thehiddencity

Deck Profile: Subterror (Post MACR)

More specifically, Subterror Zoodiac.

Originally, I planned on doing a review of all the new Subterror cards first and then a deck profile, but I learned a bunch of new stuff for Subterror Zoodiacs that made me more excited to post a deck profile instead. This deck is incredibly good, potentially meta worthy; testing proves strong so far. As per usual, this isn’t a completely honed build it’s more of an initial draft, but it’s certainly no deck slouch.

I had been testing lots of, what in hindsight, where bad variants of Subterrors. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t this, so they weren’t, what is probably the best version of the deck. In that period I saw that someone topped a tournament with a Subterror deck and then I saw what strategies he used and I emulated them and created my own build, though this is similar.  I’ll talk about some plays and how the deck works after the quick rundown of cards:

Monsters: (20)

  • 1 Subterror Behemoth Stalagmo
  • 1 Subterror Behemoth Phospheroglacier
  • 1 Subterror Behemoth Umastryx
  • 1 Subterror Behemoth Stygokraken
  • 1 Subterror Nemesis Warrior
  • 2 Zoodiac Whiptail
  • 2 Zoodiac Ratpier
  • 3 Subterror Nemesis Archer
  • 3 Speedroid Terrortop
  • 1 Speedroid Taketomborg
  • 3 Subterror Fiendess
  • 1 Glow-Up Bulb

Spells: (14)

  • 3 Instant Fusion
  • 1 One for One
  • 3 Terraforming
  • 1 Foolish Burial
  • 3 Zoodiac Barrage
  • 3 The Hidden City

Traps: (6)

  • 2 Lost Wind
  • 1 Breakthrough Skill
  • 3 Solemn Strike

Extra Deck: (15)

Fusion: (2)

  • 1 Invoked Raidjin
  • 1 Elder Entity Norden

Synchro: (1)

  • 1 Naturia Beast

XYZ: (12)

  • 1 Castel the Skyblaster Musketeer
  • 1 Gagaga Samurai
  • 1 Daigusto Emeral
  • 1 Zoodiac Tigermortar
  • 1 Zoodiac Chakanine
  • 2 Zoodiac Drident
  • 2 Zoodiac Broadbull
  • 1 Totem Bird
  • 1 Ghostrick Alucard
  • 1 M-X-Saber Invoker

This deck works pretty simply in general strategy. The basic gist is to get out a Zoodiac XYZ, like Drident and protect it from battle using The Hidden City and one of the disruptive Subterror Behemoths. The deck has very easy 2 card combos that completely lock down the opponent when you go first, and with the addition of Subterror Fiendess you can negate practically anything.

The Main Play

There’s one main play I designed this deck to make and it involves opening with 2 cards: Zoodiac Barrage or Speedroid Terrortop and The Hidden City. The combo is slightly different depending on whether you have Barrage or Terrortop, but they are effectively the same combo because they result in the same field, the only difference being the M-X-Saber Invoker summoned using the Speedroid engine. Here’s the combo using Terrortop:

  • Do the standard Terrortop fare netting you an Invoker, Drident and a Ratpier on field as well as a Whiptail in hand. (I figure this combo is pretty common knowledge by now)
  • Activate The Hidden City searching Subterror Nemesis Warrior.
  • Normal Summon Warrior and use his effect tribute himself and Zoodiac Ratpier.
  • Special Summon a Subterror Behemoth Phospheroglacier from the deck face-down.
  • Use The Hidden City to flip Phospheroglacier face-up.
  • Activate Phospheroglacier’s effect and chain Nemesis Warrior’s effect to re-summon itself.
  • Glacier sends Glow-up Bulb to the graveyard.
  • Revive Glow-up Bulb
  • Synchro with Bulb and Warrior for Naturia Beast.
  • Use Phospheroglacier to flip itself back face-down. (unless you have a Fiendess in hand)

With 2 cards you now end with a field of M-X-Saber Invoker, Naturia Beast, Zoodiac Drident, and a face-down Subterror Behemoth Phospheroglacier that protects from attacks using The Hidden City. You’ll ideally have at least 1 additional Trap Card in hand or even Subterror Fiendess in hand to make your field much more difficult to break.

In order to do the same with Barrage, you instead of searching Warrior search Subterror Nemesis Archer, and then Normal Summon it. Then you use Barrage destroying archer to do the typical Zoodiac play. When the Archer is destroyed though it can special summon Nemesis Warrior from the deck, allowing you to do the same play.

In the Barrage play you can instead of getting Nemesis Warrior off of Archer (potentially you drew Nemesis Warrior or Glow-up Bulb meaning the combo cannot be performed the same), you would then Special Summon a Subterror Behemoth Stalagmo face-down and then use the Hidden City to flip it face-up so you can draw a lot of cards, ideally more disruption. This also can get Nemesis Warrior out of your hand and into the graveyard where you want it.

Other Notable Cards

Instant Fusion:

I think it’s worth giving a special notice to the card Instant Fusion, which I didn’t realize was practically staple level for Subterrors. I had toyed with the idea of running it because having an extra push for a Rank 4 XYZ is always nice, but it never seemed good enough to warrant running the card. The problem was that I didn’t realize how ridiculously helpful Invoked Raidjin is as a Instant Fusion target. All this time I had been running Des Lacooda in order to summon Behemoths from hand more easily when I could’ve just use Raidjin.

Raidjin is a Level 5 Fusion monster. Raidjin’s effect is that once per turn during either players turn he can flip a monster face-down. This is of course a great control monster in the Invoked deck, probably the best one they have. In Subterrors though its just a simple combo starter. Instant Fusion him out, use his effect to flip himself face-down, this then meets the requirements to summon a Subterror Behemoth from the hand, and we move on from there. This is pretty exceptional for 2 reasons. One, you don’t normal summon during this play making it very safe, and two, when Raidjin is flipped face-down this makes the card forget being summoned by Instant Fusion and allows it to not be destroyed uring the End Phase, giving you a crazy control monster if it survives, which isn’t unreasonable.

One for One & Foolish Burial:

These two are just some basic combo starters, now heavily increased in viability because of Subterror Fiendess. With One for One you typically want to discard a Subterror Behemoth to summon a Fiendess from the deck. Then, use Fiendess’ effect on herself to summon back that Behemoth from the graveyard. This would also allow you to summon any other Behemoths from the hand if that came up because it results in all of your monsters being face-down, but that rarely comes up for me because of how few Behemoths I run.

Foolish Burial works basically the same as One for One in the previous regard. You can pitch a Behemoth, then Normal Summon a Fiendess and use her effect to revive it. More importantly though you can use Foolish Burial to pitch Glow-up Bulb in order to make Naturia Beast. The same can be said for One for One, which can also summon Glow-up Bulb, making them have extra utility.

Traps:

I’m pretty sure the trap line-up I’m using in the above deck list is not optimal. Lost Wind and Breakthrough Skill where kind of gimmicky adds, although they are really good cards, because I added them because you can send them directly from the deck to the graveyard with Phospheroglacier. If I where to go to a large tournament it’s possible I wouldn’t run those cards in the end.

Solemn Strike is really good, but I’m also not sure it’s altogether neccessary in this deck. Of the traps it’s clearly the best, but strike doesn’t feel like it solves or aids in solving anything this deck has problems with. I still cannot deny this card is amazing and quite solid, but I feel like it’d be easy to drop it for other cards. I’d like to slip in some hand traps, maybe this is a spot.

 

Other than all that stuff I don’t have a whole lot to say about this deck other than that it’s really good and you should look out for similar builds in the future.

Written by: Kyle Oliver

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