MW: Odion Shakes Up The Meta And 2012 Nostalgia Arrives!

This week has been full of surprises and impressive tops from the new Temple of the Kings Deck. With buyouts happening to the March 2012 format as well and more, let’s take a dive into what has been happening.

Firstly, during the past weekend, the new Odion cards have made a wave of discussion from events, raking in 2 wins and 5 other tops. One player won a full regional of 700 players with Fiendsmith Odion and has made waves in the community. Many of the pieces from the Deck, like Anubis the Last Judge, The Man with the Mark, and Treasure of the Kings have seen many players purchase them with excitement. Let’s take a look at each of the three cards and see why they are all important for the deck.

Being the centerpoint of the Deck, The Man with the Mark allows you to take 1 Temple of the Kings or a Spell/Trap that mentions it from your Deck and either add it to your hand or send it to your GY. This allows you to grab Treasure of the Kings, which allows you to set an Apophis Trap from your Deck. You can also search up Temple of the Kings so you can activate 1 Trap Card the turn it was Set. Another great upside with The Man with the Mark is that if you control Temple of the Kings, the Man himself and Apophis monsters you control cannot be destroyed by battle or card effects. This is in addition to the Man’s last effect, which protects all copies of Temple of the Kings you control from card effect destruction. It’s an all-around card letting you have plenty of protection during your opponent’s turn to combat card effects that would destroy the man and his Apophis monsters or prevent them from dying in battle.

Despite being a 1-of per deck, Merciless Scorpion of Serket is useful since it searches Temple of the Kings or a Spell Card that mentions it from your Deck to your hand. It must first be Special Summoned from your hand by banishing a Level 10 monster from your hand or Deck. That cost isn’t difficult to meet at all, as both Anubis the Last Judge and Lord of the Heavenly Prison are ideal Level 10 monsters for the deck that also fulfill this requirement. If Serket battles an opponent’s monster, you can destroy that monster during the Damage Step, and by doing so, Serket gains half the original ATK of the destroyed monster, allowing this monster to end games quickly if the opponent isn’t cautious trying to remove it from the field as fast as possible.

Treasure of the Kings, a card that can be tutored by both The Man with the Mark and Merciless Scorpion of Serket, is another extremely powerful card for the deck as it allows you to set any Apophis Traps from your Deck straight to your field. This card also becomes Temple of the Kings while in the Field Zone, which essentially means you’re running even more copies of the Temple and it can be easier to grab than the Temple, as this card is a Field Spell as opposed to a Continuous Spell. And while you have 2 or more Set cards on the field or a Trap in your GY, you can use this card’s final effect, which lets you add 1 monster that mentions Temple of the Kings from your Deck to your hand, allowing you to search out Anubis the Last Judge, The Man with the Mark, or Merciless Scorpion of Serket, depending on where you are in your combo.

Finally, Anubis the Last Judge is your main Level 10 monster of choice to banish off of Merciless Scorpion of Serket (while you control Temple of the Kings), but it’s not just played for that. Anubis can send itself from your hand to the GY to add The Man with the Mark from your Deck to your hand, so it acts as more copies of the Man. Outside of that, Anubis can also Special Summon itself from your hand or GY, provided you have 3 or more cards in your GY with different names that are either Temple of the Kings and/or Traps, and by placing those cards on the bottom of the Deck in any order. This Summoning Condition allows you to put cards like Infinite Impermanence or Dominus Purge back into your Deck for later use. And finally, if a Spell/Trap you control is destroyed by a card effect, you can target 1 card your opponent controls and destroy it. This is a fun way to punish your opponent when they hit you with Harpie’s Feather Duster or Lightning Storm.

Gallant Granite has been seeing a lot of play in the Odion Deck because it allows them to overlay their Apophis Traps into this card. It helps you gain access to Lord of the Heavenly Prison and will let you have protection for your Set Spell/Traps by revealing Lord in your hand. In the past, Gallant Granite searched cards like Block Dragon in 2020 for Adamancipator Decks, and now, Magical Musketeer Fiendsmith Decks use it to search for cards like Nibiru, the Primal Being, as another form of interruption against your opponent if they manage to break your board. Gallant Granite hasn’t seen a reprint since the 2020 Tin of Lost Memories. While it has been going up over time, some players hope to see a reprint of this card soon.

Primite Dragon Ether Beryl has been going down with how Primite Blue-Eyes hasn’t been doing as well people have thought. Being able to Set any Primite Spell/Trap from your Deck is really great as you can Set cards like Primite Lordly Lode or Primite Drillbeam face-down, depending on the situation you find yourself in. By Tributing this card, you can send a Normal Monster from your Deck to the GY, which is already good, but with Blue-Eyes, you can also use it as Link Material for Spirit with Eyes of Blue, which searches up Mausoleum of Light. It keeps a Dragon on the field to help make Hieratic Seal of the Heavenly Spheres, and you can send a Blue-Eyes White Dragon off of Mausoleum’s effect, granting you card advantage during your turn. Primite Dragon Ether Beryl can also add itself back from the GY to your hand during your Standby Phase while you also have a Normal Monster in your GY. This helps with the recursion the engine needs to push for game against your opponent. Hopefully after the next Forbidden and Limited list, Blue-Eyes Primite goes higher in playrate than it is right now.

Now, after going over some cards from the modern day, let’s take a look at the past with the March 2012 format. This format consists of Wind-Up Shock Lock, Inzektor, Dino Rabbit and Disaster Dragons, a format many wish to forget because of Number 16: Shock Master and its Shock Lock and how devastating Inzektors could be with Inzektor Dragonfly and Inzektor Hornet.

Players have gone after more cards for Time Wizard formats, the first being Wind-Up Rat. This card has only been printed as Super Rare from Order of Chaos, and it is a centerpiece of every Wind-Up Deck since its release. By using its effect to switch itself to Defense Position, you can Special Summon 1 Wind-Up monster in your GY. This helps with the Wind-Up Hand Loop, as you can Special Summon Wind-Up Hunter from your GY, which tributes a used copy of Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity to kick off its effect. The full Wind-Up Hand Loop was covered on the Official Konami Blog Page here. Along with the Hand Loop that Wind-Up had access to back in 2012, they also have the option to use 3 Level 4 Monsters to Summon Number 16: Shock Master.

Number 16: Shock Master has drastically gone up for the Shonen Jump promotional card released back in May of 2012. As a huge menace in the format till its banning in September 2013, it has had its part with multiple Decks over the full year it was out from Inzektor to Wind-Up and even Dino Rabbit. By detaching 1 material from this card and declaring 1 of the 3 card types (Monster, Spell, or Trap), neither player can use that type of card until the end of the opponent’s turn, and often, it is way more punishing for your opponent.

Mystic Piper has eluded a reprint as it was originally in Extreme Victory and oddly hasn’t gotten one since. You can tribute this card from your field to draw 1 card, and you reveal that drawn card. If it happens to be a Level 1 monster, you draw 1 additional card. It has been a card that some players use for fun in Level 1 Decks like Lyrilusc. Back in 2012, a Chaos Piper Control Deck managed to reach Top 4 at YCS Long Beach. Being a Level 1 itself is useful for decks that need a slight consistency boost while making sure you have no monsters on the field afterwards. A reprint of this card would be great for all the past format players to use and try different techs out.

Machina Force has been on the radar for Edison Machina players as some lists run 3 of this card as something you discard for Machina Fortress. That is the key role for this card since you don’t run any of the monsters to summon it with Commander Covington. Just being a Level 10 for Machina is useful with Fortress, but honestly for many players, a better option would be Red Gadget, Green Gadget, and Yellow Gadget, as all you need to do is discard Machina Fortress itself and one of the three Gadgets to Special Summon itself from the GY. It’s really unclear why this card has been going up, but being able to have a free Special Summon of Machina Fortress from the GY is really nice after Turn 2 or 3.

Finally, let’s take a look at Fiend Comedian. This card has only been printed in Legacy of Darkness, one being a Worldwide English print and just its normal LOD-098 print. This card’s Worldwide English print is in extremely low quantity because of it not having much of a print run since it was from Master Collection Volume 1 in 2004. This is where cards included “EN” in their set number, and as such, this version is rarer to find because of how limited the print was. It is mostly played in decks like Labrynth, Paleozoic, and Tearlament as this card benefits you regardless of the result. If you toss a coin and call it right, you banish every card in your opponent’s GY. If you call it wrong, you have to send cards from the top of your Deck to the GY, equal to the number of cards in your opponent’s GY. This allows Paleozoic specifically to fill their GY with their archetypical Traps, so they have them ready as monsters to summon each time a Trap Card is activated. This card also works super well with Transaction Rollback, as it copies its full activation effect at the cost of half of your LP, which essentially means more copies of this card in your Deck.

As we wrap this article up, let’s hope that some of these cards get the daylight once again with a reprint. The market is ever changing, and it is interesting to see where players take a look at what cards they are wanting to pick up for previous formats.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon