Forum:Deck Guide/Gravekeeper's

by Gadjiltron

Intro
The Gravekeeper's archetype is well-known among many players of the card game - dating back to Pharaohnic Guardian, the archetype was the first true archetype to be created in the game, and boy was it a persistent one. Several years after the archetype's first release, it received occasional, but potent, support from later packs - mainly Force of the Breaker and Absolute Powerforce. Even before then, one of their key cards has played an important role in several other Decks, even if it means serving as mere Tribute fodder for the large monsters. In the present Graveyard-reliant metagame, the Gravekeepers have found a new life as a form of an anti-meta Deck.

Mechanics
The Gravekeepers are a set of Spellcaster-Type monsters, either bearing the DARK or EARTH Attribute, which also grants them access to some powerful Attribute supports. While each monster looks weak on its own, with each LV4 monster bearing an ATK that does not exceed 1600, their biggest force lies on their Field Spell, Necrovalley. The Field alone not only seals off any effect that attempts to target the Graveyard, but also gives all Gravekeepers a sizeable boost of 500 ATK and DEF, bumping their LV4 monsters to about 2000 ATK, turning them into great beatsticks with greater effects.

Analysis

 * Speed: Gravekeepers are capable of swarming, just not as fast as what the other faster meta Decks can do. They make up for this slight lack in speed with a great pressure strategy, though.
 * Power: Without the Field, the Gravekeepers are rather easy to crush with brute force. With the Field, they become a force to be reckoned with, since they all gain a noticeable power boost with it.
 * Consistency: Gravekeepers are very dependent on their Field. Fortunately, they have ways to search for it, and may even come prepared with means to protect said Field as well.
 * Risk: If anything's risky, it's the Field itself - once it goes, if the Gravekeepers dont have a quick replacement soon enough, their entire strategy falls apart and they usually don't have enough muscle to fight back.
 * Meta Ranking: Despite said risk factors, Gravekeepers still manage to make their way to the top nowadays because they are able to severely cripple many Grave-reliant strategies seen today.

The Basics
Before we get started, we should look at the most vital piece of the archetype - their playing field.


 * Necrovalley - The heart and soul of the Gravekeeper's Deck. This comes with several amazing effects.
 * First, nobody can remove cards in the Graveyard from play. This shuts off a number of effects that rely on doing such things, be it revival, fiddling with your positions, blocking attacks, or blowing stuff up.
 * Second, any effects that targets the Graveyard is negated. Just like how Macro Decks can disrupt meta strategies, this effect just plain blocks out anything that tries to touch the Graveyard. Note that this does not say anything about effects that trigger in the Graveyard, so keep note of that.
 * Third, all Gravekeepers gain 500 ATK and DEF. Doesn't look like much, does it? Try saying this when you're getting pummelled by 2000 ATK LV4 monsters, or if you're having trouble surmounting a 2500 DEF wall.

Monsters
Now, on to the monsters.


 * Gravekeeper's Spy - The first card of the Gravekeepers you'll notice, mainly because it is used in somewhat unrelated Decks. Spy serves as a pretty strong wall, with base stats of 1200/2000, with a powerful Flip Effect that can Special Summon a Gravekeeper with 1500 ATK or less from your Deck. Within a Gravekeeper's Deck, this means that it can fetch almost any LV4 or lower Gravekeeper, while also shrugging off many attacks with 2500 DEF. Outside of Gravekeeper's Decks, Spy is used to supply Tribute fodder - its Flip Effect and strong DEF means that the player will almost always have solid Tribute fodder for whatever big monster he's playing. Max him out. Always.
 * Gravekeeper's Assailant - Another key player in the Gravekeeper's Deck. Its base stats of 1500/1500 allows it to be recruited by Spy and makes it a strong 2000/2000 with Necrovalley on the field. Even better is his effect - if he attacks while you have Necrovalley present, you can change the battle position of a face-up monster your opponent controls. This is quite powerful, since many monsters have high ATK but low DEF, or vice-versa. Max him out, but be careful since he doesn't do anything without Necrovalley around.
 * Gravekeeper's Guard - Another defender of the Gravekeeper's, but weaker than Spy in a number of ways. His base stats are only 1000/1900, though that does not dismiss his ability to hold off attacks from regular beatsticks. On flip, he can return a monster on the field to the owner's hand, which is great for taking out Nomis, Synchros, and Fusions which happen to be all the rage lately.
 * Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier - One of the less favoured members of the Gravekeepers, Spear Soldier has base stats of 1500/1000 with an innate Trample that does not need Necrovalley. Sure, he's a nice piercing beatstick, but nowadays he is cast aside in favour of other members of the family.
 * Gravekeeper's Cannonholder - He's not as impressive as his brothers, at base stats of 1400/1200. His effect involves Tributing a Gravekeeper except for another Cannonholder to do 700 damage to the opponent. This is usually not favoured, since many players prefer to keep their big beaters on the field.
 * Gravekeeper's Watcher - By discarding this guy from your hand, you can negate any effect which involves your opponent discarding from his hand. However, the exact wordings mean that he cannot stop anything that involves discarding cards as a cost, greatly limiting his use. I suppose you could side him against Dark World or something...
 * Gravekeeper's Vassal - A small body, with a little trick. Any Battle Damage done by this card is actually treated as Effect Damage. However, with his small stats of 700/500, he's not going to do a lot. And his effect's not that impressive either.
 * Gravekeeper's Curse - On Summon, he can do 500 points of damage to the opponent. However, it just about stops there. There are a few fancy tricks to reuse him to make the most out of his effect, but there are better ways of dealing damage to the opponent, like, say, Spear Soldier. Curse's low base stats of 800/800 make him more fragile than the above, even.
 * Gravekeeper's Chief - The original boss monster of the Gravekeepers, but he tends to be overshadowed by someone even larger. Doesn't stop some people from running him, though. At LV5 he has base stats of 1900/1200, which go up to a decent 2400/1700 with Necrovalley, allowing him to compete with Monarchs. When he's Normal Summoned, he even gets to revive a Gravekeeper from your Graveyard. Wait, the field would negate that? Not a problem, since Chief will grant you free access to the Graveyard despite Necrovalley out, making the Grave lock one-sided. The only problem here is that you can only control one of him, so don't use too many copies.
 * Gravekeeper's Commandant - Introduced in FOTB, Commandant has one very useful effect: Discard him to the Graveyard, and he will fetch a Necrovalley for you. This essentially results in him replacing Terraforming in Gravekeeper's Decks, and if you don't need to search for a Field at the moment, you can still Summon him. With base stats of 1600/1500, he becomes a fearsome 2100/2000 beater! Run him in threes.
 * Gravekeeper's Descendant - Introduced in ABPF, Descendant has started to replace Spear Soldier and Cannonholder due to his ability - by Tributing a Gravekeeper you control he can destroy a card on the field. In the present day, field control is much more valued over Trample or Burn, and his base stats of 1500/1200 also make him slightly superior to both the above cards.
 * Gravekeeper's Visionary - The new boss of the Gravekeepers. AT LV8, he has low-looking base stats of 2000/1800, but he has an effect that can reduce the pain in Summoning him, since he can be Tribute Summoned using one Gravekeeper. With the field out, he's at 2500/2300 at least, stronger than any other keeper can hope to be, and he powers up as you allow Gravekeepers to accumulate in the Graveyard. What's more, he's difficult to destroy, since you can discard a Gravekeeper to prevent his destruction, and this just makes him even stronger. Do give him a shot.
 * Gravekeeper's Priestess - This addition to the Gravekeeper family is a little iffy among Gravekeeper players. She functions as a substitute Necrovalley, with none of the Grave-sealing and only a fraction of its boost. The low stats also don't help much, but if you need an urgent means to use any Necrovalley-reliant effects, she's the monster to take care of this.
 * Gravekeeper's Recruiter - Another TCG-exclusive addition. Recruiter is actually a fairly potent card, since it allows you to get a Gravekeeper of 1500 DEF or lower when he's sent from the field to the Graveyard. His presence actually bumps up the speed of Gravekeepers substantially - he either can fetch a Commandant who can in turn get the Field Spell they need, or snag a well-needed beatstick. Run 2-3 of this guy, he's quite powerful.
 * Charm of Shabti - An unusual variant of Kuriboh for Gravekeepers. While the wording says "reduce Battle Damage to Gravekeepers to 0 this turn", it is, in a sense, half a Waboku. You still take the Battle Damage, but your monsters survive the attacks for this turn. Eh, if you want to stall, might as well make do with the actual Waboku.
 * A Cat of Ill Omen and An Owl of Luck - Both these monsters have Flip Effects that can help you search for Trap cards or Field Spells respectively. If you control Necrovalley, they go into your hand, otherwise they go on the top of your Deck. Might as well use Commandant in place of the Owl, while the Cat might potentially come in handy at times.

Spells and Traps
Now, we look at the Spells and Traps in the archetype.
 * Royal Tribute - One of the few reasons why Gravekeepers are able to compete with the meta is because of this card. It requires Necrovalley on the field, but when activated, both players discard all monsters in their hand. This is important as it defuses cards that activate in the hand, like Honest, Battle Fader, Effect Veiler, Gorz, and Tragoedia. Furthermore, your opponent also loses whatever monster they might prefer to actually summon, which is very disruptive.
 * Gravekeeper's Stele - Coming from ABPF, this is an amazing boost to the archetype. Circumventing any effects of Necrovalley, this allows you to add up to 2 Gravekeepers from your Graveyard to your hand, allowing you to reuse discarded Commandants or anything else that hit the Graveyard. Heck, you can even use this as a follow up to Royal Tribute, meaning you now get monsters while the opponent has nothing!
 * Gravekeeper's Servant - This is pretty much here only because it has "Gravekeeper's" in its name. The actual effect does not mesh very well with the archetype, since it merely mills the opponent for declaring an attack.
 * Rite of Spirit - The Gravekeepers' special revival card. You basically get to Special Summon a Gravekeeper from your Graveyard, regardless of Level, ATK, DEF, or even the presence of Necrovalley. Amazing, especially when you are able to spring this during the Battle Phase to call up an emergency wall or continue bashing away at the opponent.

With the release of the Marik Structure, most of the material needed for making a decent Gravekeeper's Deck can be easily purchased.

Variants
The design of the Gravekeeper's archetype doesn't leave a lot of room for variants, but there are still a few noticeably different variants.

Gravekeeper's Bloodline
The basic Gravekeeper's Deck mainly makes use of all sorts of Gravekeeper's monsters to have different ways to cope with different situations. Its main theme is beatdown and swarming, and is often noted with its use of the higher-level Gravekeepers.

Cards likely to appear in this variant include:
 * Gravekeeper's Chief and Gravekeeper's Visionary, which add some muscle which the other monsters lack, in exchange for being willing to take a risk of dead draws.
 * Gravekeeper's Priestess and Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier are simply thrown in here because the Deck can accomodate them, and because they have some handy effects to deal with certain situations.
 * Magical Dimension fits in nicely with the Gravekeepers since they're all Spellcasters. Played right, it allows you to dodge a targetting effect, replace the target with something bigger, and destroy a card in a way which Stardust Dragon can't do anything about.
 * United We Stand complements the swarming ability of the Gravekeeper's well, making their big beaters even bigger.
 * Solidarity provides a solid (pardon the pun) ATK boost of 800 since the Deck runs nothing but Spellcasters, which serves as a decent backup plan if Necrovalley isn't on the field.
 * Magician's Circle is used to bring out any Gravekeeper from the Deck, since their strongest monster is Visionary which sits right at the upper bound of Circle's criteria of 2000 ATK.

An example of this Deck is as follows:

Gravekeeper's Rebellion
Naturally, with today's Graveyard-reliant meta, Gravekeepers have actually earned a reputation in being a form of anti-meta nowadays. However, the anti-meta build is quite different from the basic build.

Cards likely to appear in this variant include:
 * Pot of Duality is used to help the Deck fetch what it needs. It doesn't do a lot of Special Summoning either, at least on its own turns.
 * Dimensional Prison is most definitely a very useful way of keeping monsters that like to go into the Graveyard out of the game permanently.
 * Royal Oppression freezes anything that Special Summons. Sure, the same can be used on their own Spy, but since it cannot trigger in the Damage Step, this means that a Spy flipped through battle can still grab a monster from the Deck.
 * Starlight Road and Stardust Dragon are filed in as insurance against destruction effects, especially particularly annoying Black Rose Dragons that can blow up the field.

An example of this Deck is as follows:

Gravekeeper's Revolution
Some Decks make good use of the Gravekeeper's swarming abilities or loopholes in Necrovalley to incorporate Synchro Summons into the Decks.

Cards likely to appear in this variant include:
 * Krebons and Psychic Commander are two decent Tuners that have abilities to hold their own while on the field. They can also be pulled out quick with Emergency Teleport.
 * Sangan is used to search out almost anything the Deck has, since even the base Gravekeepers here mostly have 1500 or lower ATK.
 * Deep Sea Diva is used in multiples, with one Diva searching out the second. This, when combined with Gravekeeper's Spy, allows for quick LV8 Synchro Summoning, with a LV6 Synchro being an intermediate.
 * Plaguespreader Zombie's effect triggers in the Graveyard, allowing himself to crawl out of the Graveyard for a second use of Synchro Summoning.
 * Arcanite Magician is a must to play in the Deck, since you can fill the requirements with great ease, and can help destroy a couple of intrusive cards.

An example of this Deck is as follows:

Other Tips
Other cards exist to help out the Gravekeepers if they're in a pinch, or if the Deckbuilder has some trouble acquiring some of the cards used.


 * Mystic Tomato is capable of searching out any Gravekeeper you might need, since a lot of them are DARK and have 1500 ATK or less. Furthermore, its effect activates in the Graveyard, meaning that it can bypass Necrovalley.
 * Breaker the Magical Warrior fits the theme of DARK Spellcasters, and also helps out the Gravekeepers in S/T control with his own effect. Furthermore, when Necrovalley isn't present on the field, Breaker can serve as muscle for the Deck at 1900 ATK, provided you haven't use his Spell Counter yet.
 * Forbidden Graveyard helps cover for the loophole in Necrovalley by blocking out any effects that activate in the Graveyard. The discard needed for this somewhat limits its usability.
 * Malefic Stardust Dragon is easily Summoned since it just requires removal of a Stardust Dragon from your Extra Deck, and it helps keep the pressure on the opponent as effects cannot be used to destroy your Necrovalley. Just note that this prevents your other monsters from attacking.
 * Bottomless Trap Hole is always a good idea to take out any monsters that will prove to be too tough for the Gravekeepers to beat in combat, regardless of position. Something which, oh, Goyou Guardian tends to be infamous for.
 * Solemn Warning is kind of a backup to prevent any effect that Special Summons from ruining your day. Don't run too many of these, though, because it has a high fixed 2000 LP cost. A maximum of 2 will suffice.
 * Dark Illusion negates any effect that targets one of your DARK monsters and destroys it. Since almost all the Gravekeepers are DARK, this is a decent addition to the Deck.
 * Imperial Iron Wall can be considered as a Side Deck since it prevents removal from play in any form. Removal from play can mean some trouble for Gravekeepers since they cannot use their usual recycling methods.

Do be careful of anything that can go wrong, though...
 * Geartown is a bit of a problem for the Gravekeepers, since it competes for the Field Spell Zone. A bigger problem arises if the Gravekeepers actually do manage to get Necrovalley back on the field, because with Geartown eventually getting destroyed by the game mechanic, the controller gets to Special Summon the well-known Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon, whose high stats and self-protection effect will give Gravekeepers a bit of difficulty.
 * Nobleman of Crossout is starting to see some use in Side Decks around to defuse some annoying dogs. The problem here is that it can break your own Spies and prevent you from being able to swarm with Spy's ability.
 * Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure can give the Gravekeepers some difficulty, since it prevents them from recycling used-up monsters. However, the Gravekeepers can still adapt and deal with this better than many Grave-reliant decks.
 * Gravity Bind, Level Limit - Area B, and Messenger of Peace are also problematic here, since all the big beaters of the Gravekeepers archetype are all LV4, and have at least 1500 ATK. None of their smaller members can even circumvent locks like this, with the sole exception of Cannonholder. Oh well, might as well destroy the lock with the card effects you have at hand.