For those intrigued by the title…….. today I’m going to be posting about a Zombie Lightsworn deck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just kidding.
Now depending on who you ask, the curse of the Lightsworn can refer to two ideas.
The first refers to the fact that a Lightsworn-based build has never won a major Shonen Jump Championship or Nationals in the United States. Seeing as how the set was released around the same time as Phantom Darkness, Lightsworn have been given ample opportunity to win an event. So what gives?
Well I personally feel the curse is rather arbitrary and meaningless. The Lightsworn archetype has swept multiple Nationals tournaments this past year in big markets such as Great Britain. And while it’s never actually won a major tournament in the United States, that’s in a relatively small sample of tournaments. Part of the problem was the dominance of Tele-DaD. Another huge problem was the otherwise kind-hearted Jeff Jones, a frothy-mouthed, rabid anti-Lightswornite who dashed the hopes of an entire generation in the finals of SJC Anaheim!
Nevertheless, some of the best duelists in the world (Anthony Alvarado and Dale Bellido to name a couple) showed up with Lightsworn at the biggest tournament of the year. I actually agreed with them, deciding to run a Lightsworn deck myself. Here is my build:
24 Monsters:
2 Judgment Dragon
3 Celestia, Lightsworn Angel
3 Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner
3 Wulf, Lightsworn Beast
2 Aurkus, Lightsworn Druid
1 Ehren, Lightsworn Monk
1 Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress
1 Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
1 Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior
3 Honest
3 Necro Gardna
1 Plaguespreader Zombie
11 Spells:
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
3 Solar Recharge
3 Charge of the Light Brigad
1 Gold Sarcophagus
1 Foolish Burial
5 Traps:
2 Threatening Roar
1 Crush Card Virus
2 Beckoning Light
Unfortunately at Nationals I ran into the other definition of Curse of the Lightsworn. The deck can draw some terrible hands!
Prior to the event, I thought this was about as close to a perfect build of Lightsworn you could put together. I still stand by this statement, and have come to a few conclusions that you can conveniently use on your way to Lightsworn success.
1. You will win the games where you mill multiple Wulfs, Necro Gardna’s, and have three named LS by the end of turn one. It is the games that do not feature such fortunate millage that count.
This basically means you should not be running Dark monsters mixed into your line-up. While cards like Sorcerer and Dark Armed Dragon look sexy on paper (Salvosworn deserves its own post entirely), they really impede the flow of your deck. The goal is to put out Lightsworn monsters and send cards to the graveyard at the end of each turn.
This also means you should be running two copies of Beckoning Light and avoiding anything else (like Monster Reincarnation).
2. When you start running more than 25 monsters, you start becoming a failure at life.
3. You should be winning the majority of your game 1’s. To reach that goal, you need to have an even mix of cards that are good for going first and good for going second.
A few examples should suffice. Cards like Card of Safe Return and Gold Sarcophagus are extremely good when you are going first. Unfortunately, a card like COSR cuts down your deck’s consistency while leaving you more vulnerable to being OTKed. After all, it is a dead spell in hand until you can start milling.
On the other hand, cards like Foolish Burial and MST are amazing when you go second. I frequently sided into a second Foolish Burial and some Monarchs for game 2. But it’s a terrible card when you go first (again, another card you will be holding while getting OTKed and doing nothing for your mills).
You have to balance these goals in mind and create a no-frills LS deck if you want to win. Save the fancy stuff for Regionals.
4. Gorz is not needed, Ryko and Ehren are both far superior to Jain (which is a terrible choice for all LS players), and the above monster line-up is flawless for a 3 Wulf build. Max Celestia for it is the primary win condition.
5. An alternative build (that might be even better than the one I posted) would feature 2 Wulf to create more consistency. Anthony Alvarado played this version.
After starting either 3-0 or 4-0, I lost my first match to a Blackwing player. In the second game I lost, I got OTKed through Gorz. For game three, I opened Necro Gardna, Wulf, Honest, Dust Tornado, Beckoning Light, and Judgment Dragon.
I then played against a LS mirror match at 6-1. After winning game one, I lost game two to double Judgment Dragon + Aurkus versus my full board and about 4 cards in hand. I had just milled about 8 cards with a set Beckoning. Unfortunately I had no JD in my graveyard to respond to his. For game three, I opened Wulf, Wulf, Beckoning, Beckoning, Aurkus, and Heavy Storm.
So long story short, if I were to play LS again (I would choose it again for Nationals in a heartbeat), it would be the 2 Wulf version.
This concludes my tips on building a proper Lightsworn deck and averting both curses. Future articles will discuss why Lightsworn wins and play strategies for Lightsworn players.
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I enjoyed reading this article; even though I don’t run LS (way out of my budget; I run BW), this article helped me understand them more and gave me ideas on how to prepare against them. Also, your 3rd tip on making a good LS deck can also be applied to any other deck and I took that advice and made my BW deck better (especially vs their hardest match up: LS).
Anyways, thanks for the inspiration.
the problem I think people are having is that people are still under the impression threatening roar is a “minus one”. Back in monarch format I can understand it being a minus one because games didn’t end fast and threatening roar could have been a bottomless getting rid of the threat instead of threatening roar. But in a format where OTK is on the loose; cold wave, lyla, celestia, icarus, heavy, trunade, arcanite, blackrose, mst, etc are widely played I rather play a “minus one” that helps me a lot more than bottomless. Threatening roar also has another effect, I do not lose the game. I will gladly take that minus one, if I will have another turn. Threatening roar is another necro gardna, I heard he is one of the reasons why lightsworn is good, and being another necro gardna I can have a followup play of celestia the broken monarch.
People main cards in this format to run their deck as fast as possible, no one is maining anything anti-meta (oppression, light mirror, d-fissure, etc), so as a response to the meta, I should main a card that stops the goal of the meta, which is to win in the first few turns. Bottomless is a slow card this format, and threatening roar is always a live card. When my opponent sidedecks, kycoo soulrelease, dd crow, light mirror, etc., they are siding cards which do not help their theme but instead try to win a long drawn out match instead of the quick 5 turn games the deck is intended to do. This allows me to sidedeck slower cards such as bottomless, allowing it to be a much more live card, plus it adds the surprise factor, since most LS players don’t main monster removal. If my opponent makes their deck slower by sidedecking, I am allowed to side cards like mirror force, bottomless, torrential, etc.and they will play more of a role in the game, since my opponent is no longer trying to beat my face in. One for one cards are only as good as how long the duel progresses, if my opponent is trying to OTK me what good is it to bottomless, especially with lightsworn when cards like celestia and JD can over a way to blow up their field.
Most players shy away games 2 and 3 from going OTK on you after they see you maining threatening roar. For example(I side bottomless vs blackwing), a blackwing player will fairly confident he can summon any creature to guarantee a free whirlwind search, since lightsworn tends to not run any monster removal in the form of spells and traps.
If you didn’t read all of this, basically threatening roar is good vs all matchups and has the effect of I DO NOT LOSE, while bottomless is effective in all matchups except synchro cat and lacks chainability. Bottomless is reserved in the sidedeck.
I have yet to main 2 aurkus, but i can definitely see where you’re coming from. He is completely dominant in every match-up this format. I am personally not a fan of ehren, I would much rather run a jain. Im currently running 2 wulf/3 celestia/0 foolish/1 garoth and i find its working very well.
I think Gorz is godly in LS, just for the fact that he’ll stop the OTK for the turn and it helps the dark ratio if you’re siding into Twilight.
Do you guys feel that the twilight side (dad, CS, PoC, Goldds*for CS*) is the best way to go or is what Jae said, the monarch side better?
Anyways i completely agree with the rest of your points, and continue to do this.
Lil’Marcus
The piece would have been better if you did not decide to save the superior Lightsworn variant for another article. I understand that since this is a new website you want activity, but you’re already dishing out enough material on a regular basis.
I sincerely hope you take back the horrible misconceptions about Cat Synchro in the conclusionary article of that series. The deck wins because of Cold Wave, Solemn Judgment, Dark Strike Fighter, and one-turn kills involving said cards. It’s capable of -ATTAINING- card advantage, but that’s not why it’s winning. All of the decks have that capability, Cat Synchro is just currently the most explosive deck in a format dominated by inconsistent strategies. My other dissatisfaction with that article was your blatant support for unclean players to support your uninformed argument, which was the opposite of the Jae Kim I used to read; he would execute them with an iron fist and a venom tounge.
Hoping to see it all turn out well. Good luck with the blog, Jae.
Marcus : Gorz is just taking up space in LS. Side deck for gorz = ftw. ( I keep him sided )
2 Aurkus is THE solution in LS along with heavy storm/trunade ( Yes, thats what I run with 1 lyla and it works wonders. ) Also all LS decks should have a small trap line-up. I run main deck 2x troars 1x torrential tribute along with the usual 2 beckoning 1 CCV and it seems to work fine, most of the times you ll end up grabbing one of them. I also side 2 wabokus which works real well vs other LSworns as in terms of forcing out their Honest and vs BW ofc as well as all decks except GBs because of free tag out. Hope this helped a bit. No foolish is bad dont forget it can ditch a Lightsworn for +1 name or grab it with lyla or add some power with wulf.
Whoops I was only thinking of the remove 2 effect. No idea how the other effect slipped my mind.
hm? What?:P
Hey Jae, I proxied together a copy of the main deck you posted on here that you posted for nationals. I am currently trying to make at least one build of the top 5 decks out there you’ve been talking about. So far I have a Lightsworn deck (yours), a copy of Jeff Jone’s SJC Anaheim deck, and a Gladiator Beast deck that was used in the top 32 or so at nats I found on Konami’s site. And so I was just wondering a couple things. In my playtesting, Jeff’s SkillDAD deck wins roughly 75-80% of the time. Of course, I have no idea if that’s just because I’m new to Lightsworn, or if it’s just how the matchup was meant to run. Did you have anything prepared for Dark Synchro variants when you played at nats? even so could you please post your Side and Extra Decks so I could proxy together your entire creation? I was also wondering if since it’s been so much time since Anaheim that the deck I’ve been using has grown obsolete?
To clarify what I said in my first post in sentence one, I meant to say that I’m attempting to proxy at least one copy of all of the top 5 decks out there.
Yeah, I have a plug-in that’s supposed to let you edit posts but I guess it’s not working.
Jones.DaD has a very good g1 matchup versus Lightsworn. 75% sounds about right (maybe 70 with two pros versus one another). It’s the reason I went with 1 sarc/1 MST over other things.
Thanks Jae, but do you think you could maybe give me like a good sample list of what LS uses in the side? If you don’t want to put it up publicly or anything it’d be fine if you perhaps, PMed it to me over the pojo Message Boards (I promise I won’t show anybody). If that’s cool with you my user name is Roxas943. I am currently trying to put together an article myself on pojo and if you could be gracious enough this would help me most indefinitely. Thanks anyways, though.
If you’re running 3x Wulf, Then you should be maxing out foolish. Especially when you’re maxing out Celestia, Lightsworn Angel. Some monster choices that I would suggest would of been.. Sangan, Phantom of Chaos. Since you are playing with CCV. Sangan gives you access to nearly 70% of monsters in you’re deck and Phantom of Chaos is a last option to Judgment Dragon/Lumina/Lyla (To get past that Light Mirror.
do u want to know u lost is becouse your Monster Reborn loser that is why