hot-stories

Posted by : Unknown Mar 29, 2011


Now that YCS Charlotte has come and gone, it’s time to look back and figure out what matchups are going to be the most prominent in the coming month. After all, the more you know about them, the better your chances of winning are. One of the big new matchups that we saw at YCS Charlotte was the Dragunity versus Six Samurai.
This matchup happened many times throughout the tournament to be sure, and we even saw a Feature Match happen in Round 8 where we saw Samurai duelist, and eventual winner of YCS Charlotte, Sean Coovert, take a very close victory against Dragunity Duelist Anthony Alvarado. Despite some less than stellar hands, Alvarado was still able to fight Coovert to a close Duel 3 where he finally took his first loss of the tournament, giving Coovert 24 packs in the process because of his status as a Bounty Duelist. But how indicative is this of how the matchup usually goes?

How They Work
The Six Samurai Deck, new and improved with Storm of Ragnarok’s “Legendary” Six Samurais, has many tricks at its disposal, the most popular of which tend to the multitude of ways to Synchro Summon Legendary Six Samurai – Shi En on the first turn. Between 2500 ATK and the wicked strong ability to negate a Spell or Trap card once during each player’s turn, Summoning Shi En as early as possible is the Samurai Duelist’s first goal. The second goal is making sure he stays on the field until the Duel is won.
Using Shi En’s own effect wisely, coupled with using Trap Cards like Solemn Warning andMusakani Magatama to take care of anything else that troubles you, the Six Samurai Duelist wants to lock down the opponent, leaving them with multiple cards in hand that they simply cannot use, or at the very least, aren’t willing to risk losing until it’s too late. The Six Samurai Deck can also use cards like Double-Edged Sword Technique to bring back the Synchro Materials they used to summon their Shi En the first time and Synchro Summon another. Having two free negations during each turn is insanely good, and can only be broken through with some serious monster effects.
With all that said, don’t count Dragunity Decks out for a second! Using Dragon Ravine, a Dragunity Duelist can either Summon the Level 8 Synchro Monster of their choice, destroy 2 cards, or Summon Brionac. Here’s how: Dragon Ravine allows you to discard a card from your hand in order to either send a Dragon-Type monster from your Deck to your Graveyard, or add a Level 4 or lower “Dragunity” monster from your Deck to your hand.
If you happen to have Dragunity Phalanx in your Graveyard, you can add Dragunity Dux to your hand with Dragon Ravine’s effect. You can then Normal Summon the Dux. Dux’s effect allows you to select one Level 3 or lower Dragon-Type Dragunity monster in your Graveyard and equip it to him as an Equip Card. By Equipping Dux with Dragunity Phalanx, you can activate Phalanx’s effect, which allows you to Special Summon it to your side of the field when it’s equipped to a monster. Since Phalanx is a Level 2 Tuner monster, you can then Synchro Summon with Dux for the Level 6 Dragunity Knight – Vajrayana. Vajrayana then lets you equip the Phalanx once again, and you can Special Summon one more time to Synchro Summon with Vajrayana for a Level 8 Synchro Monster of your choice. Since you can do this every single turn (as long as you don’t run out of Dux or Vajrayana!), this can very quickly overpower your opponent and leave you with the easy win.
That’s not even where the tricks end though. If you have Dragunity Aklys in your Graveyard, you can add Dragunity Legionnaire to your hand with Ravine’s effect, Normal Summon him, and use his effect to equip the Aklys to himself. Legionnaire is able to send a “Dragunity” monster in your Spell and Trap card zone to the Graveyard in order to destroy one face-up monster your opponent controls, that’s pretty much a free destruction effect, considering you didn’t even lose anything in order to do it! That’s STILL not all though, because once it hits the Graveyard, Dragunity Aklys’s effect activates, allowing you to destroy any card on the field. That’s two cards gone for next to no cost, and you still have your Legionnaire on the field to attack with, too!
And of course, in any scenario when you would Synchro Summon Vajrayana, you can Summon Brionac instead.
It’s safe to say that without Dragon Ravine, the Dragunity Deck doesn’t run nearly as smoothly as it does with it. This means the Dragunity Duelist wants to do everything in his power to find and protect Dragon Ravine. Dragunity Decks frequently run 3 copies of Dragon Ravine as well as multiple (at least 2, sometimes 3) copies of Terraforming to go with them. While the multiple copies of Terraforming may seem like they would become dead in your hand after you have Ravine, you can discard them to use Ravine’s effect.
How to Win
If you’re playing Samurais…
You do not want them to successfully activate and resolve their Dragon Ravine, or its effect. Save your Mystical Space Typhoons for it. Also remember that a Field Spell has to be face-up on the field when its effect resolves in order to do anything, so you can Chain your Typhoon to its effect and your opponent will be out a card in addition to the Field Spell.
You don’t need to make any drastic changes to your gameplan. You still want to SummonLegendary Six Samurai – Shi En right away. As long as you’re careful and intelligent in your negation decisions, you can leave the Dragunity Duelist with no way to win. While you do want to negate your opponent’s Ravine, you have to be careful of your opponent following up withDark Hole to wipe your monsters. Keep a Double-Edged Sword Technique or Musakani Magatama face-down just in case.
If the Dragunity Duelist goes first they might be able to drop Stardust Dragon and several Spell or Trap Cards to go with Dragon Ravine. In this case, you can still use cards like Giant Trunade and Musakani Magatama to protect yourself while you try to escape the situation. Cards you might want to consider for your Main Deck with this in mind are Effect Veiler andLegendary Six Samurai – Enishi. Both of these are useful against a ton of different Decks, and Enishi can wipe a Synchro off the board on either player’s turn.
As far as side deck usage goes, you want to bring in cards like Dust Tornado or even The Six Samurai – Kamon that will help you keep their Ravine off the field, and cards like D.D. Crowthat will allow you to stop their big plays with Dux and Legionnaire, while also removing important Graveyard pieces like Dragunity Phalanx and Dragunity Aklys from play. This also empties out their Graveyard as a whole, leaving Pot of Avarice dead in their hand.
If you’re playing Dragunities…
Get Dragon Ravine. Play it. Keep it on the field. Once your Dragon Ravine is active, it can’t be negated by Shi En, even if you activate it’s effect every turn. The first thing to know is that a strong opening field is very hard for a Samurai duelist to deal with. If you have Counter Trap cards as well as Stardust Dragon protecting your Ravine at the end of turn 1 you have a good shot of winning the Duel. Don’t count them out immediately though, there are things a Samurai Duelist can do to get out of that situation.
The most important thing you have at your disposal is your Side Deck. By bringing in cards likeKinetic SoldierPuppet Plant, and Chain Disappearance, you can limit a lot of your opponents plays. A well placed Chain Disappearance on your opponent’s Kagemusha of the Six Samurai could eliminate all the Tuners from your opponent’s Deck cutting them off from Shi En. If they do get their big Synchro monster to the field, you can easily use Kinetic Soldier to run it down or use Puppet Plant’s effect to steal the Shi En, activate your Dragon Ravinesuccessfully, and use a Tuner monster of your choice to Synchro Summon something with the Shi En. Once again, Effect Veiler can be a very key card to use against an opposingLegendary Six Samurai – Kageki to cut a Shi En combo short.
By making sure you win the Duels where you go first and capitalizing on slow start-ups, you can cruise your way to victory in this matchup. With a loaded Graveyard, there’s little a Samurai Duelist can do to you, since you use a lot of monster effects to do your biggest plays, a Shi En can be little more than a small annoyance to you, and Musakani Magatama can go completely unused while you summon your Level 8 Synchro through Dux and attack over their Shi En. By keeping all of this in mind and using your own discretion and intelligence, you can bring the Samurai powerhouse down to its knees.
With both Dragunities and Samurais getting more cards in the not to distant future, it will be interesting to see both decks grow and evolve. We’ll get our second look at them in just a few weeks at YCS Anaheim, so stay tuned!

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