Hey readers, this week we’re going to start off by taking a look at Justin Turner’s Blue-Eyes Maiden deck:
3x blue eyes white dragon
3x maiden with eyes of blue
3x gravekeeper's spy
1x gravekeeper's descendant
2x tsukuyomi
3x lyla the lightsworn sorceress
1x red eyes darkness metal dragon
1x black luster soldier
1x chaos sorcerer
1x white stone of legend
2x maxx c
3x silver's cry
2x dragon shrine
2x trade in
2x wonder wand
2x forbidden lance
1x one for one
1x charge of the light brigade
1x dark hole
2x mirror force
2x safe zone
With the structure deck being released shortly, now seems like a good time to go over this deck. There are a lot of effects that can target Maiden to summon a Blue-Eyes, the goal is to find the effects with the most benefits, cards like Wonder Wand are a good start, as it basically summons a Blue-Eyes for zero cards if you assemble Wand + Maiden. Tsukuyomi is an interesting choice, as it provides a recurring targeting effect, allowing you to keep summoning Dragons every turn Maiden lives. I want to add an engine to make the deck a little more aggressive, and try to cut back on a lot of the slower cards the deck is playing, like the Spy engine.
As I just said, I feel like this deck plays best as an aggressive, almost combo deck, and I don’t see the role Gravekeeper’s Spy plays in that. It just seems like a really slow rank 4 engine. Simiarly, as cute as Tsukuyomi is with the Maidens, without Spies in the deck it doesn’t fill a consistent role anymore.
The Dragon Shines don’t really do much here. Sure, they’re a way to turn your Trade-Ins and Silver’s Cries live, but we’re already running a Lightsworn engine (which is about to get a little larger) to get cards into our graveyard. If we were running Eclipse Wyvern, who is certainly an option to consider, it’d be a different story, but I don’t really see the point here. By cutting the Shrines, we also have to cut the Trade-Ins, and White Stone of Legend.
With Trade-Ins gone, Blue-Eyes is pretty miserable to draw, and as far as Maiden cares, you only need 1 copy in the deck. However, cards like Bottomless Trap Hole are real, and Silver’s Cry is a card that while I’d probably cut personally, cutting it might be venturing a bit too far away from the deck that you submitted. I’m going to cut 1 copy of the Dragon, as I don’t see any benefits in running more.
Ok, enough fun stuff, now let’s examine fundamentals a little. In this deck, you have 4 cards in it for your opponent to use Mystical Space Typhoon, or similar cards on. Not counting Wonder Wand, since you don’t really care if that gets Typhooned. With every deck going back to maining between 2 and 3 copies of MST, I’d argue that decks have 2 options. 1. They can try to overload the Typhoons by playing so many traps that the Typhoons can’t take care of them all; or 2. They can play zero traps, and simply blank the Typhoons. Both are definitely viable options for this deck, though I’m leaning towards #2, simply because it makes the more interesting deck for this article. Feel free to experiment around with larger trap lineups in your own builds, but running 4 traps does little more than just make their Typhoons live, I’m cutting the 4.
The cuts in summary: 16
-3 Gravekeeper’s Spy
-1 Gravekeeper’s Descendant
-2 Tsukuyomi
-2 Dragon’s Shrine
-2 Trade-In
-1 White Stone of Legend
-1 Blue-Eyes White Dragon
-2 Mirror Force
-2 Safe Zone
Yeah, 16 cuts is quite a few… Anyway, since we aren’t running actual traps, I’m going to add the 3rd copy of Maxx “C”, 2 Effect Veilers, a Gorz, and 2 Tragoedias to the maindeck. The Gorz and Trag fill a double purpose of upping the dark monster count of the deck. Now we just have 10 slots to play around with.
One of my favorite cards to target Maiden is Risebell the Star Adjuster. Now, at a glance he looks pretty terrible. He’s got bad stats, doesn’t do anything when he’s normal summoned, and he’s a bad attribute. However, on the flip side, he’s a Psychic level 3, and he gives access to Ancient Sacred Wyvern when combed with Maiden. You summon Maiden, then Teleport for Risebell, boost Maiden up by 3, which targets her and summons a Blue-Eyes. You then make Ancient Sacred Wyvern, and if life is 8000-8000, you’re attacking an empty board for 8100. I’m going to add 3 copies of Emergency Teleport, along with 1 Krebons, 1 Risebell, and 1 Psychic Commander, just to keep the options open.
Well, these slots are melting away, with only 4 left I want to start by adding in 2 copies of Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter. He helps keep the field clear so you can go for game shots, and is another mill engine for your Silver’s Cries, and chaos monsters. While it sucks that you can mill Psychic monsters out of your deck, and make your teleports weaker, I feel the benefits of overlapping the two engines outweighs the negatives.
Lastly, I want to add 2 copies of Mystical Space Typhoon to the main. In the beginning of the format, people are going to run cards like Black Whirlwind, Tenki, and even Skill Drain, which all need to be answered directly rather than through cards like Forbidden Lance. Typhoon is also an answer to what is going to be one of the most prevalent maindecked traps of the upcoming format, Fiendish Chain.
The additions in summary:
+1 Maxx “C”
+2 Effect Veiler
+1 Gorz, Emissary of Darkness
+2 Tragoedia
+3 Emergency Teleport
+1 Risebell the Star Adjuster
+1 Krebons
+1 Psychic Commander
+2 Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
+2 Mystical Space Typhoon
Next up, we’re going to take a look at Tadej Prosenc’s Thunder Family deck
Monsters: (21)
3x batteryman aaa
2x Effect veiler
1x Honest
3x Mahunder
3x Pahunder
2x Sishunder
1x Thunder King Rai-oh
3x Thunder Sea Horse
1x Tragoedia
2x Vylon Prism
Spells: (11)
1x Dark hole
2x Forbidden Lance
1x Mind Control
2x Mystical Space Typhoon
2x Night beam
3x Recycling Battery
Traps: (8)
1x Bottomless Trap Hole
1x Compulsory evacuation device
2x Fiendish Chain
1x Safe zone
2x Threating roar
1x Torrential Tribute
This is a deck I experimented with quite a bit back before Tachyon came out. It did alright versus Water since it had easy Abyss Dweller access, but aside from that every matchup was extremely difficult when you didn’t have a turn 1 Sea Horse. Through the banlist however, a lot of things changed, and the Thunder Family deck certainly could be a solid choice for the upcoming format.
The first cut I want to make are the 3 copies of Batteryman AAA. He’s overlap where the deck doesn’t need overlap, and he’s extremely greedy. If you always went to a later game where you get to take over with Recycling Batteries, he’d be alright, but he’s just so bad to draw, and you never really want to Sea Horse for him.
Next, the singleton Thunder King doesn’t fill much of a role here. Being Thunder type is nice, but aside from that he contributes little to your own strategy. Effect Veiler also doesn’t seem like he fills a role either, possibly when the format is more defined and we know for sure if Veiler is the kind of effect we want, sure. But I never liked cards like Veiler basically going blind into a format, especially in decks like this where they only serve as a hand trap. It’s one thing when you’re forced into hand traps like the previous deck we worked on, in this deck, since we have access to real traps I don’t see much benefit in maindecking Veiler.
I’m going to cut one of the Night Beams, it’s going to become a 3rd copy of Mystical Space Typhoon. Some of my earlier builds of this deck ran Threatening Roar as well, however I eventually realized I wasn’t taking advantage of Roar very effectively. In decks like Inzektor, Threatening Roar protects Centipede, or Dragonfly, setting up for more advantage swings on the following turn. However, in this deck, you don’t benefit from protecting your monsters enough to really justify Roar in the same way decks like Inzektor can justify it. Similarly, I’m going to cut the singleton Safe Zone, since protecting your monsters isn’t really the top priority considering how easy they are to replace.
The cuts in summary: 10
-3 Batteryman AAA
-1 Thunder King Rai-Oh
-2 Effect Veiler
-1 Night Beam
-2 Threatening Roar
-1 Safe Zone
Pot of Duality is so important for this deck, because Thunder Sea Horse is so important for this deck. Without Sea Horse your deck doesn’t really function, and Duality helps dig. On your first few turns, you aren’t really special summoning anyway, so there isn’t really much of a drawback on your Dualities anyway. I’m adding the allowed 3 copies. Similarly, I want to add 2 copies of Cardcar D, just to help dig.
I said earlier I was adding the 3rd Space Typhoon, so that leaves us with 4 slots left, which will all be traps. 2 Mirror Force, 1 Solemn Warning, and 1 Dimensional Prison seem like the obvious additions to the trap lineup to me. While cards like Mirror and Prison aren’t as reliable at blocking their battle phase as Roar is, they’re so much more powerful that it’s worth it, especially for a deck aiming to grind them down in longer games.
Additions in summary:
+3 Pot of Duality
+2 Cardcar D
+1 Mystical Space Typhoon
+2 Mirror Force
+1 Solemn Warning
+1 Dimensional Prison
That’s all for this week, if you have a deck you’d like featured in one of our deck doctor articles, send us a message at https://www.facebook.com/ArgDeckDoctor
And remember, Play Hard or Go Home!
Latest posts by Tyler Nolan (see all)
- Deck Doctor #33: Spellbook and Vanilla Synchros - December 18, 2013
- Deck Doctor #32: Synchros and Inzektors - December 11, 2013
- Deck Doctor #31: Frog Monarch and Anti-Meta - December 4, 2013
Get
Connected