A look at an idea using cards from sets a little farther off in the future.
I don’t know what your opinion of Shining Victories is, but mine is certainly that this is a really bad pack. It offers almost nothing desirable to the game and has cards that aren’t of much value to most players. The chase cards are all Kozmo cards, so if you don’t want Kozmos then you don’t really want anything but really inexpensive cards which can be bought for nickels and dimes and online vendors. As is typical they have a card in the unique cards slot in the middle of the pack that’s a good card (Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherries), but it’s so absurdly overpriced that your best bet is to either forgoe getting it or luck sack into it with packs you receive at events for your entry.
So there’s me here, having waited a whole 3 months since the last pack still playing Monarchs. Shining Victories arrives and, though I already knew it pre-pack release, it’s pretty much a bust pack, meaning we don’t have anything else interesting to look forward to for another 3 months. That’s a literal half year dry spell if you don’t care about Kozmos like me! So, what else am I to do but look at and test cards from the pack after Shining Victories? And that’s what I’ve been doing. Here’s a pretty sweet deck idea I’ve been working with using 2 new cards from the future pack The Dark Illusion.
This is probably one of the most interesting Yugioh cards I’ve seen in a long while and it really demanded my attention as soon as I read it. The direct translation of the cards name is “Fairy Tail – Shirayuki” or Snow White. I’m sure its name will be changed once we get an official translation, but for now I’ll refer to it has “Fair Tail – Snow White” because that’s the current Wikia translation:
Level 4 / LIGHT / Spellcaster
1850 ATK / 1000 DEF
If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; change it to face-down Defense Position. During either player’s turn, if this card is in your Graveyard: You can banish 7 other cards from your hand, field, and/or Graveyard; Special Summon this card.
Other than being super adorable, this card is also extremely versatile and a deck builder’s delight. Very abusable attribute, type and level as well as a good effect and an effect that’s valuable in a lot of potential decks. At the same time it has no clear use, which is another reason I like it, making it up to deck builders to find use for the card.
The first thing I thought for this card was naturally Lightsworns. A deck I’m very familiar with and also probably the first deck most people think of when thinking of high graveyard counts since Snow White preys off of there being a large amount of cards in the graveyard. The main reason I thought of Lightsworns was actually because of Eclipse Wyvern. Snow White reminded me greatly of the heyday back with Lightsworn Dragon Rulers where you could use the Dragon Rulers to banish milled Eclipse Wyverns to easily search Judgment Dragon. Not only does this card take over that role very well, but it also has control aspects and is less rigid in its requirements for your deck. Since Snow White can literally banish any cards from the graveyard there’s no need to be adding additional Dragon-types like before, all you really need is Eclipse Wyvern and Judgment Dragon in the deck along with the standard Lightsworn fair.
So, I tested this idea, and it works! The main problem I feel though is that Yugioh has really moved past this being a power play so I really felt in testing that this wasn’t good enough; as Matt said about searching Judgment Dragon’s with Eclipse Wyvern “there’s no time for that.” That’s not to say the deck isn’t quite powerful, but it was no where near current deck’s power level, and it almost certainly would require you having a 1000 dollar YCS prize card to play optimally. Thus my testing continued.
There’s a bunch of cards that this card can potential work with, here’s some of the things I though where interesting:
- Eclipse Wyvern:
- I don’t have to say much about it, but you can search Judgment Dragon and Lightray Diabolos with it, and you can fairly consistently summon both in Lightsworns. It’s kind of slow since you want to summon Snow White during the opponent’s turn so you can disrupt their plays with Snow White’s Tsukuyomi effect making it slow. Also banishing 7 cards is generally counter intuitive towards Judgment Dragon and Lightray Diabolos’ summoning conditions.
- Lightray Sorcerer:
- This adds an interesting element of infinite looping. With Lightray Sorcerer you can cycle back your LIGHT monsters, which is basically all you run in this deck, and can also banish opponent’s monsters as a bonus I suppose. This is really slow though, and more often than not it would’ve been better if you didn’t have to banish a monster sometimes.
- Necroface:
- This is one of the ideas that I still like a lot, but I feel like the metagame is probably too fast to utilize. Obviously you use Necroface to return all of your cards back to the deck and get a huge beater, what’s great about this though is the Extra Deck recycling. This makes banishing Extra Deck monsters with Snow White pretty ideal since you can fairly easily form Necroface loop in order to re-use cards from your Extra Deck infinitely (and yes you can use your Extra Deck fast enough). Most notably I found that recycling my one copy of Elder Entity Norden was helpful. The major downside of course, is this is only good mid to late game and Lightsworn decks tend to win earlier than that so you don’t always get around to using Necroface. Also, banishing Necroface with Snow White can potentially be more of a detriment. It’s possible someone can think of a weird deck that utilizes that interaction.
- Light of Redemption:
- Light of Redemption is a Normal Spell that adds a banished LIGHT monster to the hand. This is a pretty straightforward backwards toolboxing option that gets put on the table once you add Snow White to Lightsworns.
- D.D. Scout Plane
- This idea was a whole lot of fun. Whenever D.D. Scout Plane is banished it’s special summoned during the End Phase of that turn, unfortunately in attack mode. What’s interesting is that it can provide a semi infinite form of banishing material to activate Snow White’s effect because Snow White can banish D.D. Scout Plan from anywhere, field, graveyard or hand. I haven’t gone full blown into this idea yet, but it certainly has a lot of potential. With the addition of cards like Armageddon Knight and Dark Grepher it feasible an engine could be made based around this, but the problem is figuring out the ends that these means provide. Maybe some OCG player will find some ultimate wombo combo using this interaction and we’ll get another iteration of the triple PSY-Framelord Omega deck.
- Angel of Zera:
- Finally finally there now exists a way to consistently use Angel of Zera. Angel of Zera is a level 8 generic Synchro. It gains ATK for your opponent’s banished cards and it is also the same as D.D. Scout Plane except it comes back during the next Standby Phase. With Snow White this literally provides an infinite 2800+ beatstick. It’s pretty wild when I can get it out in a duel. Definitely cool beans!
- PSY-Framelord Omega:
- I mean, it’s first a really good card, we all know that. Second, Omega acts as an easy way to build up additional banish fodder for Snow White. I consider it the go to Synchro in my Snow White builds I’ve been testing. Generally strong and helpful for the engine’s continuity.
- Leviair the Sea Dragon:
- Some pretty sweet plays arise with Leviair, not necessarily even with just Lightsworns, although they can summon Leviair fairly consistently using multiple Luminas. If you banish a Level 4 among the cards used to summon Snow White then summon a Leviair you can backwards toolbox that 4 and then combine them in a rank 4 XYZ monster. This can put immense pressure on the opponent for really low cost. In particular I really like banishing a previously used Norden and then reviving it with Leviair, which activates Norden giving you a third level 4 monster, which can be used to make a triple rank 4 XYZ or maybe two rank 4 XYZ monsters.
- Bujinki Amaterasu:
- Speaking of triple rank 4 XYZ, the master himself is here. In the aforementioned play you can summon an Amaterasu, who’s basically a giant better Leviair. This lets you summon yet another banished monster and can add banished monsters to the hand during the opponent’s turn. In my testing, I was surprised to find this card isn’t as gimmicky as I had expected, it’s actually quite consistent and powerful.
- D.D. Telepon:
- This one is an area I didn’t delve into, but I kept in the back of my mind for future reference. When Telepon is banished from the field you banish a Psychic monster with 1500 or less ATK from the deck and summon it during your next Standby Phase. This most likely works best with Esper Girl and that section of Psychic cards. There’s also Psychic cards like Genetic Woman that backwards toolbox banished monsters and I’m pretty sure there’s a bunch of spells and traps too. The most I can say is there’s potential here, but I’m not ready to open that can of worms yet.
- Kozmo Scaredy Lion:
- It’s weird to me that I thought if this card, because I thought it was awful when I opened it at the prerelease, but nevertheless it came to mind in combination with Snow White. Once per turn Scaredy Lion can return 3 banished Kozmos to the graveyard, which can heavily re-fuel Snow White. There’s some kind of weird Kozmo Lightsworn hybrid swirling around my mind, but I would also consider this a can of worms I’m not ready to try yet. (a Tin Can of worms…)
Initially, this next combination I had tried to avoid, but in theory it was the best possible combination. I was looking for cards that have effects when banished, and the clear victor get being Shiranui. Shiranui was a FIRE Zombie archetype that barely got any support, but besides that, each Shiranui monster had an effect when they were banished, and it didn’t matter where they were banished from. For whatever reason I had thought that Shiranui was a boring archetype, and to a degree I still think that, but certainly the best possible build I could make with Snow White would contain them, this was immediately apparent upon play testing.
Level 4 / FIRE / Zombie
500 ATK / 0 DEF
You can Tribute 1 Zombie-Type monster; Special Summon 1 Zombie-Type Tuner monster with 0 DEF from your Deck. If this card is banished: You can target 1 of your banished “Shiranui” monsters (or up to 2 of them if “Shiranui Style Synthesis” is on the field), except “Shiranui Sage”; Special Summon that monster(s). You can only use each effect of “Shiranui Sage” once per turn.
Shiranui Sage is another card that is being released in The Dark Illusion. Sage wildly increases the power of the Shiranui deck, which was otherwise totally inconsistent and slow. It provides an extremely strong, but very simple combo with just itself:
- Normal summon Shiranui Sage.
- Use Sage’s effect, tribute itself to summon a Uni-Zombie from the deck.
- Use Uni-Zombie’s effect, sending Mezuki from your deck to the graveyard to make Uni-Zombie level 4.
- Use Mezuki to revive Shiranui Sage.
- Synchro with Sage and Uni-Zombie for PSY-Framelord Omega.
Basically, this combo gives you a one card level 8 Synchro. The downside is that only Zombies can attack for the rest of the turn because of Uni-Zombie’s effect. This doesn’t particularly matter on your first turn, which you ideally do this combo on. This provides a lot of future setup because the Omega will return your Mezuki to the graveyard during the opponent’s Standby Phase.
For the most part I didn’t find much value in the other Shiranui cards, at least not in combination with Lightsworns, except for one, which was Shiranui Spiritmaster. When Spiritmaster is banished you can destroy a face-up card on the field, which is insane in combination with Snow White. Sage can be banished to special summon banished Spiritmaster for reuse and Spiritmaster provides tons of control in combination with the Tsukuyomi effect of Snow White. I can’t imagine that it’s easy to play through unless your monsters cannot be target (detect my anti-Kozmo sarcasm).
With that, here’s an absolutely bonkers deck I’ve been testing that I’m really looking forward to next next set. I’m aware I’m running a Minerva in the deck, but it’s not a neccessary piece, although I would run it ideally:
Monsters: (27)
- 3 Wulf, Lightsworn Beast
- 3 Fairy Tail – Snow White
- 3 Raiden, Hand of the Lightsworn
- 3 Mezuki
- 3 Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress
- 1 Performage Trick Clown
- 2 Shiranui Spiritmaster
- 3 Shiranui Sage
- 3 Uni-Zombie
- 3 Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner
Spells: (13)
- 3 Solar Recharge
- 3 Instant Fusion
- 1 Soul Charge
- 1 Foolish Burial
- 2 Charge of the Light Brigade
- 3 Twin Twister
Extra Deck: (15)
Fusion: (2)
- 1 Elder Entity Norden
- 1 Kamionwizard
Synchro: (4)
- 1 Shiranui Shogunsaga
- 1 Angel of Zera
- 1 PSY-Framelord Omega
- 1 Michael, the Arch-Lightsworn
XYZ: (9)
- 1 Number S39: Utopia the Lightning
- 1 Bujinki Amaterasu
- 1 Performage Trapeze Magician
- 1 Number 39: Utopia
- 1 Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer
- 1 Diamond Dire Wolf
- 1 Minerva, the Exalted Lightsworn
- 1 Abyss Dweller
- 1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
As always, feel free to comment with any question or ideas of your own. If anything have some fun the new cards from The Dark Illusion, they’re pretty slick.
Written by: Kyle Oliver
What do u think about blue-eyes? I think its meh and will be basically heritics 2.0, but people seem to be all over that hype train…. also what about volcanics? Ive been testing a basic stall version with messenger of peace and lose 1 turn (among other flood gates) plus all that massive draw power and basically burn my opponet to death while hiding behind flood gates, it works very well, but dam its a slow and boring death for the opponet and me. Also the ARG state championship for WA is in spokane in i believe 2 weeks, and i hope to see some podcasts soon. Hope all is good with everyone.
The Blue-Eyes stuff may be good to a degree, but I think it’s extremely boring and rigid. It seems like a deck that won’t be sticking around for more than a format or so, and as I’m pretty budget I generally ignore decks like that.
I really like Volcanics, I’ve been doing a lot of testing with them too. The Kozmo match-up is so abysmal though that I can’t expect them to do anything in the meta. I haven’t been able to find any reasonable ways to combat Kozmos with Volcanics that don’t compromise the functionality of the deck.
We’ll try our best to get some podcasts out for ya 😉
Whats your build like? I smash kozmo on ygopro almost every time, i find mermail much more a problem.
Pretty much the same as what you said in your first comment for my build. I feel like if Kozmos get out a big ship you lose pretty consistently against Kozmos, plus Volcanics can brick pretty hard if they don’t open well and and you typically get straight OTKd by Kozmos if that happens. I tried testing some different things like main deck Imperial Iron Wall and it’s kind of a 50-50 on results so far.
Mermails makes sense.
Use the level 2 Shiranui fire tuner. You can summon it with Solitaire.
Banish 7 and special summon snow.
Synchro for Horse Prince. Use Horse prince’s effect to special summon a Gren Maju Da Eiza.
Banish 7 more for Snow
Da Eiza = 5600 (Assuming you haven’t banished anything else).
Next turn, get kaiju slumbered Ratpier combo’ed and lose the game.