As much of a shakeup as the most recent banlist for the Yugioh TCG was, ultimately it succeeded only in doing one thing: Sunsetting the already-dwindling might of 2024’s best decks. The banlist is, ultimately, a tool to move product, and while the impact on the game’s health is of course what we know it best for, it’s no secret that Ryzeal & Maliss are about to do gangbusters on store shelves. Lurking somewhere behind the tools provided to these two robust, non-engine rich strategies is however, a threat that is composed of the true beneficiary of the banlist, The Pile.
While it sounds ominous, this concept has existed in the game as soon as splashable engines emerged, as Yugioh’s main resource is neither cards nor mana, but Hard-Once-Per-Turns, or HOPTs. By properly accessing every effect available to you at a given time, akin to button-mashing in a fighting game, you can defeat even the most honed strategies. Showcased in its modern infancy by a Top 8 at the Milwaukee WCQ, presenting: Buster Blader in a Blender.
The namesake for this deck is also the reason it was able to put up results, in the form of Buster Blader. With its modern support releasing all the way back in 2016’s Breakers of Shadow, this archetype has lurked on the fringes of playability in nearly every format since. While tailor-made to beat dragons, the actual strength of Buster Blader lies in its ability to pass its turn following interaction, and have its entire play line available to it on the opponent’s turn. Little more excites someone with a Prologue of the Destruction Swordsman in their hand than to see an opposing Droll or Fuwalos. This is much in the same vein as how Fiendsmith Kashtira works, where the more interaction your opponent deploys, the happier you are with your standard low-ceiling endboard.
What Buster Blader as a package provides is a ludicrously potent, self-contained way to end your turn on a high note, with the caveat that the engine itself requires quite a few cards you don’t want to open. Therefore, any way we can decrease the possibility of drawing those pieces over other cards that would be more live, the better Buster Blader’s cohorts would feel to include.
For that reason, this list is 55 cards in the Maindeck, although the choice to go to 60 is certainly there. The Buster Blader pile deck which performed at Milwaukee was 45 cards, but I feel there’s still too high of a statistical risk to warrant that in today’s metagame. If you want an easy way to extend to 60 from 55, 3 copies of Fiendsmith Tractus, a Fabled Lurrie, and a One for One would get you there. The ‘Blender’ part of this deck is down to the sheer quantity of disparate packages included, and mixed-up among the Blader core.
On that note, the engines this deck plays aside from the aforementioned Buster Blader are Bystial, Red-Eyes, Fiendsmith, and Kashtira, each of which have some crossover with the other. Bystial acts as a means of GY disruption or opportunity to set up a recursive loop into a grindier strategy, and Red-Eyes is your self-contained Normal Summon line which ends on 2 bodies for Moon of the Closed Heaven; Fiendsmith & Kashtira, meanwhile, are known quantities within the metagame which work much the same as the old Knightmare & Pankratops inclusions, being a way to use spare bodies on the board, or as a devastating power floor. While yes, Bystials can give you access to Buster Whelp of the Destruction Swordsman, or be a 6 for D/D/D Wave High King Caesar alongside Engraver, none of the obvious synergies are as potent and gimmicky as some previous decks I’ve featured. Everything is essentially independent, and loses to different cards.
One aspect of the deck I want to touch on is that of Trap Trick, something we haven’t seen in quite some time. By locking yourself to a single Trap activation for the rest of the turn, you can access any Normal Trap when you need it, provided you play a minimum of 2 copies. This has obvious overlap with Buster Blader, but I’m keen to highlight an option not considered often enough for these piles: Mischief of the Gnomes. Mischief blows out Ryzeal to such an extent it’s laughable, and does so twice over. Of course, it does less to its competitors beyond the Xyz-reliant strategy, but critically you can always slot in something like Daruma Karma Cannon over Mischief, if you’re expecting fewer Ryzeal opponents. It does double duty as a superb card to pitch via Forbidden Droplet, the preferred board breaker for this list, just generally being good enough against the most brutal potential matchup.
Against all but Ryzeal, Buster Dragon & its Fusion counterpart perform a stellar amount of work. Changing the type of our opponent’s monsters, especially if they’ve already committed to a Summon and cannot flex into Infinite Impermanence, means that all of Maliss’ lines are off, and a great many Rogue strategies immediately bite the dust. Even Tenpai, if it continues to exist, gets thoroughly dunked without the dragon, as Buster Blader, the Dragon Destroyer Swordsman naturally hates out the type, albeit losing to some sweepers. Layering your interaction, and knowing when to pivot between Traps after having your monsters removed, is a key set of skills to have while playing this strategy.
Ordering your openings, as well, is vital — if you can get your opponent to waste interaction on something like a Kashtira Unicorn, before following up with your full Black Metal Dragon line, is a sweet deal indeed.
There is something interesting about the strategies which crop up when the meta already appears to be solved so soon, and how so often it’s the best 3+ engines played in or around the top decks, mashed together. This has been seen with Bystial Runick, piloted by Joshua Schmidt, and given the rising popularity of Red-Eyes Metal lines in Fiendsmith-holding decks I expect this is far from the last variation on this you’ll see. Notably, if you cut out all of the Buster Blader cards, you’d have what is far closer to the “accepted” Bystial pile already seeing some experimentation; akin to Blader, though, it loathes the potential of drawing cards it wants to search or send to the GY, such as Branded Beast, or Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. There’s safety in simply having more cards in your deck, such that drawing those unappealing but necessary components to your play lines is less likely. If you’ve got a consistent, solid core with no cards you want to see but not open, 40’s the best bet, but often duelists will disregard entirely the possibility of edging over, to 42, 45, 55, or even the full 60 cards. After all, especially in the modern day, Yugioh is a numbers game when it comes to calculating your possibility to open playably against a standard 1-2 interaction opponent.
If I’m to be honest, the ratios in the Extra Deck are copied verbatim from the Top 8 list, and I don’t entirely agree with them. Lacking a card like TY-PHON seems like a clear oversight, and I feel it might be equally reasonable to add a single Angel Statue - Azurune to the mix and allow yourself to play Silhouhatte Rabbit, the modern Verte Anaconda (Which I say with sarcasm, but affection). Given we’re already nearing 60 cards, it’s a drop in a vast sea to include a Continuous Trap of that manner, should we be locked from the Fiendsmith line off of any 2 monsters.
In a similar vein, Called By the Grave isn’t in here because frankly, we welcome handtraps against us. There’s a benefit to being interrupted here, and ‘wasting’ an opponent’s card as we progress through our many gameplans, though as more “Dragon Link” style variant could find room for both Crossout Designator and Called By, alongside targets, should the opportunity present itself. This is basically a modernized version of those 2022-era lists, prior to their best pieces (The Guardragons) being banned.
Quite a lot of what’s been covered today is but another rotation in the cycle that Yugioh takes, year-by-year. As there will always be 1-2 top decks following a massive shakeup, so too will their components coalesce into a new whole, aiming to show that sub-engines have just as much a chance in the modern game as their more stringent, linear counterparts.
With that, we’ve covered exactly why some duelists are putting Buster Blader in a Blender! Do you have a set of engines you like to play together? Is there a better Trap Trick target than Mischief for the matchup? I’d love to hear what you’ve been thinking in the comments below!
