JULY 2008

Return of the Undead - Ice-eyes

Haven’t seen me in a while, have you?
Nevertheless, the one, the only Ice-eyes is back for good. Some deck fixes will follow, but I thought I would kick things back into gear with a look at one of my favourite decks of all time: Card of Safe Return Zombies.
Why Zombies, you ask? I hear cries of ‘but they’re not prevalent in today’s meta!’ ringing out. Well, they might not be ripping up the tournament scene now, but when Premium Pack 2 hits on 29th July, they’re going to be.
The reason? One monster. Just like it took Zombie Master to propel them to the top last time they dominated, it’s going to take another very, very special card. Here it is:

Mezuki/4/Earth/Zombie/1700/300. Nothing to write home about. Just read the effect:

When this card is in your graveyard, you can remove it from play to special summon 1 Zombie-Type monster from your graveyard.

Yes, you heard me. You can resurrect ANY Zombie from your graveyard FOR FREE. Let me stress that again. IT’S FREE. What’s more, it’s compatible with Card of Safe Return and you can use it to bring back Il Blud, then Second Summon the Blud and use its effect to get another free monster. Those swarms just got a whole lot bigger, quicker and easier.

The mind games this card can play with your opponent are deadly. If you’ve got a huge swarm that includes our Secret Rare friend, your opponent knows that if they play that Lightning Vortex, Mezuki is just going to restart a chain of free Special Summons. If you just have a lone Zombie backed by Card of Safe Return, with Mezuki in the grave that Smashing Ground reads ‘your opponent draws 1 card’. That makes it invaluable against Gadgets; all that removal is useless provided you can counter Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo and Royal Oppression.

Everyone and their mother is pushing Crush Card Virus where it really shouldn’t go at the moment, and Mezuki can turn that to your advantage. Imagine your opponent Crushing away Mezuki and Il Blud. Mezuki revives Blud, which perhaps recurs Master and, well, sets up more crazy brain-hungry antics.

Then there’s the added bonus of the cards that should have worked in Zombies but really didn’t. Hand Destruction is much more viable. Imagine discarding Mezuki and a Zombie, then playing Card of Safe Return and recurring said Zombie. Also, it allows Book of Life to be played before your opponent can make a move. Sometimes, they’ll discard spells, but often the lure of ditching that Frog or Disk Commander is too great to resist. It’s not just Hand Destruction or Card Destruction either; other, less played combos are now competitive.

Check out running two Trade-In with a playset of Despair from the Dark and a Dark Magician of Chaos. This is a combo I’ve been testing, and Mezuki really makes it. Despair is pretty much the biggest thing you can bring back, and Hand Destruction ditches dead copies of all three pieces, plus Mezuki, Blud and countless others.

Allure of Darkness was like Marmite – you loved it with your undead, or you hated it. On the one hand, Allure helped dig towards the key Card of Safe Return and Zombie Master you needed to start exploding. However, having to remove that precious Master once you got it hurt. It really, really hurt.

Now, you can use it alongside Burial from the Different Dimension; where it used to perform two narrow functions (costing you a card each time by shuffling back into your grave key Zombies you had been forced to Allure or had lost to D.D. Crow), it now has three – you can also send as many copies of Mezuki as you have used back for re-insanity. Near the end of a duel (around the second turn or so), Burial can read ‘Special Summon three monsters from your graveyard’.

It also changes it from a poor topdeck in the late game to an absolutely ridiculous one. In one of my recent games, I was playing against a potent Jinzo/Machine Dark deck similar to the one that reached Day 2 of a Shonen this format. Low on life points, staring down Dekoichi, Jinzo and Armageddon Knight and holding a useless Card of Safe Return, I topdecked Burial to send back two Mezuki and an Allured Despair from the Dark. Out from the ‘yard erupted Despair and Il Blud, who fetched Zombie Master. That allowed me to play a second Safe Return, use my first Master’s effect to pull a second and proceed to win.

Now imagine drawing two Burials and some Safe Returns off of a Card Destruction which pitched two Mezuki and a bunch of huge Zombies. Yes. You did just special summon five monsters and GAIN hand advantage.

Heck, you could even play Dark World Dealings. That reads the same as it did in Dark World now; ‘draw one card, special summon something huge’. In fact, it’s even better because several of the huge monsters bring a buddy as well (Blud, Master, I’m looking at you).

Mezuki is so good that, like Master and Blud, it can bring Zombies back to the top almost single-handedly. I suggest that, should you plan to play a Zombie deck, you get hold of Il Blud now. Its price is going to shoot up beyond even what it was in its heyday. I know I’m going to.

Expect to see Zombies running around your metagame. Start dusting off those Pyramid Turtles, or start dusting off those Macro Cosmoses. Or lose.

Mezuki is that good.

-Ice-eyes.

Got a deck that needs fixing? Email it to me at ice-eyes@live.com with a brief explanation of how it works and what you want done and I’ll give you expert, reasoned advice.