Creative Deck Strategy: Metaphys Rokket

Dragons and Wyrms fight together in this unified approach!

Introducing the Metaphys:

Originally joining the game as LIGHT/Wyrm-type variations on powerful boss monsters from the past, the Metaphys archetype is extremely unique through their relationship with being banished. In addition, the majority of their monsters actually trigger during the Standby Phase after they are banished, giving them one major downside – they require time to setup before they can start having a significant influence on the duel. But once they do, this theme has a ton. Mass backrow and monster removal, multiple options for search power, and a boss with lots of protection. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, we need to introduce you to the key members.

Metaphys Deadalus is first on our list, as it acts as both removal and starting things off. When it is Special Summoned by the effect of another Metaphys monster, you can banish all other Special Summoned monsters on the field. Additionally, whenever it is banished, during the next Standby Phase you return it to the deck to banish a different Metaphys card from your deck. This second effect is primarily used to trigger your other Metaphys options, such as Metaphys Nephthys. Similar to Deadalus, whenever Nepthys is Special Summoned by the effect of another Metaphys monster, you can banish all set Spells and Traps on the field. Additionally, whenever it is banished, during the next Standby Phase you return it to the deck to add a different Metaphys card from your deck to the hand.

To support the first effects of each of those, you have two options. Metaphys Tyrant Dragon becomes unaffected by trap cards and can attack twice per turn if summoned by the effect of another Metaphys monster. Additionally, whenever it is banished, during the next Standby Phase you return it to the deck to Special Summon a Metaphys monster from your hand. This second effect can be used to trigger the first effects of Deadalus or Nephthys, but you can also rely upon this next option. Metaphys Decoy Dragon is the only Pendulum monster of the theme, offering a couple similar effects. As a Pendulum Spell or as a monster, whenever your opponent declares an attack, you get to banish your face-up Decoy to summon another Metaphys from your GY or that is banished. However, note that the Spell version of the effect would not trigger the first effects of your other Metaphys monsters. Additionally, whenever it is banished, during the next Standby Phase you can Special Summon it.

Rounding out our key players is the ‘consistency’ option for the theme, Metaphys Ragnarok. Whenever it is summoned, you can banish the top 3 cards of your deck and it gains 300 ATK for each Metaphys card you banished. Also, whenever it deals battle damage to your opponent, you get to summon a Level 5 or higher Metaphys monster straight from the deck. Metaphys Executor is the boss monster of the theme, able to be summoned by banished 5 Metaphys cards with different names from your field or GY. It can’t be destroyed or banished by card effects, and if your opponent controls more cards than you, you can Special Summon a banished Metaphys monster once per turn! This well-protected threat can end games, especially when you use all of your Metaphys tools to extend the duel.

In a few words, this theme is extremely powerful, but constrained by the delays in its effects. As a result, you will commonly see Metaphys variants focusing on banishing as many as possible quickly to get the most card advantage, then hoping to survive until the next turn to sweep the duel. Builds such as this revolve around banishing Necroface and haphazardly banishing as much as they can in a similar fashion to Lightsworn. While that approach can definitely work in a casual setting, I wanted to try and spice it up with a slightly more consistent way to play the duel, with a stronger first turn to prevent your opponent from just winning the duel before your Metaphys come online. For that, I turned to a different type and attribute core – the Rokkets.

 

Loading the Gunbarrels:

The Rokket archetype has evolved over the course of the current series to be an effective and efficient Link-summoning strategy. Not only does it boast 1-card combos that start with Starleige Seyfert and result in a board with multiple negates, but it is a nimble enough engine that brings along easy card advantage along the way. Additionally, I must mention the great toolbox options available to Dragon-type decks, something that I wrote about extensively in a prior article, which you can access HERE. Together, these Dragons offer a ton to our strategy – but let’s take a quick dive into how they work.

Rokket Tracer is the glue holding this engine together. A level 4 tuner, Tracer has a quick effect to destroy any face-up card you control to summon a different Rokket monster from the Deck. While it does lock you into DARK monsters from the Extra Deck for the rest of the turn, this restriction can be easy to avoid. As for what you can summon, the best option in the current meta is to bring out Silverrokket Dragon, a simple 1900 ATK Level 4 Dragon. This statline is particularly important, as the theme’s field spell (Boot Sector Launch) is very accessible AND it boosts Silver to 2200 ATK, enough to destroy an El-Shaddoll Winda in battle. You can access this field spell off of any Level 4 or lower Dragon, since Striker Dragon, a Link 1 monster for the theme, searches it when Striker is Link Summoned!

Speaking of accessible field spells, this theme also has easy access to Dragon Ravine, since that Field Spell can be searched from the Deck by another Link Monster, the Link 2 Dragunity Knight – Romulus. Once searched, Ravine can let you send Absrouter Dragon directly to your GY, which lets you search any Rokket monster, bringing us full circle to the Tracer we started this theme highlight with. As you might expect, this theme can get quite loopy, especially when you begin to throw in the potential of Guardragon Elpy and Guardragon Pisty, in addition to the easy access to Saryuja Skull Dread to fix any poor hands. Factor in the ability to pull any Rokket from your deck with Quick Launch, and this theme has competitive potential in droves. While all of this description rings true for any Rokket deck in general, Metaphys as a theme could use the boost provided by the Rokket engine for multiple different reasons. Let’s talk about how they mesh together, shall we?

 

Uniting These Two Themes:

These two themes are quite different based on the offered descriptions, and even in practice, these two strategies play much different games. Metaphys typically goes for a grind game, aiming to out-resource the opponent over time, while Rokket Link decks tend to focus on getting the best disruption board possible from their first hand. This begs the question – how do these two themes come together? There are three major synergies to this hybrid build, so let’s cover each.

Type Compatability:

It was clear from the beginning of the type that when Wyrms launched, it was simply to create a new branch of Dragon monsters without them having access to the wide Dragon-type support pool. Dragon Rulers had just dominated the game, and it was time to try something new. But in the beginning of the type, a continuous Spell card was released to show the transformation – introducing Dracocension. Broken down, its effect is fairly simple – Tribute a Dragon to summon a Wyrm from your deck with the same Level. This is absolutely key when so many key Dragon monsters share levels with Metaphys monsters. The Level 4 Rokkets can be swapped into Metaphys Ragnarok, the Level 7 Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms can unleash Metaphys Daedalus, and a Chaos Dragon Levianeer that has already used its effect can be exchanged for a Metaphys Nephthys or Metaphys Tyrant Dragon. In other words, this Spell lets you thin your deck and complete your entire combo chain with the Rokket cards, only to swap into the Metaphys engine at the end when you are more likely to banish your Metaphys cards!

Access to Zeroboros:

Gracing the cover of Structure Deck R: Rokket Revolt was a new boss monster for the Rokket theme, Topologic Zeroboros, and this monster seems to be designed to function perfectly with the Metaphys monsters. When a monster is summoned to a Zone any Link monster points to, all cards on the field are banished. Then, if Zeroboros was banished by its effect, it returns during your following Standby Phase. Also, Zero gains 200 ATK for each banished card. In short, this card stalls games, especially against decks that needs to summon to an Extra Monster Zone or that benefits from Link Summoning. At the end of the day, all of these effects are super beneficial for two themes that constantly banish cards, but Rokkets are definitely the best theme for getting its material to the field to pull off its Link Summon in the first place. Combining Quadborrel Dragon and Dillingerous Dragon is the best method as it happens to give you a Borreload Savage Dragon along the way, so look forward to seeing that combo explored later on!

Enter Chaos:

The third and final synergy between Metaphys and Rokkets is that combined, they become a solid ‘chaos’ deck. With Metaphys bringing the LIGHT monsters and Rokkets bringing the DARK, you can start to make full use of banishing both attributes from the GY. This will primarily be achieved through the mini Chaos Dragons, White Dragon Wyverburster and Black Dragon Collapserpant, but you will have the potential to gain more off of their summons than in a traditional Rokket link deck. The reason for this is fairly straightforward – if you banish a Metaphys to summon Black Dragon or Levianeer, you get additional card advantage on the next turn. This stacks up rather quickly, giving yourself even more of a reason to combine these two themes. But if you haven’t been convinced yet, let’s take a look at today’s decklist and run through a sample combo from my test duels to show just how effective this deck can be.

 

Sample Deck List:

Click to view the decklist in the Official Card Database

 

Seyfert Enabled Combos:

As mentioned, this hybrid is about maximizing your chances to banish your Metaphys monsters in a systematic way. To get to that point, Rokkets get to do some fun combos. Let’s talk about some of the combos when you open with Starleige Seyfert and any other card.

1. Normal Summon Seyfert.
2. Use Seyfert’s effect, sending itself to add Black Dragon Collapserpent to hand.
3. Banish Seyfert from your GY to Special Summon Collapse from hand, then use Collapse as Link Material for Striker Dragon.
4. Striker Dragon triggers to add Boot Sector Launch to hand, and Collapse triggers to add White Dragon Wyverburster to hand.
5. Banish Collapse from your GY to Special Summon Wyver from hand, then use both Striker and Wyver as Link Material for Dragunity Knight – Romulus.
6. Romulus triggers, adding Dragon Ravine to hand.
7. Activate Ravine, discarding any card to send Absorouter Dragon from your deck to the GY. Its effect then triggers, adding Rokket Tracer to your hand.
8. Replace Ravine with Boot Sector, then use its first effect to summon Tracer from the hand. Use Tracer’s quick effect, destroying Boot Sector, and summoning Silverrokket Dragon from your deck.
9. Link Summon Guardragon Elpy and Guardragon Pisty using your two Rokkets (so that they point to one another).
10. Activate the effect of Elpy, summoning Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon to the zone the two Guardragons point to. Use Darkness’ effect to summon back Striker Dragon so that it points to Elpy.
11. Activate the 2nd effect of Striker Dragon, destroying Elpy and adding Tracer back to your hand.
12. Activate the effect of Pisty, summoning Silverrokket back from the GY.
13. Link Summon Dillengerous Dragon using Tracer and Pisty. Then Link Summon Quadborrel Dragon using Silverrokket and Darkness.
14. Quadborrel’s effect triggers, discarding Tracer and destroying Dillengerous before summoning both Silverrokket and Tracer back from your GY.
15. Dillengerous triggers in the GY, summoning itself back to your field.
16. Synchro Summon Borreload Savage Dragon using Tracer and Silverrokket, which triggers its effect to equip Pisty from your GY and gain 1 counter.
17. Link Summon Topologic Zeroboros using Dillengerous and Quadborrel so that it points to the open Extra Monster Zone.

This combo is something that any Rokket deck can perform, but it works well for a Metaphys variant because of the various ways it can be modified or extended. If you also opened Dracocension, you can use its effect to tribute away Tracer before the final Syncho summon, giving you Ragnarok instead as your Level 4 tuner. It would then banish 3 cards from the top of your deck when you have ~ 12 of your 27 remaining cards in deck that you would be happy banishing. An alternative would be if you open your copy of Levianeer, it might even be in your best interest to discard your Metaphys monsters along the way, as you can banish all 3 of them to get a further combo that can end on a Borrel Link in the Extra Monster zone as well as the end board. If you open one of your other pieces used during the combo, such as Absorouter Dragon, just make that your discard for Ravine. That’ll let you send your Dragon Ruler for further banishing shenanigans and an extra body that you can ascend into Metaphys Daedalus.

This may be the best opening for this variant, but the Metaphys do offer other advantages to a pure Rokket link variant. First, Rokket link really doesn’t have the full field-wipe options in their arsenal that Daedalus and Nephthys bring to the table. Sure, they can remove single monster threats well, but they can struggle when you need to remove multiples. Secondly, they have a pretty bad grind game overall. If your initial board is broken with a traditional Rokket link, you may struggle to get back into the duel since so many of your Extra deck monsters are now in the GY. Metaphys doesn’t have this option as well – in fact, they bring Metaphys Executor to the table as a 1-card solution to the end game. Even if your opponent negates its effect, you still banished 5 Metaphys cards, so you get plenty of advantage to work with when they all trigger during the next Standby Phase! Don’t forget the deck thinning brought to the table by both themes – even the themed trap card Metaphys Ascension has two effects to help you dig through your deck quicker.

 

Additional Tech Options:

• Metaphys Options:
  • Asymmetaphys – This is the draw spell for the archetype, and it helps by both banishing Metaphys cards you may have drawn as well as affect the board. However, it is less consistent when you are running a smaller number of Metaphys cards, hence I excluded it from today’s build.
  • Metaphys Dimension – This is an amazing card I cut at the last minute for the copy of Upstart Goblin. Not only does this give you free Metaphys monsters while your opponent plays, but it also lets you banish additional cards they control when you banish a Metaphys card. Yes it is a slower trap card, but it definitely helps in the grind game.
  • Waterfall of Dragon Souls – A generic Wyrm support card, this can be used to either fill the GY for Executor and draw extra cards or just search a Ragnarok when in need!

• Rokket Options:
  • Rokket Synchron – Another tuner option, this can be combined with Absrouter to make your Savage Dragon.
  • Galactic Spiral Dragon – This option enables Rank 8 Xyzs when sent to the GY with Ravine or Foolish.
  • World Legacy Guardragon – Revival Spell for Dragons, this can combo well and assist with Guardragon combos.
  • Dark Armed Dragon – Very easy to employ in Rokkets when you can control your GY extremely effectively.

• Banishing Options:
  • Necroface – Want to banish more haphazardly? This is your best option for doing so, and it works extremely well with the Metaphys lineup.
  • Aloof Lupine – Another good option for banishing your Metaphys – however, this requires your Normal Summon, making it incompatible with Seyfert on the same turn. So you have to take caution when running this in a hybrid variant.
  • Premature Return – Swap out a Metaphys from your hand for any other banished monster. It may summon in face-down defense, but that doesn’t matter when your Rokkets still can summon during the EP of a turn they were destroyed!

 

Conclusion and Wrap-Up:

That’s all for today’s article – hope you enjoyed a quick trip to the banished zone. While Metaphys may be unable to fully stand on its own two feet without a supporting engine, that doesn’t mean that the cards should just collect dust. You can still banish with the best of them, just with a bit of Rokket-powered help! Also, you get to finally combine Wyrms and Dragons for the first time since the introduction of the new-*notdragons*-but-still-dragon type! Hopefully you enjoyed this example of powering up an older theme with new support, even if that support was never intended for their archetype – there are a ton of other examples just like this which I hope you can discover too! With that, I’ll catch you next time in the Colosseum with another CDS article soon.

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Reminder, I also take suggestions for future CDS articles! I really want to see some input from you! If you wish to see a CDS article about the archetype, theme, or strategy you love, feel free to private message me on the YGOrg Discord server, the YGOrganization Forums, or just post a comment in response to this article on our Facebook page with your ideas to keep under consideration! On most YGO-related communities my username is Quincymccoy, so feel free to reach out. As of now, I have a couple of outstanding requests that I am looking at: Cyberse, Generaider, Gladiator Beast, Shaddoll, and Speedroid.