Forum:Hardened Armed Dragon Abuse

A few days ago, a user named Clockwork-artichoke posted on my talk page and said how good my decks were. It warmed my heart to hear this, so I decided to thank him. With an awesome deck. He basically got to see it before anyone else. It's based around using Hardened Armed Dragon to summon huge, invincible monsters!

The main idea is that Hardened Armed Dragon gives, well, armor to the monster it's tributed for. This allows for a hell of a lot of fun with huge monsters – basically, you can make nigh-indestructible walls.

Here's the breakdown. There's Hardened Armed Dragon, Spell Striker, and Malicious as quick tribute fodder. Dasher is a way to just special summon some of these monsters. Finally, Giant Rat can search out Armed Dragon, Spell Striker, or itself again to protect my life points.

The rest of the monsters are humongous. However, they're not just there for size – each one has an effect suited to the whole tribute engine thing. For starters, if I tribute Armed Dragon for Covered Core, it can't be destroyed by effects – including its own – or battle. Belial allows me to protect all of my other monsters. Fiendish Engine is incredibly synergistic – it summons tokens to tribute along with Armed Dragon, and I can use its ATK-boosting effect without destroying it. Mosaic Manticore recycles tribute material monsters. The Creator does somewhat the same thing, and resurrects discarded monsters. Finally, under the right conditions Darklord Zerato can be summoned with one tribute – Armed Dragon – and be not destroyed by card effects. This includes its own – it can Raigeki the field while being protected from its own drawback.

The spells are virtually ALL for drawing. There's Trade-In (except for Covered Core, all the 2-tributers are level 8), Precious Cards from beyond (perfect for this deck), Allure of Darkness, Magical Mallet, Hand Destruction, Destiny Draw, and Card of Safe Return (for Manticore, Creator and Monster Reborn). As it is, spells that allow me to draw make up a third of the deck. This is out of fear that I might just have a few more dead draws than I would like otherwise. Also, there's Monster Reborn and Mystical Space Typhoon.

For traps, I've got Solemn Judgment. That's basically it. With Armed Dragon and Belial, there's not a whole lot I need to negate, but it's still there. Of course I'll side in Divine Wrath and other negation for when they're needed.

The ideal opening move with this deck is summoning a huge monster with the help of Armed Dragon. How would you do this? Well, say you had Destiny Draw, Destiny Hero – Malicious, Hardened Armed Dragon, two giant monsters and something else. You simply discard Malicious for Destiny Draw, remove it to summon another from the deck, discard one of the huge monsters to special summon Armed Dragon, and tribute both for your other huge monster. There – you've got a huge monster on the field and 3 cards in hand. Pretty good, eh? Maybe this scenario won't happen just in my opening hand, but that's the reason for the huge amount of draw spells – to get to such a situation.

Tell me what you think of this concept deck. Runer5h 01:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)Runer5h