Everyone loves a good joke. But sometimes they are taken too far.

Case in point? My Saryuja OTK deck. I already had my invite for the year, so my goal for this regionals and all others was just to play decks with maximum cheesiness. I expected to frustrate a single opponent, lose horribly twice, drop, and play Win-A-Mat. But that’s not what happened. I’m going to go ahead and show the deck, and below I’ll give a bit of background info as well as some of the central plays since so many people have been asking.

Video Deck Profile (Including my awful voice!)

Rewind to March. I took Fluffals to a regional and teched single copies of Destrudo the Lost Dragon’s Frission and Mare Mare, hoping to pull off the Yazi into Saryuja combo to help accelerate my plays. (More on that later.) I opened Mare Mare far too often at that event, but I decided the combo was still really fun, so I decided to up my deck size to see it less often. Enter my favorite engine, Blaze Accelerator Reload, and my current favorite deck, Trickstar. I threw them together with a Toy Vendor engine to see if I could get any spicy plays from ditching Reincarnation or BAR with Vendor. Soon after, I (for some reason) added a small True Draco engine, as well as, more understandably, a Masked HERO Dark Law engine, a Dino engine, and a Brilliant Fusion engine. My new goal was to capitalize upon the extra summons allowed by Saryuja Skull Dread and Gem-Knight Seraphinite. The deck was running surprisingly smoothly, with cards such as Foolish Burial Goods my field spells facilitating plays. But eventually, I realized without anything to search off Toy Vendor and at a size of over 40 cards, I was not gaining any additional advantage off Toy Vendor. So I dropped that engine. Soon after, I discovered the one-card Beatrice, Lady of the Eternal play that resulted from Vision HERO Vyon, and I opted to remove the Mask Change-related cards for it to more reliably pitch cards to the grave. Following that, the Trickstar engine got downsized, dropping everything but the three cards still in and Trickstar Reincarnation, as I was primarily using them for link summoning anyway, so just Trickstar Candina and Trickstar Lilybell worked out fine. The Volcanics, while working fine, didn’t do anything Raigeki and Dark Hole couldn’t since I was going 2nd (which you have to do for the main combo), so it got dropped as well. From there, I began testing every engine I could think of — ABC, Zombie, Invoked, Subterror, Zoodiac — but all of them were better suited to going 1st, so they didn’t stick around. I wanted ways to consistently break boards, summon boss monsters, and confuse my opponents. From just testing more and more engines, I finally settled on what I entered the tournament with, with the expectation that I’d just hope to summon Saryuja and then see what I could morph my hand into each game. I didn’t expect to win. This deck was supposed to be a joke. But here we are.

So what does the deck do? Well, as the name implies, it OTKs thanks to Saryuja. Here’s the standard starting play:

Cards needed: Destrudo (in hand or grave) + Any Level 6 or lower non-tuner monster

You start by activating Destrudo by targeting the Level 6 or lower monster you control. It summons itself, and from there, you summon Yazi, Evil of the Yang Zing. Yazi then destroys itself and one card your opponent controls. (This is why it only works going 2nd.) Yazi’s effect activates in the Graveyard, summoning Mare Mare from the deck. Mare Mare allows the creation of three tokens per turn, two of which turn into Linkuriboh and Link Spider. Use the link monsters and any other 2 monsters (they can be the remaining token and Mare Mare) to summon Saryuja. Saryuja then fixes your hand by shuffling back in unwanted engine pieces, and it also allows you the additional summon for cards like Souleating Oviraptor, Vision HERO Vyon, Armageddon Knight, Predaplant Ophrys Scorpio, Fairy Tail – Snow, or whatever you want. You can just combo off with whatever you happen to have at the time.

Vision HERO Vyon is a one card Beatrice, for those of you who are unaware. Beatrice is typically the next “boss” monster summoned in the deck, either through this combo or by having the two key cards Vyon leads to in hand already. For the combo, Vyon, when summoned, will send Elemental HERO Shadow Mist to the Graveyard, who will fetch Destiny HERO – Malicious. Vyon will then banish Shadow Mist to search Polymerization. Fuse into Destiny HERO – Dangerous, summon a second Malicious, and overlay into Beatrice. At this point, you can send cards such as Overtex Qoatlus, Fairy Tail – Snow,  and Shaddoll Dragon to the Graveyard for their effects.

If you send Overtex, you get to add Double Evolution Pill, which will then summon Ultimate Conductor Tyranno. Those are the standard three monsters that almost always end up on the field. When Brilliant Fusion is an option or when you can trigger Baobaboon, more plays become available, such as a Decode Talker or Borreload Dragon (or both).

That’s the general strategy. It’s called Saryuja OTK because it all starts with Saryuja. And it can be summoned a few different ways besides the Destrudo combo. But the overall goal is just to use your starter cards to bait negations/traps, then just go all out in fielding enough damage to end the game.

For anyone wondering, my matchups were as follows:

Trickstar (1-2)

60-Card Zombie Dinosaur (2-0)

Blue-Eyes (2-0)

Pendulum Magician (2-1)

True Draco (2-1)

True Draco (2-0)

Dinosaur (2-0)

True Draco (2-0)

Of those, the Trickstar matchup is seriously the only time I bricked. (I opened game 2 with Ash Blossom, Gamma, Dark Hole, Raigeki, Dogoran, and Tyranno. And Trickstar Reincarnation blasted my hand apart game 3.) Despite how much is packed into the deck, it’s deceptively consistent. I performed the OTK in 9 or 10 of the games I won, and of the remaining wins, I was forced to go first once and still managed to win after having my board broken.

The only cards I believe I never used were Emergency Teleport, Scarlight Red Dragon Archfiend, Curious, the Lightsworn Dominion, and, despite siding them, I never saw Shaddoll Fusion / Shaddoll Beast or Trap Eater.

Baobaboon was not bad, but I rarely saw him. His purpose is to help fix my hands while serving as 1/2 of the Yazi equation with Destrudo. He works well with Dragonic Diagram and Ultimate Conductor Tyranno, and, as he proved during the tournament, he stalls exceptionally well. I’m not sure I would include him or the True Draco cards moving forward. They weren’t bad by any means, but they were my go-to side-out cards almost every game.

I decided not to play Lonefire Blossom since it does not do anything immediately on summon, and I wanted to play around quick effects and traps. I never really had an issue getting plays going, so Lonefire just felt unnecessary. Lonefire is certainly a card that can work in here if anyone is so inclined to try it.

I also realize my ratios are … strange, to say the least. I preach Destrudo and Armageddon Knight as two of the best cards in the deck, but I don’t run 3 of either. In this deck, my aim was to never see more than 1 copy of a card. If I did, it would have to be something like Scorpio, which can work with a second copy of itself by pitching the dead one away. I always wanted to have variety in my hand so that I could adapt my plays to the gamestate. I never wanted to see more than 1 Vyon, Armageddon Knight, Destrudo, etc, even though I always did want to see them. As for Destrudo, I have approximately twelve ways to get to him when you count Terraforming. More if you count Beatrice. I never had an issue getting to him. Saryuja and Baobaboon were enough hand-fixing power to shuffle back in my bricks while still helping me get to my play-starters. It’s just what ended up working, so I went with it.

As for why I chose to build for going 2nd instead of 1st, other than the Mare Mare play . . . it’s really just because I didn’t trust myself to be able to get to Evolzar Laggia every game, and Amano-Iwato scares the hell out of me. I could set up Naturia Beast, Overtex Qoatlus, Beatrice, and Saryuja on the first turn, but if Amano-Iwato comes out unchecked, I’m dead. So I chose to try and deal with boards instead.

Going forward, I’d probably replace the Scarlight with Scrap Dragon so that my Extra zone could be freed up, and I’d replace Curious with either Tornado Dragon or The Phantom Knights of Break Sword for more field-clearing. If I were to turn this into a go-1st build, Curious would certainly stay, and I’d probably incorporate Invoked, ABC, and Subterror into the deck, as they help establish boards with cards like Naturia Beast, ABC-Dragon Buster, and Invoked Mechaba. There are also some nice plays facilitated by Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights, but they take up too much space in the deck for my liking and do more for going 1st as well. But since my goal is still to pull off the Mare Mare combo, I’ll be keeping it as a go-2nd build.

So, uh, that’s about it. I really don’t feel like I covered too much, but that’s about all there is to say about the deck. You just combo off however you can until you get game damage, usually facilitated by Saryuja Skull Dread.

Shoutout to all my opponents for being really chill and friendly even though I was taking ten minutes for my turns. You were all really cool players!

DaCrowz

Founder of Cards on the Table, DaCrowz continues to profess that his opinions on manga, movies, and shows are somehow in good taste despite the fact that he would likely give an "A" rating to the Prison School anime. When he is not being mistaken for Nicholas Hoult in public, he puts most of his energy into convincing the Yu-Gi-Oh! community that Volcanic Scattershot is staple for any deck.