Hello again! Has everyone been having a good December? I offer my sincerest condolences to the very-stressed out students finishing up term papers or studying for their final exams. I graduated from college just over a year ago, so the stress of finals period is a painfully recent memory for me (Am I the only one who still dreams about being late on a test or assignment despite not being in school anymore?).
Students: remember to budget your time wisely, to abstain from distracting activities and locations, and to tackle each task individually with measurable goals so that you do not feel overwhelmed by the workload in its entirety. Take heart, the holidays are upon us!
Get to know a Deck Doctor – A Personal Introduction
(Note: Skip to the next bolded header if you wish to access the deck discussion immediately)
I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction I received in the comments of my last article. Having followed ARG since the beginning, I have seen how the sage advice of some really good players often goes underappreciated in the comments. Joe’s work is a notable example: some of his most insightful writing contributions to the game of Yugioh have received the most ignorant and abusive comments. For this reason, I had given up helping strangers online for some time, as it seemed like there were far more people out there criticizing decent advice than there were actually seeking to improve. Trying to help people at this game through forums, article writing, and online groups is often a thankless task that will get you as much hate as appreciation. The Deck Doctor contest witnessed my return to online help, and I just want to say thank you to the community for understanding the advice I wrote in my last article. X-Saber is an intricate deck, and I did not expect readers to appreciate what I was saying in my article as well as they did. The feedback was essentially 100% positive, and this gives me hope that writing to an online community can still be worthwhile. Thank you readers for exceeding expectations!
As I continue in my role as a writer, I’d like to interact with my readers on a more personal level. I want the experience of reading my article to be as if you’re reading words from a friend you know, and not from a stranger. (If you’re interested only in the theory-oh, feel free to skip ahead to the deck discussion under the next bolded heading).
Some things I have already told you about me are that I’m an afterschool teacher (I teach creative writing and mathematics), I’m going to medical school next year, and that I keep a record of every tournament match I’ve ever played (both on Excel and on paper). The quirky meticulous behavior doesn’t stop with just my record keeping; I also organize my cards – extremely well, for that matter…
Apart from my trade binder, stacks of commons organized by set, and stacks of random rares and holos, I keep a distinct library of cards in what I consider to be the absolutely best way to organize a collection for competitive play. I keep separate boxes for monsters, spells, traps, and extra deck, and each box is lined from front to back in alphabetical order, with the exception of the extra deck, which keeps cards in order of level and rank. Within each box are sleeved playsets of just about every relevant card that has been in a deck that has topped a YCS within the few past years, all alphabetized for instant access when deckbuilding (However, I do not keep Dark World cards in my collection due to my moral code). I highly advocate keeping an organized library of competitive play cards as opposed to putting cards in trade binders when you will likely wish to use them again someday.
Some biographical stuff about me: I emigrated from China to the U.S. at age 2 because my parents were finishing up their graduate and doctorate level science education in this country. I attended high school in Louisiana, and college at Rice University. I developed a very frustrating stuttering habit in 6th grade, and just before college I conquered it through self-discipline, mastering the art of fluent speech. I had typical hobbies in high school, such as tennis and violin, but I also had some less common hobbies like bboying, freestyle rap, Dance Dance Revolution (for several hours at a time) and drawing lots and lots of chubby bears doing silly activities. I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor as a child when I thought blood was scary, but then decided I did want to be a doctor later in high school when I realized the career matched all my interests.
Well, that’s all I’ll say about myself for now. Feel free to chat with me in the comments, whether about the deck or about life in general. Now onto deck doctoring!
The Dark Magician’s Soul Control
It looks like ARG is taking us on a journey further and further back in time. First I doctored Gishki and Rock Stun decks, and then we went a few years back to X-Sabers. This time, we’ve landed in 2005/2006 with Soul Control (we should do a 2003 vanilla beatdown deck for the last round of Deck Doctor, just sayin).
Frazier Smith, ARG’s “Dark Magician”, has brought this patient to the table:
Main Deck: 40
Monsters: 22
3 Cyber Valley
2 Card Trooper
2 Dimensional Alchemist
2 Maxx “C”
2 Effect Veiler
2 Cardcar D
1 Thunder King Rai-Oh
1 Battle Fader
1 Sangan
1 Necroface
1 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Caius the Shadow Monarch
1 Tragoedia
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness
1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
Spells: 10
2 Soul Absorption
1 Machine Duplication
1 Gold Sarcophagus
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Mind Control
1 Scapegoat
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
Traps: 8
2 Solemn Warning
2 Torrential Tribute
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Mirror Force
Extra Deck: 15
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
1 Number 20: Giga-Brilliant
1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
1 Abyss Dweller
1 Number 39: Utopia
1 Formula Synchron
1 Armory Arm
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Arcanite Magician
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 Scrap Dragon
Playing for cards? Nah son, back in the day we played for souls
“Monsters that are Level 5 or 6 require 1 Tribute and Monsters that are Level 7 or higher require 2 Tributes.”
This is a classic quote from the rulebook that comes with every sealed deck of Yugioh product, describing a mechanic that has been with us since the game’s inception. Tribute summons have historically been a costly mechanic. Even with all the special summon options that have evolved in the game, the mere fact that a tribute summon monster can sit dead in your hand, combined with the cost to summon said monster, has made tribute monsters so volatile that to play them well, they always need to be the focal strategy of the entire deck. An exceptional format would be the starter deck era, but in most other formats, tribute summoning has been an unreliable strategy unless you were going to dedicate your deck’s core engine to performing them.
Monarchs are the quintessential tribute monsters, as they pay for the cost of their summons with one-for-one effects that trigger upon summon. While this inherent ability makes up for the cost of their summon, it doesn’t address the other side of why tribute strategies are mediocre: developing tribute fodder is slow, and if you don’t have fodder, your hand is inconsistent. Treeborn Frog has helped shaped a number of formats with the way it has mitigated this drawback, but we often forget there was an age before the little guy hopped into the Monarch player’s card pool.
Yep, I’m talking about the mid-2000’s. Before we had Treeborn as recursive tribute fodder, players depended on the likes of floaters (Gravekeeper’s Spy), special summons (Premature Burial and Call of the Haunted), and monster-stealing spells (Enemy Controller, Snatch Steal, Brain Control, and the eponymous Soul Exchange) to produce the sacrifice needed to bring out the big guns. Soul Control thrived in a slower format, when card advantage translated much more into victory. Trading Soul Exchange for their monster, Thestalos for their (presumed) removal card, and Thestalos’ trigger effect for free netted you a +1 in overall advantage from the Soul Exchange-Monarch play.
While that was the basic premise of card advantage through tributes, there were many other format-specific intricacies to the Soul Control deck that are no longer directly relevant to the current game. However, I find that learning about this game’s history can be helpful. If you would like to read about true Soul Control, Evan Vargas, a former veteran and player from my locals (before he retired), has a tournament report on how he topped an SJC with the deck. (Beware of coarse language)
Link to the report here: http://www.pojo.biz/board/showthread.php?t=149612
Monsters
Monsters: 22
3 Cyber Valley
2 Card Trooper
2 Dimensional Alchemist
2 Maxx “C”
2 Effect Veiler
2 Cardcar D
1 Thunder King Rai-Oh
1 Battle Fader
1 Sangan
1 Necroface
1 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Caius the Shadow Monarch
1 Tragoedia
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness
1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
Modern day Soul Control, while uncommon, is most often played with the monarch strategy paired alongside some form of Chaos. Frazier-excuse me, the Dark Magician, has sensibly opted for the Chaos mold. The reason a Chaos backbone is effective in such a deck is because it provides a strong follow-up play once you’ve traded your tribute summon for their out. Your Caius is akin to a character’s projectile in a fighting game; you don’t care whether it hits, you are doing it to bait your opponent’s reaction so that your follow-up combos out successfully executed. Many other decks utilize this principle, such as Chaos Agents and Chaos Dragons.
For instance, in round 2 of Barcelona, Simon baited the opponent’s backrow using a Venus-Shine Ball play. After determining no Torrential set, he summoned Hyperion, which traded with the opponent’s Solemn Warning. These two moves broke the Wind-Up player’s floodgate and gave Simon a full read on his opponent, who had one set remaining. Simon summoned Chaos Sorcerer and activated Enemy Controller in the battle phase to steal the game with 5,700 damage in direct attacks. Chaos Dragons follows this bait and flood principle as well, as they will often tribute summon a Darkflare or Lightpulsar and special summon another, forcing you into blocking with removal. If the deck is piloted correctly, the player then follows up with the remaining Chaos monsters he has conserved to push through a broken dam without resistance, thereby ending the game.
Now that I’ve justified the Chaos framework of this deck, we can examine each monster choice and adjust to that framework. Cyber Valley and Machine Dupe form a nice combo, and Mind Control is just plain nutty. Valley has a lot of utility both defensively (with its effect) and offensively (with Mind Control), and since Leviair is a card now, I will gladly leave in the full playset (you either play one or zero of this card).
As I have explained in previous articles, cards like Card Trooper, Forbidden Lance, and Enemy Controller (2-effect cards) work best in decks where both effects are central to the deck’s win condition. Forbidden Lance, for instance, isn’t played when it’s just used for removal protection (that’s why you almost never see it in Wind-Ups), but rather when it is also critical in monster battles (which is why Joe says he’d play five copies in Rabbit if he could). The same is the case with Card Trooper; the card is only consistently good when both of its effects contribute to the win condition.
Inzektors deliver my favorite illustration of the Card Trooper principle. Card Trooper’s draw-a-card effect makes it a prime target for Solemn Warning. Card Trooper’s mill effect makes it a fast engine that digs into Inzektor Hornet. When you have Hornet in grave and can protect Centipede without fear of Warning, you are on your way to victory. In the context of Soul Control, Card Trooper does very little to advance toward any sort of win condition. Your win condition isn’t unearthed by digging violently into the deck, nor is it found in trading normal summons for Dimensional Prisons and Solemns. Trooper gets dropped.
Dimensional Alchemist is an excellent addition to most Chaos engines. The card’s popularity has been on and off, though it seems to make a small statement at least once each format. Recently, it was played over Solar Recharge in a Chaos Dragon deck that top 4’d a Michigan regional. The card has excellent floating capabilities that can pressure your opponent into over-extending or over-conserving. It recycles BLS. It’s a great card, and it stays. One of the most common misplays I have seen done with this card is summoning it with no monsters banished. A blind Alchemist play is worse than a blind Typhoon. Please do not do this.
The Dark Magician currently runs 4 hand traps in the main deck. There are two reasons why I strongly advise against maining Maxx “C” here. The first is that the format has grown too diverse. You are just as likely to play a Wind-Up player as you are a deck where Maxx “C” becomes dead. You are just as likely going to play a Wind-Up player who opens control/beatdown as you are a Wind-Up player who opens TGU/Mage + Shark. Against water, you have to wait for the Sphere to plus off C. If your opponent triggers Megalo before you see a Sphere, do you use your C then for a mediocre 1-1 trade, or do you allow him to have free reign in the hopes of getting additional value from C on the following turn, should he even activate the Sphere? You don’t want to be faced with this kind of dilemma and punish yourself for running C in the main. If Maxx “C” were dark, I’d reconsider its inclusion in the deck, but right now it’s just too inconsistent for such a diverse meta (and my own locals happens to be half Macro Rabbit). The second reason is also why I justified excluding C from Billy’s Rock Stun deck: C works best when your own strategy involves going off hard after your opponent is stunned into passing his turn. Soul Control, as its name suggests, plays for card advantage and control. While it does have explosive plays, you are not making them enough to rely on a card like C to set you up for them on any given turn.
Speaking of dead Earth attributes, we’ll look at Cardcar next. Cardcar is an awkward card. Its text effectively reads “Trade tempo for card advantage.” Some players consider it critical in some decks (like Hieratics). However, it’s generally underwhelming. If its effect did something more along the lines of “Trade tempo for card advantage, or card advantage for tempo” or “Trade tempo for card advantage, and keep your normal summon” I’d appreciate it more. In this particular format, I see it as a one-trick pony whose one trick can be unwanted in many situations when the pressure is on you to deal with their on-board threat. I’m cutting it for this reason, and to free up some normal summons for us.
Thunder King Rai-Oh is on this list at one copy. Its continuous effect prevents Genex Undine, Pot of Duality, ROTA/E-Call, and Spellbooks from activating altogether, and its trigger effect negates the inherent summons of boss monsters. It attacks over virtually every normal summonable monster in the metagame, or trades in battle at worst. It is the best unlimited 4-star monster in history (a title once assigned to Kycoo), so I would main 2 and side the third copy (mostly for going first) here.
Battle Fader at 1 is an interesting piece of tech here. Barring Solemn Warning (or the less commonly seen Vanity’s Emptiness/Mind Crush), the card basically says you can’t lose for a turn. It also won’t lose to end phase MST the way Threatening Roar does, and at the very least, it can help you set up a tribute summon on the following turn. I think it’s a neat trick to hold onto.
Sangan underperforms in the deck as it is currently, but the addition of the ever-versatile TGU will fix that, in addition to another amazing searchable…
D.D. Warrior Lady! Another reason I freed up some normal summons earlier was to make room for this card. One of my main playtesting buddies, Mark, is an excellent innovator. Like me, he has a habit of acquiring the cards to make every meta deck and getting good with all of them (I don’t say “master” all of them here because as long as Wind-Up is a deck, I would not claim anyone has “mastered” all of them, but Mark sure comes close). He often times throws quirky stuff my way during testing, too, and the best nonmeta deck I’ve seen of his this format has been a Chaos deck utilizing DDWL. Warrior Lady has been all but dismissed over time since she burns through a normal summon to answer the board while not stopping swarms the way a card like Fossil Dyna and Zenmaines might do. However, there is another side to the argument. She answers cards that negate destruction, is one of the strongest Sangan searchables, is Light fodder for the grave, punishes blind attacks on set monsters, is recursive with Leviair, and her effect fuels…
Lightray Sorcerer! Jeff wrote an article recently about cards that aren’t great now but are worth holding onto for the future meta. I advocate the Lightrays being such cards, particularly Sorcerer. Keep some copies in your toolbox! The card has potential, as we have seen in Ellis’ Eltanin Beat deck, which maindecked two copies. He made it all the way to the top cut at Providence before losing to my friend Garon. There are three characteristics of this card that I really appreciate (apart from the card art, which I also happen to like). The first is that its summon condition doesn’t use up resources. You aren’t moving cards to or from any zone on the field. If you have three Lights, you’re good to go. The second characteristic is that it is an answer to Macro Cosmos. If your opponent keeps in hand traps, you can easily play around them. If your opponent keeps in or sides in Macro or D-Fissure instead (upon seeing that your deck is Chaos), Lightray will catch him off guard. Lastly, its effect is unique. It ducks game mechanics. We should be thankful ignition priority was gone when this card was released. In conclusion, Lightray Sorcerer adds excellent balance with the Chaos monsters and provides incredible synergy with banishable monsters like Cyber Valley and D.D. Warrior Lady. It’s just plain hard to counter or side against. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been punished by Lightray due to mis-siding before. Remember to play it like a traditional Chaos monster: break the opponent’s gate first, and then drop the boss monster when the probability is low that he has no remaining outs.
Necroface has no utility on its own (I hate running bad topdeck cards unless they do amazing things at other stages of the game). The combos that exist with it are ineffective and inconsistent. The card is as useless as it is ugly, so out it goes.
Chaos Sorcerer, BLS-EotB, Gorz, and Tragoedia are natural choices for a Chaos deck, providing boss level attack, Dark attribute fodder, and powerful effects. I’ve been discussing Chaos theory (pun intended as usual) quite a bit, but we can’t forget that this is a Soul Control deck at its core. For that reason, we ought to include at least one more Monarch. “Caius der Shattenmonarch” gets bumped up to 2.
Edits:
-2 Maxx “C” (side deck)
-2 Card Trooper
-2 Cardcar D
-1 Necroface
+2 D.D. Warrior Lady
+1 Thunder King Rai-Oh
+2 Tour Guide from the Underworld
+2 Lightray Sorcerer
+1 Caius the Shadow Monarch
Spells
Spells: 10
2 Soul Absorption
1 Machine Duplication
1 Gold Sarcophagus
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Mind Control
1 Scapegoat
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
As usual, Trinity is dismissed from the chopping block. Hole, Reborn, and Storm are cards that don’t so much need justification to run as they do justification NOT to run. If I ever doctor a deck that doesn’t run one of these (like Gravekeeper’s), I will explain the exclusion thoroughly, so don’t worry.
Mind Control and Machine Duplication are, as I mentioned, pretty nutty with Cyber Valley. Mind Control is removal that’s very hard to stop, as the “take control” mechanic doesn’t exactly have a ton of answers in the game’s card pool. A game where you are utilizing the Valley-Mind Control combo is one you are likely to win - provided you don’t make any horrible judgment calls like using the combo on your first turn against a Genex Undine. Allure is another strong one-of that lets you sculpt your hand into what it needs to be for the situation. Tragoedia and Caius are not always the most live of cards, and Allure helps with that.
Scapegoat and Gold Sarcophagus are cards I would remove. I’m 2 for 2 now in cutting Scapegoat out of decks; I promise I don’t have any sort of vendetta against Scapegoat. The card just has little synergy here. I understand that Valley + token is a play, but that play isn’t a plus in card advantage unless you convert the remaining tokens into another play. Mind Control and Machine Dupe are much better combo pieces for Valley than Scapegoat. Ultimately, Cardcar D does the same thing as the Goat + Valley combo (trade tempo for cards), except Cardcar does that job in just one card. And I STILL cut it from the deck. Naturally, it follows that Goat is not going to make it in the final edit. Gold Sarcophagus offers marginally better synergy with the deck than Scapegoat since you can banish a monster and retrieve it with Alchemist or Leviair. I hope you see what I meant when I said marginally better. The tricks you pull off with this card are not win conditions; they are just cute one-for-one plays. Sarcophagus doesn’t carve out any sort of path to a blowout the way Sarc-Cold Wave did for X-Sabers or Sarc-JD/Heavy did for Lightsworn in older formats. This is neither the time nor the deck for Gold Sarc.
The last one-of I would include is Soul Exchange, to keep with the theme of Soul Control. The reason I am keeping it at one is because if it’s run at two or more, you have to run more Monarchs as well to keep them live. The irony is that by running more Monarchs, you are increasing the combinations of dead hands you can potentially draw. Then there’s also the issue of drawing two of them together. Jake Mattern, a veteran duelist who had a tremendous hand in my early development as a player, first exposed me to this idea, an idea that I now often follow when deck building. That is, I don’t run two of a card that I would absolutely hate to draw both copies of in the same hand. There are obvious exceptions, such as Genex Controller, which gets searched out by Undine more often than not in order to reduce the number of times you are ripping it off the top. Soul Exchange has no such synergy, and a game where I am staring at two in my hand is a game I am likely going to lose. I most often apply this rule to combo-dependent cards, but it needs to be used with discretion as it is a guideline to deck building, not a guarantee.
I suspect the decision my audience (as well as myself) would critique the hardest about the deck I’m building here is the single copy of Soul Exchange. It strongly nudges at the question of whether to run the Monarch engine at all. The reason I am including it is to stay faithful to the original submission. The original submission is Soul Control, and the final product must therefore be Soul Control. What I personally found most affronting when glancing through round 1 of Deck Doctor entries (apart from the unchecked spelling and grammar) was that some writers completely gutted out decks and removed their themes entirely. I am dogmatically opposed to that kind of fix for a deck, as it opens the doors for a slippery slope. I may as well tell you to cut every card except the power spells and the traps and replace the rest with Wind-Ups if my intent is to remove your deck’s theme. I don’t consider it a Deck Doctor’s right to gut out a deck’s theme and transplant a new one. I am sticking to what I was given, though I will state some additional thoughts on alternatives for this deck toward the end, as we ought to keep an open mind about what to play.
To wrap up spells, the Dark Magician prescribed 2 Soul Absorption as a joke, undoubtedly intended to be replaced with Soul Exchange. Soul Absorption is actually the kind of card I would use to teach children the difference between what is a good card and what is a bad card. Something I love about my job is that a lot of the math and writing students that I teach are really into Yugioh. I sometimes bring various decks to my work place to teach them about the metagame (they don’t go to tournaments so all their duel news comes from me). I’ve shown them Rabbit, Inzektor, Plant Synchro 2011, Mermatlanteans, and Chaos Dragons. I also teach them fundamental patterns of play like developing card advantage and conserving power cards for later. When I teach about card advantage, I usually use cards that don’t generate card advantage, such as Soul Absorption, to explain to them what not to use when deck building. Long story short: Soul Absorption is a card so bad that it’s the kind of card I use as an example to teach children the characteristics of a bad card. Increasing one’s life points simply does not generate a win condition...
But MST sure does! In the season 2 episode 17 of the animated series Justice League, Superman said that every punch he takes is a punch his teammates don’t have to. MST is your Superman because it will take on the removal that was intended for your big monsters. Soul Absorption gets swapped for a pair of these bad boys.
Edits:
-1 Scapegoat
-1 Gold Sarcophagus
-2 Soul Absorption
+1 Soul Exchange
+2 Mystical Space Typhoon
Traps
Traps: 8
2 Solemn Warning
2 Torrential Tribute
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Mirror Force
The last time I had a check-up, my doctor kept asking me whether I was in possession of symptoms that a fit young man my age had no business possessing. He repeatedly asked whether I had chest pain or difficulty breathing even though I repeatedly told him no, yet he ordered an EKG for me when it really wasn’t necessary. Since my insurance would cover the test regardless, I went ahead with it and did not protest. It was clear to me what my doctor was doing. He wanted me to need an EKG so badly that he ignored the fact that I was perfectly fine, so he kept inquiring about my condition. He wanted to convince himself that I needed an EKG. Doctors often try to order more tests because it gets more money sent their way, and patients like myself often comply when having health insurance means no money out of their own pocket.
For this particular deck’s trap lineup, I would feel like the shady physician I just described if I were to rearrange things just for the sake of keeping up appearances. A Deck Doctor who makes lots of busy changes to a deck may look like he’s smart while he’s tinkering away, but a truly wise one also ought to identify when things should be left untouched. This trap lineup is just fine in this doctor’s opinion. I believe Mirror Force complements Dimensional Alchemist and Cyber Valley well, as both monsters can be played such that they draw out aggression from the opponent. Especially Cyber Valley. Your opponent will often be left pondering whether to leave it alone in hopes of destroying it with a card effect later, or to attack it in fear of the Mind Control, Machine Duplication, or TGU you may be holding. For this reason Mirror Force should be played over Dimensional Prison (I made the reverse decision in my last article, showing that your monster lineup plays a critical role in your trap lineup). I like the Torrential at 2 because the deck is in need of solid floodgates. I like Warning and Bottomless at 2 because they are just great traps all-around. I would side deck Fiendish Chain against most decks right now. Finally, I would main Solemn Judgment. I agree 100% with the EXclusion of SJ in a more “grindy” build of Soul Control Chaos, but since this deck does lean toward ending with a blowout play (thanks to TGU-Leviair and the additional boss monsters I included), I want Solemn Judgment to be the down payment on insurance for these game-ending pushes.
Edits:
+1 Solemn Judgment
Extra Deck
Extra Deck: 15
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
1 Number 20: Giga-Brilliant
1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
1 Abyss Dweller
1 Number 39: Utopia
1 Formula Synchron
1 Armory Arm
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Arcanite Magician
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 Scrap Dragon
The Dark Magician included the rank 3 suite as if in anticipation of the Tour Guides that would inevitably be recruited into the deck. In nearly any other deck, I would give Acid Golem priority over Giga-Brilliant, but since GB is light, he is going to outlast Acid in this deck. In the Golem’s place comes the second copy of Leviair, as the card is predominantly responsible for the broken momentum-shifting plays this deck is capable of, and you will easily find yourself making good use of that second copy. Golem is the only XYZ from the original list that isn’t needed.
As far as Synchro monsters, the level 7 and level 8s should not be played in twos, as the scenario required to summon these creatures is far too unique (monster plus Veiler). When Veiler + a boss is my only avenue toward an Extra Deck monster, I try to just pick out the one I like best between two and run that. In Chaos Dragons, the 7 and 8 that I play are Black Rose Dragon and Scrap Dragon. Here, I opt for the Arcanite Magician and the Scrap Dragon. I’m advocating Arcanite this time because unlike in Chaos Dragons, there is a good chance you’ll have purple cards set when you’re Synchro summoning with Soul Chaos. Arcanite lets you destroy your opponent’s field without having to lose cards or wait until you use up what you have on board. It’s less situational, and I am opting for more general utility over specific utility.
With the two slots freed by the release of Black Rose and Stardust, I am including Papilloperative, for its attribute and for the setups that it can punish, as well as Maestroke, again for its attribute and for just being what I would contend is the most playable generic rank 4 across all formats in the year of 2012.
Formula Synchron, Armory Arm, and AoJ Catastor should not be summoned in this deck. Note that I am not saying that they cannot be summoned. They should not. There is almost no scenario where you should be giving up Effect Veiler and a Thunder King, Effect Veiler and an Alchemist, Effect Veiler and a Cyber Valley, etc. for a Synchro play. Cut these three, and add three solid XYZ monsters: N50: Blackship of Corn for its attribute and removal/burn ability, Photon Strike Bounzer since I multiplied the level 6 monster count severalfold, and Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger for additional power plays utilizing Mind Control.
Edits:
-1 Number 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
-1 Black Rose Dragon
-1 Stardust Dragon
-1 Formula Synchron
-1 Armory Arm
-1 Ally of Justice Catastor
+1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
+1 Photon Papilloperative
+1 Maestroke the Symphony Djinn
+1 N50: Blackship of Corn
+1 Photon Strike Bounzer
+1 Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
The Finished Product
In what has been my most drastic fix yet, we’ve swapped out 17 cards and swapped in 18 cards to leave us with a 41-card main and 15-card extra deck.
Main Deck: 41
Monsters: 23
3 Cyber Valley
2 Dimensional Alchemist
2 Effect Veiler
2 D.D. Warrior Lady
2 Thunder King Rai-Oh
2 Lightray Sorcerer
2 Caius the Shadow Monarch
2 Tour Guide from the Underworld
1 Sangan
1 Battle Fader
1 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Tragoedia
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness
1 Black Luster Soldier, Envoy of the Beginning
Spells: 9
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Machine Duplication
1 Soul Exchange
1 Allure of Darkness
1 Mind Control
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
Traps: 9
2 Torrential Tribute
2 Mirror Force
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Solemn Warning
1 Solemn Judgment
Extra Deck: 15
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
1 Temtempo the Percussion Djinn
2 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
1 Number 20: Giga-Brilliant
1 Abyss Dweller
1 Maestroke the Symphony Djinn
1 Number 50: Blackship of Corn
1 Photon Papilloperative
1 Number 39: Utopia
1 Photon Strike Bounzer
1 Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
1 Arcanite Magician
1 Scrap Dragon
Final Thoughts
If there is one major conclusion I feel Soul Control Chaos and X-Sabers demonstrate, it is that older decks don’t necessarily have to fall prey to power creep. Both archetypes have essentially fallen off the community’s radar, but we forget that a newer card pool, consisting especially of powerful, generic Extra Deck cards, can give older decks a boost in addition to the newer.
Cyber Valley becomes pretty scary to play against if you don’t have immediate removal for it, as you don’t know whether your opponent will combo out with Mind Control or Tour Guide-Leviair if you leave it on the board. On the other hand, if you attack the Valley, you are advancing your opponent a draw phase and sacrificing the tempo of your entire turn, which is frustrating.
D.D. Warrior Lady suddenly makes its return from a different dimension, as new bosses like Lightray Sorcerer suddenly make it that much more effective. And speaking of this boss, it is a huge threat in itself that can be difficult to find an answer to. Normally, keeping cards out of the graveyard against a Chaos deck is a good thing, but Sorcerer drops will leave your opponent in for a nasty surprise, as well as give him a difficult time deciding how to side deck for your next game. As icing on the cake, it has a nice effect that is difficult to play around.
With this deck, I did my best to strike a balance between maintaining fidelity to the patient’s theme (Soul Control) while administering the fixes needed to keep the engine competitive and up to par with the rest of the meta. As a result, I wasn’t at liberty to advocate a full on Monarch army (as the only way to make that competitive would be to transform the entire thing into Frognarch), nor did I allow myself to gut out the deck and let it just be Chaos without tribute summons. I fully expect that such a fix would not please every last member of the audience (neutrality seldom does). As much as I may wish for the contrary, the reality is that not every reader is going to see eye to eye with every future fix I make as long as I serve as Deck Doctor. I offer this consolation: with every fix, I will provide as much justification as I can for the decisions I make, and also give fair consideration toward the decisions I don’t make.
This time around, the major decision I didn’t make was to gut out the Soul Control theme. Given the choice at a tournament, I would honestly run the Chaos deck without Soul Exchange and Caius. However, I did not want my personal preference on this to influence the article overall, which is why I mention it here at its conclusion.
Now some minor decisions I didn’t make. One was to include Utopia Ray for the same reason I did include Gaia Dragon, to create more options for Mind Control. I also did not opt for Fiendish Chain in the main, though I would not finish this article without stressing its importance at the time of writing. The card has seen a strong return lately, and for good reason – it performs across the board against the meta. I would side deck two for sure, and I was mere inches from maining the card.
And while I’m on the matter of the side deck, I strongly recommend Spirit Reaper and Macro Cosmos. Reaper is another one of those floodgate cards that a less explosive deck like Soul Chaos needs, and also just does a lot of great things offensively as well. It forces all kinds of trades and will definitely pull some weight for you. Cosmos is good here as well, as so much of the engine revolves around the banished zone. I guarantee that players will mis-side against you now and then, at times leaving in their own Cosmos as they mistaken your deck for a traditional Chaos deck. Cosmos also punishes players who leave in hand traps against you (or side in Kycoo), synergizing very effectively with Lightray Sorcerer, which punishes the siding in of Cosmos (and Kycoo).
Finally, I hope that I’ve provided some inspiration and insight to the readers and deck builders out there. Perhaps you’ve picked up something new to consider in your deck building, whether it’s how to choose Mirror Force over D Prison (check out the previous article for an explanation on what deck I would choose D Prison for), building a deck in a way to force the opponent to side incorrectly, running one copy of cards you abhor drawing two of, or when to choose generic effects with more situation coverage (Arcanite, Blackship, Bounzer, Maestroke, second Leviair) over more narrow effects with less situation coverage (Black Rose, Armory Arm, Formula Synchron, Catastor, Acid Golem) for the Extra Deck. These general principles will take you far, and I intend to introduce more and more general theory through concrete examples as we journey together in fixing up decks. In the meantime, playtest to uncover your own truths, pursue your passions, enjoy the holidays, and of course…
Play hard or go home.
Sincerely,
Johnny
Johnny Li
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
Get
Connected