Caoimhe

Seto Kaiba’s Magic: The Gathering Deck

Caoimhe ⬥

An increasing number of people close to me are into, have been getting into, or are getting back into Magic: The Gathering. I don’t have a massive reluctance to learning or playing it but there’s a big upfront investment in learning it and I wasn’t particularly motivated to, but I was picking bits of it over time just from conversations with friends and I was on a nostalgia kick for Yu‑Gi‑Oh! recently so eventually I agreed with Caoimhe³ to play iff she made me a commander decker themed around Seto Kaiba.

This Reddit post outlined a basic idea for a deck with Dromar, the Banisher as a commander and other themes that were identified for the deck where: dragons, machine monsters, lads with big axes and the words “raider” or ”kaiser” in their names and big flashy trap cards that fuck up the opponent’s deck because this is first a comic about card games with big dramatic reversals and second a an actual card game. As well as Dromar repping the mandatory Blue-Eyes White Dragon I was keen on having some representation of some other cards I always associate with Kaiba like Crush Card Virus, Lord of D. and XYZ‑Dragon Cannon. I also wanted to have at least a few cards that functioned similar to trap cards or flip effect monsters from Yu‑Gi‑Oh!

Another friend threw out a list of card suggestions, though warned that Dromar was not a particularly good card to build a deck around. I pointed out that that was appropriate seeing as Ol’ Blue Eyes itself is fairly rubbish in practice and I am not intending to enter tournaments here, just play with some friends. I also suggested toning down the amount of cards from her suggestions that involve searching through the opponent’s deck, as doing that constantly sounds miserable for everyone involved in the game, especially when I’m new and wouldn’t really know what to look for.

Caoimhe took all of this and did her best to turn it into a usable deck list. I have no intention of spending a load of money buying cards, I am just going to print off proxies for all of these (the fact that I have a printer has also made me popular amongst my friends who play) and I have had some fun making some Yu‑Gi‑Oh!-styled proxies of the cards for the deck using the YGO Pro card editor, Card Conjurer and the GNU Image Manipulation Project.

Starting with some monster cards, we have Lady of D. as Dragonologist. Originally I was going to use Lord of D. before I discovered the post-transition version of the card.
Steel Hellkite wasn’t actually in the deck Caoimhe put together but I wanted an artefact dragon creature to represent XYZ-Dragon Cannon so one of the other dragons is going to get subbed out.
Blue-Eyes Abyss Dragon as Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. For planeswalkers I decided to use the link card layout.
Dragon Master Knight as Sivitri, Dragon Master. I don’t actually know what the arrows on link monsters mean so just lit up the top and bottom ones to represent planeswalker loyalty abilities.
Blue-Eyes Tyrant Dragon as our commander, Dromar, the Banisher. For the template I decided to use a skill card, which seems to be the closest thing to deck master that was ever implemented outside of the show.
Obelisk the Tormentor as Summon: Bahamut. Yu‑Gi‑Oh! doesn’t have anything resembling the layout of a saga card so this one is more normal. While it may be a dragon card rather than an Egyptian god card that means it does synergise with other parts of the deck and the uniqueness of the saga with a countdown leading up to a big bang feels appropriate for Obelisk.
We have trap cards to represent cards with foretell, with Magic Jammer as Saw It Coming.
For Poison the Cup we have Forbidden Droplet. This is not really a Kaiba card but I love Condemned Darklord and wanted to include her in some form.
A foretell reminder card for the trap cards, covering them up with the back of a Yu‑Gi‑Oh! card.
A similar reminder for morph cards.
Dark Hole as Damn. When I started making these I did monsters first and it seemed natural to put the mana cost of the cards over where the levels would be in a Yu‑Gi‑Oh! monster card, but for spell and trap cards that space is used for the typing so I put the cost in the title instead, more like Magic: The Gathering cards. The inconsistency is frustrating but it also reflects the inconsistency of Yu‑Gi‑Oh! cards themselves. Why is typing for spell and trap cards under the title but in the text box for monsters?
Return of the Dragon Lords as Fearsome Awakening.
Jester’s Cap combines the Crush Card Virus and Saggi the Dark Clown, which Kaiba often used together. I originally used the trap card layout for this but decided to save that just for cards with foretell, as those are going to be the ones played face down and settled on leaving artefacts as normal spell cards.
The Flute of Summoning Dragon as Herald’s Horn.
Smothering Tithe, actually keeping the Magic: The Gathering art because Caoimhe liked the smug anime girl. I had include the Yu‑Gi‑Oh!: The Abridged Series joke in here somewhere.
The Duellist Kingdom prize money card for a treasure token for Smothering Tithe.
Basic island suggested by a friend as fitting with Kaiba’s aesthetics as a field card.
And a plains.
And a swamp.
And a card that won’t actually be used.

I might make some more if any particularly cute or fitting ideas strike me, but I don’t intend to do the entire deck. Trying to do a full hundred cards would quickly go from fun to tedious.

And now I need to actually play a game.