Surgery, Surgery, Surgery

November 15, 2012

by Kevin Mathew

Hello, fellow readers of ARG articles. My name is Kevin Mathew, and I am here to display my view of deck editing decks. I have only recently playing competitively, but I have played this game for years now and have created several, shall I say “odd” decks, over the years that have somehow worked. Though my specialty are weird decks that are unique to the individual and place several strict policies on myself out of sheer stubbornness, I am well aware of what is current in the meta and why certain cards are used in place of others. I encourage all to play within their own style and I am a huge supporter of underdog decks and interesting deck builds that need fine tuning. Now without further ado, let us dive into the two deck lists I have been given to fix. Turn on the surgical lights and let us break down the first deck: Billy Brake’s Rock Stun deck.

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 Grandmole

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

Personally, I have never been a fan of Rock Stun because of how slow it is to start. No offense to any stun players out there, but I like my decks with some speed and if happens to have an OTK in it, then it does. For those of you who do not know what Rock Stun does, it is an EARTH deck that uses the trifecta of Koa’Ki Meiru ROCK monsters to negate your opponents spells, traps, and monster effects by tributing themselves. Koa’Ki Meiru Guardian negates monster effects, Koa’Ki Meiru Sandman negates traps, and Koa’Ki Meiru Wall negates spells. It is a pretty versatile deck with the trifecta and along with the great troll, grand mole, and a heavy back row to protect your monsters from harm and to guard your life points. It is a formidable deck to face if u cannot run it over. There are some changes that I would like to make to beef up the deck to make the offensive strategy more aggressive without losing defensive power.

Monsters

My initial concern for monsters is the Fossil Dyna. While I realize that Wind-Ups exist with Chaos Dragons, Geargia, Dark World and Heroes all speeding up to smack you down with little to no set up, it does not mean you need to throw in a well-known side deck card into your main deck right off the bat. Another problem with Dyna in the main deck is Block Golem. Block Golem is the sole of the deck, as it can revive 2 of your ROCK monsters that are in the grave. My suggestion would be to take them out and replace them with an amazing boss monster: Grandsoil the Elemental Lord. With all of the milling from Card Trooper and the Koa’Ki Meriu sacrifices to halt your opponent’s plays, it should not take that long to drop one of those bad boys and go hard on the offensive. In the off chance Grandsoil is removed from the field and you are forced to not attack, it just allows you a turn to set up for your next play. Finally, if you’re really worried that your opponent has a set mirror force/dimensional prison set for your attack, you can always revive your potential Sandman in the grave to protect Grandsoil that turn.

Spells

Wow, The Seal of Orichalcos. As soon as I saw that card, I was so tempted to say just take out the extra deck entirely and put another copy in the main deck for consistency, but I restrained myself at the last minute and began to think smart again. The main problem with the seal in this deck is that while it does not need the extra deck at all, the extra provides that extra boost to victory that you may need. In place of it, I would suggest using pot of avarice. It’s an amazing recycle engine; shuffle back block golems to use again, both shuffle back milled/destroyed Grandsoils as well as provide some more control over the amount of monsters in your graveyard, and also put any non-EARTH XYZ monsters you may have summoned before to allow the explosive golem plays. The second issue is the Mystical Space Typhoon. 3 is a really exaggerated number and should only be used in deck that can get away with it and not have it be a dead draw. With a deck like Rock Rtun, every card you draw counts so I would suggest replacing the Typhoons with a Heavy Storm and two Forbidden Lances.

Heavy Storm has always been a great cleaner of back rows as and a great setup play for that huge agro play that wins you the game in one turn and the deck really does need its monsters to stay on the field for that move. As for the Lances, why not make your MST’s go the extra mile? In the offensive strategy, lance can cripple your opponent’s monster attack which would allow you to attack over them. On the defensive strategy, it allows you to protect crucial monsters from cards such as Bottomless, Torrential, Dark Hole, etc.

Traps

The trap line up for this deck is pretty standard for the most part. The only thing I would change would be to switch Starlight Road out with the Huge Revolution is over. Now, before all you starlight road fans jump me for my cards, allow me to explain. Huge Revolution is much better in this deck because the back row heavily supports the monster line up in their attacks. While Starlight Road can both negate a mass wipe and give you another monster, it can be negated with a Solemn Warning. Huge Revolution is a counter trap, which means it can only be negated by a counter trap, so unless your opponent wants to pay half of their life points to Judgment it or Bribe you and allow you to draw a card, it will go through.

Extra

First things first: take out the synchro monsters. You have no tuners main deck so I see no reason for them unless you plan to side some in. That leaves us with 5 slots open. Didn’t Abyss Rising come out recently? Why not add some xyz monsters from that set? The first thing that pops into my head is Gagaga Cowboy. Offensively he isn’t that great, but defensively, he’s got a hefty 2400 defense, and his effect in defense position is to snipe away 800 life points off of your opponent. That definitely sounds an extra push card. The next monster I would add from Abyss Rising is a bit unorthodox but amazing in its own right: Abyss Dweller. I realize he is a water attribute monster and that once it hit the grave block golem becomes useless, but look at its effect: “Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; any card effects that activate in your opponent's Graveyard cannot be activated this turn.” That effect essentially stops both Lightpulsar and eclipse wyvern’s effect from going off, seals off the Inzektor Hornet and completely shuts down Dark World and the new Atlanteans for a turn! With this one xyz monster, you can freeze any graveyard effect from going off for a turn, adding in more control, and if it does end up in the graveyard, you can reshuffle it with pot of avarice. As for the rest of the xyz monsters, there should be more control-based monsters and less aggressive ones so good bye copy of Kachi Kochi and hello copy of Fairy King.
So here is the new deck after its tune-up:

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 Grandsoil the Elemental Lord
1 Neo-Spacian Grandmole

Spells: 10

2 Forbidden Lance
1 Heavy Storm
2 Soul Taker
2 Pot of Duality
1 Pot of Avarice
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 Huge Revolution is Over

Extra Deck: 15
2 Gem-Knight Pearl
1 Kochi Kochi Dragon
1 Soul of Silver Mountain
3 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
2 Wind-Up Zenmaister
2 Fairy King Albverdich
2 Abyss Dweller

2 Gagaga Cowboy

Now onto Joe Giorlando’s Gishki Hero deck:

Monsters: 20

3 Gishki Soul Ogre
3 Gishki Vision
3 Destiny Hero Plasma
2 Destiny Hero Diamond Dude
2 Tragoedia

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

Man I’m excited about tweaking this deck. Just one look at this deck and you can see the sheer speed and power of the deck, so without further ado, let’s dive straight into the deck.

Monsters:

Before I begin, I am going to say something that may cause you, the reader, to stop reading and read another article: Tour Guide is not that great. If you are still reading after that statement, I thank you for allowing me to explain. Yes, the engine is a good engine and yes, it can make an “ok” deck into a “great/meta” deck, but in this deck it is not needed. One of the main flaws in this deck is that it does not have a defense strategy. This does not mean u have to start replacing cards with traps; I would like to suggest another method: hand traps.

Throughout the meta, hand traps have been the one thing that would make an otherwise broken play into a decision of whether or not to push through. Both Effect Veiler and Maxx C have had their share of halting players from rushing into an aggressive play and forcing the opponent to reconsider what he/she should do for that turn. With this in mind, I took out the Tour Guide engine and the Gorz for 2 Maxx C and 2 Effect Veilers. In the Gishki portion of the deck, it is not necessary to have 3 copies of Vision flying around. You only need two for the searching and the offering and if you ever decided to ritual summon it would be better to have the Aquamirror in hand so I suggest taking out a copy of the vision for a Shadow.

Now for the Destiny Hero/dark portion of the deck. In my playtesting of the deck, the situation always seemed better whenever I dropped Tragoediea instead of Gorz., Yes, Gorz is more intimidating, however Trag was always easier to bring out and a lot more versatile than Gorz. With all of the level 8 monsters running around in other decks and all of the level 8 monsters in your deck, it is fairly easy to pitch a level 8 monster from your hand, steal their boss monster, and xyz into the Sun Dragon, leaving little to no way for them to retrieve their monster back. As for the Destiny Hero part of this, with a deck fairly split in half between monsters and spells, running an extra copy of Diamond Dude would be better, not to mention it’s an extra target for Destiny Draw so you can save the Plasma for a future Trade-In. As for Dark Armed Dragon, he is still necessary as a boss monster because you are already dumping the graveyard with both dark and water monsters and since there are 3 miracle fusions in the deck, controlling the graveyard should not be a problem.

Spells:

For the most part, the spell lineup is pretty stable in my opinion. The only major change I would do would be to take the salvage out for two pot of duality for consistency and two MST’s for diamond dude and one Mask Change. The reason why I would suggest one Mask Change is because the only monster I would use this on would be Absolute Zero so that’s an automatic Raigeki done an over with and secondly I have the option of going into Vapor, which will be protected by my opponent’s destruction cards, and Acid, which is a built-in feather duster. With this I can make use of one monster and turn my opponent’s field empty, basically securing outside of the hand the otk field I have been preparing for.

Extra Deck:

Wow, that’s a lot of random stuff. First things first, since Tour Guide and Sangan are no longer in the deck, all of the rank 3 xyz monsters are out of the deck. Now while Veiler is a tuner monster, Black Rose Dragon is not the synchro I would use and as for Big Eye and Gaia dragoon, they go to another deck out there in yugi land, and finally while Excalibur and Utopia are great in their own right, they need to go. So the only thing left is the blade armor ninja and the Hieratic Sun Dragon of the Heliopolis. From here, we can only go up. The only other rank 4 I would add is Abyss Dweller simply for the fact it shuts down aggressive plays and completely locks down Dark World and the new Atlantean archetype’s plays. Now I do run Synchro monster because there are Veilers in this deck, but I keep it to the minimum of Ally of Justice Catastor and Scrap Dragon; Scrap Dragon mostly because it’s better to have one for that random play of extra pushing than to not have it. Now my fusion line up is pretty standard considering it’s mostly water and dark hero monsters. The fusion line up would be 3 Absolute Zero, 2 Escuridao, 1 Gaia, 1 Great Tornado, 1 Shining, 1 Vapor, and 1 Acid.

So here is the revised version of the deck:

Monsters: 21

3 Gishki Soul Ogre
2 Gishki Vision
3 Destiny Hero Plasma
3 Destiny Hero Diamond Dude
2 Trageodia

2 Effect Veiler

2 Maxx C
2 Gishki Shadow
1 Elemental Hero Stratos
1 Dark Armed Dragon
Spells: 19

3 Destiny Draw
3 Trade-In
3 Miracle Fusion
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Pot of Duality
1 Gishki Aquamirror
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn

1 Mask Change

Extra Deck: 15

1 Blade Armor Ninja
1 Abyss Dweller
1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis
1 Ally of Justice Catastdor

1 Scrap Dragon

3 Elemental Hero Absolute Zero

2 Elemental Hero Escuridao

1 Elemental Hero Gaia

1 Elemental Hero The Shining

1 Elemental Hero Great Tornado

1 Masked Hero Vapor

1 Masked Hero Acid

Thank you for taking the time to read this article in full. This is the first time I have actually written a yugi-related article though this is not my first time being a doctor I can assure you of that. If you have any opinions of the deck, or how you would change it feel free to let me know and try it out yourself. I support any and all decks out there that try to strive for something great and the players behind those decks so don’t give up no matter how many times you may get stacked horribly, get your binders stolen, and your cards put through the wash. Always pick yourself up and try again. Please feel free to leave any comments below on what you think and I will respond to you as soon as I can and again thank you for your time.