Metagame Impact #2 – Structure Deck: Lair Of Darkness

On April 20, 2018 by Soner Güngör

Hey Yu-Gi-Oh community,

todays article is co-written again. This time it’s been written by Steffen ”Eichelo”  Eichelberger and Nicolas Vera.

In this article we are going to discuss the new structure deck “Lair of darkness”, which will be released April 20th. We want to talk about the new cards that this structure includes, as well as how they would impact the current format.

Also this new structure deck includes some interesting reprints, that help players have easy access to cards like: Vanity’s Fiend, Tour Guide from Underworld, Absolute King Back Jack, Allure of Darkness, Foolish Burial Goods, and all virus cards.

First, let’s go over some of the new cards this structure deck contains:

Darkest Diabolos, Lord of the Lair:

Your opponent cannot Tribute this card, also they cannot target it with card effects. You can only use each of the following effects of “Darkest Diabolos, Lord of the Lair” once per turn.
● If a DARK monster(s) you control is Tributed: You can Special Summon this card from the GY (if it was there when that monster was Tributed) or hand (even if not).
● You can Tribute 1 DARK monster; your opponent places 1 card from their hand on either the top or bottom of their Deck.

Lilith, Lady of Lament:

The original ATK of this Normal Summoned card becomes 1000. (Quick Effect): You can Tribute 1 DARK monster; reveal 3 Normal Traps from your Deck, your opponent randomly picks 1 for you to Set to your field, and you shuffle the rest back into your Deck. You can only use this effect of “Lilith, Lady of Lament” once per turn.

Ahrima, the Wicked Warden

You can discard this card; add 1 “Lair of Darkness” from your Deck to your hand. You can Tribute 1 DARK monster; draw 1 card, but if you Tributed a DARK monster other than this card, you can add 1 DARK monster with 2000 or more DEF from your Deck to your hand instead. You can only use this effect of “Ahrima, the Wicked Warden” once per turn.

Ahrima, the Wicked Warden can tribute a dark monster to draw a card.
With Lair of Darkness, every Monster on the Field is a Dark Monster so you can tribute any Monster on either side of the Field. Also, against cards like Master Peace or Odd-Eyes Vortex Dragon,
it works like a Kaiju and helps you to out monsters.

Lair of Darkness:

All face-up monsters on the field become DARK. Once per turn, if you would Tribute a monster(s) to activate a card or effect, you can Tribute 1 DARK monster your opponent controls as if you controlled it. Once per turn, during the End Phase: Special Summon as many “Shadow Tokens” (Fiend/DARK/Level 3/ATK 1000/DEF 1000) as possible to the turn player’s field in Defense Position, up to the number of monsters that were Tributed this turn while this card was face-up on the field.

And this brand new virus card which seems amazing:

Grinning Grave Virus:

“Tribute 1 DARK monster with 3000 or less ATK; your opponent destroys 1 card in their hand and/or Deck for every 500 ATK the Tributed monster had on the field, also if you Tributed a monster with 2000 or more ATK, check all cards your opponent draws until the end of their 3rd turn after this card’s activation, and destroy all monsters among them. Cards destroyed and sent to the GY by this card’s effect cannot activate their effects during the turn they were destroyed”.

With Grinning Grave Virus, just by tributing one dark 2500 monster you can potentially destroy all your opponents hand during their first turn and as we know, this is a powerful strategy. Just like droll and lock bird + trickstar reincarnation or wind up hunter + carrier. The only counter here is – the opponent can decide if they will destroy cards from their hand, or from their deck.  We have easy access to this card with the effect of Lilith, Lady of Lament and also we can tribute one opponent’s monster thanks to the effect of Lair of Darkness. Lair of Darkness is searchable with cards like terraforming or another new card from the structure deck. like Ahrima, the Wicked Warden.

Grinning Grave Virus prevents your opponent using the effects of the destroyed cards.
The card says the effects of the cards, destroyed by this effect cannot be used this turn.
Your opponent can’t trigger cards with powerful graveyard effects such as: Cir,Malebranche of the Burning Abyss or Kozmo Dark Eclipser.


The structure deck cards could lead to some new strategies being played and because we don’t have any ban list yet, this could give the current metagame a chance to change. We just have to figure out how we can use these cards or what we can combine them with. This may give the deck a chance to compete with the top tier decks such as Pendulum Magician or True Draco.

But which deck will benefit from the new cards the most? Will it be relevant in the meta?

Potentially, a deck that could be a powerhouse with the new cards is Infernoids!
Infernoids will have a great push with the new field Spell “Lair of Darkness” because you can tribute your opponents Monsters to trigger your Infernoid-effects to negate Spell/Trap/Monster-effects or banish cards from your opponents graveyard.
Also you can easily Special summon Darkest Diabolos, Lord of the Lair like every time because you have so much opportunity to tribute a Dark Monster when Lair of Darkness is activated.
The only downside is, the deck still can brick a lot. If you draw only Infernoids, you can’t do that much.
Also Handtraps are really strong against the Deck, Ash blossom and joyous springs hurts it a lot.
Against Ash blossom, you can play “Called by the grave”, a card which we discussed in our last article.

What do you think about the new Structure Deck?
Do you think it will have impact on the current format?
Tell us your opinion in the comments.

Thanks for reading this article and be sure to come back soon for our next article!