Competitive Yu-Gi-Oh is played in a best 2 out of 3 format. After finishing the first and second games in a match, both players have the opportunity to change their decks slightly, removing cards from their Main and/or Extra decks and replacing them with an equal number of cards from their Side Deck. The Side Deck is a collection of up to 15 cards, and usually consists of powerful but narrow answers to the most common decks you expect to see at a tournament. There are lots of cards that are Edison format staples that you’d never actually see in a game 1 because they anchor the Side Deck instead. So let’s check a few of them out!
Cyber Dragon1 is maybe the most common side deck card in the entire format, and will even sometimes see main deck play. 2100 is more ATK than any level 4 monster, so Cydra is a great answer to decks like Hero Beat or Gladiator Beast that rely on such cards. It’s a must-answer threat that doesn’t even cost a normal summon, gaining you the tempo you need to exhaust those decks’ resources and take control of the game. But Cydra sees just as much play as a hoser for Machine decks. Chimeratech Fortress Dragon usually gets the start in the Extra Deck (in Edison, your 15th Extra slot is usually less valuable than your 15th Side), but regardless alongside Cyber Dragon is a devastating answer to any and all Machine monsters, including the powerful and threatening Machina Fortress. If your opponent doesn’t immediately destroy your Cyber Dragon in response to its summon, all of their Machines will get sent to the grave AND you’ll get a large beatstick to boot. Machina decks hover around the top tier of Edison, and this single interaction is a big part of what keeps them in check.
Vanity’s Fiend and Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo both largely serve the same function. Against the right decks, simply getting one onto the field will shut down everything your opponent’s deck can do. Fiend is stronger, with a 2400 ATK ceiling that’s very hard to answer without special summoning. Dyna is weaker, and can be swung over by many common level 4 monsters, but in exchange it’s easier to summon (doesn’t need a tribute AND you can special it) and comes with a flip effect that can let you reset the board if you draw him after your opponent sets up.
Deck Devi is an absolute backbreaker against the right deck. Frog variants especially hate this card, as it clears out all their frogs (including any Dupe locks they may have set up) AND can cost them their draw phase for up to 3 turns. There are plenty of decks in Edison with access to high ATK DARK monsters, especially once you factor the Extra Deck into the equation. Blackwings especially almost always have Deck Devastation in their sides, thanks to how easily it pairs with the 2000 ATK Sirocco.
D.D. Crow is the only fully generic hand trap in the entire format. Despite being a fairly old card it’s also ahead of its time, as future hand traps like Effect Veiler, Maxx “C”, and Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit would come to define and even dominate their respective formats. Crow isn’t quite that powerful, but it’s a great answer to many Graveyard-based interactions throughout the format. You can snipe a Treeborn Frog, or leave a Blizzard exposed without the non-Tuner it was trying to summon back.
Pulling the Rug is a great answer to Caius, or indeed any other Monarch. It can also take out Stratos, Armageddon Knight, Machina Gearframe. All sorts of otherwise guaranteed plusses get taken out as a 1 for 1 by this counter trap.
Royal Oppression is semi-limited, and a borderline main deck staple. This type of special summon floodgate would prove increasingly powerful as Yu-Gi-Oh became more and more focused on big combo engines as the primary deck archetype, and Royal Oppression would eventually find itself banned, probably forever. In Edison though it has mixed utility. Partially because it’s a deceptively tricky card. You need to pay 800 life points, so naturally you can run out and have it turn off on you. Because it’s an activated ability, cards like Treeborn Frog (which can be activated as many times as possible so long as the conditions are met) are effectively immune, since negating its effect puts it right back in the grave to activate again immediately. There are also dumber possible interactions: you can protect the special summon effect of Blizzard the Far North if you control a Black Whirlwind, since both those triggered effects go on the chain in the order of your choice, and if you make Whirlwind link 2 Royal Oppression can’t hit the link 1 Blizzard because one of those weird Yu-Gi-Oh rules things is that negation effects must be chained directly to what they’re attempting to negate. You can’t use it at all in the Damage Step. If it’s face-down, it can only be activated once in the same chain it flips up so you can sometimes bait it and chain a summoning effect to that first activation to get it to resolve. Learning how to use Royal Oppression is one of the hardest skills to pick up if you’ve never played with it before, but once you know the ins and outs it can be devastating, locking your opponent out of all relevant plays.
Royal Decree (semi-limited) and Trap Stun are very similar cards with surprisingly divergent use cases. Decree is for when you play few to no traps yourself, and simply want to lock out your opponent for as long as you can. But in exchange for sticking around, Decree is more vulnerable, since once your opponent destroys it (say, with the spell Mystical Space Typhoon) all their traps come back online. Trap Stun can’t be turned off so easily, and doesn’t preclude you from running your own traps to protect whatever play you make on the stunned turn. But in exchange it’s only one turn; you better make it count.
Imperial Iron Wall and Mask of Restrict are very similar cards, serving as floodgates against different strategies. Iron Wall locks out decks like Vayu Turbo and HERO variants, which rely on banishing their own monsters to make their best plays. Mask of Restrict is hell against Frog variants, and any deck that relies on powerful tribute summons.
Dust Tornado sees a lot of play for pretty basic reasons. With MST limited, Dust Tornado serves as additional spell/trap removal. It’s useful against decks that play a lot of backrow, and is also useful specifically against many of the powerful continuous traps we’ve seen above. Getting to set a card is flavor text maybe 95% of the time, but every so often using it to set something in your opponent’s end phase can be a good play, protecting a key trap from removal on their turn but having it active for yours.
Consecrated Light is an absolute blowout against heavily or exclusively DARK decks, something that can single-handedly shut down something like Blackwings. If you ever find yourself facing one, it’s important to keep in mind what it doesn’t cover: you can still set, and you can still flip summon, and you can use that to slowly get a tuner and non-tuner into play for a non-DARK synchro summon. You also still get activated abilities, if you are somehow able to smuggle something like Dark Armed Dragon into play under this oppressive card.
Lightning Vortex serves two purposes. It lets you handle decks that like to swarm the field (such as Dragon Turbo or Frog variants), and it lets you counter-side against all the annoying floodgate monsters seen above. If you expect to see Consecrated Light or a Fossil Dyna, you might want to bring this in to have an answer.
Given how common Ryko/Hamster decks are in Edison, it makes sense that the best answer to FLIP monsters in the game sees frequent side deck play. This card basically explains itself.
Soul Release is one of those cards that sees a lot of play, but I don’t think it’s actually very good. It seems like it should be, letting you erase the progress of an opponent trying to set up their grave for big plays. But timing this normal spell can be really awkward, compared to the quick effect of D.D. Crow. What good is Soul Release if your opponent puts their key monsters in the GY on the very same turn they use them?
We’ll stop there, though honestly we could keep going for a while. Side Decks are endlessly varied, and I’m sure we’ll do a part 2 at some point covering the less common picks (and/or any breaking metagame developments; side deck picks change much more quickly than main decks). But next time we’re back to the main, as we look at the blisteringly fast Dragon Turbo.
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