Happy holidays everyone! Johnny here, back again with some exciting developments. When I last wrote for round 1 of the Deck Doctor contest, I was preparing for YCS Seattle and waiting to hear back from a medical school I had interviewed at. Since then, I have not only advanced to round 2 of the Deck Doctor contest, but I have been accepted into medical school. In other words, I am not only competing to be a professional Deck Doctor, but I am also on my way to becoming an actual doctor!
I have a juicy article in store for you all today. Today’s patient is Alex “Thunderpants” Vansant’s X-Saber deck, and I have to say my heart LEAPT when I saw that I would be assigned a Saber deck for this round of deck doctoring. The reason is because I discuss Saber theory a lot with my friend David, a seasoned X-Saber veteran who I often go back-and-forth with, discussing how to best address the meta with the slightest nuances in card selection. David has top 8’d two regionals since the ban list with these X-Men, including a 1st place finish in San Antonio on September 1st, where he and my pal Scott running Heroes both went undefeated (the last round of Swiss was omitted that day due to time constraints).
Just as I did with Billy’s Rock Stun deck and Joe’s Gishki Hero Deck, I am prescribing required reading before we go into the deck fixes. I currently teach for a living, and the instructor in me cannot resist the urge to teach the fundamental concepts behind the deck I am fixing. The benefit to you, the reader, will be that you can pick up a thing or two about Yugioh in general, even if you don’t play the particular deck the article focuses on.
Why explicate before fixing a deck? Simple: it guides us on the course toward real improvement. A common mistake made in deck doctoring is lack of attention to the deck’s ultimate objective. If a deck’s win condition, opening, midgame, endgame, strengths, and weaknesses are not adequately understood and delineated within the same article, changes are more or less arbitrary. If the deck is better after the change, it’s luck and we don’t learn anything. If it’s worse, then we’ve defeated ourselves. If we go with hazy, subjective ideas such as singular experiences or card preference without a well-explored conclusion on what the deck DOES, how can we expect to fix a deck for the BETTER? That’s why I’ll explain the foundations of this deck as best as I can along this journey.
Opinion and preference, while useful, cannot be the sole foundation for our card choices if we are to pursue rational deck building. Rather, we are to make every card selection with sound reasoning and adherence to our deck’s doctrine - with intimate knowledge of its purpose, its plays, and its position within the metagame.
The following is Alex Vansant’s “Sabers Strike” deck:
Main Deck: 41
Monsters: 18
3 XX-Saber Darksoul
3 XX-Saber Emmersblade
3 XX-Saber Faultroll
3 XX-Saber Fulhelmknight
2 X-Saber Pashuul
2 Tragoedia
1 X-Saber Airbellum
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness
Spells: 11
2 Forbidden Lance
2 Enemy Controller
1 Scapegoat
1 Mind Control
1 Book of Moon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole
1 Pot of Avarice
Traps: 12
3 Gottoms’ Emergency Call
2 Solemn Warning
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Torrential Tribute
1 Reinforce Truth
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Starlight Road
Extra Deck: 15
1 XX-Saber Gottoms
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 XX-Saber Souza
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Naturia Barkion
2 XX-Saber Hyunlei
1 Naturia Beast
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Armory Arm
1 Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
1 Photon Strike Bounzer
1 Inzektor Exa-Beetle
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
What is the X-Men’s Doctrine?
X-Saber was once the most played tier 1 deck because of the gymnastics it could do all over the meta. Limited cards such as Rescue Cat and Cold Wave, and even unlimited cards like Gottoms’ Emergency Call and XX-Saber Faultroll, created explosive plays that would wipe out the opponent’s field while leaving your own with powerful Synchro monsters. What made these pushes more daunting, however, was that the plays replenished themselves in the form of their floater monster: XX-Saber Darksoul. Thus, if you survived the first onslaught, you had to deal with the second wave that was guaranteed to come the turn after. Even worse was that these recurring power-plays could initiate on any turn of the duel; their stage 1 field presence in the form of floaters, recruiters, and protection traps was such good defense that the Saber player could comfortably slowroll even the most aggressive of decks as each draw phase helped the duelist to brew the perfect storm of a hand.
Sabers have fallen off the map into the category of “rogue” as time has progressed. While the banning of Rescue Cat and Cold Wave (which was a win condition in itself) played a significant role in this deck’s fallout, the primary culprit behind its now obscure status is simply power creep – that is, the growing strength and popularity of newer decks. However, one cannot understate the winning potential that the X-Men still have. I am firmly of the opinion that the strength of this deck is not accurately reflected in its representation among players. In fact, it is BECAUSE this deck is so underrepresented that it gains a lot of strength. Knowing how to dictate tempo against Sabers is a forgotten art, and it certainly cannot be acquired during the duel. The obscurity of this deck has granted it the advantage of exploiting players’ ignorance, both in play and in side decking strategy.
Let’s take a look at how the deck still performs all kinds of flips and tricks. First, we’ll examine its potential plays. The Extra Deck just screams versatility. Easily-made Naturia Synchros allow for a very adaptive style of play. If your opponent’s deck is spell dependent (think Dark World and the like) or trap dependent (isn’t burn annoying?), the Naturias can easily take advantage of their lopsided strategies. In addition, our 1.5 years with XYZ releases has given Sabers more in their Extra Deck arsenal. What the Naturias can’t handle, Photon Strike Bounzer with its effect negation or Sword Breaker with its monster destruction can certainly cover. Bounzer gets special recognition, as it negates so many potential turnarounds found in today’s most played decks. Think about it: the vast majority of momentum shifts are performed with monsters whose effects activate on the field. Even defensive plays, such as damage step effects (Dyna and the likes) can be stomped upon by Bounzer. The rank 3 M-X-Saber Invoker is formidable as well. It can turn what was formerly an unplayable Faultroll-tuner heavy hand into a live and very powerful turn.
Clearly, the XYZ mechanic has given the deck a huge boost to make up for the loss of such key plays involving Brionac, Cold Wave, or Rescue Cat. The reason the Extra Deck is worthy of first mention is because it is the armory of the deck. It is the player’s access to any and every weapon, and what’s best is that you don’t have to draw cards in your Extra Deck: they’re ready to make. Each and every push that doesn’t involve bombing your opponent’s hand with Gottoms is likely to end in some sort of soft lock involving a Naturia Synchro, a Bounzer, a Stardust, or some combination of the above, plus a maindecked monster such as Fulhelmknight to make future plays live. Think about the doors Strike Bounzer + Fulhelm open up for you: invulnerability to nearly every common play involving monster effects (not even BLS stops this), and a live Emergency Call ready to have its trigger pulled for Act 2 at any time.
Playing this deck correctly requires you to find an opening to strike through. Whether it’s waiting for that Fulhelm to show itself, or that clutch Trap Stun to protect your push, you need to be patient with the draw-pass game. Remember: your monsters replace themselves. Your opponent will seldom justify playing Soul Taker or Dark Hole on Emmersblade, so why try to win with maindecked monster beatdown when you can let Emmers’ recruiting ability bait your opponent into negging from Torrential and Mirror Force? If you have game the same turn, or can create a fairly safe soft lock with the Extra Deck, you can switch to offense at the drop of a dime, but until then, your opponent will have to either wait or play in fear, as attacking your monsters will not bring him any closer to your life points (you will seldom run dry of all your recruiters/floaters before you’ve pushed), and playing backrow removal could lead to a chained Emergency Call. When both attacking monsters and spending backrow removal is made difficult for your opponent, you can do a lot of things with the psychological upper hand. Therefore, it is better to wait for a safe and big push than to poke at life points with maindecked monsters – generally speaking. In other words, don’t play the beatdown game. Let them push and push and attack into your recruiters and chainables while you amass that game-winning hand.
Monsters
Monsters: 18
3 XX-Saber Darksoul
3 XX-Saber Emmersblade
3 XX-Saber Faultroll
3 XX-Saber Fulhelmknight
2 X-Saber Pashuul
2 Tragoedia
1 X-Saber Airbellum
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness
I’ve given the Extra Deck stars a good amount of coverage, so it’s only fair that I recognize the monsters of the Main Deck who make everything possible. The X-Saber monsters are a collection of some of the best and most re-used effects we’ve ever seen in 4 star and lower monsters. Emmersblade is a recruiter whose effect has been printed in various cards time and time again. It is incredibly adaptable in that it not only maintains a defensive field presence, but it also easily converts into an offensive strike at a moment’s notice. With a Gottoms’ Emergency Call set and an Emmersblade on field, you can ram Emmersblades repeatedly into an opposing monster, instantly livening the Gottoms, and then use Gottoms in tandem with the last monster you recruit with Emmersblade for a whole variety of plays. While opening Faultroll and Gottoms, which are seemingly mid to late game cards, seems suboptimal, an Emmersblade easily turns them into a power play. Emmersblade also gives you a quick out to Thunder King, as it can recruit a Boggart in the damage step (immunity to Bottomless, yay!) that can ram with the TKing. You will do this play often, as TKing has historically been this deck’s longest running enemy.
Boggart Knight is the original Madolche Mewfeuille, and much better for that matter. As mentioned, Emmersblade makes it a Bottomless-immune Thunder King slayer. When summoned in your main phase, Boggart Knight puts pressure on your opponent to spend Veiler or Maxx “C”, as he cannot risk waiting for the Faultroll drop. Thus, Boggart can bleed out those hand traps even when you’re bluffing the Faultroll. Every now and then he’ll even catch a Warning, as the threat of Faultroll is simply too big to risk waiting to see whether the Saber player is going to trigger its normal summon effect. Mindgames aside, Boggart Knight is simply your quickest window to Faultroll’s rampage outside of Emmersblade + Gottoms.
Pashuul deserves recognition as a themed Spirit Reaper that doesn’t die to targeting. Just be careful its effect doesn’t backfire on you (learn from Frazier and be cautious with those Doomcaliber Knights). It can be searched out with a chainable (Reinforce Truth), and it doesn’t even use up one’s normal summon in the process. I cannot tell you how many times Reinforce Truth has been targeted by MST. So many plusses.
Darksoul is your gateway into the second wave of plays, should you not win outright on the turn of your first power play. It synergizes beautifully with Gottoms’ hand bombing effect, as well as Synchro summoning in general, as using Darksoul as material essentially makes almost every Synchro summon a one for one exchange (and in the case of Hyunlei: much, much more). In addition, Darksoul tutors in the end phase, allowing you to wait until you see how the entire turn plays out before you decide what nasty enabler you wish to search for the next turn’s strike.
In my previous article, I mentioned how Jujitsu Master and Dyna synergize well on a meta level, meaning that while their card texts do not relate to each other, their effects take advantage of human fallibility and the potential for false reads. Predicting one card can be detrimental if the facedown turns out to be the other. The same can be said for the Darksoul and Emmersblade pair. The two cards synergize well, as your opponent will have difficulty getting a good read on your set. Summoning a precious TKing to greedily nab a plus off Darksoul can spell trouble if the set turned out to be Emmersblade.
Fulhelmknight is of course are primary tuner. As a level 3, it provides quick access to both level 6 Synchros and rank 3 XYZ monsters. His summon effect alone can often dictate your opponent’s playstyle, forcing him to keep monsters in attack position that he wished he could switch to defense. Its negation effect is also very handy, as it can draw out overextensions from the opponent, or provide coverage in specialized situations (such as the aforementioned Bounzer+Fulhelm wall).
Airbellum is a solid card, even though it comes from an age before the double X’s (Rescue Cat into double Airbellum attacking into a blank field was a good feeling back in the day). Its effect lets you use it similarly to a summoned Reaper, essentially drawing out your opponent’s good backrow and giving you free information for future turns should your opponent turn out to have set bluffs. It’s a level 3 tuner to boot, and it carries the X-Saber name, if anything else.
So now that the main cast has been summarized, what do we change about it? Well, Thunderpants has humorously left Boggart Knight out of this list, most likely to tease the Deck Doctors. The 1 Airbellum, 2 Pashuul, rest all 3’s lineup is standard for Sabers this format. The good physician knows not to tamper with what isn’t damaged, so the Saber lineup will not be altered beyond the addition of triple Boggart Knight. There is scarcely reason to run anything other than the 1/2/rest 3’s ratio, as it is the most consistent, so we’ll leave it at that. Monster-wise, this leaves Tragoedia and Gorz on the chopping block.
I see this as a good opportunity to squeeze in a general theory-oh lesson so that the non-Saber enthusiasts can still extract benefit from my writing, however small. Tragoedia has a built-in permanent brain control and can refine itself to Synchro and XYZ for your situation’s needs. While these effects are nice, they are not easily at one’s disposal. You have to take battle damage and you have to have a spare monster to capitalize on either of these ignition effects. Thus, you historically see Trag in decks where its battle damage trigger effect is the most needed of the three, as the other two cannot consistently be depended upon to swing the game in your favor. The decks that need this effect the most are the ones who run little to no protection in the way of purple cards. Since a Saber deck ought always to run traps for the purpose of the slowrolling phase I discussed in the introduction, the protection that Trag offers is needed that much less. In addition, running more traps in general leads to smaller hands, so Trag’s protection is that much more diminished when dropped. Tragoedia offers amazing protection through blowouts created by Heavy Storm, but it is simply far too situational in decks that are not about conserving big hands of boss monsters (think Agent and Chaos Dragon) to run in a deck like this.
As for Gorz, it is going to sit dead in hand more often than not, given the heavy backrow lineup in addition to the overall style of slowrolling with monsters on the field until the big pushes (I keep returning to this theme in this article because it’s critical to piloting the deck correctly). You will maintain steady field presence, thus Gorz is not as strong here as it is in other decks. With that said, I would definitely include it in the side to combat OTK strategies such as Hieratics, as well as to bait early game resources in the Water matchup, which is an altogether different matchup that deserves its own article, or at least its own section.
Edits:
-2 Tragoedia
-1 Gorz (move it to the side)
+3 XX-Saber Boggart Knight
Spells
Spells: 11
2 Forbidden Lance
2 Enemy Controller
1 Scapegoat
1 Mind Control
1 Book of Moon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole
1 Pot of Avarice
Let’s start with the powerful one-ofs. Trinity does what Trinity does well here, so we won’t touch the Big 3. However, Pot of Avarice is a card that does not belong when your intent is to load up your grave in preparation for any of 3 copies of Gottoms’ Emergency Call. Pot of Avarice fares brilliantly in decks such as Water or Dino Rabbit, which limit you to those few shots - and then you’re out of bullets. In the case of Sabers, you will not be creating the same lock twice in the same game, so you will unlikely need that recycled Naturia Synchro. You will certainly not need more than the 15 copies of monsters you run full playsets of, either. Even in the rare instance where monsters are running scarce, Faultroll has an innate Reborn effect and Gottoms has an innate DOUBLE Reborn effect, both of which are hindered by the inclusion of Avarice. For the sake of the Avarice argument, Sabers is more analogous to Inzektor, where you would not want to shuffle everything back with three maindecked Calls, rather than Water or Rabbit, where you would want to shuffle everything back since your plays require your monsters to be in the deck or in the hand.
Scapegoat also needs to be dropped, as having a tuner plus four free spaces (or even five free spaces) in the monster zone is far too situational. Faultroll drops hinge on you controlling 2 names at least on board, and Gottoms cannot even activate with Goat tokens clogging your field. The last time Scapegoat could really do something crazy was in Plants 2011, and that’s because Formula Synchron, Bulb, and Spore were easily utilized. Not so in this deck.
The Book of Moon, I do agree with, as Sabers is one of the few remaining decks that effectively utilizes it for both defense and offense. I think its potential when paired with Fulhelmknight may have inspired Alex to include the two copies of Enemy Controller, but this is where things get excessive. Enemy Controller isn’t removal, and it doesn’t flip your own monsters the way Book does, so in the end it’s a bit of the worst of both worlds in both power and versatility. It turns the focus of the deck too much on Saber beat, when the goal we outlined earlier was to slowroll into a push with Extra Deck soft locks or hand bombing. While Controller does have that one additional effect to take control of an opposing monster, its cost does not make it more appealing than Mind Control, which is a versatile card we DO want to keep in this deck for removal and Synchro/XYZ fodder.
Two Forbidden Lance is a neat idea. These were likely chosen for their primary advantage over MST: they protect your summon with certainty as opposed to blindly. In addition, chaining Lance on your Hyunlei should they chain Starlight to Hyunlei’s effect can protect both her as well as her effect, ensuring you go off. While these advantages are undeniable, we need to take the current state of the game into consideration, with its Wind-Up Factories, its Macro Cosmos (and in the Main Deck, no less!), its Madolche Tickets, its Skill Drains, and its many field spells. MST is going to put in a lot of work against maindecked continuous backrow. I especially have Macro Rabbit in mind here. Let us also consider that Lance works best in decks that hinge upon both its effects. Again, we are not interested in playing Saber beat, so Lance’s attack-altering effect is going to be minimal for the same reason that Enemy Controller will not be huge in this deck. Thus, Lance is not worth running just for summon protection alone, especially when we can protect our plays with a safer card such as Trap Stun. Let’s stick to the more versatile MST.
This has given us a little more mobility room, so I will dedicate two slots to Pot of Duality. A player once complained to my friend David, “You always draw broken. X-Sabers aren’t supposed to be this good.” David and I had a laugh over this afterward because the player didn’t realize that the opening hands were not the cornerstone of success. Rather than open broken, you’re doing something more reliable: you’re searching broken. You let Emmersblade and Darksoul dig into the combo pieces you need while making Gottoms E-Call live, you Duality for whatever piece is missing from the puzzle, and you let the purple cards protect you while you snowball into your broken play. Duality in a Saber deck is like the free space on a Bingo card – it puts you that much closer to your winning combination.
Edits:
-2 Forbidden Lance
-2 Enemy Controller
-1 Scapegoat
-1 Pot of Avarice
+2 Mystical Space Typhoon
+2 Pot of Duality
Traps
Traps: 12
3 Gottoms’ Emergency Call
2 Solemn Warning
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Torrential Tribute
1 Reinforce Truth
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Starlight Road
The 3x Solemn Brigade and 2x Bottomless are choices I agree with, as they facilitate the stage 1 draw-pass business you want to force your opponent into (I’m sorry for belaboring this point so much, hopefully you’ve integrated it into your philosophy by now). Starlight Road is a toss-up. You are going to run Stardust Dragon either way, so Starlight is less of a burden as it can be in other decks. Starlight also serves to mitigate your need for Gorz in the main. On the other hand, Starlight can often reward bad play in scenarios where you could otherwise win if they didn’t have the Warning. Not to mention, your monsters float enough to make playing around Torrential easier. Since I am going to include a copy of Trap Stun, I will drop Starlight.
As for Torrential, Billy ran 0 at one point to make his opponents always guess when it would show itself and constantly have to play around it. I really liked the fear you could instill with such a strategy, so I’m actually going to cut Torry to one copy so that the opponent will be drawn to cautiously play around the invisible second copy. Also, I just don’t like drawing two of this card, especially when you’re already running 2 Bottomless and 2 Warning, 4 cards which suffer from “turn too late syndrome” (I think Sam P. coined this phrase, and if so, credits to Sam).
The 3 Emergency Call are, of course, standard. You max out on them in the same way you max out on the other integral puzzle pieces, so that you can go off sooner and also cause your opponent to sweat more over deciding what to Warning, Typhoon, or spend hand traps on. Reinforce Truth is a great end phase play, as well as bait for Typhoon, and also a quick setup for Synchro summoning the following turn.
Trap Stun comes in at one copy because of the blanket coverage it will offer in the form of one card. It will do what the Road and Lances I cut did, except more consistently, and won’t require you to play incorrectly the way Road would. Two Trap Stun can prove very detrimental should you face a deck that does not set backrow, so side the second copy – do not main it.
The net cards at this point are 3 cards removed from the deck. I’ll add just two more to keep the deck at 40 cards, not because 40 is significantly different from 41 cards, but more because there just isn’t a 41st card I think is needed in this deck. The last two cards I will add are two copies of Dimensional Prison. I initially opted for Mirror Force, and would certain run it in just about every deck that runs traps this format. However, this deck has particular difficulty with Zenmaines and Maestroke (especially since I am not going to include Temtempo in the final build), and in other situations where you would otherwise want Force, you want your Darksoul/Emmersblade to get attacked anyway. Prison also dodges destruction negation, which is something I largely advocated for last article when I tuned up Billy’s Rock Stun deck.
Edits:
-1 Torrential Tribute
-1 Starlight Road
+1 Trap Stun
+2 Dimensional Prison
Extra Deck
Extra Deck: 15
1 XX-Saber Gottoms
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 XX-Saber Souza
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Naturia Barkion
2 XX-Saber Hyunlei
1 Naturia Beast
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Armory Arm
1 Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
1 Photon Strike Bounzer
1 Inzektor Exa-Beetle
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
Thunderpants was likely kidding with the Armory Arm as there is no way to make it (unless he really had Scapegoat in mind). We’ll drop that in favor of M-X-Saber Invoker, which makes hands live that used to be dead openings before XYZs existed. Exa-Beetle is my favorite XYZ monster in Chaos Dragons, but since you run so much removal in the main and space is tight, it’s going to have to go for Number 17, the all-around rank 3. Boggart Knight’s restrictive effect means Black Rose pretty much will never get made in this deck (and Hyunlei offers much better plays anyway), so it gets dropped for the much more commonly summoned Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth. While Gaia has no effect, it is very easy to summon, and synergizes excellently with the many level 6 monsters you run to make rank 6 monsters. The attack advantage over Hyunlei is why you will make it quite a bit. I really like Gaia Dragon’s synergy with Mind Control, and in a local setting where I know what everyone plays, I would run it if there were lots of high rank summoning decks around. However, Acid Golem is a more common summon, and it clears the 2900 attack hurdle, which is rather key. On a side note, those who are new to the deck will find Gottoms’ 3100 attack barrier game-determining in some instances. The reason I have dropped a couple of higher ranks for rank 3s is the ease of summoning them via E-Call. While Thunder Charger is certainly a blowout, you are more commonly going to need those rank 3s to perform OTKs. Boggart+Fulhelm+Faultroll+Faultroll is a classic example of game exactly even pre-XYZ age, but more obscure situations such as Emmers on field, summon Boggart to summon Darksoul then drop Faultroll won’t be game unless you run the standard rank 3s (assuming no targets for Faultroll in both of the above scenarios). While I do wish to include Temtempo and Sword Breaker, I cannot find room for them at this time, as I feel the other monsters are less narrow in the needs they address. The need to OTK is greater than the narrow needs these cards serve.
Edits:
-1 Armory Arm
-1 Black Rose Dragon
-1 Inzektor Exa-Beetle
-1 Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
+1 Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth
+1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
+1 Number 30: Acid Golem
+1 M-X-Saber Invoker
The Finished Product
This is our 40-card main and 15 card side deck.
Main Deck: 40
Monsters: 18
3 XX-Saber Boggart Knight
3 XX-Saber Darksoul
3 XX-Saber Emmersblade
3 XX-Saber Faultroll
3 XX-Saber Fulhelmknight
2 X-Saber Pashuul
1 X-Saber Airbellum
Spells: 9
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Pot of Duality
1 Mind Control
1 Book of Moon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole
Traps: 13
3 Gottoms’ Emergency Call
2 Dimensional Prison
2 Solemn Warning
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Reinforce Truth
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Trap Stun
Extra Deck: 15
1 XX-Saber Gottoms
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 XX-Saber Souza
1 Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth
1 Naturia Barkion
2 XX-Saber Hyunlei
1 Naturia Beast
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Photon Strike Bounzer
1 Number 30: Acid Golem
1 Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
1 M-X-Saber Invoker
1 Wind-Up Zenmaines
Final Thoughts
Thank you for going on this journey with me. I hope that in my theorizing and exploring, you have gained insight into where cards like Mirror Force, Tragoedia, and Gorz belong, and where they are less effective. While there is so much more to be said about what to do with the opening hand you’re dealt, how to dictate pace with battle recruiting and Darksoul floating while searching into your optimal hand, and the fields to end with based on your opponent’s setup, there is not enough time or space to cover everything that ought to be covered about this deck. I hope that the brief glimpse I’ve offered you at least opens your mind to the possibility that this deck, while rogue, is still rather effective. For the side deck, Maxx “C” (the fullplayset), Gorz, and the third Typhoon are a must for the Water matchup. Double Gozen Match for Wind-Up and other multicolored decks is standard as well, and the 2nd Trap Stun will definitely come in handy. I’ll leave the rest up to you. It’s best to judge according to the meta of the environment you will be piloting this deck in. Until next time!
Play Hard or Go Home.
Sincerely,
Johnny
Johnny Li
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