Card of Demise - The return of the classic Anti-Meta deck

In my previous post, I talked about Card of Demise. Let me go into a little more detail about why this card is better than you might think!

The card effect

Draw until you have 3 cards in your hand, also for the rest of this turn after this card resolves, your opponent takes no damage. During the End Phase of this turn, send your entire hand to the Graveyard. You can only activate 1 "Card of Demise" per turn. You cannot Special Summon during the turn you activate this card.

Plus-2 card with huge drawback? Or with no drawback at all?

When I first read this card, I ignored it pretty quickly. While "draw until you have three cards" seems interesting enough, the drawbacks are very high. So I thought there would be no meta deck ever that would ever use this card.

But that's where the magic word rang. Meta.

In the OCG, this card was used nearly instantly and caused a few players to top events... with anti-meta decks.

This anti-meta deck is an update of the classic anti-meta deck, with cards like Rai-Oh, Banisher of Radiance, etc. A handful of monsters that are to be normal summoned and a sheitload of spells and traps.

With a deck like that, the deck pilot doesn't care about "discard your hand" drawbacks. They normal summon a banisher of Radiance or Rai-Oh, set their hand face-down, activate cards of demise, set some more cards until the field is full and end the turn with discarding 0 or maybe 1 card (if your deck doesn't like you and lets you draw into another monster). In a deck as dangerous as anti-meta, having a +2 card (in the best case) is not just good, it's frigging amazing.

Decklist?

The obvious question you have is: Where's the deck list? So here it is. Though remember, this is OCG. So a few cards have different limits there than over here in TCG.

MONSTER CARDS (11):

• 3 Banisher of the Radiance
• 3 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
• 3 Thunder King Rai-Oh
• 2 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

SPELL CARDS (10):

• 3 Card of Demise
• 3 Pot of Duality
• 1 Harpie’s Feather Duster
• 3 Moon Mirror Shield

TRAP CARDS (19):

• 2 Compulsory Evacuation Device
• 1 Torrential Tribute
• 1 Dimensional Prison
• 1 Starlight Road
• 3 Bottomless Trap Hole
• 1 Ring of Destruction
• 2 Rocket Hand
• 1 Vanity’s Emptiness
• 2 Macro Cosmos
• 1 Solemn Warning
• 1 Solemn Judgment
• 3 Solemn Strike

SIDE-DECK (15):

• 1 Dark Hole
• 2 Forbidden Lance
• 2 Mystical Space Typhoon
• 3 Book of Moon
• 1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
• 2 Chain Disappearance
• 3 Imperial Iron Wall
• 1 Macro Cosmos

Side-note: No extra deck was listed (and probably not used). If any card was used, I think it's limited to Stardust Dragon. though on the other end, if you play no extra deck it's a great mind-game to troll your opponent into thinking you play Monarchs (lol).

Other "weird" or "unusual" choices

It's been a while since an anti-meta deck has topped, so a few card choices are made that you're probably not that familiar with. Let me list them.

Rocket Hand (OCG exlcusive):
Target 1 face-up Attack Position monster you control with 800 or more ATK; equip this card to it. It gains 800 ATK. During either player's turn (except during the Damage Step): You can send this Equip Card to the Graveyard, then target 1 face-up card on the field; destroy it, then the monster that was equipped with this card cannot change its battle position, also its ATK becomes 0. You can only use 1 "Rocket Hand" effect per turn, and only once that turn.

Moon Mirror Shield:
If the equipped monster battles an opponent’s monster, during damage calculation: The equipped monster’s ATK and DEF become equal to the ATK or DEF (whichever is higher) of the opponent’s battling monster +100, during damage calculation only. If this face-up card is sent from the field to the Graveyard: Pay 500 LP; place this card on either the top or bottom of your Deck.

Basically these two cards do the same: Protect the few monsters you have and make sure they can overcome any challenge thrown at them.

Other uses for Card of Demise

Well, this deck choice of anti-meta shows that this card is best used in decks that don't special summon a lot and/or run a limited amount of monsters.

For exmaple, if Resuce Rabbit would ever be released from its limit, Dino Rabbit could make a return, using this card. Gravekeepers and regular HERO decks are decks that run limited amount of monsters and might be able to use it as well. Though similarly to Pot of Duality, the limit on special summons can become a drawback in these decks.

Luckily enough, decks like Chain Burn won't be able to use this card, because decks like that tend to focus on hand traps to save their lives. And one of the big drawbacks of Card of Demise is discarding your entire hand at the end of the turn.

But there are probably other obscure decks that suddenly might become good or better because of this card. I'm curious to see what top players wil use this card and make it work in random decks. Jeff Jones might be interested...

Until next time, V out.