Fiend RFP is my absolute favorite deck approach these days. Ever since IOC came out, I have been inexplicably drawn to Gren Maju de Eiza (the Red Lotus Beast) over and over again. You most definitely need to sink your claws into your friend and bring him back in. Especially with him liking rfp, fiend, and the fact that there are reprints and a revolving Ban list..........He would have a great time returning.;)

Most defnitely, one of my first really good decks I built was a hybrid deck that went from a Fiend Swarm/Beatdown to an RFP deck using the fiends. The RFP side really took people by surprise and I did better with that often, even though I had a little less tactical experience with it.

...say, things have been a little slow around here so let's take a poll, what's your favorite brand of fiend tactics when building a deck. There are certainly TONS of way to use them, but which way works out best for you and what combo works best with it (if you feel like sharing it 8^D)

Honestly, Im torn. My tendency is to build Fiend decks that are rather obscure or combo-complicated, like Gren Maju, Goblin King, or Guardian Baou.

But if I were to evaluate what has been the most successful for me, I have to say that an aggro style, using a fair mix of other types, has tended to take me further in the competitive market.

With that in mind, the card and combo deck style that has been an overall favorite of mine has to be the DNA/Goblin King deck style. Its fairly combo oriented, but focuses a lot on straight up aggressive attacking, rather than any kind of control, burn, ect.

i'm torn as well but heres my top 3 in no particular order:

beatdown
field control
stat control (lowering my opponents atk or manipulating them with things like dna sergury)

I've always respected fiends. I never really had enough faith in them to actually compete with them though... I'd always usually just fall back on a Cookie-Cutter, FTK, or some Zombie variant.

I do have quite a bit of experience playing casually with them though, and I'd have to say that my all-time favorite fiend archtype are none other than the good ol' Archfiends. I love the synergy. If I ever would have gotten my hands on 2 more physical copies of Pandemonium and finished my playsets of Terrorking, Darkbishop, Vilepawn, and Infernalqueen, I might have just taken that sucker to a sanctioned tournament.

I have always played Aggro-Control fiends with at least some use of a top-tier mechanic in my deck. In the last format my fiend deck proved fairly effective and I don't know why. I tried using Night Assailant and Serpent in such ways that I could keep up with the hand advantage of the format even if I wasn't going to use D-Duo (I didn't use it for two reason, I hate it and I don't have one :grin: ). This format fiend decks almost have to fall into Tomato Control style, like mine did. Well, I have a regionals this Saturday so I hope for the best.

I've tended to do better with aggro decks as well. My one foray into Archfiends was fairly unsuccessful, but then an Archfiend Chaos deck isn't going work that well anyway.

I tried a Gren Maju deck but the combo it revolved around ended up being nearly impossible to pull off consistently so I never even bothered trying to use it in a tourney. I'm just now getting around to trying a Goblin King deck since I originally was waiting to get another Opti-Camoflauge Armor. However a new idea came up and Goblin King wasn't quite as central, so Opti wasn't needed.

I really liked my last aggro fiend deck which featured Great Maju Garzett. GMG worked really well as many a duelist found themselves suddenly looking at a 4000+ ATK beatstick. But I got a bit tired of playing it and temporarily retired it. It would need some thinning and tweaking as I was finding myself having trouble drawing what I needed and getting into top deck situations more often than I cared to. I think I was trying to cram too many tier 1 beatdown strategies into the deck.

The Archfiend Chaos deck is VERY successful. I'm pretty sure that Waldo won a regional with a Necrofear/Archfiend/Chaos/Fiend Beatdown hybrid.

For me, I tend to stray towards the outlandish style decks with heavy effects (Giant Kozaky, 8 Star Fiends, Inferno Tempest) or a very combo-centric style deck, which is my current fiend deck. I don't know if it would be close to a "toolbox" but there is a lot of Last Will / Sangan / Tomato / Newdoria action going on in it. By far the deck does best when you Last Will for a tribute summon and then can immediately bring in the support you need. Often enogh its a Byser Shock and from there I have one free swpie on the field and then can prepare for what comes next.

I guess I envision it as a lot of smaller, but surgical blows to my opponent while parrying most attacks they throw at me, or leading them in to a Necrofear chomp 8^D

I went to the regionals with my fiend deck. Ended up 6-2... but it the day ended weirdly. I am on a team and so we have to play team dynamics. When I was 5-1 I got paired against a teamate who I play all the time. I got the win here so I moved on to the final round paired against another teamate!!!... How sad right?

Anyway, my deck did pretty well, going to time during almost every match. Weird, but usually I could pull it out at time almost every time. Off to wait for the next regionals now.

Congrats Androfrost! Chalk up another one to fiends behavingly well at regionals! 8^D Were you using the Tomato Control deck you mentioned a couple posts up, or was it something different? What wound up being the clutch combo or card in the deck? I don't want you to reveal all your secrets, I'm sure you want to keep those, but I'm always curious as to what gives a given fiend deck the edge. Congrats again!

Thanks Dillie-O. Yes I did use the Tomato Control deck. It works so well with fiends, but I do advise not using Dark Jeroid, heh. I think the main thing that makes my deck work is the fact that every monster in the deck should be at least one for one (when used right) unless mass destruction hits me at a weak moment . However, I do play very conservatively (probably why so many matches went to time) so that guards me from most mass destruction.

I will tell you, though, that Dark Necrofear really messes up good players when you a player uses it correctly. Here is a fun example:

My opponent had a Newdoria and D. D. Assailant on the field and nothing else. I had nothing so I summoned Dark Necrofear. I attacked Newdoria with Necrofear, Necrofear died and at the end of the turn took the D. D. Assailant. On my opponent's next turn he special summoned Cyber Dragon and attacked the D. D. Assailant. Dark Necrofear ended up giving me a 3 for 1.

Other moments of mention were twice when my Sangan died my opponent had Don Zaloog. I searched Night Assailant. The opponent attacked and randomly choose the Night Assailant, lol.

Ahh, very tasty indeed Androfrost! Necrofear is fiendishness at its finest 8^D Much congrats!

man its examples like androfrost's that i love to read. no matter what new fad or dominate deck type rises from the game, it still can't outshine old school fiends like newdoria and necrofear.

Yeah...quite a lot of people get blinded by "what wins" at SJC tournaments and don't think much of anything else...though I won't name names here...but there's a lot...It only goes to show that other decktypes can win against all the "competitive" stuff.