Deck Profile: Clown Blade (first attempt)

Performage Trick Clown + Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades = Deck?

As a Yu-Gi-Oh! community, we’ve been staring at OCG lists for some time now seeing this “Clown Blade” deck and really been left waiting for it to come out. For one reason or another it seems to have permeated just about every possible deck as an engine, I swear I’ve seen it combined with just about anything. So it must be good right? Well, I figured I’d take a couple days and do some deck building to try my hand at building a Clown Blade deck. I tried to have some fun with it, so it’s probably not anything close to standard (which there might not end up being, which I’ll explain it a bit), but it works and I think it’s a lot of fun.

So, everyone was excited for Clown Blade, but then the unexpected happened with the most recent ban list and Lavalval Chain was banned. One of the most important parts of the Clown Blade deck was a quick setup play involving Lavalval Chain using either 1 Performage Trick Clown or 1 Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades and any other Level 4 monster and then using Chain’s effect detaching Clown or Thousand Blades (whichever you used) to send the other from the deck to the graveyard. This would setup the XYZ combo that lets you keep reviving the Trick Clown and Thousand Blades once per turn. Without Lavalval Chain now the setup has become a lot more difficult, making the deck potentially unviable as a meta deck meaning a standard build might not even surface because it cannot compete with the likes of Nekroz and the gang. With that, me and a few others from my locals have journeyed to try to find the optimal way to make Clown Blade with the new handicap. Here’s my first attempt:

Main Deck: (40)

Monsters: (20)

• 1 Photon Thrasher
• 2 Heroic Champion – Assault Halberd
• 3 Juragedo
• 3 Performage Trick Clown
• 3 Performage Damage Juggler
• 2 Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades
• 1 Performage Hat Tricker
• 3 Mathematician
• 2 Effect Veiler

Spells: (9)

• 2 Reinforcement of the Army
• 1 Foolish Burial
• 3 Pot of Duality
• 3 Forbidden Lane

Traps: (11)

• 2 Raigeki Break
• 1 Torrential Tribute
• 3 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
• 2 Karma Cut
• 3 Fiendish Chain

Extra Deck: (15)

Synchro: (1)

• 1 Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier

XYZs: (13)

• 1 Stellarknight Constellar Diamond
• 1 Constellar Pleiades
• 1 Artifact Durendal
• 1 Stellarknight Delteros
• 1 Number 101: Silent Honor ARK
• 1 Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer
• 1 Diamond Dire Wolf
• 1 Gagaga Samurai
• 1 Evilswarm Exciton Knight
• 1 Abyss Dweller
• 1 Gagaga Cowboy
• 2 Tellarknight Ptolemaeus
• 1 Number 80: Rhapsody in Berserk

Basic Idea:

Since we can no longer achieve a quick setup without luckily drawing into limited to 1 cards like Foolish Burial, I quickly tried to remove the idea of a fast paced aggressive build for the deck. I figured, since I cannot get a quick setup I should fall back on a control heavy slow but advantageous setup. This gives rise to my very trap heavy version of the deck. Rather than quickly OTK (but by no means is this deck not explosive though) the goal of the deck is extremely advantageous control. Use advantageous XYZ plays to remove the opponent’s resources without using much of your own. Admittedly, the current build is quite unrefined, but that’s why I titled it as “first attempt”.

How Does it Work?:

The deck is based around two cards that you might not know: Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades & Performage Trick Clown.

Performage Trick Clown is a Level 4 LIGHT Spellcaster with 1600 ATK and 1200 DEF. Here’s the effect:

If this card is sent to the Graveyard: You can target 1 “Performage” monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon it, its ATK and DEF become 0, then you take 1000 damage. You can only use this effect of “Performage Trick Clown” once per turn.

Very simple and mostly self explanatory. When Trick Clown is sent to the graveyard in any way (including being Synchro’d with, being detached as XYZ material, and being sent directly from the hand or deck) it can revive itself. It’s possible to revive another Performage, but there’s almost no reason to do so.

Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades is a Level 4 EARTH Warrior with 1300 ATK and 1100 ATK. Here’s the effect:

Once per turn, if this card is in Attack Position: You can discard 1 “Heroic” card; you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except “Heroic” monsters, also Special Summon 1 “Heroic” monster from your Deck, and if you do, change this card to Defense Position. When you take damage while this card is in your Graveyard: You can Special Summon this card in Attack Position. You can only use this effect of “Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades” once per turn.

I bolded the part of the effect that matters. It’s possible to run a suit of Heroic monsters to supplement Thousand Blades’ first effect, but in almost every instance I would consider that pointless. What really matters is that you can revive it from the graveyard when you take either burn or battle damage. This works a pretty clean defense tool in a pinch when your being attacked, but the main draw is that you can revive it off the effects of your own cards burning you, Trick Clown in specific.

Whenever you have a Thousand Blades in the graveyard and a Trick Clown is also sent to the graveyard you can then use Trick Clown’s effect, reviving it and burning you for 1000. Then, since you took damage you can revive Thousand Blades. Both are once per turn, but there’s ways to maintain them to continually use there effects. For example, XYZ summoning a monster with the two, but not detaching either on the turn they’ve already used their effects. That way if the opponent destroys that XYZ you’ll be able to revive both during the opponent’s turn or if the XYZ survives until later you can detach on your next turn and revive the 2 and get a free XYZ monster.

A typical play goes like this, let’s assume there’s a copy of Thousand Blades in the graveyard:

• Normal summon Mathematician and use it’s effect to dump Trick Clown,
• Trick Clown’s effect reviving it, and then Thousand Blades’ effect reviving it.
• XYZ for Tellarknight Ptolemaeus.
• End your turn and attach a Stellarknight Constellar Diamond to you Ptolemaeus.
• At whatever opportune time during you opponent’s turn use Ptolemaeus to detach Trick Clown and Thousand Blades to make either Pleiades or Durendal.
• Use Trick Clown and Thousand Blades’ effect again reviving both.
• On your turn you can now make an XYZ with both, such as Castel and then detach both and revive them again and make a Ptolemaeus again.
• etc. etc.

To facilitate the loop are a bunch of defensive traps, Raigeki Break, Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, and Karma Cut to prevent the opponent from attacking over your Trick Clown or Thousand Blades. Also, Fiendish Chain as opposed to Breakthrough Skill to stop attacks and the inherent synergy with Constellar Pleiades.

Weird Stuff:

I’ve tested quite a bit with this so far, but I’ll definitely be changing it up in the future. I’ve actually been working on some other really fun, and some more legitimate builds using Clown Blade as a an engine such as Lightsworn Clown Blade, Artifact Clown Blade, and my personal favorite U.A. Clown Blade. I hope you’re looking forward to some of those in the future.

If you have any questions feel free to comment below!

Written by: Kyle Oliver