I wanted to start out by thanking the Alter Reality Games staff for not only providing the public with the opportunity to get our ideas out, but also for bringing it about in a challenging, effective, and fair way.  I am Cody Johnson, or GreatFailsMontana on YouTube, and I have actually written a number of different articles on here before. So hopefully, some of you remember or know me already, but if you don’t then it is nice to meet you!

There already has been great input on both of these deck designs, so I will only try to contribute my own ideas and not repeat too much redundant information.  So after about 5 days of testing, I think I have 2 decent decklists, that will still need some personal tweaks for player preference, but they are already at about 65-75% win percentages. So for me, they are about finished.  Let’s get into the specifics!

Here is Billy Brake’s Rock Stun Deck:

Monsters (19)

3 Koa’ki Meiru Guardian

3 Koa’ki Meiru Sandman

3 Koa’ki Meiru Wall

3 Block Golem

2 Card Trooper

2 Maxx “C”

2 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo

1 Neo-Spacian Grand mole

Spells (10)

3 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Soul Taker

2 Pot of Duality

1 Seal of Orichalcos

1 Monster Reborn

1 Dark Hole

Traps (12)

2 Dimensional Prison

2 Solemn Warning

2 Call of the Haunted

2 Bottomless Trap hole

2 Torrential Tribute

1 Solemn Judgment

1 Starlight Road

Extra Deck (15)

2 Gem-Knight Pearl

2 Kochi Kochi Dragon

2 Soul of Silver Mountain

1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn

1 Wind-Up Zenmaister

1 Gachi Gachi

1 Fairy King Albverdich

1 Gaia Knight, Force of Earth

1 Naturia Beast

1 Naturia Barkion

1 Scrap Dragon

1 Stardust Dragon

So as you can see the deck looks pretty standard.  I mean there are some pretty obvious markers that make it Billy’s Deck, but it still functions like a standard Rock Stun deck.  I started out by making a monster heavy variant that focused on the trooper/call model that Billy follows which capitalizes on the benefits that Block Golem provides (i.e. Mid-Late game pushes), but it seems like it never has enough protection against decks that are hyper aggressive.  For instance, it has issues with decks either on the monster heavy side, with decks like Chaos Dragons, or on the trap heavy side, against decks like T.G. Stun.  After going through several strange focal points (Solidarity, Gaia Plate, even Power Giant!), I decided to fix that issue by adding some more traps, but that wasn’t enough to handle the monster heavy decks, so I decided that the Barbaros/Skill Drain engine was the perfect, simple solution for a complex problem.  Now that I’ve talked a little bit about the overall design, let’s get into specifics.

Monsters:

The biggest original change that I did was to scrap Card Trooper because of its unnecessary clash with the deck. Yes it dumps cards in the grave, yes it works well with Call, and yes it even can get rid of problem 1900 beaters, but are those things really necessary or are you trying to add too many ideas from Inzektors and Agents which function on completely different levels? The Rock Stun deck has the “Stun” in its name for a reason and I think that means that we need to think about it in those terms.  Some things that I really did like about Trooper, was his great way of making cards like Dark hole and TT double edged as well as dumping rocks into grave.  I think people forget is that Rocks have their own floater.  Naturia Cliff is an amazing card that not only adds the floater and dumping capabilities of Trooper, but it fills the maintenance cost for your Koa’ki Meiru Rock monsters!  What a great card to fill the same slot as Trooper would.  The rest of the changes I made to the deck were related to the Skill Drain decision.  Maxx “C”, Fossil Dyna, and Grand Mole are all great cards for a variant that doesn’t use Skill Drain, but because of the variant I decided on, we need to think of the deck in different terms.  With those changes, it makes room for 2 Beast King Barbaros and 2 Legendary Jujitsu Master.  The 2 Beast King give the deck a boss monster and a card that justifies the skill drain.  The 2 Jujitsu Master are great because they are Level 3, 1300 Attack, 1800 Defense, Earth, Rock monsters with the added bonus of actually having a great effect. For me, they are the best choice for a Skill Drain variant of Rock Stun. Through testing, I found that you absolutely never want to start out with more than 1 Block Golem and running 3 ofs should not be our first instinct just because archetypes like to do that.  So, because it is great to draw Block Golem but almost game breaking to draw multiples, I took out 1 of them.  Here are the changes to the monster list:

-2 Card Trooper

-2 Maxx “C”

-2 Fossil Dyna

-1 Grand Mole

-1 Block Golem

+3 Naturia Cliff

+2 Beast King Barbaros

+2 Legendary Jujitsu Master

IT’S A Trap Line Up

The reason why I wanted to do this category next is because it has the next most changes after monsters.  My basic idea with the deck was to design a deck that could do the same kinds of things that T.G. Stun can (minus Horn of the Phantom Beast), but better against a lot of non-interactive decks.  So my solution is Skill Drain and in a deck like this you only need 2!  Skill Drain is absolutely amazing against decks like Wind-Ups, Chaos Dragons, etc. without being detrimental to the deck really at all.  Before you get all too excited about avoiding the Koa’ki Meiru “revealing a Rock-type Monster” text, you need to realize that revealing a rock type monster is a maintenance cost for the monsters; meaning that it’s not an effect that can be negated, so Skill Drain does not affect it.  I put in Seven Tools of the Bandit, because I feel like the card is amazing in decks that make large pushes “gradually, then suddenly” (Hemingway reference!).  Compulsory Evacuation Device is a decent replacement for Grand Mole’s function in the deck so I believe that it is very necessary.  The 2 Call of the Haunted are obviously getting taken out.  I don’t really know why he decided that the deck needed it other than to provide some interesting plays with Trooper and Block Golem. There is the interesting, but rare, play where you activate call in the Draw or Standby Phases and grab the most relevant Koa’ki, but I don’t believe that it is a great enough play for it to stay in.  I really wanted to take out the Road, but after the Skill Drain change it seems more than necessary.  Here are the Trap list changes:

-2 Call of the Haunted

+2 Skill Drain

+1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

+1 Seven Tools of the Bandit

Spells:

The changes here are a little more obvious and for player preference.  I decided to cut two MSTs for Heavy Storm and Seven Tools. They just provide better outs in different scenarios.  Backrows get blown through all too easily nowadays and this deck is better than most with handling individual backrow anyway.  Forbidden Chalice is a solution to running just 2 Skill Drain, as well as giving the deck a damage step choice for negating effects, other than with the Guardian. There are the rare times where Barbaros can take advantage of it as well!  Once again, the solitary Seal seems completely convoluted, but they skill drain change makes the card even more interesting. So I’m keeping it. I took out 2 Soul Taker because the reasons why he was running it are now solved with Skill Drain/Forbidden Chalice.  So the changes are:

-2 Mystical Space Typhoon (MST)

-2 Soul Taker

+1 Heavy Storm

+1 Forbidden Chalice

Extra Deck:

The choices in this list are a little arbitrary for obvious reasons, but I do want to make a point with Vylon Disigma and Shock Master.  There are circumstances where you are playing non-interactive decks and Shock Master is very much needed or other circumstances where the game is completely grinded out, your opponent’s resources are limited, and life is low, so you would want the options of Disigma or Shock Master.  That is just my opinion though.  Here are the changes:

-1 Kachi Kochi Dragon

-1 Soul of Silvermountain

-1 Gachi Gachi

+1 Vylon Disigma

+1 Number 16: Shock Master

+1 Naturia Landoise

Here is the full, edited Rock Stun Deck:

Monsters (18)

3 Naturia Cliff

3 Koa’ki Meiru Guardian

3 Koa’ki Meiru Sandman

3 Koa’ki Meiru Wall

2 Block Golem

2 Legendary Jujitsu Master

2 Beast King Barbaros

Spells (8)

2 Pot of Duality

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Dark Hole

1 Monster Reborn

1 Seal of Orichalcos

1 Forbidden Chalice

Traps (14)

2 Skill Drain

2 Dimensional Prison

2 Solemn Warning

2 Bottomless Trap Hole

2 Torrential Tribute

1 Solemn Judgment

1 Starlight Road

1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

1 Seven Tools of the Bandit

Extra Deck (15)

1 Vylon Disigma

1 Number 16: Shock Master

2 Gem-Knight Pearl

1 Kochi Kochi Dragon

1 Soul of Silver Mountain

1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn

1 Wind-Up Zenmaister

1 Fairy King Albverdich

1 Gaia Knight, Force of Earth

1 Naturia Beast

1 Naturia Barkion

1 Naturia Landoise

1 Scrap Dragon

1 Stardust Dragon

Alright so onwards and forwards! This is so long, sorry!

Joe Giorlando’s Gishki Hero Turbo Deck:

Monsters (20)

3 Gishki Soul Ogre

3 Gishki Vision

3 Destiny Hero Plasma

2 Destiny Hero Diamond Dude

2 Trageodia

2 Tour Guide from the Underworld

1 Sangan

1 Gishki Shadow

1 Elemental Hero Stratos

1 Dark Armed Dragon

1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

Spells (20)

3 Destiny Draw

3 Trade-In

3 Miracle Fusion

3 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Salvage

1 Gishki Aquamirror

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Allure of Darkness

1 Dark Hole

1 Heavy Storm

1 Monster Reborn

Extra Deck (15)

1 Grenosaurus

1 Melomelody the Brass Djinn

1 Wind-Up Zenmaines

1 Leviair the Sea Dragon

1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon

1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction

1 Temtempo Percussion Djinn

1 Maestroke Symphony Djinn

1 Blade Armor Ninja

1 Heroic Champion Excalibur

1 Number 39: Utopia

1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis

1 Number 11: Big Eye

1 Gaia Dragon, Thunder Charger

1 Black Rose Dragon

This deck was much, much more fun to test overall.  It was very frustrating to find the "right" way to go with it, because there are so many different directions you can go, but it was still very fun.  Something that people forget about this deck is that it is a TURBO deck, meaning that the deck is supposed to achieve some kind of speed to get to some kind of overwhelming card advantage.  That card advantage nets you your power cards so that you can go off as soon as possible.  So what I tried to do, is make this variant as turbo as possible without sacrificing any consistency.  I went from the Recharge/Lightsworn engine to a variant focused more on Gishkis to a variant more focused on destiny heroes and then I realized that what I was missing wasn’t massive change in design, but a way to get win conditions faster.  That led to the version I’m about to show you! I actually decided to think about the deck in terms of being an Absolute Zero deck more than Gishki or Turbo OTK.

MONSTERS!

I found it very interesting that Joe not only omitted Malicious, but he omitted DIVA!!  Deep Sea Diva is absolutely amazing in this deck.  Gives you access to Synchros and access to rank 2s!  It works well with the Gishkis already in the deck and lets you run Malicious! I did end up adding Atlantean Attack Squad because he is the best level 3 Sea Serpent by far.  He gives you the potential to put 2400 damage on board at almost any time.  That is nothing to squander over.  Because I’m running Malicious I feel that Plague is necessary and because I’m running both Plague and Mali I feel that Dark Grepher is a must.  He’s also legitimized by Destiny Hero – Plasma.  Effect Veiler is a great add for this deck!  It allows the deck to have some much needed defensive plays and it is the final push to allow for BLS.  Black Luster Soldier is THEE boss monster that we have access to.  Diva, Veiler, and Plays with Utopia/Heroic Champion Excalibur make it so that this card is very accessible.  And BLS happens to be Level 8 so he’s fodder for Trade-In.  Tragoedia, Tour Guide, Sangan, and Dark Armed are very good cards, but I really think that they go against the purpose of the deck.  Tour Guide would be in the deck if the minimum for decks would be 43.  I absolutely like it in the deck, but it isn’t needed with Diva pulling a lot of weight.  Sangan, DAD, and Trag’s issues are that they are cards that don’t actually help with the turbo aspects to the deck. DAD and Trag can sit in your hand forever and Sangan relatively takes long time to actually get anything done. So here are my edits to Monsters:

-2 Tragoedia

-2 Tour Guide from the Underworld

-1 Sangan

-1 Dark Armed Dragon

+3 Deep Sea Diva

+2 Destiny HERO – Malicious

+2 Effect Veiler

+1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning (BLS)

+1 Plaguespreader Zombie

+1 Dark Grepher

+1 Atlantean Attack Squad

Da Spells:

The changes here are not too revolutionary.  I took out 3 MST and 2 Salvage for similar reasons of the Monsters.  MSTs and Salvage can be extremely dead turns 1-2 and I want the deck to go FAST.  Salvage is also a win more card for this deck.  I tried even 1 and it was just too situational.  I added 1 Mind Control because it is great for this deck.  It gives you another win condition as well as giving you fodder for Xyz and Synchros.

-3 MST

-2 Salvage

+1 Mind Control

Extra Deck!

This part was strange, because Joe didn’t type Elemental HERO Absolute Zero, which is the purpose for running Miracle Fusion.  I’m not sure if he would actually make that mistake or if he was entertaining the contest a little more, but regardless the deck needs as many Ab zeros as Miracle Fusions.  Also, I took out all of the unnecessary and rank 3 Xyz so I could fit in the obvious rank 2s and Synchros! I actually really liked the potential that Heliopolis presents.  He combines well with Zero too. I chose Magical Android over Catastor because of BLS and the fact that Android is better against Shock Master, going into time, Dolkka, and other similar situations.  Here are the changes:

-1 Melomelody the Brass Djinn

-1 Wind-Up Zenmaines

-1 Leviair the Sea Dragon

-1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon

-1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction

-1 Temtempo Percussion Djinn

-1 Maestroke Symphony Djinn

-1 Blade Armor Ninja

-1 Number 11: Big Eye

-1 Gaia Dragon, Thunder Charger

+1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu

+1 Daigusto Phoenix

+1 Number 96: Dark Mist

+3 Elemental HERO Absolute Zero

+1 Armory Arm

+1 Magical Android

+1 Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth

+1 Scrap Dragon

+1 Stardust Dragon

The Edited Gishki Hero Turbo Deck

Monsters (25)

3 Gishki Soul Ogre

3 Gishki Vision

1 Gishki Shadow

3 Deep Sea Diva

1 Atlantean Attack Squad

3 Destiny HERO – Plasma

2 Destiny HERO – Malicious

2 Destiny HERO – Diamond Dude

1 Elemental HERO Stratos

1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

1 Plaguespreader Zombie

1 Dark Grepher

2 Effect Veiler

1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning

Spells (16)

3 Destiny Draw

3 Trade-In

3 Miracle Fusion

1 Gishki Aquamirror

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Allure of Darkness

1 Dark Hole

1 Heavy Storm

1 Monster Reborn

1 Mind Control

Extra Deck (15)

1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu

1 Daigusto Phoenix

1 Number 96: Dark Mist

1 Heroic Champion Excalibur

1 Number 39: Utopia

1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis

3 Elemental HERO Absolute Zero

1 Armory Arm

1 Magical Android

1 Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth

1 Black Rose Dragon

1 Scrap Dragon

1 Stardust Dragon

Hopefully, you can see what kinds of things that my writing and ideas can bring to the ARG staff.  Overall I feel like the decks perform much, much better after the edits I made.  I feel like with time that could definitely change and my testing was very limited, obviously 5 days of testing does not equal perfection.  I think it’s very interesting to see how people have changed the original lists.  It’s absolutely fascinating that we can have 50+ people submit different ideas and different card choices with different reasonings.  That is amazing that our game is so multi-faceted.  Thank you for spending superfluous amounts of time reading all of these articles.  I hope you enjoyed this article specifically! Please comment your thoughts on my ideas/lists below.  And as always, “Go hard or Go Home!"

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