Duelists, step inside my office, because the Deck Doctor is in! Since I’m new here, I’ll introduce myself.  I’m Johnny, though some of you may know me by my online avatar: Slashtap.  I’ve been playing Yugioh for nearly half of my life (since age 12), and I’m fairly meticulous about the way I play and think about the game.  In fact, I keep a detailed record of every tournament match I’ve ever played in, both in paper and electronic form.  These records include my opponent’s names, the decks they played, the deck list I ran, the number of entrants at each tournament, my final standing, and even the prizes I collected.  Just last week, I filled in the last page of a duel notebook that covers all my matches from 2009 through 2012.

I am very confident in my rulings knowledge as well.  I am glad to help people when it comes to questions about tournament policy and game mechanics.  I have not judged an event lately, though I was a floor judge at YCS Dallas earlier this year.  This fall, I have been touring the YCS circuit as a player instead of a judge.  Expect to catch me at Seattle!

Today I am here to serve the role of Deck Doctor.  In the daytime, I am a teacher, and I love to explain and instruct.  Therefore, I won’t just doctor a deck today - I will also teach and incorporate some general lessons on deck building within the article so that you can learn something that you will use even if you don’t play the particular deck I am fixing up.

Incidentally, I aspire to become a real doctor some day (I interviewed at a medical school this September and am keeping my fingers crossed).  But here in the Yugioh realm, my patient will be the deck, and my prescription… Finding the right build!  So let’s begin.

There are two patients I will be checking up on today, the first of which is Billy’s Rock Stun deck.  Its contents are as follows:

Billy’s Rock Stun

Monsters: 19
3 Koa’ki Meiru Guardian
3 Koa’ki Meiru Sandman
3 Koa’ki Meiru Wall
3 Block Golem
2 Card Trooper
2 Maxx “C”
2 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

Spells: 10
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Soul Taker
2 Pot of Duality
1 Seal of Orichalcos
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole

Traps: 12
2 Dimensional Prison
2 Solemn Warning
2 Call of the Haunted
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Torrential Tribute
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Starlight Road

Extra Deck: 15
2 Gem-Knight Pearl
2 Kachi Kochi Dragon
2 Soul of Silver Mountain
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
1 Wind-Up Zenmaister
1 Gachi Gachi
1 Fairy King Albverdich
1 Gaia Knight, Force of Earth
1 Naturia Beast
1 Naturia Barkion
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon

What is Rock Stun and what is its relation to the metagame?

In order to improve this (or any) deck, a player must know what the deck’s objective is.  A thorough understanding of a deck’s win conditions, weaknesses, card interactions, and possibly plays is key to knowing what cards will and what cards won’t work in the deck.  Knowing the deck’s purpose will enable us to steer clear from card choices that hinder the overall strategy or bog it down with inconsistencies.  This is why we first need to cover what the deck IS and what it is trying to DO.

So what is the purpose of Rock Stun?  Rock Stun is a permission-based deck.  This means that its win condition is to seal off an opponent’s options, denying him the opportunity piece together the purpose of his own deck before his life points hit zero.  Its ideal early- and midgame is found in successful one-for-one trades.  I give up my card, you lose yours -that’s the idea.  A game where the Rock Stun player is dictating which resources are being traded for which is the game the Rock Stun player wants to play.  This will lead to the ideal endgame wherein the opponent has no remaining resources to “break even” in trades, and is thus locked by the quick clock established by the 1900 beatsticks that the deck runs.

You may ask: If Rock Stun’s goal is to make good one for one trades, how does it win if it’s breaking even in card advantage?  The idea is that you make one for one trades that cripple your opponent’s strategy.  This in turn will leave your opponent’s hand looking like a collection of incomplete puzzle pieces.  After your early game trades, your opponent will be left holding more and more cards that don’t do achieve victory on their own (Typhoon, Bottomless/Torrential a turn late, a hand trap, etc) or cards that need another card in tandem to do anything (Wind-Up Factory, Honest, Eclipse Wyvern, Forbidden Lance, etc).  This works because you, the stun player, run more live stand-alone cards than your opponent does, so after a trade-off of live cards, you will be left chugging forward while your opponent’s draws are out of steam.  You’re generating virtual card advantage.

When does Rock Stun work, and when does it not work?

Rock Stun shines best in what I personally refer to as one-for-one formats – ones where the top decks do not establish victory by instant blowout plays but must amass their victory via a series of plays, often over the course of two or more turns.  This is because the philosophy of Rock Stun is to act as a sort of floodgate.  The goal is to prevent the opponent’s strategy from ever taking full shape, and it is NOT to respond to a strategy that has already taken shape.  In recent formats, however, floodgates were too easy to break by just about every meta deck.  What made meta decks better choices than anti-meta decks like Rock Stun was that the meta decks could respond to established fields well and generate tremendous reversals in gamestates.  In other words, the best decks were decent at guarding permission as well as performing comebacks.  Rock Stun was only really good at the former and not the latter, until recently.

The advent of REDU gave us Block Golem, a card that lifts Rock Stun out of its previously established role and allows it to defy convention.  The threat of Block Golem allows what was once a purely stun deck to now have an intrinsic way to plus in card advantage, outside of doing battle.  This in turn means that the deck does not automatically lose if the dam is broken.  Block Golem gives Rock Stun a late game with actual options.

Monsters

Let’s take a look at the monster lineup in Billy’s deck.

Monsters: 19
3 Koa’ki Meiru Guardian
3 Koa’ki Meiru Sandman
3 Koa’ki Meiru Wall
3 Block Golem
2 Card Trooper
2 Maxx “C”
2 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

The nine Koa’ki Meiru negators and three Block Golem are the heart of the deck’s strategy to block off permissions, so we won’t touch that.  Next we have two copies of Card Trooper and two copies of Maxx “C”.  I notice that Billy has included these cards because their EARTH attribute avoids conflict with the activation requirement for Block Golem’s ignition effect.  They’re solid picks – arguably some of the best EARTH monsters in the game’s history.  However, I will comment on some weaknesses they may have in this particular deck.

Card Trooper shines brightest in decks that love to eat away monster removal in order to set up for a gate-flooding play on the following turn.  It shines even brighter when those decks happen to benefit tremendously from milling as well.  Two beautiful examples: Chaos Dragons and Inzektors.  Chaos Dragons not only load up their grave for their win condition with the aid of Trooper’s milling effect, but also are happy to trade their Trooper for D Prison or even better, Warning, so as to disable the barrier between their dragons and the opponent’s life points.  Similarly, Inzektors have Card Trooper to dig into Hornet (their win condition), advance themselves 3 draw phases (4 if they die in the grave), and bleed out the removal that would otherwise have been used on their precious Dragonfly or Centipede.

However, these rewards are only minimal in a Rock Stun deck.  Summoning Trooper for the sake of making Block Golem live is no way to properly pilot Rock Stun, so the milling reward is effectively gone.  In addition, spending the Koa’ki Meirus to bleed out removal is nice as it is.  You don’t need Trooper for that, especially since there is no follow-up explosion after you trade your Trooper for their Warning.  Trooper-for-Warning just isn’t the same when there is no Chaos monster in hand or Call of the Haunted set with Centipede in grave to go off on the same turn.  Sure, Trooper can ram a TKing for a free +1, but the deck is not weak to TKing to begin with.  While Trooper is a solid card, it uses up your normal summon and doesn’t synergize as profoundly with this deck as it does in a Dragon, Inzektor, or even Agent deck, so I’ll take it out of here.

Next, there is the 2 Maxx “C”.  Like Card Trooper, C is a solid card, but in the context of Rock Stun, we don’t exactly need it to fulfill our goals.  Consider what C does in our metagame – it’s primarily an answer to Wind-Ups.  Well, this deck is full of removal and negation to begin with.  C is just a luxury card that will not pay for itself in the sense that the marginal benefit it brings you against Wind-Ups will not outweigh the cost of drawing it in so many inopportune scenarios against many other decks.  Yes, there is always the fact that traps and Koa’ki Meirus don’t answer a first turn Shock Master.  But if you’re going to run a card for fear of an obscure first turn scenario, you may as well maindeck Gemini Imps since you are just as likely going to face a Dark World player who opens Dealings, Dragged Down, or Card Destruction first turn.  (This is tongue in cheek.  Please do not maindeck Gemini Imps).

If that is not convincing enough, you can also consider that C works best in decks that can combo out with large hands.  That’ll leave you with more than enough reason to stay away from it when playing Rock Stun.  Having two Koa’ki Meiru Guardian in hand as opposed to one in hand is not going to make a difference within the span of one turn – not in the same way that having two Hyperion, two Pulsar, or two Wind-Up Shark will.  In other words, C’s rewards do not return as quickly in a stun deck.  C works best in a deck that reaps its rewards on the SAME turn after the card was activated.

Fossil Dyna is a card that is absolutely staple in this deck.  Like Block Golem, it defies stun convention as it allows you to recapture a gamestate that was taken from you.  The old Rock Stun deck was very poor in this area.  With traditional stun decks, comebacks were essentially nil if you were facing a good player.  There are very few cards that synergize with the deck while also combating such a gaping weakness.  Dyna is a wonderful gem (PUN INTENDED NO APOLOGIES) in this regard.  So it shall stay.

Next there’s Grand Mole.  I cannot tell you enough how much I love this card.  It’s cute, it’s lethal, it plusses over time, and it ducks all kinds of commonly utilized game mechanics.  It’s a rock, both literally and metaphorically, and it’s fun what you can do with it to lock your opponent down prematurely, before he’s even exhausted all of his cards in hand.  Keep it.

Lastly, I would add Legendary Jujitsu Master.  There aren’t many other monster options for this deck (the Morphing Jars, heh), but this is one of the only remaining good picks.

This card gains an additional surprise factor since your opponent will be reading monster sets as Fossil Dyna.  That’s an example of a sort of pseudosynergy you’ll want to consider when deck building.  While Dyna and Juju don’t directly interact when you look at their card text alone, on a meta level they form a quasi-interaction because your opponent is a human being who is capable of making false reads.  Look for other quasi-interactions when you are building your deck.  Another neat thing about Jujitsu Master is that its effect resolves successfully under Skill Drain if it dies in battle.  Look up the substeps of the damage step if you are not familiar with the mechanics behind this.

Edits:

-2 Card Trooper
-2 Maxx “C”
+2 Legendary Jujitsu Master

Spells

Next we’ll examine the Spells.

Spells: 10
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Soul Taker
2 Pot of Duality
1 Seal of Orichalcos
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole

Things like the 3^rd MST, Taker, and the exclusion of Book are the kind of decisions you don’t want to set in stone (PUN INTENDED AGAIN, SUE ME).  These choices should be in flux and will depend on your local meta and testing, in contrast to a choice like 0 Card Trooper, which you can safely deduce via a sound application of theory-oh.  In other words, some choices need testing, some are obvious off theory alone.  I can’t tell you whether the full set of Typhoon or two Soul Taker is necessary in the main deck.  It may work for me and not for you.  I’ll drop one Taker because I think there’s sufficient removal and add in Book because I like versatile cards that do flips and tricks.  Further, Orichalcos’ attack boost offers a similar solution to the problems Taker solves.

Edits:

-1 Soul Taker
+1 Book of Moon

Traps

Let’s visit the Trap lineup.

Traps: 12
2 Dimensional Prison
2 Solemn Warning
2 Call of the Haunted
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Torrential Tribute
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Starlight Road

The trap lineup of any stun deck should be diverse so as to encourage your opponent to lose to incorrect reads.  The beauty of the standard traps in this game is that the cards that beat one trap lose to another.  You summoned Zenmaines reading Bottomless or TT?  Well, I had Compulsory set terribly sorry warmest regards to your mother all the luck in life, etcetera.

I love 3 Prison in trap heavy decks.  Unlike Torrential, it deals with opposing threats while letting you retain your own threat in the monster card zone.  Unlike Torrential, Prison doesn’t lose to destruction negation.  However, Prison does lose to Fish, but then again, what doesn’t these days?  Put that matchup on hold and determine in your mind to side out the Prisons for the full playset of Soul Drain.  That frees us to worry about other matchups.  I would drop a Torrential because good players seldom allow it to do its job against them.  Compulsory is going in at 2 copies here because this deck reminds me a good deal of Hero Beat’s weakness to Zenmaines stall.  Scott taught me to run 3 copies in Hero Beat, and I think the need for the card in this deck is quite similar.  I’d drop a Call because opening dead is a terrible feeling and I want to heighten the probability of drawing removal.  Also we took out Trooper earlier, so Call’s utility, even with the consideration of Block’s potential, is ever so slight at this point.

Edits:
-1 Torrential Tribute
-1 Call of the Haunted
+2 Compulsory Evacuation Device
+1 Dimensional Prison

Extra Deck: 15
2 Gem-Knight Pearl
2 Kachi Kochi Dragon
2 Soul of Silver Mountain
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
1 Wind-Up Zenmaister
1 Gachi Gachi
1 Fairy King Albverdich
1 Gaia Knight, Force of Earth
1 Naturia Beast
1 Naturia Barkion
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon

Naturally, the extra deck should have more EARTH attribute monsters than one is used to seeing, but this one is so overboard that it’s just kind of silly.  We need to get rid of a few monsters we’ll never summon, such as Scrap, Barkion, Beast, Gaia, and Gachi.  Monsters that are outclassed in nearly every way should go too, so Zenmaister gets dumped (the only situation where it’s better than Pearl would be an obscure Chimeratech play).

That leaves us with six slots.  We can expect Gear players who side Cyber Dragon to bring them in against our deck.  After all, Cyber Dragon runs over every normal summon by battle.  So we’ll stick in Chimeratech Fortress Dragon since we have the room and the uncommon situation with Monster Reborn may come up.  Even though this situation is uncommon, it’s more common than the Reborn play that would get you access to the Naturia synchros, and a play with Cyber Dragon would create greater blowouts versus a very relevant deck.  We should also add Gagaga Cowboy for its game-stealing effect and its relevant attribute.  Giant Soldier of Steel gives the deck a game 1 threat against burn strategies and is also of relevant attribute.

Since Block Golem is acting as an instant rank 3 AND rank 4 for us, we ought to consider what other 3’s and 4’s we might actually need.  The essential EARTHs are covered, and everything else conflicts with Block Golem’s activation requirement.  So why should we run a non-EARTH XYZ monster?

The answer is: when that monster can lead you to reasonably expect not to activate Block Golem’s effect for the remainder of the duel.  Utopia and Utopia Ray are outstanding examples.  You would not go for Ray unless you’re either in time (see: Frazier’s feature match at Dallas) or you’re going to end the duel.  A light in grave will not matter at that point.  To a lesser extent, Acid Golem may provide some real utility, especially under Skill Drain should you side it (or should your opponent run it).

Edits:
-1 Zenmaister
-1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
-1 Gaia Knight
-1 Naturia Beast
-1 Naturia Barkion
-1 Scrap Dragon
+1 Gagaga Cowboy
+1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
+1 Giant Soldier of Steel
+1 Utopia
+1 Utopia Ray
+1 Acid Golem

The Finished Product

With that, we’re able to have a 40 card main and 15 card extra deck.

Monsters: 17
3 Koa’ki Meiru Guardian
3 Koa’ki Meiru Sandman
3 Koa’ki Meiru Wall
3 Block Golem
2 Legendary Jujitsu Master
2 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

Spells: 10
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Pot of Duality
1 Soul Taker
1 Seal of Orichalcos
1 Book of Moon
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole

Traps: 13
3 Dimensional Prison
2 Solemn Warning
2 Compulsory Evacuation Device
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Starlight Road

Extra Deck: 15
2 Gem-Knight Pearl
2 Kachi Kochi Dragon
2 Soul of Silver Mountain
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
1 Fairy King Albverdich
1 Stardust Dragon
1 Gagaga Cowboy
1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
1 Giant Soldier of Steel
1 Utopia
1 Utopia Ray
1 Acid Golem

Joe’s Gishki Hero Turbo

My next patient is a very different deck from the previous.  Earlier I mentioned how Rock Stun is all about establishing those permission locks.  Well, Joe’s Gishki Hero Turbo deck is all about violating them.  Let’s take a look at Joe’s list.

Monsters: 20

3 Evigishki Soul Ogre
3 Gishki Vision
3 Destiny Hero Plasma
2 Destiny Hero Diamond Dude
2 Tragoedia
2 Tour Guide from the Underworld
1 Sangan
1 Gishki Shadow
1 Elemental Hero Stratos
1 Dark Armed Dragon
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

Spells: 20
3 Destiny Draw
3 Trade-In
3 Miracle Fusion
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Salvage
1 Gishki Aquamirror
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn

Traps: 0

Extra Deck: 15

1 Grenosaurus
1 Melomelody the Brass Djinn
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
1 Temtempo Percussion Djinn
1 Maestroke Symphony Djinn
1 Blade Armor Ninja
1 Heroic Champion Excalibur
1 Number 39: Utopia
1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis
1 Number 11: Big Eye
1 Gaia Dragon, Thunder Charger
1 Black Rose Dragon

What is Gishki Hero Turbo, and what’s with the zero traps?

There are three characteristics of this deck found within its name: Gishki, Hero, and Turbo.  I will break down the implications of these three factors colliding into one powerful 40 card deck.

Gishki - In the current age, if a duelist Is talking about ritual strategies, he’s more than likely discussing Gishki.  The Gishkis are the one ritual archetype Konami has really made an effort to make competitive.  Their monsters are the biggest, they have devastating effects, and their support is fast.  There are two reasons ritual summons on the whole have not been a popular strategy throughout the game’s history: the inconsistencies involved in depending on three card combos and the difficulty of earning back the card advantage lost from performing a ritual summon.

The Gishki archetype overcomes both weaknesses better than any other ritual strategy (with possibly the exception of Herald of Perfection).  Three card combos are more consistently dug into with the aid of their very own unlimited version of Stratos, Gishki Abyss.  Abyss simultaneously covers the loss of card advantage before the ritual summon is performed, and Aquamirror’s effect further patches the deficit in cards after the ritual summon is performed.  In addition, the ritual monsters themselves have neat effects that allow them to recover additional card advantage without necessarily doing battle.

Hero - So we understand what Gishkis can do well, but why did Joe add Heroes to the deck?  The answer is that Joe was well aware of the weaknesses I just mentioned of all ritual summon strategies: it is difficult to draw into the summon and it is difficult to make up the card advantage lost from performing a ritual summon.  I’ve already stated that the Gishki support helps to mitigate these drawbacks, but Joe is not satisfied.  He took things a step further and decided to add a Hero engine both to bolster draw power as well as amplify destructive output.  Spent resources in a pure Gishki deck are just spent resources, but Joe has decided to convert said resources into his follow up play: Miracle Fusion.  Now every ritual summon is not just a ritual summon - it’s also the precursor to a Hero fusion summon.  Your opponent will be on edge with every play you make, as he will be left wondering if you have the follow-up after he spends his best removal on your ritual summon.

Turbo - Lastly I’ll explain what it means for this deck to be turbo.  “Turbo” itself is not an archetype the way Gishkis and Heroes are, but this component of the deck does require explanation.  While the idea of using spent cards as Miracle Fusion fodder is enticing, we have to examine the implications of running two engines on a holistic scale.  Yes, we gain versatility in plays, but we also weaken our draw consistency.  This is where Joe has thought ahead yet again.  To minimize the loss of consistency introduced by having a second engine, Joe has only included six Hero monsters, all of which conveniently synergize with digging deeper into the deck.  3 Destiny Hero Plasma sounds like it can give a deck terrible opening hands - until you consider that there are 3 Destiny Draw, 3 Trade-In, and Allure maindecked to help sculpt those hands out of mediocrity.  Not to mention, Plasma is easily tribute fodder for the summon of Soul Ogre.  Opening Rota/Stratos alone is a titanic threat, as it is easily paired with any of SEVEN draw cards that will guarantee you a plus off its summon.

At the start of the format, Joe stated that Dark World was a deck as ignorant as ever.  Players did not understand what he meant by that, and this left some DW players angry at Joe for insulting their deck.  On the contrary, Joe was using “ignorant” to describe what made Dark World powerful.  “Ignorant” in this context is what we WANT out of a turbo deck.  Like Dark World, Joe’s Gishki deck does not run standard removal traps (or in this case, ANY traps) because the deck’s intent is to IGNORE the meta (hence, it is ignorant).  The goal of this and any other turbo strategy is to focus on doing what it does, and not let anything -including protection or hand traps- get in the way of its internal consistency.  If the deck were alive and could describe itself, this is what it would say:

“I am so confident that my strategy is more powerful than yours head-to-head, that rather than do anything to stop your strategy, I will focus entirely on my own strategy.”

If there was ever such thing as a wager in the form of a deck, turbo decks would be just that.  The most effective turbo decks in this game’s history, whether we’re talking about Dark World, Gishki Hero, Tundo OTK, or even Dragon Exodia, are all wagers that their strategy is so good that it is better to focus every card choice entirely on the strategy itself rather than the opposition.  Thus, a turbo deck is ignorant (in a good sense).

What do I do with the cards I’m dealt?

I confess that I have sunk over 1,000 hours into playing Yugioh video games.  Somewhere in that time I spent a good while learning the concept of FTK/OTK consistency and how to play cards according to probability.  I’ll translate what I’ve learned into playing this particular deck.

The most fundamental rule is to play your searcher before anything else.  If you’re holding Duality (which I’m adding to this deck) and Diamond Dude, play Duality before summoning and activating Diamond Dude to see whether you want to summon Diamond or pitch him for a possible Destiny Draw off the Pot.  You may even wish to normal summon or pass turn altogether depending on what the Pot reveals.

Following this principle, you also want to resolve your Stratos, Tour Guide, Visions, Shadows, and Abyss (which I am also adding) before playing draw cards.  This is because you want to filter out searchable cards so that you maximize the probability of drawing non-searchable cards with D-Draw, Allure, and Trade-In.

Another thing to consider is what card to pitch when you are given the choice.  If you are holding Diamond Dude and Plasma for D-Draw, you’ll usually pitch Diamond Dude in anticipation of the potential Trade-In rip.  In that same vein, opening the Stratos D-Draw pair should usually leave you searching for the Diamond Dude over the Plasma.  If level 8s are crowding your hand, then you may want to pitch Plasma first so that Diamond can still have its effect live.  In most (though not all) setup situations, I pitch Soul Ogre before Plasma for Trade-In so that Allure won’t show up in my hand dead (this is extra important after I cut out several DARK monsters from Joe’s build).

Although turbo decks are often thought of as solitaire decks (I do not deny this), there is still potential at every corner to drop the ball and misplay during a solitaire combo.  Don’t rush your plays just because you topped a Plasma to make your D-Draw live midgame.  You might be holding a Vision or Shadow that you need to resolve first and may have forgotten about.  Order of play is crucial to ANY turbo deck.  Lastly, if you are running Avarice (which I HIGHLY suggest), be sure to count the number of each draw spells in your grave when selecting your monster targets.  You must know how many of what card is left in the deck and select the proper targets accordingly so that you aren’t losing to dead draws.

Against trap-heavy decks, I end almost every first turn with Soul Ogre + monster + 4 in hand.  I leave the Soul Ogre on field naked because its chance of survival is heightened given that they are just as likely to draw a late Bottomless or Warning as they are to draw something that can deal with it.  Against boss monster decks, I try to conserve resources in favor of one push and will try not to first turn Soul Ogre.  You will not always have the luxury of choosing to do 8k in one turn, as your plan may be interrupted by the need to answer a big threat.  Even resolving too many copies of Upstart Goblin (which I am also adding to the deck) can thwart your ideal one-turn push for 8k.  Pay attention to details.  Even things like resolving Upstart should influence your game plan for the rest of the duel.

Other random tips?  Plasma or Diamond Dude + nearly any main decked monster = Absolute Zero.  Generally try to leave Stratos alone when you Miracle Fusion.  You can use your on-field Absolute Zero as a surefire Raigeki by tributing it for Gishki Aquamirror.  Heliopolis is an out to Herald of Perfection.  Fuse Stratos + Diamond Dude, Plasma, or a Hero fusion to get Great Tornado in defense mode if they’re trying to ram Lightpulsar into you.  The list goes on, but you get the idea.

To my disappointment, I have witnessed other deck builders make changes to this deck which do not contribute achieving its purpose more consistently.  In some instances, players are even changing the entire theme of the deck such that it isn’t even Gishki Hero Turbo anymore.  However, we have avoided that via our thorough treatment of the deck’s purpose.  Now that we’ve understood the deck’s purpose, both on a macro and micro level, we can make educated selections when we edit the deck rather than arbitrary, detrimental decisions.

Monsters

Monsters: 20

3 Evigishki Soul Ogre
3 Gishki Vision
3 Destiny Hero Plasma
2 Destiny Hero Diamond Dude
2 Tragoedia
2 Tour Guide from the Underworld
1 Sangan
1 Gishki Shadow
1 Elemental Hero Stratos
1 Dark Armed Dragon
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

The importance of the core engine was explained earlier, so we will not be dropping our Heroes or Gishkis.  On the contrary, Shadow needs to be run in 3s.  It will dead draw rarely, hardly enough that you should consider running it at 1.  In addition, Diamond Dude is going to 3 as well.  He is D-Draw and Allure fodder, he is your potential plus, and he is, incidentally, the most common target of Monster Reborn (play several matches with this deck and you’ll see what I mean).  Diamond Dude is also your avenue to rank 4s, particularly Excalibur and Blade Armor, two of the most common extra deck summons you’ll be conducting with this deck.  The idea is to steal the game without a chance at recovery, and those two rank 4 warriors do just that.  Lastly, Gishki Abyss is going in this deck, and it’s being run at 3.  This is a Gishki Hero Turbo deck.  It is not a pure Gishki deck.  It is not a Gishki Hieratic deck.  It is not a balanced Gishki control deck with traps.  It is turbo.  There is one goal, and it is NOT to toy around with neat tricks while we fumble up our victory condition.  We are diving headfirst into our deck to search out the cards needed to win, and Abyss does just that.

What do we drop?  When I saw this list I knew right away that TGU was a poor choice.  Upon testing, my suspicions were affirmed.  While it has some potential for synergy with the deck (Allure-Leviair, Dark Armed, yadayada), double TGU hands will frustrate you to no end.  Considering that this is a turbo deck, you will be drawing that 2^nd TGU more often than you’re used to seeing.  With TGU out, there’s not much purpose left in running Dark Armed (which is not to say that there was much to begin with).  DAD underperforms in any deck that does not have decent graveyard manipulation.  Gishki Hero Turbo is not Inzektor, the original Tele-Dad, Chaos Dragon, or anything of the sort.  Miracle Fusion is not enough graveyard manipulation to justify running the beast, and we do not want more inconsistencies in a turbo deck.  DAD goes.

Gorz and Tragoedia also went on the chopping block, and I must say Tragoedia was an easy pick for the next cut.  Although you are running a boss monster deck here, you are not running Agent or Dragon.  The idea is not to conserve your hand all day the way those decks do.  You don’t have the hand traps to justify such action.  Tragoedia is too often a weak drop with this deck and seldom serves any role beyond beatdown.  Gorz wasn’t great in my testing, but Gorz will always be Gorz, and he can be a much needed savior in a situation where your hand has not shaped up ideally (and this WILL happen).

It appears that some players are unable to distinguish between a boss monster deck and a turbo deck that happens to run boss monsters.  Consequently, they have included handtraps in their Gishki turbo deck fixes.  The reason handtraps work in Dragons and Agents is that their win condition is met via slowrolling.  The reason you almost never encounter a Dark World player running handtraps is because their win condition softens over time.  You can’t afford a soft opening turn 1 in a deck that leaks power faster than others with each passing turn.  Turbo decks need to be consistent solitaire decks, unhampered by defensive card choices, especially meta calls like hand traps.  This is why I am not including handtraps in this deck, and why you shouldn’t be, either.

I gave Gustkraken serious consideration here, considering that her effect is the best of all the Gishki’s.  In addition, with the edits I’ve made, getting 6 stars to tribute should prove easier than ever.  While that all sounds good on paper, I found that she is a bad card to have in hand with the exception of a turn one summon.  In any other instance, her synergy with the deck is quite poor.  Is a strong turn one opening worth the many dead draws you’ll be dealt by this card?  You can give it a try, but I recommend to leave her out.

Edits:

-2 Tragoedia
-2 TGU
-1 Sangan
-1 Dark Armed
+2 Gishki Shadow
+3 Gishki Abyss
+1 Diamond Dude

Spells

Spells: 20
3 Destiny Draw
3 Trade-In
3 Miracle Fusion
3 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Salvage
1 Gishki Aquamirror
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn

Upon initial inspection, my inner sense of theory-oh told me that Salvage would perform with mediocrity at best in this deck.  After testing, I stand by this prediction.  Salvage in many decks is a win-more card (I could write an entire article on what decks actually depend on Salvage).  As a win-more card, Salvage does not consistently steal you games you would otherwise lose.  Quite the opposite: it gives you a more decided victory in games you’ve already won.  Win-more cards are the last thing we want in any deck.  Unless your objective is to style over your opponent, you should choose cards that convert losses into more wins rather than wins into fancier wins.  Salvage is out.

Typhoon was another card on my suspect list.  While it is staple in almost any deck, we must revisit the fundamental objective of turbo philosophy: to focus on our solitaire stream of plays, and not what the opponent might do to us.  Typhoon is a liability in various ways, two obvious ones being that it’s dead against decks that don’t set and it’s a terrible flip off of Diamond Dude’s effect.  For the latter reason, I tried Night Beam, but found that blind shots just do not fit the idea of turbo strategies.  This little experiment affirmed in me the greater, more general truth, the same truth behind why every good Dark World player knows not to main deck the MSTs.  With that said, I think Night Beam, Extermination, or MST are good side deck choices for this deck.

The other 15 spells synergize quite nicely with the deck and its purpose.  One neat thing I’ll note in particular is that in a way, you run more than 1 copy each of Dark Hole, Reborn, and Storm.  That’s not in the sense of being able to reuse those spells, but in the probability sense.  You will draw them more than you are used to when running most other decks simply because this deck burns halfway through within a couple of turns.  The threat of a power card blowout at higher probability will be daunting to the opponent.

With 5 spaces freed by the subtraction of MST and Salvage, I was absolutely certain that 3 slots were going to Upstart Goblin.  It’s such a solid card, its effect so pure.  There’s a lot of beauty in the card’s simplicity.

I then tested Duality, as this is one of those card choices which I can’t tell whether it’s good going off theory alone.  It was up to par.  Bear in mind that a Duality flip off Diamond Dude does NOT restrict you from special summoning during the same turn.  This is because Duality’s restriction comes with the activation of the card Duality, and Diamond Dude does not activate cards - it activates effects of cards.

Through the games I played, I noticed that Avarice opportunities were numerous, and the idea of recycling draw/ritual fodder while plussing seemed beautifully in tune with the concept of turbo solitaire.  I had to include it, though that meant 41 cards.  I figured Miracle Fusion at 2 would not pose any serious detriment to the deck, and just cut the 3^rd copy in favor of a 40-card main deck.  I opted for 0 changes in the trap lineup, and if you’ve read up to this point, you know exactly why even a single trap would not be good for this deck.

Edits:

-3 Mystical Space Typhoon
-2 Salvage
-1 Miracle Fusion
+3 Upstart Goblin
+2 Pot of Duality
+1 Pot of Avarice

Extra

Extra Deck: 15

1 Grenosaurus
1 Melomelody the Brass Djinn
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
1 Temtempo Percussion Djinn
1 Maestroke Symphony Djinn
1 Blade Armor Ninja
1 Heroic Champion Excalibur
1 Number 39: Utopia
1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis
1 Number 11: Big Eye
1 Gaia Dragon, Thunder Charger
1 Black Rose Dragon

Just as Billy did with his own extra deck, Joe is probably teasing us here with some silliness.  It’s clear that a chunk of the extra is stuff Joe would not seriously include, so allow me to address this.

Grenosaurus, Big Eye, Gaia Dragon, and Black Rose obviously do not belong.  Since we extracted the entire TGU lineup, every rank 3 gets deleted as well, all in favor of rank 4s.  The deck is not particularly tight on space, which is why I have included Utopia Ray (a game-stealing gambit I like to include in decks not tight on extra space).  Cowboy and Abyss Dweller join the lineup.  They will not be common summons, but their purpose is there and you’ll find utility out of these cards.  The one addition that may need explanation is Gachi Gachi, which is being included because rank 2 situations are considerably more common now that you’re running the full set of Abyss.

Lastly, I’m adding the necessary Hero fusions that Joe comically (and no doubt purposefully) left off his list.  While the other colors are possible to make with this deck (Excalibur + Zero = Shining, etc.), you will not find them at all necessary.

Edits:

-10 Silly cards
+10 Reasonable cards

The Finished Product

Take a look at our wonderfully polished 40 card main and 15 card extra deck.  If you want to see something neat right off the bat, netdeck this and play against a really good Dino Rabbit player.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the favorable matchup.

Monsters: 20

3 Evigishki Soul Ogre
3 Gishki Vision
3 Gishki Shadow
3 Gishki Abyss
3 Destiny Hero Plasma
3 Destiny Hero Diamond Dude
1 Elemental Hero Stratos
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

Spells: 20
3 Upstart Goblin
3 Destiny Draw
3 Trade-In
2 Miracle Fusion
2 Pot of Duality
1 Gishki Aquamirror
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Pot of Avarice
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn

Traps: 0

Extra Deck: 15

2 Elemental Hero Absolute Zero
1 Elemental Hero Escuridao
1 Elemental Hero Great Tornado
1 Elemental Hero Gaia
1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
1 Gagaga Gunman
1 Abyss Dweller
1 Maestroke Symphony Djinn
1 Photon Papilloperative
1 Blade Armor Ninja
1 Heroic Champion Excalibur
1 Number 39: Utopia
1 Number C39: Utopia Ray
1 Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis

Final Thoughts

Whether it’s a better grasp of permissions, a new understanding of where Card Trooper shines best, a matured perspective on turbo-oriented strategies, or even a stronger idea of how to construct an extra deck, it is my hope that you’ve been able to take away something from this read.  Try out the decks I’ve fixed up, and remember to always seek to better yourself, your plays, your work ethic, and your manner of thinking when approaching the game.  I suppose my advice is best summarized in Alter Reality Games’ age-old adage,

Play Hard or Go Home.

Sincerely,

Johnny

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Johnny Li

Houston, TX

Latest posts by Johnny Li (see all)

• 100 Prisoners - February 23, 2015
• Excuses - February 19, 2015
• Learning Efficiently for the Returning Player - February 16, 2015

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