Naturia

Naturia, known as Natural in the OCG, is an EARTH-Attribute Archetype from Duel Terminal - Justice Strikes Back!!, Duel Terminal - Demon Roar God Revival!!, Duel Terminal - Champion of Chaos!! and Duel Terminal - Pulse of the Trishula. Their effects center around limiting, or gaining advantages from, your opponent's Spell Cards, Trap Cards and Monster Cards when activated/summoned. Despite their adorable appearance, Naturia monsters are surprisingly quick and can control the field easily. The Naturia archetype is also perhaps the first archetype to include both Fusion Monsters and Synchro Monsters as well as Fusion Monsters which include Synchro Monsters as their Fusion Material.

Naturia monsters tend to be of various types, but all relating in some way to forest life, such as Plants, Insects, Rocks, a few Beasts,and even a Dragon, and thus benefit as a group from the "Forest" Field Spell Card (They also would benefit from Gaia Power due to their Earth-Attribute). Naturia monsters also have their own Field Spell Card, Naturia Forest. Most of them have low ATK and DEF, but can swarm the field rapidly as the opponent uses card effects, facilitating the summoning of a few powerful Synchro Monsters. Since several of the monsters summon themselves from the Hand or Deck during the opponent's turn, copies of "Urgent Tuning" come in very handy in a deck dedicated to Naturia monsters.

Many Naturia monsters are able to prevent the opponent's actions, often by using other Naturia monsters as a cost. A well-constructed Naturia deck can completely lock down an opponent, as there are Naturia monsters able to negate the effects of Spell Cards, Trap Cards, Normal Summons and Special Summons. This is balanced by many of them simply not having very high ATK or DEF, with the exception of Naturia Leodrake, which has no effects.

Playing Style
Naturias, when created right, can be a solid and competitive deck choice that can completely lockdown your opponent. One of the main strategies of Naturia monsters is to get Naturia Bamboo Shoot out as quickly as possible (because it's effect is extremely deadly and when comboed with cards like Naturia Mantis and Royal Oppression can stop your opponent from doing much of anything) which is quite easy with some cards that thin the deck such as Naturia Cliff, Pot of Duality, etc.

Another way to play Naturias is build your deck around two things - Synchro Spamming (abusing the effects of various Naturia monsters to Special Summona and Synchro as fast as possible). This type of deck mostly gets out the Naturia Synchros because of their lockdown effects to overwhelm your opponent, although you can also choose to summon the staple synchros. The other type of Naturia build is an Extrio Build - a build that revolves around getting Naturia Extrio out on the field and abusing it's effect (cards like Miracle Synchro Fusion help this deck a lot).

The final ways to build a Naturia deck are:


 * The Naturia EARTH variant. This variant supports the Naturias and other EARTH cards such as Giant Rat, Gigantes, and Gaia Power. This variant also helps the Naturia Synchros since all of them require EARTH monsters as at least 1 of their materials. Plus, Giant Rat helps keep your monsters on the field which makes Synchro Summons and swarming easy.


 * The Naturia Plant variant. This type of Naturia build utilizes plants and the Naturia plants, hence the name, to beatdown the opponent with Tytannial, Princess of Camellias and locking the opponent down with Naturia Bamboo Shoot. This deck type is a good choice because it can beatdown the opponent, create a good field control and graveyard control quickly, and lockdown your opponent. Be careful though; if you tribute a non-Naturia monster for Naturia Bamboo Shoot then it's effect does not go off. A new Naturia support - Naturia Pineapple has recently been released as a TCG Exclusive in the Duelist Revolution booster pack. It's effect greatly helps Naturia plants for it's effect is basically a Treeborn Frog for this decktype. Unfortunately it does not help the Naturia archetype as a whole.


 * The Naturia Insect variant. This variant isn't as well known as the above but it is a solid deck choice. This deck uses the Insects of the Naturia archetype plus the Insect support such as Naturia Stag, Naturia Mantis, Verdant Sanctuary, Doom Dozer and more to quickly swarm the field. Usually some of the key Naturia cards are not played in this deck because it hinders the deck's consistency. (Naturia Bamboo Shoot, Naturia Cliff, etc.)


 * The Naturia Stun variant. This is basically Naturia Bamboo Shoot, some other Naturias, and the normal Stun cards (Thunder King Rai-Oh, Doomcaliber Knight, etc), This is probably one of the builds that you will be able to create by the time Duelist Revolution comes out.


 * The next variant is come to be called Pineapple Cat/Beast. it's basically Naturia Pineapple, Naturia Bamboo Shoot, the good plant Naturias, plant support, some beast Support (an ideal support for this build would be Snyffus) and Rescue Cat + Summoner Monk, Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter etc. Like Naturia Stun this build will be a deckchoice as soon as Duelist Revolution is released.

Weaknesses
Because Naturias have the potential to restrict your choices in a duel FAST, the key to beating them is to be quicker than this type of Deck before Naturias can make any impact on the Duel at all. For instance, Skill Drain or Angel O7, if used ASAP can severely handicap this deck since most of the Naturia archetype is composed of monsters. Even if Synchros or Naturia Extrio start popping out on the field, all of the Naturia/Fusion monsters can be iced with a Bottomless Trap Hole (Bottomless can bar quite a number of Naturia Effect Monsters as well). In addition, once you get the monsters hindered, Dark Bribes and Solemn Judgment can take care of the Spell and Trap card support.