The Element of Surprise

The Element of Surprise

The meta is the meta for a reason. The top decks are the best because they swarm well, search well, draw well, disrupt well, have broken cards that haven't been hit by the banlist yet, or some combination of those things. But after a while, the meta gets replaced by something else. Why? Partially, it's because banlists change and sometimes decks just can't recover, or new cards come out that counter them perfectly, or sometimes the meta changes generically and certain decks just don't have as much advantage anymore. But I think the main factor, above them all even, is the element of surprise.
   Take YCS Atlanta. How many dozens of X-saber decks were ran there? A lot... And many topped, just like they always have done this format and the format before. But what won? The top three slots went to Gravekeepers, an old and seemingly forgotten archtype. Are Gravekeepers generally a better archtype than X-Sabers? Royal Tribute is a bit broken and crazy annoying, and Necrovalley disrupts a lot of strategies, but my answer would be no, in general X-Sabers are the better archtype. The reason Gravekeepers won is: EVERYONE plays X-Sabers, so everyone expects them to be played, everyone knows how to play them and how they run, and everyone knows how to counter them, so they side against them. Gravekeepers are an old archtype to be sure, but the way people play them has changed drastically over the years, and no one has attempted to play them seriously in quite some time, so it was almost completely unexpected. Gravekeeper's Recruiter gave it even more consistancy and search power as well. And even the way Frazier Smith (and Sean Mcabe, they made the deck together) made the deck was a little unique. They mained 2 Starlight Roads, while most people don't even side 1, much less main any. But why not? Heavy Storm's out, but Dark Hole and 2 more Black Rose Dragon are in. Personally i would have run something else, but it served it's purpose: screwing with the opponent's head by being unique. The side deck was pretty genius as well. They could side out certain spells for Cyber Dragons and/or Malefic Stardust Dragons if they need bigger monsters and to REALLY screw with your opponent. I can guarantee you NOBODY will expect you to actually use Malefic Stardust Dragon, a card most people see as being as useless as Earthbound Immortals. In actuality, it's a free 2500 ATK beatstick that protects Necrovalley, a key card in Gravekeepers. 
   The idea of the element of surprise is to make your opponent pull a Tristain Taylor and say "Holy *bleep* on a *bleep* sandwich!!!!! What did you just do?!?!?!" There's nothing quite so sarisfying as beating someone with a card no one really cares about except for you. It may sound corny, but Yusei Fudo was right: "No card is truly useless, you just have to find a use for it"... Okay, I lied, some cards ARE useless, but many have a use or may have a use later down the road when new cards come out (example: Rescue Cat and Mokey Mokey).
   Today we'll make a deck around 2 different and seemingly random commons that no one cares about. But man do they work together amazingly! For our build, we will follow Smith and Mccabe's lead and take an old, well-supported archtype that not a lot of people use (at least not in the way we will) for the main frame of our deck, and utilize a different and somewhat forgotten art of fighting: fusion summoning. I hope I haven't lost you yet, bear with me . First up for our random commons, let's rewind back to the set Phantom Darkness. With all the flashy and expensive support that came out in that pack, this card was sadly overlooked:

Chain Material

Spoiler:

"Any time you fusion summon a monster(s) this turn, you can remove from play, from your side of the field, hand, deck, or graveyard, fusion material monsters that are listed on the fusion monster card, and use them as fusion material monsters. You cannot attack the turn this card is activated. If you used this effect for a fusion summon, the summoned fusion monster(s) is destroyed during the end phase."

   Pretty useless right? Well no, and I will show you why not with the next random common:

Spoiler:

Fusion Gate
"As long as this card remains face-up on the field, a fusion monster can be fusion summoned without "Polymerization". The fusion material monsters used for the fusion summon are not sent to the graveyard but removed from play."

I know what you're saying: "Yeah yeah Harper, I get it, if you have both you can fusion summon for free without losing advantage until every monster in your deck is gone, but so what? You can't attack with them and the fusions die during the end phase. And then you have no monsters left." In this deck, that's actually good, check it out:

Elemental Hero The Shining

Spoiler:

"1 Elemental Hero monster + 1 light monster
This card cannot be special summoned except by fusion summon. This card gains ATK equal to the number of your removed from play Elemental Hero monsters x300. When this card is sent from the field to the graveyard, you can select up to two of your removed from play Elemental Hero monsters and add them to your hand."

See the combo now? Activate Fusion Gate, activate Chain Material, fusion summon (using Elemental Heroes from your deck so you don't lose advantage) 3 Elemental Hero The Shining (and maybe Elemental Hero Absolute Zero). When they die at the end of the turn, you get 6, count 'em, 6, Elemental Heroes to your hand, making Chain Material a +5 card that sets up the grave for Miracle Fusion. And if you wisely summoned Zero too, your opponent's monsters will also be dead when it dies, which usually garners even more advantage, making Chain Material (in the best case scenario) a +10 card o_O. If you want to be nitpicky, it techinically takes Fusion Gate as well to use the combo, so depending on how you count advantage it's a +4 (at LEAST). But Fusion Gate is far from dead while it's on the field. Once it's your turn again, remember, you still have 6 Elemental Heroes in your hand just waiting to be fused into Absolute Zeroes or Elemental Hero Gaias. "But wait Harper, then you'd be giving yourself -1's each time you fuse, just to get an Absolute Zero." Well shoot, I guess Blackwings should stop using Blackwing - Sirocco The Dawn + Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind to synchro summon since it's a -1. Even without Chain Material, Fusion Gte is amazing. If you have Stratos and Fusion Gate, you can summon Stratos, add Voltic or Prisma to your hand, and fuse them into The Shining without losing advantage. When The Shining dies (provided that it doesn't get removed from play or negted by Solemn), you get back Stratos and Voltic/Prisma. Then you can summon Stratos, add another Elemental Hero to your hand, and refuse Stratos and Voltic/Prisma into another The Shining so you end up keeping advantag despite The Shining dying (that's why I wish that I could run 9 or so of The Shining). Oddly enough, even after all that it can do, your opponent won't want to "Mystical Space Typhoon" Fusion Gate even if they draw MST because, 1. They have no idea what's going on or what to kill, and 2. They have better things to MST, like Solemns (Because once you thin your deck by 8 cards by using 1 card, Solemns are a lot easier to draw into). In a weird kind of way, Absolute Zero can be more effective than Stardust. Many decks are really aggressive and otk-happy, but instead of your advantage relying on your monster being there, you rely on it NOT being there. It's more difficult to otk when all of your monsters will be destroyed. I'm not saying Absolute Zero is better than Stardust, but does have a better surprise factor certainly, since people already know how to get around Stardust.
   So, time for a decklist. Let's start with my generic Spell/trap lineup

6 spells:
Monster reborn
Dark hole
Mystical space typhoon x2
Book of moon x2

8 traps:
Mirror force
Bottomless trap hole x2
Torrential tribute
Solemn judgement
Solemn warning x2
Trap stun

Having 4 or even 5 spell/trap hate cards instead of just 3 is great, but with decks like these, you're going to have space issues a lot so we'll have to cut down. Now for our tech: Fusion Gate and Chain Material. Chain Material is a deathdraw at 3, but you won't ever draw it at 1, so 2 is perfect. Fusion Gate on the other hand is essential to the engine, so we'll run 3 and even Terraforming if we find room. We'll also add 3 Miracle Fusion, because it's the best way ever to fusion summon, and it's so easy to set up the grave here, making it so Miracle Fusion is never dead.

12 spells:
Monster reborn
Dark hole
Mystical space typhoon x2
Book of moon x2
Miracle fusion x3
Fusion gate x3

10 traps:
Mirror force
Bottomless trap hole x2
Torrential tribute
Solemn judgement
Solemn warning x2
Trap stun
Chain material x2

That leaves 18 slots for monsters... More than enough. We want to run monsters which can double as the "element material" and the "hero material" since The Shining's effect only works on Elemental Heroes. So our skeleton monster lineup will look like this:

9 monsters
Elemental hero stratos
Elemental hero prisma x2
Elemental hero voltic x2
Elemental hero ocean x2
Elemental hero wildheart x2

Prisma is a hero and light, not only that but he can set up the graveyard for Miracle Fusion really well by dumping heroes. Voltic is a hero and light, and also has a nice swarming effect late game. Voltic into Voltic into another rfg-ed Elemental Hero. Yay for +1s! Usually you want to make sure you don't purposefully draw into him though, his ATK is less than impressive. Ocean is a hero and water, his effect is decent, but a bit slow and not suited much to this deck. The reverse toolboxing comes from the rfg zone, not the graveyard. Wildheart is a hero and earth, and being invulnerable to traps is nice.
   9 monsters is laughably small though, so let's find some tech. Cyber Dragon is good here as an extra beatstick, as well as being light for The Shining. Also, you can use Prisma's
effect to reveal Chimeratech Fortress Dragon and send Cyber Dragon to the grave to set up for Miracle Fusion if you need to. We'll run 2. We'll also run 2 Honest because it's awesome, it's light, and we have 6 targets for it's effect (not including fusions). Also we'll add 2 Snowman Eater for generic removal and another water target for Absolute Zero. So here's our list:

15 monsters:
Elemental hero stratos
Elemental hero prisma x2
Elemental hero voltic x2
Elemental hero ocean x2
Elemental hero wildheart x2
Cyber dragon x2
Honest x2
Snowman eater x2

Now we have 3 slots left for tech spells and traps. Since we need this to be consistent and we have only 15 monsters, we'll add 2 E-Emergency Call and 2 Pot of Duality for speed, and we'll take out Torrential Tribute. So here's the finished product:

15 monsters:
Elemental hero stratos
Elemental hero prisma x2
Elemental hero voltic x2
Elemental hero ocean x2
Elemental hero wildheart x2
Cyber dragon x2
Honest x2
Snowman eater x2 

16 spells:
Monster reborn
Dark hole
Mystical space typhoon x2
Book of moon x2
Miracle fusion x3
Fusion gate x3
Pot of duality x2
E-emergency call x2

9 traps:
Mirror force
Bottomless trap hole x2
Solemn judgement
Solemn warning x2
Trap stun
Chain material x2

15 extra:
Elemental hero the shining x3
Elemental hero absolute zero x3
Elemental hero Gaia x2
Elemental hero Terra firma (just so you can reveal it to dump Ocean with Prisma's effect)
Elemental hero wildedge (same as above but for Wildheart)
Chimeratech fortress dragon
+ generic synchros (in case you Monster Reborn a tuner)

Side deck is whatever you want. Interesting side deck choices would be Paradox Fusion, Super Polymerization, and Dragon knight Draco-equiste. Another thing you can do with your side deck would be to side cards to completely change the deck into a Light Hero Beat deck in game 2 to further mess with your opponent's mind and make their siding useless. You could side like this:

-2 Elemental hero prisma
-2 Elemental hero voltic
-2 Elemental hero ocean
-2 Elemental hero wildheart
-3 Fusion gate
-2 Chain material
+3 Elemental hero neos alius
+3 Thunder king rai-oh
+1 Cyber dragon
+3 Gemini spark
+1 Pot of duality
+2 Hero Blast

So is this deck capable enough to win a YCS? Not now, because Elemental Hero The Shining hasn't been released in TCG, only in OCG and KC . But can it when The Shining comes out? I think, with a skilled enough duelist piloting it, it's entirely possible.  

Great article man, I've been trying to think of a new deck idea for while and this sorta of gave me one, but I'm gonna try this out before i make that one!!!

would i suggest .... -1 warning +1 terraforming ?

cuz in this deck the main point of its fusion gate not miracle fusion, like in the ordinary light beat where warning was at 2 ... so -1 warning +1 terraforming is better ... nice idea btw

Nice article, but it's actually not new at all, this deck will be used a lot when shining comes out.
In ocg this deck is one of the meta, since they got not just shining but also Great Tornado and parralel world fusion, which makes deck even more explosive. Moreover, fire fusion will come out in the ocg soon (don't remember name, blaze or somthing maybe, idk), this deck was introduced long time ago.
Also there's not just decks that resolve around fusion gate and chain material, there's also for example a deck called "bahamut Zero" which uses 3 king of swamps and 3 polymerisation's combined with debris dragon: drop swamp, take poly, summon debris, explode field with brd, use miracle fusion on EH and swamp and you got zero - fun huh?

yea the deck with swamp ... i heard about it too ... never tried out these fusions tho ... i dont keep up with the meta ... i am an anti-meta player

its called bahamut zero because the guy that made it, they call him bahamut haha. i believe he was the world champion a while back, but i might be thinking of someone else =b haha.

i've seen some videos from a friend of mine from singapore. the deck is pretty good. i'd make one but i'm a back deck builder haha

Frost: thanks man! I've been trying out my own crazy idea and it's extremely aggressive, as long as you have fusion gate there's no such thing as dead draws.
Milkman: I thought about it for a while and decided to try it out. Fusion gates have been good to me while I was testing the deck, but I'm paranoid that I won't draw one. I'm not dead without it but Fusion Gate is very key. I also found PoD wasn't impressive in this deck. It's okay but not necessary, it usually messes me up more than anything with the no special summoning thing. I took both out, and put in a third E-call and a second Terraforming. We'll see how it tests that way
tmiracle: o_O meta, are you serious? I've never heard of such a deck before (although I don't keep up with ocg much). I have actually heard of Bahumut Zero before though, I made a build for that too, and I like it quite a bit. It gives good pluses, I think I like it better than the old Destiny Hero engine for Zero decks. I call mine Miracle King though haha. The fire fusion is called Elemental Hero Nova Master. When he hits KC I will drop the snowman eaters and put in two Elemental Hero Heat so I can use him to further speed the deck along. I forgot to put Great Tornado in the decklist for this, I use two in my build, even though Stratos is the only wind type. I recycle him a lot xD.
John: interesting, I wondered where the name came from. I've also heard that it came from some final fantasy dragon and it was called that bc you can summon Black Rose and Gungnir... Idk though. It's not too hard to build really, you should give it a try

In my KC build i use avian to make up 2 winds.
Why avian? since i never summon anything exept prisma and stratos, it goes perfectly as fusion material, moreover it's prisma target, and by adding this to my deck, he unlocks more fusion targets like wild wingman.
Also i run 1 king of swamps and 1 woodsman together with 1 poly, poly is kinda underrated there days, actually it can make some very explosive combo's combined with fusion gate and miracle fusion. I also use super poly, for otk moves and opponent field dissruption, it's godly card, especially when used with zero, i won't reveal my build, but my build is even capable of summoning elemental hero divine neos, and in tourney, this deck won 8 out of 9 matches, against strong players, most of them have several decks in reality whick means that they are no joke.
P.S. sorry for my bad english, I just woke up, so i'm kind of tired and that affects me a lot, lol.

Harper7000 wrote:

Frost: thanks man! I've been trying out my own crazy idea and it's extremely aggressive, as long as you have fusion gate there's no such thing as dead draws.
Milkman: I thought about it for a while and decided to try it out. Fusion gates have been good to me while I was testing the deck, but I'm paranoid that I won't draw one. I'm not dead without it but Fusion Gate is very key. I also found PoD wasn't impressive in this deck. It's okay but not necessary, it usually messes me up more than anything with the no special summoning thing. I took both out, and put in a third E-call and a second Terraforming. We'll see how it tests that way
tmiracle: o_O meta, are you serious? I've never heard of such a deck before (although I don't keep up with ocg much). I have actually heard of Bahumut Zero before though, I made a build for that too, and I like it quite a bit. It gives good pluses, I think I like it better than the old Destiny Hero engine for Zero decks. I call mine Miracle King though haha. The fire fusion is called Elemental Hero Nova Master. When he hits KC I will drop the snowman eaters and put in two Elemental Hero Heat so I can use him to further speed the deck along. I forgot to put Great Tornado in the decklist for this, I use two in my build, even though Stratos is the only wind type. I recycle him a lot xD.
John: interesting, I wondered where the name came from. I've also heard that it came from some final fantasy dragon and it was called that bc you can summon Black Rose and Gungnir... Idk though. It's not too hard to build really, you should give it a try

oh shoot, you're right about the dragon thing. i was thinking of another deck that some dude from singapore made lol

damn harper, i was hoping never talked about this deck in any forums cua i was actualy gathering the cards i need for the deck cuz i was aware of that long time ago. zero is alreadytaking more value lately and all the other elemental heroes will too. Im happy i have my 3 ultimate alius already cuz i run light beat IRL and im pretty sure you wont find them for a 15$ trade anymore XD but yeah when those elemental heroes will finaly come out in TCG we will see the real power of heroes and super poly. shining give you hand advantage to activate that super poly for free.

Gaia againt : scraps ' sabers . machina . gadgets
zero againt : damn fish FTK
Equiste against : debris !"#$$ decks

when tornado and shining will come out we wil counter debris decks more easily and even mirror matchs or sworns.

cant waitj to see if konami is alreay making the dark and the fire elemental hero !

unless they make shining and tornado ocg exclusives. then what? haha

Shining comes out in march and great tornado comes out in STOR . Nova Master...who knows? He barely came out in OCG. The dark one isn't even in OCG yet .
Dude...this deck is AMAZING! I took tmiracle's advice abd moved Super Poly from side to main and it's worked beautifully. Super Poly is very lol, the only bad thing is when you go against only dark decks (like bw). Then you have to side it out. I've updated it in other ways too...this is my gift to you DGA. It's won 20-1 in testing

Shining Gate 2.0 (40)
       Monsters: (15)
Elemental Hero Stratos
Elemental Hero Prisma x2
Elemental Hero Neos Alius x2
Elemental Hero Voltic x2
Elemental Hero Ocean x2
Elemental Hero Woodsman x2
Elemental Hero Heat x2
Honest x2
       Spells: (17)
Monster Reborn
Dark Hole
Mystical Space Typhoon x2
Giant Trunade
Miracle Fusion x3
Fusion Gate x3
Terraforming x2
E-Emergency Call x3
Super Polymerization
       Traps: (
Mirror Force
Bottomless Trap Hole x2 
Solemn Judgement
Solemn Warning x2
Chain Material x2
       Extra: (15)
Elemental Hero The Shining x3
Elemental Hero Absolute Zero x3
Elemental Hero Nova Master x2
Elemental Hero Great Tornado x2
Elemental Hero Gaia x2
Elemental Hero Terra Firma
Elemental Hero Inferno
Chimeratech Fortress Dragon/Dragon Knight Draco-equiste

Until Nova Master hits KC, i've been going back and forth between using Avian/Grand Mole/Divine Neos and Neos/Rainbow Dragon/Rainbow Neos. Both work great. The rainbow variant has slightly more dead draws bc of neos and rainbow, but with as long as you have Fusion Gate you're good. And Rainbow Neos is so boss with all his awesome effects and ridiculous atk. I'm considering removing the BTHs for somethig else. Deck isn't trap reliant. I might put in more monsters, Pot Of Dualities, Future Fusion w/Vision Hero Trinity, a third Terraforming, or some combination of them all. Enjoy the decklist guys...FUSION>SYNCHRO!!!! Yeah, I said it

EDIT: forgot to mention...I looked up the rulings for Chain Material. As it turns out, you don't HAVE to activte it's effect. So with the usual combo with Material+Gate, you can fuse 4 heroes with monsters from your deck, leaving you with Zero, Shining, Gaia, and Tornado. Then, you can STOP using Chain Material and just fuse with Fusion Gate, fusing Zero and Gaia/Tornado for Zero (and nuking the opponent's monsters in the process), fuse Shining and Gaia/Tornado for Shining (who will have a bazillion attack points by now). Since these were fused with Gate, they won't die at the end phase

you still can't attack the turn you activate chain material haha

looks really good. the first deck that you tried to make a while back was pretty awesome so this one must be godlike haha

It sux that you can't attack during the turn you do all that, but the combo is still really nice and those monsters shud be able to last another turn

Also a really nice thing about Fusion Gate is that Solemn Warning cannot be used to stop you from using it.

Elemental Heroes are about deck thinning.

I would easily recommend on having 2 Terraformings and 3 E-Calls.
As a deck that has many spells, Summoner Monk is awesome.

Those 10 traps are overkill and a deck that can effectively Fusion 3 (At least) Zeroes doesn't need Dark Hole.

2 Chain Material, 2 warnings, 1 Tools, Judgment, and Mirror Force are good enough.

---

Also, Chain Material - Fusion Gate can do even better combos.

You can end the turn with 1 Shining and 1 Zero that are left on the field (+ Zero Nuke) by Fusing Fusions that are on the field already with Fusion Gate, not via Chain Material while still sending 1-2 Shinings to the grave in the End Phase.

This thins the deck well and increases the chances you will draw traps and Mircale Fusions later in the game.

Since your opponent has 0 monsters on the field and you have Zero and a Shining with over 5k Attack, he won't have much to do.
If you decided to get Stratos back to end via The Shining's eff, you can easily destroy 2 face down cards of your opponents. (And he will most probably set cards since he doesn't have much to do).

Hence not being able to attack doesn't suck that much. You can easily prepare everything to push really hard pressure on your opponent the next 1-2 turns and increase your 'sacking ability' by controlling what will be left for you to draw.

A nice tech is Neos + Ranbow Neos.
It might harm consistency a bit, but an 4500 beater that can get rid of a backrow or empty your opponent's grave as well as sending to his decks cards that he doesn't want to draw. (If it's a grave depended deck) hurts their moves and consistency.

Sorry Disso, for some reason I never saw that you replied :O. Anyway, yeah your ideas are great, I've come tithe same conclusions with testing. Some things I even said below the article . At first I didn't like not using many traps, but after your Chain Material play that's basically all that's left for you to draw, not that you need them anyway xD. Stratos's second eff is one most people forget. Like you said with the Chain Material, all you have to do is fuse Gaia tornado zero and 2 shinings, fuse gai and shining for shining, fuse zero and tornado for zero, blow up the field with zero's eff, let the other shining die to get advantage and get back stratos to blow up whatever backrow they have. If they Solemn Stratos...most likely they will lose for paying that many lp. Here's the latest build, tell me what you think. I may fit in a sevel tools

Shining Gate (40)
       Monsters: (15)
Elemental Hero Stratos
Elemental Hero Prisma x2
Elemental Hero Neos Alius x3
Elemental Hero Voltic x2
Elemental Hero Ocean x2
Elemental Hero Woodsman x2
Elemental Hero Heat x2
Honest
       Spells: (18)
Monster Reborn
Dark Hole
Giant Trunade
Book Of Moon
Mystical Space Typhoon x2
Fusion Gate x3
Terraforming x3
Miracle Fusion x3
E-Emergency Call x3
       Traps: (7)
Mirror Force
Torrential Tribute 
Solemn Judgement
Solemn Warning x2
Chain Material x2
       Extra: (15)
Elemental Hero The Shining x3
Elemental Hero Absolute Zero x3
Elemental Hero Nova Master x2
Elemental Hero Great Tornado x2
Elemental Hero Gaia x2
Elemental Hero Terra Firma
Elemental Hero Inferno
Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
       Side: (15)
Rivalry Of Warlords x3
Super Polymerization x2
Cyber Dragon x2
Mask Of Restrict x2
Dust Tornado x2
D.D. Crow x2
Bottomless Trap Hole x2

Until Nova Master arrives I may use Rainbow Neos like you said. He's the proest thing ever xD