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ShineSoldier on YuGiOh
Deck Analysis: System Shutdown

May 1, 2006  

Advantage is important, that’s a fact. Advantage through card effects is nice. An even better way of gaining advantage is to get it through battle: All monsters you destroy with one of your monsters in battle are 1-for-0’s in your favor, and that’s the best type of advantage you can get: Decreasing your opponent’s amount of resources without using any of your own. What fascinated me, was the ability of a small group of monsters to return monsters they destroyed in battle to the top of the owner’s deck. With this ability, you won’t only generate advantage, but you’ll also let your opponent draw the same monster over and over again, meaning that he/she can’t get new resources to get rid of your monsters.

 

There aren’t many monsters in the game with this kind of effect. Actually, I can only count three of them that are actually playable: Mystical Knight of Jackal, Winged Sage Falcos and Mystic Swordsman LV6. The Mystical Knight can return any monster it destroys to the top of your opponent’s deck. A great effect. Winged Sage Falcos can do the exact same thing, only with a small drawback added. The monster that Winged Sage Falcos destroys has to be in attack mode, which could form a problem. Then there is Mystic Swordsman LV6, who requires the destroyed monster to be in face-down defense position.
 

As you can see already, the last two monsters don’t work well together. The first one has to destroy an attack mode monster, while the second one needs the monster to be in defense mode. That’s why we have to make a choice: Are we going to include Falcos or the Mystic Swordsman in this deck?

 

I’m going to create this deck by using Mystical Knight of Jackal and Winged Sage Falcos, so no Mystic Swordsman. This is because the Mystic Swordsman requires its own deck to work in. It needs to be summoned through the effect of Mystic Swordsman LV4 in order to attack in the turn he’s summoned, because if he’s not, he’ll be turned face-down first. The drawback that Falcos has is easily cured. Final Attack Orders is the perfect cure for this. Even if you attack a defense position monster, it’s still going to be switched into attack mode as soon as it’s flipped face-up by the attack.

 

System Shutdown (40)

 

Monsters: 18

3 Mystical Knight of Jackal

3 Mirage Dragon

3 Spirit Reaper

2 Winged Sage Falcos

2 Gravekeeper’s Spy

2 Magician of Faith

1 Kaiser Seahorse

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

 

Spells: 12

1 Confiscation

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Graceful Charity

1 Premature Burial

2 Rush Recklessly

1 Snatch Steal

1 Scapegoat

1 Swords of Revealing Light

2 The Shallow Grave

 

Traps: 10

3 Blast with Chain

1 Mirror Force

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Solemn Judgment

2 Dust Tornado

2 Final Attack Orders

 

Deck Summary
 

This deck is obviously focused on returning monsters to the opponent’s deck by destroying them with either Mystical Knight of Jackal or Winged Sage Falcos. Even though the Mystical Knight is a two-tribute monster, I still chose to add him three times. I did that, because he’s absolutely necessary in this deck. Two copies of him is just too less to let this deck work properly. In order to ease the way of summoning him, I also added two copies of Gravekeeper’s Spy and one of Kaiser Seahorse. They both make the Mystical Knight a lot more easier to summon. I also included Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted and two copies of The Shallow Grave. This might sound like a bad idea, but if you think about it, it makes sense. All of those cards can bring monsters from the Graveyard back to the field so that you can tribute them for the Mystical Knight, or you could bring the Mystical Knight back himself. The Shallow Grave also lets your opponent Special Summon a monster, that’s true, but this deck can take advantage out of that situation very easily. If you were able to bring out the Mystical Knight during that same turn, you could take out the opponent’s monster with it, and in case you think you won’t have a problem dealing with it multiple times, then you could choose to return it to your opponent’s deck and begin your lock.

 

I’ll explain the strategy behind this deck now.

The focus of this deck is to bring out Mystical Knight of Jackal and Winged Sage Falcos. As soon as you get one of them out, you´ll need to support them by using cards like Final Attack Orders, Blast with Chain and Rush Recklessly. All of them work amazingly well with Winged Sage Falcos. His attack is boosted so he can take out any monster that tries to attack him and then, if your opponent is going to play defensively, you play Final Attack Orders to get the lock going. Mystical Knight of Jackal is harder to bring out, but needs less support than the Winged Sage Falcos. He already boasts a wonderful 2700 ATK points, so he can take out almost anything he wants to. Plus, he can return defense mode monsters as well. Obviously, Spell and Trap Cards remain a threat to you, but as soon as your lock gets active, your opponent will have to take you down with the Spell and Traps he/she has left, since the only cards he/she will draw are monsters for the remainder of the duel. This is why there are three copies of Mirage Dragon in this deck. It can negate oftenly played cards like Mirror Force and Sakuretsu Armor. To counter Bottomless Trap Hole, I included two copies of Dust Tornado, but you could also use Solemn Judgment for this. Although, I would recommend saving your Solemn Judgment to counter Spell Cards, since this deck doesn’t run a lot of cards to negate them.

 

Because there isn’t a lot of protection against Spell Cards, I chose to use three copies of Spirit Reaper. He can serve as tribute fodder for your Mystical Knight, but when you already have that guy out, you can use Spirit Reaper to decrease your opponent’s options even further.

 

Something you might’ve noticed is the absence of Torrential Tribute. I´ve got a very good reason for that. It´s mass removal, which is good most of the time. But it isn´t in this deck. Sure, Mirror Force is in, but that one only hurts your opponent´s Attack Position monsters. Torrential Tribute clears the entire field of all monsters and that drastically decreases the usefulness of your lockdown strategy. Unlike Mirror Force, this card wipes out all of your opponent’s monsters, which isn´t something that could be called ‘good’ in this deck. That is why I left that ‘staple’ Trap Card out.

 

Strengths of the ‘System Shutdown’ Deck

One thing that this deck can do extremely well is obviously locking down your opponent. The abilities of this deck to force your opponent into drawing the same card over and over again is not only annoying, but also gamebreaking when used correctly. The fact that your opponent won’t be able to collect new resources to find new ways of taking down your monsters so that he/she can recover from your assault is something that shouldn’t be underestimated. If your opponent isn’t holding any monsters, which is very well possible if you got off some direct attacks with a Spirit Reaper, you can always force your opponent to bring a monster back with The Shallow Grave so that you can still get your lock started. Another card that has great synergy with some other cards in this deck is Blast with Chain. It is often overlooked, but in fact, it’s a very useful card. In this deck, it’s able to boost your Winged Sage Falcos to a 2200 ATK monster, which means that he can take out a Cyber Dragon that’s attacking him. If that’s the case, you can return that Cyber Dragon to the top of the opponent’s deck and your lock is placed.

You see how easy it is to pull this lock? The right cards are all in this deck multiple times so that the odds of drawing them are pretty high. This deck uses a lot of combinations between cards that can hurt your opponent very badly if you just use them correctly.

 

Weaknesses of the ‘System Shutdown’ Deck

This deck has a lot of potential, but only when you get the right cards together. Like I said earlier, this deck is pretty combo-orientated, especially Winged Sage Falcos needs a lot of support. If you aren’t able to combine Winged Sage Falcos with some ATK-boosting cards, you’re stuck with a 1700 ATK monster that won’t last very long. The same goes for Mirage Dragon. It’s a very good card to include in this deck, because it adds protection to your bigger monsters, but when you’re in a tough situation, this card won’t help you out, since its effect is useful only when your opponent is the one in the tough situation. That’s why this deck can fail when you can’t seem to draw the right support cards. Several things have been done about this, though. Spirit Reaper was added, a card that has one of the best stalling effects ever. It’s able to stick around quite a long time, which might buy you the necessary time to draw the right support cards after all. Gravekeeper’s Spy is a monster with a reliable 2000 DEF. She will keep her stand for a while also. Still, Cyber Dragon forms a main threat to her. I also included Scapegoat, together with Swords of Revealing Light. Both are able to keep your opponent from attacking for a while so that you can still get the necessary support cards.
 

As you can see, I tried to cure this problem as well as I could, but at certain times, you just can´t draw any of these cards. The odds of this happening have been decreased, though, but it can still happen.

 

Theoretical Dueling Tips

In a duel in which you use this deck, you will most likely want to open with a defender. Spirit Reaper and Graveleeper´s Spy are both reliable cards to open a duel with. Another opening move could be to summon Winged Sage Falcos and back it up with two face-down cards. One of them is either Rush Recklessly or Blast with Chain (preferably Blast with Chain, since it stays on the field after activation) and the other one is Scapegoat. This is a perfect opening move, since you can defend yourself very well. If your opponent throws a big monster at you, play the Blast with Chain. If your opponent activates Smashing Ground, chain Scapegoat so that you’re still defended. If your going second and you make this move, then your opponent doesn’t want to activate Heavy Storm, since you can chain Blast with Chain then to destroy one of his/her cards. Once you brought out a decent defense, you can start planning the arrival of Mystical Knight of Jackal. It would be a good idea to back him up with a Solemn Judgment or a Mirage Dragon to make sure he’s not being destroyed in the very same turn that you brought him out. You can then start with your lock: Use Mystical Knight of Jackal to consistently return opposing monsters to the top of their deck to give your opponent dead draws all the time. The Mirage Dragon will prevent your Mystical Knight from falling prey to in-battle-triggered Trap Cards, that are very popular at the moment, and Solemn Judgment can always serve as solid negation. Even if your opponent manages to destroy your Mystical Knight, you’ve still got 4 revival cards left. Now you might think that The Shallow Grave is a card that isn’t very useful to bring back the Mystical Knight, since he only has a small 1200 DEF, but together with a face-down Final Attack Orders, that might be an even better choice than to bring him back with Premature Burial or Call of the Haunted. Your opponent thinks that he/she will take your monster out in battle, but instead, you activate Final Attack Orders, which switches your Mystical Knight to attack mode as soon as he’s flipped up by the attack. This’ll mean that the opponent’s monster will most likely be destroyed and thus it returns to the top of the opponent’s deck. Again, your lock has been placed.

 

The best way to duel with this deck would thus be playing calm. Never overextend, unless you’re completely sure of the fact that your lock has been timed well and that your opponent can’t catch you of guard with a Torrential Tribute. Remember that if you’ve got Mirage Dragon out and your opponent has multiple face-down cards and he/she chooses not to activate any of them when you attack, that doesn’t mean that they’re all in-battle-triggered Trap Cards, not at all. Torrential Tribute and Bottomless Trap Hole could be there as well. This is a mistake that is oftenly made, don’t let it catch you off guard.

 

Final Words

The Deck List of this deck looked entirely different when I first created it. I chose to use Anti-Spell Fragrance, along with Chiron the Mage to make an end to your opponent Spells so that your lock would be even better than it already was. This was a mistake. Anti-Spell Fragrance is a wonderful card, but only in a deck that is built around it, and only around that one card, not around other cards as well. In this deck, we’ve got mutiple Quick-Play Spells, like Mystical Space Typhoon and Rush Recklessly. The old version of the deck also ran Book of Moon, My Body As a Shield and Enemy Controller to lighten the downsides that Anti-Spell Fragrance has (since it forces you to put down Spell Cards first as well). But still, it slowed the deck itself too much, since you couldn’t use Premature Burial or The Shallow Grave on the turn you drew them, which means that you would have to take the risk of setting them on the field first.
 

The Deck List that I use now is far more useful than the older one. It has found ways to deal with bad draws very well and also changed its main focus towards the Mystical Knight instead of Winged Sage Falcos.
 

I know some of you might think: ‘Why didn’t you include Back to Square One or Phoenix Wing Wind Blast?’ Well, that’s because this deck focuses on returning monsters to the deck by battle, not through the effects of cards. Both Back to Square One and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast are –1 disadvantage-cards, while the monsters in this deck all provide you with +1 advantages. So that’s why.

 

This deck gives you great pleasure during duels and that’s what Yu-Gi-Oh is all about. Winning of course is fun as well and that’s something that this deck can do also. Have fun with this deck and I hope you enjoyed this article.

 

All of your comments, suggestions, reactions or anything else can be sent to ShineSoldier@gmail.com

 

*One last thing: I’ve got quite a lot positive e-mails about my Card Creations idea, so you can expect such an article in the near future. Since it’s almost finished already, I won’t be able to put in cards that are sent to me now anymore. All cards you send to me will be placed in my second article of that serie – that’s a promise ;)

 

‘Til next time,

~ShineSoldier~


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