Photo Credit: Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH

Hi all, I am here to talk to you about the new Infernoid monsters being released in the upcoming set, Secrets of Eternity.

The Monsters
All the monsters are special summon monsters, and can be special summoned from hand or grave by banishing either 1, 2, or 3 other Infernoid monsters from your hand or grave, whilst the sum of the levels and ranks of monsters you control are less than 8.

Rather than listing out all their effects and stats, you can read them all  here:http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Infernoid

A Few Points to Note
They are summoned inherently, so cannot be responded to by Maxx “C” or Vanity’s Emptiness, but can be hit by Thunder King Rai-Oh or Black Horn of Heaven.

They can each be summoned and use their effects as many times as copies you summon.
They can deal with almost any threat between them, without having to access the extra deck
They work just as well in the grave as they do the hand, so the theme can make good use of milling support and discard traps.

They are all fire attribute and fiend type, so can make use of any support for those. (The most obvious being blaster). Whilst not being dark type means they can’t use all of the dark support available, it means they aren’t affected the popular side card Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror

The monsters themselves aren’t that interesting. They don’t have any exciting combos due to their various summoning costs and restrictions, but they all have solid, advantage gaining effects. The on theme support is also not very exciting. It is all on the same page as the monsters. The only potentially relevant support is Void Launch, but it looks too slow to be competitive, requiring a turn to set and use.

How Can You Build a Deck With Them?
Clearly, summoning monsters by banishing multiple cards at a time is not going to win many games. It looks like the best support for the Infernoid monsters is going to be a cards which mill, given there aren’t that way of sending specific high-level fire or fiend monsters to the grave, so here are some potential cards to use (Keep in mind these can be used exclusively or together):

Lightsworn monsters. The obvious pros are the use of Solar Recharge and Charge of the Light Brigade. However the monsters themselves don’t offer much and mill very slowly, also, packing enough of a lightsworn engine to run Solar Recharge is going to lead to inconsistencies.

Tour Guide From the Underworld and a Burning Abyss engine. Tour guide is now classed as a miller as well as everything else she does, due to easy Dante, Traveler of the Burning Abyss access. Tour guide acts as a self-replacing mill 3 and plus one for a normal summon, as well as giving extra options depending on what you include in your extra. However, it requires a large engine to run, and is hurt by Vanity’s Emptiness and Maxx “C” that an Infernoid deck may be otherwise unaffected by. Also, wanting to make use of Dante as an opener can leave you vulnerable to Shadoll Fusion.

Card Trooper. Cardtrooper is a standalone that is virtually impossible to stop milling 3 without giving a away a minus. However a resolved Card Trooper is far less impressive than a resolved Tour guide, which gives far more advantage from single normal summon, and the same number of mills, despite being easier to stop.

Kuribandit as another powerful standalone, that is somewhere between trooper and Tour Guide on the risk vs reward scale, offering more mills at a slower pace.

Reasoning and Monster Gate. Reasoning and Monster Gate are by far the most exciting and abusable options for the deck. Given the on theme Infernoid monsters cannot be normal summoned, Reasoning and Monster Gate ignores them when excavating, meaning you can mill a whole bunch of them with one spell. You can do this very regularly if you include only one or two normal summonable monsters. This should then comfortably enough resources to win the game, either on the that turn, or on the following turns. The question then becomes which monsters to include in the deck. The most obvious option is Card Trooper, since it loses nothing to being special summoned, and doesn’t require other monsters to be played in the deck to get its full benefits. If anyone was still playing back in the days of Diamond Dude Turbo, they might remember abusing cards like Jinzo off of these spell cards so it might be worth looking there for inspiration as well.

I think this deck’s best shot at being competitive will be setting it up to abuse Reasoning and Monster Gate, so the first version I would try would include:

• 3 of each Infernoid monster
• 2 Card Trooper
• Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos
• 3 Reasoning and 1 Monster Gate
• Discard Traps
• Backrow removal
• Deck thinning cards, such as Reckless Greed, Upstart Goblin, and maybe even Pot of Duality

However, it will certainly be possible to explore the deck in many other ways. Give it a try and see what you can come up with!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Paine is a Math major at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Tom has been a member of United Gosus since 2014, as a Player Intern. For more information about Tom, check out his profile here: http://www.unitedgosus.com/people/tom-paine/