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[Deck Dimension] The Reasoning of the Great Shogun
Belgian Blue’s Deck Dimension The Reasoning of the Great Shogun : Examining the potential of Matthew Lai’s Canadian Nationals deck
I remember a few people asked me, back when I was still writing Deck Dimension here on Realms, to do an article on a Samurai deck. At the time I resolutely refused, basically out of protest that the North-Americans got Grandmaster as a promo and we Europeans didn’t, and of course the simple fact that I didn’t have access to three cheap grandmasters. Time has passed since, and fate conspired in my favour, receiving my grandmasters the same week that Matthew Lai managed to Top8 in the Canadian Nationals with a Six Samurai concept that was absolutely brilliant ! I have mixed feelings about the deck that will form the basic outline of this article.
First of all, I won’t hide my admiration for Lai’s idea to run reasoning over Card Trooper in this deck. Apart from the obvious fact that he just cut the price of the deck in half, he clears up monsters slots to make the idea work and abuse more Six Samurai tricks. It was very insightful since the samurai are evenly spread across Levels 3 and 4, usually supported by 3 grandmasters and 3 cyber dragon at Level 5. If you then plan to play out the power card Great Shogun Shien, then you make it hard for the opponent to call the right number with Reasoning. And lastly, reasoning is just a much better card than Card Trooper for this deck. Card Trooper mills blindly from the top of your deck, so you get a 1900 beatstick that becomes a 400 ATK target while milling monsters in the grave, where you are overly reliant on recursion and grandmaster to provide two different samurai on your field. Reasoning on the other hand doesn’t just put a body on the field, it looks for a monster specifically, giving you a very good chance at getting out a six Samurai. If you have a choice of Samurai in hand, then you can set reasoning off first and if a samurai rolls off your deck, you can put a different one on the field beside it to use the effects. It’s downright brilliant in every aspect. For me, Matthew Lai revolutionized the idea of the Six Samurai.
But on the other hand, I don’t feel like Lai capitalized on his innovation. He ran only 8 Six Samurai, and while nicely spread over level 3 and level 4, there were only 4 different ones and he ran three of them in full sets. If you know that the Samurai don’t get their effect until you get two different ones on the field. His line-up only made that likely if he depended entirely on grandmaster to provide his “other” samurai.
But in conclusion, while I may not agree with his deck in its entirety, Matthew Lai did take it all the way to his national Top 8, and for me, he changed my outlook on what constitutes a good Samurai deck.
Kurasawa was a visionary, there really WERE 7 Samurai !
A lot of the choices in this deck will of course be logical picks, but I’ll try my best to add some reasoning (no pun intended) for their inclusion. In Japan, the Samurai never thrived. Getting two on the field to get any use out of them was just too much of a hassle for effects that really weren’t THAT good. And their shared effect, which is exceptional, certainly requires you to have two. In UDE territories, the Samurai flourished by the addition of a 7th Samurai, the Grandmaster of the Six Samurai. Having 3 of them became a must for any decent Six Samurai deck, and all you luck North-Americans had easy access to a few copies just for attending the sneak peek. This deck is no different though :
3x Grandmaster of the Six Samurai
The Grandmaster functioned as the own private Cyber Dragon for Six Samurai. When you had a Samurai on the field you could summon this LV5 and 2100 ATK monster, and because he just happened to have Six Samurai in his name, you had the power to use your samurai’s ability AND follow up for damage with a 2100 ATK monster. The fact that when he was hit by removal you could get a Samurai back from your graveyard, including himself, was just gravy, since it made it all the more likely that if your opponent had something big enough to attack it, they would choose that as a target over your other six Samurai, thereby protecting his protégées. The downside was that you couldn’t have two on your field at the same time (given his effect that would have been a tad broken admittedly) making two in hand a little bit of temporary dead weight. But the pro’s outweighed the cons by so much that everybody always runs grandmaster in threes in any good Six Samurai deck anyway.
3x Cyber Dragon
Though not always an essential cog in the Samurai scheme, we referred to Grandmaster as a personal Cyber Dragon and extolled the virtues of that. Why would we then neglect to abuse the fact that we can have 3 additional cyber dragons ? Though they do nothing for the Six Samurai directly, they help swarm in a deck that likes to swarm, form field presence when you don’t want to put a vulnerable samurai out there and perform the same lightning rod function to protect them, since he is in fact the bigger threat. I had this discussion on Yugiohrealms Deck Depot just the other week, when someone told me a phrase I had spoken many times myself : “Not every deck needs cyber dragons”. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t believe it. Not every deck needs them. This one does. That doesn’t mean you can’t cut a copy for something more suited to your needs though …
2x Great Shogun Shien
Early decks neglected Shien. His 7 stars made him an overweight general that slowed his troops down, or so it was said. His effect to limit the use of spells and traps is rarely very useful as its generally the first one that hurts, and if that first one hurts your Shogun, then it was all for nought. But on occasion it pays off. What makes Shogun great is that he is another large body that helps swarm. Samurai get their effects in pairs, so they gave us grandmaster to make that a viable idea. How early users of the deck then failed to realize that shogun was exceptionally easy to get out is beyond me, really. I realize this is a format that requires versatile tech, but as I’ve always said about any deck, its best to focus on maximizing your own strengths first and then worrying about the strengths of other decks. Because the one thing that I REALLY like about Shogun is that he isn’t that bad if you draw both. He doesn’t have the “only 1 on the field” clause that limits grandmaster. So if you get two Samurai on the field you can summon both of your Shoguns ! If you pulled that off with Zanji and Grandmaster, you just produced 8900 ATK on your side of the field ! If you did it with Yaichi instead of Zanji, you have 7100 usable attack power and a way to defuse a possible mirror force. Shogun ends games, and believe it or not, I’m usually happy when I see him in my opening hand. How many large monsters do that ?
2-3x The Six Samurai – Zanji
2x The Six Samurai – Irou
1-2x The Six Samurai – Kamon
2x The Six Samurai – Nisashi
2x The Six Samurai – Yaichi
This is where I start to digress from Matthew Lai’s idea in order to make his innovation pay off more. First of all, I upped the count to 10 Samurai instead of 8. That gives reasoning more chance to find a second Samurai to get them to work together. Next I wanted to provide a lot of “Different” Samurai. Since they require a different samurai to turn on their effect. This is where Lai failed to capitalize on his investment. In his Top8 loss he got necked twice by opening with 3 of the same Samurai. That’s not likely to happen with this line-up. With 5 different samurai, nicely spread over 10 slots, you will be able to use your samurai more often. The choice of Samurai differs highly as well. For starters I’m using not one, but two Nisashi, where most people ignore this guy. I’m sorry, but I don’t get the conservative play some people use with Six Samurai. When you continually have 2100 ATK beaters blocking for you, attacking twice for 1400 damage is a HUGE feat that ends games quickly. Go back to the double Shogun scenario, and picture 2800 damage instead of zanji’s 1800. That’s how strong Nisashi is. And you wouldn’t believe how many times he’s paid off for me. This is now, with grandmaster, an official SIX Samurai deck. I tried fitting Yariza in a few times as well, but he is incredibly weak, and lets face it, in this format there are no moments when you think “man, I wish I had a direct attacker”. 2 Yaichi is more than enough, in a format of chainable stuff, to have an effect that only works on face-down spells and traps, at a time when you already have two monsters on the field, is basically asking for trouble. It really only pays off to stop Mirror Force on an early swarm. But with two Reinforcments and 2 The Warrior Returning Alive, you can afford a more toolbox approach. As indicated in the list above, I would consider running Zanji in 3 and cutting a Kamon. This could be a problem since I would then be running 3 level 3 monsters and 7 level 4 monsters, making a call of 4 on reasoning more likely to pay off for the opponent, but Kamon is more of a side-deck card, while zanji is the only Samurai that really pays off on his own as a solid 1800 beatstick. He is the sort of presence that either keeps field presence or lures out removal early on. So I’ll leave that as a preference call. I’d take the three zanji, but conceptually I can make a better case for 2 of each.
1x Morphing Jar
Also a big auto-include in Six Samurai decks, I’m not THAT big of a fan of the Jar here. He’s often a dead card because there are no exceptionally bad hands here. But he earns his slot because you tend to overextend a few times with this deck, and eventhough that usually ends game, sometimes it’s a risk that pans out wrong. In those cases that dead Jar in your hand suddenly becomes your most valuable asset in setting up a new game-ending swarm.
3x Reasoning
I believe I amply motivated this inclusion in the opening paragraph. Its simply a wonderful card for this deck, milling very precisely to meet the goals of the deck, without taking up monster slots. But while we are on the subject, for the experimental at heart, a rogue copy of monster gate does quite well in this deck too, if you think you could use more of this. Trading in a cyber dragon or a duplicate samurai for a samurai of a different name can be a major play, while thinning the deck. If we still had Magician of Faith, this would have been a golden age for the Samurai (then again trooper decks would benefit too).
2x Reinforcement of the Army
2x The Warrior Returning Alive
A nice little toolbox to support the fact that we run 15 warriors. Reinforcement helps guarantee you have the right “different” samurai for the situation, and together with reasoning it could easily turn a dead opening hand with shogun as your only monster into an opening swarm that sets you up for the win. The Warrior Returning alive won’t work the same way here as it would in a trooper based deck, but more to allow consecutive swarms. Getting back access to a specific samurai, grandmaster or even shogun, is what can blow the opponent out in just a few fast played turns.
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
The staple spell and trap removal is still very much needed, as I find Yaichi and Kamon to be very unreliable. Losing their attack for attempting to destroy something, where especially yaichi will often fail to hit his target.
1x Snatch Steal
Needless to say when you have a swarm with no opposing backrow, that Snatch steal is the game ender, stealing a cyber dragon or Monarch to join in the fray will probably end the game for you before Snatch even gives your opponent any LP.
1x Premature Burial
1x Call of the Haunted
Special summons, especially targeted ones from your graveyard, go a long way towards meeting that 2 different six Samurai quota.
3x Smashing Ground
2x Sakuretsu Armor
1x Mirror Force
I took a little more pro-active approach here, opting to add to the scale in favour of Smashing ground. With the ability to repeatedly swarm and recover from them, its better to have options to clear the field on your turn, then on the opponents turn, when they can more easily shut it down. A pair of Saku still earn their way into the starting line-up on account of their enabling ability to meet your necessary win conditions.
1x Ring of Destruction
The Ring is simply amazing in this deck if you can set it safely at the end of a turn when you swarmed for massive damage, as it usually closes out the game for you on the opponents draw phase, or at the latest their Main Phase 1.
2x Mask of Restrict
or
1x Swords of Revealing Light
1x Backs to the Wall
I said I’m taking the pro-active approach, and it’s a Monarch meta again, so mask of restrict gets my preference here. Stop to think about it a second. How often will mask hurt your deck ? If all goes well, never. All 8 of our large monsters have built in special summon abilities. Now think how much this will hurt other decks ? Monarchs ? I can just imagine going up against a 12-gauge deck that can’t seem to find that mystical space typhoon as you lay into their tribute fodder. T-Hero ? Those two metamorphosis and Jinzo are looking mighty stupid right now. If it runs tributes, its dead. I’ve opted to slide Backs to the wall to the side deck together with Giant Trunade. Its really a good play, but a bad opening hand card. It really only pays off mid to late game when you have a shogun in hand and you can chain it to a storm or trunade. Unlike with return it doesn’t matter if that happens on your turn or theirs. If you have to chain it to their removal, then just bring your sams back in defense to protect your 100 remaining LP and switch them back on your turn. Barring storm followed by vortex which is a massive 341 play in your favour, it’ll pay off.
As a result we get a more resilient deck, at an even 40 cards, that can capitalize on a core card like Reasoning :
Quote
19
2x Great Shogun Shien
3x Cyber Dragon
3x Grandmaster of the Six Samurai
3x The Six Samurai – Zanji
2x The Six Samurai – Irou
1x The Six Samurai – Kamon
2x The Six Samurai – Nisashi
2x The Six Samurai – Yaichi
1x Morphing Jar
14
3x Smashing Ground
3x Reasoning
2x Reinforcement of the Army
2x The Warrior Returning Alive
1x Heavy Storm
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Snatch Steal
1x Premature Burial
7
2x Mask of Restrict
2x Sakuretsu Armor
1x Ring of Destruction
1x Mirror Force
1x Call of the Haunted
For the side deck I’m holding on to a pair of Kamon, in case we have some macro decks or other weird face-up stuff, and I’m even adding two twisters. Call me paranoid, but if you can swarm, and recover from hits from torrential and mirror force, then your biggest threat is a continuous one. With only 7 traps, decree is fairly feasible, Just dump call, saku and mask of restrict for Swords, triple decree and Confiscation. Backs to the wall and Giant Trunade add an extra dimension to the deck if you don’t need any of the particular tech you are packing. Cursed seal and Pulling are probably just sensible inclusions against the most dangerous decks in the format.
Quote
Side Deck:
3x Royal Decree
2x Six Samurai – Kamon
1x Swords of Revealing Light
1x Backs to the Wall
1x Giant Trunade
2x Pulling the Rug
2x Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell
2x Twister
1x Confiscation
I contemplated adding D.D.Crows or Banishers to the side as well but opted against it. The monster line-up falters quickly when its changed too drastically, and Pulling the Rug and Mask of Restrict together work quite well at stopping any problems you may need the Crow for. A malicious being special summoned doesn’t seem half as hazardous when its not being tributed to a monarch of Metamorphosis. Dito with a treeborn Frog. Smashing Ground counters with enemy controller don’t work anymore either and the list goes on. Mask of restrict is a good card and we all know it, but not a lot of decks can use it like this one without hampering their own strategy.
How to play the deck
The deck is not hard to play. Just take some time to practice with it and get the hang of it, and it’ll soon be an automatism to play. The hardest task is remembering all your effects. Selecting the right samurai for the job, looking at your options for substitutional destruction carefully. After that I suggest looking at your options to swarm. Depending on what you have you can be a little more cautious, or a little more aggressive. If they have no back-row, don’t hesitate to slam your zanji into whatever they have, to then follow up for 4000+ damage. If they didn’t torrential you, that face-down is only a threat to you if its mirror force. If you have access to yaichi, you can resolve that issue as well. If you can push it through, don’t hesitate to dump your hand on your field, if they can’t get rid of all of it, you are in good shape still on the next turn. At least a good enough shape to sweep up after 6000+ damage.
On more cautious attempts it can be wise to probe the field with cyber dragon and a normal summon, or a grandmaster play. Horde your top damage cards until you are sure you can use them in a game-winning or near game-winning blow. If you open with a bunch of regular samurai and warrior returning alive, chances are good you’ll have a grandmaster or cyber dragon soon, so just put one out there in Game 1 and see what bites, you’ll likely be able to follow up with more accuracy and precision for much more damage.
If you decide you side to backs to the wall, just keep it until you can chain it to a storm or trunade, and you have at least 3 different samurai monsters in the graveyard and a shogun or something in your hand. It’s meant to be a game-ender, and it is. Just make sure you are the one to end it.
The trick is just to keep poking and prodding until you are sure its cool to let go and take the game . Don’t fear what the other guy puts out there or throws at you, you have smashing, saku and a full set of zanji’s at your disposal, not to mention Mirror Force. Getting rid of a threat can happen at any given time, permitting you to go to town on their LP. I’ve seen people pass with the security of a monarch and a cyber dragon, just to lose a dragon to smashing, the monarch to zanji’s effect and then eat direct attacks from a grandmaster, a shogun and two hits from a nisashi.
The worst games are the ones where you mill a lot of spells or traps from your first reasoning into the grave, leaving you with little backup to your swarm. In general there are just a few things to be afraid of and lightning Vortex isn’t seeing a whole lot of play right now, so you can still get the needed damage in, but be a little more cautious with your resources than you would otherwise be, select your attacks more carefully, well, I’m sure many of you have more experience than me and know the drill in this cases ;)
How the deck fares
The deck has a lot of favourable match-ups because its fast and it attacks with multiple monsters. Since a lot of decks either need to pass with one large monster on the field, or multiple small ones, and can’t overextend the back-row for fear of heavy storm, it often means at least one of your monsters is getting in direct hits. If the opponent fails to reply with mass removal, then 2 or 3 turns generally equal game.
The deck struggles against early monarchs. In those match-ups the pullings come in, and you don’t want to overextend too fast unless you can connect for sure. With mask of restrict out you pretty much have carte blanche to do whatever you want though, so the game can turn to your favour extremely fast. Only Thestalos tends to hurt you much, and he is exactly the reason you want to keep a lot of cards in hand to start off with. As soon as they drop a monarch and its effect is spent, you’ll usually have more leeway to drop a large attack, where a zanji can clear the threat, and the others can attack directly.
The Demise match-up is actually fairly favourable, believe it or not. You still have pulling and cursed seal in the side if you don’t agree, but since most demise decks these days play to resilience and just big hits instead of OTK’ing consistently, you’ll often be going up against an unprotected field with face-up 1400 ATK monsters. With the Demise decks you still see nowadays, you’ll OTK faster than they do.
Gadgets fall to your multiple attacks. Colourful weenies in attack position, and barring a mirror force, whatever they have will only stop 1 attack, especially if you happen to have shogun out. After UK and Canadian nationals I fully expect Gadget decree to come into vogue, and that even eliminates that threat. They’ll be quicker to clear your swarm of course on subsequent turns, but they’ll be unable to get damage in, giving you all the room and time you need to set up a second hit.
Popular choices from the last few nationals aren’t going to harm you either. Banisher is smaller than zanji and Irou, which compensates for his lack of smashability. Cyber phoenix seems to be the new buzz in the meta, but since the only effect that targets a machine-type monster is Zanji, who cares ? And I’ll knock on wood, but so far I haven’t found any real trouble with Trap Dustshoot since I usually don’t care which samurai I open with, and after that my hand size is rarely big enough for dustshoot to work.
The samurai remain a good choice for the format. Combining speed, power and an uncharacteristic resilience. This deck is slightly more tweaked to match the current top decks in all these aspects, deliberately opting for more pro-active choices over the usual “I’ll curl up while I try to get two samurai out” approach. I’m quite pleased with the outcome, more than I thought I would be when I first saw the Six Samurai.
Conclusions
I must admit I didn’t see much in the Six Samurai when I first heard of their pending release. Too combo-centric and simply not worth the effort. Their Japanese release only confirmed that, as they saw next to no play in their land of origin. But then, for the first time in years UDE showed some balls and instead of disappointing us with crappy promo after crappy promo (I still keep getting free Neos tins from the place I order from, I just trade them now, below value of course) they released a unique sneak peek promo. They then screwed up by only releasing the extremely expensive (45 bucks or something I think) Secret Rare version to Europe. The card catapulted the deck into a competitive deck at the start of the format. As the format evolved however the deck became reliant on a blind milling power card like Card Trooper, making it even less attainable, to keep up with the increasing pace of decks. Then it was pretty much dead and buried until Matthew Lai revived the deck with a new concept that is, permit me to say it once more, brilliant. If you have grandmaster the core of the deck is easy and cheap to build, and it really is better than the trooper version. More consistent and more efficient, with the same type of speed. Of course once in a blue moon reasoning will screw you over too when it drops morphing Jar, or grandmaster when you already have one, but it doesn’t compare to all the times it wins games.
The Six Samurai still don’t look all that strong or appealing, but after having tested them for a little while now, I have to say they play easily and aggressively, exactly the way I like it. And with councillor Enishi joining rank in a set or two their bag of tricks will only expand. They are truly explosive, and if its in your means to make the deck (usually meaning if you have a set of grandmaster) you really should give them a whirl. With reasoning being more effective than Card Trooper, you could also easily cut 1 Cyber Dragon without losing too much efficiency, which makes the most expensive card in the deck the Grandmaster himself. It’s a worthwhile investment, even if you only use the deck to test your other decks against.
What about a devoted / dedicated Monster Gate or so deck with only 3 Shogun in the deck and nothing else (monster wise)?
You can create a severe lockdown deck forcing the opponent only one s/t a turn.
By default, destiny hero reliant decks die. All combo decks die. Packing it full of negators or protectors, you can box the opponent into a VERY tight spot.
I would try and draw a list up, but Xav is much better at lockdown gmeplay than I am.
What about a devoted / dedicated Monster Gate or so deck with only 3 Shogun in the deck and nothing else (monster wise)?
You can create a severe lockdown deck forcing the opponent only one s/t a turn.
By default, destiny hero reliant decks die. All combo decks die. Packing it full of negators or protectors, you can box the opponent into a VERY tight spot.
I would try and draw a list up, but Xav is much better at lockdown gmeplay than I am.
Speaking of Locks, I got new lock 4 ya. It ain't as hawt as the Clock but it's hella fun, you'll like it.
very good build, but I have some concerns about your choices. Surprisingly, its not in the monsters. You justified those choices well and it seems the conclusion of that states that there is no clear bulid since the use of reasoning in this deck relies on unpredictability.
When building a deck, I try to make sure it covers EVERYTHING it could come up against in the initial build, while still being consistent. i thinka lot of the weaknesses were overlooked. For one, theres no way to keep monsters on the field aside from attacks. And there's also no straightforward way to protect from control cards like brain control. Even the side deck lacks this kind of protection. I think Cards like Solomn Judgement and My Body of the Shield have been overlooked and are greatly essential to the Mythos of this deck. There inclusion in the deck also cuts down on the unneccessary inclusion of side deck choices like Pulling the Rug. Its important to have consistency and cover for other threats, but utility is also a must for this deck. A card that can take out 3 threats is a lot better than any that can deal with just one specific one.
very good build, but I have some concerns about your choices. Surprisingly, its not in the monsters. You justified those choices well and it seems the conclusion of that states that there is no clear bulid since the use of reasoning in this deck relies on unpredictability.
When building a deck, I try to make sure it covers EVERYTHING it could come up against in the initial build, while still being consistent. i thinka lot of the weaknesses were overlooked. For one, theres no way to keep monsters on the field aside from attacks. And there's also no straightforward way to protect from control cards like brain control. Even the side deck lacks this kind of protection. I think Cards like Solomn Judgement and My Body of the Shield have been overlooked and are greatly essential to the Mythos of this deck. There inclusion in the deck also cuts down on the unneccessary inclusion of side deck choices like Pulling the Rug. Its important to have consistency and cover for other threats, but utility is also a must for this deck. A card that can take out 3 threats is a lot better than any that can deal with just one specific one.
MBaaS isn't half as necessary as I deemed it at first. This deck can put up small swarms, and recover well if they fail, even setting up new swarms the turn after. As I tried to point out throughout the article, this deck is strong enough to play pro-actively, and not defensively. The abilities of the samurai are not the key element. Only their swarm and selective destruction. Use the abilities when you can, but if you focus on getting two different ones out just for that, you lose time to the fast decks of today. I believe Lai demonstrated that to some extent, though not the extent I would have liked to have seen it. At best MbAAS could be sided against vortex.
But yes, its still very exposed to brain control. I looked at means to prevent targeting of my six samurai, but couldn't really find anything suitable. Mask of Restrict helps a great deal in this regard, as it results in a lot of LP from snatch, at best a hit with brain control, but then you get a monster back, and soul exchange is utterly useless with it. So that was my way of dealing with the problem. All these cards become less hazardous when you cannot tribute. Same with malicious, disk commander, treeborn frog, dekoichi, GK spy etc.
Since I haven't tried to get the position. Ive been getting this a lot (assuming you did mean me) and Im seriously considering it. My English Minoring at Uni could use some serious exercise.
Since I haven't tried to get the position. Ive been getting this a lot (assuming you did mean me) and Im seriously considering it. My English Minoring at Uni could use some serious exercise.
lol :) I think he was referring to me :) And I don't really want to talk about it out of respect for the realms management.
But you should try out metalz, if you think you have something worth sharing. I'd like to see you give it a go.
Awesome article on the Samurai's, BB. I've always used Marauding Captain as my swarmer, mainly because I don't have Grandmaster; I never thought about Reasoning. And Morphing Jar is a great idea for dumping the bad hands, and even renewing my hand if it's spent, I seem to get often.
I really like this deck list, although I thought the Masks would be sided. I've also found Kamon quite useful, actually. It's helped against Swords, Snatch, Premature, and COTH for the most common, as well as those random cards that some decks use.
Also, you mentioned that you couldn't find anything useful for those targetting control cards, like Brain Control and Snatch Steal. Have you checked out Spell Shield Type-8? It's a free Magic Jammer against those cards, and it's quite useful against Lightning Vortex (which I actually prefer over Smashing Ground) and other Spells that could be quite dangerous to this deck.