High-Defense Relinquished

So, at the library play session before this one I tried a hybrid beatdown/spirit deck, and it didn't fare so well. I won 7 duels but lost 3. Not wanting to show up with a bland beatdown again, I decided to throw together something that could be potentially fearsome but I had never tried before -- a highly defensive Relinquished deck. Here's the cards:

Tributes:

• 1x Relinquished
• 1x Jinzo
• 2x Summoned Skull

Beatsticks:

• 1x Dark Elf
• 1x Opticlops
• 1x Dark Blade
• 2x La Jinn the Mystical Genie of the Lamp
• 1x 7 Colored Fish

Defensive Front:

• 1x Labyrinth Wall
• 3x The Forgiving Maiden
• 2x Wall of Illusion

Ritual Support:

• 2x Sonic Bird
• 1x Mystic Tomato
• 1x Witch of the Black Forest
• 1x Sangan

Magic:

• 1x Black Illusion Ritual
• 1x Swords of Revealing Light
• 1x The Dark Door
• 1x Change of Heart
• 1x Fissure
• 1x Dark Hole
• 1x Mystical Space Typhoon
• 1x Harpie's Feather Duster
• 1x Pot of Greed
• 1x Axe of Despair
• 1x Monster Reborn
• 1x Premature Burial

Traps:

• 1x Shift
• 2x Trap Hole
• 2x Michizure
• 3x Waboku
• 1x Wall of Revealing Light
• 1x Magic Jammer
• 1x Seven Tools of the Bandit

It's pretty easy to see how this deck is supposed to work. There's a lot of stall power, Relinquished is extremely easy to get despite my only owning 1 copy, and with my strong front of beatsticks and heavy-hitting tribute monsters, I never EVER rely on him. He's just tech, something that adds an extra threat to this menagerie of monsters.

So, here's the postmortem. I won 11 duels with this deck and lost only one. The one duel I lost was to my pal who keeps showing up with unstoppable decks (the last two times he has stomped me using Magical Scientist -- I curse that card!).

What worked:

• The defensive front held very strong against everything that was thrown at it. I knew that Wall of Illusion would be a "shock" card that everyone forgot about, and sure enough. Man, the look on a kid's face when his Blue Eyes attacks a Wall of Illusion is just priceless. Especially when I've flipped a Waboku so my Wall survives. I really don't use The Forgiving Maiden's effect, I just like having the option -- it makes her a bit better than stuff like Giant Soldier or Mystical Elf.
  
  
• The Relinquished retrieval engine was very smoothe. I always had Relinquished in my hand within 2 or 3 turns, although interestingly I only ended up using him in 3 or 4 of the 12 duels I played. This deck probably would work better *without* him, but he's just cool and searching him out tends to put the less-experienced opponent on edge. Also, Witch can seek Summoned Skull and Jinzo as well, making her doubly useful.
  
  
• The tribute monsters ruled absolutely supreme. For some reason, a lot of kids don't grasp the concept that a 2500 ATK lv 6 monster is superior to Blue Eyes or almost anything else that's level 7+ (Barrel Dragon is one good exception of which I can think). Jinzo, as he has in every single session so far, turned a lot of the duels around. In one particular duel, Jinzo was destroyed twice, but each time I used one of my monster resurrection spells to get him back at strategic junctions. The only thing funnier to see than that Wall of Illusion thing is the look on their face when Jinzo comes back for the 3rd time.
  
  
• The traps were pretty well balanced, unlike they were in my spirit deck (for some reason I thought I should run 2x Seven Tools and 3x Magic Jammer, and that's all I ended up with in every single opening hand, argh!). Anyways, Shift was priceless. It comboed well with any of my defense monsters, but ESPECIALLY Wall of Illusion. Old Blue Eyes is gonna attack my Summoned Skull? Don't think so! Michizure proved VERY useful, and Trap Hole got 'em good more than once. Unfortunately, I didn't draw Wall of Revealing Light in ANY of the duels, so I am unable to tell how it might have affected the game.

What did NOT work:

• Labyrinth Wall. Can we say dead weight? And not because you can't summon it. No, it's because playing a tribute monster face-down in the current metagame is a DEAD give-away. There are not any tribute monsters with flip effects that I'm aware of, so tributing face-down MUST mean it's a high-defense monster. They always took this out with monster destruction cards. Only once did someone attack this card and take damage from it. It's kinda fun, but it's definitely not effective.
  
  
• The beatsticks. I didn't own a single 1900 ATK lv 4 monster until AFTER this play session, so I was stuck with these no-effect 1800 sad sacks. All they generally proved useful for was ramming into opponents' traps, and of course, tributes. Dark Elf did prove useful, however, holding the field down for about 3 turns once. Technically, she belongs in the defensive catagory, though ;)

I really enjoyed using this deck. It didn't do EVERYTHING I wanted it to do, but it did enough. The only one that could beat me was my Magical-Scientist-using friend who has won tournaments. I had a couple of close calls, but something (usually Jinzo) would always appear to turn it around.

Highlight: I once had Labyrinth Wall, both Summoned Skulls, Jinzo, and Relinquished all on the field. I had played The Dark Door earlier, and my opponent had nothing, but I couldn't take him out because of my own stupid spell card! Finally, I drew my MST and blew it up, proceeding to attack him with every creature (except LW obviously) and winning the duel.