Dragons to Come! Also Azure Ruler 2nd Place decklist @ Columbus!

     The new TCG Banlist is upon us, and finally Dragons have been slane. or so players are hoping. After some strenuous testing, I built a skeleton for the Dragon Rulers in the upcoming format(With all the 'Bigs' at 1) and I must say that I'm pleased with the results. But before I get into that, I want to show my final Azure Ruler build that I took to the Columbus Regional(12/14/13) and got 2nd Place with!!

     If there is one thing that I learned from last format, is that Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon is extremely BROKE! This one card puts you so far ahead in gamestate that players are often forced into playing extremely defensive schemes to counter attack a massive push, only to be trampled over and lose all of his/her resources to be unable to continue further. For ultimately 2 turns, your opponent is unable to target or destroy Dragons with effects; the only for sure way to get over things is to simply attack over it, and not many decks can produce a +3000 atk monster. So it only made sense that if I were to continue my success with Dragons, I would have to find a solid way to continue to produce at least 1 Azure a game! This was going to be a daunting task to ensure that I was able to keep maximum consistency, and be able to have options for all or most of the gamestate.

     When comparing my final Dragon Ruler build of the format to the upcoming changes, I was forced to find 16 cards to replace in my main deck!! That is a LOT of cards to replace, especially if I were to meet my goal in having similar consistency! At first I thought the task would be easy because I could simply replace the missing cards with the Plant Engine, add in a pair of Mythic Dragons, and play all the support for both, but I found that the extra deck was extremely tight! You wouldn't always have enough resources for dragon summons or you wouldn't be able to fit all the Extra Deck cards you would need, to run the deck effectively. So I moved on and built a 'Turbo Blue-Eyes' variant and the results were impressive. The deck does require you to get the draw cards early and have the required costs, but I find that I end up looking through +30% of my deck on below average hands on turn 1! That is already a great start for initial runs. After much debate and changes, I decided to take the deck to my locals and compete with current format decks and ended up placing 2nd :D Excellent start for the upcoming format. Here's the decklist:

Monsters: 20
4 Dragon Rulers
3 Blue-Eyes White Dragon
2 The White Stone of Legend
2 Flamvell Guard
1 Debris Dragon
1 Kidmodo
2 Mythic Tree Dragon
2 Mythic Water Dragon
1 Eclipse Wyvern
1 Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness
1 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon

Spells: 17
1 Burial from the Different Dimension
3 Upstart Goblin
3 Dragon Shrine
3 Trade-In
2 Cards of Consonance
2 MST
1 Gold Sarcophagus
1 Silver's Cry
1 DDR

Traps: 3
1 Solemn Warning
1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
1 Torrential Tribute

     Where's the Sacred Swords!?! That card is somewhat bad here, although you will get the +1 from banishing a Dragon Ruler, I find that Sword being live was rather inconsistent. The idea is to send the Dragons to the grave with Shrine or Banish them with Gold Sarc. Cards of Consonance is at 2 because of consistency issues. It's true that I played 3 in the last format with only 2 White Stones, but I find that I am forced to burn through 1 Flamvell Guard and 1 White Stone with Dragon Shrine most of the time and thus putting Cards of Consonance not able to have a cost to discard. DDR and Silver's Cry are such amazing cards in this deck and I can't find the way to work in 2 each. They both serve a unique purpose that I have to run them both at 1 to benefit from each for the time being. Dragoncarnation is not in here for a couple reasons, first off, its too slow, and I find that I typically use my resources correctly to make pushes and rarely have wished I had it; and DDR is better. Gorz is here to help facilitate lack of summoning ability and to help make a synchro and rank 7 push with minimal resources on the following turn; love it! Eclipse Wyvern is to help get ReDMD as soon as possible. This one card produces such big pushes that it's almost as if you were playing with the babies.

     But that is all for this evening. I'm going to continue my pursuit in building a Plant variant that utlizes Meliea the Tree Spirit with the new EARTH Plant Princess released in Legacy of the Valiant. I feel that once she arrives, things could move along more smoothly in that build.


-Peperm1nt