Let’s just get into it, Geartown Malefic Skill Drain, The Best Deck Ever!!! Seriously this deck is just beast mode against any other Meta deck. In my opinion it’s the most under rated deck that has been winning. Recently it took a Nationals 7th place finish by Justin Womack and 2 YCS Indy tops by Conrad Selig getting 5th place and Luis Zambrano getting top 8. For some reason nobody is paying attention to the deck, with the exception of a few people. Oh man, this deck has so many good match ups. The fact that the deck plays Skill Drain, Necrovalley, and Royal Tribute creates problems for Meta decks like Plants, Agents, Dino Rabbit, and Chaos. So you might want to think twice next time you want to play a Meta deck. Remember Royal Tribute is still the most God like card in the game. In this article I am going to talk about the deck in general, strengths, weaknesses, and common misconceptions of rulings people face against the deck.
The main purpose of the deck is to create field presence with the 3000+ attack beaters that it can summon at an instant. Trap cards like Skill Drain, Dark Bribe and Solemn Judgment serve the purpose to protect your monsters from staple destruction cards like Dark Hole, Torrential Tribute and Mirror Force.
This deck is pretty awesome. It has some neat factors that make the deck competitive and fun to play. I’ve been play testing with it for a while now and it has some broken combos swarming the field with 3000+ beaters. Geartown is such a ridiculous card that gets you a free 3000 attack beater, but wait that’s not the fun part. Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon’s effect is so boss, making your opponents trap and spell cards useless when it declares an attack. Nice, right!
Oh yeah did I forget to mention it also runs the most broken card in the game Royal Tribute.
With that said lets get into the deck.
Monsters: 14
3X Malefic Cyber End Dragon
3X Beast King Barbaros
3X Gravekeeper’s Commandant
2X Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon
2X Thunder King Rai-Oh
1X Malefic Stardust
Spells: 18
3X Pot of Duality
3X Terraforming
3X Trade – In
3X Geartown
2X Necrovalley
2X Royal Tribute
1X Mystical Space Typhoon
1X Heavy Storm
Traps: 8
3X Skill Drain
2X Dark Bribe
1X Starlight Road
1X Solemn Judgment
1X Safe Zone
Let’s review the deck.
Strengths
1. 3000+ Beaters:
The field spell card Geartown gets the ball rolling in special summoning Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon and Malefic Cyber End Dragon. At this point, your opponent is put in a tough situation, facing two 3000+ attack beaters. There are not many monsters in the game that can battle and destroy these two monsters without wasting many cards, so you can breathe easy. Malefic Cyber End Dragon makes it extremely difficult for your opponent to destroy it, 4000 attack is no joke. You will constantly notice your opponent setting a monster to protect their life points. At this point you feel very cocky and confident in winning. Nice right!
2. Necrovalley + Royal Tribute:
Since the introduction of Gravekeeper’s as a competitive deck, everyone knows how ridiculous Necrovalley and Royal Tribute can be. We have all been there once or twice when your opponent plays Necrovalley summons a monster, sets three or two back row, and plays Royal Tribute. It’s just not a good feeling getting Royal Tributed first turn with a hand full of monsters. This is the point of running these two cards, straight and simple to win against decks running 20+ monsters.
3. Skill Drain:
Skill Drain stops many of the top deck’s monster effects. By disrupting your opponent’s plays it puts you in a great situation to win. Against Agents it makes winning so much easier. The opponent is not able to search with The Agent of Mystery – Earth or able to special summon Mystic Shine Balls with The Agent of Creation Venus. Combined with Necrovalley it can make Master Hyperion useless. Against Plants it can disrupt Tour Guide of the Underworld’s effect and other Synchro monster effects. Dino Rabbit, can be a bit tricky, because of the fact that Rescue Rabbit gets under Skill Drain. Overall Skill Drain is a versatile card against various match ups.
4. Aggressive, Aggressive, Aggressive:
You can’t be afraid of anything your opponent might counter you with. The deck has all the answers to Mirror Force, Dimensional Prison, Dark Hole, Torrential Tribute and Black Rose. I’m not telling you to blindly attack your opponent directly with 4000 and then drops Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness against you. What I am telling you to do is from beginning to end play smart and aggressive. The deck basically plays itself in overwhelming your opponent with powerful monsters. Like I said before this deck will make you feel very cocky and confident. Don’t fall into this trap be smart and play well.
Weaknesses
On a serious note this deck does have 2 major weaknesses:
1. Consistency:
Don’t get me wrong this is a good competitive deck, but it can be inconsistent. No matter how good you think you can build this deck around the current Meta. You are still going to draw bad hands. The worst feeling is drawing 2 Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon in your opening hand without a Trade-In or never drawing a field spell card to special summon Malefic Stardust or Malefic Cyber End Dragon. The fact of the matter is that this deck has a reliance on field spells to summon monsters. You need to have both at the same time to be efficient in playing the deck. You can just hope to make the best out of every bad hand. Remember that your opponent can open up with a bad hand as well, so don’t get frustrated or mad, be patient the deck can pull of miracles.
2. Cyber Dragon:
On the other hand you have Cyber Dragon to worry about, which can screw you over if you over extend your plays. Your 2 boss monsters Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon and Malefic Cyber End Dragon are both machine and potentially create a problem for this deck. The deck runs no monster negation or monster destruction cars like dark hole, bottomless trap hole, or solemn warning. Essentially your high attack beaters will get over anything. Cyber Dragon’s ability to contact fuse for Chimeratech Fortress Dragon creates problems for the deck even with skill drain. Cyber Dragon essentially takes out your boss monsters like nothing and at times you don’t have another monster in your possession to play because the deck runs heavy monster protection cards like Dark Bribe, Safe Zone, and Starlight Road and a low monster count. Thus your field is left open to any potential attack from your opponent’s monster.
Common Mistakes and Rulings
The deck’s surprise factor gives you a competitive advantage over other players that are not familiar with the deck. For some reason some players don’t bother to read cards, and that’s why they lose to the deck. The most common mistakes people make against the deck is that they try to Mystical Space Typhoon the field spell while Malefic Stardust is out, it just doesn’t work. Another mistake people make is trying to activate Mirror Force or Dimensional Prison when an attack is declared with Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon; it’s just not going to work. Remember to read every card you are not familiar with, it makes a big difference.
Here are a couple rulings to take into consideration.
1. Geartown – to my knowledge Solemn Warning can’t negate Geartown’s effect because of game mechanics. Recently at a regional the head judge told me that Solemn Warning could negate it. Honestly, I don’t know what to believe anymore on this effect. Make it a note to double check the ruling on this card if you decide to use it at a regional or ycs.
2. If upon activation of Geartown your opponent chains Mystical Space Typhoon, Geartown’s effect will miss timing preventing the special summon.
3. Malefics – On each Malefic monster card it states “There can only be 1 face-up ‘Malefic’ monster on the field”. Even if you have Skill Drain active, there can only be one Malefic monster on the field. For example, if my opponent has a Malefic Stardust on the field, I can’t special summon another Malefic monster to my side of the field, even though I don’t control the Malefic Stardust. It’s a game mechanic.
I sincerely hope that the insight on this deck has helped you in some way learn more about the game. Until next time, remember to read every card you are not familiar with and play until your life points hit “0”. Nice, right!
Carlos Salas
San Diego, CA
Game Zone
Latest posts by Carlos Salas (see all)
- The Best Deck Ever!!! - January 3, 2012
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