(NOTE: I built this deck before the announcement of Bujingi Sinyou, but I don't feel that the deck would change much even with him available)

Bujins are by and far one of my favorite archetypes to have been released in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh!. They have slowly gained more and more power over the past 3 sets we have gotten. While we have yet to receive any kind of broken TCG exclusive, Bujins have recently cemented themselves as part of the national metagame and it is difficult to miss or overlook their strengths. The Bujin deck is geared towards dominating the Battle Phase. Bujin Yamato ensures that you have a readily accessible and reliable engine to put your protection cards like Bujingi Turtle and Bujingi Hare into the graveyard as quickly as you can. Once you have established a graveyard setup, it is very difficult for your opponent to remove even an 1800 atk monster from the field, let alone the 2400 and 2500+ super beaters you can summon. Throw on top of that the fact that your smallest Beast-Warriors can overcome the absolute strongest creatures in the game through the use of Honest and Bujingi Crane and you have a recipe for victory. Or at least you would if you can ensure your plays go off in time.

Despite the incredible strengths of the Bujin deck, their biggest glaring weaknesses lie in their reliance on getting to Yamato as quickly as possible in the early game and the general slowness of the deck. If a Bujin player's duel draws into the late game, their resources start dissipating and they realize their incredibly poor ability to 'top deck' a comeback. This weakness can be mitigated by Bujincarnation if you manage to hold onto it long enough, or even get to see them. One card isn't enough to fix the overwhelming slowness that Bujins have. It is difficult for a Bujin player to push for game on an opponent at full life without wasting a significant amount of resources they could have used to try and slow roll the duel in their favor.

Well, the War Gods have changed my friends.

 Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned (from yourhand) by banishing 1 "Bujin" monster from your Graveyard, except "Bujin Hirume". After this card has been Special Summoned this way, if this card you control is destroyed by your opponent's card (either by battle or by card effect) and sent to the Graveyard: You can discard 1 card, then your opponent discards 1 card. You can only control 1 "Bujin Hirume".

Right away you should notice that this card is different from any other Bujin card we have gotten so far. Here are the things you should be seeing when you read her effect

1. She is the only Bujin who cannot be Normal Summoned
2. She is the strongest main deck Bujin monster with 2000 atk
3. She does not have an End Phase effect like the other Beast-Warrior Bujin monsters
4. Her effect directly interacts with your opponent

That last one is one of the most important differences to notice. Before Primal Origins, the Bujin deck focused entirely on using its resources to protect its monsters more than trading cards and advantage with their opponent. Barring Kaiser Colosseum and Vanity's Emptiness, the Bujin deck for the most part allowed the opponent to do whatever they wanted on their turn so long as it didn't touch their monsters. Not any longer I say! With the release of a single card, Bujins can now move away from the stun and control variants that their weaknesses necessitated.

A Shift in Focus

With Hirume nearly within our hands, I can safely say that Yamato is no longer the focus of the deck. Yamato in fact is just the engine to jumpstart your plays for the most part, and with some hands you don't even need him! Hirume and Arasuda's inherent synergy with each other make your Normal Summon less important and crucial to your success. Before Primal Origin released, your only goal was to normal summon Yamato successfully and keep him on the field. If he left then you NEEDED to summon another one quickly or you would end up dying. No more, if Yamato is not on the board during your End Phase you can rest easy for the most part and shift your focus to other monsters who's normal summons are equally as important now.

Hirume opens up a lot of possibilities in how to build the Bujin deck, but let me show you my build that I have been tinkering with. This is nowhere near a final product, but it is definitely working like I want it to for the most part.

[ccDeck="Monsters"] 3 Bujin Yamato
3 Bujin Arasuda
3 Bujin Hirume
3 Bujingi Crane
2 Bujingi Turtle
2 Bujingi Hare
1 Honest
3 Tour Guide from the Underworld
3 Kuribandit
1 Black Luster Soldier, Envoy of the Beginning
3 Fire Formation - Tenki
3 Pot of Duality
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Bujincarnation
2 Pot of Dichotomy
1 Black Garden
2 Trap Stun
[/ccDeck]

I'm going to use my non existent psychic powers to assume that you are thinking the following: "What the @#$% did I just read?"

Well, let me go through a game that lasted a total of 3 turns earlier this week.

Turn 1: My opening hand is Tenki, 2 Arasuda, Yamato, TGU and Crane. I play Tenki to add Hirume to my hand, poised to strike on the next turn. I normal summon Yamato and send Hare to the grave in the end phase.

Turn 2: My opponent plays Tensu and normal summons Bear with its effect. He then uses the Bear's effect to send Tensu to the grave to try and blow up my Yamato. Of course Hare came out an--; Well actually I let it go through and Yamato was sent to the Graveyard. The Fire Fist player was a bit perplexed by this, but he continued his turn by summoning a second Bear and attacking with both of them. Getting another Tensu and a Tenki. He activated Tenki to search for Wolfbark and overlaid for Tiger King, setting Tenken (the protection trap) from his deck. He finished by setting a 4th card to his back row.

Turn 3: I draw a second TGU for my turn before I began my onslaught. I banished Yamato to special summon Hirume from my hand. Hirume's summon triggered the effect of one of my Arasuda's, special summoning him as well. I overlaid the two into Susanowo and used his effect to add another Hirume to my hand. I banished Arasuda from my grave to special summon my second set team of Hirume and Arasuda and overlaid into Kagutsuchi, who milled 3 more Bujin cards to the grave and boosted his attack to 2800 total with Tenki. I then decided it was time to use my normal summon. TGU came down and brought out a Kuribandit from the deck before overlaying into Leviair and bringing my banished Yamato back to the field. Seeing my suddenly massive field, the Fire Fist player activated Tenken, trying to stave off some damage from the inevitable assault.

A Crane boosted Kagutsuchi steamrolled Tiger King before Susano, Yamato and Leviair all attacked for a grand total of 8600 damage and ending the game.

Bujins would have never been able to do this before Hirume was revealed. That isn't even the craziest of combos that you can do with the deck! Included at the end of the article is a video where I go through the above scenario as well as a few others on YGOPro to demonstrate the game stealing power this deck has acquired. But before that, let's go over some of my deck choices first.

FAQ:

Q: Kuribandit... Wtf?
A: This deck's plays are greatly aided by the addition of Tour Guide from the Underworld since she opens up some nasty Leviair plays for early, mid and late game. Paired with Tour Guide I needed a monster that had synergy with the deck. Night Assailant had the same problems that the old Bujin deck did, it was just too dang slow. Tour Bus was an interesting idea, being able to shuffle back Cranes, Honest and BLS so I could get even more mileage out of them was enticing. However, Tour Bus was a terrible card to draw at any point in the duel so I quickly threw the bus out as well. This left me with an actually very synergistic card, Kuribandit. The devious little rogue makes for a great opening play if I cannot get to Yamato. He loads the graveyard with Bujins (hopefully) so I can still make my Hirume combos on the following turn and also lets me dig deep into my deck for a spell card (or Trap Stun) that I desperately need to get to in order to make the game ending combos come to life. His synergy with the deck was undeniable, and with me now running 6 Dark Type monsters I was now able to justify throwing BLS into the deck as a reliable main deck boss monster.

Q: 1 Black Garden?
A: This originally was the 3rd Trap Stun, but I went back to the original Bujin OTK's idea of taking advantage of Crane's ability to reset my monster's attacks to their normal values after the boost. When I play Black Garden is when you know that I am attempting to game you quickly. Since the deck is special summon heavy now, it isn't unheard of to throw out 4-5 tokens on my opponent's field, making their life points easy pickings for even a single Susanowo. Black Garden's tokens also allow me to circumvent any big threat my opponent has thrown on the field. Beelze? No problem, I'll just destroy the tokens I gave you for a total of 8800 damage and leave your brick wall alone. Black Garden can even be used defensively if I can clear my opponent's field before using it. If I have Pot of Dichotomy and need to use its recycle and draw power to make my combo live, I can do so without fear if my opponent has left their field empty or nearly empty. Even without a Battle Phase, my opponent will have very little to do if their field is locked up by a bunch of weeny tokens that are staring down a Susano and Kagutsuchi. As far as to the number of the card, I don't want to drop Trap Stun altogether and I'd rather not draw duplicates of Garden. It is an additional way to kill my opponent, but the deck isn't reliant on drawing it since it can be milled away by Kagutsuchi and Kuribandit without warning.

Q: Pot of Dichotomy?
A: Dichotomy accomplishes 2 goals in this deck: Monster Recycling and Late Game Recovery. If my opponent manages to stop my push and get in a position to clear my field, Dichotomy allows me to send my combo pieces back to the deck for a free 2 cards at the expense of my Battle Phase. With monsters like Kagutsuchi and Tsukuyomi at my disposal I am more than comfortable to forsake a turn of attacking to recover my field and hand presence.

Q: How consistently can you actually get your combo?
A: The combo can be reached with a combination of any of the following

1. Any of the 9 Bujin Beast-Warriors I run
2. Any 1 of the 6 other Bujin Beast-Warriors or one of 3 Tenkis

In addition to the above, there are consistency cards like Pot of Duality and Kuribandit to help dig for the above to set the combo up as well. Mathematically speaking, you have about a 60% chance to open with the listed cards above. And that is without factoring in Pot of Duality and Kuribandit's ability to dig into your deck. So if we are estimating here, at least 2 out of every 3 duels you are in you will be open handing your ability to dive into your combo. Those are pretty good odds in my opinion!

Anyways thank you guys so much for taking the time to read this article and I hope you enjoyed my Theory-Oh talking. I'm extremely excited for the release of this next set, so in the comments don't forget to tell me the cards you are most excited for! This is by no means the optimal way to run the new Bujin deck, but you always have to start somewhere! In addition to letting me know what cards you are looking forward to, be sure to leave some feedback on what you think can make the deck better. And don't forget, the Circuit Series makes its next stop in Washington DC on May 31st, so don't forget to plan to come out and compete for your chance at the nearly $6,000 prize pool from the main event alone! And always remember,

Play Hard or Go Home

Link to YouTube Demonstration of Deck: http://youtu.be/nQcRixerXTY?t=1m44s

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