So in case anyone was wondering, Fugglor, Chow and I are all running chaos dragons, and all finding it fairly fun (and relatively cheap) to run. While I am still not entirely convinced of the deck's competitive potential, I'm slowly discovering ways to make this deck more consistent. My version was influenced by some of my interactions with Chow's and Fugglor's builds, but there are a number of things that set mine apart. Here's my 34 monster Chaos Dragons
Monsters: 34
3x Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
3x Lightpulsar Dragon
3x Darkflare Dragon
3x Eclipse Wyvern
3x Divine Dragon Apocralyph
2x Alexandrite Dragon
2x Axe Dragonute
1x Dark Armed Dragon
3x Breaker The Magical Warrior
3x Dimensional Alchemist
3x Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
1x Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress
2x Effect Veiler
2x Chaos Sorcerer
Spells: 4
2x Gold Sarcophagus
1x Monster Reborn
1x Future Fusion
Traps: 2
2x Torrential Tribute
Side:
3x Neko Mane King
3x Thunder King Rai-oh
2x Cyber Dragon
3x Mystical Space Typhoon
2x Smashing Ground
2x Shadow Imprisoning Mirror
Extra:
1x Brionac, Dragon Of The Ice Barrier
1x Five Headed Dragon
1x Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
1x Black Rose Dragon
1x Number 39: Utopia
1x Wind Up Arsenal Zenmaioh
1x Adreus, Keeper of Armageddon
1x Ally of Justice Catastor
First I will skim over the obvious. You run 3 REDM, 3 Wyvern, 3 Lightpulsar, and at least 2 Darkflare in any pure chaos build like this. Another fairly obvious addition I think was the 3 Divine Dragon Apocralyph, which is ridiculous in this deck. It allows you to reuse or reverse toolbox your dragons, while simultaneously filling your grave with chaos food. Dark Armed is thrown in mainly because it is another target for Wyvern's effect, but it has obvious merits in any deck that runs darks and can regulate the number in the graveyard. 2 Chaos Sorcerers provide some removal, though I would take out one or even both if I had a Black Luster Soldier, which you should obviously run if available. Then, 2 Effect Veilers are essential in any deck nowadays (3 if you have room), and with their recent reprint there's not much of an excuse not to have them.
Now for some of the stuff that defines this build: you may notice that it has exactly 17 dark and light monsters. This should help ensure that you mill both lights and darks, and end up with fairly even numbers of both for chaos food. To help mill are the 3 Rykos and single Lyla, which is one of the reasons I run 2 Gold Sarcs. My main problem with old builds that ran more spells and traps was that the lightsworns would end up milling spells and traps instead of monsters, which obviously hurts, especially when every spell and trap could help you win. Here I ran the bare minimum with Monster Reborn and Future Fusion. The 2 Gold Sarcs not only ensure that you can get either to hand, they also allow you to mill freely without having to worry about losing Future Fusion, which is a HUGE win condition for this deck. Anyways, the lightsworns also provide destruction, which you may recall was one of my main problems with the deck. However, I don't run Charge of the Light Brigade because I don't believe the lightsworn engine is essential to this deck.
Another thing that sets this build apart is the beaters. 2 Axe Dragonute and 2 Alexandrite allow you to get over the increasingly common Thunder King Rai-ohs, which can cause problems for just about every boss monster due to their summons being inherent, and negatable. Even besides taking out Thunder King Rai-oh, having 2000 atk beaters can help in a lot of situations, especially since they are both chaos food as well as dragons, which allow them to be brought back by Apocralyph and discarded with Darkflare. Breaker is another beater that provides some backrow destruction. In old builds, I would often mill MSTs, which not only prevented me from using them, it also made it so that I had cards in grave that weren't chaos food. Running Breaker solves half of that issue by being dark, meaning it's okay to mill him most of the time. The 3 MSTs are in the side deck instead, for use against a number of matchups.
The last "beater" is Dimensional Alchemist, which I believe is essential to this and other chaos dragon builds. He can speed up the deck with his milling, which also gives him 1800 atk for one turn. Most important is his second effect, which allows you to bring back banished monsters when he's destroyed. The massive amount of banishment in this deck ensures you will always have useful targets to bring back with this effect. I hate myself for not realizing sooner how perfect this guy is for this deck.
The 2 Torrential Tribute provides some control, and works great against both rabbit decks and wind ups (after turn 1). They also have immense synergy with Lightpulsar and Dimensional Alchemist, allowing you to potentially plus while you derail your opponent's plays. Most decks nowadays should run the maximum, as it is one of the best ways to prevent the big decks from getting out their bosses, but in Chaos Dragons it's just too good to not run.
This brings me to some of the omissions in the spell and trap lineup. You may notice that I don't have Heavy or Dark Hole in my main or side deck. I felt Dark Hole was inferior to the Torrentials here since it can't be used to prevent your opponent's plays. Heavy was left out due to the massive amount of spell removal (Breaker, Lyla, Ryko, and MST in the side) already available in more useful forms. Another problem with Heavy and Dark Hole is that they can both set off Starlight Road, which I believe will be fairly common tech in this format. Torrential also sets this off, but I decided that its benefits were too good to disregard. Also left out were the more generic control traps, such as Solemn Warning, Bottomless, Dimensional Prison, Safe Zone, and Compulsory, as well as Call of the Haunted. These were fairly easy ones to take out since they don't particularly contribute to the consistency of the deck, which depends on the high monster to S/T ratio.
This format, the side is just as important as the main, because of the range of strategies you may come up against. 3 Rai-Ohs are fairly obvious, and your opponents are fairly likely to run it against you anyway. He's simply too good to leave out. Against wind-ups, the main sides are 3 Neko Mane King and 2 Cyber Dragon. Neko Mane King can help end the wind-up loop prematurely, and is MUCH CHEAPER than the obvious alternative, Maxx C (for those of us who don't have 300 bucks to spend on a playset of cockroaches, or awesome friends to borrow theirs from like Fugglor has). Cyber Dragon is great at cleaning up after the wind-up loop, when their field is likely to be littered with Zenmaighty and/or Zenmaines. It can also attack over most of the monsters that deck can produce. Obviously, it is a good side against any deck that runs machines or simply lacks large beaters.
Against inzektors, Shadow Imprisoning Mirror stops basically everything they could do. The 2-3 Effect Veilers in the main deck should help supplement these. Also, MST can possibly help, though this has its obvious downsides against Dragonfly.
While wind-ups and inzektors have some scary plays, the big deck to worry about this format will be Dino Rabbits. I believe the main deck could do fairly well against a rabbit deck. However, the 2 Smashing Ground will likely help tremendously. Smashing allows you to get rid of Dolkka quickly, and it can force Laggia to use its negation. Besides this, it could be sided against any deck that may require non-monster removal to deal with, such as skill drain decks. The 3 MST will also likely be helpful against Dino Rabbit, since they love to set backrow.
Finally, we get to the extra deck, which is not particularly important to this build. Obviously, you need Five Headed for Future Fusion, and Fortress Dragon for Cyber Dragon. Fugglor's Gallis, Birdman, and Tragoedia allow him to go into rank 3 xyz and synchros fairly easily, but my build has more or less opted out of that. The only tuner is Effect Veiler, which is not likely to be used as a tuner unless absolutely necessary. If required, Veiler can synch with Darkflare or Cyber Dragon to make level 6s (Brionac, Orient, Gaia Knight, whatever), or Lightpulsar to make level 7s (primarily Black Rose). Level 8s are fairly difficult here, since the only direct combination possible is Veiler and DAD, which is not likely to pop up at an opportune moment. Obviously, you should still run the staples (Scrap, Stardust, Colossal) if you have room for them, though they are fairly low priority.
More likely to come out are the xyz. Cyber Dragons and Darkflares can make Zenmaioh or Adreus (or Tiras) fairly easily, and the many level 4s available make rank 4s like Utopia or Zenmaister attractive prospects. One flaw with this build is that it has no feasible way to go into Leviair, which has immense synergy with this deck, one thing that Fugglor's build addresses quite easily.
The best extra deck pieces are not yet out in the tcg. First is
Queen Dragun, a generic rank 4 xyz that provides some nice support by bringing back dragons, mainly Lightpulsar, which would still get its effect if destroyed. A monster that many are looking forward to is
Lavalval Chain which in most cases will be used as a Foolish Burial, though without the minus one. This deck thrives on cards in the grave, so this has some obvious combo potential. Lastly is the
Hieroglyph Dragon King Atumus (its name seems to change all the time, so I won't even bother writing it right). He can be made with 2 Lightpulsars, and allows you to quickly get out any dragon from your deck (except DAD of course) for MASSIVE combo potential. Then, because this deck can get out level 10s so easily, a cool idea would be to run
Super Duper Dreadnought Cannon Giant Gustaph Max Railroad Cannon, who has a huge burn effect and a huge name that can help you make the final push for game.
So I hope this was helpful, and at least gives you guys some more ideas on how to run this deck. I'm really sorry I haven't been posting more, but college life has been pretty hectic lately. Honestly, I shouldn't have posted this now with finals coming up but I felt bad, especially since I now have 2 teammates trying to challenge me as a dragon playa. I'd like to mention some other ideas in future posts, but I wouldn't expect anything too soon. For now I think I'll just badger Chow to put up his list. Please leave some comments or suggestions below. I apologize if this build doesn't work as well as I think because I haven't spent much time play testing it yet.
Blazers finally won a game, and against Chicago, no less. Nolan Smith is the next Jeremy Lin.
-Orgymaster
