Hello everyone, as you all know the water deck is becoming more and more popular. It's easy to run, easy to pilot - well if you want I can say 'medium', but it's not hard by any means. So what I'd like to talk about is how do we stop them.
If you're playing 'Chaos Dragons', 'Macro Rabbit', even 'Darkworld'... Like if you think about it, you can pretty much win with any deck that has easy access to 'big' monsters - Agents for an example, those decks are good vs mermails - sure, they lose time to time, but they are good.
As you all know I'm a WU player, I play other decks, but WU is my main deck. The big monsters I have are only XYZ monsters. The idea is that I side good cards vs that deck in order to win, since I have almost nothing in my main that can do me any good vs Water.
Now what I'll talk about might sound more like 'What to side in WU vs Mermails' but I think you can use it in other decks - for an example 'Trooper Agents'.
So before that, lets say how mermials win their games. They win by OTK, the times that it's not an OTK was cause he attacked you earlier and you took some damage to you LP. If you think more about their plays, they spam a lot of monsters in order for them to win, they summon 'Abyssmegalo' and some other 'not so good' monster(s) on board and you just got OTK'ed - that happens cause they've discarded copies of "Marksman' and "Infantry' to remove any protection you might have in the turn. ~That pretty much sums down the whole strategy the 'Water' deck has.
Cards are good against that deck:
Monsters.
As monsters, in this moment, you have a very little number of monsters you can use to do anything vs them.
Best monster against the mermail deck is probably - Banisher of the Radiance.
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Any card sent to the Graveyard is banished instead.Now the problem with him is that he's not 'big', he's only at 1600 attack, they do run 1800 attack monsters in the deck, so they can kill it. The place where is that card good tho is Agents. Trooper agents have enough backrow protection to keep him alive as well as the field presence of 'Gachi Gachi' on the field to boost his attack to 2000. If the opponent doesn't have a quick out to that it pretty much seals his fate.
Next monster is being currently used in a lot of decks - Thunder King Rai-oh.
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Neither player can add cards from their Deck to their hand except by drawing them. During either player's turn, when your opponent would Special Summon a monster: You can send this face-up card to the Graveyard; negate the Special Summon, and if you do, destroy it. TK is a part of WU main decks since the start of the format, but not just there, a lot of decks started playing Thunder King cause of its multiple 'powers'. What I'm talking about is that not only TK is a good normal summon with 1900 attack it stops your opponents cards - it can stop the special summon of a monster (don't try to stop the special summon(s) from effects, TK can't negate something that start a chain) and he stops them from adding any card from the deck to his/her hand.
Yes, the last part is what we're looking for - they can't search any of key cards from the deck, as you might have seen - all of the mermail combos, in order to be executed, they need to activate the effect(s) that let them search some cards within the deck. The Idea is that, with TK on board, you pretty much lock most of the cards they have to stop you, but not all of them. 'Abysslinde' is a pain in the ass for your TK since it summons a 'Abyssmegalo' from the deck, a monster that is bigger than your 1900 attack TK. He can do that or he can just special summon the copy of 'Abyssmegalo' he has in his hand, and since it's summoned from an effect, your TK can't negate that.
Other good choice of a monster is actually a XYZ Monster - Abyss Dweller.
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While this card has an Xyz Material attached that was originally WATER, all WATER monsters you control gain 500 ATK. Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; any card effects that activate in your opponent's Graveyard cannot be activated this turn.Pretty much a staple card of this moment that a lot of decks have quick access to - Wind-ups, Heroes, etc.
There are 2 key notes on that card - 1) You can use it in during either player's turn, this can give you huge advantage not only against Water, but with decks like DarkWorld, Hieratics, and a lot more; 2) It stops effects that ACTIVATE in the graveyard, this means that it counters Atlanteans and Marmail Abysslinde, Sangan, cards like Mystic Tomato, Light pulsar, Madolche, everything that activates in the graveyard.
There is another thing as well, if you have other water monsters it can boost their attack by 500. Overall a very good card, if your deck can make it add it to your Extra if you haven't already.
Spells.
As for spells, there is pretty much only one card - Dimensional Fissure.
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Any monster sent to the Graveyard is banished instead. The card is really good, that's why everyone probably know to side this one. Since of its huge popularity I will not talk that much about this card. What I will say is that 'Fissure' stops their access to the grave and if they don't MST that, like very fast, they can't do anything - just like DWs.
*COUGH* http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Armor_Kappa *COUGH*
Traps.
Macro Cosmos.
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When this card resolves: You can Special Summon 1 "Helios - The Primordial Sun" from your hand or Deck. While this card is face-up on the field, any card sent to the Graveyard is banished instead. This card has been in the game for quite some time, the card is basically the same as 'Banisher'.
Macro is currently being used in the 'new' Dino Rabbit builds, in their main deck. Like Banisher this card has flaws, being in a deck like Dino Rabbit it would be normal to expect the opponent to side 'Royal Decree' against you. In terms of number of outs this card has, against Banisher, Macro is weaker - 3 MST, 2 Dust, Heavy Strom, Royal Decree. Again, since this is one of the cards that completely 'shuts down' the Water deck, if they don't have a 'quick' access to one of the outs I just said - you pretty much won the game.
Soul Drain.
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Activate by paying 1000 Life Points. Monsters that are banished, as well as monsters in the Graveyard, cannot activate their effects (that start a Chain). Like Macro was the trap card variant to Banisher, Soul Drain is the trap card variant to Abyss Dweller. The card is a every good alternative to DFissure if you somehow need your graveyard, I'm talking about decks like LS, BW, etc. - since they could side that card. As I mentioned when I talked about DFissure, soon the OCG will have Armor Kappa. Now what Kappa does is this:
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Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; this card gains 1000 ATK or DEF. During the Battle Step, when a monster you control battles: You can discard 1 card; this turn, you take no Battle Damage, and monsters you control cannot be destroyed by battle. You can only use this effect once per Duel. This doesn't seem like something that good, but what you need to focus on is this - 'Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card;' This is what we call - COST, and that means to destroy your DFissure he will need only a copy of Deep Sea Diva in his hand (he will need a copy of Atlantean Heavy Infantry as well, but you get the point) - with that he can just detach the Infantry that is a material and pop your DFissure. Lucky for us that the TCG will not have that anytime soon, so we can still use our DFissures.
That really sums every card that can 'shut down' the deck, now I'll talk about the new card I was thinking about.
As everyone knows WU, Trooper Agents, and like a lot other decks as well main 'Dimensional Prison', 'Mirror Force', stuff like that - when they go against 'Water' they usually have to side those cards. The idea is that you remove the cards that you CAN'T chain - you'll still have 'Torrential Tribute', 'Bottomless Trap Hole', all of the 'Solemns', but that's about it. If you keep cards that 'can be used only when they attack', sure there are times that your opponent won't use 1 of 3 copies of 'Marksman' or 1 of 3 copies of 'MST', you can actually use your set Mirror Force on some cards. In the more realistic way of thinking it - your 'Prison', 'Mirror', even 'Fiendish Chain' is not that effective, in other words those trap cards are all dead, and your opponent will pop them and OTK you. Since most people know that, they side those cards out.
So what do we add against this deck?
What some WU decks have at this moment is copies of 'Snowman'/'Spirit Reaper' in main - you side that as well. Now if you think about it, you already removed 4 cards from your main - and this is like the best case scenario. So what you'll do is that you'll put copies of 'Fissure' in your main deck in order to lock them, but you can side 3 at max, so that means that you have one more spot left. So far so good, you can side a copy of 'Soul drain', like I said before, as your 4th 'Fissure' and go into the next duel. That's all nice but it doesn't always work. Aside from those generic cards that you'll remove from your deck, you have cards like 'Compulse', 'Mind Control/Soul taker' in your main deck as well. Now 'Mind Control' is probably the best out of those 3. What 'Compulse' is is a card that lets them summon their 'Untine', 'Abysspike', 'Abyssmegalo' one more time - true, you can use the card against other cards he might summon against you and actually do something with it. As for 'Soul Taker', the card can be used only in your turn and the monsters your opponent, 'Water', has are just little bit over 2400 attack, that's not hard to overpower, what I'm saying is that 'Soul Taker' is not that good vs 'Water'.
What I thought about was the last YCS, won by Inzektorz and Water being 2nd place. How did the Inzektor guy won -
Threatening Roar.
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Your opponent cannot declare an attack this turn. As you might have seen I said a couple of times that 'Water' can only OTK you to win, the times that they don't OTK you is when they have done some damage to you BEFORE their final spamming. What 'Water' does is spam some monsters and by doing that they destroy your backrow and your monsters, so they clean your board and attack you with all forces directly - the only thing you can do is have 'Gorz' or 'Tragoedia' to stop the OTK. What the Inzektor guy did was he had 'Threatening Roar' - you can chain that card to MST, to 'Marksman's effect' buy you another turn. At this point when you use the card, other than against MST, your opponent will have his monsters on board already, since what 'Water' does is OTK. You can say that his hand is already weaken, he'll need time to make another OTK spam. What you can do once you stopped those attacks is to comeback in the game - now in Agents it looks pretty easy, you can summon a new 'Hyperion' and pretty much kill his field; what you can do in WU is a little harder, you'll need a little more cards in hand to fully comeback but you can still do it.
You can have 'Carrier' and a 'Magician' and have Roar in set, he spams the field you just flip the copy of roar and you have your Magi/Carrier alive for next turn. Now with them you can really comeback, I'm not gonna talk about what you CAN do since the combos that you can do from that point are a lot, but you get the point. You protect your combo monsters - carrier and magi, and you comeback on the next turn.
Now this is actually only in theory, I haven't yet tested the idea to its fullest, but I do see Threatening Roar as a side option against 'Water'. So I'd like to hear your opinions on it and maybe share what you side against the deck.
Last edited by L.Lawliet on Wed Jan 30, 2013 12:08 pm; edited 1 time in total
