ApexPendulum

Pendulum Ninja Valley 2014

Here’s an idea for a pretty awesome and fun deck utilizing Pendulum Summoning.

The idea was sparked by a deck profile I saw on YouTube using Pendulum Summoning to lockdown the board with Mist Valley Apex Avian. You may have already seen a similar deck online, that to say this isn’t really my idea, but I thought it was such a cool idea that I’d try my hand at making a build and also show you guys something cool that can be done using the new Pendulum mechanic. Because Apex Avian can negate a card by returning itself to the hand, it makes the perfect monster for you to continuously Pendulum Summon every turn from your hand allowing you to negate 1 card every turn and also giving you a massive attacking body. I took this idea and supplemented it with the concepts behind the Ninja Valley deck (from when Divine Wind of Mist Valley was at 3) that used Hanzo and Ninjitsu Art or Transformation to summon Mist Valley Apex Avian from the deck and control the board by bouncing Divine Wind of Mist Valley and Mist Valley Falcon to negate cards, since Apex Avian can bounce to negate as many time per turn as you want as long as there’s something to bounce. The deck is really fun and is actually quite good. I haven’t completely tested the kinks out of the deck, but here’s a rough draft deck list:

 

Monsters (18):

  • 3 Mist Valley Apex Avian
  • 3 Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon
  • 3 Stargazer Magician
  • 1 Mist Valley Falcon
  • 3 Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo
  • 2 Upstart Golden Ninja
  • 3 Timegazer Magician

Spells (8):

  • 2 Reinforcement of the Army
  • 1 Soul Charge
  • 3 Pot of Duality
  • 1 Book of Moon
  • 1 Divine Wind of Mist Valley

Traps (14):

  • 1 Bottomless Trap Hole
  • 1 Torrential Tribute
  • 2 Dimensional Prison
  • 2 Breakthrough Skill
  • 1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
  • 2 Fiendish Chain
  • 2 Ninjitsu Art of Transformation
  • 2 Call of the Haunted
  • 1 Solemn Warning

Extra Deck (15):

  • 1 Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack
  • 1 Number 11: Big Eye
  • 1 Stellarknight Delteros
  • 1 Cairngorgon, Antiluminescent Knight
  • 1 Blade Armor Ninja
  • 1 Number 50: Blackship of Corn
  • 1 Number 101: Silent Honor ARK
  • 1 Heroic Champion – Excalibur
  • 1 Castel the Avian Skyblaster
  • 1 Diamond Dire Wolf
  • 1 Evilswarm Exciton Knight
  • 1 Lavalval Chain
  • 1 Abyss Dweller
  • 1 Gagaga Cowboy
  • 1 Number 80: Rhapsody in Berserk

First thing, since I’m utilizing Pendulum Monsters and of them is Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, I took the liberty of using some Rank 4 XYZ from Duelist Alliance as well for the build given that’s also what Odd-Eyes comes out in. So if you’re wondering what Stellarknight Delteros and Castel the Avian Skyblaster are, then you can look them up in the upcoming Duelist Alliance pack on Yugioh.Wikia. Since the Extra Deck for this deck isn’t particularly relevant to its strategy I don’t really want to get into them all too much. I’ll suffice it to say that the deck can make Rank 4 XYZ pretty easily using Upstart Golden Ninja, and basically you just want to have the most versatile Rank 4 toolbox possible since that’s all you’ll reliably be able to make with the Extra Deck, if you even go into it at all in a duel.

How’s the deck work?

The deck is very simple. Using Timegazer and Stargazer Magician, whose respective scales are 1 and 8, continuously resummon Mist Valley Apex Avian from your hand using the new Pendulum mechanic. In order to more easily search the two Magician monsters, you also run Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, which destroys itself during the end phase to add a Pendulum monster with 1500 ATK from the deck to the hand (both Stargazer and Timegazer being targets). Since Stargazer and Timegazer’s scales are 1 to 8, you can also continuously summon Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon from your Extra Deck to pester the opponent with its 2500 ATK. (also due to both the Magician’s effects Spells and Traps can’t be activated with Odd-Eyes attacks)

For those unfamiliar, this is a rundown of Mist Valley Apex Avian, the driving force behind the deck:

Mist Valley Apex Avian

Level 7 / WIND / Winged-Beast

2700 ATK / 2000 DEF

When an effect is activated, you can select 1 face-up “Mist Valley” card you controlReturn that “Mist Valley” card to its owner‘s handnegate the effect’s activation, and destroy the card whose effect was activated.

During your turn, if you have the field spell card Divine Wind of Mist Valley, you can bounce it to the hand to negate anything your opponent plays and then play it again immediately afterwards. During the opponent’s turn you can bounce either the field spell or Apex Avian itself to the hand to negate a card (in this instance, triggering the field spell so you could summon Mist Valley Falcon from the deck). In the past, returning your own Apex Avian to the hand was essentially a last ditch effort that would give you a dead card in hand for the rest of the game. Now it’s actually a good thing to do because of Pendulum Summoning. If you have both the Pendulum monsters from the deck on the field you can Pendulum Summon all the Apex Avians in your hand onto the field once during your turn, which very quickly shuts the opponent out of the game.

In order to as quickly as possibly setup up the lock down we run Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo and Ninjitsu Art of Transformation. Hanzo adds Transformation to you hand upon his Normal Summon and Transformation tributes a Ninja to summon a Beast, Insect or Winged-Beast type monster from your deck up to 3 levels higher, namel Mist Valley Apex Avian. I also run the obligatory double ROTA and Pot of Duality to make your opening turns as clean as possible.

Once the setup has been completed all that’s really left is for the pilot of the deck to play smart control Yugioh and usually that can end the game pretty quickly.

Thoughts on Changes:

Here’s some things I thought I might want to change or add in the future with more testing:

  • Pot of Duality is really good for this deck’s turn one plays and makes opening Hanzo very consistent, but later game it’s rare you’ll have a turn to play it since you Special Summon using the Pendulum Mechanic almost every turn after you’ve setup. It my be better suited to run Upstart Goblin instead.
  • In testing Dark Bribe has been a very strong card in tandem with Pendulum monsters, firstly because Mystical Space Typhoon is a thorn in my Pendulum Scales side’s, and secondly because when Pendulum monsters are working at peak performance advantage quickly becomes invalidated due to your infinite monster resources, so the extra card the opponent gets is meaningless. The card also make a lot of sense in tandem with the lock down of Apex Avian.
  • In the future with Shadolls, Bottomless, Torrential Tribute and Solemn Warning seem very underwhelming to me and may get replaced by more Fiendish Chains and Breakthrough Skills or maybe with Dark Bribes.
  • Hopefully more Magician and Odd-Eyes named Pendulum support comes out in the future making the Pendulum portion of the deck more consistent.
  • You could theoretically run a Chaos Dragon mini engine in tandem with the Hanzo engine by adding in Ninjitsu Art of Super Transformation and use Eclipse Wyvern to search Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon to make your Pendulum Scale setup more consistent. This may just be a good idea for another deck altogether though.

QOTW? Question of the Week:

What cards are you most looking forward to from the upcoming Duelist Alliance pack? I personally really want to add Castel the Avian Skyblaster to all of my decks, it looks sweet!

Written by: Kyle Oliver

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