Hello Yugioh Community! Congratulations are due for Nizar Sarhan and Peter Gross! Nizar was able to capture his 2nd YCS win in Dallas with the ever popular Dino-Rabbit and Peter Gross took his unique Chaos Dragon deck all the way to the top spot at the YCS in France this past weekend. Both of these feats were quite awesome in their own way. Nizar was able to win again in the same city he won in last year going undefeated while Peter took a deck that was way under the radar and demolished his competition. A Dragonsworn deck also managed to get 2nd place at YCS Dallas, Alex Reed was one win away from making Dragons winning everything this past weekend. In light of how well this deck did at each of the YCS I wanted to take this chance to talk about how to stop this powerful deck. YCS Chicago is less than 14 days away and you can expect a lot of duelist to pick this deck up so you want to make sure you know how it works and some good ways to slow it down!
Question of the Article: Do you think Dragons are going to be a contender or was their success just a fluke?
Don’t forget to answer the question of the article in the comments down below!
MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW THE DECK WORKS
The main point of this deck is to summon a whole bunch of big boss monsters and kill you very fast. It is actually very easy, once they get a couple of light and dark monsters in the grave the duel could be over before you know it. The decks play almost no defense what so ever and are extremely aggressive. You need to know these things when you are facing a dragon duelist. You don’t have much time to play a slow conservative game, most of the time you want to be very aggressive and just try and kill them before they kill you.
There is no doubt in my mind that a great amount of player’s not knowing what some of the dragon cards did was a key part of why they were so successful this past weekend. Let’s take a look at what I mean. Here is a quote from the top 4 feature match at YCS Dallas.
“Reed used his Metal Dragon’s effect to Special Summon Lightpulsar Dragon. Duren flipped Torrential Tribute to clear the field, but Reed returned Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon to the field with Lightpulsar Dragon’s effect, and used the his Red-Eyes’s effect to Special Summon Lightpulsar Dragon right back to the field, putting him in the exact same position he was in before the Torrential Tribute.”
If you destroy Lightpulsar Dragon his effect will trigger and allow your opponent to bring back a Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon (REDMD) back from their grave. This makes cards like Dark Hole not very helpful against a field of REDMD and Lightpulsar Dragon. There is a way to stop this though. Much like Elemental HERO – The Shinning, Lightpulsar Dragon has an optional trigger effect when it goes to the graveyard. This means it is able to miss timing just like The Shinning. If you are able to activate any card (Mystical Space Typhoon, Maxx “C”, Effect Veiler, etc.) in response to the summon of any monster while Lightpulsar is on the field and then chain Torrential Tribute Lightpulsar Dragon would miss timing and not be able to activate its effect. If Lightpulsar going to the grave is not the last thing to happen when the chain is resolving then it won’t be able to activate his trigger effect when it hits the grave. Knowing this could mean the difference between winning and losing.
CARDS THAT WILL HELP YOU TAME THE DRAGON
Here a few cards that I would keep in mind when finishing up your side deck before entering any sort of competitive tournament in the near future. These cards are probably my top three favorite card choices to have when going against Dragons.
GORZ, EMISSARY OF DARKNESS
This card is probably the best on card answer to this deck. They will try and go for game as fast as possible and since they run a lot of giant monsters you can almost always count on it happening. Most of the time a Dragon duelist will wait and try and make a big swing, putting a lot if not all of their eggs in a basket. Gorz will allow you to stop their big game push and then you can try and mount your comeback the following turn. Even in the finals of YCS Dallas Game 3, if Nizar Sarhan did not have a Gorz to drop there is a very high chance that Alex Reed would have won his first YCS. Since Nizar was able to drop such a giant monster that allowed him to take care of Alex’s on field Dragons, he was able to capture a victory in a short few turns after the Gorz drop.
Bottomless Traphole
Bottomless can be quite excellent against Dragons. It is one of the few cards that can hit every single boss monster in the deck and take care of it without breaking a sweat. Lightpulsar Dragon will be instantly taken off the field and banished so you won’t have to worry about them bringing back REDMD with Lightpulsar’s effect. This is a great removal card and can hit almost every monster in their deck.
Electric Virus
This card has already began to see play against Dino-Rabbit decks. If you are playing a deck that can summon a whole bunch of monsters in one turn, (Wind-Ups, Inzektors, Dragons, Dino-Rabbit) then Electric Virus can really come in handy and allow you to just steal the game. I like this card just because you can OTK pretty easily after stealing their 2800 attack REDMD. You could be looking down against a field of huge dragons, but after discarding a couple copies of this virus you won’t see anything but your opponent’s lifepoints drop to zero.
Conclusion: Dragon made a very impressive showing this past weekend at both of the YCS tournaments. I think part of the reason they were able to do so well is because of a lot of duelist lack of understanding of the deck. Now that it has seen success you can count on the fact that this deck will be used by a decent amount of players out there. It is important to understand how the deck works in order to make the right plays when dueling against it. It is important to make sure you consider this match-up when building your side deck for any tournament. I went over my top three favorite cards and while there are many more out there, I feel these would be the most effective at the moment. Dragons have now officially joined the competitive scene and you can count on seeing them around.
Thanks for reading, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them in the comments down below! Don’t forget to answer the question of the article! Remember, Play Hard or Go Home!
-Billy Brake
-YCS Toronto and YCS Columbus Champion
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