monsters in this deck. There are three in total: Jinzo, Anteatereating Giant (I prefer to call him like this, since the other name is kinda...Well, it’s weird) and Mobius the Frost Monarch. All of them have their own purpose in this deck. Jinzo is for protection. It negates all Trap Cards, meaning that your Relinquished will be safe from Saku’s and Mirror Force. Even though your own Traps will be negated as well, Jinzo is still a very useful card. And besides, it doesn’t even matter that much. Traps are mainly for protection, but when you’ve got a 2400-attacker out, you won’t need that much protection anyway.

Anteatereating Giant is another ‘Tribute Monster’. It doesn’t require any tributes to be made in order to be summoned, but you need to send two S/T Cards on your side of the field to the Graveyard in order to bring him out. This card has always been considered as ‘bad’, but I think it has quite some potential. Sure, it’s a –2 disadvantage, but sending two S/T Cards to the Graveyard means that you can also send a monster that is equipped to Relinquished to the Graveyard, since they are considered to be Spell Cards. This card has great synergy with Relinquished: Not only does it allow you to ‘destroy’ an opponent’s monster (steal one with Relinquished, tribute it for Anteater), but it also provides some very solid defense. Combine this with Jinzo, and you can destroy all of your opponent’s Trap Cards without having to worry about the chainable ones.

Finally, there is Mobius the Frost Monarch, another card that provides solid protection to your Relinquished and also forms great synergy with it. If necessary, you could even destroy a monster that’s equipped to Relinquished.

Most of the Tribute Monsters in this deck provide defense. But there are many other cards that do this as well. That’s because Relinquished must stay around as long as possible so that you can take full advantage out of him. Other examples of protective cards I added are Solemn Judgment, Mirage Dragon and Swords of Revealing Light. They protect your Relinquished very well and Swords of Revealing Light does a lot more than that alone: When you are stuck with only 1 piece of the necessary cards to bring Relinquished out, this card will defend you for three more turns, giving you three more draws. But besides that, it also flips all of your opponent’s monsters face-up. So if you’ve already got Relinquished out, you can use this to steal a monster that was face-down first, but now not anymore. What does this matter? Now Relinquished gets a (decent) ATK/DEF value. Any face-down monster he absorbs results into not boosting its ATK/DEF at all. It’s still a nice way of getting rid of Flip-Effect Monsters, though.

The last thing I would like to mention is the inclusion of several attack negators. Most of the people think Sakuretsu Armor is superior to Draining Shield nowadays. Life Points isn’t where the duel is about, except when they’re at a real low amount. Sakuretsu Armor results into a 1-for-1 trade, where Draining Shield leaves you with a –1 disadvantage. However, this deck can make good use out of Draining Shield and its counterpart, Magic Cylinder, simply because the targeted monsters remain on the field after activation. This is something that Sakuretsu Armor doesn’t do. Even though it’s better to destroy the monster than to leave it on the field most of the time, it isn’t in this deck. This deck can take advantage out of those situations by absorbing them with Relinquished, so that you still got off with a 1-for-1 trade. But now, you’ve got a little bonus. If you used Draining Shield, you got some extra Life Points and Magic Cylinder would’ve inflicted some damage to your opponent.

But since including too many of these cards would lead to bad draws, especially when you can’t get Relinquished out, I also added some removal cards. Bottomless Trap Hole, Torrential Tribute and Mirror Force are in to help you out when you’re in a tough situation.

Strengths of the Relinquished Deck

This deck has a lot of positive things (which makes me wonder why this deck isn’t seen around that much). Even though Relinquished requires two cards to be brought out, he can give you back a lot more than just two cards. With an effect like his, you could make your opponent suffer great disadvantages. With Relinquished, you’re forcing your opponent to play weaker monsters, or at least, play defensively. Their high ATK monsters will be the perfect attacking target for Relinquished so that he can suicide into them and absorb an even stronger monster than he absorbed the first time.

With cards like Draining Shield and Magic Cylinder, you could stop an attack in case your opponent did manage to get two monsters out at the same time, of which one is stronger than your Relinquished. A Cyber Dragon would be extremely dangerous to this deck (I’ll get back to this later), but for that problem, this deck also has an answer. If you haven’t got a Draining Shield or Magic Cylinder, just use Bottomless Trap Hole.

Because the opponent won’t be able to take out your Relinquished in battle most of the time, he/she is forced to use Spell or Trap Cards to get the job done. That’s where your immense amount of protection jumps in. Anteatereating Giant can get rid of all non-chainable S/T Cards, so that you can destroy a Sakuretsu Armor or Mirror Force each turn. If you can’t get him out, you’ve always got Jinzo, Mobius or Mirage Dragon to back yourself up. And even if your opponent manages to get rid of ‘em, then Solemn Judgment will protect your Relinquished also. And if that’s not enough, you can always use the revival cards: Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted and Monster Reincarnation can all bring back one of the previously mentioned monsters (except for Anteater, he can only be brought back by Monster Reincarnation since it’s a Nomi) to start the fun all over again. When your opponent finally thinks it’s over by playing Lightning Vortex or something like that, you just play Fulfillment of the Contract to get back your Relinquished and start all over again.

As you can see, this deck can generate lots of advantage and that’s defenitely a good thing. Relinquished is a card that can be used both offensively and defensively, which makes this deck so versatile. Together with all of this deck’s protection and maybe a Tsukuyomi, the odds of you winning the duel are certainly high.

Weaknesses of the Relinquished Deck

As I said earlier, Cyber Dragon forms a major threat. When your opponent Special Summons him, he/she can Normal Summon one other monster so that Cyber Dragon can take out Relinquished’s equipped monster and the other Normal Summoned monster Relinquished itself. Even though this deck runs a lot of protection against this threat, you should still be aware of it.

Another great weakness of this deck would be topdecking. Although it’s very unlikely you’ll ever need to topdeck (thanks to all the great defense), the chance is always there. With nothing in your hand or field, drawing a Black Illusion Ritual or Relinquished won’t be a good thing. Solemn Judgment, Monster Reincarnation, Anteater or any other Tribute Monster are horrible, dead topdeck-draws as well, making it very hard to win. Of course there are some great topdecks. Graceful Charity and Mirror Force are wonderful cards to draw in such situations, but the odds of drawing them aren’t very high. Be aware of this. If you’re using this deck and you think it’s a real problem, I’d suggest putting in some Spirit Reapers, Messenger of Peace or Morphing Jar.

Theoretical Dueling Tips

A duel with this deck is going to be fast. The goal of this deck is to take control over the duel as soon as possible, and with the cards that are in this deck, that’s perfectly possible. If you manage to get one of the two Ritual Cards in your opening hand, then summon Manju to get the other one. If you don’t have Manju, use Sangan. You can then get Relinquished, or when you’re already holding him: Manju. When you get Relinquished out, make sure he’s well protected. It’s a smart thing to first summon a Mirage Dragon or Jinzo so that you can’t be hit by a Torrential Tribute or Mirror Force. When you’ve managed to get Relinquished out, then the duel should be yours. If you’ve got a Mirage Dragon out, try to back him and Relinquished up with a Solemn Judgment and possibly a Draining Shield so that you are prepared for almost anything. The best part of the duel starts when you manage to draw Tsukuyomi (of course you could also get her (or him, I don’t know) with Sangan). You can then steal an opponent’s monster every single turn. Your Relinquished will then be at 0 ATK/DEF most of the time, since you’ll mainly be stealing face-down monsters. This doesn’t really matter, though, since you’ve still got Mirage Dragon and Tsukuyomi there to inflict more and more damage. When the game phase shifts to late game, try to get out Anteater (you could do that in the mid game already, though) to get rid of your opponent’s last defense in S/T form so that you’ll be in total control of the game.

Bottomline: If you just play correctly with this deck (which means summoning Relinquished fast and back him up properly), you’ll most likely win the duel.

Final Words

I didn’t include Thousand-Eyes Restrict at all. Even though he fits in perfectly in the Relinquished theme, I just don’t think he’ll fit into this deck’s strategy. Flipping Relinquished (or in this case: Thousand-Eyes Restrict) face-down with Tsukuyomi is a nice strategy, but because of the fact that Thousand-Eyes Restrict prevents all your other monsters to attack, he won’t do anything good as a 0 ATK/DEF Monster. You won’t be able to take advantage out of the ‘I steal your stronger monster’ that effectively either. Also, Draining Shield, Magic Cylinder and Mirror Force would become dead draws sometimes, since TER (Thousand-Eyes Restrict) prevents your opponent’s monsters from attacking as well. That’s all I’ve got to say...

Well, I guess that does it for this article.

I hope you enjoyed it.

All of your suggestions, comments and/or ideas can be sent to the usual address: ShineSoldier@gmail.com

‘Til next time,

~ShineSoldier~