double post ........

Yeah... I'm not liking Enishi at this moment either. It doesn't seem worth putting it into a Six Sam deck that wants to be very fast and almost have OTK 1st draw. I'd rather add in another Shogun than Enishi...

I haven't been able to test out Cunning yet in my deck becuase I'm not completely sure on what to take out for them to go in....

Oh dear, its all so very complicated! Bleh...

Well, there's always WTA. That seemed to work very well, even though I never saw Enishi get pulled off Reasoning anyway. I'd also look into 2-3 of the Union. It does wonders for Grandmaster and still counts as a Six Samurai for Yaichi/Kamon.

You could technically support three shien. If you use two or three sword technique, and some more milling cards. Slightly less consistent, but would ensure you get OTK's half of the time.

The Union, again, seems to stifle the pace of the deck. The fact that you need to waste a normal summon to get him out when you already have a samurai out makes it hard. Then you equip it to a samurai, and now you don't have another six samurai MONSTER on your field, so they lose their effect. At 500 ATK by itself, its just too much work to get it to pay off. I prefer continuing to bash face in two or three turns, before I even need extra draw power.

My take on the Union monster is that it'd work best with Grandmaster of the Six Samurai. Summon Spirit of the Six Samurai, you now have one Six Samurai on the field. Drop a Grandmaster of the Six Samurai and equip Spirit of the Six Samurai to the Grandmaster. Now you have a 2600 Grandmaster that can attack right over a Monarch and draw. I want to experiment with it, I think it might be interesting. I plan on only playing one copy right now to replace Morphing Jar which I'm getting more and more sick of in this deck as time goes on. Everyone sees it coming, what else does a Samurai deck set?

Actually its easy to get morphing jar off. For starters, keep at least two cards in hand so you don't telegraph that its jar. If you can, set dark bribe to the backrow stop those noblemen. It also helps if you side in a single Big shield. Search it with ROTA, then set the jar instead. They'll be afraid to use a card like nobleman of shield crush. Sometimes I'll set a samurai the turn before so they'll waste their nobleman on that, then drop jar on the next turn.

Having the Union just for grandmaster seems a bit too situational. At the same time, barring an unbribed vortex, I enjoy having more than one monster on my field. I like the Union better now that it just reads destroyed, instead of destroyed by battle, but still don't see room for it in my current build.

No, the only dilemma I'm still struggling with is to go with one sword technique or two. two is riskier, but also considerably more aggressive.

I'm starting out with one Sword Technique for now to see how it works. I was originally planning on using two but decided to scale back so I could fit an entire playset of Cunning of the Six Samurai in this deck. I'm sure it will still be a few more weeks before I have any of these cards, so I'll have to wait to do some testing.

Unfortunately I don't have any Dark Bribes yet :( I'd love to add some to this deck as giving my opponent one card really doesn't seem like a big deal when I have a swarm about to win the game. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can find a decent deal on them, I don't want to pay more than the game costs, but I don't really want three copies of a game that I'll never play because I won't get anything reselling them, I'm not really a huge video game player.

There's the problem. The current set we've been working with so far isn't working. I was the one getting my face bashed in w/in 2-3 turns, and my deck is set pretty much like you two's. Once I changed it out, took Shien out, replaced him with Enishi, brought in 2 spirits, 2 double edged, 3 cunnings, etc. it started going back to me bashing face w/in 3-4 turns. Better to take 1 turn longer to win than not win at all. I went from entering the Sneak Preview dead last against the new meta, to ending SP a day later 1st place over 15 previous Rank 8's.

Maybe I'll think differently after I've tested out Enishi a little bit, but for right now I really enjoy Shien and how well he fits into the theme of this deck.

To tell you the truth, Enishi isn't great at all. I mean its good, but not good enough. Its a waste to use in a speed associated deck that also uses the graveyard frequently. I feel bad now that I've asked a buddy of mine to hold 2 of em' for meh. Lame, I'll call him up and tell him I don't need them. Aren't worth it just stick to what you got. Enishi could be a possible sidedeck card but isn't worth taking up the space that you might of used for something else.

See if your buddy's interested in any of the stuff in my sig for his two lol. I need a full playset of them.

I myself have noticed a huge difference between Samurai Swarm with Shogun Vs. Samurai Beatdown with Enishi. Swarm just wasn't able to beat Beatdown. I had the fortune to play with 6-7 other 6S users for over 10 hours through late Friday night and early Saturday morning, most placed or won Regionals, and we tried everything. Every variation of Swarm and it got stomped each time.

We'll have to hook up on gameking or yvd then :)

You guys need to check out Jerome McHale's samurai article on meta today. They may have well have titled it "Plauge is a bonehead" :p I agreed with most every word he said. I don't think I'd go back to a reasoningless deck like that, but I like the idea of the mill.

I was just about to check it out while I finished my breakfast, I'll read through it and take some notes before coming back with any thoughts I have on it, I'm always interested in seeing different people's takes on the Six Samurai.

Alright, I just read through Jerome's Six Samurai deck. There were a couple of things that I liked right off the bat and a couple of things that I'm still thinking about.

Without really doing much play testing with Spirit of the Six Samurai, I did proxy it a little last night it seemed to work out pretty well, it looks like Jerome shares a lot of my thoughts on this little guy. At worst he allows you to have a Six Samurai on the field of Cunning of the Six Samurai so you can keep your reverse toolbox working. At best he's pumping up Grandmaster of the Six Samurai or Nisashi so you are drawing more cards. Nisashi is particularly interesting to me because it will allow him to attack over Zombie Master, meaning if your opponent didn't win off an initial Zombie Master surge you now have a good chance at a comeback, though I guess that would mean you had Reasoning or Premature Burial in your hand too. The more I think about it the more possibilities I see with Spirit of the Six Samurai. Hopefully it will turn out to be half as useful as I think it might be.

Jerome's Deck plays a TON of monsters but for good reason. There are 22 monsters in the main deck plus 2 copies of Reinforcement of the Army. That's basically 24 monsters packed in here so that when Magical Merchant goes off it's bound to send one or two monsters into the graveyard for any of the graveyard recursion cards to pull back. This not only supports these cards but it also supports Enishi, Shien’s Chancellor which is one of Jerome's prime sources of monster removal. Actually besides Enishi, Shien’s Chancellor the only form of monster removal in this deck is Mirror Force. This is a drastic change from Six Samurai decks of old that were focused on monster removal to help rush the field. Instead Jerome opts to play a set of Solemn Judgments and Dark Bribes to help counter threats.

Dark Bribe has been beaten to death. It's a great card and I need to get my hands on a playset of them badly so I can include them in my Samurai build. Solemn Judgment has always been a favorite of mine and it seems to be a favorite of Jerome's as well, maybe stemming from the Counter Fairy Deck that seems to be close to his heart. Practically all the monster threats you could run into are counter by Solemn Judgment and in a pinch it'll take the place of Dark Bribe if you can't draw into it. As much as I want Double-Edged Sword Technique to work out well, I see this becoming another Backs to the Wall, where I really don't need it to win the game, probably something that Belgian has been preaching for a while and I've been too pig headed to listen to. I might have to consider running this trap line up it makes more sense to me the longer I look at it.

The Reasoning/Great Shogun Shien build is something I really enjoy and don't want to get away from the engine right now. The main things you'll notice that Jerome didn't choose to include in this deck that are generally in a Samurai deck are Cyber Dragon, Reasoning and Great Shogun Shien. Where Jerome is running Enishi I think it's wise to eliminate Great Shogun Shien and Cyber Dragon, giving you more room to run Six Samurai monsters, which Jerome did by maxing out on most of the good Samurai. Personally I would have probably added in another Enishi, but that's just my taste. I may have also included Ceasefire to help protect Magical Merchant from Shield Crush and Nobleman of Crossout, but since Jerome is running 3 Dark Bribes and 3 Solemn Judgments it's probably not necessary.

This is what happens when I get interrupted by work, I lose my train of thought and forget about other things I wanted to comment on, let's see if I can find my focus again here.

I think the only other thing I wanted to comment on was the interesting bit that Jerome brings up about the Skill Drain/Cunning of the Six Samurai/Kamon interaction. I honestly hadn't even thought about this but it makes a lot of sense and gives the Samurai deck a few more tricks up it's sleeve. Cunning of the Six Samurai really is a great card and I can't wait to do more testing with it. This article gave me more ideas to test out with the Samurai.