Dragonstars/Cosmic Dragons

Cosmic Dragons are an archetype with, currently, 5 monsters (+a synchro) of different attribute and they all share a new type: Genryu.
They all are recruiters which work under Skill Drain and work even when destroyed by card effects (even yours), but don't if they are Swapped.

Nice cards:
Supply Unit: +1s everywhere.
Soul Charge: happy synchro.

Ideas:
Skill Drain Cosmic Dragons
Skill Drain destroys a lot of decks, gives some headache to other. The downside is not being able to use a Synchro Monster's effect, however you can play around this by (1) going into Stardust or similar monsters who work in the grave or (2) by using Bixi as a material (it makes the synchro unaffected by traps, and Skill Drain is a trap). Most likely, will be the build I'll play around with.
It may play Ice+Fire Hand.

Cosmic T.G.
Cosmic Dragons are basically faster TGs, but they really do work nicely together. Most notably, Striker+Bian=Naturia Beast which cannot be destroyed in battle. Looks nice, but I cannot say I really like it.

Cosmic *something* (Naturia Beast)
Naturia Beast with Bian is really awesome, so one may like playing it. Nice EARTH Tuners LV2 are:
-Esper Girl/Psychic Jumper: maybe a Psychic Build? (most likely only a couple of Psychics thrown in, Serene, Esper and Commander may be some nice picks.)
-Naturia Cosmobeet/Nettles: plants are a nice trend recently, expecially with Soul Charge's Hype (which this deck already uses more than decently). They may look nice, although I don't think I'll be playing this.
-Kagemusha: it's an option for a Six Sam build, but I don't think this'll be decent enough.
-Striker/Pashuul: Reinforce Truth was an awesome card some time ago, I wonder if it can be good again, dunno.

Lo Shogun non Guerriero: Wildheart Garden

Monster: [9]

3x Carcar D

3x Elemental HERO Wildheart

3x Tenkabito Shien (not a warrior!)

Spells: [17]

3x Black Garden

2x E - Emergency Call

3x Mage Power

3x Pot of Duality

1x Reinforcement of the Army

2x Terraforming

3x Upstart (Hoban) Goblin

Traps: [14]

1x Bottomless Trap Hole

3x Compulsory Escape Device

1x Compulsory Evacuation Device

2x Dimensional Prison

2x Mirror Force

2x Needle Ceiling

2x Pollinosis

1x Torrential Tribute

Yeah, Tenkabito is not a Warrior. I would really want to know WHAT made Konami think in a person being clearly a soldier (edo era, maybe?), with a katana (I guess) on an horse that it wasn't a Warrior. Oh well, I just lost the second Target for RotA.

Let's get to deck, shall we?

The deck is, let me say it, a watered-down version of Chain Beat. I don't generally like decks which do exactly the same thing another one does, but worse, so I struggled to find something which made it somewhat better at least in some field, and I managed: the deck can actually use Torrential Tribute and Needle Ceiling, alongside Compulsory Escape Device better than Chain Beat, due to being totally unaffected by traps. Also, no chain, unless it has a spell in it, can kill us, which is one of the things I feared the most with Chain Beat (Compulsory Escape Device, chain my stuff, opponent then uses troll card). Although pretty forced, the deck can manage a better use of pollinosis, too, and can afford using Mage Power for incredble ATK boosts (Field Spell+5 S/Ts=3000 ATK boost on a 1500 body).

The deck isn't hard to play, instead, it's pretty easy, but differently from PACMAN or other decks like those, it doesn't plus (aside from opponent's -1s), so management resource is actually a problem. Shouldn't be if you manage it good.

Let's get to a couple of the main rules: (this being a control deck means it won't REALLY have power plays, they're more like something you should keep in mind and cards you could activate at given points)

-Manage your cards, don't, don't, don't waste them. I did a couple of time when I was in a pinch, but I lost the game. If you're not losing, don't waste resources. While you can take a risk if you're losing and that's the only way out, try to play your cards at the best.

-Search, then Draw, then PoD. Although not always like this, generally you should first activate Emergency, RotA and/or Terraforming, then go with Upstarts, if you have them, lastly PoDs. That's to increase the probaiblity of adding what you need with PoD. Cases in which you could disregard this are when (1) you necessarily need a bluff, which is actually believable in game two or (2) when you need boosts for Mage Power, in which case you would rather not search.

-Your monsters are important! That's one of the main flaws of the deck. For this one, protecting the monsters is way harder than with Chain Beat. Although I said way harder, it's still pretty easy, and we do play a lot of them (before adding Tenkabito, I used to play only Wildheart and CCD, this meant that when the third Wildheart was killed, I could have admitted defeat at any time, I think you can manage the game if one or two of your monsters are destroyed). Try not to reduce damage by setting a monster unless you really need the reduction.

-Smokescreen. IF you're playing a match, hiding your deck is a nice option from time to time. If you see your opponent is a dead bad Match-up (you'll learn them playing), you may want to try a smokescreen, unless your hand is really good. Fake a Masked HERO deck by searching Wildheart and setting only a couple of backrow (not, not, not Needle Ceiling, Pollinosis, or Escape Device). Don't use PoD, too.

-Two Monsters and Garden are all you need for a Needle Ceiling trigger. You'll be using this a lot. Although your opponent won't summon face-up most of the times while you have Garden, if he is going for a power play he'll HAVE to do that. That's the right time. If you can use Needle Ceiling without accounting for the Token, go ahead and activate it in chain to Black Garden's effect, so that you can kill monsters and keep a Token.

-Use CCD. Late game it usually is Torrential Fodder. After the first turn you won't really use CCD (I'll talk about this later), and it'll sit in your hand most of the times. Remember that it is valid Torrential Tribute fodder (but also remember to use it on the Token's summon, we wouldn't want to give the opponent a free token, would we?). Also, early game it draws Solemn Warning way and your opponent LPs while doing so. Being a magnet for Veiler is also nice (and, you won't believe me, many players never think about veilering your wildheart and using a trap on him during my turn). Believe me or not, it is also additional damage here and now, and fuels Needle Ceiling, expecially with Garden, when your field isn't awesome.

-Sometimes you may prefer not using Mage Powers on first turn. If you have a Wildheart and some traps to protect him and you went first, no point in activating Mage Power. Dark Hole which kills Wildheart AND resourcers is no good.

Something you may want to change:
I'd recommend you to try this build first, instead of just going into some fixes for your personal one (I wouldn't count that as netdecking, it's more like play-testing), after that, go ahead and think about the following cards:
You may want to remove CCD. No point in dropping it to two or one copies. If you play it, it is in three copies. It's much more useful early game than late, this means you would want as many copies as possible to draw it sooner, but if you come not to like it (I'm pretty undecided), feel free to drop it.
You may want to add Forbidden Dress. Forbidden Dress is actually amazing, but I just personally don't like it. It's more protection against spells and monsters, a 600 ATK drop on your opponent (1200 under Garden). I'm pretty biased because I tried this in the garden-less build, most likely has way more potential in the garden build. I'll try it again.
You may want to add Fiendish Chain. Fiendish Chain was actually in the original decklist, but I dropped them for slots. Wouldn't recommend this if you choose to play Forbidden Dress.
You may want to remove Pollinosis. As good as the card can be, it has one flaw, tributing the monster, and your opponent will try to give you as few tokens as possible. I'd recommend Dark Bribe in its place but, as I said, managing resources is really important here, you wouldn't want a +1 on the opponent. You'd better run some Dresses in their place.

What's more, I don't know if I'm going to build a side deck, but if I am, I'll definitely try making it a change-deck side. I'll first have to see what kind of cards may be sided against it, and I definitely don't have enough knowing about current side decks to judge on that.

Hope you have fun with Chain B- Wildheart Garden.
See Ya


Usual Trivia: I came to be shocked that Tenkabito wasn't a warrior, that's just unbelievable. This also shows in the title which says "The Shougun is not a Warrior". Supposedly, Tenkabito Shien is young Great Shogun Shien (and, of course, the Shi En). How can a Shogun not be a warrior?

Cancello Feniceo: Gate Material HEROes

Monsters: [12]

1x Elemental HERO Avian

1x Elemental HERO Burstinatrix

1x Elemental HERO Clayman

2x Cardcar D

2x Elemental HERO Bubbleman

1x Elemental HERO Heat

1x Elemental HERO Alius

1x Elemental HERO Ocean

2x Elemental HERO Voltic

Spells: [17]

1x Dark Hole

3x E - Emergency Call

3x Fusion Gate

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

3x Pot of Duality

1x Reinforcement of the Army

2x Super Polymerization

2x Terraforming

Traps: [11]

1x Bottomless Trap Hole

3x Chain Material

2x Dimensional Prison

2x Fiendish Chain

2x Mirror Force

1x Solemn Warning

Extra Deck: [15]

1x Blaze Fenix, the Burning Bombardment Bird
2x Elemental HERO Electrum
1x Elemental HERO Nova Master
2x Elemental HERO Shining
Other cards up to you (my extra decks suck, you know that)

What's this? I named a lot of times in my two years of blogging (actually, 2 years, a month and some days), but never really posted a build. I don't know why I didn't post it, so I thought I should have fixed that posting one, although after Stratos' ban. As I said in "Gate Material's Versatility", at this point of the game, HEROes get more consistent by adding an engine known for being the base for tons of OTKs but not really consistent.

So, what is this really? It's Gate HEROes Fenix, a Gate HEROes deck that uses Chain Material as another win condition. The synergy is born by the fact that both Gate HEROes and Gate Material decks play HEROes (although not the same ones) and Fusion Gate. This means that by adding the Gate Material engine into a Gate HEROes we'd have more discard fodder for Super Polymerization, more material for fusions (even with Gate, if you manage to take back the materials you banished via Shining) and draw power due to Cardcar D, other than the obvious OTK from Gate Material.

Shall we see the cards one by one?

-Avian, Burstinatrix, Clayman, Bubbleman and Chain Material are packed together. Although Veiler kills this loop if shot on Electrum because of only one copy of Avian, Burstinatrix and Clayman, if you know how to play the deck, you should be able to make the opponent waste their veilers on a Blackship of Corn or something like that. Playing doubles isn't worth it. Bubbleman, on the other hand, is quite a good card and works nicely in 2 copies because he is an AZ material to freely use and easy XYZ material unless you have 2 Fusion Gates in your hand.
-Cardcar D and Elemental HERO Heat are needed for the loop too. You could attempt one without playing them, but it'd require an even worse extra, so I decided to go for the Blaze Fenix one. What's more, I generally play either Heat or Lady Heat, so it's not like that is a burden on me, and Cardcar D is a great card first turn for consistency.
-Alius, Ocean and Voltic are my go-to HEROes, generally. Although I used to play one Ocean and one Ice Edge, I may be more into only 1 Ice Edge as of now. Ocean has a nice body, though, and is LV4. Your pick. Alius is a nice beater and LIGHT for Shining spam, while Voltic has always been one of my favourite cards in Gate HEROes. I even played builds focused on him with Thunder Sea Horse, but when they banned Stratos it wasn't worth it anymore. 2 is nice, though, because it even lets you recycle Electrum's materials or Heat if they got banished, other than going for burst damage at one point, expecially if you have Voltic banished.
-Emergency Call and RotA are for consistency once again. Also, being able to choose which HERO you want, most of the times it'll let you go into the AZ-Shining combo. Also, it thins the deck a lot, giving you earlier access to Chain Material.
-Fusion Gate (supported by Terraforming) is the backbone of the deck.
-2 MSTs are for dealing with nasty backrow when you get into the loop. I used not to play them, but they came to my liking once I tried them. Also, if you're not aiming to the loop, they can be used to protect your field by chaining it to the activation of a Field. Also, smart MSTs can take care of pretty much anything, Fiendish Chain on Electrum is one of the easiest examples, but you may see while playing that it kind of hurts when you hit their field which was resolving or other cards which need to stay face-up. Hitting stuff is good.
-Pot of Duality is awesome in here. Although it most of the times lets your opponent guess what you're playing, some of the times you'll be so fast thanks to this that even if he wanted to counter you he cannot because he doesn't have the cards he needs to do so. I'd generally use it after thinning the deck with Emergency Call and RotA, but some of the times it's better to keep them in your hand until it's time to look for the monster you need.
-Super Polymerization is what solves your first turn. With this deck, most of the times you feel no nee to summon on first turn, because it may lead to losing resources without Stratos. With this card, instead, summoning an HERO means having a raigeki break on your opponent's monsters always ready which gives you a nice monsters in exchange (just today I won two games out of 4 thanks to this). I wouldn't max it out, though, because it leads to dead draws and lose too much advantage due to the discard.
-Aside Chain Material, the traps are all for control, to slow down the game a bit. Also, most of the times you'd want to kill shi en or other monsters with nasty effects if you're going for the loop.

You may have noticed that this deck lacks Miracle Fusion. To be honest, I don't feel it's needed since they banned Stratos. Maybe you could play it in Bubble Beat, but that's only because it tends to send to the graveyard a lot and you generally don't recycle them. Here we wouldn't want to banish HEROes, even the one not needed for the loop, because we'd rather keep them if we went into a Shining and we need another one for the loop. With extra HEROes, used fusion monsters are recyclable, but if you banish them just for one extra Fusion which doesn't give you any real advantage, you'll be digging your own grave.

As for the deck, there aren't many tips I'd give you, mainly because the deck got a lot simpler since Stratos' ban. The only things I can write your are:
-The Loop. I used to think everyone knew it but, apparently, given my games in rated and the fact that almost everyone asked me time to read Chain Material, not everyone does. In a tournament, though, I believe everyone will know that. The loop goes as follow: you need two Electrums in the Extra (or one banished and one in the extra), 1 Blaze Fenix, 2 Shinings (or banished) and 1 Nova Master (or banished). If you don't have them like this (maybe you used Shining), banish them from where they are and put them back into the extra via Electrum. Then start the loop. Summon Blaze Fenix, then Electrum, use Fenix's effect and deal damage. Electrum+Fenix into Nova Master, then Electrum again, Electrum+Nova=Shining, then ||Fenix, then Electrum, Fenix's effect, Electrum+Fenix into Nova, Nova+Shining into Shining, then Electrum, Electrum+Shining into Shining||
Loop the part between the "||" until your opponent dies. A problem you may have is Veiler on Electrum, avoidable chaining Super Polymerization on Electrum, but you'll need to banish it later.

-When not looping, the combo you'll be using a lot is AZ-Shining. Basically, you can wipe your opponent's monsters by using Gate+3 HEROes of which two need to be WATER and LIGHT. Basically, fuse the WATER HERO and another HERO into AZ, then AZ+LIGHT HERO into Shining, wipe the field, and beat with a Shining with at least 3800 ATK. This works best if you have, other than those monsters, 1 Voltic. If you have two, one Voltic could be used as the LIGHT HERO. If you do this, after wiping the field, you should beat with Shining, then Voltic which SSs Voltic, which SSs another HERO, dealing at least 5800 damages withouot considering last monster's beat. I OTK'd a lot by using Heat as the other monster, because it means 8000 damages.


Also, there are some cards you may want to consider adding:
-Ice Edge, the main reason I don't play it is that my teammate hates him, but I'd generally use it, although he cannot be used for XYZs. I don't really XYZ summon, so it's ok.
-Macro Cosmos and/or Dimensional Fissure. Although they damage Shining's retrieving effect, they usually make him a better beatstick, other than acting as Antimeta cards by themselves. What's more, it helps against Veiler.

That's All, Folks!


Usual Trivia: "Cancello Feniceo" means Phoenixian Gate. Other than being a nice name, it is also, visually speaking, what the deck does with Fenix. Fusion Gate is the only thing which connects the Extra Deck to the Field, letting Fenix go in and out freely, by looping.

Chain Beat Rulings (and Black Garden)

So, yeah, I'm playing Chain Beat recently and I'm pretty tired of explaining in almost each and every game rulings for the deck. A couple of time it happened that if I linked them to Pojo's Guide they'd just say "I don't trust a random forum's post" and if I link Wikia "Wikia's editable by anyone, ya know...". Also, I don't expect them to really believe a blog's post either, so let's just start by saying:
Everything I'm writing here is OFFICIAL.
It will always be taken by somewhere, sometimes I may not write the source, but everything is for sure.

So, let's start:

Wind-up Rabbit is one of the backbones of the deck, but has one hell of a tricky effect. Let's see what bothers up:

1.Wind-Up Rabbit's effect which banishes a monster isn't a cost and cannot then banish under Skill Drain;

2.When Wind-Up Rabbit returns on the field, it isn't considered a Special Summon, it is considered "returning on the field" and does not start a chain;

3.Wind-Up Rabbit's effect cannot be used in Damage Step.

First part is based on Problem Solving Card Text. Reading Rabbit's effect clearly explains that it is an effect, nothing to say here.

Second part will need one of PSCT's main rules: nothing's left unsaid in cards written with PSCT and nothing says one thing while it means something else. This means that if the card doesn't say that it is a Special Summon it means that it isn't, and if no method of summoning is explained it means there is none. The card simply is banished until then, this means that it'll "return" your next Stand-by Phase.

Third part should be obvious given that the only cards that can activate in Damage Step are counter traps, cards which directly modify ATK/DEF of a monster and cards which need to be chained directly to a card.

Evilswarm Thunderbird is our second and last floater, and, while it's mostly like Rabbit, it is worth writing about it:
1.Evilswarm Thunderbird's cannot be activated if Skill Drain is active;
2.When Evilswarm Thunderbird returns on the field, it's not considered a summon and it doesn't start a chain.
Basically, the same rulings from Rabbit, with the only difference that part 3 doesn't exist because it's explicitly written in the card text that it cannot be activated during damage step.

Black Garden is a difficult card. With PSCT. Without it it'd have been pure hell. Thank you, guy-who-proposed-PSCT-at-Konami-TCG:
1.If you summon a monster while Black Garden is active, but one of the two effects of Black Garden cannot be used (halving the ATK and Special Summoning a Token), the other works as it should;
2.Black Garden's effect upon summon starts a chain;
3.Once a monster's ATK is halved via Black Garden, its ATK is set on that value and won't change if a card which gave the monster that ATK doesn't apply its effect anymore;
4.If a monster is removed from the field and later returns, it won't have its ATK halved.

I decided to write only the most important ones, so to lighten the charge of the post, not making it too heavy of a read for it to be linked fast.
The first part is given by this article about PSCT, as you can see, Black Garden uses "also", meaning that neither is needed for the other.
The second part is purely obvious given the card, it being a trigger effect it must start a chain.
Third Part is, instead, the trickiest part. Based on the rulings of other cards which halve monster's ATK we can say that if there's Tenki on the field and then Rabbit is summoned while Black Garden is on the field, Rabbit's ATK will go to (1400+100)/2=750 ATK. If Tenki is then removed, Rabbit's ATK will stay at 750. This is pretty important if a monster gets an ATK boost in chain with Black Garden. Let's assume the following situation: there's Black Garden on the field, your opponent uses Call of the Haunter and summons Traptrix Myrmeleo. The chain will go as following:
Chain Link 1: Black Garden
Chain Link 2: Myrmeleo
If you did nothing now, Myrm would just go ahead and destroy your garden, leaving you open against a 1600 ATK Myrmeleo. Ahh, it would be nice if you could stop her effect so that you can just crash onto it with a Token gotten from her summon or something like that. Oh, but you can! You have that Forbidden Chalice, so you decide to chain it.
Chain Link 3: Forbidden Chalice.
The chain is then resolved:
Chalice boosts Myrm's ATK making her 2000 ATK and negates her effect; Myrm does nothing because her effect is negated; Black Garden goes ahead and halves Myrm's ATK making her ATK 1000 and summoning a token on your side of the field. All's well, your opponent will just destroy your token and deal you damage, BUT even after the End Phase, Chalice's boost won't go away, keeping her at 1000 ATK, which kind of hurts, but still doable by Rabbits and Thunderbirds.
Back at the rulings, part four is, instead, more obvious than everything else, but I got this as a question, too, so I figured I should have written that. If the monster isn't on the field anymore, its ATK goes back at the original value and when it returns the field it won't be halved (unless it is Summoned).


Hope it was a nice read, if I get other problems like those, I'll try and write them here. If you have something you'd want me to write, go ahead and say so.

See Ya.

Naturia Beast, Relevance in the Meta

1 EARTH Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner EARTH monsters
During either player's turn, when a Spell Card is activated: You can send the top 2 cards of your Deck to the Graveyard; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy it. This card must be face-up on the field to activate and to resolve this effect.

Naturia Beast, one of the Naturia Synchros Trio (not considering Leodrake since he hasn't a negation effect), arguably the best among them. I named this card lots of times in the past, from Iron Chains, to Madolches, from Beast Synchro, to Karakuris and other lots of thingies. I noticed the strength of Karakuris, mainly, in this meta, with that Naturia Beast, but someone (Desmond Johnson) managed to show it to the world. I must admit that his build works a lot better than the one I was trying for this meta. It had pretty much the same basics, only that I played 3 decrees for the sake of drawing them as early as possible and go into a lock with Naturia Beast. However, they were quite the DDs, but sometimes they were way too useful, I'm still confused about them. Another thing Desmond noticed and I didn't was that Solar Wind Jammer could SS itself without monsters on the opponent's side.
Back on today's topic, Naturia Beast. Well, you should know by now what the next meta is going to look like, right? Mermails and Fire Fists till the release of Spellbook Judgment Day, where they'll become part of the meta, then, once HA7 is released, Evilswarms will be the main antimeta choice.
Beast is unstable in this meta, Spellbooks dies to it (aside Junon+3 Spellbooks, for that exact reason you should aim to the win as fast as possible), Fire Fists will be slowed down till they have a beater (tenken+something, reason why I used to play 3 decrees in my build), Evilswarms don't have access to Pandemic, but they can run over Beast with just Ophion (Decree is helpful here, too) while Mermails aren't really that affected, aside salvage and such, but they can kill beast with ease. For those reason, Naturia Beast is quite controversial.
However, when judging a certain card, you must always consider what type that card is: Infernity Launcher is way more broken than Mirage, even having the same effect, pretty much.
This card is the same thing: it is a synchro, thus it resides in the extra. Considering your extra a toolbox, as I always do, this card can be brought to the table when needed, and not waiting to draw it and being a DD from time to time.
If you are against Mermails, you'd rather go into Stardust than Beast, but against Spellbooks and Fire Fists the latter is awesome and against Evilswarm you'd go into a beater for their Ophion or, if you've got Decree, into Beast to attempt a lock, if they aren't too close to summon Ophion.
The decks that can afford easy summoning of Beast (and possibly barkion) have some potential not only for Beast itself, but even for the synchro ability: if you can summon Beast, you surely can summon Catastor, that's a great card itself, probably Stardust and Scrap and maybe Black Rose. Having that kind of toolbox (considering all of the XYZs, too) is a great arsenal for a player's deck.

I hope some other original deck makes it to the top of some important event, originality is always a good thing. Maybe some will be able to do so via Naturia Beast, who knows.

See Ya

Suppressor Dragons, Combined and Single

Who are the suppressor dragons? They're an archetype composed of 4 monsters, one for each element (remember that in YGO elements are EARTH, WIND, FIRE and WATER. All are LV7, the sum of their ATK and DEF is always 4600 and have got similar effect. Basically:
*Name* LV7 *corresponding attribute*/Dragon ATK+DEF=4600
You can banish 2 Dragon-Type or *corresponding attribute* monsters from your hand or Graveyard, except this card; Special Summon this card from your hand or Graveyard. During your opponent's End Phase, if this card was Special Summoned: Return it to the hand. You can discard this card and 1 other *corresponding attribute* monster to *so-called discarding effect, different for each one*. When this card is banished: Add 1 *corresponding attribute* Dragon-Type monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only use 1 "*name*" effect per turn, and only once that turn.

Great, right? Well, you didn't read their discarding effect, still.
Redox, the EARTH one is a walking Reborn for your grave, no other restrictions. You can even summon himself, if Konami is ok with discarding first and then targeting the monster. Poor stats, though, 1600 ATK and 3000 DEF
Blaster, the FIRE one is a walking raigeki break, with no other restrictions. Discard him and a fire and destroy one card. Doesn't trigger Handmaiden, sadly, but it could set-up the grave for an Handmaiden mill and destroy a nasty backrow. Probably the second with better stats, 2800/1800. Great attack to run over anything, DEF good enough to block Maestroke Flip and Attack, if he doesn't have other monsters.
Tidal, the WATER one is a walking foolish burial. Probably the one with the worst effect but more applications, since it'll give Mermails a good discard, eventually can be summoned to XYZ with Megalo into Abyssgaios or Drago-SAC, a monster that's receiving lots of love, recently. 2600/2000, probably the better stats among them. Basically, the ATK is good enough to run over pretty much everything Blaster would run over, but his DEF makes him better against Maestroke. However, you should realize based on your deck and your playstyle which one has got the better stats for you.
Tempest, the WIND one is a walking...uhm...really, a walking itself. Discard it with a WIND monster and get another Dragon from your deck. That's quite of broken, isn't it? Dragunities will have tons and tons of fun with this card. Being LV7 helps more in Drago-SAC based decks or even standard Beastcraft decks. The deck where it shines the most, however, is Dragunities, as I said earlier, since it can search pretty much every combo pieces for Atum Dragunities and, in combo with Ravine, it can search REALLY everything you need. 2400/2200. Oh well, at least it suicides into Laggia. You won't summon it the most of the times, or, if you do, you'll XYZ him in the 90% of cases.

A question lots of people asked me is "can they work together?". My main response was "they aren't out on DN, I won't test them till that time. When they will, I'll try to confirm my theory where they could, even though not as a really competitive deck".
Basically, throw in some remotion, Necroface, GS and Dimensional Alchemist, and they'll be discard fodders for themselves, eventually summoning them all back and XYZ, while RFDD (Return from the Different Dimension) works as our own Rekindling.
Engine:
3 Redox
3 Blaster
3 Tempest
0/3 Tidal
1 Necroface
0/1 REDMD
3 Treasured Sword of the Seven Stars
3 Gold Sarcophagus
0-2 D.D.R.
0/1 RFDD

You can splash this engine pretty much anywhere.
Heraldic Beasts want to be in the grave, and they want discard fodder.
Plants, do I even need to talk?
Skill, well, this will negate their return effect, and on the field they effectively don't have any useful effect. Redox can reborn Barbaros, and the latter is a target for Treasured Sword (TSSS)
And I'm keeping one for another review, because I like it more than the other, even though the Plant one has access to easy Shooting.

However, I myself think that those monsters should be used on their own. Redox is great in both Rock Stun (or Skill Rock Stun) and Gem-Knight, other than Heraldic Beast (triggers Leo, and eventually Summons him back from the grave); Tidal is great in Atlanteans and Mermails, discards like hell, and I'm looking for good WATER monsters for Heraldic Beasts to use its effect to send Leo to the grave and trigger him, even though it could not be needed; Tempest has Dragunities, R7 WIND Abuse, and lots of uses for searches; Blaster can be used in Lavals (meh) or in Fire King to destroy themselves and use their effect, and Qilin could eventually send it to the grave to have another easily accessible Beater that will return to your hand to use its effect, and, even though I never played Fire King, I think they can access Skill Drain without losing much or even anything, and that's just great.
TSSS is just awesome, a +1 if you use it on a Suppressor, or a +0 on other monsters. If one, a random one, of those dragons had an use while in hand, I'd play 1 TSSS and 2 of the named dragon, even though it's pretty risky. Or I could play 1 TSSS, 1 Dragon and a monster searchable via that Dragon LV8 for Trade-In. More risky than the one before, but more useful, and Magical Mallet COULD help shuffling back the searchable Dragon. But I don't know, they just conflict too much with the FTK mindset.
Gold Sarcophagus is just way too good, on Necroface on first turn it could plus you so much that you couldn't even think about it. Assuming you just drew the first 6 cards of your 40-cards deck, and that one of those was GS, use GS on Necroface (thinning by another card). Milling 5 cards has high possibilities of banishing at least one of those 12 Dragons (91%, approximatively, thanks to Fabio Borges), and, if you drew into Necroface, you could just banish a Dragon and make it a +1 (search with the dragon+GS' Dragon-GS).
I, as one, see lots of power in those monsters, and lots of hidden uses that I won't discover till they'll be out on DN, assuming I have a good enough internet connection to log into DN without making it crash.
That's All Folks.

P.s. I LOVE Tempest, can't wait for it to be on DN.

Madolche Magileine

When this card you control is destroyed by your opponent's card (either by battle or by effect) and sent to your Graveyard: Shuffle this card into your Deck. When this card is Normal or Flip Summoned: You can add 1 "Madolche" monster from your Deck to your hand.

Well, great, uh? I LOVE this card, she's quite of awesome. Not because it is an auto-searchable stratos that recycles herself, that is perfect for naturia synchros, for arcanite or for her splashability, but because of her art. Oh, come on, a witch on a fork with eyes with different colors and that's quite "moe", why shouldn't you love her?
Put aside how lovely she is, she's the centerpiece of Madolche decks, makes the deck work. Search another copy of her, resulting in a +1 in no matter the deck, then if she's destroyed, you get to recycle her making her another possible target for another copy of herself.
Let's see why this card is good in steps:

Recyclability and Searchability
The titles says it all. Starting off this card on first turn is a pretty consistent opening, since it doesn't really reveal you deck (saying that you're splashing her in another deck aside madolche and spellbook), conducting to misplays based on misjudgments. It is a +1 on the very first turn and as a splashable engine it is a lot more stable than Gadget's, that basically do the same thing in some decks (Gadget are sometimes, or it's better to say "were", used only as an engine to generate +1s in stun decks or such) but eating more slots in the deck. For stun decks based on +1s, gadget are still better, but in decks where you can continuously stun your opponent's monsters, this card is way better. Doesn't eat too many slots if compared to gadgets, leads to less dead draws (double gadget in hand), is better for long games since magileines recycles themselves continuously.

Versatility
Magileine is spellcaster, and thus she works wonders with Spellbooks, power makes her a 2400 that searches when destroys a monster. Being spellcaster is awesome with some random LV3 Tuners to go into Arcanite and destroy two cards. Going into Naturia Synchros with a LV1 EARTH Tuner or LV2 (won't consider Landoise since I don't like him, aside from a few decks). Being LV4 makes her great R4 XYZ material in two turns.

Engine Expandability
The engine should be 3 Magileines alone if the deck supports them, otherwise you should include some monster hate, too, but that depends on the deck. However, what's great about this deck is that you can expand it, too. Add Butlerusk and you'll have a walking Terraforming that afterwards makes you a R4 XYZ, add in Cruffsant in a deck where you play beast supports (Horn of the Phantom Beast is good, too) and you'll have a 1500 at the worst, 1800 usually, and eventually 2100 and so on, recycling you magileine for more searchs and +1s, while having a monster that could be used for bounzer, big-eye, drago-SAC or whatever based on what you're playing.

Dodging Ability
Dodges BTH, makes your opponent's Solemn Warning a waste of 2000 LPs (since you'll get to recycle her), if on her alone TT turns into a -1 for the opponent and so on. If you attack with this into WU Rabbit, you'll have the upper hand, tenki or factory aside.


Really, the only bad sides of this card are not working when flipped face-up (an attack, for example) or Special Summoned and having poor ATK. That's it. And you should love the artwork.

See Ya.

Madolche Hootcake and Madolche Nights, Thoughts on them and Madolches

When this card in your possession is destroyed by your opponent's card (either by battle or by effect) and sent to your Graveyard: Shuffle this card into the Deck. You can target 1 monster in your Graveyard; banish that target, then Special Summon 1 "Madolche" monster from your Deck, except "Madolche Hootcake". You can only use this effect of "Madolche Hootcake" once per turn.

When a monster effect is activated, if you have no monsters in your Graveyard: Negate the activation, then, if you control a face-up "Madolche Puddingcess", shuffle 1 random card in your opponent's hand into the Deck.

I tried not to make a big fuss for this, however I noticed it wasn't like me not to talk at all about those supports (from LTGY) for madolches, being a madolches-addicted, that made me write this post. Lots of people, too, asked me for advices and opinions on those two cards, so this is a review addressed to all of those who asked me.
Let's start it:
First of all, Madolche Nights, cute card. Adds control factor to our build, being searchable and valid target for Tiaramisu. However, I don't like it. It doesn't destroy the monster, but, mainly, it requires a monsterless grave. For this exact reason, I'd recommend none, Puddingcess Builds aside.
Hootcake, however, is another thing. Leaving the artwork aside, that I as for one don't like, it has got a great effect. Banish a monster (not only madolche, any monster is ok), SS a Madolche from the deck (no matter the level, so, yeah, it's great even for Puddingcess builds, since it empties the grave for both Pudding and Nights). If it is Gelato, congratulations, you just got a search. Searching Chateau like this will mean that you'll have two beatsticks, 2000 and 2100 respectively. However, what's the great fact of this card? It is the first, in the main deck, that can bring a monster on the table directly, so this generates +1s and comboes at the same time. Think of the old Mew+Gelato+Warwolf combo, now switch Gelato with Hoot. Do you see what's happening there?
Mew, SS Hoot, SS Warwolf. Warwolf+Mew=Invoker, eff Invoker, detach Mew, bring one Gelato, get to search Chateau, banish Mew for Hoot's effect and Summon Gelato, getting another search. If you've got a target in the grave for Tiara's effect, search Ticket, if you haven't, search another Chateau and activate it in top of the previous one to gain a target.
This combo is really flexible and has lots of different endings, similarly to Wind-Ups. You can even do something with just mew and hoot or hoot and warwolf if you've got a monster in your grave, and this is what I aim for. Basically, the 3-cards setup we needed before just turned into a 2-cards setup+1 in the grave to work. I think that this one is lot more solid, and gives us the chance to enter the meta. Why's that? Not only it's easier to combo and we have more ways to do that, but mainly because this gives us the ability to play Soul Drain and more Hand Traps in the main deck.
Soul Drain is the first thing I thought while reading Hoot, it stops lots of the cards in the actual meta and lets some of our monsters stay in the grave, so that we can use them for Tiara or Hootcake. Other than that, mained, you can use it to stop searchers or other grave reliant monsters (sangan). In the worst case scenario (you face someone who doesn't matter soul drain being on the field) you can side 'em out.
For the Hand Traps, you could have slots issues and cut them out, but with Hootcake, that's just awesome. Veiler and Maxx are awesome Hootcake's effect fodder, and they can stop what soul drain doesn't. Basically, if you face something that fears Soul Drain, play more of them siding out Veilers and Maxx. If you face something that fears Veilers and Maxx, side more of them and side out Soul Drains. However, the most of the times, no matter what of the two sidings you did, you'll have monsters in the grave, and that's just awesome.
Remember that, even though it probably will be the best action in lots of possibilities, SSing Gelato via Hoot isn't the only thing to do. Bringing another beast could make you able to go into Leviair to SS what you just banished, could it be another Madolche, or whatever really. It gives us our first way to recycle some used non-madolche monsters, so I can finally play the T.G. Engine (even though Soul Drain locks their effects in the grave, but that doesn't matter) and be able to use Striker more than just once.
I won't build anything 'till they'll be out on Dueling Network, but I'll test quite some lots of things with those.
That's All Folks!

Ultimate Leodip's Infernity Guide

As requested by Thomas, the winner of the 30.000 Visits Contest, here it is a full Infernity Guide.
As an Infernity lover (and pretty much half-veteran, since I played it in lots of builds with lots of techs at least once per format) I'm more than happy to write this one. What's more, this'll be a guide that I'll update, that's why it is the "ultimate" guide, it'll always be updated as long as I discover something new about Infernities that I think it's worth writing.
Let's start it: (cutting post because it is way too long)

Void Ogre Dragon, Decks and Applications

1 DARK Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters
Once per turn, during either player's turn, when your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card while you have no cards in your hand: You can negate the activation and destroy it.

Shi En with a bigger body and easier to summon. Basically some non-Tuners+Plaguespreader/Krebons are this.
He's DARK, with tons of supports everywhere, and Dragon, for other giant supports. REDMD anyone?
Being LV8 makes him a little bit hard to summon, but not that much, while 3000/3000 with Shi En's effect pays back your hard work in summoning him.

Well, what about this card? I don't randomly review cards, ya know.
I'm recently realizing how splashable this card is. As long as you have an empty hand and a DARK tuner, it won't be hard to summon him and it will pay back. If you don't have an empty hand, it is a 3000 beater without any negative effect like red dragon archfiend.
I started thinking about it seeing that Tele-Hieratics played 1 copy of him in the extra, and that opened a new world.
If you remember my various post on Avenger Abuse, you may remember that this card was one of the main cards. I pretty much always started with this on first turn that went into crazy control onto the opponent, and beating him down with 3000 beater, good enough to kill him. When I went into Void Ogre, it was mainly via Grepher (discard Plague/Malicious, send Malicious/Plague), then, if Grepher survived, I used him to send Avengers to the grave as back-up plan. Thus, seeing this was happening lots of times, I decided to try "Grepher Control". Basically, it had pretty much the same set-up as avenger abuse, but no avengers and no eaters. I went into Void Ogre using Grepher as fast as possible, then lots of traps kept me living.
The concept was simple, and it had lots of ways to make it happen (OCG-wise, since I'm talking of Lavalval Chain), like Monk+Random spell+Random card for Plague, or Grepher+Malicious/Plaguespreader and likes.
It worked, and I think it would work again if I re-built it for this meta, but it had one great problem: both Malicious and Plaguespreader were usable only once.
For that exact reason I played D.D.R. that discarded nasty things from my hand, too, and I played rfdd for another, fast, void ogre or random LV8 Synchro. However, that wasn't obviously enough. That's where Avenger Abuse succeeds over Grepher Control.
Avenger Abuse can put more pressure on the opponent so that if he were to destroy your void ogre in battle (unlikely to happen, but possible, think of GBs with Shrinks) or if he tries to destroy your lone Grepher, you get 3 LV8 or 4 that could become 3 LV8 Synchros with Eater or Shock Master. That's why your opponent will ALWAYS try to kill your void ogre via effects, because it could turn into stardust, stardust, void, or stardust, void, scrap.
Back to the card itself, Void Ogre is meant to be played in infernities, a deck I really love. Empty-handed (usual thing for Infernities) it is a bigger Shi En, quite awesome, isn't it?
Infernities can bring this card like it's nothing, the only thing it misses that didn't make him absolutely broken
enough to be even banned is that he's not an Infernity. Basically, no Barrier abuses.
After you combo, you'll most likely end with Void Ogre+ABCs (Awesome Backrow Cards) plus other random cards. If you chose Barriers as ABCs, you'll have to summon a random Archfiend in ATK, meaning that you'll have few troubles with big beaters killing your archfiend and nullifying your Barriers.
Even though, Void Ogre is great, because you should assume that you won't always be getting your comboes, you could get this via a random topdecked Archfiend with Avenger in the grave. This all makes Void Ogre great even if he isn't an Infernity monster.
Oh, just a little tip before we end this, since we're talking about Infernities, I'm working on a new loop (with dewloren) that starts off the usual grave set-up+mirage/Launcher in hand. Not anything else. I'm still in the beta phase of the project, however.

See Ya

Prohibition, What About Maindecking?

Activate by declaring 1 card name. Cards with that name, and their effects, cannot be used. Cards already on the field are not affected (including face-down cards).

Great side deck card it is, isn't it? Generic enough to be a generic side deck card against every deck. For this exact reason this card is primarly used for random decks you could encounter in a tournament but that you weren't ready for so that you didn't side anything. But, let's be a little more specific: every deck has a key card or some cards that they'd suffer alot to lose, or even cards that you don't want yourself to face. This card will always be there for you (looks romantic as a statement, doesn't it?).
So, what am I reviewing this card for? Maindeck it.
When there's a card enough specific to always be used it is considered a staple, let's say Reborn, Heavy and Dark Hole. Dark Hole and Heavy Storm are in the 90% of cases great minuses for the opponent and they could win your game, while reborn is played even in macro decks because SSing something without any cost is just great. No limit for the summon, even the opponent's grave is ok, and you can bring your opponent's BLS.
Prohibition does just the same, but even better: DH isn't good against some decks, Heavy isn't against other, Reborn suffers Macro decks, but this card can slow down ALL of them, or even kill some of them (prohibition on sea lancer is pretty much an auto-win, if you can protect prohibition).
Here's another factor, protection. Sometimes you can use Prohibition to protect yourself from DH when you overextended and opponent used fader or swift scarecrow, or even gorz. Sometimes you can use Prohibition on MST (maybe along Starlight face-down) to protect your field spell, your continuous cards, your face-downs, and your prohibition itself. Sometimes you can use prohibition when you see your opponent has 3 DARK monsters in grave on DAD.
This all makes maindecked prohibition great for lots of decks, from OTKs to control, to Antimeta, to Macro, to Skill, to Grave-reliant, to SS-reliant and so on.
Focusing a bit more on OTKs, you can use Prohibition on Gorz, Fader or Scarecrow (based on what you think opponent has in hand), or, if he has a set card, on Mirror Force, Prison or Compulsory. If you're comboeing and your opponent has a face-down, declare that Solemn Warning or Torrential Tribute right away.
Focusing on Control/Antimeta decks, stopping MST and Heavy Storms isn't everything you can do. If you play, let's say, a Control deck that focuses on bringing a boss monster to win, you can declare Solemn Warning and summon without worrying.

This is in game 1, in early game, where you don't even know what the opponent's playing, in mid and late game you can easily kill decks once you know what they're playing. Go for Prohibition on Hornet and plan to win, or use it on REDMD to stop the infamous Lightpulsar-REDMD loop, or use it on WU-Rabbit to stop some more abuses or Magician if he has yet to combo, while Mermails could lose some power once you stop their infantry, because they'd lose their raigeki break for face-ups that's searchable and abusable and that could destroy that prohibition itself. Everything suffers at least a bit Prohibition, even in game 1.

In game 2 and 3, if you didn't side out those prohibition (I'd always recommend to keep them, though, except for some rogue and such), this card gives you the upper hand since you won't have to side out anything to fit them, they're already in! Side what you want, and if it is a continuous spell/trap, declare MST.
Use this on Magician and protect it well, you should have already won like this. I won't explain all the decks cause you should know their main cards, just know that everything suffers, rogues and similar apart.

In game 2 and 3, too, you can use this card to counter-side. Basically awesome. You playing Wind-Ups? Go for Needle Ceiling. Playing Chaos Dragons? Fissure. Fear opponent's Prohibition? Prohibit it. (If you're asking if it is possible, yes it is).

Well, I described Prohibition as a meta call, sometime I should show you something else about Prohibition-
Stay Tuned, I prohibit you to stop following me (? LOL, just wanted to use prohibit someway, I like this verb a lot).

Black Garden, Giant Little Beatsticks, How to Build

When a monster(s) is Normal or Special Summoned, except by the effect of "Black Garden": Halve its ATK, also you Special Summon 1 "Rose Token" (Plant-Type/DARK/Level 2/ATK 800/DEF 800) to its controller's opponent's side of the field, in Attack Position. You can target 1 monster in your Graveyard with ATK equal to the total ATK of all face-up Plant-Type monsters on the field; destroy this card and all face-up Plant-Type monsters, then Special Summon that target.

Yeah, yeah, great card, anyone knows this card's great, right? Let's start saying that recently I'm taking a liking to this card (I always liked this, but recently it got better), and I'm thinking of lots of uses for this card's effects. Let's start reading them one by one:

When a monster(s) is Normal or Special Summoned, except by the effect of "Black Garden": Halve its ATK, also you Special Summon 1 "Rose Token" (Plant-Type/DARK/Level 2/ATK 800/DEF 800) to its controller's opponent's side of the field, in Attack Position.

Basically, I summon a monster, his ATK is halved, and I summon a token on the opponent's field or viceversa. This part of the effect is awesome, it's way this card is played where it is played. Decks that abuse this part of the effects are usually called Garden Control. Basically you set a monster that would benefit alot by having a greater ATK than other monsters, like don zaloog, next turn flip summon it and have a great beatstick that does anything. Here the name Giant Little Beatstick (GLB) comes to mind, it is a little beatstick, but it becomes giant if compared to other monsters. To abuse this card's effect we have:
Don Zaloog, hand control like hell.
Wind-Up Rabbit, becomes basically a 2800, good enough, isn't it? Comboes with Kaiser Colosseum (I'll say more about this later). (Verz Thunderbird does the beating better, but the Kaiser worse)
Horus, once LV6 is summoned, he'll be a hell of a beatstick (not halved via Garden, too), and could upgrade  easily beating a token into LV8 to negate ALL the spells, good enough.
Jurracs, Guaiba could easily become a laggia destroying the token he just generated, and Dino could let you draw two during the end phase (always working with kaiser colosseum).
(Pseudo-/)Flip Effects, Sazank could be a 1200 (2400 against other monsters) that sends a monster to the grave and direct attacks, Fossil Dyna could destroy all of the tokens and keep control on the field with his 2400 ATK, and so on.

What's more, the tokens being plant means you can use pollinosis as additional judgments (or better, main judgments, since I wouldn't play judgment itself for the LP cost that here is really bad), and fragrance storm as a mean to control the field for kaiser (I wouldn't suggest this, anyways, because could really be a dead draw)

Let's see the second and last part of the effect:

You can target 1 monster in your Graveyard with ATK equal to the total ATK of all face-up Plant-Type monsters on the field; destroy this card and all face-up Plant-Type monsters, then Special Summon that target.

Then, what about this? Let's start saying that tokens are 800 ATK and are probably the only plant monsters on the field, that means that the monster that you want to reborn has to be a 800*X ATK monster, where X is a number from 1 to 10 (even if the higher it is, the most difficult to summon it is), I find that 800, 1600 and 2400 are the easier to summon). I wrote something about Garden and possible targets in this post, so I think I should not focus on this part of the effect in the explanation, just use the other post as a reference for anything about this part of the effect.

Now, let's see supports for the supports. You can't just randomly play those supports if they don't accomplish at anything, so let's see some supports for the supports:
-Tour Engine, brings Rabbit faster. Not really needed, but for those who don't care for Kaiser Colosseum's field control and like Tour, this engine could be played. As engine I mean 2 Tours, Sangan and Night Assailant. Sangan searches pretty much anything, while Night Assailant is a mindfuck for the opponent. You'll be setting a lot of monsters, so your opponent wouldn't always expect a flip effect when you set a monster, so cards like assailant, fossil dyna, sazank and others are real bitches for the opponent.
-Kaiser Colosseum, I talked alot about this card in this post, why's that? Rabbit that auto-banishes itself reduces the number of monsters on your side of the field, reducing even the number of monsters the opponent can play. What's more, let's see an hand of garden+guaiba+Kaiser, and the opponent with a clear field (first turn, for example). Activate Garden, summon guaiba, the opponent gets a token, then activate kaiser and stop your opponent's monsters. Next turn (assuming it was the first turn), you beat the token, get another guaiba, opponent gets a token, too, go into laggia, your opponent can't summon the other token, and you'll be left with Laggia, kaiser and garden, while the opponent has a token. Lots of cards, generally, can abuse kaiser in here, I don't see why you shouldn't be playing with it.
-Ninjas, we do play sazank, we could play other ninjas. They can easily bring Horus and keep field control with supertransformation for when you don't have kaiser. You can summon either horus or white dragon, since the latter can prevent your S/Ts' destruction. We do even play some Dinos, so why not?
-Royal Decree, along with horus LV8, needs no explanation. You just have to balance your trap set well.

Now, counteracting to the opponent's counteract in the first game. Let's first see what the opponent is likely to do:
If he NS or SS monsters, it'll halve their monster's ATK, and they'll get me a token as tribute for horus and such, but he could not know I do play horus, based on your gamestyle and what you revealed to the opponent. Since he surely knows that having a monster with halved ATK against my monsters that benefit from killing opponent's monsters isn't good, he'll probably set them, so let's see what we can do against the setting of monsters.
Setting a monster isn't a very good option in YGO, since it'll make you lose the normal summon of the turn and you can't attack with that one, what's more you'll have to flip it next turn exposing it to additional traps the opponent could have drawn in the turn he bought. For this exact reason I'd max out on those BTH and CED. Bottomless is a great card, if the monster has less than 1500, it won't be a threat to us, if it is greater than 1500, you can kill it. Compulsory, on his side, can bounce that monster buying you another turn since he'll have to set the monster again and flip it next turn. I'd play some Torrential, too, but it's based on how your build is.
Acid Trap Hole is another choice, based on how much control you want on the opponent. Let's be realistic, no one plays >2000 DEF monsters, except Glads if they tech Hoplomus (but you'll have to encounter a GB that does play hoplomus, and both of the facts are pretty surrealistic, and they'll even have to draw into it, because searching it with proving would conclude nothing from their side of the game), and in that case you'll know who the set monster is. Only sad fact is that it trigger FLIP effects, but they would have triggered them however, sooner or later, right?

Other things they could do in game 1 is activating a field spell to ruin your garden setup. In that case you have few responses, but they are good enough considered that you'll have first to encounter a deck that plays a field spell and searches it pretty fastly. In that case we have 2/3 maindecked typhoons, cards to negate the field spell so that it won't destroy garden, and horus LV8. Horus is your main response to ANYTHING, once you have it into play, you can stop the main S/T destruction cards (MST and Heavy), and opponent's field spells.
Other than this, there's something I'm playing in lots of places recently, and it gave me some pretty results: maindecked Prohibition.
Every deck has some main cards for their strategy, and every deck plays typhoon and heavy that you'd want to forbid, so why not?

And there we are, post-side situation: you know the opponent's deck, your opponent knows yours, you've got to side.
You don't fear neither Macro nor Fissure, so if you encounter a Macro Rabbit, he'll surely de-side them in game two, even if it hasn't nothing special against you, so that'll be 3 slots that will probably go to hand traps or prohibition.
For the fact you don't fear Macro and Fissure, you can play them, even in the main if you want.
What someone will probably side against you is Closed Forest, if they do play it. In any case, what they'll side will probably be some continuous S/Ts, so add some Dust Tornadoes.
They could (should) add some more mass destruction effects if they side them, so build your list the way you'll be able to play 1 or 2 starlights in game 2.
Be aware if skill drain, too.
Build your list the way you'll be able to side Royal Decrees, if you're not maining them.
If you're not maining them, side hand traps. It's highly recommended to main them, though, since you fear a first turn explosion that you wouldn't be able to control since they started comboeing before you could put anything on the table.
Side some more mass destruction, if you don't play at least TTs in the main, because you, as just said, fear first turn explosions.
If your list is a little bit homogeneous in either type or attribute, side or main Gozen Match or Rivarly of Warlords. You just have to continuously summon plant/EARTH tokens on the opponent's side of the field so that he won't be able to do anything. That is more hate for the Wind-Up loop and other explosive decks, aside from Chaos Dragons. For Chaos Dragons Macro/Fissure are enough, but you should control them well enough with your mained cards.


Well, this was all for today's post. I could update it someday, but for now it is all. Take this post as a guide to the deck, I think it is pretty exhaustive about everything. If I forgot something, make me notice in the comment, I'll fix it.
See Ya.

Madolche (Tech) Side Choices+Updated List

Let's start saying that I changed my build a bit:

Monsters: [15]

1 Effect Veiler

1 Madolche Butlerusk

1 Madolche Cruffsant

3 Madolche Magileine

3 Madolche Messengelato

3 Madolche Mew-feuille
1 Maxx "C"

3 Snowman Eater

Spells: [13]

1 Dark Hole

2 Forbidden Lance

1 Heavy Storm

3 Madolche Chateau

1 Madolche Ticket

1 Monster Reborn

2 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Pot of Duality

Traps: [12]

2 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Dark Bribe

1 Dimensional Prison

1 Madolchepalooza (Ex-Madolche Festa)

1 Mirror Force

2 Starlight Road

2 Torrential Tribute

1 Ultimate Offering

As you can see, I did -1 palooza and -1 veiler for 1 Maxx "C" and 1 other Snowman Eater. The reason for this is the mindset I explained here and the fact that I think Maxx hits some deck that veiler doesn't, and maxx, along with veiler in the deck, can hit decks that wouldn't be hit by maxx alone. I like this.

If you want any explanation on gamestyle and cards choices, look at the post I linked, then come back here.

As you probably noticed, I added the side deck (and an excalibur in the extra for both the side deck and the usual double gelato, totally missed he wasn't in my extra before). First of all, I should thank a user called ~Straiker~ because he lent me an hand by letting me see his side deck, I'm bad at building side, usually, so I asked for help there. He, strangely, put in some cards in the same number I would, so I could have probably built it myself, but, yeah, he did help me.

2 Veilers and 2 Maxx, great against deck that do explode, rely on monsters effect on the field and Special Summon alot. The opponent doesn't see them coming, and when he'll be aware that you have got a good number of them he'll slow down, and you can re-side them out in game three, if you need slots for other things. Be aware of Fissure and Macro, though.

Third Typhoon and 2 Dust Tornadoes, actually, needed. I could encounter a deck that does main or can side macro cosmo or other continuous cards against madolches. Dust tornado is great, and the setting effect isn't half bad, too.

2 Prohibtion, one of the best side deck cards, IMO, but I don't play lots of S/T protection, so I can't side three. Prohibition is both a card against other deck, and a counter side. You can even prohibit MSTs and Heavy Storms to protect your other cards. Let's say we drew into double prohibition and Starlight, would activate a prohibition on MST, the other one on the card you want to prohibit and set Starlight be a bad thing?

2 Needle Ceiling, against WU and lots of swarms and explosive deck, really. Good card. Start off with set monster and this against an explosive deck and you're safe, you'll probably be even able to combo the next turn.

Let's see then the techy cards:

2 DNA Surgery. Good card, really good. I always found this a great card. Against Dino Rabbit, against HEROes and Six (no Shi En), against tons of things that do rely on the type. However, be aware of this card, it can kill your own games if you don't play this good. I like this card in here because by declaring Beast you'll both stop most of your opponent type-reliant comboes and start off yours. Let's say you have Surgery set on Beast, and Snowman on the field with Mew and Gelato in hand (I'd just kill anyone who tries to say that this is occasional, really, you just have to draw into surgery that's not vital for your comboes and that is against your opponent's deck). Normal Mew, SS Gelato, search Chateau, activate it. Snowmand+Mew into Invoker, eff Invoker, detach Mew, SS Gelato and get another search, Ticket probably. Activate it, go into Tiara with double Gelato, detach a gelato to add Gelato and Mew back to your hand and shuffle back two cards your opponent controls in his deck, then use Ticket's effect to bring another Gelato that gets you another search, probably another copy of chateau to generate targets for tiara's effect or Festa. Just notice that Festa is great with DNA Surgery on the field set on Beast, because you can trigger Gelato with ease.

2 Soul Drain. Same reasoning of Surgery, just two because of lack of S/T Protection. Great card against Mermails, one of the worst match-up we've got, against DWs (that's why I don't side Shadow-Imprisoning Mirrors), against lots of single cards and staples that do activate in the grave and, as most of my tech cards, has a double use. Soul Drain stops your own Madolches in the grave, so it could backfire if not properly used. However, as I said, I have a new Mindset that does rely on their returning effects only as a backup plan and to help setting up your games with both recycling and ticket. By following the same reasoning of TK in decks that do search from the deck, consider that YOU are the owner of Soul Drain, and YOU get to decide when to activate it. Locking your own Madolches in the grave is a good thing when trying to get targets for tiara's effect, and at the same time you're locking your opponent strategy, so that he can't really answer your moves with their Marksman, Graphas, and such, while he can't set-up his own strategy with Dragoons, Snoww and others.

I like how my Madolche deck gets better everytime I post. I recommend anyone to try this deck out, even the Madolche haters. As it is right now, it is fit for a tournament, so if you have regionals, locals and such, and have got the cards, try it out, you could/should win.

See Ya.

Level 6 Synchro

I think that anyone noticed that, LV6 Synchros actually left aren't that good. The moment Brionac was banned, synchros lost the little playability they still had, why's that? Brionac is one of the best synchros level 6 is easily accessible and the effect was really versatile and not limited to once per turn. Little cost that could be abused to clean for OTKs or looping (just think of all the Infernity Loops or Fableds, or random FTKs, and so on). However, Brionac was the first and usually sole synchro option when going for LV6, because other weren't even a quarter of Brio's power. Still, Brio was banned, and we lost our LV6 synchro option, effectively killing lots of comboes or power-plays, may it be synchro climb or just a random synchro to draw with Librarian's effect. People almost instantly decided either to totally drop the synchro part in their deck to focus on XYZ sheningans (or main deck ones, like BLS and such) or to find a substitute for brionac. The main choices were Iron Chain Dragon and Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth. Let's analyze them:

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters You can remove from play all "Iron Chain" monsters from your Graveyard to have this card gain 200 ATK for each card removed, until the End Phase. When this card inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent, send the top 3 cards of your opponent's Deck to the Graveyard.

Well, why do some people choose this over gaia? Because of the milling effect. Still, I totally find this unuseful, if not dangerous for yourself: setting-up your opponent's grave isn't a good thing for the 80% of the deck in this meta. 2500 ATK is good, but gaia's 2600 are better, since he doesn't need to sucide against stardust, shi en and others.
To be blunt, then, I totally don't like this card, and I (I, ME, that's personal, you could particularly like this card for some unknown reasons, and, if you do, it is unuseful to talk, since you're probably so convinced that nothing would change your mind) won't recommend anyone to play this card over Gaia.

Let's see him, now.

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters

Well, no effect. Actually, this card is better than Iron Chain, in my opinion. 2600 ATK, better than Iron Chain's 2500. No milling effect, thus no risks in attacking your opponent to deal some damages, but, what's more, there's no effect at all. The awesome thing about this part is that Fiendish Chain doesn't do a thing against this, and, even though this one is really improbable to happen, your opponent can't randomly veiler this card just to have a random LIGHT monster in the grave for BLS. Good card, if I were to choose between one of those, I would, without any further thinking, choose this one. HOWEVER, there's one more thing I want you to see. There's a synchro option that only few players consider, and just a little part of those plays:

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent. This card gains 300 ATK each time it inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent.

So, what about this card? He's the thing I wrote this post for. I like this card over both Gaia and Iron Chain because of the piercing effect. Everyone in here hates, at least a bit, Reaper, right? Well, Reaper hates this card. Why having a card that deals constantly damage to the opponent while building-up its strenght shouldn't be considered for competitive plays? This runs over spy, while dealing damages, or even over recruiter. This runs over Mother Grizzly (yeah, lol), while dealing damages. However, the main reason is that this card by itself totally defeats the purpose of setting a monster to avoid battle damages, and that's great. After little time, if protected and well-played, this card can even be better than gorz when he's summoned after the opponent's deck's boss' attack.

Overall, Gaia should be used, Uruquizas too. If you have one slot, play the one that would be better in your meta (gaia is good against decks like rabbit, six and others that have some monsters under 2500 ATK, uruquizas is good against, strangely, Inzektor, some wind-up situations, reaper, and cards like Maestroke, eventually GK, sometimes GB), I usually like uruquizas better (on DN), but depends on my deck and if it plays easily summonable beatsticks over 2500 ATK. If you have two slots, don't hesitate to play both.

That's All Folks.

Card of the Week #20: Metaion, the Timelord

Cannot be Special Summoned from the Deck. If you control no monsters, you can Normal Summon this card without Tributing. This card cannot be destroyed by battle or by card effects. You take no Battle Damage from battles involving this face-up Attack Position card. At the end of the Battle Phase, if this card attacked or was attacked: Return all other monsters on the field to the hand, and inflict 300 damage to your opponent for each card returned. During your Standby Phase: Shuffle this card into the Deck (even if face-down).

Lovely card, rulings, there we go:
If the a card returned to the hand via this card's effect isn't really in the hand (Plaguespreader summoned via its own effect, for example), that card won't be counted toward the number of cards for the damages.
Bouncing a Synchro monster, Fusion monster, or XYZ monster, is counted as bouncing them to the hand, so they will be counted.

No explanations.

Let's take a close look, then:
FIRE, nothing special since it can't be summoned from the deck;
LV10, some XYZs, go into Gustav with this and another monster;
Fairy, the great one, it's just perfect for this card;
Stats, 0 ATK and 0 DEF, not that they matter given the effect.

Well, I like this card. I used to play, and recently brought back to life, a fairy deck using Freya with Court of Justice and Valhalla to bring giant fairies. Needn't to say that this card was probably one of the best star of the deck, and funnier ones to play. In three copies I drew it frequently, and frequentily I did summon it. That was to clean the field from nasty XYZs, such as Zenmaines, Maestroke, or even giant synchros and hard-to-play-around monsters. Dealing some damages was even actually funny, and game winning if used right.
In this deck I used to play Freya as LV1 to trigger Court of Justice, and ATK booster for our fairies, while Athena and this dealt damages, while krystia was frequently blocking opponent's summons. Athena+this worked wonders, since you could attack with this, get rid of monsters on the field, summon athena somehow, tribute this and SS another monster so that we didn't get the -1 that this card usually has. Athena comboed quite a bit with Superbia and another athena, summoning this as finisher some times, while dealing other damages and having a field full of powerful beaters.
Valhalla was there to summon giant beatsticks from the void, and the rest was protection and staples. Good deck it was.

Talking of this card generally, I should underline how this card can be freely summoned from the hand, grave or banished zone. The only limit it puts, is that you can't from the deck. Actually, I think that if built well, Call of the Haunted should be its best friend. SS it via coth, wipe out the field, recycle CotH somehow (still thinking of a solid way to do so), use it again next turn, profit.
While this idea is still developing, one of the most possible ones is in Burn decks or monster-less (or deck with a low monster count) as a way to stall the opponent, do some damages, and have an empty field for your moves during your turn. As a level 10, it's great for random gustavs with metal reflect slime or other cards.

Having 0 ATK makes it a workable target for Limit Reverse, but even for reptilianne vaskii, if you were to play metaion in a reptilianne deck (needed to name this one since I'm thinking of how to efficiently play and build a reptilianne deck).


Actually, this post was just a fast one to put together various uses of this card. Today I had no time to write anything, since tomorrow there's English Oral Test (side note for who doesn't remember/know: Italian is my language, English is only the language I learnt at school) and need to study something, even if not truly needed. Oh, well.

See Ya.

Card of the Week #18: Wind-Up Rabbit

During either player's turn: You can target 1 "Wind-Up" monster you control; banish it until your next Standby Phase. This effect can be used only once while this card is face-up on the field.

Yeah, mainstream card, but there's a reason. Some rulings, first:
This card can banish itself.
This card is RETURNED on the field, not special summoned.
This card's effect is SS2, so you can chain it to cards like dark hole or trap hole.

Nothing to explain, just that they all show why this card is awesome.

Let's take a close look:
Wind-Up, great archetype we've got, with tons of supports.
EARTH, yeah, yet other supports.
LV3, more and more uses.
Beast-Warrior, Horn-friendly.
Stats, 1400 ATK, goes under BTH, but that doesn't matter since this card could avoid it anyway, but <1500 ATK is a key for cards like Giant Rat. 600 DEF, low, but you won't use this, anyway.

So, why am I reviewing such a mainstream card? You know I tend to hate mainstream things, but this one is different: I fell in love with it.
Basically, I started using this in madolches because it was a LV3 monster that stayed for looong time on the field that could have go into invoker with mew (that summoned a Gelato from the hand to get a search), SS another gelato from the deck and do Excalibur or, obviously, Tiaramisu.
After that, I started playing it in Yubel, since it was a mainstay on the field that would never get rid, so that I could use it to slowly beat the opponent.
Then, the Rabbit-mania appeared. I'm playing it in tons of places, wherever it has a little of use and I have an engine that can do semi-consistently R3s to go into Zenmaity.

The card itself is a star in Wind-Ups since it can trigger Factory and Magician with ease, comboeing and such.
However, what are the points in this card that makes it so awesome?
Being Wind-Up has some supports, if you want to try something strange splashing them into something else, just be sure to play tour guide since she's indirectly a recruiter for wind-ups with zenmaity.
Being EARTH is also quite awesome, and being LV3 could let you go into Naturia Synchros.
Being SS2, this card survives to pretty much everything.
Since it returnes instead of SS, you can use this card to avoid things like Black Garden, and that's the main reason why I wanted to talk about this in first place.
Using this with black garden could, theorically, be a 2800 Beater that avoids pretty much everything, supportable via horn that is theorically again a 1600 ATK bonus on all the beast monsters. Great deck, I should re-build it for this meta.
Garden slows down opponent's moves, generates tokens to ATK to deal damages to the opponent, and if you summon waghu at full ATK, too, you should have already won the game.
Along with the World Tree you should be able to fully control the field, wanghu controls <1400 ATK monsters, garden reduces their attacks to not let wanghu be destroyed, and world tree destroys anything, maybe even burden of the mighty to control even more opponent's monsters.
Using Horns to gain card advantage and ATK advantage, rabbit that's a 2800 attacker, Evilswarm Thunderbird (OCG) that is a 3900 attacker, that should be good enough with some protection for your field spell, for your wanghu and eventually your world tree.
Good deck is good.

Well, this was quite all, today I'm kinda tired, and I've got to play the piano briefly as an audition for a band, but that's not the problem, lol.
See Ya.

Card of the Week #17: Gravekeeper's Spy

FLIP: Special Summon 1 "Gravekeeper's" monster with 1500 or less ATK from your deck.

GKs, yup. No rulings for this one, easy and short effect.
Let's take a close look:
-Gravekeeper monster, supports, supports everywhere, necrovalley mainly.
-DARK, should I say something? This attribute has probably the higher number of supports, probabl even more of the LIGHT one.
-Spellcaster, spellcaster support, wonder wand, and Secret Village of the Spellcasters (yeah, lol).
-Stats, nice body, 1200 ATK and 2000 DEF, respectively 1700 and 2500 under Necrovalley, great, isn't it?

Set this, opponent attacks, get another monster, possibly XYZ or Synchro. I really like this card, it was a quite popular engine alongside guard or descendant, before the tour engine appeared.
I want to talk about this card because of some things I'm thinking of. I really hate laggia, so I like Snowman Eater a lot, I was going to review that, but then I noticed that it was in the main page of wikia, so I decided not to. Thinking of some cards with a similar effect, I thought of guard. 1900 DEF, bounce effect, not bad, really. However the review is on Spy, and not Guard, and there's a reason. In quite some time I learnt some tricks with Spy. Other than being a R4, he is compatible with Necrovalley to be a 2500 body, to give quite some problems to the already named Laggia, but even without it you can take care of cards like Thunder King. However, leaving apart this ordinary stuff, I learnt how this card's type is awesome. Spy, Summon another GK, bounce the other GK (if you summoned one that's not LV4) for Birdman, then go into Arcanite with Spy. If you summon a LV4 gravekeeper you can then just bounce Spy to reuse it and go into arcanite however. But, that's not all, if you bring Recruiter you can bounce Spy to reuse it and go into a random LV6 Synchro, while searching with Recruiter's effect. However, the main thing is Secret Village of Spellcasters. I truly love that card. Summon Spy, he gets attacked but not destroyed, get a monster, activate Village and have two bodies (one of them is 2000 DEF, the other could be pretty much anything) that lock your opponent's spells. A thing like this would be game against Dark World, but even heroes can't do too much, based on the build, though. Just solemn once their Stratos and you've won.
Just think of a deck that plays Gravekeeper's Spy, Gravekeeper's Guard, Gravekeeper's Descendant, Gravekeeper's Recruiter, Birdman, Village, Necrovalley (well, good card, if you play against a spellcaster deck you don't want to lose right away during game 1, do you?), tons of protection...
I like it.
Good Match-Up against Dark World, Rabbit Laggia, little advantage against Wind-Up, sad match-up against Inzektors, Chaos Dragon and Magical post-ABYR. Inzektor can be killed just using some protections before he can pull off some loops and comboes, Chaos Dragon puts quite some giant monsters on the field, so it's difficult to win against them, but if you manage to go into colossal fighter you should have win, while Magical is quite different. If you have Village, they'll bypass the spell-locking effect, but if you have Necrovalley they'll kill it right after activating their field spell, that they can search way faster than us. I'm siding Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell for that exact reason. If you can forbid the opponent's field spell, you shouldn't have problems anymore against spellcaster decks, go into necrovalley and you're just fine. With the side deck we can shift into a village-only build, against decks that do automatically lose against this card, or into a regular (or little teched) gravekeeper, so that you can use the advantages you still have.
I was even thinking of a little madolche engine. 3 Majoleine, 1 Butlerusk, get to search what you need, but that's just a concept.

Just for the sake of knowing, I wrote this without any pre-thinking, since the planned CotW would have been Snowman Eater, so I improvised everything.
That's All, Stay Tuned.