Deck Doctor Round 3 : Tyler Nolan

December 18, 2012

by Tyler Nolan

Hello ARG Readers, I’m back again this week with another deck doctor article, this time with Frazier Smith’s Soul Control deck. Lets get right into the list:

Frazier Smith’s Soul Control: 40

Monsters: 22
3 cyber valley
2 card trooper
2 dimensional alchemist
2 maxx c
2 effect veiler
2 cardcar d
1 thunderking rai-oh
1 battle fader
1 necroface
1 chaos sorcerer
1 black luster soldier- envoy of the beginning
1 caius the shadow monarch
1 tragoedia
1 gorz, the emissary of darkness
1 sangan

Spells: 10
2 soul absorption
1 machine duplication
1 gold sarcophagus
1 allure of darkness
1 heavy storm
1 mind control
1 monster reborn
1 dark hole
1 scapegoat

Traps:8
2 solemn warning
2 torrential tribute
2 bottomless
2 mirror force

extra deck: 15
1 stardust dragon
1 scrap dragon
1 formula synchron
1 black rose dragon
1 number 17 leviathan dragon
1 number 20 giga brilliant
1 number 30 acid golem of destruction
1 number 39 utopia
1 leviair, the sea dragon
1 temtempo the percussion djinn
1 abyss dweller
1 wind up zenmaines
1 arcanite magician
1 armory arm
1 ally of justice catastor

At first glance, this reminded me a lot of SalvoDAD. The deck played similarly to the X-Saber deck from last week in that its goal was to survive a few turns, stall through the early game and develop with cards like Dimensional Alchemist, Dekoichi, Card Trooper, Tragoedia, Fader, and Gorz, before making a big push for game with a Black Salvo play followed by chaos monsters. The deck looks like it plays through the same kind of early game, but with less explosive potential on the top end, instead trying to get ahead enough with the grindy early game cards that a single chaos monster is enough to finish the game.

In the monsters, there are a few cards I don’t like here. Cyber Valley is a little too slow and clunky. A lot of decks can just avoid attacking it as well, with very little downside for them. The Water and Inzektor decks have Heavy Infantry and Hornet to deal with Valley, Rabbit has Dolkka out of the Extra, and other decks have the newly released Blackship of Corn as an easy rank 4 answer to Valley. When Valley is good, he is very good, but so many times he can just be ignored that a 3-of is too many, I’m going to cut them in favor of more proactive cards.

The random Necroface doesn’t really seem to fill much of a role either, you aren’t doing very much with the removed from play pile, and when you summon him he isn’t often going to be all that large. I’m also going to cut the two copies of Maxx “C”, in previous Deck Doctor articles I’ve mentioned my dislike for that card right now, and nothing has really changed. Versus Water, most of the time you’re just going to be getting an Upstart Goblin in response to their Abyss Sphere, against Chaos Dragon you’re lucky if you even get that much out of it. The card is bad against too many popular decks to want to maindeck it.

Moving into the spells, the immediate thing that stood out was Soul Absorption. It takes a lot of life points gained for it to be worth a full card, and it isn’t common that you’re going to gain more than a couple thousand life off this card. Something that gains “virtual” life, or prevents loss of life, like Dimensional Prison, or Mirror Force, while also being neutral in card advantage is just so much more valuable than a static life gain card. I’m going to cut both copies.

With the Cyber Valleys gone, cutting the Machine Duplications seems obvious enough. Mind Control gets the axe for the same reason. Scapegoat doesn’t do much in here without Cyber Valley either, so that’ll be cut off as well. You have other cards that help you survive through the early game, and you can’t use the tokens for much of anything. The final cut is going to be the Allure of Darkness. There just aren’t going to be enough DARK monsters in the final list to support it.

So in summary, the cuts are:

-3 Cyber Valley
-2 Maxx “C”
-1 Necroface
-2 Soul Absorption
-1 Machine Duplication
-1 Mind Control
-1 Scapegoat
-1 Allure of Darkness

So, with 12 slots freed up, we can start adding cards. The first addition I’m going to make is 2 copies of Tour Guide from the Underworld. It helps give the deck some more power without hurting the already somewhat unstable early game. It also lets you add Dark Armed Dragon, who again gives the deck a more powerful late game to survive into. With the Guides, and a couple other of the cards we’ll be adding, getting to 3 darks shouldn’t be much of an issue.

This deck definitely wants to be playing the maximum allowed number of Tragoedias. Tragoedia helps with the deck’s survivability, and will usually be very large due to all of the cards that replace themselves like Card Trooper, Cardcar, or Dimensional Alchemist. The last addition I’m going to make to the monster lineup is I’ll be maxing out Thunder King Rai-Oh. Rai-Oh is one of the most powerful hate cards in the game right now, and has its uses against just about every deck. Wind-ups can’t do much at all with Thunder King on the field. Versus the water deck, it stops them from doing Abysspike, or Undine stuff. It creates a huge thorn in the side of a lot of opposing decks, and is another speed bump your opponent needs to get over in order to advance their gameplan. When it is your plan to make the game go longer, these speed bumps can be invaluable.

In the spells, I’m again going to add two copies of Pot of Duality. On the first few turns of the game, your plan, just like with the saber deck from last week, is to just setup and stay alive. Pot of Duality is one of the best cards in the game for setting up, and when you’re not planning on special summoning much on the first few turns anyway, it basically has no drawback!

Similarly, I’m going to add a second copy of Gold Sarcophagus, for a lot of the same reasons I ran it in the Saber list last week. However, it is even more important in this deck, which otherwise has no way to search for your game ending power cards like Black Luster Soldier, or Dark Armed Dragon. If you already have those, you can always search for something like Monster Reborn, or Heavy Storm. Because you have cards like Tragoedia and Gorz in this deck, which weren’t in the Saber deck, you’re even more likely to be able to survive into getting the card removed. Another benefit of Gold Sarcophagus is that it hides the card from Moulinglacia, so they can’t discard it. So if you Sarc for a BLS before the water deck goes off, you have a comeback card hiding out, waiting to pounce.

Book of Moon is one of the best “traps” in the game right now, and was surprised to see it excluded. It not only can protect your monsters in their battle phase, but it interrupts Magician + Shark, and other xyz plays. While it doesn’t destroy the monster immediately, the added versatility is worth having to attack over their monster on your following turn.

I’m going to round the list out with 2 copies of Mystical Space Typhoon, mostly as an answer to cards decks like this have trouble with like Wind-up Factory, or a Call of the Haunted on Archlord Kristya, but it is also just a solid card for getting your pushes through later on.

So in summary, the additions are:

+2 Tour Guide from the Underworld
+1 Dark Armed Dragon
+2 Thunder King Rai-Oh
+1 Tragoedia
+2 Pot of Duality
+1 Gold Sarcophagus
+1 Book of Moon
+2 Mystical Space Typhoon

Final List,

*Doctored* Soul Control: 40
Monsters: 22
3 Thunder King Rai-Oh
2 Card Trooper
2 Dimensional Alchemist
2 Tour Guide from the Underworld
2 Effect Veiler
2 Cardcar D
2 Tragoedia
1 Battle Fader
1 Dark Armed Dragon
1 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
1 Caius the Shadow Monarch
1 Gorz, Emissary of Darkness
1 Sangan

Spells: 10
2 Pot of Duality
2 Gold Sarcophagus
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Book of Moon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole

Traps:8
2 Solemn Warning
2 Torrential Tribute
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Mirror Force

For the side deck, you have a lot of options. For Wind-Ups, Gozen Match and Needle Ceiling are probably still your best options, even with the number of attributes this deck has, the wind-up deck can’t really do anything under a Gozen, and you’re free to do what you plan on doing through the early game anyway, slowly apply pressure with alchemists and thunder kings while accumulating the resources to make bigger plays.

Siding Dimensional Prisons for a slight improvement versus decks like Heroes, or other rogue decks you might want more one for one removal against is probably worth it as well.

D.D. Crow is currently my favorite side for Inzektor, if you hit their Hornet it becomes extremely difficult for them to do much of anything. Soul Drain is a reasonable option you have for the Water deck, though it shuts your Alchemists, and Trooper draw off. Macro Cosmos might not be completely unreasonable either, while it definitely hurts you as well, because of the way it completely shuts down both the Water and Inzektor decks gameplans is significant. Banisher of the Radiance is also an option worth considering, it can be very difficult for the decks you side it in for to get rid of, and when protected, it can singlehandedly end games.

Notable Exclusions:

Not many of these this time around, I was able to fit in just about everything I wanted to.

Night Assailant: I haven’t been a huge fan of running a 2^nd tour guide target, the times it’s good when you open double tour guide are outweighed by the times you draw it and it’s bad. The odds of drawing the one Assailant is much higher than your odds of drawing both Tour Guides

Call of the Haunted: Even though the deck plays Card Trooper and Sangan, those are the only cards in the deck that you can chain Call for in response to destruction, as Alchemist will miss timing. Also, unlike the Agent deck, your boss monsters aren’t revivable when milled with Trooper, so you don’t have much power in Call either.

Hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing this article, and I hope to be back next week for the finals!