Deck Review: Lancer Frogs

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Rather than doing this specifically about the deck as a whole, I thought I’d let you guys in on the main combos involved around the deck. Starting from the completely overlooked boss monster of the deck, Sea Lancer, one of the weirdest and yet funnest brews of Frog decks was born. Read more to find out how…

First things first, let’s look at the Sea Lancer effect, since it’s really the center piece of the deck:

You can target any number of your banished Fish, Sea Serpent, and Aqua-Type monsters; equip them to this card. This effect can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field. If this face-up card on the field would be destroyed, you can destroy 1 of those cards, instead. This card gains 1000 ATK while equipped with a monster(s) by this effect.

Sea Lancer came out in Generation Force as a rare. He’s a level 5, Water, Beast-Warrior sporting 1300 attack and the monarch standard of 1000 defense. Which are both notably low for being a level 5 monster.

When building your deck with Sea Lancer  in it, the first thing you’ve got to do is remove from play some Fish, Aqua or Sea Serpents for his effect. This is where Ronintoadin, his partner in crime, comes in. Ronintoadin simultaneously removes some Aqua monster (the other frogs you’re likely running) for his effect and provides tribute fodder to summon Sea Lancer. With a combo as simple as that you can Summon a 2300 beater that can’t be destroyed at least once; this is the core combo, but it goes more in depth when the deck really get down to what it wants to do. This also really completes the “recursion cycle” of the Frog Engine giving them support against what used to be their biggest weakness, removal, as well as yet another place to recur the frogs from on top of there already low searchable stats from the deck, there status as water monsters which have a multitude of support cards and access to one the best plus 1 cards in the game: Salvage. (which also can recur Sea Lancer too) But back to the topic at hand.

First off, 2300 isn’t all that much for a one tribute monster, considering it has to compete with Monarch, especially along side a Frog deck. Also, with decks like Tour Guide Plants running around that just pump out level 5 Synchros willy nilly and agents just lumping 2700 beaters on the field, that much attack isn’t going to make a huge difference. Thus, the deck uses one of Frog’s new and very powerful tools: Gachi Gachi Gantetsu. Aside from Agents this is the only other deck that summon Gantetsu’s for little to no cost at all. The deck can just revive 2 Ronintoadin‘s and you’ve met the requirements, using no cards in your hand for that matter. (of course the setup of this situation takes time, but once the deck gets going the potential to summon Gantetsu’s is only limited by the amount of them you have left in the extra deck) Summoning Gachi Gachi Gantetsu in this way also works well in tandem with Sea Lancer the same way it worked in the core combo, except with this way you can pump Lancer up an additional 400 ATK as well as remove loads more fodder to equip to Sea Lancer to prevent it from being destroyed even more times, but wait there’s more! (Curse you bad infomercial lines)

On top of this a couple neat rulings come into play with 2 cards in specific: Dupe Frog and the ever forgotten Poison Draw Frog. I never thought I’d think about Poison Draw Frog again, but his day has finally come, and he’s even at the center of the decks strategy! Here’s the basics: Both Frogs have effects that activate when they’re “sent from the field to the Graveyard” and there usually isn’t much special to that, but take notice that neither specifies that they must be in a monster card zone or treated as a monster at all to get this effect. This means that if they’re being treated as an equip card (say, on Sea Lancer), if they’re sent to the graveyard from there they’ll still get there effects. So this means, when you equip Sea Lancer with a Poison Draw Frog that you removed with Ronintoadin, whenever Sea Lancer would be destroyed you can destroy the Poison Draw Frog instead, sending it to the graveyard and activating its effect. So instead of being destroyed, Sea Lancer just draws a card. All these together setup the ideal Lancer Frog play.

Here’s the conditions: 1 Treeborn Frog, 2 Ronintoadin and 2 Poison Draw Frogs in the Graveyard and a Sea Lancer in hand. At first this sounds like a lot of pieces in specific places but with the advent of Swap Frog it’s actually quite easy to pull off. (and Dupe Frog searches for Swap Frog on top of this) The first thing is to get out your Treeborn Frog during your Standby Phase. This step can of course be replaced with many other things, the main idea though is that you get an extra monster that you can tribute to summon Sea Lancer. (The most easy replacement is just some other frog in the graveyard to remove to summon Ronintoadin a third time) Next, remove from play the two Poison Draw Frogs to summon the two Ronintoadin‘s. Then Tribute Summon the Sea Lancer by tributing Treeborn and activate his effect, thus equipping himself with the two Draw Frogs. Then, overlay the two Ronintoadin‘s for Gachi Gachi Gantetsu. Now you have a 2700 beater that can’t be destroyed twice, and whenever it would be you draw a card. Pretty narly! That and you’ve only used one card out of your hand the turn you do this combo.

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The easiest way to setup the “ideal graveyard” as I’ll call it, is actually quite simple. Swap Frog really shines in this deck like he never has before. Almost every single bit of that book of an effect he’s got will come to play in this deck to your advantage. First off is the obvious, whenever he’s summoned send frogs to the grave to fill up to the ideal graveyard. But you can also pitch Frogs from the hand to special summon him if you need Tribute fodder, or if you just need a frog in your hand in the graveyard. You can also use his return to hand effect to summon him multiple times under certain, easily met in this deck, conditions or use it to return a used up Sea Lancer to hand to be summoned again. Also, with Swap Frog and Salvage combined it’s really easy to get the ball rolling.

Overall, I think Sea Lancer adds a new very crucial element to Frogs that anyone who’s running them should be considering. I might go as far to say you should be running him no matter the frog deck because the options he opens up to the deck are so good. Even if the deck’s not based on Sea Lancer it just adds so much to the deck that there’s no reason to turn it down. On top of it’s awesomeness though, it’s also worth almost nothing because it’s just a rare card and every Frog monster also comes as a common. Even Gantetsu comes in a structure deck!

So that about wraps things up for that. Hope you enjoyed that brief look into Lancer Frogs.

 

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