Changes to Deck Pages and Unicorn Synchro

I'm going to change the deck pages at the top to reflect what I am currently playing with. Those are Amaryllis, Koakis and Intro to Chaos. The other decks will always be in my mind and once I think up new strategies to increase their power, I will bring each one back. But for now, we will do the swap.


Yesterday, I mentioned briefly about Unicorn Synchro, a beast deck that attempts to synchro as a win condition, often using the RFG zone as part of the engine. It is still in pre-alpha. Right now, I am testing to make a build that is as close to being the most responsive that I can. So far, this is what I've come up with:

Unicorn Synchro

x3 Dark Desertapir x1 Egotistical Ape x2 Elephun x2 Giant Rat x3 Mine Mole x1 Monoceros x1 Naturia Pineapple x2 Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter x2 Super-Nimble Mega Hamster x2 X-Saber Airbellum x3 Future Fusion x2 Gold Sarcophagus x1 Monster Reborn x1 Dark Hole x1 Mystical Space Typhoon x3 Soul Release x3 Unicorn Beacon x2 Bottomless Trap Hole x2 Compulsory Evacuation Device x1 Torrential Tribute x2 Trap Stun

As you can see, the deck has a few cards that are very important.
Tuners: Airbellum is usually the go-to tuner in every deck it is used in. Unfortunately, in this deck Airbellum can often be a hindrance. With Mine mole on the field, Airbellum forces you to make a non-beast synchro. He is also not searchable except by Mega Hamster, which is often a waste of resources. This makes Elephun almost more important. Then, Ape is there to supplement the small number of tuners in the deck.
Dark Desertapir: The toolbox of the deck. It's effect activates from Beacon, Visions, Soul Release, and even Gold Sarc. This enables 1-2 card synchros and sometimes even nets an additional draw through Mine Mole!
Future Visions: This card is one of the few control cards available in the deck. Since so many monsters are easily attacked over, Visions allows you to plan ahead(like the name says). Also, it is part of the synchro strategy.

Let's talk a bit about the extra deck. In it, there are:
x2 Thunder Unicorn, lv 5
x1 Naturia Beast, lv 5
x1 Ally of Justice Catastor, lv 5
x1 Magical Andriod, lv 5
x1 Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier, lv 6
x1 Goyo Guardian, lv 6
x1 Flamvell Urquizas, lv 6
x2 Voltic Bicorn, lv 7
x1 Black Rose Dragon, lv 7
x1 Stardust Dragon, lv 8
x1 Scrap Dragon, lv 8
x1 Lightning Tricorn, lv 8
x1 Colossal Fighter, lv 8

This is all subject to change, but so far the level 5's and level 7 synchros are the most important. Sometimes, I will syncro for 8 if there is a threat, but typically I go for 5 or 7. Until konami makes a level 6 synchro beast, 6's are almost detrimental to play.

Anyway, pre-alpha(meaning still theoretical and I don't have the cards in real life). Deck is far from complete but it is so interesting, it almost makes me want to make it as soon as possible.

Beasts! Deck #46!

Beasts are a LOT of fun.
A) Tons of easy to get cards. (Some not so easy)
B) Lots of new support from DREV.
C) One of the best draw engines in the game.
D) A Synchro toolbox with 3-4 extra targets.
E) They look silly. And are even more silly to actually win with.

I've been playing with 2 Beast themed decks. One is your typical aggro beast deck with less combos and more generalized play(Aptly named Beasties for now), and the other is the combo themed RFG Synchro style deck(Aptly named Unicorn Synchro for now). Both decks have things they do very well.
Beasties uses the beast scrap monsters goblin and chimera, which have amazing synergy with super rush recklessly and green baboon.
Unicorn Synchro can synchro very easily by recycling cards in the graveyard and RFG zone. Thanks to Dark Desertapir, future visions and gold sarc, the deck can often synchro from almost nothing.

Of course, these decks are still in the pre-alpha, "for fun" stage. I'll post more about them as they do better in testing.

More Deck Talk - "Intro to Chaos"

This is an effort to get a proper posting schedule again.

As posted before, the Intro to Chaos deck is almost complete. I am only missing the 2 Ravens, 1 Colossal Fighter, 1 Brionac and 1 Mist Wurm to make it a fully functioning threat. Let's take a second to look at why those cards are important.
Fabled Raven- This is a Chaos deck so we want to maximize the light and dark targets for Chaos Sorcerer and Dark Armed Dragon. Unfortunately, the market on light tuners with an attack rating is extremely thin. After End-Master, the next highest attacker is Raven, followed by Kushano, then a huge plummet to an 800ATK Frequency Magician. Raven's effect isn't really needed in the deck, but it complements his usage nicely. You can pitch a level eater, then synchro for 7 or 8 or 9, which has awesome utility.
Colossal Fighter- In this deck, Colossal Fighter is VERY important. Little known to many players, but Stardust Dragon is not the only level 8 synchro in the game, and is certainly easy to attack over. What colossal fighter does is forces your opponent to use spell and trap destruction as the ONLY out. Stardust's only out is a stronger monster, but who's deck doesn't focus on winning with strong monsters anyway?
Brionac- A no-brainer. Wins games.
Mist Wurm- I actually haven't ran into a Mist Wurm in a while. With level eater, Intro can easily synchro for 9 and clear the opponent's entire field. With a card like this, I feel like Trunade should be replaced with MST, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

Intro shines in the face that you can make plays using a very low number of cards. Let's take a look at some opening hands:
1)Dark Armed Dragon, Mind Control, Torrential, Level Eater, Effect Veiler, Byser Shock
2)Honest, Byser Shock, Byser Shock, Fabled Raven, One for One, Mirror Force
3)Torrential, Battle Fader, Chaos End Master, Shining Angel, Monster Reborn, Sangan
4)Book of Moon, Level Eater, Byser Shock, Sphere of Chaos, Giant Trunade, Sangan
5)Byser Shock, Monster Reborn, Call of the Haunted, Book of Moon, Honest, Giant Trunade.

So with the exception of the last hand, which could still work, Intro draws very well. I still havent decided on a side deck. It will probably involve the normal glad beast hate and dust tornados, but I also believe the deck could benefit from Royal Decree, Shrink, Battle Faders and Dimensional Alchemists in the side deck.

What happened Amaryllis?

Well, last week at locals, Amaryllis unfortunately went 1-3 out of all the matches. I believe only one of them I lost 0-2 (Xsabers) but it was still upsetting nonetheless. Most of the losses were all about the opponent exploding before I can stop them or me not drawing into any good cards. So today we'll be talking about strategy and any fixes we can make.

#1. The Side Deck
Lately I've been siding in Cloak and Dagger against many key cards in certain decks. Examples of these are Xsaber Darksoul and Machina Fortress. Turn 1 It is great to get this card out; later in the duel it falls behind in playability. Another issue with C&D is the fact that it is a deterrent, and not prevention. Mind Crush and maybe even trap dustshoot could be better cards in most situations than C&D would be. The rest of the side consists of the normal Gladiator Beast Hate, Infernity Hate, Monarch Hate, 1 Gottoms and 1 Starlight. I will be replacing the 3 cloaks with the 2 firstly named traps and 1 Ceasefire.

#2. Play Style
Amaryllis isn't a deck where I necessarily have a concrete path I can follow and reach the same end. It's not so much as a toolbox, but rather a best-case scenario strategy. Let's take an opening hand as an example.
(1)Mark of the Rose, (2)Miracle Fertilizer, (3)Dandylion, (4)Monster Reborn, (5) Amaryllis, (6)Tytannial.
Albeit a very very lackluster hand, it is not an autoloss. Turn 1 I get to set dandy and then I draw into Amarallyis; pass that turn, opponent sets up more powerful plays and probably destroy my tokens, maybe even deal damage. Turn 3 I draw into card trooper, mill 3 which is worse cards lol. Well, maybe that was a bad example, but what I mean to say is, there are so many options with cards like MotRose, Foolish Burial and Lonefire that it is very difficult to figure out what the best play is. Very often, on the matches that I lose, I do not play Amaryllis. So because of that you would think that my #1 priority should be getting Amrayllis in the grave, even though thinning out those volcanic counters and providing discards for trade-in would be more optimal to prevent dead cards in the hand.

#3 Dead Cards in the deck
Let's list ALL the cards that have the potential of being dead and/or do not work towards the goals of the deck.
1 Miracle Fertilizer
1 Mark of the Rose
1 Spore
1 Return From the Different Dimension
1 Naturia Beans
2 Volcanic Counter
3 Trade-In
1 Sangan
1 Gravirose
As you can see, the utility is there in all the cards, yet the possibility of being dead is the highest with these (barring the obvious tytannial and Amaryllis). In all honesty, there arent too many cards to swap out. Nothing offers the kind of draw power that Trade-In has that doesn't give your opponent an advantage too.

So yeah. We'll be doing a few tweaks to the way we play a deck as a whole. Inbetween playing with Intro to Chaos(which is nearing completion!) and Koakis, I will continue to build and maximize Amaryllis.

Brief Amaryllis talk and "Intro to Chaos"

We've been having a lot of fun with Amaryllis. It hits hard, it burns, it swarms, it does a lot of things using cards I actually like. The win condition is to whittle the opponent's life points in many different ways, while maintaining field presence. Amaryllis itself doesn't add too much to field presence, but after enough hits it becomes a threat to most opponents. Tytannial, ryko, dandylion, lonefire, debris and gravirose are the cards that contribute the most to field presence, probably in decending order of importance. Unfortunately, the deck does run a few monsters that contribute little to nothing to field presence, but still works toward the grand scheme of obtaining a win condition. Those include:
- Volcanic Counter
- Card Trooper
- Spore
- Revival Rose
- Sangan
- Phoenixian Seed
Now, this isn't to say that those cards don't contribute to the win condition in their own way, which they all do. But each one does walk the thin line of "situational use." If we wanted to build Amaryllis away from its combo orientation and into more field presence, Our replacements would probably be things like Naturia Bamboo Shoot, Botanical Lion, plaguespreader zombie, and other similar monsters.

Besides Amaryllis, I wanted to talk a little more about "Intro to Chaos" that was brought up in this post. This chaos deck uses the Chaos End Master "engine" along with many others to synchro with little effort. Often, a synchro can be pulled off by using 1 card per turn, which makes Intro to Chaos very very focused on available resources. With cards like ROTA and Armageddon Knight, it actually "top-decks" very well, by pitching useless cards out of the deck and using them from the graveyard. So how far are we from the current build?

x1 Armageddon Knight x1 Battle Fader x2 Byser Shock x2 Chaos Sorcerer x3 Chaos End Master x1 Cyber Valley x1 DAD x2 Effect Veiler x2 Fabled Raven x1 Gorz x2 Honest x2 Level Eater x1 Sangan x2 Shining Angel x1 Sphere of Chaos x1 Allure x3 Book of Moon x1 Dark Hole x1 Trunade x1 Mind Control x1 Monster Reborn x1 MST x1 One for One x1 ROTA x2 Bottomless x1 CotH x1 Mirror Force x1 Torrential

Out of that we're really only missing the Fabled Ravens and a few extra deck cards like Brionac, Mist Wurm, and Chaos Goddess. With this build we have Level Eater and, in essence, Sphere of Chaos and Byser Shock as our only potentially dead cards. If we wanted to keep End Master and the Chaos theme, then our replacement level 5 or higher monsters would be Destiny Hero Malicious, Elemental Hero Necroshade, Great Maju Garzett, Regenerating Rose, Shadow Ghoul, Total Defense Shogun, and Yubel. None of those cards are really that great except for Necroshade, Rose and Shogun in this deck, so as of right now Byser Shock is the best choice. To fire off End Master's effect, we have 3 books and 2 honest. Some people would say that you also need shrinks but I believe that it will depend on the deck you're up against. Many decks don't necessarily need more outs to battle, the main focus is to ALWAYS pick and choose your battles until you can synchro summon.

Where's the updates??

Sorry about the lack of updates this past week. I've been working very often and I actually missed the last 2 local tournament days due to work. We'll be out monday though and hopefully the posts will be back at its usual pace.

Newly Semi-Limited

Mystical Space Typhoon
Chaos Sorcerer
Snipe Hunter
Ojama Trio
Magic Cylinder

Mystical Space Typhoon - Back in the day, we used to run 3 MST, 3 Trap hole, (me)2 Dust Tornado, Torrential, MForce, Monster reborn, dark hole, raigeki, change of heart, snatch steal and delinquent duo and call it a deck. With MST going to 2, a lot of people think that setting single spells or traps is a guaranteed bad play. In a lot of instances it is. With no heavy storm, you should PROBABLY set 2 face-down on the first turn, barring specific plays. But what is the benefit of running 2 MST? Decks right now are already tight on spell/trap space. I feel like the 1 MST being an even exchange in game resources is often enough, and the second should only probably be sided. Of course, if you're running a deck that doesn't use as many advantageous cards that only your theme can use, then a second MST might work. Lets take zombies for example. Only after you've maxed out on Book of Life, and the necessary amount of each good generic s/t card, should you start doubling up on things like MST.

Chaos Sorcerer - A boss monster in our soon to be "Intro to Chaos" deck. Actually, many people will be running "chaos decks" this format, which is basically their original deck with 2 chaos sorcerers in it. It's a good card, don't get me wrong. And it can even be splashed into many decks. But I don't think running 2 is for everyone. And I'm sure many people will give up on their "chaos decks" when they realize the reason they never ran chaos in the first place.

Snipe Hunter - I didn't even know this was semi-limited. Roll a die and you have a 60% chance of destroying a card, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, he comes at the cost of hand resources. In a deck where discarding leads to an advantage, such as fabled decks (sorry, darkworlds do not work. Don't get cheated out of a win because of this.) Won't be seeing any increase in play from me. In all honesty, the card is not as good as Raigeki Break in Fabled decks either. Your normal summon is better suited for Kushano or Raven.

Ojama Trio - With all the synchroing going on, you'd imagine this would be allowed sooner. Eating up monster zones is not fun though, and is often used in decks that have a win condition besides attacking lifepoints with strong monsters (burn decks). I've considered using 2 in an Aslla Piscu deck, but she's still a bit too inconsistent to try to use. Either way, if your opponent is using burn, then it might be time to side in the newly unlimited royal decrees.

Magic Cylinder - I used to use this in EVERY deck when the card was first released. Negate an attack and burn for very nice damage most of the time. Even with all the MST and dust tornado back then, magic cylinder was a very good card. With no D.Prison, Sakaretsu, etc. there is no comparison. Now, the card has slowed down substantially, just as much as Mirror Force. There is a reason why Ring of Destruction is banned and this isn't, Ring can be chained at any time. Magic Cylinder suffers from the fact that it is only usable at 1 time. Using 2 can take 3000-4000 damage from your opponent fairly easily, but not as consistently as you would think. I may try 2 in the Amaryllis deck, but we're still undecided.