High-Defense Ritual Iteration

Ritual Monsters:

• 1x Relinquished OR The Masked Beast

Tributes:

• 2x Summoned Skull
• 1x Jinzo
• 1x Total Defense Shogun

Beatsticks:

• 1x Zombyra the Dark
• 1x Slate Warrior
• 1x Mad Dog of Darkness
• 1x Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke
• 1x D. D. Assailant

Defensive Front:

• 3x The Forgiving Maiden
• 2x Wall of Illusion
• 1x Legendary Jujitsu Master

Ritual Support:

• Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands
• Senju of the Thousand Hands
• Sonic Bird

General Effect Monsters:

• Penguin Soldier
• Magician of Faith
• Sinister Serpent

Spells:

• 1x Axe of Despair
• 1x Black Illusion Ritual OR Curse of the Masked Beast
• 1x Change of Heart
• 1x Continuous Destruction Punch
• 1x Mystical Space Typhoon
• 1x Nobleman of Crossout
• 1x Pot of Greed
• 1x Premature Burial
• 1x Scapegoat
• 1x Swords of Revealing Light
• 1x The Dark Door
• 1x The Forceful Sentry

Traps:

• 1x Call of the Haunted
• 1x Magic Jammer
• 1x Michizure
• 1x Needle Wall
• 1x Raigeki Break
• 1x Seven Tools of the Bandit
• 1x Shift
• 2x Waboku
• 1x Wall of Revealing Light

OK, once you've read my rant, you'll know this play session wasn't as fun as the ones before it and some of the reasons why. But, beyond all of that mess, there's the deck I used. This is an iteration of my previous deck, upgraded, experimentally adjusted, and made ban compliant. I figured the bans weren't going to be the popular format at the play session, and I was right, thus I brought along Witch, Sangan, Tomato, Harpie's Feather Duster, Dark Hole, and Monster Reborn, which with my alternate ritual choice made a sort of side deck from hell. I did swap some of these cards into and out of the deck since I found myself facing pre-ban decks chock full of nightmarish broken cards, and I have to say it actually broke the focus of the deck. I figured I could make one that could be convertible, and I figured wrong.

My unadjusted win/loss record would be 3 to 4, however, there was misconduct during one duel which I lost, and there was another final duel at the end in which I was performing strongly but had to quit (they ran us out at 4:00 pm sharp, darn it). Adjusting for this, I believe the proper record is 4 to 3, and all three of the remaining losses were to the same person, whom I did beat once. This means I faced 4 decks total, and 3 of those I defeated. Not so bad with everything considered. However, I can feel my collection aging against the metagame despite my efforts to get better cards (this iteration represents the sum of ALL my efforts, too). I know this deck is not tournament worthy, but then it was designed to be fun and to fit my personal style, not to win tournaments, so I'll refrain from judging it by an unfair standard.

What worked:

• The beatsticks. Stronger and slightly fewer in number than last time, this time they did carry their weight and prove useful, although not as much as they would have at the play session before due to the proliferation of Giant Orc. Does everyone run that ugly thing in sets of threes now? Sheesh! 1900 was once top of the line, now it seems to be poop. I definitely could have used some kind of strategy to give them an ATK boost. D. D. Assailant, even though he only has 1700 ATK, came through for me a couple of times. Nobody really wants to get their high-attack monster removed from play >:)
  
  
• The general effect monsters. These guys are old standbys that found their way back in due to the banning of Witch and Sangan (which if you recall, I HATE). This also made Tomato mostly useless, hence his side-decking. Of the three, Sinister Serpent is the one that proved invaluable and allowed me to finally defeat the opponent who had beaten me three times in a row. His infinite Graveyard recursion was a life saver, because you simply cannot afford to run out of monsters when facing three Giant Orcs and a bunch of their buddies. His effect allowed me to stall the opponent for almost 30 minutes as I slowly, opportunistically drained his life points in a dangerous dance around his extreme beatsticks.
  
  
• The spells. Although not highly focused, this rag-tag band of cards runs the gauntlet of effects and gives me a spectrum of support. Most useful were Swords, Pot, The Dark Door (once again), and most of all, Scapegoat. I considered running Stray Lambs too, but ran out of space for it.
  
  
• The tributes. Jinzo still rules. And Summoned Skull is still stronger than a lot of people think. 2500 for one normal tribute can be lethal when backed up properly. I still wish he had some kind of effect, though. Total Defense Shogun worked well as a replacement for the dull Labyrinth Wall, too, and was very fun to use. Putting the Axe of Despair on him makes him pure, lethal tech ;)

What did NOT work:

• The ritual aspect. With the Relinquished retrieval engine *SMASHED TO BITS* by the abhorred Witch and Sangan bans, and my lack of enthusiasm to take out my standby effect monsters to add Witch and Sangan back in, I only got to summon him once. With the preban "Rip and Tear!!!" madness going on like it was, he only lasted about 3 turns on the field. During that time, he did do some serious damage by taking control of a Giant Orc, though. I'm still sold on his effect, for when I can pull it off, it pays off several times over. Also, there's something neat about a monster you can summon by Tributing a Scapegoat token.
  
  
• The defensive front. Wow, what happened guys? You let me down after being so strong before. Actually, I definitely felt a deficit here when I designed the deck, because of the Forgiving Maidens. Oh yeah, I TRIED to find something better in my collection to replace them with, but it just wasn't there. My Walls of Illusion kept getting smashed by spell cards instead of catching my opponents' monsters. Legendary Jujitsu Master DID, however, get to send several monsters back to the opponents' decks, something which can be very wicked depending on the timing. If this deck gets reiterated in the future, he's staying in for certain.
  
  
• The traps. Either drawn at the wrong time or proving themselves too expensive to activate when I needed them, this definitely ended up being the worst part of the deck. Clearly there are too many traps to start with for a deck with Jinzo. I tried cutting it down, but with the bans in place, I needed more spell/trap destruction/negation, and most of that comes in the form of trap cards these days (no, I don't own Heavy Storm, so stop asking :P). This time I DID play Wall of Revealing Light in two separate duels. Once it helped me superbly. The second time it only sped up my demise by requiring a payment of 2000 LP. And with the Giant Orcs running rampant like bulls down an avenue in Spain, the payment of 2000 proved ineffective. 3000 would have worked, but geez, that's just unreasonable.

So, there you have it. What was a great deck last year iterated into what was something of a disappointment this year. It just goes to show that metagame shifts aren't entirely predictable, especially when you've been out of the loop for a while like I have. Also, as you'll see in my rant above, the situation was vastly different and thus all bets were off.

I still came out with a winning record (when adjusted, which I feel is right given the circumstances), so I'm not ready to condemn this deck to the dust bin. However, I think that if they have another session next month AND I feel like going, I will try something totally different, just for a change of pace.