Deck Doctor: Counter-Agents!

Welcome back! Today I have a special edition Deck Doctor, based around a deck that hasn't even released in the TCG just yet -- The Agents! The Agents are an archetype based on Roman Gods and Goddesses, and are all Light-attribute Fairies. A new structure deck called "Lost Sanctuary" just recently released in the OCG markets, bringing with it reprints of old The Agent cards as well as all new support, including Master Hyperion, which is for all intents and purposes a Light-themed Dark Armed Dragon. Consider this Deck Doctor a sneak peek into a future TCG deck!

This was submitted to me by Daegor42 over on the WBO forums. Thanks for the submission! If you missed the post I made earlier, I've set up a new e-mail account exclusively for this blog, so if you'd like to submit a deck for a future Deck Doctor article, you can do so by e-mailing me at: roans.pro.ygo@gmail.com

So, let's get started! Here's Daegor42's original deck list:

Monsters: (20)

3x Master Hyperion
3x The Agent of Mystery - Earth
3x The Agent of Wonder - Jupiter
1x Archlord Kristya
3x Zeradias, Herald of Heaven
3x Bountiful Artemis
2x Meltiel, Sage of the Sky
2x Honest

Magic: (9)

3x The Sanctuary in the Sky
3x Treasure of Heaven
2x Pot of Duality
1x Dark Hole

Traps: (11)

1x Solemn Judgment
3x Solemn Warning
3x Divine Punishment
2x Dark Bribe
1x Seven Tools of the Bandit
1x Torrential Tribute

First Impression:

I'm going to be perfectly honest in saying that this deck looks amazing. The synergy among the archetype's monsters combined with The Sanctuary in the Sky is great, and the three biggest new support cards (Master Hyperion, Treasure of Heaven and Divine Punishment) only looks to make things better. The only glaring omission I see immediately is the lack of Monster Reborn, which you would think would be a staple in this deck, more so than any other!

So, I'm going to assume that most of you (like me) have no idea what most of these cards do. For the sake of clarification, here's a quick breakdown of the more important cards in the deck:

Master Hyperion

"You can remove from play 1 "Agent" monster from your side of the field, hand, or Graveyard to Special Summon this card from your hand. Once per turn, you can remove from play 1 LIGHT Fairy-Type monster from your Graveyard to select 1 card on the field and destroy it. If you control a face-up "The Sanctuary in the Sky", you can use this effect up to twice per turn."

The Agent of Mystery - Earth

"When this card is Normal Summoned, you can add 1 "Agent" monster from your Deck to your hand, except "The Agent of Mystery - Earth". If "The Sanctuary in the Sky" is on the field, you can add 1 "Master Hyperion" to your hand instead."

The Agent of Wonder - Jupiter

"Once per turn, you can remove from play 1 "Agent" monster from your Graveyard to select 1 face-up LIGHT Fairy-Type monster you control. It gains 800 ATK until the End Phase. Once per turn, if "The Sanctuary in the Sky" is on the field, you can discard 1 Fairy-Type monster from your hand to select 1 of your removed from play LIGHT Fairy-Type monsters, and Special Summon it."

Divine Punishment

"Activate only if "The Sanctuary in the Sky" is on the field. Negate the activation of an opponent's Spell, Trap, or Effect Monster's effect, and destroy it."

So, as you can see, the deck very heavily revolves around having the field spell card "The Sanctuary in the Sky" on the field. Sanctuary is already a great card, making sure that your fairies take no battle damage (though they can still be destroyed by battle), but it's the secondary effects of cards like The Agent of Wonder - Jupiter and The Agent of Mystery - Earth that truly make Sanctuary amazing. Coupled with the searching power of Zeradias, Herald of Heaven, which is essentially this deck's version of Gravekeeper's Commandant, the cards that have Sanctuary-dependent effects should almost never be dead.

Master Hyperion is very clearly this deck's main win condition, and rightfully so, but the deck has plenty of muscle in the form of Zeradias and Jupiter, both of whom can be used as beat sticks, and if backed by Sanctuary and Divine Punishment, they are both more than capable of holding the field.

So, having said all of this, let's get down to the construction, shall we?

Proposed Changes:

- 1 Archlord Kristya, - 1 Seven Tools of the Bandit, - 3 Treasure of Heaven.

+ 1 Meltiel, Sage of the Sky, + 3 Book of Moon, + 1 Pot of Duality, +1 Monster Reborn.

Breakdown:

Daegor42's original deck list is honestly really solid, and most of my changes could be considered player preference, but I noticed that the deck has an overwhelming lack of protection for its creatures. Sure, the deck plays Honest, three Solemn Warning and two Dark Bribe, but I really have a feeling that's not going to be enough. I hate doing this with every deck that I doctor up, but I really cannot stress enough how great of a card Book of Moon is. Yes, it is inherently a minus one, as you lose one card to put your opponent's creature face down, but putting creatures face down is incredibly valuable, especially in this format where both Trap Stun and Royal Decree are seeing a lot of play. A successful Royal Decree would absolutely obliterate this deck, and had we not added Book of Moon in, the only protection the deck's monsters would have would be Honest, which is limited to two.

I know I've said this before, but you should almost never be using a Book of Moon to stop a direct attack, unless said attack is literally going to reduce your Life Points to zero. Book of Moon is an out to synchro summons and is very literally one of the best defense cards in the game.

As for my other changes, I decided to drop Archlord Kristya in favor of a third Meltiel. Kristya is a great boss monster for the deck, but seeing as the general theme of the deck revolves around special summoning backed up by a strong Counter-Fairy engine, I thought that Kristya would be rather counter-intuitive (no pun intended) to the deck's strategy. Meltiel is very literally a broken card, effectively allowing the player to pay 1000 Lifepoints for a Solemn Warning instead of 2000, and if Sanctuary is on the field, destroy a card as well! With the amount of counter traps being run in the deck, I thought that a third Meltiel was somewhat of a no-brainer, as it's essentially, in my opinion, a better version of Bountiful Artemis.

Treasure of Heaven might seem like a good card at first glance, but after taking a better look at it and the role it would play in the deck, I decided that it's really not worth playing at all. There is a lot of special summoning going on in this deck, and removing a Light-fairy from your hand to draw two cards only to be locked out of special summons AND your battle phase sounds awful to me. I dropped all three copies in favor of adding in the three Book of Moon. I also added in a third Pot of Duality to make up for the now somewhat lacking draw power of the deck. Treasure of Heaven is really just a worse version of Cards for Black Feathers, which is already a pretty mediocre card. If it didn't lock the player out of their battle phase for the turn I would have no problem with running two of them along with two Pot of Duality, but that one stipulation makes the card not worth running in my eyes.

Finally, I dropped a Seven Tools of the Bandit in favor of a Monster Reborn. This has become somewhat of a cliched argument since the release of Solemn Warning, and again this may just boil down to player preference, but with three copies of Warning main decked I don't think it's a wise idea to play Seven Tools on top of that -- put shortly, it's a lot of life points to be paying! If you played all three Warning and Seven Tools in one game, that would leave you with 1000 LP! Of course, this is very unlikely to happen in one game, but it's not a risk I'm willing to take.

Monster Reborn is a staple in almost any deck, but I feel it belongs in this deck more so than almost any other as it works so heavily out of the graveyard. For instance, discard Zeradias to search Sanctuary, activate Sanctuary and then Monster Reborn Zeradias for an instant 2100 beater that takes no battle damage. Of course, this isn't the most optimal Monster Reborn play, but regardless, the card absolutely needs to be present in the deck. This also brings the total deck count to 41 cards, but that's acceptable here.

So, though my changes were few, here's what the completed list looks like!

Monsters: (20)

3x Master Hyperion
3x The Agent of Mystery - Earth
3x The Agent of Wonder - Jupiter
3x Zeradias, Herald of Heaven
3x Bountiful Artemis
3x Meltiel, Sage of the Sky
2x Honest

Magic: (11)

3x The Sanctuary in the Sky
3x Book of Moon
3x Pot of Duality
1x Dark Hole

1x Monster Reborn

Traps: (10)

1x Solemn Judgment
3x Solemn Warning
3x Divine Punishment
2x Dark Bribe
1x Torrential Tribute

Test this build out and let me know what you think of it! I'm very curious myself, because this looks like a deck that I would want to play once all of the support releases here in the TCG.

I hope you guys enjoyed this somewhat special edition of Deck Doctor. I had a really great time researching it, learning the deck and deciding how I would want to play a build like this.

Also, as always, if any of you wonderful readers would like to submit a deck for a future Deck Doctor article, you can do so by e-mailing me at our brand new address: roans.pro.ygo@gmail.com

Until next time!