SURVIVE WITHOUT DARK DESTROYER - Few suggestions for Kozmo Players who don't have cash.

Hi everyone! Here we are with another article, this time about gameplay and directed to those Kozmo players who can’t, or just don’t want to spend 80 euros for a piece of felt paper, afford the cost of the money card of the moment: Kozmo Dark Destroyer.

In these few lines i’m gonna try to give you some suggestions in order to avoid the lack of Dark Destroyers in our deck, I think they can be useful in Locals and probably some WCQ Regionals.

The point I’d like you to wonder about is that brain can often reach goals money isn’t able to. That’s one of those cases.

We’ll talk about some “hidden advantages” of not run any Kozmo Dark Destroyer, then we’ll look after some alternative solutions to get rid of the obstacles set by the metagame.

Let’s start from the hidden advantages:

First of all your opponent doesn’t know your decklist, but he will suppose you’re running Dark Destroyers unless you made him know. That will happen when your opponent will see you playing a Reasoning or a Kozmo Farmgirl, let’s explain it:

First of all, on Reasoning activation, it’s highly probable your opponent will declare level 8. That means you’re gonna surely summon a monster.
Second case is when you activate Farmgirl’s effect to special summon from hand: in this case, mostly in locals, your opponent will probably activate Mind Crush and declare Dark Destroyer in order to avoid the destruction of his own monster. His fear will cause him a free -2.

The second advantage we have is that we have free slots we can use to run other synergic cards or some “Side Deck cards”.

The Monarch Stormforth is the card which best fits with both requests: running three copies of this card allows us to limit the lack of Dark Destroyer in the mirror match by tributing our opponent’s one and getting an immediate gain. We’ll go deeper about this issue soon.

The goal is to look at Samuel Pedigo’s way to best all the Dragon Rulers he faced in YCS Turin with his Geargia deck managing to be the champion against the meta dominating deck. Pedigo made his bet on a full of Side Deck cards recipe and managed to take by surprise all Dragon Rulers players and be almost an autolose match-up for them (more than 50% of the tournament).
We’re not going as far as Pedigo did, anyway the lack of Dark Destroyer allows us to recreate somehow a similar strategy.

Last but not least, i see an advantage in player’s developement, no need to remark that the success of this advantage is on the players. The fact we can’t rely on such a high value card like Dark Destroyer, in my humble opinion, make players wonder deeper about any play they make and then the player himself improves his abilities for the future, even if he’s gonna have Dark Destroyers.
To explain this situation I’ll compare it with the Qliphort Players one: a player who’s not used to think about his plays couldn’t have found alternatives to the memorized Apoqliphort Towers combo; a more experienced, or better if you prefer to call him like that, player was able to find another solution for play, and also win, the duel.
That’s the point! Kozmo Dark Destroyer is definitely a win condition, like Apoqliphort Towers was, but it isn’t essential at all to develop Kozmo’s strategy.

Now it’s time to talk about cards we can use as palliative for our lack:

This is a very important task and it’s essential, in order to prepare any tournament, to study the possible metagame we’re gonna face. If we’re going to play in a local tournament it’s highly probable we’re gonna know personally every player in it and what he plays, so we’ll know the deck breakdown of the event almost 100% sure. That allows us to calculate probabilities to face a single deck, for example Majespecters: if we know that 5 of 20 players will run Majespecters in the store weekly tournament, with high chances to face them in high tables, we’ll run cards which make this match-up easier.
However, we must not make the mistake to set the entire decklist against this single match-up because we risk to get involved in matches with two or more dead draws; that’s the worst situation in a competitive level if we want to succeed: remember that the only way to get chances of a “cheap” Dark Destroyer is to end in the prize zone every weekly tournament we attend to.

So, let’s look for cards we can find useful in most situations.

We already told a bit about The Monarchs Stormforth; is not casuality if even some full Kozmo decklists rely on it. It’s a very useful card for the mirror match but it also allows us to take some advantage against Majespecters due to the fact it doesn’t target and doesn’t destroy. The Monarchs Stormforth is also capable to make playable some hands which otherwise would make you regret that Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG doesn’t allow the mulligan, for example a full lv5 or more monsters starting hand.
Furthermore, this card can be much worth against PePe because it makes you pass over some little obstacles like Performage Mirror Conductor or avoid the special summon by Performage Plushfire effect.
We’re then talking about one of the best removals in the game which’s biggest limit is to stop Special Summons from the Extra Deck during the turn of it’s activation: that’s not a real problem for Kozmo.

Another useful card is Grand Horn of Heaven: it’s biggest problem is the fact it negates only inherent special summons, being worthless in a mirror match with none of them (just some rare situation of BRD or some Xyz summon, but really unusual); anyway this card is much worth against all pendulum-based decks. To send to the grave pendulum summoned monsters negating their summon is a considerable damage for those decks because often it results in the loss of all the work they made to fill their Extra Deck with pendulum monsters to swarm at the right moment (or turn by turn like Majespecters) and makes your opponent skip a Phase, although it allows him to draw a card. Activated in Main Phase 2, this card can easily allow you to play your next turn without any concern due to your opponent’s backrow.
So, if Kozmo is not so much played in the store you use to play, here you are an idea for your Main Deck.

Now we're gonna talk about a potential win condition, if you play it in the right way, against PePe, Magicians and Majespecters: Darkfall. It’s effect activates when your opponent special summons 2 or more monsters at the same time and sends all of the summoned monsters to Graveyard, but that’s not all folks! It also sends to the Graveyard all the copies of those monsters your opponent has in his hand and deck. No target, no destroy, is that enough to say how strong this card could be if you actívate it at the right moment? If not just think about the fact it just sends to the graveyard, overpowering the game rule because of which pendulum monsters would be sent to the Extra Deck instead of Graveyard. That makes us break free from some really strong cards like Performage Plushfire, Majespecter Raccoon Bunbuku or Luster Pendulum, the Dracoslayer (and cutting out this card can easily mean to stop concerning about Ignister Prominence).
I think it’s a heavy risk to run this card in our Main Deck because it can be a dead draw, and we don’t want any. Side Deck is the correct location for Darkfall in order to use it just when needed.

Another interesting option is Deep Dark Trap Hole: this card can have some use in the mirror match, stopping our opponent for one turn or a bit more and giving us the chance to approach a response strategy.
This is Deep Dark Trap Hole effect: when your opponent special summons one or more lv5 or more monster(s), banish that(those) monster(s).
That’s not the solution for all of our trouble, we know that Kozmo does not suffer too much have it’s monsters banished, but it stops our opponent for a while.
Furthermore, it can be useful against Dracoslayer engine based decks because Ignister Prominence effects are not Quick Effects then we can get rid of the only card that can revert the situation just by the activation of Deep Dark Trap Hole.

And that was the last low-cost option we found useful to resist until luck or money will allow us to get our hands on 3 Kozmo Dark Destroyers. Now it’s on you, dear readers, to find other and better solutions. It always worths to use our brain.

 

 

 

 

Finally i want to post you the decklist i’m running in locals right now with a global 10-2 record in 3 tournaments as example:

MAIN DECK 40

MONSTERS 19
Kozmo Farmgirl x3
Kozmoll Wickedwitch x3
Kozmo Goodwitch x1
Kozmo Strawman x1
Kozmo DOG Fighter x1
Kozmo Sliprider x3
Kozmo Forerunner x3
Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit x1
Honest x1
Maxx “C” x2

SPELLS 15
Kozmotown x3
Emergency Teleport x3
Reasoning x2
Mystical Space Typhoon x3
The Monarch Stormforth x3
Terraforming x1

TRAPS 6
Grand Horn of Heaven x2
Storming Mirror Force x2
Solemn Warning x1
Vanity’s Emptiness x1

SIDE DECK 15
Maxx “C” x1
DNA Surgery x2
Cyber Dragon x2
Darkfall x2
Vanity’s Fiend x2
Fairy Wind x2
Anti-Spell Fragrance x2
Mind Crush x2

Last but not least we wish you to enjoy trying this and more ideas.

As usual,

PER ASPERA AD ASTRA