Only six sams and aliens get this treatment, but I have to admit they have been the most fun to play. Most of the support isn't that playable though. I mean I love backs to the wall, but wouldn't play it in a competitive version of samurai. Great ifyou can chain it to a storm or trunade :p


Same with aliens, lots of support, but not the basics that they need to be a competitive deck.

Hope we keep getting more for both themes. They make up for all the e-hero crap by giving us fun, cheap and decent families.

Meh, I'd have much rather had the card protecteda samurai when destroyed. Period. Like Heavy mech. Even if it had no other effect. Think, you can summon this card, special summon grandmaster since its a six samurai monster, and then equip it to grandmaster.

I used to main deck Nisashi because of the huge potential for damage he has. I might have to go back to that thought because I've been less and less impressed with Zanji lately.

I still haven't done enough testing with Monster Gate to see how well it runs in the deck. Obviously the best ways to use it right now are with Brain Control or Scapegoat, Brain Control can help cause huge swings like it does in every other deck in the format right now. The way this build is constructed I don't think I could support more than one copy of Monster Gate as multiple copies might start clogging my hand up.

Unfortunately I finally got my third copy of Gravekeeper's Commandant yesterday, so I've been trying to slap together a Gravekeeper's Deck to test those guys out. The Samurai are still my favorite, so this deck isn't going anyway for a long time. It might rival my old Horus deck for longevity.

I'm continuing this in Den's thread. here's the 2 deck lists i made

Enishi Build

Monsters 21
3 - Grandmaster
3 - Irou
3 - Yaichi
3 - Zanji
2 - Enishi
1 - Morphing Jar
3 - Card Trooper
3 - Cyber Dragon

Spells
1 - Heavy Storm
1 - Snatch Steal
1 - Dimension Fusion
1 - Premature Burial
1 - Mystical Space Typhoon
2 - Reinforcements of the Army
2 - Warrior Returing Alive
2 - Reasoning of the Six Samurai
2 - Smashing Ground

Traps 8
1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ring of Destruction
2 Return From the Different Dimension
3 Sakeretsu Armor

now we have the Reasoning build

Reasoning build

Monsters 18
3 - Grandmaster
3 - Irou
3 - Yaichi
1 - Zanji
1 - Kamon
1 - Relic of the Six Samurai
2 - Great Shogun Shien
1 - Morphing Jar
1 - Exiled Force
2 - Cyber Dragon


Spells 15
1 - Heavy Storm
1 - Snatch Steal
1 - Premature Burial
1 - Mystical Space Typhoon
2 - Reinforcements of the Army
2 - Warrior Returing Alive
2 - Reasoning of the Six Samurai
2 - Cold Wave
3 - Reasoning


Traps 7
1 - Mirror Force
1 - Call of the Haunted
1 - Ring of Destruction
2 - Living Blade Technique of Various Blades
3 - Sakeretsu Armor

Let me clue you in. I've loved gravekeeper's since day 1. They are amazing, but a month ago someone loaned me the needed cards to put the deck together, and so I decided to test it that day, I went 1-5 and managed to take my rating down 21 points in one day ! In a meta with raiza, mobius, snipe hunter etc, necrovalley is never really safe. Combined with the fact that most effects like treeborn, sangan etc still work with valley out, and that builds hurt by it (T-hero) aren't as prevalent anymore, means we've all been overestimating GK's a bit.

Sammies on the other hand have been cleaning up for me. Three tournaments last week, 16 wins and 4 losses, a third and 2 fourth places. In one of them I outplayed a former national champ.

On the zanji vs nisashi matter : Zanji is a nice little beatstick when you don't have another samurai, but his effect is redundant when you pack 3 smashings mained and 3 shirnks in the side that come in for my pullings. Why sacrifice a monster to take out a bigger one when you can just attack directly ? Sammies need big damage, fast. In that aspect two zanji and one nisashi are a nice toolbox approach.

The monster line-up here is distinctly reminiscent of Matthew Lai's build, a line-up I tried my hardest to get away from, despite the rest of the deck being top notch. Diversify and use more samurai. They thrive on each other. I run three copies of Yaichi only because yariza sucks and I wanted a nice split between LV3 and LV4 for reasoning purposes, but generally, running three of any samurai isn't that great, since it reduces the chances of getting two differnt sams on the field, making you reliant ongrandmaster.

Let's work with the Reasoning Deck first since it's the one all of us have the most experience with. I've never really been a huge fan of Return From the Different Dimension, so I'm not sure that variant will be up my alley. I wouldn't mind work on it at some point though for a change of pace.

We're all going to agree that 3x Grandmaster is a must for any Six Samurai variant, so those will be an auto inclusion. From there we have plenty of slots to keep adding in monsters. Let's concentrate on the Six Samurai monsters first so we can see how much space we have left in the deck.

2 Great Shogun Shien
3 Grandmaster of the Six Samurai
3 The Six Samurai - Yaichi
2 The Six Samurai - Irou
2 The Six Samurai - Zanji
1 The Six Samurai - Kamon
1 The Six Samurai - Nisashi

This is what I'm planning on updating my Six Samurai line up to. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the Relic. It seems like an alright idea but I'm not entirely convinced it's necessary in a Six Samurai build. Moving onto the non-Samurai monster.

3 Cyber Dragon
2 Exiled Force
1 Morphing Jar

I'm not sure if Cyber Dragons will still be necessary in this deck, however they are never a bad idea for a deck that wants to swarm and that's exactly what the Six Samurai want to do. I like Exiled Force in the Reasoning build. I know it's optimal to pull a Six Samurai or Great Shogun off of Reasoning, but running into an Exiled Force really isn't a bad option either. The only thing you really don't want to run into with Reasoning is Morphing Jar. If we decide to add Book of Moon to this build even that isn't a terrible draw.

3 Reasoning
2 Reinforcements of the Army
2 The Warrior Returning Alive

These make up the core of the Spells this deck wants to see. Reasoning can start off your special summoning with a bang. We all know why these cards are good so we might as well finish up the Spells and talk about some of the non conventional choices.

1 Heavy Storm
1 Snatch Steal
1 Premature Burial
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Giant Trunade
2 Reasoning of the Six Samurai

Reasoning of the Six Samurai interests me because of how versatile it can be. It can do a great job of removing targeted Six Samurai, swapping a duplicate Six Samurai for a different one in the graveyard, or allowing even more attacks in a battle phase. I think this card is going to be overlooked because of how much of an impact that Living Blade Technique of Various Blades can have on a game. The Traps are pretty easy.

1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ring of Destruction
2 Living Blade Technique of Various Blades

Living Blade Technique of Various Blades is a great card for this deck. Belgian Blue and I have already discussed this in some detail on this thread so I don't really want to rehash things. If Machine Beatdown continues to be a popular deck in the format, I'd run Widespread Ruin. I've never really been a huge fan of a ton of defensive Traps, Spells always seem to help set a better tempo than Traps do.

I could be way off base here, obviously I haven't tried out any of this yet but am looking forward to doing a lot of testing in the future.

Not a huge fan of exiled. This deck establishes a crazy amount of control with 2 different samurai on the field and that should be the aim with reasoning. Sacrificing that to drop an exiled that will only do what a smashing could do better seems, well, wrong to me. So I'd take those two out, and put in a 10th samurai. Personally i'm running another Kamon in that slot for reasoning purposes, and because Kamon clears some of the bigger threats to the deck. Snatch steal, premature burial, d-fissure, stall and if need be a decree. He earns his second spot on the line-up. If I do change a monster in the line-up it would be 1 cyber dragon. Cyber is, as you said, great, for the reasons you said. But getting a dead cyber happens a reasonable amount of time, so he is logical exclusion if you still want to run an exiled, or in my case one of the new monsters, like Relic.

On the spell line-up, I'd probably put both reasoning of the six sam in the side, and in their stead and that of the second exiled, put a set of smashing. This is somply crucial to a deck that commits a lot of resources to the field, you need to get all the damage in while you can because your cards are viulnerable. Its exactly how I run it now, and I wouldn't really change it unless I had to, like when reasoning is banned. Then I'd want to fix that, probably with two foolish burial (if we get them any time soon, hoping for SD13, but not holding my breath) and a third warrior returning, to fully abuse my graveyard with warrior returning and Blade tecnique.

Traps I agree with. In these case I may side in the Reasoning of six sam for smashing when I deal with monarch/brain control variants, or I could side out blade technique for them when I face a more stall-oriented version that stops my attacks. And Shrink or saku when I simply need more removal.

Alternatively reasoning can be replaced with a pair of monster gates, but then you really need the three cyber dragons. Gate works extremely well with blade technique as well.

Still not sure how I feel about the additions of 2 Brain Control, 1 Monster Gate and 1 Scapegoat that I made to this deck. I haven't seemed to draw any of them recently. :ermm: I did pull a Nisashi in testing today but it was Card Destruction-ed away before I was able to use it.

Wow Crystal Beasts really really hate Kamon, side decking another two copies of him is just pure evil. I might cut the Royal Decrees out of my side deck as I'd like to make room for Protector of the Sanctuary and I haven't come across any match ups where I really need to side in the Decrees.

I side into decree for almost anything that doesn't require more traps. Better to have a safeguard against the 2 cards that can screw up my whole game and any type of tech they sided in in the form of traps. Protector is a fickle strategy, as you'll almost never have it out with jar or card D. You'll have to see if its worth it to your. Its enormously powerful and wins games, but a two card combo with two limited cards will happen only once in 20 games.

Two limited cards. Protector of the Sanctuary helps against much more than that.

Using this card really is brilliant as it shuts down Destiny Draw, Morphing Jar, Card Trooper, Cyber Phoenix, Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive, Pot of Avarice, Destiny Hero - Disk Commander, and even Rare Value. It really wrecks havoc on the metagame right now, I'm starting to do a lot of testing with it and so far it's proved to be a great help in the Machine Beatdown match up.

Also can you explain to me effect of the union monster. So if it's made to an equip card does the samurai it is equiped to get their effect?

You summon a Union monsters just like you summon any other monster. You can then decide if you want to use it as a monster or activate it's effect. It's effect allows you to move it to your Spell/Trap zone where it is equipped to a monster, in this case a Six Samurai monster.

If you have another Six Samurai monster on the field it would get it's effect because there would be another Six Samurai on the field.

Only the samurai it is equipped to gets the effect. The union monster itself, when a monster, has no effect apart from being able to equip itself.