August 2008

 

"Maximum Light" Deck - AJD

Greetings, duelists. As a long-time casual Yu-Gi-Oh! player, I've tried to keep up with the latest metagame trends, reading the reviews of the Pojo writers as well as the tips and rants, even though I don't agree with some of them.

Which brings me to this deck, named "Maximum Light". I haven't personally constructed or used it yet (Honest is expensive...), but the main strategy seems to work. Basically, you try to pull off simple combinations with Light monsters to dominate your opponent's field with ease. Check it out:

Maximum Light

Monsters: 21
2x Zaborg the Thunder Monarch
1x Cyber Dragon
2x Guardian of Order
1x Marshmallon
3x Freed the Brave Wanderer
2x Shining Angel
1x D.D. Warrior Lady
3x Honest
2x Blue Thunder T-45
2x Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
2x Sage of Silence

Spells: 14
2x Lightwave Tuning
2x D.D.R. - Different Dimension Reincarnation
1x Shrink
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Premature Burial
1x Nobleman of Crossout
1x Book of Moon
1x Shield Crush
1x Enemy Controller
1x Monster Reborn
1x Lightning Vortex

Traps: 5
1x Mirror Force
1x Torrential Tribute
2x Raigeki Break
1x Return from the Different Dimension

Extra Deck: 12
3x Stardust Dragon
3x Goyo Guardian
3x Red Dragon Archfiend
3x Thought Ruler Archfiend

The high-Level monsters are essentials in Light decks. Zaborg can be brought out fast with Shining Angel's target as his tribute, or with Marshmallon. Cyber Dragon is excellent with Honest if your opponent brings out a strong monster on turn 1; Special Summon Cyber Dragon, Normal Summon Honest, return Honest to your hand, and use him to power up your CyDra. Guardian of Order is largely considered as overextensive, but if each card is worth about 1000 life points, if you can get in a hit with the Guardian, you've already paid off that overextension times 2.5.

Marshmallon makes for a great defense along with some burn damage, and he provides tribute fodder for Zaborg, or just as an extra Light for Guardian of Order's requirement. Freed's destruction ability is very helpful here, considering that a lot of commonly played monsters (I'm looking at you, Laquari/Stratos!) have more than 1700 ATK. Shining Angel can bring out Honest, D.D. Warrior Lady, or Sage of Silence easily. D.D. Warrior Lady's removal is just too good to pass up in an environment crawling with Heraklinos and Stardust Dragon. Three copies of Honest are definitely worth it here, allowing Blue Thunder T-45 to take down any monster and get a free token in the process, or with Sage of Silence to keep your opponent's Spells in his/her hand. Blue Thunder, as mentioned before, is useful with its token-generating ability, making it a nice floater. Ryko is devastating - let him use his effect to destroy your opponent's card, and then follow up with Freed, using Ryko and one of your inevitably-discarded Lights as fuel for his effect. Lastly, Sage of Silence is searchable with Shining Angel, and it punishes your opponents for setting weak monsters early on, so that they can't use their powerful spells.

The Spell lineup is abnormally aggressive. Lightning Vortex, Shrink, Shield Crush, Nobleman of Crossout, they're all powerful monster-destroyers (with Shrink being useful when Blue Thunder is attacked by a bigger monster). Lightwave Tuning is nice with Shining Angel, Freed, etc. Shining Angel can bring out another Angel, then you can use Lightwave Tuning and summon another Level 4 monster to tune with Shining Angel, summoning Stardust Dragon (or you could summon Ryko to summon Goyo Guardian). D.D.R. is for bringing back your Freed fuel and, in some cases, D.D. Warrior Lady. All the rest are staples.

There are only 5 Traps here, since the deck doesn't really need any support in that department. Raigeki Break can destroy a card and load your Graveyard with Lights for Freed at the same time. Return is for when you need that big finish. Sometimes, you might even use it to bring back a D.D. Warrior Lady to save your rear from one of those nasty boss monsters.

As for the Extra Deck, there's the classic trio of SD, RDA, and GG, because they are too good to pass up. Thought Ruler Archfiend is a good choice, since you might as well recover some Life Points, and since it's a Light monster, hey, that's more Freed fuel!

And that's that. With this deck, you can use both aggression and field control to win handily. If you have any comments on the deck, or if you want me to write a deck fix for you, my e-mail address is [ajDOTfortedsDOTdigiovanniATgmailDOTcom], minus the brackets and with the DOTs replaced with "." and AT replaced with "@", just because I don't want spam flooding my inbox :P.