DNA

Prisma HEROs

With it being the beginning of the new format, I’m mostly just churning lots of ideas around and have no real concrete ideas about strategy and “anti-meta” deck building philosophy because nothing in the format is really defined. So as you may have noticed all my articles are just really a display of random ideas I’ve been having and this week is no different. Another one of the ideas in the churnification process is decks using Elemental HERO Prisma.

 photo ElementalHEROPrisma_zps69c2fad1.png If you’ve been reading any of my articles over the past year you’ve seen a bunch of stuff about Prisma. My Chaos HERO deck was hovering in the back of my mind for most of the last format, simply because it wasn’t up to par with the uber decks of the format, although near the end I realized an idea that could’ve potentially made it compete and that idea has evolved into a new deck idea of sorts.

This time around I’m not dabbling with any Chaos monsters it’s a pure LIGHT deck. This gives a lot more side deck versatility since with just about every deck you’ll be wanting to be siding Gozen Match or Rivalry of the Warlords unless you’re someone name Dragon Rulers. side note: In my opinion Dragon Rulers has probably already solidified its position as the best deck this coming format, so it’s the deck to look out for. That aside here’s the main 5 cards that I’m looking at for this deck:

  • Elemental HERO Prisma 
  • Cyber Dragon
  • Photon Thrasher
  • Ghost Ship
  • Instant Fusion

Aside from Ghost Ship, these names are all pretty much old news as far as HERO decks go. The plan is a lot different though because the idea involves maxing out on all 5 of these cards (making 15 cards in total). Why? What benefit do you have with these cards? There’s the obvious auto-win factor against any deck using a multitude of Machine monsters, but the main focus is the speed and effectiveness this core would hopefully bring to making Rank 4 and 5 XYZ while only using LIGHT monsters. Cyber Dragon, Ghost Ship and Instant Fusion all can provide Level 5’s without Normal Summoning. Thrasher, Prisma and Instant Fusion again provide Level 4’s, sadly Instant Fusion can’t provide a LIGHT level 4 monster, but I’ll settle for a Warrior-type. This in specific gives us access to one of the best XYZ toolboxes around: Constellars. We can summon Constellar Omega, Pleiades and obviously Ptolemys M7. Along with those we can also summon Starliege Palidynamo, Heroic Champion Excalibur and Volcasaurus. Those six names make for an incredibly mean extra deck.

 photo PrismaXYZ_zps0ffed853.png

One question I keep mulling over is whether or not it’s worth running this styled engine over Constellars, an inevitable comparison deck. They both are kind of stun-ish and access relatively the same Extra Deck. Now I can’t just come right out and say I think this deck is better than Constellars, that deck is very good, but HEROs have some interesting benefits, namely Miracle Fusion and Elemental HERO the Shining.

With just a single Prisma, as before, you can make Miracle Fusion live by dumping Cyber Dragon to the graveyard. And now all of The Shining’s most feared traps are limited to 1 and 2, being Bottomless, Compulsory Evacuation Device and Dimensional Prison (which nobody runs). So on paper the Shining is better than ever. The loss of Stratos of course hurts, but there’s additional E – Emergency Calls to get Prisma more accurately. You can also use Instant Fusion to summon Elemental HERO Mariner or Steam Healer when making a Rank 5 XYZ to put a HERO monster in the graveyard for Miracle Fusion. This also allows you to run maybe one copy of Absolute Zero, and he’s pretty cool too.

While on the topic of Fusion Monsters, I also though about Super Polymerization, a card that I’ve pretty much hated forever, but I admit it is useful. With 3 E-Call and 3 Prisma I don’t think it’d be horrible to be running 1 or 2 copies of Super Poly. This solves the dead E-Call problem, since Prisma is one of the only HEROs I’d want to run. (Neos Alius is great and all, but running him takes a lot of deck space as well as most turn’s Normal Summon) The only other potential HERO I thought of running was 1 copy of Elemental HERO Captain Gold with 1 copy of Skyscraper. It makes your Prisma kill everything bar Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos and other 2800 plus beaters I’m not thinking of at the moment. This solves the E-Call problem to an extent and also provides Miracle Fusion fodder as well as the prospect of Lightray monsters.

The idea of Lightrays has always been nice. If you read their effects, they’re all very good. The problem is it’s way too difficult to summon them effectively. I know Matt has been trying to make use of them for a long time, especially recently. 2 of them really come to mind for this deck specifically: Lightray Sorcerer and Lightray Gearfried.

Lightray Sorcerer is a bit of a strange one, it’s always so much harder than you expect to Banish 3 LIGHT monsters, so I’m always tentative when thinking of this card. Built into the engine already is the Ghost Ships and Miracle Fusion, which banishes a fair amount, but not nearly enough. The next best thing I can think to add would be D.D. Warrior Ladies and Dimensional Alchemists. Probably not enough, but I’ll at least try it out.

Lightray Gearfried is a lot more feasible though. I would only run 1 or 2 copies, since draw more than one kind of ruins your hand. In theory, as is most of the deck, Gearfried is setup without much thought. Take for example an extremely basic play of Prisma and Photon Thrasher. Special Thrasher, Normal Prisma and send Cyber Dragon. XYZ for a LIGHT Rank 4 (Palidynamo to recoup advantage or Omega because he’s good) and once the Rank 4 dies you have 4 differently named LIGHT monsters in grave 3 of which are Warriors. With random Effect Veiler, Captain Gold, Honest, Musician King etc. it makes 5. The main problem I see though is getting stuck at 4 LIGHT monsters. Then again there’s always the icky gross Utopia into Utopia Ray play to make 5 LIGHTs. That takes up a lot of extra deck space and is a waste of resources to do though.

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Onto the Trap side of things. For the most part their’s not a lot traps worth playing this format. There’s all teh one offs that just about every deck gets to play now: 1 Bottomless, 1 Warning, 1 Compulsory, 1 Torrential, and in general I’ll consider those staples. Then there’s the Mirror Forces or Dimensional Prisons, you choose which. That leaves us with the next best 2 traps left in the game: Fiendish Chain and Vanity’s Emptiness. Likely I’d run 2 of each of those as well. Emptiness is a little weird, you want to run some kind of big protection monster with it. Ideally you combo it with Pleiades, but it’s still okay by itself.

The last real trap of note is DNA Surgery. Main decked DNA Surgery is just about the most foolish thing I’ve ever though up, but this is just about the only deck that can maintain it, if it even can. The idea would be it of course has general disruption purpose against Spellbooks and any other monster-type reliant deck, but moreover it allows me to make every monster on the field a Machine-type which turns every copy of Cyber Dragon or Prisma into a monster field wipe, since you can contact fusion for Chimeratech Fortress Dragon whenever. In essence it’s a continuous version of Lightning Vortex with a discard cost in the form of a monster summon. (that may be a stretch, but whatever) It also could technically allow the extra deck to be running some strange cards like Gear Gigant X or even Evolzar Laggia and Dolkka if I was so bold.

Well, that’s the basic idea I had! Tell me what you think or if you’ve got any ways to expand upon it, or maybe some reason why it’s just a horrible idea, I would love to hear that too.

QOTW: Question of the Week?

What do you think is the most broken card that has ever been made in Yu-Gi-Oh? That’s including banned cards. Is it Pot of Greed, or is that too simple? Also, explain why!

Written by: Kyle

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