What’s up Yugi-doods? I’m here today to express my disdain for a certain deck because it has been underperforming since its release and I doubt that it will get any better with the release of Order of Chaos. The deck that I speak of is none other than Dark World. If you remember when my good friend, Alistar Constantine, talked to you all about a concept known as “Poison”—that is—the widespread belief that a certain deck or idea is good when it simply isn’t, you MUST beware. I feel as though Dark World is a deck that, regardless of how much effort you place into any particular build, will often give up on you at any round of a tournament, causing massive frustration. The deck’s main problem is that it is TOO combo oriented for its own good. In Yu-Gi-Oh, combo decks have a history of being great because most of the cards in those decks were also great as standalone cards. However, Dark World on the other hand doesn’t have any standalone cards, causing every play to be a 2-part combo or more. Then on top of this there is the looming threat of games 2 and 3 where opponents put in so many devastating cards against the deck that your chances of winning the match if you didn’t win game 1 are very slim. This slim chance gets even lower against the better players. With Dino-Rabbit seeming to be the most played deck on the competitive level and the fact that it sides Dimensional Fissures and will soon side Shadow Imprisoning Mirrors for Inzektors, which will inadvertently cripple Dark World, I would say it’s time to let Grapha and his gang stay in Dark World and off the table.
If you’re wondering what I meant when I said “2-part combo” I was referring to the way the deck can’t do anything without both a discard outlet and a couple Dark World monsters. The deck cannot play a high monster count because the hands that have all monsters are incredibly bad unless of course you have something like Card Destruction or a way to pitch Snoww and grab the field spell and maintain the field spell. Also, if you don’t open with a Grapha or cannot find the means to get to one in the first 2 turns you will begin losing faster than the banning of Makyura the Destructor. Then there are those times where your hand appears to be okay and then it leads nowhere because you didn’t draw correctly off of Dark World Dealings or the field spell. I compare it to way Lightsworn once was when your opening hand could look broken on the surface but then if you mill trash you would still lose despite the way it looked before you started dropping Solar Recharges and Charge of the Light Brigades. The only thing was that Lightsworn didn’t have this problem with milling what it needed too often. Another problem that I have with the Dark World deck is that Dragged Down into the Grave really isn’t all that great. The card allows you take the “best” card in your opponent’s hand and discard it to the grave but then he or she get to draw another card. This means that when you end your turn the opponent will have 2 new cards after his or her draw phase so the information about his or her hand that you received will be less reliable almost immediately. Against decks like Plants you could be left completely in the dark because they play many one-of cards, such as One for One, Black Luster Soldier, Pot of Avarice, Lonefire Blossom, Debris Dragon, Dandylion, Spore, Glow-up Bulb, all the staples like Book of Moon, Dark Hole, Monster Reborn, the Solemn Brigade, etc. Plants happen to also be a combo deck but as I aforementioned the cards can standalone. That is the greatest asset of most combo decks. When a Plant Player summons a Reborn Tengu there are so many plays that can stem from that one summon—Lonefire, Glow-up, Enemy Controller, One for One, etc. On top of that, the Plant player really doesn’t have to do anything with the Reborn Tengu for it to still be a great card on the field.
Many players use the logic, “but Dark World opens so broken sometimes that you can’t beat it.” That’s cute and all but in this format if any deck opens “broken” you are most likely going to lose, yet you don’t see these decks sacrificing consistency to do so. Look at a broken Dino-Rabbit hand: Rescue Rabbit, Tour Guide from the Underworld, and then the other 4 cards can either be parts of the Solemn Brigade, Trap Dustshoot, or just a couple defensive cards. A broken Plant hand can contain Lonefire + Monster Reborn, One for One + Dandy, and Reborn Tengu + Lonefire just to name a few. While many of those cards are limited to one per deck it would be foolish for me to not state the instances where the Plant player simply draws a perfect counter to your hand which only that deck can do consistently—another strength. Karakuri’s broken openings typically entail a first turn Naturia Beast and some backrows to protect it which can spell game if you happened to have drawn too many green cards. Even if you haven’t you have to deal with the Synchro before the Karakuris begin to make more annoying Synchros, which is a normal thing for that deck, and then it’s game over. I used these examples only to show how flawed the “Dark World opens broken sometimes” logic actually is. If you are playing the deck because you think it opens broken and you don’t care too much about bad hands then I advise you to play Dino-Rabbit since it is more consistent than Dark World at the very least. Also, if your reason for playing Dark World is that you believe it has a good matchup against Dino-Rabbit because of the recurring Grapha I hope you’re aware of the coming Dimensional Fissures in games 2 and 3 which must be answered immediately. Before Dino-Rabbit became a deck there was no other competitive deck in the format that could successfully side into Dimensional Fissure. You had Plants, Agents, Karakuri, and Tech Genus.
Going forward into Order of Chaos I think it’s safe to say that Dark World will become worse because of Inzektors. Sure, most of the monsters in the deck are below 1500 which means that if you have Deck Devastation Virus you could pull out a win but every time you don’t draw that card you’ll be playing at a severe disadvantage because Dark World requires you to commit to the field for it to work properly. Inzektors happen to prey on decks that must heavily commit to the field. The Inzektor combo which is summon Dragonfly, equip Hornet, pop a card, special summon Centipede from the deck, equip Hornet, pop a card, add Dragonfly from the deck to the hand, Xyz summon into Wind-up Zenmaines, rinse and repeat until you go +962645364326 on your opponent, will quickly debilitate the Dark World strategy. It also wrecks other decks but those decks have the ability to commit less to the field without conflicting with the central strategy and they can maindeck Effect Veilers without lowering consistency. On the plus side from Order of Chaos I guess one could argue that the Wind-up deck discards cards from the opponent’s hand which would obviously be advantageous to a Dark World player but you can’t expect someone to keep discarding cards from your hand once they realize what deck you’re using. On the negative side from Order of Chaos comes the almost mandatory siding of Shadow Imprisoning Mirror because of Inzektors. This affects Dark World because before Inzektors became a deck many players opted to not side Shadow Mirrors since it really only hurt one deck and that deck wasn’t all that prevalent. Now, Inzektors are sure to be a threat and the deck is easy to acquire so you can expect to see it all over the place. As a result, you can expect to see more sidedeck cards against “dark” strategies.
Remember Play Hard or Go Home!
-Frazier Smith
-YCS Atlanta Champion
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