Edison Deep Dive: Gladiator Beast

To no one's surprise, here is my build of Gladiator Beast. 

First of all: I love this deck. I almost literally dream about it, and sometimes when I'm outside doing irl stuff (most likely working) I get this strong urge to play GB. Little can I do about that, until when I get back home.

Those post-work sessions let me build a deck I'm proud of. I already talked quite extensively about some thoughts I have about GB, so this post will be mostly about this specific build.

Let's first start by addressing the elephant in the room: 3 Dark Bribe and no Starlight Road to be seen anywhere.

I already mentioned in my previous post how good Dark Bribe is. GB has no problems generating advantage states such that a comeback is unlikely, so Dark Bribe is just a strong negate to allow your plays to go through and reach that fabled board, no matter if your opponent goes +1 in the while (or not, if you are negating Icarus Attack, Gemini Spark, etc...). (On that note, that's the exact same reasoning behind Upstart. If I can deal 8000 damage, then I can also deal 11000.)

Trap Stun is the common alternative to Dark Bribe in GB, and I agree it's generally better for the purpose of making your plays go through (although it does miss Book of Moon, which is quite bad, as well as Solemn Judgment). However, Dark Bribe is also the (worse) alternative to Starlight Road to protect your traps, the alternative to Typhoon to beat continuous spells/traps, as well as additional Judgments to negate key spells.

This incredible flexibility is what drove me to play 3 Dark Bribe and entirely neglect S/T hate. It's SO BAD to draw Trap Stun and then get hit by Heavy, or draw Starlight Road and get hit by a trap. Having one card which can replace both depending on what's needed on the spot is the core of this build, allowing the rest of the deck to function overall better. To be honest, I think most lost games are just the games in which I drew no Dark Bribe, so there's that.

Moving on from Bribe, another key value of the deck is going first vs. going second. GB is, in general, really bad going second. Tempo is a big issue for GBs, and not having anything to protect your summon, or Chariot to protect against flip monsters (notably, Ryko and Snowman Eater) is super bad.

A decklist that minimizes the disadvantages of going second would max out on Book of Moon and Shrink, both acting as protection for your GBs as well as battle tricks, as both let you go around BTH, and BoM also lets you avoid tempo loss against battle traps. Another going second card is My Body as a Shield, which is the only protection against Torrential, but also works against BTH and Mirror Force. However, not being a battle trick and not being able to negate Ryko/Snowman in damage step made it side deck material for me to play when you know you are going second and you need the early tempo.

This build accepts the risk of losing tempo by not playing My Body in the main, but tries to minimize the risk of going second by playing 2 Hoplomus (and considering a third). Hoplomus is a great going second card as it is generally relatively low value (i.e., you don't mind losing it), cannot be BTH'd, and can either attack into a defense position monster or be summoned as a wall against an attack position monster. Also, it's the only GB that you don't really mind activating Book of Moon on to avoid a battle trap, since defense position is its default status.

Going first, however, is the real shit this deck is able to do. With 3 Bribe and 1 Judgment, chances you can set your whole hand without even caring about Heavy are high, and any GB set 4 is incredibly strong, because chances are you can protect it and tag it later, do some Gyza plays and whatever. Being able to be given the chance to set Chariot to use both offensively and defensively, then tag as soon as possible into Equeste to recycle it represents many of the steps on the road to winning the game.

Before moving onto the side, the next notable thing about the main deck is, IMHO, the inclusion of Icarus Attack and Call of the Haunted. I debated a lot on Icarus, before deciding I wanted to play 2. A relevant note is that I actually started out with a 3 Icarus build, wanting to do something to abuse it, and eventually went all the way to 0, just recently playing 2 again.

The idea behind Icarus is that it acts as "pseudo-protection" for Bestiari (i.e., can chain it to BTH, Prison, Caius, etc...) to safeguard it, while also popping 2 opponent's cards. I originally dropped the card because there are plenty of situations in which you don't plus off of it, or your opponent doesn't have enough cards making it awkward, but the inclusion of double Darius and Call of the Haunted allowed me to go back to 2. Call of the Haunted is great to steal some tempo, allowing for unexpected Gyza. Also, speaking about Gyzarus, you can actually summon it with Call and triger its effect, which is crazy, since it is functionally a +2 Icarus Attack (-1 for Call, +1 from Gyza summon, +2 from Gyza's effect). Darius, as well, allows you to recycle Bestiari for 1-battle Gyza plays, and summon back random Icarus targets.

In general, Icarus is one of the most shaky cards of the deck, alongside the second copy of Darius, but they tandem pretty well and allow for some great recovery plays. Icarus sadly leaves the main deck most of the times from G2 onwards because of Starlight Road against trap decks (which is where, IMHO, Icarus shines brightest), but in G1 it can be very unexpected, and plants the seed of doubt from G2 onwards whenever you raw summon an Equeste or Bestiari.

The side is the least polished part of the deck, and subject to a lot of changes. One especially notable card is Ancient Forest. It's for all intents and purposes Nobleman of Crossout, but with the added bonus of also offering some stalling. Also, it turns your Book of Moons into Sakuretsu Armor, which is fine I guess?

My general siding plan is:

• Keep Upstarts in if siding something that cripples the opponent's deck (Light-Imprisoning Mirror, Mask of Restrict, Cyber Dragon against machine decks).
• Max out S/T hate against decks that can play Oppression. This works especially well since most decks that play Oppression also play other traps, so you get to have more S/T hate even if they do not draw into Oppression.
• My Body as a Shield against almost anyone going second (maybe not Frogs?). Most destruction will target your monsters as tempo is huge for GB, so My Body can deal with almost anything.
• Morphing Jar is sided out against most trap-heavy decks.

Some other cards I was thinking about playing in the side are:

• Trap Eater: I don't really like the card, but in this deck it gets rid of floodgates and summons a body (and possibly enables synchro plays). I might consider 1 copy over 1 Dust Tornado.
• Imperial Iron Wall: I think main deck Imperial Iron Wall is actually a possibility in today's meta, as most decks are outright crippled from it, and here it also acts as protection from BTH, Prison, Caius, and so on. However, allowing for Iron Wall means shaping your traps line-up to allow for it, by at the very least removing Prisons for Sakuretsu.
• Secutor: Secutor is incredibly strong when it pops off. Most of the times, you can go Heraklinos and outright win the game. However, it does require some setup and drawing into Secutor makes it almost impossible to recycle it. I believe that bricks G2 onwards are especially bad because your opponent's deck is already routed to make you perform worse.

Conclusions

I dunno, go play the deck I guess? It's fun, I love it. You're going to get a lot of ragequits though.

Edison Blabber: my two cents on Gladiator Beast

I'm playing some GB recently, and experimenting a lot with it. I love the deck despite the stigma it has (and despite the fact that I got far far more rage quits playing GB than I did in the rest of my Edison experience), but I can't hide it has its flaws.

I'll probably do an Edison Deep Dive in the near future, but for now I just wanted to blabber about what makes GB good, what makes it bad, and what we can do to fix it.

The Gameplan

The GB archetype was conceptualized to be a toolbox archetype built around monsters which can tag into each other upon surviving battle depending on the situation supported by equip spells which can be passed from one GB to the other. Let's just say that the monster part was much better than the equip part.

As such, the way the deck shaped up to be was a control deck where each won battle netted you some sort of advantage, while keeping the opponent in check with traps and the incredibly strong Gladiator Beast War Chariot. This makes a lot of sense, and to the best of my knowledge even more combo-oriented builds (namely, Prisma builds) are still quite control by nature.

As such, the deck namely has issues getting the engine started, but once it gets started it can keep on piling up the pressure until it's too much for the opponent to handle through it's incredibly powerful boss monsters, Gyzarus and Heraklinos.

The Good

The toolbox nature of GB is a plus in my book, being able to search out whichever option you need. The effects themselves are good, namely:

• Bestiari pops an S/T, but does so mandatorily so you are forced to destroy one of yours if the opponent has none;
• Murmillo pops a face-up monster, but again mandatorily;
• Darius summons a GB from grave with its effects negated and goes back in deck if anything happens to Darius;
• Equeste adds back a GB card from grave, most importantly Chariot;
• Retiari can banish a card from the opponent's graveyard;
• Laquari becomes a 2100/400 beater;
• Hoplomus becomes a 700/2400 wall.

If everything is well, the first 4 net advantage, Retiari disrupts the opponent's plays and Laquari/Hoplomus are used to have better field presence (in Laquari's case, possibly netting a +1 in battle), since all the others are quite frail.

However, the effects aren't as good as they'd need to be to warrant a pure GB deck, but that's where the fusions come into play:

• Gyzarus can be contact summoned with Bestiari and any other GB and destroys up to 2 cards on summon, tagging into two GBs after battle;
• Heraklinos can negate any S/T by discarding one card, but can't tag.

Gyzarus is an advantage machine, popping 2 cards on summon and then tagging into potentially two other cards which can plus again (or, with a GB in grave, into Heraklinos). As such, most games are won without even summoning Heraklinos. On the other hand, you win all the games in which you summon Heraklinos (with good sense, summoning it at the cost of all your resources is a big no-no), so there's that.

When listing the good things about GB, you can't not mention War Chariot. Having a +0 monster effect negation is super strong, but recurring it even once with Equeste puts you in a great advantage position.

The Bad

The deck is very NS reliant, meaning you will only be able, at best, to commit 1 monster per turn to your field. Edison is moderately slow-paced, but if the opponent has 1 piece of removal per turn you are left with no monsters to play with. More specifically, every monster you lose puts you back one turn, while the opponent might be setting their grave or hand up in the meantime.

The deck is very battle-reliant, as well, meaning you get even more opportunities to suffer your weakness to monster removal in the form of battle traps. At the same time, you suffer 1800+ ATK monsters in the early game (when you likely don't have a 2100 Laquari), and still suffer from CyDra in the late game (since you need to sacrifice your Laquari for it).

Similarly to Monarchs, you want to have 1 monster in hand every turn to summon. Unlike Monarchs, you also want to draw into as many traps as possible, making the balance of the deck very shaky, risking to be either trap-flooded (which is the best worst-case scenario, since you can just stall a bit hoping to draw into a monster) or monster-flooded (which is the worst worst-case scenario, since you won't be able to set a field of traps any time soon). If you are familiar with Magic the Gathering, you can just think of GBs as lands.

Setting a lot of traps makes you very susceptible to BRD and Heavy Storm, so you need to either strongly underpower your field by not committing too much (in which case they can still blow your field up and set you back 1 turn and some advantage) or commit and protect it. The deck can struggle to come back from disadvantage because the engine is so slow to get started, so a successful bomb strikes twice as hard.

Finally, the deck just dies to Royal Oppression, no questions asked.

What we can do

First things first, I want to address the Prisma + Test Tiger + Rescue Cat build. I don't like it. The deck is already a mess of card balance, adding more potential bricks. It ups the ceiling, but I don't think the problem with the deck is the ceiling but rather the floor.

You want to draw Chariot. Maybe you don't know you do, but you do. I'm playing 3 Upstarts and not looking back. Heck, it's even rare that I side them out.

Samnite (if tagged in, searches a GB card when it destroys a monster by battle) and Secutor (if tagged in, doesn't tag out on battle but summons 2 additional GBs from deck) are great, but they only ever shine in Test Tiger builds, which come at the cost of worse balance. Again, we want to lower the floor, not increase the ceiling.

WIth those things out of the way, here are some considerations I keep in mind when building GBs:

• Morphing Jar is crazy. You generally benefit more from drawing 5 than the opponent, and you want to set your whole hand either way.
• Hoplomus enables a great mixup with Morphing Jar and keeps in check a lot of stray monsters you'd normally have problems with while you draw the outs.
• Since the balance of the deck is shaky, IMHO the name of the game is "flexibility". A card needs to be flexible and have multiple applications to work in the deck. Here is a subset of considerations that stem from the flexibility requirement:
• Starlight in the main is bad. You need to draw it before the opponent draws Heavy Storm, and is otherwise a dead card. It is live against Icarus Attack, BRD, and JD, but if you ask me that just means it is a good side deck card, not a good main deck card.
• You want protection from Heavy Storm and from battle traps, and Dark Bribe is my go-to card for that. Yes, it's a -1, but if your attack goes through you will reset the advantage to 0 or to +1 and advance your engine, so it's 100% worth it. Dark Bribe also negates a lot of power cards in a way that the opponent wouldn't expect, such as Miracle Fusion, Soul Exchange, etc..., so it is one of the most flexible cards in the deck, and I'm maining it at 3 with very little doubts on whether to go down to 2.
• Book of Moon and Shrink are both protection for your monsters and ways to win battles. BoM is the most generic one, allowing to dodge BTH and battle traps, as well as stopping your opponent's synchro plays (especially mind/brain control synchros) and turn off a lot of monster effects. Shrink is usually better in battle and lets you go above very strong threats such as Tytannial (forcing the negate), Kristya and others, but also gives you BTH protection. I'm on 3 for both.
• Smashing Ground is the weakest form of 1 for 1 removal because it doesn't help protecting your monsters during your opponent's turn. I'll always favor more copies of Dimensional Prison or BTH over Smashing Ground. I'd rather wait a turn or stall out until I draw the actual out than lack protection.
• Call of the Haunted helps both with comebacks and, in a sense, with monster protection (i.e., you can summon the same monster that was destroyed, but that's stretching it a bit). In general, it's a bad card when you are in an advantage position, but it's a good card when you are back, especially if you summon Gyza with it.
• Icarus Attack is a great card on paper. It avoids your Bestiari from getting banished in the case of a BTH or Prison, and offers chainable 2 for 2 removal, which is great, especially if it baited out a different trap (letting you go +1). In reality, it performs a bit worse than that because it requires your opponent committing to the field, and drawing multiples really sucks because you can't keep the tempo up. I'd think of using 2 or 1, especially with 1 Call of the Haunted.

Conclusions

GB is a super fun deck to play, perhaps a little less fun to play against, but it's something I want to make work. Expect an Edison Deep Dive in the near future ;)