Creative Deck Strategy: Metaphys Rokket

Introducing the Metaphys:

In a few words, this theme is extremely powerful, but constrained by the delays in its effects. As a result, you will commonly see Metaphys variants focusing on banishing as many as possible quickly to get the most card advantage, then hoping to survive until the next turn to sweep the duel. Builds such as this revolve around banishing Necroface and haphazardly banishing as much as they can in a similar fashion to Lightsworn. While that approach can definitely work in a casual setting, I wanted to try and spice it up with a slightly more consistent way to play the duel, with a stronger first turn to prevent your opponent from just winning the duel before your Metaphys come online. For that, I turned to a different type and attribute core – the Rokkets.

Loading the Gunbarrels:

Uniting These Two Themes:

These two themes are quite different based on the offered descriptions, and even in practice, these two strategies play much different games. Metaphys typically goes for a grind game, aiming to out-resource the opponent over time, while Rokket Link decks tend to focus on getting the best disruption board possible from their first hand. This begs the question – how do these two themes come together? There are three major synergies to this hybrid build, so let’s cover each.

It was clear from the beginning of the type that when Wyrms launched, it was simply to create a new branch of Dragon monsters without them having access to the wide Dragon-type support pool. Dragon Rulers had just dominated the game, and it was time to try something new. But in the beginning of the type, a continuous Spell card was released to show the transformation – introducing Dracocension. Broken down, its effect is fairly simple – Tribute a Dragon to summon a Wyrm from your deck with the same Level. This is absolutely key when so many key Dragon monsters share levels with Metaphys monsters. The Level 4 Rokkets can be swapped into Metaphys Ragnarok, the Level 7 Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms can unleash Metaphys Daedalus, and a Chaos Dragon Levianeer that has already used its effect can be exchanged for a Metaphys Nephthys or Metaphys Tyrant Dragon. In other words, this Spell lets you thin your deck and complete your entire combo chain with the Rokket cards, only to swap into the Metaphys engine at the end when you are more likely to banish your Metaphys cards!

Gracing the cover of Structure Deck R: Rokket Revolt was a new boss monster for the Rokket theme, Topologic Zeroboros, and this monster seems to be designed to function perfectly with the Metaphys monsters. When a monster is summoned to a Zone any Link monster points to, all cards on the field are banished. Then, if Zeroboros was banished by its effect, it returns during your following Standby Phase. Also, Zero gains 200 ATK for each banished card. In short, this card stalls games, especially against decks that needs to summon to an Extra Monster Zone or that benefits from Link Summoning. At the end of the day, all of these effects are super beneficial for two themes that constantly banish cards, but Rokkets are definitely the best theme for getting its material to the field to pull off its Link Summon in the first place. Combining Quadborrel Dragon and Dillingerous Dragon is the best method as it happens to give you a Borreload Savage Dragon along the way, so look forward to seeing that combo explored later on!

Enter Chaos:

Sample Deck List:

Click to view the decklist in the Official Card Database

Spoiler

Monsters: 27
| Absorouter Dragon
| Black Dragon Collapserpent
| Chaos Dragon Levianeer
| Magnarokket Dragon
||| Metaphys Daedalus
| Metaphys Decoy Dragon
| Metaphys Executor
||| Metaphys Nephthys
||| Metaphys Ragnarok
| Metaphys Tyrant Dragon
| Omni Dragon Brotaur
| Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
| Rokket Tracer
||| Silverrokket Dragon
||| Starleige Seyfert
| Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms
| White Dragon Wyverburster

Spells: 11
| Boot Sector Launch
||| Dracocension
| Dragon Ravine
| Foolish Burial
| Gold Sarcophagus
||| Quick Launch
| Upstart Goblin

Traps: 2
|| Metaphys Ascension

Seyfert Enabled Combos:

As mentioned, this hybrid is about maximizing your chances to banish your Metaphys monsters in a systematic way. To get to that point, Rokkets get to do some fun combos. Let’s talk about some of the combos when you open with Starleige Seyfert and any other card.

Normal Summon Seyfert.
Use Seyfert’s effect, sending itself to add Black Dragon Collapserpent to hand.
Banish Seyfert from your GY to Special Summon Collapse from hand, then use Collapse as Link Material for Striker Dragon.
Striker Dragon triggers to add Boot Sector Launch to hand, and Collapse triggers to add White Dragon Wyverburster to hand.
Banish Collapse from your GY to Special Summon Wyver from hand, then use both Striker and Wyver as Link Material for Dragunity Knight – Romulus.
Romulus triggers, adding Dragon Ravine to hand.
Activate Ravine, discarding any card to send Absorouter Dragon from your deck to the GY. Its effect then triggers, adding Rokket Tracer to your hand.
Replace Ravine with Boot Sector, then use its first effect to summon Tracer from the hand. Use Tracer’s quick effect, destroying Boot Sector, and summoning Silverrokket Dragon from your deck.
Link Summon Guardragon Elpy and Guardragon Pisty using your two Rokkets (so that they point to one another).
Activate the effect of Elpy, summoning Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon to the zone the two Guardragons point to. Use Darkness’ effect to summon back Striker Dragon so that it points to Elpy.
Activate the 2nd effect of Striker Dragon, destroying Elpy and adding Tracer back to your hand.
Activate the effect of Pisty, summoning Silverrokket back from the GY.
Link Summon Dillengerous Dragon using Tracer and Pisty. Then Link Summon Quadborrel Dragon using Silverrokket and Darkness.
Quadborrel’s effect triggers, discarding Tracer and destroying Dillengerous before summoning both Silverrokket and Tracer back from your GY.
Dillengerous triggers in the GY, summoning itself back to your field.
Synchro Summon Borreload Savage Dragon using Tracer and Silverrokket, which triggers its effect to equip Pisty from your GY and gain 1 counter.
Link Summon Topologic Zeroboros using Dillengerous and Quadborrel so that it points to the open Extra Monster Zone.

Additional Tech Options:

Conclusion and Wrap-Up:

That’s all for today’s article – hope you enjoyed a quick trip to the banished zone. While Metaphys may be unable to fully stand on its own two feet without a supporting engine, that doesn’t mean that the cards should just collect dust. You can still banish with the best of them, just with a bit of Rokket-powered help! Also, you get to finally combine Wyrms and Dragons for the first time since the introduction of the new-*notdragons*-but-still-dragon type! Hopefully you enjoyed this example of powering up an older theme with new support, even if that support was never intended for their archetype – there are a ton of other examples just like this which I hope you can discover too! With that, I’ll catch you next time in the Colosseum with another CDS article soon.

Reminder, I also take suggestions for future CDS articles! I really want to see some input from you! If you wish to see a CDS article about the archetype, theme, or strategy you love, feel free to private message me on the YGOrg Discord server, the YGOrganization Forums, or just post a comment in response to this article on our Facebook page with your ideas to keep under consideration! On most YGO-related communities my username is Quincymccoy, so feel free to reach out. As of now, I have a couple of outstanding requests that I am looking at: Cyberse, Generaider, Gladiator Beast, Shaddoll, and Speedroid.

YGOrganization