Idea for deck building including the new Subterror archetype.
I’ve been playing around with Subterrors, I feel like I really haven’t seen any sort of ideas for the deck that I found interesting. The cards for the archetype were also exceptionally cheap, monetarily I mean, so I wasn’t really pushed away by price point. That to say I’ve tested some stuff, here’s just an info dump of things I looked through.
Basic and Obvious:
I’ll just start with cards I found exceptionally obvious to be used in the deck. First is Burst Rebirth: Pay 2000 special summon a monster from your graveyard faced-down. Once the deck gets started, the big Subterrors Behemoths are in the graveyard pretty quick, at least if the opponent is doing anything at all. So reviving them face-down is an essential.
The next obvious card is Terraforming. The deck is literally lacking support, so it needs anything that can get you to its cards faster. The field spell for the deck, The Hidden City, is essentially a ROTA type card, so terraforming just becomes a sixth ROTA type card for the deck. In the future the deck may still run Terraforming, but it’s certainly not neccessary if more relevant support comes out.
Interesting Individual Cards:
Quick High Levels:
With Subterror Nemesis Warrior, I was trying to think of reasonable ways to special summon high level monsters in order to quickly activate his effect. With at least a level 3 monster you can tribute the level 3 and Nemesis Warrior to summon Umastryx from our deck. With at least a level 6 monster you can summon Stalagmo fro your deck. Here’s some of the ones I thought of off hand:
- Gillagillancer
- Lancer is basically a level 6 Cyber Dragon. Probably the most straightforward way to get a level 6 on board.
- Destiny HERO – Malicious
- The possibility of running some form of HERO Subterror deck exists through this card. You can easily special summon Malicious once in the graveyard and it provides the level 6 you need without normal summoning.
- Photon Thrasher
- Another simple one. If you run Reinforcement of the Army to search your Nemesis Warriors you can also run 1 Photon Thrasher as a way to combine with a Nemesis Warrior you already have in hand to special summon an Umastyrx from the deck.
More Random-ish:
Similar to Burst Rebirth but better and worse in ways is The Shallow Grave. The Shallow Grave is a Normal Spell that has both players revive a monster from their respective graveyards face-down. The requirement of the opponent having a monster in the graveyard is a huge setback for this card, but otherwise it would be amazing. I thought of making a weird build utilizing cards like Dark World Dealings, Hand Destruction, and Destiny HERO – Malicious combined with The Shallow Grave to turbo-ify the deck in a weird way. Probably wouldn’t work…
Next, I literally read through every Yugioh card that had the text “Rock-type monster” in it in hopes there would be some kind of synergy with Subterror Behemoth Stalagmo. The only real card I found was Triamid Pulse. Here’s its effect:
Continuous Trap
Once per turn: You can banish 2 cards from your Graveyard (any combination of Rock-Type monsters or Field Spell Cards), then activate 1 of these effects;
● Target 1 other face-up card on the field; destroy it.
● Target 1 Rock-Type monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon it in Defense Position.
● Target up to 3 Field Spell Cards in your Graveyard; shuffle them into the Deck, then draw 1 card.
This card has a fair amount of synergy with the deck since I typically run 3 Terraforming at the moment and Stalagmo, and the potentially used Pot of Taboos (with Predicition Princesses) are both Rock-type, so the activation requirements aren’t too steep. You could also toss in some other Field Spells if you really wanted to get it working.
Flip-Flop Powers:
Probably the first idea I came up with was running flip-flop monsters in the deck. Both the Subterror Behemoth monsters have the effect:
When a face-up monster you control is flipped face-down, if you control no face-up monsters: You can Special Summon this card from your hand in Defense Position.
One of the easiest ways to activate this effect is to normal summon a monster that has an effect that flips itself face-down. The types of monsters with these effects I refer to as flip-flop monsters, examples would be classics like Moai Interceptor Cannon or Swarm of Locusts. There’s a handful I’d like to make special note of though.
- Des Lacooda
- Des Lacooda has always been a favorite card of mine. It has the flip-effect, allowing you to flip it face-down once per turn, and a flip summon effect that just draws 1 card. I would consider it the ideal flip-flop monster for the deck because of the built in attack protection The Hidden City provides. This just gives you a continuous stream of cards, which is powerful if left alone for 1 or 2 turns.
- Flip-Flop Frog
- Literally having flip-flop in the name makes it pretty obvious. Flip-Flop Frog is in my opinion the best removal type flip-flop monster because it returns monsters to the hand when flip summoned except it doesn’t target, which is crucial. If for whatever reason you get multiple Frogs then it can return as many monsters to the hand as Frogs on the field, which is a nice bonus that is rarely seen aside from pure Frog decks.
Ghostricks:
The entirety of the Ghostrick archetype has the flip-flop effect, which makes me consider it in my mind. Does it have any value in Subterrors? I’m not completely sure, but it sure makes sense.
Geargia:
This one actually has a lot of synergy. What one could debate as the best flip-flop monster in Yugioh (bar the potentially new and better Subterrors) is Geargiarmor. With Geargiarsenal you’re running 6 flip-fop monsters to activate your Subterrors from hand pretty quickly. Also, Geargiaccelerator has an effect when sent to the graveyard and is easily special summoned, giving it synergy with the Behemoths as well as Nemesis Warrior. The idea certainly needs refinement, but in my brief testing it all was very functional and has potential.
Shaddolls:
Here’s a quick one, I haven’t tested it though. Shaddolls can work with any deck that’s EARTH, and predominantly want EARTH monsters now that Construct is banned. There isn’t a whole lot of synergy here because the Shaddolls don’t really flip themselves face-down, but at the very least both can run Burst Rebirth, Shaddolls are good, and fusion summoning with a Subterror sets them up for revival in the graveyard.
The Cream of the Crop:
Clearly the most synergetic and best idea is the one that everyone’s already had, which is Prediction Princesses. Prediction Princess Tarotrei has absolute synergy with the deck. Here’s her effect:
Level 9 / LIGHT / Fairy
2700 ATK / 1200 DEF
You can Ritual Summon this card with “Prediction Ritual”. Once per turn, during your End Phase: You can Special Summon 1 Flip monster from your hand or Graveyard in face-downDefense Position. You can only use 1 of the following effects of “Prediction Princess Tarotrei” per turn, and only once that turn.
● During either player’s turn: You can target 1 face-down monster on the field; change it to face-upAttack Position.
● During either player’s turn: You can target 1 face-up monster on the field; change it to face-down Defense Position.
First, she revives a Behemoth during each End Phase. Second, she can flip-flop your monsters as a control mechanism during the opponent’s turn. She can even flip the opponent’s monster face-down to mess with their setups. It being on the field alone provides a lot of power. Typically you’ll also run Tarotrei with Pot of Taboos because Taboos is level 9, providing the entire ritual tribute for Tarotrei and is also a Flip effect monster, making it revivable by Tarotrei herself. Even above all that, Pot of Taboos has an incredible effect. You can also provide the entire ritual tribute using Subterror Behemoth Stalagmo. This really sets up the deck quickly.
The basic engine I’ve boiled it down to is this:
- 3 Prediction Princess Tarotrei
- 1 Prediction Princess Coinorma
- 3 Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands
- 3 Prediction Ritual
- 1 Ritual Sanctuary
All the threes make sense. Coinorma is a generically good card for the deck. It has a flip effect that summons a level 3 or higher flip effect monster from your deck face-down. You cannot use any other effects that turn other than Prediction Princesses, making the card really slow, but, because you can banish the Ritual Spell from the graveyard to search your deck for any Prediction Princess monster, I found it logical to include one copy for at least that purpose.
Then I also added one Ritual Sanctuary, a really interesting card that I think finds maximum synergy in this deck given that it’s really easy to run 3 Terraforming in the deck. Ritual Sanctuary’s effect is this:
Field Spell
You can discard 1 Spell Card; add 1 LIGHT Ritual Monster or 1 Ritual Spell Card from your Deck to your hand. You can shuffle any number of Spell Cards from your Graveyard into the Deck, then target 1 LIGHT Fairy-Type monster in your Graveyard whose Level equals the number of cards you shuffled into the Deck;Special Summon it. You can only use each effect of “Ritual Sanctuary” once per turn.
This adds versatility to your Terraformings and also lets you recycle Terraformings and The Hidden City’s which is pretty powerful. It gets you Tarotrei or the Ritual Spell in a pinch, or can recycle Manjus, whichever you fancy, maybe even both?
The Future:
What I’m expecting for the deck is two things, or at least, this is what I’m hoping to see in the next set to put the deck over the top into relevant meta space. The first is a way to combat Nobleman of Crossout. If Subterrors become good, this card inherently becomes very viable in the side against them. What I would hope to see is either a continuous trap that lets you flip-flop your Subterrors or a card like Sinister Shadow Games for Subterrors. This lets you evade Nobleman of Crossout and also adds a lot of dimension to the decks play.
The second thing I’d like to see is a level 4 or lower Subterror Behemoth with a flip-flop effect. For example, maybe a Level 4 Dragon-type that can flip-flop itself that has a flip effect that banishes a spell or trap card. This adds a searchable flip-flop option to the deck which really ramps up the deck’s turn one plays. Also, since it’s level 4 it provides XYZ options in combination with Nemesis Warrior.
That’s all my thoughts, I’m out!
Written by: Kyle Oliver