Our pick for “coolest Deck in the Top 32” of YCS Providence was easy: it’s William Casaw’s Obelisk the Tormentor Deck. Honorable mention goes to Joseph Maddalena’s Big March of Machines, but Casaw spent his weekend taking people down with Kaiba’s Egyptian God Card and that absolutely counts for something. The Obelisk Deck is actually a new spin on an old Deck you might remember called Frog Monarchs. That Deck used “Frog” cards, Ronintoadin, Battle Fader, and Soul Exchange to gather monsters to Tribute for the various Monarchs.

Monarchs are really easy to understand. You Tribute Summon them, they do something nasty to the opponent. Generation Force switched up the strategy a bit by introducing Sea Lancer. Lancer could retrieve the monsters banished to Summon Ronintoadin and use them as shields for itself to keep the Duelist alive and well until they could strike back with more Monarchs. And every time Lancer used a frog as a shield, it went back to the Graveyard where it could be banished for Ronintoadin again. Eventually it was integrated into the Deck along with Rank 2 Xyz Monsters (since the Frogs are Level 2), and Duels started shaping up like this:

1. Defend early with Gachi Gachi Gantetsu.
2. Strike back with a Monarch or Jinzo.
3. Defend again with Sea Lancer or Battle Fader.
4. Summon Obelisk.
5. Fist of Fate!

If that’s intriguing to you, read on!

Nearly all of the cards in the Deck fall into one of two categories: cards to keep you safe or big scary monsters. The cards that keep you safe are also the cards that you’ll be using as food to Summon Ronintoadin or directly as Tributes for your big Summons.

The key monsters for gathering Tributes and keeping you safe are Dupe Frog, a 2000 DEF monster that acts like a combination of Marauding Captain and Sangan, Swap Frog, which acts like a cross between Foolish Burial and The Tricky, and Battle Fader, which is pretty self explanatory.

The key offensive monsters come in 1 Tribute, 2 Tribute, and 3 Tribute varieties. For 1 Tribute, you can have a Monarch, Sea Lancer or Jinzo. For 2, you get Light and Darkness Dragon. While extremely powerful, Light and Darkness Dragon is also one of the most complex cards in the entire game, and you might want to stay away from it until you’re completely certain of how it works. And for 3 Tributes, you get the man himself, Obelisk the Tormentor.

These kinds of Decks frequently use no Trap Cards. They do this to make as many cards in the opponent’s Deck as useless as possible. Heavy Storm, Mystical Space Typhoon, etc. don’t really do anything against the Deck. The price you pay for doing such a thing, however, is giving up many of the most powerful cards in the game. To make up for it, you use more cards that directly advance your strategy or that make use of the many extra monsters you have thanks to Frog effects. Soul Exchange lets you use your opponent’s monster as Tribute, and Creature Swap and Enemy Controller straight up take enemy monsters away.

In your Extra Deck, you’ll want to use many Rank 2 and Rank 6 Xyz Monsters. Casaw used Gachi Gachi Gantetsu, Daigusto Phoenix, and Number 96: Dark Mist at Rank 2, but only Number 6: Chronomaly Atlandis and Photon Strike Bounzer at Rank 6. These cover most of the bases, but if you’re going to try this strategy yourself, especially if you aren’t going to use Light and Darkness Dragon, consider playing Sword Breaker from Return of the Duelist and Inzektor Exa-Beetle from Order of Chaos as well. You don’t really have any Synchro Summon capabilities, so why not load up on useful Xyz Monsters?

If you’re not going to use Light and Darkness Dragon, then you need to fill in the gaps with something. The Dragon is a negation tool, so one thing you can do is add more copies of Jinzo to your Main Deck. Additionally, you can add Illusory Snatcher from Return of the Duelist to give yourself more offensive power and more opportunities for Rank 6 Xyz Summons. For example, you could do this:

1. Tribute Summon Caius.
2. Banish enemy card and Speical Summon Illusory Snatcher.
3. Attack for 4800 battle damage and Xyz Summon Photon Strike Bounzer to disrupt your opponent’s chance at a comeback and deal more damage.

If you really want to swing for the fences, try out Advance Zone from Return of the Duelist as well. This is one of those rare Decks where you can easily use all three of Advance Zone’s abilities thanks to Obelisk the Tormentor. Just Summoning Obelisk usually isn’t enough to scare an opponent out of the Duel.  But if you beat down their best monster with Obelisk, then destroy another one of their face-down cards, draw an extra card, and add Jinzo or a Monarch back from your Graveyard to your hand to show them that you will win on your next turn, a lot of Duelists won’t even wait to see their next card before packing it in.