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Merchant Pot Turbo
By: ss4giel
02.20.06

MPT, or Merchant Pot Turbo, is a Japanese deck that has recently become one of the more prominent decks in the American metagame. The main focus of the deck is to be able to abuse Magical Merchant’s milling ability in conjunction with Pot of Avarices restoration ability and 2 for 1 resource gain. It also uses Chaos Sorcerer in order to summon a large, quick monster that instantaneously can become a 2 for 1. MPT aims to make the opponent waste his/her resources before you lose all of yours. Although MPT has many versions, most have the ideal 2-3 Pot of Avarice, 2-3 Chaos Sorcerer, and 3 Magical Merchant as the focal point of the deck. In this article, an average Merchant Pot Turbo will be built in order to help you focus on your own version.

The monster count in Merchant Pot Turbo is always unusually high. It can usually range anywhere from 24-30 monsters. I know you may be thinking, that this is absurd, how can a deck like this win? The deck itself has incredible speed. If a Magical Merchant gets to use its milling effect, it will usually be able to discard 4 to 5 monsters before drawing a spell or trap. First off, we must add 3 copies of Magical Merchant to be able to abuse the milling and speed of the deck. Thunder Dragon is another perfect fit for the deck. It helps to add monsters to the graveyard for Chaos Sorcerer, thin the deck by 2 cards, and can also help with a Card Destruction effect. Instead of Card Destruction being the usual -1, it will become even advantage and allows you to further thin the deck. Chaos Sorcerer will be maxed out as well. The deck will usually be able to hit its light and dark count by turn 3 and fills up nicely for the +1 machine. It’s a great swarmer and allows for quick kills when your opponent isn’t expecting it. Next, 3 copies of Mystic Tomato are added in order for searching capabilities, thinning the deck even more, and the possibility of being able to search out Sangan. Tomato allows you to easily fill up 3 monsters into the graveyard for Pot of Avarice, and can be recycled over and over with it to provide consistent advantage.

Moving on, we have 3 copies of Mystic Tomato in the deck, but no searchables. In order to fix this, we add 2 Spirit Reaper, 2 Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive, 1 Sangan, 1 Newdoria, and 1 Cyber Jar. Spirit Reaper, arguably one of the best cards in this format, gives the deck the ability to stall as well as the ability to use Spirit Reaper offensively with Chaos Sorcerer. Although Dekoichi isn’t a very good target for Mystic Tomato, and usually isn’t used for Mystic Tomato’s effect, it is great if you have a Book of Moon or Tsukuyomi ready to be comboed with it. The same goes for Cyber jar, which single handedly can turn around the game and allow the game to swing in your favor. Newdoria is a great tech card that allows for monster removal. If all 3 of your Tomatoes are in the graveyard and spirit reaper isn’t a good choice at that time, Newdoria can fill this void and allow for easy removal. Sangan is a no-brainer in the deck, searching out combo cards such as Tsukuyomi.

To finish off the monster lineup, we add 1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, 1 Breaker the Magical Warrior, 1 D.D. Warrior Lady, 1 Magician of Faith, 1 Tsukuyomi, and 2 Cyber Dragon. Zaborg the Thunder Monarch is a personal tech card that I chose to benefit the deck. The usual deck has a Mobius instead of this, but the beneficial monster destruction effect this card serves can be a clutch late game move. He is also a light, further fueling Chaos Sorcerer. Zaborg is an often overlooked card because Mobius is usually viewed as “better”. We also add a copy of Breaker the Magical Warrior for the amazing effect and versatility this card has. D.D. Warrior Lady is another light card that has the amazing effect of being able to remove any monster it battles with. Magician of Faith combos with Tsukuyomi and allows the deck to recycle such power cards as Pot of Avarice, Dark Hole, and Heavy Storm. She is also another light to fuel Sorcerer. Speaking of Tsukuyomi, the deck needs it to function to its full potential. It can be comboed with a lot of the monsters, including a nifty trick with Chaos Sorcerer. The turn after you have summoned Chaos Sorcerer, you can remove a face-up monster, then summon Tsukuyomi, flip Chaos Sorcerer face-down, flip it back up, and attack with it. It is a great late game combo, which can be used to clinch the victory. To finish it off, the deck contains 2 copies of the infamous Cyber Dragon. Cyber Dragon has the amazing effect of easily being special summoned. In a turn, you are able to summon Cyber Dragon, Chaos Sorcerer, and another monster against their lone monster.

There are also many different variations on the monster side. Some people decide to run Apprentice Magician with Old Vindictive Magician in order to speed up the deck. It’s all a matter of personal preference and it depends on what your play style is. If your play style is more aggressive, then I recommend the Mystic Tomatoes as the choice for you. If you play slower, and wish to set up more combos than the Tomato version, you can use Apprentice Magician. Both are amazing choices.

Next up are the Spell choices. First off, I decided to use 2 Pot of Avarices with this deck. I know the norm can be 3, but I decided for a large regional event, 3 would create bad hands about 1 in every 4 games. In my experience, 3 Sorcerer and 2 Pot of Avarice create bad hands about once every 8 games. I feel that 2 is optimal, though you can play around with 3 if you think you would rather play a 3:3 ratio or 2 sorcerer instead. Still on the aspect of drawing, Card Destruction seems like a natural fit. It allows for monsters to fill up the grave for both Chaos Sorcerer and Pot of Avarice. In addition, it allows us to abuse Thunder Dragons even more. With Cyber Jar, you can usually discard around 7-10 cards and start off fresh with new cards!

The rest of the spells are the normal standard, sans Smashing Grounds. Smashing Grounds are usually needed in most Tier 1 decks, but this deck simply doesn’t need to use the 1 for 1 trade card. Instead, Chaos Sorcerer and Zaborg can provide a lot of monster removal by themselves. Heavy Storm and Mystical Space Typhoon are used to destroy spells and traps. Snatch Steal, Premature Burial, Dark Hole, and Nobleman of Crossout, also make an appearance in the deck. Both usual stall cards, Scapegoat and Swords of Revealing Light, are being utilized in the deck in order to abuse the idea of setting up your playing field. Because we can only set up to 1 monster per turn, it is vital that we can set up our strategy the field is overrun by the opponent’s monsters.

Traps fill out the deck. However, the deck only uses 3 traps. The three cards are also multiples of 1 card. You might be thinking, Sakuretsu Armor? Well… not quite. The deck utilizes 3 copies of the trap negator, Royal Decree. Royal Decree makes the deck be able to run more aggro than a standard deck. Chaos Sorcerer can be summoned and can attack without the fear of a Bottomless Trap Hole or Sakuretsu Armor. It allows the player to speed through the game and play the game at their tempo, instead of having to worry about the opponent’s cards. It also usually makes Chaos Sorcerer vulnerable to a couple of the opponent’s standard cards. People usually focus on their removal coming from the traps, and with this shut down, your larger monsters can roam the field with less worries.

Final Product:

26 Monsters

[3] Chaos Sorcerer

[3] Thunder Dragon

[2] Cyber Dragon

[1] Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

[3] Magical Merchant

[1] Magician of Faith

[1] D.D. Warrior Lady

[3] Mystic Tomato

[2] Spirit Reaper

[2] Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive

[1] Newdoria

[1] Sangan

[1] Breaker the Magical Warrior

[1] Tsukuyomi

[1] Cyber Jar

12 Spells

[2] Pot of Avarice

[1] Card Destruction

[1] Heavy Storm

[1] Mystical Space Typhoon

[1] Snatch Steal

[1] Dark Hole

[1] Nobleman of Crossout

[1] Scapegoat

[1] Swords of Revealing Light

[1] Book of Moon

[1] Premature Burial

[3] Traps

[3] Royal Decree

The main deck has been completed, and it is now up to you to playtest the deck as much as possible. Working on the side deck is also very important for this deck. People side in Mystic Swordman LV2, Wave – Motion Cannon, and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, so being able to neutralize those threats is very important. In the side – deck, there should also be a focus on being able to stop burn, a large threat to a non-aggressive deck like this.

Although this Ban-List is almost over, we can see that there are still many decks left untapped to their true potential. I expect the Durham Shonen Jump Championships to reflect the metagame shift. People will be running Merchant Pot Turbo, which should be interesting too see if it can hold and make Day 2. As always, I can be contacted at PojoGiel@Yahoo.com. I’d love to hear your opinions. Stay tuned for my next article