Deck Profile: Chaos Mash

Pretty busy week, just started school and I’m gearing up to go to the Philippines for 2 weeks at the beginning of October (so I wont be on the podcast then) so I’ve been a little busy. I figured then I’d just do something simple and give you a deck profile of a deck that I’ve been having a lot of fun with recently, which is my Monster Mash deck. For those who don’t know, Monster Mash is a deck variant that’s all monster cards to facilitate the use of two specific cards: Gallis the Star Beast and Witch of the Black Rose. I don’t run Witch though, because I think that card sucks. I’ll explain that later. The variant I’m running is rather original, I’m not focusing on the Gallis OTK nearly at all and I run some obscure tech choices and based the deck around one of my favorite cards: Genex Ally Triforce.

I’ll start off with the decklist.

MONSTERS(39):

• 3 Gallis the Star Beast
• 3 Genex Ally Birdman
• 1 Genex Power Planner
• 3 Dimensional Alchemist
• 3 Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress
• 1 Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
• 2 Card Trooper
• 2 Tour Guide From the Underworld
• 1 Sangan
• 1 Koa’ki Meiru Doom
• 2 Caius the Shadow Monarch
• 2 Battle Fader
• 2 Tragoedia
• 1 Gorz the Emissary of Darkness
• 3 Dark Nephtys
• 1 The Dark Creator
• 1 Chaos Sorcerer
• 1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
• 2 Cyber Dragon
• 2 Spirit Reaper
• 1 Honest

SPELLS(1):

• 1 Monster Reborn

EXTRA(15):

• 2 Genex Ally Triforce
• 1 Black Rose Dragon
• 1 Arcanite Magician
• 1 Stardust Dragon
• 1 Scrap Dragon
• 1 Locomotion R-Genex
• 1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
• 2 Leviair the Sea Dragon
• 2 Wind-Up Zenmaines
• 1 Leviath Dragon
• 1 Maestroke the Symphony Djinn
• 1 No. 39: Utopia

SIDE DECK (4):

• 3 Trap Eater
• 3 Mei-Kou, Master of Barriers
• 3 Effect Veiler

There’s a couple things I must explain first for anyone who’s familiar with Monster Mash. Skip over the next 3 paragraphs if you want to just learn about how the deck works.

First, I don’t run the FTK build. If you’re unfamiliar, the FTK/OTK is done with a 3 card combo: Birdman, Gallis and Koa’ki Meiru Doom. You normal summon Doom. (Doom’s effect is that all Light and Dark monsters have there effects negated during the Main Phase) Special Summon Gallis from your hand. (Gallis’ effect is that you can mill the top card of your deck, if it’s a monster he’s special summoned and the opponent takes 200 x the milled monster’s level) Then you attempt to activate Birdman’s effect by returning Gallis to your hand. Doom negates Birdman’s effect so Birdman stays in hand and Gallis is returned to your hand. Then you just repeat by spamming the Gallis until the opponent is Burned to death. I don’t run that build because firstly it’s boring and second because it’s inconsistent. Doom dead draws like the worst of them since he can’t do anything helpful for the deck except the OTK, so I lowered him down to 1 to provide the extra Tour Guide target since he’s a level 3 Fiend by chance.

Secondly, I run that one spell, Monster Reborn. Monster Reborn seems a little odd considering Gallis in the first place, and secondly because if I where to run 1 Spell you’d initially think I’d run either Pot of Avarice or Heavy Storm instead considering the nature of the deck. On the first note, since I’m not running the OTK build, it’s not dire that I always mill a monster with Gallis, that being said I can usually afford to let Gallis die (although it’s not optimal). At the same time, with only 1 Spell it’s incredibly rare it will actually happen. On the second note, while it did make more sense initially to use the aforementioned spells, Monster Reborn is infinitely more versatile in this deck than any other in the end due to milling and the nature of the monsters I run. The deck essentially runs walking counterparts to common staples like MST in the form of Lyla or Dark Nephtys meaning Monster Reborn easily toolboxes those out of the graveyard and can quickly power shift the game.

The third thing is that I don’t run Witch of the Black Rose. Usually it’s considered a staple (as far as monster mash is concerned), but I felt that the card really amounted to nothing. While yes it is “a plus one” it always inevitably results in a neg 1 to be coupled with that. When Witch is normal summoned while you control no cards you draw a card and if it’s a monster you add it to your hand, if not send it to the grave and destroy Witch. The problem is, there’s nothing to do with the Witch before or after you summon it, so it’s just a useless turn. You can special summon monsters and Synchro or XYZ with it, but that just means you’ll take a neg 1 to XYZ with it, which is pointless. Why not just not run it, and that’s what I did and the deck became wildly better after I made that change.

Okay, now to talk about how the deck works. The motion in the deck is almost all facilitated by Genex Ally Birdman. Your goal is usually to first try to simplify the game state using cards like Lyla, Card Trooper and Dark Nephtys so that you can make your plays without fear. Push through there spells and traps while milling and defend yourself from there pushes with Gorz, Fader, Spirit Reaper, Tragoedia and other generally threatening monsters when need be. You’ll keep this all continuously going through Chaos cycling.

First off, I should note that Tragoedia is a particular behemoth in this deck, he’s probably better than Gorz, and lucky for us we’ve got two of him at our disposal. He’s got ludicrous attack points because you pretty much keep everything in your hand. The ideal play is usually to drop him after the opponent attacks a first turn Card Trooper. With that opening you’ll end up with a huge Trag afterwards and a setup graveyard and no loss of card advantage. Because of the milling and mass monster count Trag’s level modulation is really easy to use effectively as well.  You’ll almost always have a level to help with the situation in the grave, especially late game. Similarly due to the decks high monster count and the many different level’d monsters, you’ll be taking your opponent’s monsters frequently which makes for some really easy Synchro and XYZ plays as well as easy problem solving. An opposing BLS isn’t a huge deal when you can just take it from your opponent on a whim.
Like I said in the opening, the deck is based around the card Genex Ally Triforce. He’s got three different effects that depend on what attribute the non-tuner that was used to summon him is. He has an EARTH, FIRE and a LIGHT effect. The Light effect is the most relevant, but the Earth effect can be nice to. The Fire effect will probably never come up, so I wont mention it. About Triforce, he’s a level 7 Synchro that requires a Genex tuner and any non-tuner. That means Birdman and a level 4 monster, or maybe a level 1 and a 3. He has a solid 2500 ATK and is a Dark Machine. Most of the most simple ways to summon him involve special summoning one of the decks monsters (Usually Gallis, but also Cyber Dragon, Nephtys, Chaos Sorcerer, BLS, Trag and Gorz) or by having an excess monster from a previous turn (like spirit reaper or a Dimensional Alchemist the opponent wouldn’t attack). You next get a level 4 Light monster on the field, and ideally have a Dimensional Alchemist in the graveyard (or the level 4 is D-Alch himself). Return the excess monster to hand for Birdman and then Synchro into Triforce with the level 4 Light so he can get his Light effect. The Light effect is if he was summoned with a Light non-tuner, once per turn he can revive a Light monster in the graveyard in face-down defense position. (as an interesting side note, this effect was initially intended to be used with Worms, but it’s good for this too)

You’re usually going to be bringing back D-Alchemist since he’s a nice floater and he can always at worst re-use the Birdman you just used creating a mini loop. It creates a very nice nearly infinite cycling of your D-Alchemists, which is what you want. As a normal Chaos deck would do, looping your monster back into your hand with D-Alchemist is a must. You’ll want to cycle Dark Nephtys, Chaos Sorcerer and BLS with there own summoning conditions so that you can keep adding them back to your hand. With Triforce reviving D-Alchemist, this process gets improved significantly. Even more does the cycling continue when you put Leviair the Sea Dragon into the mix. (as a note on Leviair, you should more often than not be reviving a D-Alchemist with his effect unless your making a big push that requires a specific  other monster)

There’s one play to note that can bring out Triforce with his Earth effect, which is when he’s summoned using an Earth non-tuner when he attacks, your opponent can’t use Spells or Traps until the end of the damage step, a kind of Ancient Gear effect. Especially good right now with so many people running Dimensional Prison as a main defense. The play involves two cards: Genex Power Planner and Gallis the Star Beast. You Normal Summon Power Planner and add a Birdman to your hand. Then drop Gallis for some nice burn damage then return him for Birdman and use his effect again for some more burn. (I always like the extra burn, especially when you drop Trag of the top of your deck to inflict a whopping 2000 damage for nothing) Then you Synchro for Triforce of course, but in the most ideal way since he gets both his Light and Earth effect, making him a huge threat to the opponent.

Triforce has some other good Light targets to revive with his effect to mention. Since Machine decks have seen a recent uprising, Cyber Dragon can easily become a more valuable asset because he can bring out Chimeratech Fortress Dragon from the extra deck. This is also a really nice way to deal with Zenmaines. A fun ruling to mention is that you can Contact Fusion with your own face-down monsters. This means you can revive a Cyber Dragon face-down with Triforce’s effect and contact with it and your opponent’s machine type monsters, pretty sweet right? The deck also runs a lone Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter; he’s mostly in the deck just to get milled so I can revive him face-down with Triforce to put a constant pressure on the opponent’s cards. One of the biggest annoyances of a card to bring back is Honest. Continually reviving Honest in defense mode then returning him to your hand next turn can easily put the opponent in a tight spot. Even more heinous than Honest though is reviving Black Luster Solider. Most people get the most grim look on there face when you tell them you’re reviving BLS, because the thought of that occurring never even crossed there mind.

Onto the rest of the extra deck! Arcanite is a pretty easy choice in the deck. Arcanite is a combination of Lyla + Birdman and can provide that extra push when need be. Also, if you choose the run Gravekeeper’s Spys it’s very easy to bring out Arcanite with it and Birdman. (If you don’t have Tour Guides you can easily replace the Tour Guides, Ryko and a Spirit Reaper with 3 Spys and a Gravekeeper’s Descendant)

Black Rose and Stardust are the two fairly standard extra deck Synchros. Though I rarely go into either, they’re pretty much mandatory as far as the utility of there effects. Scrap Dragon is very similar, except he’s far more usable in the deck. 8’s are rather awkward to bring out most of the time so they’re generally un-recommended in this deck, but there’s some pretty wombo combo plays with Scrap Dragon like popping your own Zenmaines or D-Alchemist.

Locomotion R-Genex is a nice thought for the deck, he must be summoned using either Caius, Chaos Sorcerer or a level 6 Tragoedia and Birdman. He takes the opponent’s monster with the highest level when he’s summoned. Similar to Black Rose and Stardust, he doesn’t really come up that much, but the deck’s extra deck isn’t really all that cramped so I tried to fit it with as much utility as possible, so it’s always nice to be able to have the option on the board rather than whining about not having it in the extra.

The Rank 3s are all pretty standard, I doubled up on the ones that are the most useful. Since the deck doesn’t run any traps, Zenmaines is a pretty go to guy when you need to passively pressure the opponent. Leviair on the other hand is extremely aggressive and is very helpful for cycling as I mentioned earlier. Leviath Dragon is always nice to have just in case you need that attack power and your only play is Tour Guide. I don’t run Acid Golem because  I almost never summon it, even in more legit decks than this because I rarely have a need for it because of my play style. I’ve been thinking of adding it though just because of this deck’s weakness to Skill Drain.

The only Rank 4s are Utopia and Maestroke, the two I consider to be the best. They’re both Chaos food at the very worst. Rank 4’s don’t come up all too much. They’re usually the result of taking an opponent’s level 4 with Trag and then summoning Lyla, which is a good play, and that’s why I added the rank 4’s in. If you run the Spys it’s recommended that you run some more 4’s and less 3’s
Side decking wise, I only put in a couple things. The deck has a severe weakness to Skill Drain, so both Trap Eater and Mei-Kou became pretty mandatory. Trap Eater sends a Continuous Trap to the graveyard to summon himself form the hand. This makes him a nice out to cards like Gozen Match as well. Due to rulings though he can’t kill cards like Macro Cosmos because you can’t send Macro to the graveyard as a cost. Nicely enough, he’s got 1900 Atk and is also a level 4 Tuner mosnter, bringing a lot more access to your level 8 Synchros and Rank 4’s. Mei-Kou is kind of like an Exiled Force for spells and traps. You can tribute him to destroy a continuous spell or trap, so he gets under drain, but he has the advantage of being a level 4 Light Spellcaster which combos really nicely with the deck, and he’s got a reasonable amount of attack with 1700. Lastly, there’s Effect Veiler. Veiler isn’t altogether necessary in the main deck since the deck can hold its own without it, in some cases though there’s things that must be stopped on the opponent’s turn, such as a Shock Master calling monster effects, that you’ll lose to if you can’t answer them appropriately. The rest of the side isn’t compiled yet since I’m still testing.

So that’s pretty much it. Tell me what you think, any ideas and comments questions? Feel free to respond below!