Hidden Arsenal 5

Even though we just entered November and Photon Shockwave isn't out on the shelves yet, it is still fun to look at other new sets that are coming soon. Konami recently tossed Hidden Arsenal 5 on their Product Info page and that has a few of us very excited. Why do you ask? It gives us the chance to make some very, very entertaining decks that have been in the OCG for quite a while.

Hidden Arsenal 5 is made up of the OCG Duel Terminals 9 and 10, and are an introduction to Steelswarms, Vylon, Gishki, Lavals, Gusto and Gem-knights. The story has something to do with Trishula destroying the environment and most of the life of the DT universe. Steelswarm monsters rise up to take control of the planet while the other tribes, adapted for harsh, post-Trishuliptic environments battle against them (or each other, I don't know). Like the past Hidden Arsenal packs, Five is a mere teaser of what these cards can do and the real fun starts in Hidden Arsenal 6 next year. There are enough cards in Hidden Arsenal 5, Generation Force and Photon Shockwave to make a casual version of the decks. I would not recommend trying anything too competitive until next year.

Steelswarm are a series of bug-looking fiend monsters. They have low level monsters that special summon and search cards, then high level tribute monsters that gain effects when you tribute the lackeys. At first glace, you can think of Steelswarm as a new type of Monarchs. You get to choose a tribute engine such as Ultimate Offering, Stygian Street Patrol, Steelswarm Cell's Cydra-esque summoning condition or Steelswarm Scout's Treeborn-eqsue effect. The only single tribute monsters Steelswarm have are Girastag, Mantis and Moth; Girastag being the only one that has a "Monarch effect." You get to simply send an opponent's card to the grave and gain 1000 life points. Moth is usually frowned upon, but with new Xyz monsters in the game, Moth has new targets to send back to the extra deck. Mantis, with its 2200 attack lets you special summon ANY Steelswarm from your Grave at the cost of 1000 LP. With a couple of additional cards (such as Ultimate Offering) you can make some interesting tribute plays in 1 turn. In Dark Grepher builds, you could actually put Mantis in the grave for rank 5 Xyz. The hand investment is a tad strenuous, but you can survive most any turn if you choose the right support cards for the deck.

Speaking of support, any good theme(and many bad themes) have theme-specific support cards. The spells and traps you will find in Hidden Arsenal 5 are designed to combat all of the Bottomless, Torrentials, Mirror Force, and all the other removal effects sans Warning. The idea is to minus your opponent and summon your card all over again.
-You summon Girastag to send your opponent's Stardust to their grave.
-They chain Bottomless Trap Hole to your effect.
-You chain First Step Toward Infestation to get your Girastag back to safety while you draw another card.
So at the cost of 1 card and field presence (you should be running Gorz and probably Trag too) you eat 2 of your opponent's cards. The other support card has a similar effect in the form of a trap card, you get to destroy an opponent's card instead of drawing one. Pretty straightforward stuff in here.

Hidden Arsenal 6 won't give you too much additional support, but instead gives you more boss monsters to choose from. That means you can PROBABLY play Steelswarm if you have enough non-themed cards to back them up. In my opinion, Steelswarm is a bit self destructive as you are restricted to tributing other Steelswarm to power up the bosses. You can make it consistent with Duality and Maxx "C", but your tribute engine will be very basic. Perhaps the best strategy is to stun your opponent while you perform low tier tributes? We will have to wait and see. Steelswarm don't make it to Duel Terminal 12, maybe they weren't as strong as they thought they were? Or do they infect the DT world and create the new Verz(Swarm? Infected?) monsters in DT13? If Verz cards work with Steelswarm monsters, it may be a long time before we see a competitive Steelswarm deck.

Vylon is supposed to be a major toolbox deck. They use equip cards to create advantage and high attack monsters. After that, Vylon have tuner monsters that can create Synchro Monsters with some of the highest technical power available. Just listen to some of these effects:
-When this card declares an attack, equip it with one Equip card from your Deck.
-Send 1 equip card equipped to this monster to the graveyard to target and destroy 1 monster your opponent controls.
And you don't even need to Synchro to win, getting equip cards out of your deck is fairly easy and beating the opponent with just those is entirely possible. Perhaps the best card in the deck, Vylon Vanguard, becomes more deadly over time. If your opponent cannot destroy it by battle as early as possible, they will give you card draws for destroying it. Vanguard lets you draw 1 card for every equip spell that was equipped to it when it is destroyed by a card effect. That condition does make it a lose out to things like Dimensional Prison, but that is why you use Royal Decree, Trap stun or Lance!

And...that is all for Vylons. For some odd reason, Vylons skip DT 10 and aren't seen again until DT 11, which would be in 2012 for the TCG. Did they lose to the Steelswarm and retreat back for a couple of months? Judging by the new cards in DT11 and 12, it seems like they had something more sinister in mind. It is more than possible to make a Vylon deck with 3 Cube and 3 Vanguard, but expect the deck to have a low monster count. Of course, you can splash them into another theme like Morphtronics, Agents, and a few others in the TCG. In Hidden Arsenal 5, Vylons have no way to place multiple monsters on the field at little to no cost. Your win condition will probably involve summoning Vanguard and hoping its high attack will stun the opponent for long enough. To synchro, you may have to rely on things like Cyber Dragon or Ghost Ship. Some have even resorted to Trident Warrior, which can summon Cube from your hand. The hand investment seems like too much, but the plays will replace themselves over time:
-Summon Trident Warrior and special summon Vylon Cube.
-Synchro for 7, Vylon Sigma and search your deck for an equip spell using Cube's effect. Possibly Mage Power.
-Attack with Sigma and search your deck for another equip spell. If you chose Twin Swords of Flashing Light- Thryce, you get to attack again and search out a 3rd Equip card. On an empty field, this could mean an instant loss for your opponent.
In the end, you lose 2 cards in your hand to get a synchro monster and THREE cards from your deck. It would be a lot better if you could replenish your hand outside of Vylon matter(which is a +0) but the plays are there.

Gishki are fast becoming one of my favorite decks, and you guys know I am a huge fan of Ritual decks. Gishki are the first Ritual archetype, unlike Djinns that were Ritual support. The cards are so well designed that it is hard to imagine what balances them out. In my opinion, Gishki are one of the most consistent decks in the game. They have the ability to search out just about any card they like and perform the ritual summon with almost any opening hand. Mostly made of sea life, Gishki get some of the best support cards in the game: Salvage, Surface, Spiritual Art, Deep Sea Diva, or many many others. Without any of these, Gishki can still perform a lot of searching to get out their key cards:
-Vision gets your Ritual Monster.
-Shadow gets your Ritual Spell.
-Abyss gets either of those.
-Erial can get anyone from your deck.
-Beast can get anyone from your grave.
In Hidden Arsenal 5, we only have 2 Ritual Evigishki to choose from: Mind Augus and Soulogre. At level 6, Mind Augus is the easiest to summon without investing as many cards. Its effect has 2 purpose, to disrupt your opponent or to refill your deck. Since Mind Augus can send any cards back to the deck, you can add powerful cards like Monster Reborn, Avarice and Salvage back to the deck, or disrupt your opponent by sending their Dandylion, Doppelwarrior, or even redundant cards like MST and Heavy Storm back to the deck. Soulogre is probably your only out to high attack monsters and has 2800/2800 beefy stats. For any monster you can't attack over, you can discard a gishki to place a target back into the deck. Some people like to focus on Soulogre because of the deck's inherent disadvantage against strong beaters. DT 11 and 12 changes this(Hidden Arsenal 6), but we won't see any of those cards until next year. Fortunately, HA5 will have all the cards necessary for extreme consistency, it will just lack Gustkrake, and awesome level 6 Ritual Lady-Kraken(or is it a boy?).

The plays that Gishki have available are borderline unfair. Barring a 1st turn Thunderking, you can easily keep 4-6 cards in your hand at all times, even with the "-3" from Ritual summons. I like to use Duality in the deck alongside Gorz and Tragoedia, as summoning anything besides Abyss, Erial and Beast are a waste of resources. The loss of special summons is worth the ability to grab Salvage, Surface, or even Pot of Avarice out of the deck. Tragoedia is also an amazing counter to Thunderking. Trag can discard Gishki Beast to take control of Tking, then target Beast to become level 4. Overlay the 2 for Utopia and you can Salvage or Avarice back your Beast at any time. Expect to see more talk about this deck, as it is a LOT of fun.

Lavals love fighting. They purposely throw each other into the grave for the purpose of winning, which is what a lot of us like to do. Similar to their forefathers, they are a synchro theme and will use many of the cards of their fallen Flamvell for their own bloodthirst. Of course, we're talking about Rekindling here. Lavals are extremely deadly in the OCG and will wreck your opponent's lifepoints in 3 turns or less (the OCG even has Maxx C now, though they don't use it). They have access to the best cards Lavals have to offer from DT 11 and 12. Out of Hidden Arsenal 5, you will get a few "boss" Lavals and some synchro fodder, but none of the support that makes the OCG version so dangerous. Similar to the original Flamvells, DT9 and 10 Lavals have a few tricky plays involving damage and setting up the graveyard for future plays. At some point, Laval Judgement Lord decided that these sort of plays just aren't enough to defeat the Steelswarm, and ultimately the Vylon, so they get more cards to set their graveyard for insanely powerful plays.

If you don't mind adding a few cards to your Flamvell deck, there are just a couple of picks like Laval Miller to choose from. If you plan on making a pure Rekindling deck using Laval Sweltering Heat, you will have to wait until 2012.

Gem-knights are another HA5 theme that you may be able to build a deck out of. The theme is much like Hero Beat:
-All of the level 4 monsters have high attack.
-They have their own Hand-trap in the form of a 1000ATK/DEF Kalut.
-In HA5, they have a trap to bait out targetting effects.
-They have a retrievable Polymerization.
So why would you want to use Gemknights over Hero Beat? Despite having very similar monster stats, Gem-knights may take a little more effort to play. You do not have as many responses to your opponent's cards as Hero Beat will, unless you splash in Normal-type support. You may lose some consistency, but alongside Duality and Gem-Merchant(Gem-knight Kalut), you may run cards like Common Charity, Faustian Bargain, Dark Factory or even Symbols of Duty. Gem-knights don't have the luxury of a Miracle Fusion, so each time you perform a Fusion summon, you will eat cards from your hand. Luckily enough, the Fusion card, Gem-Knight Fusion can be added to your hand at the cost of Banishing Gem-knights from your graveyard. Remove enough of them and you can probably flip Return from the Different Dimension for a rather large field.

The following set, HA6 doesn't give Gem-knights more support cards, but instead gives them more monsters to choose from. At some point they develop the ability to Fuse with a monster of particular Attribute. Much like Heroes, you can use their themed fusion card with teched in monsters like HERO Ice Edge for a few new options in your extra deck. At some point, their level 4 monsters evolved into Effect and Gemini monsters, which may be more efficient than running the 1900 Normal attackers. In DT12, they still do not have a Miracle Fusion. Instead, Gem-knight Obsidian joins the ranks with its Mandatory Effect:
If this card is sent from your hand to the Graveyard: You can target 1 Level 4 or lower Normal Monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon it.
This allows you to perform Fusions without losing as much of your in-hand resources. Until then, Dark Factory of Mass Production and Return from the Different Dimension are probably your only options.

Gusto are the second synchro theme alongside the Lavals. Where Lavals fall short: maintaining field presence with low level monsters, Gusto take the cake in looping recruiters when destroyed by battle. When Winda is destroyed by battle and sent to the graveyard, she can special summon Gusto Gulldo. When that is destroyed, you can search out Gusto Egul, which will complete the loop after it searches Winda once again. So long as your opponent refuses to play effects to destroy them, it is fairy easy to avoid a loss by beatdown. So what do you do with all of these used Windas and Birdies? Gusto do not have a Rekindling like the Lavals, but the forces of Gusto have a few tricks of their own. Caam and Windaar, the only 2 non-synchro attackers in Hidden Arsenal 5 and use those fallen Gusto as fuel for their effects. Caam lets you draw cards while Windaar will summon any Gusto tuner from your graveyard to the field. Contact with Gusto is a one-for-one Spell that will return Gusto monsters to the deck and destroy any card your opponent controls. Once you're ready to Synchro, the Daigusto monsters are "Contacts" on legs. Gulldos will return 2 Gusto to destroy any face-up monster while Eguls will destroy any face-down by Banishing 1 Wind monster.

In essence, HA5 Gusto are a generic recruit-and-synchro deck without any other strategies barring the non-Gusto cards you run alongside them. Even their win condition is rather basic, just dropping Synchros Monsters and hoping they are enough to out-sustain your opponent. DT11 and 12 give you even MORE recruiters and a new win condition: Daigusto Sphreeze. Sphreeze still isn't a boss monster like Judgment Dragon or even Black Luster Soldier. Instead, it feeds on the amount of beatsticks your opponent tried to throw at you and punishes them for not using destruction effects. Besides this, I'm not really a fan of the Gusto deck so I do not have much to say about it. If we see more DT-themed cards released for the TCG in Order of Chaos, then I may give Gusto another look.