There are too many cards and combinations, and not enough time to test them all. However, I explored some deck concepts that may inspire you.
Dark Magician Support
There’s new dark magician support in shining victories. Kyle mentioned that it looked pretty interesting. I loved my time with the Dragons of Legend support for the Dark Magician, so I had to try.
After a few days with it, I feel like my personal playstyle gets really aggressive and combo oriented if a theme does not have limited resources. The new Dark Magician theme throws Dark Magicians around everywhere.
There’s a new quick-play spell card, Illusion Magic: Tribute 1 Spellcaster, add up to 2 Dark Magicians from your DECK or Graveyard to the hand. He also gets his Staff and Robe turned into monster cards, plus a new…like…ghost form, and then a few more spells and traps. Dark Magician also has a Shonen Jump Xyz and a new Xyz coming from this pack, which I thought was not as good as the Jump one.
This theme also has built-in conflict resolution in the form of banishing your opponent’s cards. You know how some archetypes don’t do anything to your opponent, they just sit there and touch themselves? Some archetypes return cards to hand, some destroy, some flip face down – the Dark Magicians banish cards, that’s their thing.
Lightsworns…
I tried to go back to lightsworns and test out new cards. The one really interesting take-away is that I like Dawn Knight. It’s one of those Armaggedon Knight spin-offs for the Light attribute. Effect: 1) If sent from field to graveyard: You can send 1 Light monster from the deck to graveyard. 2) If sent from deck to graveyard: Target 1 Light monster in graveyard: place on top of deck.
The first effect is optional, though not altogether going to happen very much. But when it does happen, you get to send a Wulf or Felis, or Dawn Knight and do stuff.
The second effect is not optional, so you might end up having to awkwardly put a Dawn Knight back in the deck. This effect can, however, put a Judgment Dragon in your graveyard back on top of your deck. It can be used to plan for Card Trooper, Solar Recharge, Raiden, the works. I like it’s utility.
I also tried putting Archfiend Eccentrick and Heiress in to combat Skilldrain. Didn’t end up working out too well, mostly cause I didn’t need it if they weren’t running Skill Drain, or they were running more traps, so it didn’t matter too much. The Light and Dark combo was nice for Chaos dealings though.
Naturia Beast and Naturia Barkion deck
I had high hopes of summoning Naturia Beast, Barkion, and Destiny Hero Plasma on the first turn. I scoured though all the earth monsters, looking for earth tuners that were the most accessible, and earth-non tuners that were the most accessible. Access was determined by number of spell cards that pointed to them in the deck.
It was meh (surprise), but I did find a few interesting cards.
Tackle Crusader
If this card is sent to the graveyard:
• Target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls: flip it to face-down defense.
• Target 1 face-up spell/trap your opponent controls: return that target to the hand. Your opponent cannot activate cards with the same name as that card.
Multiplication of Ants
Tribute 1 Insect Type Monster, Special Summon 2 – Level 4 Insect Type monster tokens.
Insect Imitation
Tribute 1 Monster. Tribute Summon 1 Insect-Type monster that is 1 level higher from your deck.
If you’re running a fun deck idea, let me know. Or if you’ve come across an interesting concept that you have or have not tested, I’d be interested to just hear what it is! Feel free to discuss them down in the comments, or talk with me on twitter @mattcarter.