Frog Monarchs, January 2014

Here’s my preliminary deck list for Frog Monarchs, January 2014 format.

Keep in mind, it’s the beginning of the format and this is my first build. What that means is it is unrefined and WILL change in the future. So, first on the chopping block for new decks to try out is Monarchs.

Monsters: (32)

• 2 Tragoedia
• 1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
• 1 Light and Darkness Dragon
• 1 Gorz the Emissary of Darkness
• 2 Sharkraken
• 3 Caius the Shadow Monarch
• 3 Raiza the Storm Monarch
• 2 Chaos Sorcerer
• 1 Sea Lancer
• 3 Swap Frog
• 3 Maxx “C”
• 2 Ronintoadin
• 3 Dupe Frog
• 2 Treeborn Frog
• 3 Effect Veiler

Spells: (8)

• 1 Allure of Darkness
• 2 Soul Exchange
• 2 Mystical Space Typhoon
• 3 Enemy Controller

Extra Deck: (15)

• 1 Scrap Dragon
• 1 Gungnir, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
• 1 Black Rose Dragon
• 1 Arcanite Magician
• 1 Formula Synchron
• 1 Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
• 2 Constellar Ptolemy M7
• 1 Photon Strike Bounzer
• 1 Inzektor Exa-Beetle
• 1 Daigusto Phoenix
• 2 Herald of Pure Light
• 2 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu

I pretty much took off from the last deck list I had saved on my DevPro account and made changes from their. Notably, there’s a lot less Monarchs/Tribute monsters than a lot of people usually run and conversely much more Frog cards. This simply caters to my play style. I’d rather draw too many Frogs in my opening hand than too many Tribute monsters. The deck’s not fantastic, it’s just me testing stuff out. It’s pretty dang slow for this current meta, so I’ll see what I can do with it in the future.

I’ve made some changes to the deck to allow this ratio of Monarchs to Frogs to work. Because of the smaller amount of Monarchs I’ve opted for more opportunities to recycle them with cards like Herald of Pure Light and Constellar Ptolemy M7. By increasing the Frog amounts this increases the amount of Rank 2 XYZ that I’ll make, making it look a lot more similar to a Sea Lancer build. I’ve also added the Sharkraken, a card I really like. Sharkraken is a Level 6 WATER Fish with 2400 ATK and 2100 DEF. Here’s his exact effect:

You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by Tributing 1 WATER monster.

Pretty dang simple. It’s an inherent summoning effect, meaning the opponent can’t chain Maxx “C” to it like Illusory Snatcher and it also doesn’t require me to have a Monarch like Illusory Snatcher, so I feel it’s better in that respect. Kraken’s main use is for summoning M7. Summon a Monarch, then summon Ronintoadin and tribute it for Kraken, XYZ for M7 to recycle the monarch your used to summon it. It also really pushes for damage considering it has 2400 ATK.

Sharkraken works under pure Frog hands, which is why I really like it. It also doesn’t take up a Normal Summon meaning you can use it for baits, or for monster presence after a failed play. Since Kraken is a Normal Summon in most cases you can Normal Summon some more interesting monsters in addition, like Swap Frog to more setup or even just an Effect Veiler to make a Level 7 Synchro in a pinch.

I’ve also added in the Chaos monsters, BLS and Chaos Sorcerer. At first this seems silly since there’s only 5 LIGHT monsters in the main deck, the 3 Effect Veilers, Light and Darkness Dragon and Black Luster Solider, but with the extra deck you frequent a lot of other LIGHT monsters. Herald of Pure Light and Constellar Ptolemy M7 are both LIGHT monster and probably the most frequented Extra Deck monsters the deck has. This makes it so the real issue actually is getting DARK monsters into the graveyard. The only DARK monsters in the deck are the 3 Caius, 2 Tragoedia, 2 Chaos Sorcerers and Gorz. Chaos Sorcerer doesn’t really count since its one of the Chaos monsters you’ll be summoning, but it works in its own way since once it dies it essentially sets up your next Chaos monster by being its DARK banishment requirement.

I’ve been wanting to add back in Chaos monsters ever since the Samurai format when I could run Fishborg Blaster in my Frog decks. In that age I ran Destiny Hero – Malicious (which was at 2 at the time) so that I could summon Treeborn in my Standby Phase, the revive Fishborg by discarding Malicious. Then summon a Malicious from the deck, then Synchro for Formula and draw a card. After that you could Synchro for any Level 8 Synchro of choice, but what’s important is that this provided a LIGHT in Formula Synchron and a DARK in Malicious. Because of that I was able to sustain 3 Chaos Sorcerers in the deck. (it was at three back then, but BLS was banned) This allowed for exceptional control, since it most cases Monarch decks where reserved to their one summon a turn, but I could easily drop extra Chaos monsters on board when I couldn’t pull of my Monarch due to Bottomless, Veiler etc. and I still needed to deal with my opponent’s field. There of course was no Ronintoadin or XYZ monsters back then either so Frogs really lacked any defensive options so this control gave you the best defense you could offer. In short, I have Chaos Sorcerer nostalgia in Monarchs and I want to get back to it.

I’m still not sure if the DARK count will be effective though, and I wanted to try out running Tour Guide From the Underworld in the deck, just so I could make some neat Leviair plays involving Ronintoadin. An example would be this:

• Ronin, banish Swap to summon Ronin.
• Summon Tour Guide, get Tour Guide, XYZ for Leviair.
• Revive Swap with Leviair, Swap can send another Frog.
• XYZ for Herald of Pure Light and get back Tour Guide. (or a Monarch or anything else that’s awesome)
• You can also go into Daigusto Phoenix to attack for 5100 damage, which is pretty good too.

This play is really nice because it provides a LIGHT monster with Pure Light and a DARK with Tour Guide. It also doesn’t use up any of your Frog resources for Ronintoadin. The downside is that Tour Guide takes up your normal summon, which is really important in Monarch decks. The play can also be modified to revive a Dupe Frog instead of Swap Frog, which gives you a Dupe Frog in defense mode, which protects you Leviair from attacks, potentially.

Other things of note, I’m running Tragoedia instead of Battle Fader. Fader is probably better, but it doesn’t go to the graveyard and I really wanted to test the Chaos stuff first off. I’m sure after testing a bit I’ll understand whether the swap is worth it.

As far as future ideas go, I actually wanted to forgoe the Frog engine altogether. I’ve been testing a lot of random stuff using the baby Chaos Dragons, Collapserpent and Wyverburster, and above all else they work great with Monarchs. When running the baby dragons, I tend to hold onto them in my hand as these free tribute fodders for when I want to summon Caius. In order to facilitate this I was thinking of making a Chaos Dragon Monarch deck. I’d probably run the basic Chaos Dragon engine: 3 Darkflare Dragon, 3 Lightpulsar Dragon, 1 Eclipse Wyvern, 1 REDMD, 1 Dark Armed Dragon. In addition I’d run Tour Guide and the Baby Dragons with minimum 3 Caius and potentially more Monarchs. (I’m torn between Zaborg and Raiza) With that also comes Chaos Sorcerer and BLS of course. The biggest problem though seems to be getting that initial Chaos graveyard setup. I’ve contemplated Dragon Shrine, Lightsworns, Blue-Eyes Draw engines among other things. I don’t know which is best though.

The idea of using Chaos monsters seems better than Frogs, because in testing I found the Frogs and Monarchs to be cloggy. Too much of one and you end up losing. I wanted to use a more stand alone backbone like Chaos so that when I draw only one half of the deck I’m still okay, and Chaos Dragons are quite robust, which is nice.

QOTW? Question of the Week:

What’s a card you used to run in one of your favorite decks that you can’t run anymore, but wish you still could?

Written by: Kyle