23/09/2013

Fiddling Around with: Chaos-End Master


I was playing around with the new Dododos, thinking of how nice they were, and I was brainstorming for more options on how to search Gasser to the hand and summon Witch to get him face-down, instead of relying on a searcher+Tsukuyomi (which was, for those who want to try it, probably the most efficient way to play it). One of those searchers was Chaos-End Master (CEM for short). CEM special summons a LV5+ monster with 1600- ATK when he destroys a monster by battle.You may think that this card is a +1 (assuming you used a card to boost his 1500 ATK) but pretty hard to pull off and without any real result, but that's not it. Start by considering that it is a LV3 LIGHT Warrior Tuner, pretty nice set. Let's first see a couple of possible synchros to go into:

09/09/2013

Ipocrisia: Traptrix Antimeta


Monsters: [14]
2 Maxx "C"
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole
2 Summoner Monk
3 Traptrix Atrax
3 Traptrix Myrmeleo
3 Traptrix Nepenthes

Spells: [11]
2 Forbidden Dress
3 Forbidden Lance
3 Pot of Duality
2 Terraforming
1 Seal of Orichalcos

Traps: [15]
1 Bottomless Trap HOLE
1 Compulsory Escape Device
2 Dimensional Prison
1 Macro Cosmos
2 Mirror Force
1 Solemn Warning
2 Trap HOLE
2 Traptrix Trap HOLE Nightmare
3 Void Trap HOLE

I promised, didn't I? That I would post this after the meta defined down a bit. Well, this is it, full of meta calls.
First of all, let's start saying that the Extra matters little to nothing, but on a second though, I'd add 1 catastor in place, maybe, of Utopia Ray or something else. The side is there, not really studied and tested, but that's the concept and should, approximatively, work.
As of the main, if I weren't to play that kind of side, I would have rather played 1 Terraforming and 2 Orichalcos, but I'd have to side two terras each game in which I used those fields.

Well, let's start:
As I already said in the previous post, the Sisters' strenght relies on +1s whenever you use a card, mainly because when you use that card, your opponent already wasted a couple of resources in order to summon the monster you've destroyed. To this, you can add Nepenthes' and Myrmeleo's searches, resulting in some effective +1.
It has some great control, that's for sure, and the monsters are relatively big under Orichalcos. Sure, they don't compete with >2300 ATK monsters, but still, Dress and Lance help there respectively against 2900 or less and 3100 or less, when paired with orichalcos and Atrax.
The deck can effectively main Macro Cosmos, and, if willing, even Dimensional Fissure (probably in place of a Void Trap Hole).

Maxx "C" is there for EDs (predominant deck, most likely, of the format) and as draw power. They're, indeed, substituting CCDs. If you don't like it, you can freely go back to Cardcar D.
Grand Mole here tries to solve one of the two main problems this deck has: big monsters. If the opponent manages to summon a big monster like Maestroke (which isn't hard at all to summon and we have pretty much no way to counter with our traps) or Gachi (which is slightly easier because of Atrax+Orichalcos) or other stuff like that and they keep it in defense, we have no way to kill them and, thus, killing the opponent. Grand Mole bounces the monster and, if they attempt to summon it again (assuming it is one of those we can counter) even though they went through our traps the first time, they won't be able to do so a second time. If they succeed to, oh well, we can just bounce it again, hopefully.
Summoner Monk brings more Sisters for some more consistence. Summoning Nepenthes this way is even more awesome than drawing into it, too.
Atrax, Myrm and Nep deserve no explanation, aside from Nep being in three copies. I didn't really like it that way, but it happens often to draw into no monsters (Yeah, DN hates us, I know) and this tries to extablish a better field alongside Monk. Keep in mind that Nep+Trap Hole is generally a good or decent start. Even BTH is okay, but someone may dodge it. You never know. After Nep activates her effect once, she's gone for good most of the times. When she survives, though, she will give you many pluses. However, by no mean protect her unless you need to kill the opponent's monster or you didn't manage to use her effect yet and have no other monsters.

As for the spells, you may see alot of them, compared to how many you'd expect, but that's because most of them act as traps but are, at the same time, monk fodder.
Dress+Lance acts as main protection, alongside Mirror, Prison and so on for our Atrax. I managed to kill a couple of comboes, too, hitting a monster with Lance so that nothing could be equipped to it. I even saw one of the biggest suicides ever of a monster that had 5000 ATK and dropped to 1700, crushing against my 2300 Atrax. Dress is mainly protection against BRD, whom may be lots of troubles if you don't manage to have a void or a nightmare.
3 Dualities are for consistency, and most of the times I wished I could play more.
2 Terra and 1 Orichalcos. I would have liked the opposite, so that the Terra was pretty much always live, and to reduce the DDs. What's more, if you extremely needed to XYZ, you could set one orichalcos over the other, even though you couldn't use it. With my side, though, it's needed to main 2 Terras. If you won't play that kind of side, I'd say 2 Orichalcos and 1 Terra.

The Traps are quite a lot, uh? Still, sometimes you may lack them if you don't play accordingly to your hand. The deck isn't that skilled, but still, it isn't totally skilless. Just think before activating something and it's all good.
CED, Prison and Mirror act as main counter to monsters once they are on the field. If they maanged to summon something big before you could set your traps, without those and mole, you'd have lost. This way, instead, you have some kind of counter.
Warning is the only trap that activates on the summon that isn't a hole trap, and thus not searchable. Though, it is too awesome to not be played.
As for the Holes, I chose this exact set after a little meta breakdown. I think this is one of the best combinations. BTH is must at 1. Void Trap Hole should be the one with more copies of itself and Trap Hole and Nightmare are to be played accordingly to the player in a total of 3/4 copies.


Let's see the PROs and the CONs of the deck, instead:
PRO: has counters that vary from nice to awesome for pretty much every deck;
CON: there are a couple of DDs, expecially some Holes against some decks;
PRO: can summon some nice beater with ease;
CON: being nice beater doesn't mean good/awesome beater, and we can't drop stronger than 2300, usually:
PRO: has lots of monster removal;
CON: not always it is effective and sometimes the opponent may just summon the boss before we can drop our traps on them;
PRO: the monsters are usually well protected;
CON: when they aren't, them being killed is most of the times a great loss because of the lack of recycling and reviving power;
PRO: when you manage to effectively control the opponent, most of the times it results in a lock;
CON: when you don't, you are probably going to have your ass kicked;
PRO: it manages to destroy pretty much everything if you play it right;
CON: control cards from the opponent are game-killer for you.

Resuming the advantages and disadvantages of the deck, it has some great control over the opponent with crazily good match-ups against other decks, but it basically loses to traps and big undestroyable monsters.

I've had some nice results with it, against most meta decks. I won to some Antimeta, but surely I lost more than won against them. Being able to side Decree is awesome (Atrax lets your traps activate even if decree is on the field). The rest of the side is awesome when it comes to certain decks, but it may be totally useless against others. I already said, that's mostly the concept of the side, not the real side itself.

Try it, you won't be disappointed.

See Ya.

P.s. Usual Lore, "Ipocrisia" means "Hypocrisy". That's to point out how traptrix work with their traps, they say they're able to dodge them (they all dodge Hole trap cards) but in the end, they suffer from them, not being able to practice what they preach.