Hopeless Dragon

Well, here's a new concept I want to try : a massive brainstorming around a particular deck, card, or combo anyone would want to work on. And the first candidate for this will be a deck : Hopeless Dragon (Dragon of Despair for the purists).

What's Hopeless Dragon ?

This deck is build around Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon's ability to Special Summon Dragon-type monsters from the hand or Graveyard, in order to make it build a large army of high-ATK Dragons, who will crush opponent's monsters and Life Points. This deck can have some OTK tendencies, due to the sheer number of high ATK monsters that can be brought at once, but usually is considered a Beatdown deck.

What are the main cards in it ?

Here's what I think they are :

Monsters :

Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon (The main monster, whose effect allows to use and reuse Dragon-type monsters' effects, or to just bring back destroyed attackers. A must-be at 3)
Red-Eyes Wyvern (The main supporter, whose effect allows REDMD to come back at the cost of your Normal Summon. Can be played at 2 or 3, depending of the deck)
High ATK monsters (The three main ones used being Dark Horus, White Night Dragon and Blue-Eyes White Dragon)

Spells and Traps :

Future Fusion (while at 1, this card can bump multiple copies of REDMD and Red-Eyes Wyvern in your Graveyard, thus allowing you to use Wyvern's effects and to bring back at least two REDMD)
As much draw power as possible, to fasten the deck (Reckless Greed, Morphing Jar, usually Trade-In and Advance Draw, and sometimes Allure of Darkness, depending of the version)

Now, here's what I suggest to add to enhance the deck :
- Cards that will enhance REDMD's effect usage
- Cards that will protect REDMD
- Cards that will be aimed with REDMD's effect
- Cards that counter the cost of other main cards (mainly Allure and Wyvern's RFG)
- Staples and cards that fit the deck

Cards that will enhance REDMD's effect usage :

- Phantom of Chaos. This card, well used, will allow you to RFG REDMD in order to use its effect one more turn. That means a Special Summon this turn, maybe the one needed to strike for game, but that also means that REDMD will be accessible to D.D.R.. Its effects make it especially interesting in mid or late game, when any big hit means game.
- Any card that can bring it on the field. That means the D.D.R previously quoted, but also cards like Call of the Haunted, Decoy Dragon, or any Dragon-type monster that will be removed for its Special Summon.

Cards that will protect REDMD :

- Prime Material Dragon. This 2400 ATK Dragon has some interesting effects. The first one guarantee the player to be safe from any Dark Strike Fighter as long as PMD is on the field, while the second enhances that survivability, at the cost of cards from your hand.
- King Dragun. Another 2400 ATK Dragon, whose effect will protect REDMD way better, but whose summoning is harder, due to its Fusion Monster status. But it's second effect, who allows you to play it as a pseudo-second REDMD, can be worth the trouble.
- Deck Devastation Virus and Epidemic Eradicator Virus. These two cards, whose requirements are easily brought on the field by REDMD, will destroy what will cause you the most problems on the opponent's field : Low ATK monsters (that means Blackwings and Rescue Synchro players will take a big hit) and Spells/Traps. And whichever is destroyed won't hurt you later.

Cards that will be aimed by REDMD's effect :

- Exploder Dragon. This little Dragon can (and will) destroy any stronger monster that destroys it in battle. And if you engage the opponent, neither of you will be hurt from Exploder's battle, which is always a plus, considering its 1000 ATK.
- Magna Drago and Debris Dragon. Both of them are Tuners, thus enabling Synchro Summons in your deck. Debris works better with Level 2-3-6 monsters, while Magna is better with Level 4-5-6-8 ones. It's up to you to see who will be better on your deck.
- Masked Dragon. It can search any of the two previously quoted monsters, as well as many others, and its effect give you some resistance to attacks, as well as another monster to RFG for REDMD's Special Summon.

Cards that counter the cost of the main cards :

- D.D.R. - Dance Dance Revolution (pun intended). This card will allow you to bring back any monster removed from game, be it by Wyvern's effect, Allure's effect, or the occasionnal Phantom of Chaos / Dragon's Mirror / Dark Armed Dragon's effect. In addition, the cost may be helpful for REDMD.
- Burial from a Different Dimension. Like D.D.R., this card will allow you to bring back from the RFG zone any card sent here by one of the many RFG effects you play. Depending of the situation, it's even better than D.D.R.
- The Transmigration Prophecy. It somehow works the same way than Burial, but it can also counter any card played by the opponent which affects any Graveyard.

Staples and cards that fit to the deck :


- Monster Reborn. With many monsters in the Graveyard, it's always good to bring one of them back at no cost, or to punish any player for over-extending.
- Heavy Storm/Giant Turnade/Cold Wave. It's always good to free the S/T field before any big onslaught, and those cards help in that aspect, forcing players to shield themselves when not necessary.
- Torrential Tribute. A good way to clean the monsters' field before any massive Special Summoning.
- Dark Armed Dragon. With REDMD controlling the Graveyard, he's that easy to summon, and its effect allows destruction at nearly no cost.
- Koa'ki Meiru Drago. While its effect contradicts REDMD's and some Dragons called by it, this monster can give you a huge advantage against nearly every top tier deck. Combined with the Imprisoning Mirrors (The Light one for Lightsworns, the Dark one for Blackwings and Gladiator Beasts), it's deadly, but needs to be played carefully, in order to not stuck yourself.

The variants :

If you read well the beginning of my explaination, I said there were three big monsters that were usually played in Hopeless Dragon. Each of these three lead to different decks I'll talk here :

Dark Horus :

We'll begin with the firstly, and mostly used one. Dark Horus is a Level 8 Dark Dragon with high ATK (3000, the same as White Night Dragon and Blue-Eyes White Dragon), and is able, when the opponent plays a Spell card, to Special Summon a Level 4 Dark monster from the Graveyard.

This kind of deck will usually have :
- Reckless Greed, Trade-In, Allure of Darkness, and sometimes Advance Draw as main draw power.
- Level 4 Dark monsters in order to use Dark Horus' effect. Some of them are Dragons, in order to be used both by Dark Horus and REDMD.
- Dark Armed Dragon.
- Sometimes, Deck Devastation Virus and Epidemic Eradicator Virus, as Dark Horus itself is a good target for both cards.
- No, or nearly no access to Synchro monsters.

White Night Dragon :

Now is the most recent and, in my opinion, interesting one. White Night Dragon is a Level 8 Water Dragon with the added effects of negating Spells and Traps aiming it, and redirecting attacks sent at other monsters to it.

This kind of deck will usually have :
- Reckless Greed, Trade-In and Advance Draw as main draw power.
- Dragons with disruptive (Koa'ki Meiru Drago, Blizzard Dragon), protective (King Dragun, Prime Material Dragon) or recursive (Masked Dragon, Troop Dragon, Totem Dragon) effects.
- Few supports, outside of the staples, but a good access to Synchro monsters (Debris Dragon, Magna Drago)

Blue-Eyes White Dragon :

We'll end with the, in many players' opinions, most fiable one. Blue-Eyes Dragon is, like everyone knows, a Level 8 Light Dragon with no effects.

This kind of deck will usually have :
- Reckless Greed, Trade-In, Advance Draw and White Stone of Legend as main draw power.
- Blue-Eyes support (mainly White Stone of Legend, but sometimes the occasionnal Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon)
- Light Support (Beckoning Light, Honest)
- Weak Synchro support (due to White Stone of Legend being a Tuna... Err, a Tuner)

My point of view about the deck :

For the moment, it's a deck that isn't complete. We have the base (REDMD, Wyvern, Future Fusion, Draw power), but that's all. That makes many variants of this deck very unstable, as cards added by most players work with that base, but don't work between themselves, and I think that, if we want to improve the deck, we need to improve the links between the cards that we'll want to add to the deck.

Now, I'm looking for your advices, comments and such.

-Izual (Nickname on UniMetagame Forums)
UniMetagame Syndicated Writer