The Element of Surprise
The meta is the meta for a reason. The top decks are the best because they swarm well, search well, draw well, disrupt well, have broken cards that haven't been hit by the banlist yet, or some combination of those things. But after a while, the meta gets replaced by something else. Why? Partially, it's because banlists change and sometimes decks just can't recover, or new cards come out that counter them perfectly, or sometimes the meta changes generically and certain decks just don't have as much advantage anymore. But I think the main factor, above them all even, is the element of surprise.
Take YCS Atlanta. How many dozens of X-saber decks were ran there? A lot... And many topped, just like they always have done this format and the format before. But what won? The top three slots went to Gravekeepers, an old and seemingly forgotten archtype. Are Gravekeepers generally a better archtype than X-Sabers? Royal Tribute is a bit broken and crazy annoying, and Necrovalley disrupts a lot of strategies, but my answer would be no, in general X-Sabers are the better archtype. The reason Gravekeepers won is: EVERYONE plays X-Sabers, so everyone expects them to be played, everyone knows how to play them and how they run, and everyone knows how to counter them, so they side against them. Gravekeepers are an old archtype to be sure, but the way people play them has changed drastically over the years, and no one has attempted to play them seriously in quite some time, so it was almost completely unexpected. Gravekeeper's Recruiter gave it even more consistancy and search power as well. And even the way Frazier Smith (and Sean Mcabe, they made the deck together) made the deck was a little unique. They mained 2 Starlight Roads, while most people don't even side 1, much less main any. But why not? Heavy Storm's out, but Dark Hole and 2 more Black Rose Dragon are in. Personally i would have run something else, but it served it's purpose: screwing with the opponent's head by being unique. The side deck was pretty genius as well. They could side out certain spells for Cyber Dragons and/or Malefic Stardust Dragons if they need bigger monsters and to REALLY screw with your opponent. I can guarantee you NOBODY will expect you to actually use Malefic Stardust Dragon, a card most people see as being as useless as Earthbound Immortals. In actuality, it's a free 2500 ATK beatstick that protects Necrovalley, a key card in Gravekeepers.
The idea of the element of surprise is to make your opponent pull a Tristain Taylor and say "Holy *bleep* on a *bleep* sandwich!!!!! What did you just do?!?!?!" There's nothing quite so sarisfying as beating someone with a card no one really cares about except for you. It may sound corny, but Yusei Fudo was right: "No card is truly useless, you just have to find a use for it"... Okay, I lied, some cards ARE useless, but many have a use or may have a use later down the road when new cards come out (example: Rescue Cat and Mokey Mokey).
Today we'll make a deck around 2 different and seemingly random commons that no one cares about. But man do they work together amazingly! For our build, we will follow Smith and Mccabe's lead and take an old, well-supported archtype that not a lot of people use (at least not in the way we will) for the main frame of our deck, and utilize a different and somewhat forgotten art of fighting: fusion summoning. I hope I haven't lost you yet, bear with me :P. First up for our random commons, let's rewind back to the set Phantom Darkness. With all the flashy and expensive support that came out in that pack, this card was sadly overlooked:
Chain Material
- Spoiler:
"Any time you fusion summon a monster(s) this turn, you can remove from play, from your side of the field, hand, deck, or graveyard, fusion material monsters that are listed on the fusion monster card, and use them as fusion material monsters. You cannot attack the turn this card is activated. If you used this effect for a fusion summon, the summoned fusion monster(s) is destroyed during the end phase."
Pretty useless right? Well no, and I will show you why not with the next random common:
- Spoiler:
Fusion Gate
"As long as this card remains face-up on the field, a fusion monster can be fusion summoned without "Polymerization". The fusion material monsters used for the fusion summon are not sent to the graveyard but removed from play."
I know what you're saying: "Yeah yeah Harper, I get it, if you have both you can fusion summon for free without losing advantage until every monster in your deck is gone, but so what? You can't attack with them and the fusions die during the end phase. And then you have no monsters left." In this deck, that's actually good, check it out:
Elemental Hero The Shining
- Spoiler:
"1 Elemental Hero monster + 1 light monster
This card cannot be special summoned except by fusion summon. This card gains ATK equal to the number of your removed from play Elemental Hero monsters x300. When this card is sent from the field to the graveyard, you can select up to two of your removed from play Elemental Hero monsters and add them to your hand."
See the combo now? Activate Fusion Gate, activate Chain Material, fusion summon (using Elemental Heroes from your deck so you don't lose advantage) 3 Elemental Hero The Shining (and maybe Elemental Hero Absolute Zero). When they die at the end of the turn, you get 6, count 'em, 6, Elemental Heroes to your hand, making Chain Material a +5 card that sets up the grave for Miracle Fusion. And if you wisely summoned Zero too, your opponent's monsters will also be dead when it dies, which usually garners even more advantage, making Chain Material (in the best case scenario) a +10 card o_O. If you want to be nitpicky, it techinically takes Fusion Gate as well to use the combo, so depending on how you count advantage it's a +4 (at LEAST). But Fusion Gate is far from dead while it's on the field. Once it's your turn again, remember, you still have 6 Elemental Heroes in your hand just waiting to be fused into Absolute Zeroes or Elemental Hero Gaias. "But wait Harper, then you'd be giving yourself -1's each time you fuse, just to get an Absolute Zero." Well shoot, I guess Blackwings should stop using Blackwing - Sirocco The Dawn + Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind to synchro summon since it's a -1. Even without Chain Material, Fusion Gte is amazing. If you have Stratos and Fusion Gate, you can summon Stratos, add Voltic or Prisma to your hand, and fuse them into The Shining without losing advantage. When The Shining dies (provided that it doesn't get removed from play or negted by Solemn), you get back Stratos and Voltic/Prisma. Then you can summon Stratos, add another Elemental Hero to your hand, and refuse Stratos and Voltic/Prisma into another The Shining so you end up keeping advantag despite The Shining dying (that's why I wish that I could run 9 or so of The Shining). Oddly enough, even after all that it can do, your opponent won't want to "Mystical Space Typhoon" Fusion Gate even if they draw MST because, 1. They have no idea what's going on or what to kill, and 2. They have better things to MST, like Solemns (Because once you thin your deck by 8 cards by using 1 card, Solemns are a lot easier to draw into). In a weird kind of way, Absolute Zero can be more effective than Stardust. Many decks are really aggressive and otk-happy, but instead of your advantage relying on your monster being there, you rely on it NOT being there. It's more difficult to otk when all of your monsters will be destroyed. I'm not saying Absolute Zero is better than Stardust, but does have a better surprise factor certainly, since people already know how to get around Stardust.
So, time for a decklist. Let's start with my generic Spell/trap lineup
6 spells:
Monster reborn
Dark hole
Mystical space typhoon x2
Book of moon x2
8 traps:
Mirror force
Bottomless trap hole x2
Torrential tribute
Solemn judgement
Solemn warning x2
Trap stun
Having 4 or even 5 spell/trap hate cards instead of just 3 is great, but with decks like these, you're going to have space issues a lot so we'll have to cut down. Now for our tech: Fusion Gate and Chain Material. Chain Material is a deathdraw at 3, but you won't ever draw it at 1, so 2 is perfect. Fusion Gate on the other hand is essential to the engine, so we'll run 3 and even Terraforming if we find room. We'll also add 3 Miracle Fusion, because it's the best way ever to fusion summon, and it's so easy to set up the grave here, making it so Miracle Fusion is never dead.
12 spells:
Monster reborn
Dark hole
Mystical space typhoon x2
Book of moon x2
Miracle fusion x3
Fusion gate x3
10 traps:
Mirror force
Bottomless trap hole x2
Torrential tribute
Solemn judgement
Solemn warning x2
Trap stun
Chain material x2
That leaves 18 slots for monsters... More than enough. We want to run monsters which can double as the "element material" and the "hero material" since The Shining's effect only works on Elemental Heroes. So our skeleton monster lineup will look like this:
9 monsters
Elemental hero stratos
Elemental hero prisma x2
Elemental hero voltic x2
Elemental hero ocean x2
Elemental hero wildheart x2
Prisma is a hero and light, not only that but he can set up the graveyard for Miracle Fusion really well by dumping heroes. Voltic is a hero and light, and also has a nice swarming effect late game. Voltic into Voltic into another rfg-ed Elemental Hero. Yay for +1s! Usually you want to make sure you don't purposefully draw into him though, his ATK is less than impressive. Ocean is a hero and water, his effect is decent, but a bit slow and not suited much to this deck. The reverse toolboxing comes from the rfg zone, not the graveyard. Wildheart is a hero and earth, and being invulnerable to traps is nice.
9 monsters is laughably small though, so let's find some tech. Cyber Dragon is good here as an extra beatstick, as well as being light for The Shining. Also, you can use Prisma's
effect to reveal Chimeratech Fortress Dragon and send Cyber Dragon to the grave to set up for Miracle Fusion if you need to. We'll run 2. We'll also run 2 Honest because it's awesome, it's light, and we have 6 targets for it's effect (not including fusions). Also we'll add 2 Snowman Eater for generic removal and another water target for Absolute Zero. So here's our list:
15 monsters:
Elemental hero stratos
Elemental hero prisma x2
Elemental hero voltic x2
Elemental hero ocean x2
Elemental hero wildheart x2
Cyber dragon x2
Honest x2
Snowman eater x2
Now we have 3 slots left for tech spells and traps. Since we need this to be consistent and we have only 15 monsters, we'll add 2 E-Emergency Call and 2 Pot of Duality for speed, and we'll take out Torrential Tribute. So here's the finished product:
15 monsters:
Elemental hero stratos
Elemental hero prisma x2
Elemental hero voltic x2
Elemental hero ocean x2
Elemental hero wildheart x2
Cyber dragon x2
Honest x2
Snowman eater x2
16 spells:
Monster reborn
Dark hole
Mystical space typhoon x2
Book of moon x2
Miracle fusion x3
Fusion gate x3
Pot of duality x2
E-emergency call x2
9 traps:
Mirror force
Bottomless trap hole x2
Solemn judgement
Solemn warning x2
Trap stun
Chain material x2
15 extra:
Elemental hero the shining x3
Elemental hero absolute zero x3
Elemental hero Gaia x2
Elemental hero Terra firma (just so you can reveal it to dump Ocean with Prisma's effect)
Elemental hero wildedge (same as above but for Wildheart)
Chimeratech fortress dragon
+ generic synchros (in case you Monster Reborn a tuner)
Side deck is whatever you want. Interesting side deck choices would be Paradox Fusion, Super Polymerization, and Dragon knight Draco-equiste. Another thing you can do with your side deck would be to side cards to completely change the deck into a Light Hero Beat deck in game 2 to further mess with your opponent's mind and make their siding useless. You could side like this:
-2 Elemental hero prisma
-2 Elemental hero voltic
-2 Elemental hero ocean
-2 Elemental hero wildheart
-3 Fusion gate
-2 Chain material
+3 Elemental hero neos alius
+3 Thunder king rai-oh
+1 Cyber dragon
+3 Gemini spark
+1 Pot of duality
+2 Hero Blast
So is this deck capable enough to win a YCS? Not now, because Elemental Hero The Shining hasn't been released in TCG, only in OCG and KC :P. But can it when The Shining comes out? I think, with a skilled enough duelist piloting it, it's entirely possible.
by 
Subject: The Element of Surprise 
