In the past it has been a goal of many a dragon-user to try and mix Hopeless Dragon and Disaster Dragon. Such attempts have proved rather futile as the decks don't mix in goals. I attempted last format to mix SOL with Disaster as well to no avail.
When Cards of Consonance was first released many people suggested adding it to SOL. Lacking any targets beyond White Stone of Legend it was brushed off as being inconsistent. During attempts to make a viable draw engine to combine it with Trade-In the D.E.T. Exodia deck was born, which utilized both Trade-In and Cards of Consonance with Super Rejuvination, Card Destruction, Reckless Greed and other draw cards to attempt to draw Exodia. The deck was fast, however, despite the strength of the draw power its speed wasn't enough to fuel a deck built purely around drawing.
Such draw power would be best geared in the direction of fueling a turbo deck. D.E.T. paired White Stone of Legend with Flamvell Guard to take advantage of Cards of Consonance, the deck then expanded further into the realms of Normal monsters to further abuse Flamvell Guards status as a normal monster, however, for a control or turbo oriented deck Normal monsters wouldn't do. Many Normal Hopeless decks featuring Tri-Horned Dragon worked to great success but a deck that could utilize the engine when coupled with effect monsters lacked a good effect monster target for both Cards of Consonance and Trade-In.
At least, that was what I thought. A few weeks ago I stumbled across Jason Grabher-Meyer's article on "Deep Draw Dragons". It utilized the D.E.T. engine in a turbo-esque fashion, however, geared it towards effect monsters by using Debris Dragon and Light and Darkness Dragon to fill in the gaps. The obvious next step in its construction was the inclusion of Totem Dragon which added synergy between Debris and Light and Darkness Dragon as both profited from its inclusion. The deck is very fast and very fun, however, it lacked the advantage oriented 1 for 1 simplification game that I have grown to love so much.
Growing disgruntled by the fact that dragons lacked any monster akin to Chaos Sorcerer or Enishi, Shien's Chancellor I was chatting to some friends of mine online; Dragonic Horizons and ShadowNeji115217 from the Pojo.com forums who suggested Maximus might serve the purpose. At first Maximus failed the test, it unlike Chaos Sorcerer could not easily gain advantage off of its summon due to its reliance on an in hand spell card, however, on closer inspection Koa'ki Meiru Maximus, like Light and Darkness Dragon was a powerful level-8 monster that could cover the Trade-In aspect of the draw engine with Blue-Eyes White Dragon. As in Deep Draw 2 copies of Debris Dragon could also serve as Consonance fodder while still acting as useful tuners. In order for the deck to carry 3 Maximus it also needed to hold 3 Iron Core of Koa'ki Meiru, and with the places already filled for it 3 Koa'ki Meiru Drago soon followed as well. So, without further ado I give you the child of Disaster Dragon - Maximium Sniper and SOL Dragon; SOL Sniper!
SOL Dragon + Disaster Dragon + D.E.T.
Main Deck: 40
Monsters: 21
3 Blue-Eyes White Dragon
3 The White Stone of Legend
3 Koa’ki Meiru Maximus
3 Koa’ki Meiru Drago
3 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
2 Red-Eyes Wyvern
2 Masked Dragon
2 Debris Dragon
Spells: 17
3 Trade-In
2 Book of Moon
2 Super Rejuvenation
3 Iron Core of Koa’ki Meiru
1 Card Destruction
3 Cards of Consonance
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Brain Control
1 Future Fusion
Traps: 2
2 Dust Tornado
The deck is pretty self explanatory. The draw engines power the deck as they did in D.E.T. while the dragons swarm the field and destroy all life; as they were meant to. The deck lacks any cards that can trigger Starlight Road; Heavy Storm, Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute are all side decked due to the hype surrounding the illustrious trap card. While I believe that Starlight Road itself is not good enough to merit siding out such cards almost every deck in my locals is maining 2 at the moment. As a result I find it beneficial to go into game 1 with nothing to trigger them, that way any Starlight Roads they draw are dead cards.
In place of Heavy I elected to run 2 Dust Tornado. Dust Tornado is a versatile trap card that can take care of problematic Royal Oppressions and the like while also handling cards such as Black Whirlwind and the soon to be released Infernity Gun. While the power of Royal Oppression against this deck may intimidate some into maining Heavy or at least attempting to run Giant Trunade I found that of the commonly played decks only Blackwings are consistently running Royal Oppression at the moment, against which I can side Heavy Storm back in against them on game 2. Gladiator Beasts, however are running at least 2 Starlight Road with no Oppression while Flame-Cat also runs 1-2 Starlight Road without Oppression either. Given those numbers and the fact that Machina and Lightsworn still exist; Lightsworn has little to no backrow and Machina in my area have been maining Roads as well I find that Heavy in the side is actually best for now. This decision will obviously change as the format and hype around Road settle.
The deck plays like Maximum Sniper but with a more SOL approach to advantage. It plays through aggressive disruption plays and locking the field down with Koa'ki Meiru Drago. However, I felt that the original Maximum Sniper was too slow to support such frequent dead draws and didn't draw into its combo pieces fast enough thus I incorporated a draw engine into the deck borrowing from D.E.T. and Deep Draw Dragons, that helps me see cards faster and get Maximus and Iron Core into play easier. It also opens up a lot of OTK options.
The deck is obviously very fast. It draws through itself in speeds comparable to D.E.T., however, unlike the Exodia deck it also has the ability to turn those draw cards into use. Maximus drops are powerful and carry heavy swings in momentum, because Maximus is a Semi-Nomi it can also be revived by Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon provided it has been summoned successfully. Once Maximus is on the field it can create huge swings in field control, easily followed up by a Red-Eyes Darkness Metal/Blue-Eyes swarm. Maximus is also Wind which means it can get in around Koa'ki Meiru Drago when its locking down the field. In addition to that both Drago and Maximus can supplement eachothers end phase costs, with Iron Core working for both of them and other Maximus' also serving to save the life of an inplay copy. Alternatively Maximus can simply be allowed to die after popping a card and attacking and be revived later, or even be removed for a Darkness Metal. The deck is as always very versatile.
Synchro plays are also capable in this deck; courtesy of it carrying 5 tuner monsters. While not as common as synchro plays in most other SOL decks they still act as a another facet of the deck which can catch most opponents off guard.
Yeah, so this is my latest deck. Its also going to be my primary deck this format since Starlight Roads release rather killed my SOL Demise deck. :P
Enjoy.
Fucken Pro.
ReplyDeleteThis is my sort of deck.
Love you.
Have you tested it ? Does it work against BW or GB ?
ReplyDeleteIt's meh.
ReplyDeleteDisaster is not the same thing as Koa'ki Meiru. Your objective is to dig through your deck and swarm the field with REDMD, not minus yourself with the otherwise-terrible Maximus. Maximus is a "win more" card, like Dragon's Mirror; if you've got the resources to put him on the field, you're likely already winning regardless.
Card Destruction and your lack of a Trap lineup are awful, especially because you think Dust Tornado is somehow a more effective way of dealing with their backfields than Royal Decree or even Trap Stun. You are running two traps and they both are geared towards backfield hate; why are they not Decree?
I never said Disaster and Koa'ki Meiru were the same. Ever. I said this deck was a combination of SOL and Maximum Sniper. Sniper is a Disaster Variant that was created to incorporate Koa'ki Meiru Maximus.
ReplyDeleteDisasters goal is far from to simply dig through your deck and swarm. Thats more akin to Hopeless Dragon. Disaster Dragon is a control deck that utilizes the lockdown abilitys of Koa'ki Meiru Drago when paired with the toolbox of Masked Dragon to play an aggressive control game and overwhelm the opponent while limiting their options. Red-Eyes Darkness merely fuels the engine.
Maximus is the goal of this deck; I never once said it was the goal of Disaster, nor did I say this was a Disaster deck. Maximus is not a "win more" card. It is the win condition. Maximus is primarily held until the OTK can be established and then dropped to clear the way, alternatively it can be dropped as a simply momentum changer to throw the game into your favour. I pays for itself upon summon and you only lose advantage if it dies in the endphase. If it lives until the endphase it'll either have killed something else, won you the game, or dealt 3000 damage. Any of those options nullifies the advantage loss.
Maximus + Red-Eyes + Blue-Eyes is game. Since Maximus drops itself and both Red-Eyes and Blue-Eyes are special summons I wouldn't need to be already winning to drop Maximus at all. I can explode out of nowhere and drop an OTK at the tip of a hat.
Card Destruction when paired with Super Rejuvenation is broken, you need to learn to look up basic card combos, especially ones such as that which set the pace of the deck.
Apparently you didn't play during the DDT era. The lack of traps is because this deck is more of a turbo deck. Traps slow it down, get in the way and are dead draws. Dust Tornadoes are greater than Decree because they can deal with Black Whirlwind and the like, which Decree cannot. However, in my latest version I've swapped them out for Raigeki Breaks to add versatility to their target range; that is their purpose.
Can you name another card that isn't Black Whirlwind that Dust deals with and Decree doesn't? Does it outweigh taking care of a single card that absolutely shuts down your deck (Oppression)?
ReplyDeleteYou have so much in terms of card advantage going for you that you really shouldn't be worrying about Black Whirlwind. If you deal with Oppression and Icarus against a Blackwing deck, the Kaluts and Gales they search out with their Whirlwinds won't be relevant (Maximus is nuking the monster that they'd be dropping the Kalut on, etc).
You shouldn't build your deck around combos; that leads to dead draws. If you don't have a Super Rejuvenation, or you just discarded your Dragons for Trade-Ins and the like (a far superior card), Card Destruction is just a crappy -1. I don't know about you, but I like my decks to be consistent, not combo-reliant.
So you run the horribly inconsistent Maximus because it gives you some sort of two to three card OTK? What is it, Masked Dragon into Red-Eyes with a Blue-Eyes and Maximus and Iron Core in hand? Lol. Might as well run Exodia or Destiny Board. And please don't say you can get the Iron Core back from the grave to put it down to three required cards in hand for your OTK, the only card you're running outside of Raigeki Break that puts it there is Card Destruction.
Dropping Maximus alone is terrible, that's what I'm trying to tell you. If you're not exploding for game, you're losing an Iron Core and Maximus to destroy one of their cards and maybe deal some battle damage before Maximus dies at the endphase (if he's not dying, you probably have enough dragons to explode anyways). That's assuming he doesn't get hit by Bottomless or another protective trap. And even if you reveal for him at the endphase, you're in a format where Machina Gadget is tier 1. You do know your opponents can run three Smashing and three Fissure now, right?
Disaster's goal is not to dig through the deck, I never said that. I determined from your decklist that you wanted to dig through your deck for OTK pieces and explode in your opponent's face, which you confirmed in your own post.
How the hell do you drop a four to five card OTK at the "tip of a hat" or "out of nowhere?" How many extra cards do you have to draw while your opponent isn't watching to do that?
Raigeki Break is a nice choice, but it's still a minus. I like how you think this is comparable to DDT when you aren't running Diamond Dude nor any other card that compares to its effect; that is, a card that requires you "draw" into spells. Actually, scratch that -- that dead Maximus in hand is going to be making you get the otherwise-dead Iron Core.
This might be successful in the horribly uncompetitive meta you play in (that you introduced us to in your past tournament reports and the like), but those of us that want to do important things and win bigger tournaments will see this deck for what it is: inconsistent crap.
I can name a few for you, but the reason I traded them out for Raigeki Breaks was because the difference was only a few. Since you asked though; Machina Frontline, Infernity Gun. The Dusts were chosen over Trap Stuns because I prefer to remove the threat to simply delaying it. Royal Decree's are in the side, I'm not a fan of maining those in any deck regardless of the lack of traps. That may change eventually.
ReplyDeleteSuper Rejuvenation determines the pace of how and when you play your draw cards, using it effectively can lead to massive pluses. Super Rejuvenation is hardly inconsistent in this deck, its packing 7 discarding cards that draw more from the deck, in its present state its also using Enemy Controllers over Books and Raigeki Breaks over Dust Tornadoes. Given the number of targets that can trigger its drawing effects without taking into account potential tribute summons (which are so rare I'm not actually counting them) the Super Rejuvenations are consistently triggered, it may be a combo but it draws from what the deck is already doing so its not disadvantageous or inconsistent.
I'm running Maximus because its a powerful level 8 dragon that works with Trade-In and supplements Blue-Eyes in making 3 Trade-In viable. I also quite like Maximus, if you've played Maximum Sniper you'll know the deck is too slow to get Maximus into play consistently and without draw power the copies of Maximus and Iron Core are often dead draws - in this deck thats not the case. The deck card draw through massive amounts of itself in a single turn and in your starting hand you have a 14% chance of opening with Maximus and Iron Core, thats hardly impressive I admit but it increases by 5% each draw, when playing as many 2-draw cards as this deck is thats 10% for each draw card. I'm not sure what problem you have with a 3 card OTK, especially one that isn't the focus of the deck. Cyber-Stein ran a 3-card OTK and determined that any combo of 3 cards had better win the game or its useless. This one does, and its not even the aim of the deck, its just a possibility, I don't see how you think thats bad.
Machina Gadgets are hardly tier 1. As of this present moment they have 8% regional tops compared to Flamecats 21%, GBs 13%, Lightsworns 14% and Blackwings 18%. Their tier 2 at best, although I don't deny they are heavily prevalent and their status as non-tier 1 doesn't prevent them from dropping Smashing Ground on my Maximus any. However, triple Smashing is something that should be taken into account when playing the Machina matchup, you seem to be assuming I'm playing the same way for every game, which is rather insulting. You won't drop Maximus at a suboptimal time, you drop it when it will swing the game in your favour or win it outright, given that you need to take into account your opponents deck and their potential comebacks. I've already addressed the trade-offs Maximus can make, you seem to have ignored them.
I misinterpreted your post given the opening sentence and the one that followed it on your opinion of Disaster, I apologize. The deck digs through itself and plays the game out given what it has, if it doesn't OTK then it can still play as a traditional dragon deck, you seem to be over looking that.
ReplyDeleteIts not so much a 4-5 card combo that can be dropped at the tip of the hat as it is an OTK that can. The deck has multiple manners in which it can OTK and with all the drawing it goes through it can open up a lot of outlets for ending the game, I'm not sure what you mean by my opponent watching me draw because unless they have more counter traps set than I have draw cards thats really all they can do on my turn.
I compare it to DDT because the decks pacing is incredibly similar. I do not liken them as the same deck or even that their goals are the same, however, the decks play very similarly in pace and style; that should be rather obvious, they are both turbo decks.
Here you make an assumption. While your previous remarks I appreciate because they are legitimate and present a form of feedback I don't get on pojo this one is incredibly faulty. You claim to have read my previous posts, yet, you address the meta I played in as my meta. I'm afraid if you actually read those posts you'll see I was visiting the Philippines during that single tournament report.
While you may continue with your dreams of grandeur the fact of the matter is that no dragon deck at the moment can win a large tournament but at least I'm making decks to try instead of running under the assumption Disaster, Hopeless or the like will be able to hold up against a forming metagame which is resilient to beatdown OTKs and trendingly unreliant upon Dark and Light special summons. Adaptability is what will make dragons top and while you can write this off as inconsistent crap without testing it and assume my metagame is uncompetitive and inferior to yours it really means nothing; its an assumption you have made without any basis. If you haven't tested the deck then your assumptions won't do you any good, you have dropped your rational theorem and are simply throwing some form of hiss fit at me for making decks. Its rather odd to be honest, although I do appreciate the feedback on what you think of my decks perhaps if you would drop the illogical assumptions it would be easier to see what your intention is. Right now your posts start off as if you intend to help via critique yet by the end you reach a sort of "quit naow" attitude that is really beneath you.
(I have ADD, so I'm only going to respond to the more major paragraphs of your massive response, the ones I feel refute my more pivotal points.)
ReplyDeletePerhaps I misspoke. Your deck has a lot of OTKs, but none of them are below 3 cards at the very least, and most of them are four to five (since you seem to think Maximus is central to them, or at least important enough to run in it).
Again, if you're saying you won't drop Maximus when it's at risk of being Smashed or Fissured, you're just reinforcing the notion that it's a "Win More" card. How do you determine what is an optimal moment? When you already have a hefty set-up of beefy Dragons? Why not run Dragon's Mirror instead, then? That's only one card and you at least get a bigger beater, and as for Maximus destroying a card with its effect, you could run like Smashings in place of the Cores. There you go, now you have good standalone cards in place of crappy combo-reliant inconsistent ones that do the exact same thing.
If the deck isn't OTKing it sure isn't going to be doing anything too terribly useful. Exodia isn't anywhere in this deck so +ing yourself ad infinitum is either going to contribute to your three to five card OTK or load your hand and get your opponent to yell at you to discard at the end of your turn until you have 6 in hand.
Who said I never tested this? I wouldn't bash a deck as being inconsistent without testing it myself.
Let's see a couple of test hands with it:
Cards of Consonance
Blue-Eyes
Koa'ki Meiru Drago
Blue-Eyes
MST
Cards of Consonance
You're drawing into Wyvern, then Masked Dragon. Good luck piecing together any sort of play beyond "summon Drago and set MST" or something similar.
Trade-In
REDMD
White Stone of Legend
Trade-In
Dust Tornado
REDMD
So here you can set White Stone and search Blue-Eyes when they attack into it. Off of the inevitabel Trade-In after that you draw Wyvern and Drago, opening the door to the Clarke signature "go aggro with REDMD and Drago," but with only a wimpy Dust Tornado to back up that push (your next draws are Debris and another Dust), you're still not left with much after that early "explosion."
Trade-In
Blue-Eyes White Dragon
Blue-Eyes White Dragon
Masked Dragon
Dust Tornado
White Stone of Legend
Off of the first Trade-In you draw two Maximus. You're going to open T-set with Masked and MST, draw a Book of Moon after that, and again have nowhere to start any sort of push for momentum from.
I have a few more written down if you're going to try to say that these are only isolated examples. These are some of the better ones -- other test hands I omitted because they just didn't seem fair to you, such as dub WSOL, dub Blue-Eyes, Dust Tornado, and Iron Core.
I posted a response, I can only hope Blogger will let it show up.
ReplyDeleteYeeesh, those hands are bad but they are also rather mathematically inexplicable as most of them have duplicates of the same card, which even when run in 3s only has a 5.4% chance in your opening hand. Let alone the hands where you have doubles of 2 cards. I can see why you say the deck is inconsistent if you've been getting draws like that, however, I can honestly say in real life I've had very few hands that I couldn't play out of. Obviously they happen as this deck isn't the most consistent piece of work yet, but I've not drawn such bad hands with the same consistency you are saying you've had.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say to that is if you are play testing IRL you should pile shuffle and if you're testing online then find a new game with a more random RNG.
If you still don't like the deck then I can only hope I can come up with a more consistent future version through testing that you might be more satisfied with. I'm still running the deck through tests on what I should be running in it.
I'm afraid dropping Maximus would require its replacement with another Level-8 monster to fuel Trade-Ins, given Maximuses inherent ability to destroy anything trading it out for something as limited as a Smashing Ground is also rather unappealing to me. As you obviously know, while Smashing is only 1 card, Smashing can't hit f/ds or s/ts and it doesn't hit the field with 3000ATK to follow it up so I'm really leaning towards Maximus quite strongly. Did you follow the article on Deep Draw? What did you think of that deck?
And yea, Blogger has been stopping me from posting replies of late as well.
Even taking into account that the test hands have duplicate cards, I can't imagine any card in the deck that could fit the slot of the duplicate that would make the hand spectacularly better to the point of playability.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why you think that's mathematically inexplicable, though; I would frequently open up with doubles of Blue-Eyes, Consonance, White Stone, Trade-In, or REDMD when I ran my Blue-Eyes deck.
I used Deep Draw as the basis for the Blue-Eyes deck I successfully piloted at an extremely competitive local level. Out of all of the ideas in JGM's deck, the best are Super Rejuve and Debris Dragon -- the former giving you absolutely obscene drawing power and the latter giving you a secondary target for Consonance. As great as it was, I ultimately scrapped the deck due to lack of consistency -- it's too hard to play out of bad hands; I couldn't take a deck like that to a nine-round shonen.
ReplyDelete