Chapter 204. The History of Speed-Kill OTK with Magical Explosion! A Mini-Climax for Kuraz + Phoenix Blade!
For these veteran Duelists, if the metagame were full of "Xianming" builds that left the opponent with zero gameplay—
—what would that metagame even look like?
They didn't dare imagine it!
It would just become a coin flip!
Going second?
You scoop.
Going first?
You win.
Where's the fun in that?
DM world.
At that thought, Yugi Muto was already scowling.
Beside him, Solomon Muto stroked his white beard and fell silent.
Seto Kaiba snorted and said nothing.
Obviously,
when it came to the final downfall of the Xianming deck,
they felt none of the sympathy they'd had for Tearlaments, Spright, Zoodiac, and the like!
On the contrary, in their view,
seeing an FTK deck like that go was reason to cheer!
After all, that kind of engine had already strayed beyond the scope of a Duel.
Duel Academy.
Syrus Truesdale, Bastion Misawa, and the others were thinking the same thing.
"Whew! Good thing it finally got axed—otherwise that FTK deck was downright terrifying!"
"So they even changed effects at the end to keep Xianming from coming back?"
"I finally get why 'Graceful Charity' ended up Forbidden—way too busted!"
"Eh, it's mostly that our Duel worldview can't keep up! Otherwise I'd be King of Games by now!"
The students around them burst into chatter!
They went on and on about the accomplice cards that enabled Xianming!
Especially all the old cards!
Cards they knew well!
They could only stare at one another, speechless!
Cards that usually seemed inconspicuous—
maybe they'd only ever been missing a single catalyst!
But the short video wasn't over!
Very soon, the next clip from the Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited List Explainer began to play!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Ever since last episode's breakdown of the Xianming deck—"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "The response from my long-time viewers has been great!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Today I'm back with the storm once raised by the old Forbidden card 'Magical Explosion'!"
"This card came from a 2005 pack, was Limited around 2010, and Forbidden in 2018!"
"Not hard to see: a card that spans more than a decade and still ends up in the back room says a lot about how 'not simple' it is!"
"First, let's look at what this card does!"
'Activate only while you have no cards in your hand. Inflict damage to your opponent equal to the number of Spell Cards in your GY × 200.'
"Right—looks utterly ordinary."
"You even need 0 cards in hand, and it only burns the opponent—200 per Spell!"
"Judging by text alone, you'd never expect anything, so it drew little attention on release; but Yu-Gi-Oh! has no shortage of geniuses,"
"and with just this one card that looks so run-of-the-mill—"
"they really did build a deck that caused a stir in its day!"
"Put simply, the idea was to use support cards together with draw engines,"
"and try to burn the opponent's LP to 0 in the shortest time possible!"
"In an era where most decks were slow, a build that could end games in two or three turns"
"had a terrifying degree of impact!"
"Even if you couldn't finish all LP in one go for a guaranteed kill that turn, a few monsters could still clean up the Duel easily!"
"And this archetype at the time was called the 'AJ build,' said to be the second deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! history named after a person—rumor had it he went 2–0 with a 100% win rate straight to the top!"
"Let's look at the list first!"
After that preface from the video blogger,
Duelists across the worlds wore bewildered—even dumbfounded—looks!
Huh?
You can make an ultra-fast OTK with this too?
Last time it was an FTK!
This time it's an OTK!
How are the geniuses in that higher world always cooking up lines that make you black out on the spot?!
"AJ build," huh?
Once the shock faded, all the Duelists turned back to the short video to examine that era's list—
and the more they looked, the stranger their expressions became!
"Brain Control" to steal monsters? "Reasoning" to mill?
"Elemental HERO Stratos"? "Destiny HERO – Dogma"?
After seeing the list, the first impression was chaos!
Total chaos!
It had practically everything!
And you still couldn't see how these cards were supposed to complete the OTK with "Magical Explosion"!
But very soon, the video laid out the operations!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Having seen the list, let's go over the combo lines!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "From the list and some narration alone, many of you still won't grasp the engine!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Same as with Xianming—once you see it, you'll get it!"
"First, after your 5-card opening hand, you fire whatever you draw!"
"For example, I activate the Spell 'Destiny Draw'!"
"We discard the key Destiny HERO that pushed this engine to its apex—'Destiny HERO – Disk Commander'!"
"After discarding we draw 2, then Normal Summon 'Elemental HERO Stratos'!"
"Stratos triggers; we search 'Destiny HERO – Dogma' from the Deck!"
"Activate the Spell 'A Feather of the Phoenix,' choose 'Destiny Draw' in the GY and place it on top of the Deck!"
"Activate the Spell 'Upstart Goblin,' draw into 'Destiny Draw' and activate it!"
"Discard 'Destiny HERO – Dogma' to draw 2!"
"Activate the Spell 'Reasoning'!"
"Whatever the opponent calls is whatever—our deck has only a handful of monsters that can be Normal Summoned!"
"Most of the rest are Spells! So 'Reasoning' will probably mill five to ten Spells to the GY!"
"That's right! This is the pre-errata 'Dark Magician of Chaos'!"
"And the build packs a ton of Spells! If luck is good, we can even end our setup here!"
"Of course, to be safe, we use 'Dark Magician of Chaos' to"
"retrieve 'Premature Burial' from the GY to revive monsters!"
"Activate 'Premature Burial,' revive 'Destiny HERO – Disk Commander'!"
"Disk Commander triggers; we draw 2!"
"Now the key is: how many copies of 'Magical Explosion' are in our hand!"
"If we have 2, and there are 20 Spells in the GY—"
"the opponent's done!"
"If we only have 1, then we need to first chip away at the opponent's LP!"
"So as you can see, it's still hard to finish in one breath just like this!"
"That's why I said: a slow environment matters."
"In that era, the meta was slow enough to give this deck an opening!"
"Of course, if you pair it with Dogma's effect to burn away half the opponent's LP—"
"then the OTK odds shoot up!"
"Or you run this Trap—'Life Equalizer'!"
"Its effect: you can activate it when there's a difference of 8000 or more LP between players."
"Both players' LP become 3000."
"This way, in tandem with 'Magical Explosion,' things get very promising!"
After seeing the lines and the running commentary,
Duelists who had been hyped for this engine now wore odd expressions.
Wait, no—
judging by this,
the odds of landing the combo
were actually far lower than with the Xianming deck!
Just like that—
and it still justified banning "Magical Explosion"?
And also—
this feels like it wants to go second!
If you're going first and don't have a Battle Phase to shave LP,
the odds drop even more!
So… better see how the card looked after later optimizations?
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Now that you've seen the rough combo back then—"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "I'm sure many of you are still confused."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "You're probably thinking, 'Huh? That's it?'"
"But I'm telling you—this was only the beginning!"
"The next part is the main course!"
"Why do I say it burst onto the scene with massive impact?"
"First, precision milling wasn't outstanding at the time, so the AJ combo gave players a tactical direction—"
"namely, blind-mill."
"This engine's core is blind-milling to stack a massive number of Spells in the GY!"
"Then you deal damage with Magical Explosion."
"Why could the Grass Monarchs function? Because massive blind-mills produce heaps of usable resources!"
"Of course, the next wave—the little climax—came mainly from these two cards!"
"First—'Kuraz the Light Monarch'!"
"When this card is Summoned or Special Summoned, you can target up to 2 cards on the field; destroy them; then the controllers of the destroyed cards each draw for the number they controlled that were destroyed."
"Second—'Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade'!"
"It can only be equipped to a Warrior. During your Main Phase, you can add it from your GY to your hand by banishing 2 Warrior monsters from your GY."
"With just these, it still isn't enough! When the 2008 Spell 'Charge of the Light Brigade' hit the scene—"
"that finally formed the then-popular Kuraz + Magical Explosion line!"
Only at this "climax" stage of the Magical Explosion engine
did the veterans finally make out what was going on.
"The first-gen version definitely doesn't cut it; feels like my deck could hang with it!"
"Yeah, but can this second-gen version? Maybe it's still kinda weak?"
"Not necessarily—Kuraz can blow up your own cards to draw! That could change things."
"So in other words, more draw engines, huh?"
As the chat simmered,
they also noticed that—outside of nine monsters
plus three copies of "Magical Explosion"—
the list was almost entirely Spells, nothing but draw power and extenders!
They understood the Lightsworn blind-mill part;
but that Phoenix Blade—its purpose was hard to read!
Was that Equip Spell actually useful?
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "'Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade' is still Forbidden today."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Of course, not because of this specific engine!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden/Limited Explainer: "Even here, it only helps the OTK along!"
"The line is simple! Let's see how strong 'Magical Explosion' becomes with these cards behind it!"
"First, activate 'Charge of the Light Brigade'!"
"Mill the top three, then add 'Ehren, Lightsworn Monk' to hand!"
"Activate the Spell 'Card Destruction'!"
"Pitch and then draw five; keep going with another 'Charge of the Light Brigade'!"
"Mill three, add 'Ehren, Lightsworn Monk'!"
"Activate the Spell 'Hand Destruction'!"
"Both players send two from hand to the GY, then each draws two."
"Activate the Spell 'Hidden Armory'!"
"It mills the top card to resolve: add one Equip Spell from your Deck or GY to your hand."
"We choose 'D.D.R. – Different Dimension Reincarnation' from the Deck!"
"Use the effect of 'Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade': banish 'Kuraz the Light Monarch' and 'Ehren, Lightsworn Monk' in the GY to return Phoenix Blade to hand!"
"Activate the Equip Spell 'D.D.R. – Different Dimension Reincarnation'!"
"Discard the Phoenix Blade; Special Summon the banished 'Kuraz the Light Monarch'!"
"Kuraz triggers—target itself and 'D.D.R.' to destroy!"
"Then draw two from the Deck!"
"Next, repeat 'Hidden Armory' to search 'D.D.R.' from the Deck!"
"In the GY, Phoenix Blade again banishes Kuraz and a Lightsworn to come back!"
"Use 'D.D.R.,' discarding Phoenix Blade, to revive the banished Kuraz; Kuraz pops itself to draw two again!"
"Then activate 'Reasoning'—whatever the opponent calls!"
"We only run a few monsters; with good luck we Special Summon Kuraz again!"
"Kuraz blows itself up to draw one!"
"Then keep using Phoenix Blade to banish; ideally, clear out every monster from your GY!"
"'Hand Destruction' resolves—we draw two, pitch two!"
"Once you're sure the Spell count in the GY is enough to lethal—"
"activate your held 'D.D.R.'! Special Summon the banished 'Junk Collector'!"
"That card can banish itself and a Normal Trap in the GY to copy that Trap's effect!"
"We banish 'Magical Explosion' from the GY!"
"That's 4000 damage to the opponent!"
"Set another 'Magical Explosion' and fire it on the opponent's turn!"
"Another 4000 damage!"
"And with that—the Duel is won!"
"So? Now do you understand what Kuraz, Phoenix Blade, and Lightsworn each contribute?"
"But—you think this was the peak?"
"No, no, no—this is only just getting started!"
"Don't forget—the Monarch engine later got more support!"
"So, the ones that conspired with 'Magical Explosion' and the Monarchs to push things to the climax—"
"which cards were they?"
Stunned.
Everyone was stunned!
After the Kuraz version of the Magical Explosion deck was demonstrated,
Duelists across the worlds finally had to look at "Magical Explosion" with genuine respect.
This utterly ordinary burn card—
could actually deliver a blisteringly fast OTK!
Yugi Muto, Jaden Yuki, and Yusei Fudo all stared, wide-eyed.
They still found it hard to believe what they'd just seen on screen!
If the first-gen version had the flavor of classical Yu-Gi-Oh!, then after seeing the Kuraz + Magical Explosion combo—
they finally understood!
As the card pool and engines grew richer, the card's value only climbed!
Kuraz lines paired with Phoenix Blade—
pure card-advantage engines!
Lightsworn blind-mills; Kuraz draws.
Finally, Junk Collector plus Magical Explosion seals the deal!
That's the OTK power this engine brings!
But—
when they heard the blogger say this still wasn't the peak,
the veterans froze again!
With OTK power like this—
it still wasn't the peak?
Then the even more "peak" Monarch Magical Explosion…
wouldn't that be even scarier?
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