Overview

Currently I'm in eager anticipation of the regional on the 14^th of April 2007 held at Fanboy 3. I know its going to be an excellent event, and I know I'm gonna have a lot of fun. One of the few things that I don't know is if I'm going to do well. In this series of articles in the two weeks preceding the regional I'll let you into a little insight in how I'm going about preparing for the regional.

 

First lets start off with a little background information. Fanboy 3 is one of the better gaming placing in the UK, home of greats such as the Simon Ho, ranked first in the UK, Wayne Pinkney, 2006 national champion, and a whole host of regulars. This is a group of people that never cease to amaze me with their unique duelling and tactical skills. To sum up the meta, it's one tough cookie (pun intended). For all details please do go to their web site: www.fanboy.co.uk

 

When attempting to go into any such major tournament there are three phases that you could go through, conceptualisation, play testing and improvement. Don't believe that these phases are linear, as you can jump straight to play testing if you have done your background research and decided to copy your deck off www.metagame.com, bypassing conceptualisation completely. Note I'm not advocating or slating net decking, but personally I like the challenge.

 

Conceptualisation

In this article I intend to take you through the first step of the process with a deck type which I haven't seen that much of on the forums, this is conceptualisation.

 

If any of you out there played me two formats ago you would have noticed one defining thing about me: I always played the same deck. This is very strange as now I constantly chop and change and wonder why I don't have as much success with a deck type. To others it's pretty simple, I don't concentrate enough on a single deck type in order to improve it fully, and rather I split my time and effort on my ever-changing whims. This stops now. Things go full circle. It's time to resurrect the Ninja.

 

The conceptualisation of this deck has involved looking at a deck that recently won the Shonen Jump Championship Houston. From Emon's initial idea of using Card Troopers to fill the graveyard for mass removal I have tried to apply this idea to my signature card, Strike Ninja. So in this I would like to thank Emon Ghaneian for winning the championship and bringing this concept to the metagame.

 

Strike Ninja allows the player to maintain field advantage at the cost of removing two DARK monsters from the game. As this effect is a multi trigger, baring you attacking a face down Jujitsu Master or getting Shrunk during the Damage step, Strike Ninja is here to stay, provided you can fuel his run.

 

One of the old ways to maintain this run was to use Painful Choice to discard three D.D. Scout Plane to the graveyard, which allowed the player to run multiple tributes, which feeds the grave some more. Finally the user would drop a Dimension Fusion to rush the opponent for a win. Alas we have restriction on these cards, but in return we got arguably better ones: Future Fusion and Card Trooper.

 

Here is the proposed deck.

 

Over Fusion Strike Mark 1

 

Monsters

[1] Jinzo

[1] Blowback Dragon

[1] Dark Magician of Chaos

[3] Cyber Dragon

[3] Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locamotive

[1] D.D. Scout Plane

[1] D.D. Assailant

[3] Card Trooper

[1] Treeborn Frog

[1] Morphing Jar

[2] Strike Ninja

[1] Sangan

[2] Snipe Hunter

[1] D.D. Warrior Lady

Total: 22

 

Magics

[1] Future Fusion

[1] Overload Fusion

[1] Mystical Space Typhoon

[1] Scapegoat

[1] Snatch Steal

[1] Heavy Storm

[1] Premature Burial

[2] Smashing Ground

[1] Reinforcement of the Army

Total: 10

 

Traps

[1] Call of the Haunted

[3] Sakuretsu Armour

[1] Mirror Force

[1] Torrential Tribute

[1] Ring of Destruction

[2] Return From the Different Dimension

Total: 9

 

Lets look at some of the statistics of this deck shall we?

 

How many Machines? 12

How many Darks? 12

How many Tributes? 6

How many Magics? 10

How many Traps? 9

 

As you can see the machines to dark ratio is an equal split giving them equal opportunity to be removed from the game from either Strike Ninja or Overload Fusion.

 

Usually I would not main deck Premature Burial OR Call of the Haunted, but in this deck you would have to be stupid not to. Both these cards allow you to recall cards sent to the graveyard from Card Trooper or Future Fusion. Adding to the chainability of Call of the Haunted, Sangan, Jinzo or Dark Magician of Chaos are solid deck choices.

 

Future Fusion is the crux of many OTK decks but in this idea well use it somewhat differently. Future Fusion allows us to manipulate the deck and the graveyard, on a simple level it places a large amount of dark monsters into the grave, but on a more technical level it produces an improvement on the draw. Do you think that you can win if you draw a certain card? Future Fusion makes it happen a lot faster. Deck thinning will be an important part of the tactic but wait; Future fusion is a Limited Card.

 

Card Trooper, once summoned, mills the tops three cards of the deck, placing them in the graveyard; in return you receive a 500-attack bonus for each, boosting him to 1900 attack. What's more is when Card Trooper is destroyed you draw a card. This means Card Trooper effectively mills through 4 cards of your deck. To bring it back to the Strike Ninja fetish I acquired so long ago, it can fuel this little powerhouse as well.

 

To speed down to the key cards Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locamotive acts as a floater'. To all of you not net-savvy with your Yu-Gi-Oh speak; it basically replaces itself with another card. With a deck with great milling tactics this is very important late game, as any card you draw from a spent Dekoichi is most likely much better then your opponent's.

 

The traps and Scapegoat allows us dodge the bullet until the key cards can be drawn. Scapegoat provides an instant + 3 (in pure advantage terms only!) and other traps taking out key monsters in their arsenal

 

Snipe Hunter allows the removal of clear threats before monsters return from the different dimension. Say you have a set Return from the Different Dimension with monsters removed from the game, and your opponent has a face down monster and a set magic or trap. In order to secure that victory would you be willing to discard you whole hand? Admittedly it's a luck based card, but its 2/3 in your favour (The Devil's number, ironically). In short  I like those odds.

 

So that's conceptualisation. What I have tried to do here is take an idea and used cards to create a viable deck-type. I would love to know your initial impressions of the deck. Is it a worthy idea? Will it succeed? Please send all feedback to emuron@gmail.com

 

Until next time, when we move on to Play-testing.

 

Aaron Fletcher