Card Focus: "Future Fusion"

Card Focus: Future Fusion



Just a few thoughts I had about Future Fusion. While playing at the last tournament I attended I noticed how little my SOL Dragon deck seemed to rely on Future Fusion. This stood out to me as its pretty common to hear the phrase "if you don't get Future Fusion you pretty much lose" thrown around when addressing Hopeless variants. Take a look at the top dragon decks being run right now; Disaster Dragon, SOL Dragon, Dark Hopeless and Dragon Nohr.

Imagine if Future Fusion were banned tomorrow. Dark Hopeless and Dragon Nohr would cease to exist as viable deck-types, SOL Dragon would take a hit but with some card changes and focusing the deck further into control away from OTK it would continue to exist as a decktype and Disaster Dragon would likely shrug it off and keep on charging.

This is because for decks such as Disaster Dragon and SOL Dragon the card "Future Fusion" is not integral to the decks strategy. The deck does not revolve around a single limited entity. This is not to suggest that they do not benefit dramatically from it, or that they should not run it, however, neither deck requires Future Fusion in order to play. Now, obviously I'm speaking in very generalized terms. We all know that Dark Hopeless and Dragon Nohr can win without Future Fusion, however, if you were to remove the card from the deck completely would you want to continue running the deck?

When Richard Clarke engineered the Disaster Dragon engine he sought to create a consistent, powerful deck that didn't depend on specific combos or singular cards to run. In doing so he removed the necessity of Future Fusion from his decks skeleton and while the card obviously helps; throwing 5 of your dragons into the Graveyard right where you want them and giving you access to reverse toolbox features, it isn't necissary.

Take a look at Dark Hopeless.

Main Deck: 40

Monsters: 20
3 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
3 Dark Horus
2 The Dark Creator
1 Dark Armed Dragon
1 Prime Material Dragon
3 Axe Dragonute
2 Red-Eyes Wyvern
3 Dark Grepher
2 Phantom of Chaos

Spells: 15
1 Future Fusion
1 Heavy Storm
1 Giant Trunade
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Monster Reborn
1 Card Destruction
2 Allure of Darkness
2 Lightning Vortex
2 Hidden Armoury
2 D.D.R. - Different Dimension Revival
1 Burial from a Different Dimension

Traps: 5
1 Mirror Force
2 Eradicator Epidemic Virus
2 Deck Devastation Virus

This is a Dark Hopeless deck that topped the 3rd Dark Dragon Cup in Japan back in May of 2009. Its a fairly standard Dark Hopeless build and aside from the missing Norleras and its mained copies of the Viruses and Axe Dragonutes it looks like a deck you'd see at your local. Take a look at the engine powering it; without Future Fusion this deck loses its ability to dump Dark Horus, Darkness Metal and Red-Eyes Wyvern. It then loses its ability to summon The Dark Creator efficiently, which then in turn kills D.D.R. and Hidden Armoury. Without those options you are left with Dark Grepher, Allure and Trade-In as your discard outlets. The inclusion of Lightning Vortex certainly also helps and this deck is running 2 copies. Now translate that over to our format where people are running another level 8 in Norleras and where we don't have Axe Dragonute to feed DDV or play easy fodder for Allure and Darkness Metal.

If a Dark Hopeless variant from the TCG found itself stripped of Future Fusion it would receive the full brunt of all the blows I just noted this deck would receive and it would lack the redeeming 4-Star Dark Dragon that this has. Before I go on I want to point out that by "redeeming" I mean to say that Axe Dragonute is the one step of consistency that our western variants lack. Infernal Dragon has already proven an inferior replacement to Axe Dragonute, thus it is safe to assume that if a TCG variant were to lose Future Fusion they would be even worse off than this deck.

A TCG variant would be left with 3 Trade-In and 2 Allure to feed their monsters into the grave and RFG zone. Most TCG decks run minimal Grephers, if any, in favour of cards such as Hand Destruction and Armageddon Knight. Without a Future Fusion to dig through the deck for the -1 that is Hand Destruction stands out even more glaringly than before and Armageddon Knight would prove too slow and unable to deal with the high level monsters in your hand, forcing players to run Grepher which then forces them into overextending to get their dragons into the grave. Notice Future Fusion does it only via a temporary -1 and dumps 5. Grepher is a -2 (Grepher and the discard) and dumps 2. 3 Trade-In with 6 targets in the form of 3 Dark Horus, 2 Dark Creator and 1 Norleras may seem like a good idea at first but in lacking Future Fusion you could no longer simply toss aside level 8s as draw bait - Trade-In suddenly becomes the most reliable discard outlet the deck has for dumping Dark Horus, this means that because Darkness Metal is not a target for Trade-In that Armageddon/Grepher almost assuredly becomes Norleras and Darkness Metal specific. With this singular limitation of roles in the deck I'd like to take this moment to point out the deck would lack any method of discarding Red-Eyes Wyvern consistently as it is a Wind monster. In the face of such inconsistency and the ridiculous measure the deck would be required to go to in order to cope Dark Hopeless would likely collapse. It could not compete on a tournament level without Future Fusion.

Now we take a look at the ever popular Dragon Nohr.

Main Deck: 40

Monsters: 23
1 Dark Armed Dragon
2 Red-Eyes Wyvern
3 Sky Scourge Norleras
3 The Dark Creator
3 Dark Grepher
3 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
3 Dark Horus
1 Summoner Monk
3 Phantom of Chaos
1 Plaguespreader Zombie

Spells: 17
3 Trade-In
3 Hand Destruction
1 Burial from a Different Dimension
2 Upstart Goblin
1 Future Fusion
2 Allure of Darkness
2 Foolish Burial
1 Card Destruction
1 Gold Sarcophagus
1 Reinforcement of the Army

This is a Dragon Nohr deck built in the skeleton of James Laurent's Norleras OTK deck that he piloted to a top 8 finish in Shonen Jump Orlando earlier this format. The deck is already ridiculously combo oriented and even more inconsistent than Dark Hopeless as well as being able to be foiled by a single D.D. Crow. The aim of this deck is to dump Norleras into the grave alongside 4+ Dark dragons, then to place The Dark Creator atop your deck via Plaguespreader Zombie. From there you can normal summon Phantom of Chaos and remove Norleras to copy its effect; blow up the world and draw into The Dark Creator for an OTK swarm.

I've already pointed out the damage that losing a Future Fusion would do to Dark Hopeless so I won't revise those points for this deck. This deck as you can see carries a lot of draw power to try and dig through its deck in order to get its combo. Future Fusion is not as integral to this combo as another limited card is, however, so my focus shall shift to that momentarily; Plaguespreader Zombie. If this card is gone then the entire deck fails.

The reason I am drawing the similarity between Future Fusion and Plaguespreader Zombie is that they are both limited cards that the decks revolve around. As a result the deck builds itself to be inconsistent as it revolves around a card it cannot run in multiples. Disaster Dragon relies on no one card, but those that carry the deck can be run in 3's: Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, Koa'ki Meiru Drago and Masked Dragon. SOL Dragon revolves around White Stone of Legend, Blue-Eyes and Trade-In. Like Disaster, each of these cards can be run in 3's - the difference in this case is that SOL Dragon revolves around an engine and thus the goal of the deck is flexible depending on the other cards included. The goal of Disaster to play aggressive control and disruption is carried in the 3 cards that I listed. Koa'ki Meiru and Masked Dragon give control. When paired with cards such as Creature Swap and Exploder Dragon then Masked Dragon plays to disruption, as Koa'ki does on its own. Darkness Metal fuels the deck and powers the engine. Thats without considering the synchro options the deck has or even addressing cards like Burst Breath.

Now we turn our attention back to Dragon Nohr. With no Future Fusion this decks discard methods are almost all inherent -1s. While for an OTK deck this may not seem like an issue, no other OTK deck is running 13 two-tribute monsters. This deck, without a dumping outlet like Future Fusion loses advantage really fast and draws into even cloggier hands as the dragons that would be normally dumped via Future Fusion must now be drawn and then discarded, or sent once per turn via Dark Grepher. The deck substantially slows and when you are losing a card everytime you draw through plays such as Hand Destruction, Card Destruction and Foolish Burial you soon begin to notice that your hand will diminish at an extraordinarily rapid pace. In fact the deck loses its ability to play cards beyond top-decking after the 5th turn, and thats counting your opponents turns so 3 of your own. Thats assuming you didn't have a hand full of high level monsters and had monsters you could summon on each turn - obviously playing monsters from your hand would contribute to the losing of hand advantage but Grepher only speeds the process along further. The deck, without Future Fusion loses several turns of its life expectancy as well as its huge dark dumper. This puts it in a very fragile position where it either wins in the first two turns or the player can just scoop come their 3rd turn as they aren't going to win; this is a combo deck, it can't top deck. Cards like Hand Destruction, Dark Grepher, Trade-In, Norleras and Dark Horus don't do wonders without a hand to work with. Like Dark Hopeless this deck also loses its ability to function as a tournament ready deck.

At last we come to my personal deck SOL Dragon. Now, no doubt because I run the deck I have some bias towards it that may affect my outlook on how consistently it runs without Future Fusion. I'm sure no one will dispute that Disaster Dragon can run perfectly without Future Fusion but in order to establish the consistency of SOL Dragon I took my deck and tested it; without Future Fusion.

IF you've been following my blog you know that I recently (yesterday) took my SOL Dragon deck to a 7-0 finish at a tournament I found while on vacation. The tournament only spanned 7 rounds so I won the tournament. There is a summary here for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

If you look back at the tournament summary you can see that I consistently was able to play and win without the use of Future Fusion; as with Disaster Dragon I feel that SOL Dragon can play without it and that it merely kicks the deck into high gear. Unlike Disaster, however, I do think that SOL Dragon does rely on Future Fusion in part as it is a draw engine based deck that likes its Blue-Eyes in hand to get the deck going. I'll point out that thanks to 3 copies of Destiny Draw, 2 Allures and 1 Reasoning it does not need its Trade-In targets as much as say Dark Hopeless or Dragon Nohr, but it does run the engine and that is what the deck plays around thus obviously getting White Stones into the grave asap is a priority. Future Fusion lets you do this. The advantage of White Stone is that it can often be played much like Sangan in order to gain the Blue-Eyes you want and it is for that reason that I don't think Future Fusions loss shall hinder the deck heavily, but nonetheless I decided to test it anyway.

Now, if Future Fusion were indeed banned I would alter my deck to suit as my deck is designed to include Future Fusion, but being on vacation and lacking the cards I have at home I simply dropped Future Fusion and threw in a Foolish Burial as a replacement. A single Foolish Burial. This gives me 1 method of discarding any monster in my deck to the grave at the cost of a -1, unless its a White Stone in which case it thins my deck by 2 cards and is a 1 for 1. Here is the deck:

Main Deck: 40

Extra Deck: 15
1 Five-Headed Dragon
1 Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon
1 Red Dragon Archfiend
2 Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
2 Arcanite Magician
1 Magical Android
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Goyo Guardian
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Dark End Dragon
2 Stardust Dragon
1 Colossal Fighter

Monsters: 22
3 Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
3 Blue-Eyes White Dragon
1 Elemental Hero - Stratos
2 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Prime Material Dragon
3 White Stone of Legend
2 Red Eyes Wyvern
1 Destiny Hero - Plasma
2 Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude
2 Destiny Hero - Malicious
1 Plaguespreader Zombie
1 Dark Armed Dragon

Spells: 15
1 Foolish Burial
1 Reasoning
2 Allure of Darkness
3 Destiny Draw
1 Reinforcement of the Army
1 Burial from a Different Dimension
1 Scapegoat
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Brain Control
2 Trade-In

Traps: 3
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Call of the Haunted

I took science. I know about experiments and testing theories. I know about controls and Dependant and Independent Variables and I will admit this would not stand as away of proving a scientific theory; however, it will serve to prove my point; which is that SOL Dragon can function without Future Fusion. I wanted to keep it as controlled as possible though so I took it back to the hobby shop where I attended the tournament yesterday and found some of the people I dueled the day before. I asked them if they would let me test my deck against the exact deck they ran the day before. Obviously now they have knowledge of my deck and understand how it plays so it wasn't entirely controlled but they didn't know I wasn't running Future Fusion so I figured it balanced out enough for my intentions. :P

Only 3 guys were there. Which is probably a good thing, cuz I didn't want to play another tournament, just test out if my deck could run without Future Fusion. The guys who were there ran Lightsworn, DHZ and Dark Hopeless. Now the only one I lost a duel to yesterday was the guy with Dark Hopeless and in this match he was running Future Fusion, while I was not. We played 3 games each match regardless of who won and it was a best out of 3 result to win the match. That was because I wanted to guarantee 3 duels each match to test the consistency of my deck without Future Fusion. For those of you who care here are the duels:

SOL Dragon vs Dark Hopeless
Game 1
8000~8000
I won the roll and opened with Allure, Plague, Blue-Eyes, White Stone, Diamond Due and Scapegoat.
I played Allure and drew into Torrential and Mirror Force, removing Diamond Dude
I set White Stone of Legend, set Torrential and ended
~
He summoned Red-Eyes Wyvern and I chained Torrential, adding Blue-Eyes to my hand
He then played Card Destruction, discarding Giant Trunade, Brain Control, Dark Horus and Prime Material Dragon. I lost 2 Blue-Eyes – 2 Trade-In targets.
I drew into Wyvern, 2 D-Draw, White Stone and Call
He set a S/T and ended.
~
I drew Trade-In
I set Call and summoned Wyvern.
I placed a D-Draw on top of my deck for Plaguespreader and tuned it to Wyvern for Brionac
Brionac discarded White Stone of Legend on priority to bounce his set card
White Stone added a Blue-Eyes
I Traded-In Blue-Eyes for Foolish Burial and Plasma
I D-Drew Plasma for Allure and MST
I Foolished a Darkness Metal into the grave and Brionac hit directly
~
He summoned Phantom of Chaos and removed Dark Horus for its effect
He then Traded-In a Dark Creator – he couldn’t remove Dark Creator for PoC because the only other dark was Dark Horus thus if he wanted to get rid of Brionac this was actually his best move from the cards I could see.
Phantom of Chaos proceeded to run over my Brionac
He set a card to end
~
I drew Dark Armed Dragon and dropped MST in the draw phase to kill his set, which unfortunately turned out to be his MST which he chained on my Call.
I played Allure and drew Wyvern and D-Draw. I removed DAD
I summoned Wyvern and ran over Phantom of Chaos with it
~
I plays Allure and removes Grepher
He D.D.R’s Dark Horus and attacks over my Wyvern
~
I draw Malicious and D-Draw it for Darkness Metal and a White Stone.
His Dark Horus revives a Phantom of Chaos
I summon White Stone and remove it for Darkness Metal
Darkness Metal revives a Blue-Eyes
Blue-Eyes clashes with Dark Horus and Darkness runs over Phantom
I’m now leading 6800-1100
~
He foolishes a Darkness Metal and revives it in the endphase
~
I draw Chaos Sorcerer
Darkness Metal revives Blue-Eyes
I remove a White Stone and a Plasma for Chaos Sorcerer
Chaos Sorcerer removes his Darkness Metal and Blue-Eyes hits for game
Game 1 6800-0
~~~
Notes: That Card Destruction screwed me over. Neither of us saw Future Fusion (I didn’t even have it in my deck) and I came out waaay on top.
~~~
Game 2
8000~8000
He opens with Allure and removes Dark Horus. He then D.D.Rs it back in and plays Future Fusion – dumping 2 Wyverns, 2 Horus and a Darkness Metal
In the end phase he revives his Darkness Metal. This duel was going to be interesting
~
I draw Burial, Wyvern, Trade-In, Blue-Eyes, D-Draw and Prime Material
I Trade-In Blue-Eyes for Reasoning and MST
I play Reasoning and he calls level 8. I get a Darkness Metal Dragon off the top of my deck.
Darkness Metal revives Blue-Eyes and I MST his DDR so his Dark Horus dies
I summon Wyvern
Blue-Eyes runs over his Darkness and my Darkness and Wyvern hit direct
Its 8000 to 3200
~
He scoops.
Game 2 8000-0
~~~
Notes: He got a first turn Future Fusion and I still won. SOL Dragon seems to be proving itself highly viable without Future Fusion.
~~~
Game 3
8000~8000
We re-rolled for this duel since it wasn’t actually supposed to happen. Its just another test for my deck, these guys still don’t know what is different about my deck from yesterday.
I won the roll and drew Burial, Sorcerer, Darkness Metal, MST, D-Draw and Stratos
I summon Stratos and grab a Mali
Pitch Mali for D-Draw and draw D-Draw and Plasma
Pitch Plasma for D-Draw and draw Trade-In and Malicious (damn)
I set MST
~
He Sarcos out Future Fusion, sets 1 card and ends. Notice; he has a bad hand – he is going straight for Future Fusion to make it live.
In the End Phase I MST his Torrential
~
I draw Heavy Storm
Tragically my in hand Mali has left me with few plays.
I attack with Stratos and end
~
He sets another card and passes again
~
I draw Call
I set Call and send Stratos to attack again
~
He plays Future Fusion and dumps 2 Wyvern, 2 Horus and 1 Darkness Metal
He endphases a Darkness Metal
~
I flip call and grab Mali
I tribute Mali and Stratos for my own Darkness Metal
I play Heavy taking out Future Fusion and his set Allure
I clash our Darkness Metal’s
~
He DDR’s a Wyvern and tributes it for Prime
I take a direct attack from Prime
~
I draw Allure
I play Allure and get Trade-In and DAD, I remove Malicious
I special summon DAD and am forced to attack his lame Prime Material because he has a hand
I set Burial
~
He passes and revives Darkness in the Endphase
~
I draw Brain Control
I Brain Control his Darkness Metal and remove it for my own Darkness Metal
Dark Armed Dragon and Darkness Metal attack for game
Game 3 4800-0
~~~
Notes: I drew horribly that duel, obviously without drawing any of my White Stones or Blue-Eyes I lack the Lights or Dragons for my Chaos Sorcerer or Darkness Metal. However, even with him getting Future Fusion my bad hand was still better than his.
~~~
SOL Dragon vs DHZ
Game 1
8000~8000
He won the roll and opened with Rota into Stratos
He summoned Stratos for Malicious but apparently lacked a D-Draw
He set 2 cards and ended
~
I opened with Malicious, Chaos Sorcerer, Wyvern, Heavy Storm, D-Draw and MST
I play Heavy and kill Skill Drain and Burial
I D-Draw Mali for Blue-Eyes and Rota
He D.D. Crow’s my Mali
I Rota my own Stratos
I summon Stratos and grab Diamond Dude
I set MST and clash Heroes
~
He summons Tomato and attacks
He sets 2 cards
In the end phase my MST hits another Skill Drain
~
I draw Mirror Force
I summon Diamond Dude and flip over a Plague
I set Mirror Force and end
~
He sarcos a DAD and attempts to clash Tomato with Diamond Dude but Mirror Force stops him
~
I draw Allure and play it to draw Brain Control and Trade-In
I remove Chaos Sorcerer for Allures cost
I Trade-In Blue-Eyes for White Stone and another Wyvern
Diamond Dude flips over an Allure
I summon a White Stone but he flips Torrential
I add Blue-Eyes to my hand
~
Hes topdecking now, he sets a card and ends
~
I draw another White Stone.
I’m tempted to use the Allure but I don’t have any Darks
I summon Wyvern and attack
I set Brain Control and go for the Allure
I draw into DAD and Darkness Metal – I remove DAD
~
He gets DAD from Sarco
He plays Allure and removes a Malicious
He sets another S/T
~
I draw torrential and he flips PWWB in my standby phase discarding an Allure to put Wyvern on top of my deck.
I summon another Wyvern
I remove that Wyvern for a Darkness Metal
Darkness Metal revives Blue-Eyes
Darkness Metal and Blue-Eyes attack
He has 400 LP
~
I plays Foolish and dumps a Dark, I don’t have time to see it cuz he drops DAD and clears my field
DAD hits me direct
~
I draw Wyvern
I set White Stone alongside a Torrential and end
~
DAD attacks my White Stone
I get a Blue-Eyes
~
I draw a Darkness Metal
I summon a Wyvern and remove it for Darkness Metal
Darkness Metal revives a Blue-Eyes and that's game
Game 1 3800-0
~~~
Notes: The deck obviously fared worse against DHZ without Future Fusion. I want to say that I didn’t draw into Foolish which was in Future’s slot but I know that I played differently knowing I didn’t have a Future Fusion to draw into. It's a lot harder getting White Stones into play without it. If we were to lose Future Fusion I’d probably double up on Foolish Burial and I’d consider maining a Masked Dragon engine or a Sangan to recruit them. I need those White Stones. Still won though, and still got a DHZ deck top decking by my 3rd turn so I’m content with that for a Future Fusion-less deck. There is a reason why SOL Dragon is named after the egg. If you don’t get it, you need to claw your way to victory.
~~~
Game 2
8000~8000
He opens with 2 set S/Ts and a face down monster
~
I open with Plasma, Heavy Storm, Rota, Wyvern, Blue-Eyes and Brain Control
I Rota a Stratos
I summon Stratos and elect to search, he chains PWWB and discards D.D. Crow to bounce Stratos
I choose to grab Stratos with its own effect and take the free shuffle
~
He summons Breaker and attacks me directly
He sets 2 more S/T and ends
~
I draw Prime
His whole hand is on the board so I drop Heavy
He chains E-Tele and gets a Krebons but Heavy takes out Bottomless and Skill Drain
I summon Stratos who searches Diamond Dude
Stratos attacks his Krebons and he negates it
I end and Krebons gets removed
~
Breaker, still holding its counter, runs over Stratos
He sets a S/T and ends
~
I draw Allure
I Brain Control Breaker
I remove its counter and force his Burial. He shuffles Krebons back.
I play Allure and draw Mirror Force and Blue-Eyes, I remove Plasma
I tribute Breaker for Prime and attack his last card – D-Hero Defender
I set Mirror Force and end, I’m ready to draw :D
~
He passes
~
I draw Destiny Draw with my draw phase and Foolish with Defender’s effect
I D-Draw Diamond Dude for Trade-In and White Stone
I Trade-In Blue-Eyes for Mali and Torrential
I foolish a Darkness Metal
I summon Wyvern and end
~
He drops DAD Q_Q
He nukes Mirror Force with its effect and then attack Prime
~
I draw Allure with my draw phase and Egg with Defender’s effect
I play Allure getting DAD and Reasoning, I remove Mali
I play Reasoning and he calls level 10, after passing over a Sorcerer it lands on Diamond Dude
I drop my DAD and remove Sorcerer and Diamond Dude to clear his field
Diamond Dude flips over Scapegoat, but it's a Quickplay so we don’t get it
Diamond Dude, DAD and Wyvern all hit direct.
I set a Stone and Torrential
~
He Rotas a Stratos
Stratos is summoned for Malicious
He ditches Malicious for D-Draw but scoops when he sees his cards.
Game 2 4500~0
~~~
Notes: This is DHZ, where are his Zombies?
~~~
Game 3
8000~8000
I win the Roll.
I open with D-Draw, Darkness Metal, Mali, Mirror Force, Plague and Prime Material
I D-Draw the Mali for Torrential and D-Draw
I remove Mali for Mali and summon Plague
Synchro summon Stardust Dragon, set Mirror Force and end
He D.D. Crows my Plague in the end phase
~
He opens with Rota for Stratos
Summons Stratos to search for Defender
He E-Teles a Krebons and suddenly I’m wishing I had Torrential set
He Synchros a Brionac and discards Solemn and PWWB to bounce my field
Brionac attacks
~
I draw a White Stone
I summon the Stone and remove it for Darkness Metal
Darkness Metal brings down Prime alongside it
Darkness kills Brionac and Prime hits directly
He has 2 cards in hand, I set Mirror Force and end
~
He D-Draws Defender
He Sarcos a DAD
He sets 1 card
~
I draw Foolish and he flips Skill Drain
I Foolish a White Stone and get a Blue-Eyes to my hand
Tragically in paying 1000 lifepoints to activate Skill Drain in an attempt to prevent me swarming to be able to kill him he lowered himself within the range where Prime and Darkness Metal could kill him alone.
Game 3 5700~0
~~~
Notes: Where are his Zombies?
~~~
SOL Dragon vs Lightsworn
Game 1
8000~8000
I got first. I open with 2 Chaos Sorcerer, 1 Darkness Metal, 1 Foolish, 1 Trade-In and 1 MST.
I Foolish a Stone and grab a Blue-Eyes
I Trade-In Blue-Eyes for Mali and Torrential
I set Torrential and end
~
He charges a Garoth and mills crap. He summons Garoth but loses it to Torrential
He sets 2 – WTF?
~
I draw Diamond Dude
I summon Diamond Dude and flip over a Plague
Diamond Dude hits direct
I set MST and end
~
He sets a monster and ends
~
I draw Heavy
Diamond Dude flips over something useless
Diamond Dude kills hits Plaguespreader
~
He sets a card ontop of his deck for Plague
He summons Honest and tunes Plague to it for Brionac
He pitches a Heavy to try and spin MST but I chain it on his Bottomless
Brionac kills Diamond Dude – Thank you! My Chaos Sorcerer is live!
He sets his last card in hand – pity I drew that heavy last turn
~
I draw D-Draw, my whole hand is now live
I heavy his Beckoning and Mirror Force
I remove Blue-Eyes and Diamond Dude for Chaos who removes Brionac
I D-Draw Mali for Rota and Red-Eyes
I Rota me a Stratos
I summon Stratos and grab Plasma
Stratos hits for 1800
~
He topdecks a monster and sets it
~
I draw Destiny Draw
I remove Mali for Mali
I D-Draw Plasma for Blue-Eyes and Wyvern
I summon Wyvern and remove it for Darkness Metal
Darkness Metal revives White Stone
I tune Stone to Chaos Sorcerer for Arcanite
I add a Blue-Eyes
Arcanite removes its counter to pop Ryko
My field swings for game
Game 1 7100~0
~~~
Notes: Man, this guy, is the weirdest Lightsworn player EVER. I don’t think he is very good. These duels are lacking the explosiveness Future Fusion plays provide but SOL Dragon is still playing very consistently. I attribute this towards the spin I put on it to gear it away from a traditional Hopeless OTK and towards it being more of a control based deck. It’s still very slow, too slow for my tastes without Future Fusion but as I’ve said before, if we lost Future Fusion I’d change the line up to accommodate it.
~~~
Game 2
8000~8000
He begins. He opens by Solar Recharging a Lumina and mills a Lyla and Gorz
He Sarcos JD and Charges for Garoth, milling a Wulf and 2 Beckoning in the process
In the stupidest play I’ve ever seen he tributes that Wulf for Celestia and now I don’t think that this guy is a good person to test with.
He sets a card and ends.
~
I open with Darkness, D-Draw, Stratos, Diamond Dude, Torrential and Trade-In
I summon Stratos and grab Plasma
I Trade-In Plasma for Allure and Rota
I Rota a Diamond Dude
I D-Draw a Diamond Dude for MST and D-Draw
I MST his Beckoning
I D-Draw Diamond Dude for DAD and Foolish
I Foolish White Stone and add Blue-Eyes to my hand
I Allure into Burial and Mali, I remove Mali
I drop DAD
DAD removes Diamond Dude to pop Celestia
I remove DAD for Darkness Metal who summons Blue-Eyes
I Burial DAD and Mali back in, I also toss his JD into his grave since I just nuked his Beckoning and he has already milled 2
I remove Mali for Mali
I swing with my field for game
Game 2
8000~0
~~~
Notes: Bleh, I don’t want to play this guy anymore. He is obviously inexperienced at playing Lightsworn but at least last duel showed that my deck can still explode into a first turn kill without Future Fusion.
~~~
Game 3
8000~8000
I opened with Diamond Dude, Foolish, Chaos, White Stone, Plasma and Wyvern
I summoned Diamond Dude and flipped over a Darkness Metal
~
He made his typical opening play of Charging for Garoth and attacking over my monster. I don’t think this guy realizes the play is supposed to include a Lumina so you can + off your mills
~
I draw Brain Control
I Foolish a White Stone and add a Blue-Eyes to my hand
I remove Stone and Diamond Dude for Chaos Sorcerer
I summon a Wyvern
Sorcerer Removes Garoth and Wyvern swings directly
Gorz hits the field. Yay.
I Brain Control his token and tribute my field for Plasma who absorbs Gorz
~
He Recharges a Lyla and mills a Necro and Bottomless
He sets a monster and an S/T
~
I draw Diamond Dude
I summon Diamond Dude
Diamond Dude flips over MST
Diamond Dude and Plasma trigger Mirror Force
~
He passes
~
I draw Torrential
I set torrential and White Stone
~
He flip summons Ryko and kills White Stone with its effect milling Honest, Lyla and Judgement Dragon
He summons Lumina and discards Wulf to summon it
Wulf triggers my Torrential
He now has enough Lightsworn for Judgement Dragon
~
I draw Trade-In
I Trade-In Blue-Eyes for Allure and DAD
DAD hits and I play Allure for Mali and Trade-In, I remove Mali
I Trade-In Blue-Eyes for Darkness Metal and a White Stone
I summon White Stone and remove it for Darkness
Darkness revives Blue-Eyes and my field swings for game
Game 3 6750~0
~~~
Notes: Bleh.

Summary: 3 Matches, 9 duels, 0 losses, no Future Fusion.

Now all of that was to prove a point. The most successful dragon decks are undeniably SOL Dragon and Disaster Dragon. Notice that neither of these decks is reliant upon Future Fusion to run? In committing your entire deck to revolving around 1 limited card you are committing yourself to inconsistency. Give or take freak god hands what it comes down to often is: if you draw it; you win, if you don't; you lose.

When I took the Toronto decklist and tweaked it to make it more consistent; with less OTK, more control and "innovated" SOL Dragon my main focus was to ensure that it could win without Future Fusion. It didn't ever stick out to me to test my theory but it had seemed that my deck was able to do so fairly consistently. Think about how Future Fusion affects our deck building and playstyles and look over the Dark Variants, Dragon Nohr and the Toronto deck; there are a lot of choices that are extremely subpar choices were the deck not to include Future Fusion. Now the reason why that stands out is because these decks are so reliant on Future Fusion - they gear themselves towards getting it as fast as possible but in doing so often short change themselves - if they don't get it then they're often ruined. Obviously they can win without Future Fusion but the point is that many cards included in the deck would be removed if Future Fusion wasn't in existence, thus people are building their decks around Future Fusion. The flaw in this lies in the fact that Future Fusion is a limited card you can have a maximum of 1 copy of and thus in committing your deck around it you are committing your deck to inconsistency.

While I understand that this might sound like I'm plugging myself, and I don't mean to, when I revised the Toronto deck from OTK into SOL I took out the poor choices that had no real place in the deck such as the random Dark Grepher and included other cards like Red-Eyes Wyvern and extra copies of Chaos Sorcerer and Prime Material Dragon to give it more control and help it to last longer into duels. This detracted from the decks overall reliance on getting Future Fusion and thus made it more stable and consistent. I think that if we are to take Dragon Nohr and the Dark Variant to the same level that SOL Dragon and Disaster Dragon are at then we need to revise common card choices in such decks. The point in this ridiculously long article on Future Fusion is to point out that Future Fusion is warping the mind of Dragon users. Instead of building decks to revolve around a single limited card we need to create consistent decks that can utilize multiple tricks in addition to Future Fusion and in doing so we will improve our decks, our standard of play and our tournament standings.