Here’s some interesting tech ideas for Ultra Athletes.
Spurred on by a comment from last week asking about what some interesting tech cards for U.A.s would be, I decided I could make an article about a couple of things I thought that where interesting.
Right out of the gate, I’ll give you what I mentioned in the previous article Denko Sekka:
Denko Sekka makes a very nice niche in the new Ultra Athlete deck with the addition of U.A. Signing Deal. Now it’s possible to get away with normal summoning Denko Sekka to force your plays through and more effectively lock down the opponent. There’s two optimal routes for using Denko. The first is you have Denko Sekka and also have Signing Deal. The second is you maintain a U.A. on the field for 1 turn and then normal Denko (like in the previous builds). Both plays put the opponent in a very difficult lock down position (assuming they’re running a trap bound deck). For example, you can then summon U.A. Might Slugger besides the Denko and run over any problem monster, or perhaps use U.A. Dreadnought Dunker to both attack and destroy threats simultaneously. Then, the solidify you can have a Denko and a U.A. Perfect Ace during the opponents turn, which is pretty annoying too. If you have the field spell U.A. Stadium you can further boost Denko Sekka’s ATK every turn by 500 to intensify the lock.
After testing it a few times, I feel like I would main 2 max, probably side the third for very back row heavy decks. I’ve mostly settled on 1 unless I’m trying out other larger normal summon engines which could end up conflicting.
Another card that I thought was interesting that I testing running along side the Denko Sekka was Summoner Monk:
Summoner Monk is a little weird in the deck. It does a lot of beneficial things but at the cost of lost advantage, which kind of hurts considering the deck doesn’t get plusses particularly quickly outside of game state simplification in the battle phase.
The most obvious thing the card does though is get you to your copies of Midfielder more quickly. Naturally, the deck still relies heavily on getting a U.A. Midfielder to perpetuate your plays. Given that almost all the deck is spells (depending on the builds I’ve been testing it tends to sit around about 20 spell, literally half the deck), you almost always have something to discard with Summoner Monk. A lot of spells tend to overlap too, so if you have a Terraforming and a Field Spell or multiples in any similar way to that, Monk can get rid of them. This engine is pretty similar to the old Tour Guide engine I used before to summoner MX-Saber Invoker, which could special summon Midfielder from the deck, which was good for the deck, but has to change a little bit to work now (I’ll get to that next).
I’m sure you’re thinking that Monk to summon Midfielder isn’t all that spectacular, and it’s not. The good news is though that there are 2 additional bonuses to this play that are very helpful. The first is you can run Denko Sekka with this engine and then get that out if need be with Monk, which is alright I suppose. The second is the real kicker though; with the addition of the card U.A. Penalty Box, Lavalval Chain became an incredibly beneficial card for the deck. You can use Summoner Monk to summon a level 4 from the deck and XYZ for Lavalval Chain and use Chain to send Penalty Box to the graveyard. Then, from the graveyard it can be banished to get U.A. Signing Deal and special summon any U.A. from the deck. If you want an even bigger wombo combo, you can use Summoner Monk to summon another Summoner Monk and the next Monk to get Midfielder. Then, XYZ both Monks for Lavalval Chain and do the Penalty Box play and you’ll have Lavalval Chain, 1 U.A. of choice and a Midfielder on board. The best thing about both of these plays though is that if Lavalval Chain survives an additional turn (which isn’t all too hard to ask for with U.A. Stadium ATK boosts), you can use it again to send another Penalty Box next turn for an additional plus.
As I said, I used to use a Tour Guide Engine comprised of 3 Tour Guide, 1 Scarm and 1 Cir to make MX-Saber Invoker which could special summon Midfielder from the deck. Then, if you had U.A. Stadium you could boost Invoker to 2100 ATK and hopefully protect it and get another free Midfielder next turn. You would use Tour Guide to summon Scarm and detach Scarm and he would search Cir during the end phase. The Cir could then be discarded for Perfect Ace to special summon the in grave Scarm which would immediately die and get you another Tour Guide. Obviously none of that works now with 1 Tour Guide, so I made up a new similar but different engine that tries to take advantage of the new cards we gained.
The new engine is much smaller and simpler:
- 1 Tour Guide From the Underworld
- 1 Scarm, Malebranche of the Burning Abyss
- 2 Kuribandit
- 2 Magic Planter
- 3 Call of the Haunted
- 1 MX-Saber Invoker
- 1 Dante, Traveler of the Burning Abyss
So like before there’s the Tour Guide engine, except with only one Tour Guide. If you get the Tour Guide, then great you can make the Invoker play and use the Scarm to search Kuribandit. Why Kuribandit you ask? Well, there are actually two very applications to Kuribandit. Like Denko Sekka, you can get away with normal summoning it instead of an Ultra Athlete because of the existence of U.A. Signing Deal. Second, Kuribandit increases consistency, as it typically does, but in this instance it can mill copies of U.A. Penalty Box for additional plusses. Third, it sets up U.A. Rival Rebounder plays that can gain some extreme advantage. Without a milling engine like Kuribandit, you really aren’t going to be getting Rebounder’s effect to revive from the graveyard all too often unless you force the issue. Now, with Kuribandit, the graveyard will be frequently loaded with U.A. monsters to be revived with Rival Rebounder when it’s normal summoned, getting you to 2 U.A. field you always want in the deck.
There’s still more though with the addition of Call of the Haunted and Magic Planter. I have been looking through a lot of Continuous Traps trying to find some good ones to run along side U.A. Penalty box in order to run Magic Planter because Penalty Box is one of the most ideal cards to use with Magic Planter for reason I think are self-evident. That’s where Call of the Haunted comes in; Call of the Haunted is all too great typically in the deck, but with the addition of Kuribandit it becomes viable, which is very powerful for a couple reasons. Firstly is the aforementioned Magic Planter viability. Secondly, Call of the Haunted aids in the 2 U.A. monster on the field I’m always looking for. Lastly, and most importantly, Call of the Haunted can special summon Rival Rebounder during the opponent’s turn. When Rival Rebounder is special summoned during the opponent’s turn you can special summon another U.A. from the hand or graveyard, which gets you up to 3 or 4 U.A. on the field pretty quickly, especially if you’re milling a lot of them.
Now, I can’t say for certain this engine is viable, but it sure sounds fun, so I’ll be testing it, and other potential milling engines in the future. Some other cards to think about for this engine include Soul Charge and Feast of the Wild LV5. Both can allow you to summon some XYZ monsters, and I’d like to give special mention to Artifact Durendal because his effect can force the opponent to destroy your U.A. Penalty Box. Cairngorgon the Anitluminescent Knight is similar for blocking MSTs and redirecting them towards Penalty Box.
Last, but certainly not least, and maybe even my favorite of the potential U.A. tech cards is Heroic Challenger – Assault Halberd. Brought to my attention by a guy named Dillon from my locals, this card really makes a good fit for the deck.
For those unawares, here’s Assault Halberd’s effect:
Level 4 / EARTH / Warrior
1800 ATK / 200 DEF
If your opponent controls a monster and you control no monsters, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent. When this card inflicts battle damage to your opponent: You can add 1 “Heroic” card from your Deck to your hand.
Assault Halberd has the Cyber Dragon summoning condition, but he can also be normal summoned if need be. He fulfills a couple of niche roles in the deck that cards I’ve mentioned previously also do, but in a different fashion.
Nicely enough, Assault Halberd provides an additional Reinforcement of the Army target, making ROTA a ore versatile card, which is always nice. Because of his special summoning condition, he can provide a quick tribute for a tribute summon in a pinch when you need to summon Perfect Ace or Mighty Slugger with Stadium to get the deck going, which is really worst case scenario.
You can also do a similar Lavalval Chain play like with Summoner Monk, but it’s a bit less efficient, or I suppose I would say it’s not as easy to pull off. You can special summon an Assault Halberd, attack and get his effect to search another copy of himself and then normal summon it to make a Laval Chain (or any Rank 4 XYZ for that matter). This is a pretty clean way to make a Rank 4, it only takes 1 card, and a lot of time it will bait out other cards from you opponent allowing you to follow up with different plays depending on the opponent’s actions. For example you can special summon Assault Halberd, and I’ve found a lot of people will Veiler it if you attempt to go to Battle Phase if they have nothing to stop it, in which case you can stay in the Main Phase and tribute it for a U.A. or normal a Midfielder or play a Signing Deal etc. and keep your momentum rolling.
In the case you’re also running Summoner Monk you can always special summon Assault Halberd before summoning Monk and attempt to pressure the opponent with Assault Halberd and then during Main Phase 2 attempt a Summoner Monk play. This gives you some extra Rank 4 versatility and a view into what answers the opponent may have for your plays.
Easily the worst part about the card is that it’s Super Rare, ruining the the fact that the deck is all Commons and Rares.
Speaking of ruining the deck’s rarity, we have the Secret Rare from the most recent Crossed Souls: Galaxy Cyclone. Here’s the card’s effect:
Normal Spell
Target 1 Set Spell/Trap Card on the field; destroy it. During your Main Phase, except the turn this card was sent to the Graveyard: You can banish this card from your Graveyard, then target 1 face-up Spell/Trap Card on the field; destroy it. You can only use this effect of “Galaxy Cyclone” once per turn.
So why use this is Ultra Athletes? I’ll attempt to give you my most compelling reasons. If I wasn’t running Galaxy Cyclone in the deck I would say that Mystical Space Typhoon is a mandatory choice for main deck in Ultra Athletes. The deck struggles to deal with Continuous Trap cards, or continuous cards of any nature, and thus needs the answer to those types of cards. For example, Skill Drain, Lose 1 Turn, Mistake, and many other cards are a really big hassle for the deck, so using MST on them is a must. Also, I’m a very tentative player, so I don’t like to play risky, and if my opponent has 1 set card I don’t like to make aggressive plays with U.A. because if it gets disrupted it can fall apart pretty quick (the fate of all non teir 1 decks that make mistakes). MST also can destroy your own set Penalty Box in order to crash your deck.
Galaxy Cyclone has way more benefits on top of MSTs assets in regards to Ultra Athletes, putting it way above MST as far as best choices for this deck. Galaxy Cyclone obviously be used to destroy set cards (even your own) when need be. It also can from the graveyard destroy pesky continuous spells and traps (once again even your own). Unlike MST though, Galaxy Cyclone makes fantastic discard fodder. For both Summoner Monk and Perfect Ace, Galaxy Cyclone makes a fantastic discard choice. You can destroy the face-up spell or traps, including your Penalty Box after discarding Galaxy Cyclone. Pretty neat.
I would also like to try running Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit in the deck, maybe even with Emergency Teleport, but I don’t really expect to get any copies of that card any time soon, so I figured I wouldn’t even test it out. The Emergency Teleport provides tribute fodder, defense, destruction of obnoxious continuous cards which I’ve already mentioned are annoying as well as and also ran Synchro opportunity.
QOTW? Question of the Week:
What do you think the best deck is going to be going into Nationals? Then after that, with the combined ban list which deck you think will stand out for worlds given that many of the major decks have huge disadvantages under the combined list?
Written by: Kyle Olive