Ice barrier is very rarely used, but it's still a pretty good archetype. The only card most people use from the archetype is brionac, a limited card which most decks that can synchro summon anything usually contain, due to its useful effect in clearing the field. However, the ice barrier does have some other useful cards in it.
One of the main aims of my ice barrier deck is to stop the opponent using effects, or even attacking, rather than synchro summoning powerful monsters with effects that help to clear the field, like most ice barrier decks. Cards like "Dai-sojo of the ice barrier" can be used to stop your oppoent damaging your monsters with spells and traps, as its effect stops your ice-barrier monsters being targeted, and other cards like "Secret guards of the ice barrier" have effects preventing your monsters being targeted by effect monster's effects, meaning with those two cards you could stop your opponent from destroying your monsters with any effects.
After reading those two card effects, you would simply assume you can attack the monsters, especially since these cards generally have a low defence. Not a problem, there are 2 cards that stop your opponent from attacking with anything useful. ONe, "Defender of the ice barrier", prevents your opponent from attacking with a monster that has a higher defence than this card, if another ice barrier monster is controlled. I often combo this card with "Darkworld shackles", to reduce its defence to 100. This has disadvantages because "Darkworld shackles" means I would lose 500 life points in each of my standby phases, as I control the monster it is equipped to, but it would cause my opponent to not be able to attack with anything.
The other card that can stop my opponent from attacking is a bit of a double-edged sword. "Cryomancer of the ice barrier" stops level 4 or higher monsters from attacking, provided I have another ice barrier monster on the field. This is good as a quick stall, but having 0 defence and 1300 attack means it could be beaten very easily by an opponent's monster which was a low level. It also prevents me from attacking with my own level 4 or higher monsters, so it probably shouldn't be relied upon unless as a last resort.
The three generals also play a prominent role in this deck. By stopping your opponent from destroying your monsters, you can then tribute them to summon good effect monsters with a generally high base attack. "General Raiho of the ice barrier"'s effect means that if your opponent wants to use an effect, they must discard one card, or the effect is negated. This can be devestating at a point in the game where your opponent has very few cards in their hand, and counters widely used cards that have effects which need a discard to start with, such as Brionac, for example, to counter the people who use the card without giving a second thought about the archetype.
"General Grunard of the ice barrier" is useful, because, let's face it, no matter how much I mask it in other strategies, this is a synchro deck, and because his effect allows you to normal summon or set an extra ice barrier monster every turn, it's like a continuous version of double summon, which can help to get more levers for tuning, or even tributes for another general. He also has 2800 attack, so the card is pretty strong.
"General Gantala of the ice barrier" is my favourite of the lot. Every turn, you can special summon an ice barrier monster from your graveyard. This can be used in all sorts of ways, tuning, reserecting more generals, and bringing back more of the lockdown cards mentioned earlier that may have been used but destroyed when there wasn't as much heavy protection. 2700 attack is no laughing matter either, so he can really be a pain for other decks to deal with, especially when you can't target him with effects thanks to the cards he brought back from the grave.
Unfortunately, this deck doesn't really have very much draw or search power, unless you throw in a couple of pots of duality. "Moray of greed" can be used, but I generally avoid it, as you have to return 2 water types to draw the 3 cards, so it becomes a 0 CA, and the monsters in this deck all have a general and broad purpose. The main search power comes in the form of "Medallion of the ice barrier", which allows you to search your deck for any ice barrier monster and add it to your hand, and this can be incredibly useful depending on your situation; if you have 2 monsters on the field you could get a General Gantala to tribute summon, then special summon back one of the monsters you tributed. If you need some defence, there are stall cards you can quickly gain access to.
The deck is generally pretty consistent, provided you don't run too many of the high level cards, as they could end up as dead draws. Most of the lockdown cards are low level, and there are plenty of them which could be drawn, in many different combinations limiting and completely nullifying what your opponent can do with their cards.
Despite all this, the main reason it's so underused is that it can't keep up with meta. A dino-rabbits deck would destroy this, there is very little it can do about XYZs, and the evolzaurs' effects could tear a deck like this into pieces. Inzektors rely on card effects, so they would be taken down, but decks like six samurai would obliterate this deck; crowding the field is the last thing an ice barrier deck wants its opponent to do, they need time to build up a defence and they can't get that when 3 monsters just got summoned in the same turn, which could then destroy some of the useful lockdown cards.
Nevertheless, there are still many different styles of playing with this deck, as I just demonstrated, this effect lockdown being far less common than the already-quite-rare ice barrier synchro deck. When there are liable deck choices in an archetype that people don't use, you can surprise an opponent by doing something they don't expect. An ice barrier deck is "supposed" to synchro summon, as they are the leading cards in the archetype, so unless they were prepared for anything an effect lockdown would not be on the opponent's list of expectations. In other words, surprise is a good element in an underused deck of this sort.
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