Hello Duelists! My name is William Morrison and I am here to give you my take on a couple of really interesting decks.  The first is a deck made by none other then Billy Brake himself.  Boasting monsters with a hefty 1900 ATK and effects that will stop your opponent in their tracks it's Rock Stun!  The second is a very unique deck that combines the ritual-summoning arch-type of Gishkis with HEROs.  Each of these decks have their strenghts and weaknesses, but they both have a solid core to build greater things upon.

The Deck:

First off we have the Rock Stun deck put together by Billy Brake.  Rock Stun is a deck that gained support with the release of some older sets such as Ancient Prophecy and Raging Battle, but finally received its last piece, Kao'ki Meiru Wall, in Starstrike Blast.  This trinity of monsters, all with 1900 ATK, have effects which tribute themselves in order to negate and destroy cards that your opponent activates.  Koa'ki Meiru Guardian will put monsters to rest by negating their effects, Koa'ki Meiru Sandman will jam your opponents' traps making them useless, and lastly Koa'ki Meiru Wall can stop spells in their tracks.  These cards are further supported by other rock-type monsters in the deck; Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo, Neo-Spacian Grand Mole, and Block Golem.  Each of these cards serves their own purpose and I will explain each in due time.

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 The 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 Kachi Kochi Dragon
2 Soul of Silvermountain
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
1 Wind-Up Zenmaister
1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
1 Fairy King Albverdich
1 Gaia Knight, the Force of Earth
1 Naturia Beast
1 Naturia Barkion
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon

Billy's Rock Stun follows the same basic format of most Rock Stun Decks with the three of each Kao'ki Meiru monster and the usual Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo to stop special summons with Neo-Spacian Grand Mole to assist by returning opponents monsters to their hand or extra deck.  He even incorporats a newer card, Block Golem, into the deck to give it some explosive plays.  For anyone who is unfamiliar with Block Golem as a card its effect is as follows:

If all the monsters in your Graveyard are EARTH: You can Tribute this card to target 2 Level 4 or lower Rock-Type monsters in your Graveyard, except “Block Golem”; Special Summon those targets, but their effects that activate on the field cannot be activated this turn.

This means that you can bring back your Koa'ki Meiru monsters much easier than you ever could before.  It's true that these monsters cannot activate their effects on the field in the same turn they are special summoned by Block Golem's effect, but this shouldn't slow you down too much.  Although if you bring back a Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo with Block Golem it will still have its effect because it does not “activate”.  With this play you can attack with a 1900 ATK or higher monster and your Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo without fearing cards such as Gorz the Emissary of Darkness or Tragoedia.

All of this is fairly standard for a Rock Stun deck, but Billy's deck does something very different from the norm.  In his deck he makes use of Card Trooper to draw extra cards and fill his graveyard with monsters in hope of using Block Golem and Call of the Haunted more effectively.  He also runs two copies of Maxx “C” to counteract some of the faster decks of this format.  As for the rest of the deck he uses a fairly standard spell and trap line up with a few unique choices.

The Change:

To start off I took the original deck as is and tried testing it out and encountered a few problems.  Mostly I had problems with the monster line up.  The first of these issues was Card Trooper.  In theory using Card Trooper to thin out the deck and put desired monsters in the graveyard for future use is a wonderful idea, but in actual practice the idea falls short.  There were too many times where I watched my Bottomless Trap Holes and Solemn Warnings fall out of my reach into the graveyard.  The effect to draw when Card Trooper is destroyed is a great asset, but if you are not using the card to mill out your deck effectively I see no point in running it.  For this reason I took them out.  The second issue was with the Maxx “C”s.  There are a very good counter to decks like Wind-Ups and Six Samurai, but against others like HEROs and Chaos Dragons they are nearly useless only generating the occasional +1.  For this reason I would take them out of the main deck and move them over to the side deck.  Especially in a deck like this where you have many other ways to stop your opponent.  The last thing in the deck that I though really needed a change was the lineup of monsters.  Many decks this format are using few or no traps in their main decks so I found that more often than not I found myself wishing that the Koa'ki Meiru Sandman in my hand would have been a number of other cards.  After discovering this I cut one copy of Koa'ki Meiru Sandman.

As for the spells there was only one card that I thought needed to be cut completely.  Soul Taker was a card that, again, is good in theory.  Its usefulness in removing large targets and making monsters like Elemental HERO The Shining and Lightpulsar Dragon, but in this deck it starts after that.  In this deck your monsters are already bigger than most things your opponent will normal summon, and you have many traps that can remove the monsters when they are summoned as opposed to waiting until it's your turn and possibly too late.  The other spell that I thought needed changing was Mystical Space Typhoon.  With the same reasoning as the removal of a copy of Kao'ki Meiru Sandman I cut one copy of Mystical Space Typhoon.  The rest of the spells I agreed with completely, especially the choice of using one copy of The Seal of Orichalcos.  This card is at its best in decks that summon monsters that are hard to deal with by making them even bigger.  It is especially effective in this deck because it makes the Koa'ki Meiru monsters 2400 ATK beaters that can negate your opponent at any time.

Lastly we have the traps.  Here there was only one card that I thought needed taken out.  Starlight Road is an amazing card that can protect your from mass destruction cards such as Heavy Storm or Black Rose Dragon.  It even lets you summon a free Stardust Dragon to your side of the field!  It is exceptionally good in stun decks because it allows a player to set numerous traps without the fear of Heavy Storm.   However in this deck having a Stardust Dragon in your graveyard is detrimental when utilizing Block Golem's effect.  For this reason I removed it and replaced it with something that fits this specific deck much better.

Now this leaves us with the extra deck to fix still.  This didn't have too many issues as almost all of the monsters in it were earth already, but the choices of some of these cards over others were not the best in my opinion.  Originally the extra deck contained Stardust Dragon to go along with the Starlight Road, but since we will be taking Starlight Road out of the deck Stardust Dragon no longer has a place.  Next is a matter of usefulness, Kachi Kochi Dragon.  This card is a sub-par version of Blade Armor Ninja.  It can attack twice, but only if it destroys an opponents monster by battle and sends it to the graveyard first.  These are two things that do not always happen considering Kachi Kochi Dragon only has 2100 ATK.  I chose to replace this card with something that fit more situations better.  Without Maxx “C” Gachi Gachi Gantetsu has no place in the extra deck either since we have no level two monster in the main deck and it was next to impossible to summon even when we did.  Finally I chose to leave the Synchro monsters in the extra deck because there is room for them and if the situation arises where you can summon them they could be very useful.

Here are the changes I have made to the main deck so far:

Main Deck:

-1 Koa'ki Meiru Sandman

-2 Card Trooper

-2 Maxx “C”

-1 Mystical Space Typhoon

-2 Soul Taker

-1 Starlight Road

Extra Deck:

-1 Kachi Kochi Dragon

-1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu

-1 Stardust Dragon

Billy Brake's Rock Stun Deck: Revised

Monsters: 17

3 Koa'ki Meiru Guardian

2 Koa'ki Meiru Sandman

3 Koa'ki Meiru Wall

3 Block Golem

2 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo

1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

3 Gogogo Giant

Spells: 9

1 The Seal of Orichalcos

2 Forbidden Lance

2 Pot of Duality

2 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Dark Hole

1 Monster Reborn

Traps: 14

3 Call of the Haunted

2 Dimensional Prison

2 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

2 Torrential Tribute

1 The Huge Revolution is Over

2 Solemn Warning

1 Solemn Judgment

Extra Deck: 15

1 Giant Soldier of Steel

2 Soul of Silvermountain

1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn

1 Gagaga Cowboy

1 Kachi Kochi Dragon

2 Fairy King Albverdich

1 Wind-Up Zenmaister

2 Gem-Knight Pearl

1 Gaia Knight, the Force of Earth

1 Naturia Beast

1 Naturia Barkion

1 Scrap Dragon

Here is what I added:

Main Deck:

+3 Gogogo Golem

+2 Forbidden Lance

+1 Call of the Haunted

+1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

+1 The Huge Revolution is Over

Extra Deck:

+1 Giant Soldier of Steel

+1 Gagaga Cowboy

+1 Fairy King Albverdich

The first addition of three Gogogo Golem lets you go into Xyz plays more often because it can summon any “GoGoGo” monster from your graveyard in defense position.  It also has 2000 ATK which is very important this format because it lets it attack over cards like Geargiarmor and Thunder King Rai-Oh. As for the spells Forbidden Lance was a somewhat obvious choice for this deck.  Adding in two copies of this card makes it so you don't fall prey to your opponents traps or their monsters' attacks to an extent. The addition of Forbidden Lance also more than makes up for cutting one Mystical Space Typhoon.  This deck has an issue with getting over monsters with high defensive stats. For this reason I chose to add one copy of Compulsory Evacuation Device to the main deck to help remove those monsters and other Xyzs and Synchros.  Next to compliment Block Golem and the Koa'ki Meiru engine even more I added a third Call of the Haunted to the deck. often.  Lastly The Huge Revolution is over is going into the deck in place of Starlight Road.  It provides extra protection because it is a counter trap and cannot be stopped by Solemn Warning.

Lastly I added Giant Soldier of Steel, Gagaga Cowboy and another copy of Fairy King Albverdich to the extra deck.  Giant Soldier of Steel and Gagaga Cowboy are two brand new cards from Abyss Rising that allow even more flexibility with the extra deck without breaking the strict summoning conditions of Block Golem.

Giant Soldier of Steel:

This card is unaffected by other monsters' effects.  Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; it gains 1000 DEF until the End Phase, and if it does, you take no effect damage from your opponent's card effects this turn.

Gagaga Cowboy:

Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; apply this effect, depending on this card's battle position.

- Attack Position: If this card attacks an opponent's monster this turn, it gains 1000 ATK and the opponent's monster loses 500 ATK, during the Damage Step only.

- Defense Position: Inflict 800 damage to your opponent.

With Giant Soldier of Steel you are now equipped to handle Chain Burn in the main deck and with Gagaga Cowboy you can seal games with its second effect or attack over powerful monsters in a pinch.  The extra copy of Fairy King Albverdich was put in instead of the second Kachi Kochi Dragon because I believe that Kachi Kochi is much more situational and as a whole a much less useful card.

Joe Giorlando's Gishki HERO Turbo Deck was something that I have never seen before so I was in unfamiliar territory almost immediately.  I am familiar with the concept of Destiny HEROs and using them for a draw engine, but I had never seen them combined with Gishkis before.  I knew that Evigishki Gustkraken was one of the best ritual monsters from the Gishki archtype, but I had not taken a very close look at Evigishki Soul Ogre until now.

Evigishki Soul Ogre:

Cannot be Normal Summoned or Set.  Must first be Ritual Summoned.  You can Ritual Summon this card with any “Gishki” monster to target 1 face-up card your opponent controls; shuffle that target into the Deck.

It has an effect that lets you easily get around Xyz and Synchro monsters along with stalling cards such as Spirit Reaper.  It can even return face-up spell or trap cards that are hindering your progress such as Messenger of Peace.  The deck seemed to be centered around drawing cards as fast as possible and then going for a quick OTK with Elemental HERO Absolute Zero and Evigishki Soul Ogre.  Through playing the deck I realized that the deck has some explosive potential, but suffers greatly from bad hands.

Joe Giorlando’s Gishki HERO Turbo Deck

Monsters: 20

3 Evigishki 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

The Change:

The first problem I had was that I always ended up with all three copies of Gishki Soul Ogre in my hand or in the graveyard and dead Gishki Visions in my hand.  With this in mind I cut one copy of Gishki Vision.  Secondly there were some cards that just did not fit in the deck quite right.  Tour Guide From the Underworld is a card that is amazing, it was semi-limited on the most recent Ban-list for a reason.  It lets you bring cards out of your deck for nothing but the cost of normal summon enabling you to make strong Xyz plays.  In this deck however it is a very lackluster card.  The best it ever while I was testing was to make a rank three Xyz monster, and most of the time it never furthered my position in the game.  Next without Tour Guide from the Underworld Sangan was just a floater that searched other search orientated monsters in my deck.  This is not always a bad thing, but in this deck setting Sangan and passing a turn was too slow so the Sangan had to go.

The spell line up in this deck is designed to cycle through your deck as fast as possible and get to your Miracle Fusions.  What was in here does that its job so none of it was cut, but I did have a problem with Mystical Space Typhoon being run in this deck.  All three copies were cut in favor of a card that serves this deck much better.  Of course I would still suggest putting them in the side deck unless better options present themselves.  Salvage was another card that ended up being dead too often for my liking so I cut one copy.  It is great to reuse your Gishki Vision and Gishki Shadow once you have searched out the pieces of your ritual summon, but the occasion where you have two of these monsters in the graveyard does not come around enough to warrant running two Salvages.

The extra deck was something else completely.  By the time I was done with the main deck almost half of the extra deck was now pointless so it needed removing.  Without Tour Guide from the Underworld all of the rank three Xyz monsters were taken out.  Secondly There are no tuners in the deck so Black Rose Dragon wold be useless and even if you were to use Monster Reborn to use an opponent's Effect Veiler you would have no way to summon it with the main deck.  I chose to leave Number 11: Big Eye and Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis in the extra dec for the rare situations that they might be used.  These situations may not show up very frequently, but nothing is more satisfying than taking an opponent's Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning with Tragoedia and then proceeding to summon Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis with them.

Main Deck:

-1 Gishki Vision

-2 Tour Guide From the Underworld

-1 Sangan

-3 Mystical Space Typhoon

-1 Salvage

Extra:

-1 Grenosaurus

-1 Melomelody the Brass Djinn

-1 Wind-Up Zenmaines

-1 Leviar the Sea Dragon

-1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon

-1 Number 30: Acid Golem

-1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn

-1 Gaia Dragon, Thunder Charger

-1 Black Rose Dragon

Joe Giorlando’s Gishki Hero Turbo Deck: Revised

Monsters: 18

3 Evigishki Soul Ogre

2 Gishki Vision

2 Gishki Shadow

1 Elemental HERO Stratos

2Destiny Hero Diamond Dude

3 Destiny Hero - Plasma

2 Cardcar D

1 Dark Armed Dragon

1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

2 Tragoedia

Spells: 22

1 Gishki Aquamirror

1 Salvage

3 Trade-In

3 Destiny Draw

3 Miracle Fusion

1 Allure of Darkness

1 Reinforcement of the Army

2 Pot of Duality

3 Night Beam

1 Heavy Storm

1Dark Hole

1 Monster Reborn

Extra Deck:

1 Blade Armor Ninja

1 Heroic Champion Excalibur

1 Number 39: Utopia

1 Maestroke the Symphony Djinn

1 Photon Papilloperative

1 Number 11: Big Eye

1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis

1 Ally of Justice Catastor

1 Scrap Dragon

3 Elemental HERO Absolute Zero

1 Elemental HERO The Shining

1 Elemental HERO Escuridao

1 Elemental HERO Gaia

After testing this deck out I tossed around the idea of adding another Destiny HERO Diamond Dude or keeping in Sangan just for extra searching, but in the end they didn't really help out too much.  Eventually I tried running two copies of Cardcar D and it was phenomenal.  It sped up the deck so much I couldn't say no to using it.  Next I decided to add one more Gishki Shadow.  I made this decision because I would almost never get Evigishki Soul Ogre in my hand with Evigishki Aquamirror at the same time.  I was usually stuck with just Evigishki Soul Ogre.  For this reason I replaced one copy of Gishki Vision with Gishki Shadow.

For the spells I decided to add to copies of Pot of Duality to help with the consistency that this deck sorely needed.  Secondly I added in three copies of Night Beam into the Deck.

Night Beam:

Target 1 Set Spell/Trap Card your opponent controls; destroy that target. Your opponent cannot activate the targeted card in response to this card's activation.

I replaced all three copies of Mystical Space Typhoon with Night Beam because in this deck Night Beam is a much better card.  Night Beam is a normal spell which means you have another target to hit with Destiny HERO Diamond Dude's effect.  It may not be able to destroy face-up cards but I makes up for this by locking the card you choose down and preventing its activation.

Lastly the extra deck, now nearly empty, needed quite a few things added to it.  First of all I added in 3 copies of Elemental HERO Absolute Zero.  This is the main monster that you will want to summon with Miracle Fusion.  Next I added one copy of Elemental HERO The Shining, Elemental HERO Escuriado, and Elemental HERO Gaia individually.  Elemental HERO Gaia is playable in this deck because of the Cardcar D that was added in, Elemental HERO Escuriado is there as an emergency monster to use if you cannot summon Elemental HERO Absolute Zero for some reason, and Elemental HERO The Shining will most likely not ever be summoned.  However with Heroic Champion Excalibur in the extra deck you can summon it on rare occasions.  I also added in one more Xyz monster in the form of Photon Papilloperative.  Finally I decided that Ally of Justice Catastor and Scrap Dragon Deserved a place in the extra deck.  I know that there are no tuner monsters in the deck, but you do play Monster Reborn.  With all the room in the extra deck a couple of generic Synchro monsters will only improve your odds of winning with this deck.

Main Deck:

+1 Gishki Shadow

+2 Cardcar D

+3 Night Beam

+2 Pot of Duality

Extra:

+1 Photon Papilloperative

+1 Ally of Justice Catastor

+1 Scrap Dragon

+3 Elemental HERO Absolute Zero

+1 Elemental HERO The Shining

+1 Elemental HERO Escuriado

+1 Elemental HERO Gaia

There you have my revisions on two decks put together by two of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s finest players.  I hope you enjoyed my opinions and agree with the decisions that I made.  If something was not clear in the article please feel free to ask and hopefully I will be able to explain.  Thank you for reading and don't forget to go and try out these decks and see how they work for you!

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