Deck Name: Checkmate
Theme: Archfiend
By: Hajime Saito
Theme Card: Terrorking Archfiend
Support: Falling Down, The Spell Absorbing Life, Archfiend's Roar and Infernalqueen Archfiend
Cost: $45-55
Skill Level: All Levels of Play(Pro Duelist Perfered)
Total: 41
Mosnter: 20
Spell: 14
Trap: 7

2 Skull Archfiend of Lightning
3 Terrorking Archfiend
2 Shadowknight Archfiend
3 Desrook Archfiend
3 Infernalqueen Archfiend
3 Vilepawn Archfiend
1 Spirit Reaper
1 Sangan
1 Magician of Faith
1 Mask of Darkness

Spell
3 Falling Down
1 Nobelman of Crossout
1 Graceful Charity
2 Pandemonium
1 Heavy Storm
2 Smashing Ground
1 Pot of Avarice
2 Nobelman of Extremination
1 Book of Moon

Trap
2 The Spell Absorbing Life
2 Archfiend's Roar
1 Mirror Force
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Torrentail Tribute

-2 nobleman
-2 spell absorbing
-2 vilepawn
-2 shadowknight

+2 archfiend soldier
+1 archfiend of gilfer (combos nicely with graceful)
+1 terraforming
+1 widespread ruin
+2 giant trunade
+1 magic drain/bottomless trap hole

drop
book of moon

add
axe of despair (great with falling down)

Mmmm... No. What are you thinking?

He's thinking of ending the game much faster then people would expect. With the deck running 3 Falling Down, All I have to do it force the summoning of Cyber Dud(Cyber Dragon) and the he'll play right in to my hands. When Axe of Despair is added it allows for his 2100 attack mosnter to be come an amazing 3100. Now With Infernalqueen Archfiend on the field I can already clear away 5000 LP from both of those mostners attacking, so all I have to do is inflict 3000 more damage it thats eaiser done then said. Its just one of those advanced tactic he thought of.

I suggest dropping all the non-Archfiends and replace them with Archfiends, so that your Falling Downs can be activated more easily and that your Pandemoniums search-effect comes in handy more often. Of course with more Archfiends, you also need another Pandemonium, so my suggestions look like this:

- 1x Sangan (Pandemonium is a better searcher, can be used multiple times)
- 1x Spirit Reaper (not sure what it's doing here)
- 1x Magician of Faith (same)
- 1x Mask of Darkness (same)
- 1x Nobleman of Crossout (won't be necessary, since Terrorking does the same job)
- 2x Smashing Ground (3 Falling downs do the job a lot better)
- 2x Nobleman of Extermination (Archfiends aren't that afraid of traps)
- 2x The Spell absorbing Life (we add a third Pandemonium to save your life points)

+ 3x Archfiend Soldier (great beatstick and no payment)
+ 1x Archfiend af Gilfer (great with Graceful, Archfiends Roar, no payment)
+ 1x Pandemonium (MUST-HAVE, it's a continous searcher!)
+ 1x Terraforming
+ 2x Axe of Despair (you already mentioned why it's great)
+ 1x Premature Burial (despite the cost, it's great)
+ 1x Mystical Space Typhoon (way better than Noblemans)
+ 1x Deck Devastation Virus (this one's pure evil)

I'd keep the Sangan, MoF and The Spell Absorbing Lifes...Pandemonium will NOT always be there for you, so having ways to increase your LP is definitely a good option to have in a Deck....and the fact that's it's pretty chainable and can ruin opponent's FLIP monsters with its Ceasefire-like effect is another plus for it...Archfiend Soldier isn't needed too much except for maybe searching out a Desrook Archfiend if it dies...(cept that's where Sangan works too)

lp gain cards never bought anyone enough time to win a duel. yes pandemonium will most likely not be on the field a good part of the time. that just comes with the territory when it comes to arches. the lack of pandemonium only presses the player to attack relentlessly. so what if you are losing lp as long as your opponent is losing more per turn than you are.

Of course, that also depends on what your opponent uses. If it's a common CC Deck, then it's possible, but it never hurts to have backup at all, especially if you plan on having multiple LP payments each standby phase (which can easily equal up to 2000+) so at least, even if you can't do a ton of Damage, you'll still have enough to keep yourself alive and your Archfiend's for the next assault.

Devil Mazera: Pandemonium IS NOT a continous searcher. Its effect:

Neither player has to pay Life Points during the Standby Phase for Archfiend monsters. Each time a player's Archfiend Monster Card(s) are destroyed and sent to the Graveyard, except as a result of battle, that player can select 1 Archfiend Monster Card from his/her Deck that has fewer Level Stars than the destroyed card and add it to his/her hand.

In laymen terms,

1.) Pandemonium will only acitvate if the mosnter is destoyed AND sent to the grave not as a result of battle. So if a card like Mirror Force or Sakuretsu Armor was activated and the monster(s) where send tothe grave then Pandemonium would activate.

2.) Pandemonium WILL ONLY allow for you to search for a Archfiend with fewer stars then the destroyed monster. So If Terrorking Archfiend is DESTROYED and sent to the graveyard, then you can only search for a LV3 OR LOWER monster. Thus proving its not a continous searcher


Also in response to:
Those monsters allow to do 3 things.
1.) Allows for a Defensive Line which cannot be broken easily(Sprit Reaper)
2.) Recovers a Spell Card from the grave to use again(Magician of Faith)
3.) Recovers a Trap Card from the grave to use again(Mask of Darkness)

If 1 Deck Devastation Virus is added then the deck is going to need more Dark Monsters with an attack 2000 or more. Currently it only has 5, with your additions it will have 6. Being that there wouldn't be enough plausable ratio's to draw both the 2000 or more attack monster AND 1 Deck Devastation Virus. If the deck had more 2000 or more attack monsters then Deck Devastation Virus could work.


Gutterpuppy: A duel is won by doing 1 of 3 things:
1.) Making your opponent's Life points 0 Before your's reaches 0.
2.) Winning the Duel under a special condition.
3.) Focing your opponent to draw while he has none left to draw.

With that said this deck is hell bent on way #1, but the only down side is that unless you are a master at mind games' and draw a good hand, you'er way could actually work. But since not every one has that intellect then you have to revert to more straight foward tactics. Gain LP to extend the duel "X" amount of turns. If you take in to account that The Spell Absorbing Life forces Face Down mosnters to flip face up and their flip effects are negated, then you can then play Falling Down on the now Face Up Mosnter and you'll have gained enough LP to pay for Falling Down and the next subsuquent turns.

You dont read for for clarity, you read for mastery


Hajime Saito

throwing lp gain cards into an archfiend deck is unessesary and a waste of a valuable card slot that could go towards the actual stratigy of beating your opponent. IMHO, it would be better to find a balance in your monster line up between lp payment arches and non-payment arches. this way you are only paying for the ones that are actually worth it.

shadowknight is the worst of the bunch. 900 lp payment with no real advantage. since you're not running battle-scarred and mystic box/creature swap this archfiend is nothing more than a liability. save yourself the lp and trade it out for soldier.

to keep pandemonium from bieng nothing more than a band aid throw in one more tribute. gilfer is a nice choice since graceful is back on the scene and it has no lp payment. gilfer is very valuable in the grave with pandemonium on the field. arches roar helps you search your 4 stars and gilfer can come back and equip to reapers and other high powered beatsticks.

terraforming is a must if you plan on only running 2 pandemoniums. otherwise bump the field card to 3.

with 3 falling downs its imperative to slim out as many non arches out of the monster line up as possible. no more than 3 seems to be the golden rule in my experience. i would suggest breaker, mof/mod and reaper if you really must have some non arches in there. sangan is pointless when you already have a search engine in place (pandemonium).

a copy or 2 of axe of despair is not a bad idea considering it helps you use falling down, can equip to an opponents spirit reaper and assist king by overpwering all the 2400 atk beatsticks that run rampant in the meta right now.

with a good search engine in place and lp payments reduced you should have no problem winning. with those open card slots instead of lp gain you could go with true lp defnce in sakuretsu armor, wide spread ruin, bottomless, ect.. you could also go with some backfield control in giant runade/ dust tonado to help offensively.

Gutterpuppy is right, life gain isn't worth it, at least from my experience. I also think these card slots are better spent on either more theme-support or some generally good traps (sakuretsu, bottomless).

I know that Pandemonium only triggers when Archfiends are destroyed by card effects, but that should happen often enough. Given the Archfiends generally high ATK scores (King, Soldier, Shadowknight, Queen that powers up herself and the tributes), it will be quite hard for the typical cookie cutter monsters to destroy them via battle. None of the level 4 or lower CC monsters exceeds 1800 ATK (Kycoo), so Cyber Dragons are usually the only non-tributers that can kill archfiends in battle (meaning a majority of the time, archfiends will only die from card effects).

And although Pandemoniums searching ability has a level-restriction, it doesn't necessarily make it inferior to Sangan. As Gutterpuppy mentioned, if a tribute-archfiend dies (most likely from card effects), you can search for Terrorking or Soldier or Shadowknight, stuff that Sangan can't fetch.

1.) Its not about throwing in cards which just gain me LP, because if that was the case Enchanted Javlen, Mystic Wok, would have been up for dissussion. The reason WHY 2 The Spell Absorbing Life are added is to allow the control of Face Down monsters as well as a nice card to counter with Aggressive trap removal on the rise. Mystical Space Typhoon, Heavy Storm, Breaker the Magical Warrior, Giant Trunade, Cliff the Trap Remover, Mobius the Frost Monarch, Granmarg the Rock Monarch, Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys and many others. Pandemonium will only last for a moments time and in that time span I have to achive field control. So the question to you is why waste 3 to 4 slots on Pandemonium and Terraformin when they are going to be destroyed with in the 2 to 3 turns. Why not, use 2 Pandemonium and possibly 1 Terraformin (in the side deck) to lower the possible chance of drawing a usless hand.

2.)You'er missing the underlying tone of the card. A good example would be to make a direct refernce to a game of chess. How does a Knight move on the playing board? Also the addition of Mystic Box, Creature Swap, ect is a beginners choice card line up for this deck. It isn't about trying to do damage to your opponents LP from the payment effect of Archfiends, its about PWNING the hell of of their LP with their effects and attacks.
NOTE: A 2000 attack mosnter is either A.) Going to get destoyed from a card effect or B.) attacked by Cyber Dragon

3.) Glifer's effect will be missed if Pandemonium is on the field since Glifer's effect is optional. So that idea has been frowned uppon ever sence you brought it up.

4.) All ready discussed

5.) The reason why Those cards are added is to allow for effects that the Archfiends DO NOT HAVE to be played. Unlike Pandemonium Sangan's effect will acivate if destoyed and sent to the graveyard.
Sangan will search for the following:
Desrook Archfiend
Infernalqueen Archfiend
Vilepawn Archfiend
Spirit Reaper
Magician of Faith
Mask of Darkness

6.) That's why there are 3 Copies of Infernalqueen Archfiend in the deck, to allow for the possibility of an additional 3000 attack to be added to any archfiend monster, unlike ax of despait this effect can change targets at during each turn. So instead of a Vilepawn and Infernalqueen lock would cause most stalling since he'd have to now over come a 2200 attack mosnter. When you need to use its effect for another mosnter then just target a differnt one during the next standby.

7.) No Comment.

I'm afraid you're wrong on Gilfer, you can still activate the effects of both Gilfer and Pandemonium if Gilfer is destroyed by a card effect. It's the exact same with Desrook. Desrook's effect is optional as well, and here's the ruling straight from netrep that says you can use both Pandemonium and Desrook in a chain:

While "Pandemonium" is active, and you have "Desrook Archfiend" in your hand, and your "Terrorking Archfiend" is destroyed while on the field, "Pandemonium" is Step 1 of a chain , but you can use "Desrook Archfiend" as Step 2 of the chain. Then you would get to Special Summon the "Terrorking Archfiend" and select a Level 3 or lower Archfiend from your Deck.

Since Gilfer's effect is optional just like Desrook, it works the exact same as in the Desrook example. Imagine the following situation:

You have Pandemonium and Gilfer on the field, your opponent destroys Gilfer with Smashing Ground and Gilfer is sent to the graveyard. Pandemonium is step 1 of the chain, but you can use Gilfer as step 2 of the chain. Now the chain is solved in reverse order: Gilfer resolves first and equips to a monster, weakening it by 500 ATK points. Next, Pandemonium lets you search your deck for a level 5 or lower archfiend.

That's exactly how it works, just the same as with Desrook.

hajime, why do you put your decks up here, when all you do is reject everybodys advice?

gutterpuppy has been right about everything that he has said and you just rejected all of it because you think your decks are perfect. gutterpuppy has more knowledge on the archfiends than you do so either except some advice OR quit complaining!