Ancient Warriors NR Format

Presentation of my Ancient Warrios deck that I built in the Normal/Rare Master Duel format. This deck is interesting because you have a very large amount of Ancient Warriors cards available to use but you don't have the best play enablers that are used in a competitive version of the deck in the card game so you explore other cool aspects of the Ancient Warriors archetype to build plays.

//////////////////////////////////////////Explanation of the "Ancient Warriors" ("AW") cards:

One way to fix most of the effects of "Ancient Warriors" Monsters is to separate them by their Attributes because the Monsters that have the same Attribute share some effects that have the same activation condition or have the same objective as for example all WATER Monsters have an Ignition effect of adding an "AW" Card to the hand, what differs is whether it will add from the Deck or GY to the hand and whether it will be Monster or Spell/Trap. And they also have an Opponent Interaction effect that activates whenever you use another "Ancient Warriors" Monster's effect.

Basically the "Ancient Warriors" WATER Monsters send Continuous Spell/Trap to the GY to add an "Ancient Warriors" Continuous Spell/Trap to the hand, with Graceful Zhou Gong adding from the Deck and Eccentric Lu Jing adding from the GY. You can only use Eccentric Lu Jing's effect if you first have a legal target in the GY which means that among the Normal Summons of the deck it is the one that most needs you to have already made other plays before you can send a Continuous Spell/Trap that you control for the GY.
They have an interaction effect that activates when you use another "AW" Monster's effect, with Graceful Zhou Gong being a Monster Negate until end of turn as an Infinite Impermanence and Eccentric Lu Jing a Spell/Trap Pop like a Mystical Space Typhoon.

Deceptive Jia Wen is from the FIRE Attribute and has a simple Ignition effect on the field of sending a Continuous Spell/Trap to the GY and Halve ATK of two Monsters on the field which works for you to be able to play the Spells/Traps of "Ancient Warriors" to the GY and trigger their good effects. The second effect depends on an opponent's card being destroyed and allows you to add any "Ancient Warriors" Card from the GY to the hand.

Ingenious Zhuge Kong is the last of the Level 4 "Ancient Warriors" available in the Format and has WIND Attribute and is the best extender avaliable because whenever added to the hand by the effect of an "AW" card you can Special Summon it to the field. And on the field he is an Omni Negate of Spell/Trap Activation by sending an "Ancient Warriors" Continuous Spell/Trap to the GY. He is also an Omni Negate from Monster Effect however you need to control "Virtuous Liu Xuan" which doesn't exist in Normal/Rare Format.

Fearsome Zhang Yuan is from FIRE Attribute and is basically a Battle Phase Hand Trap for "Ancient Warriors" monsters entering the field in the Damage Step taking 1000ATK from the opponent's monster and he will still destroy an opponent's card when he sees his a card being destroyed. An excellent card in this format for the ease of cleaning multiple opponent cards at once in addition to protecting your OTHERS "Ancient Warriors" from being destroyed by battle.

Valiant Zhang De has WIND Attribute and is practically the Boss Monster from "Ancient Warriors" available in N/R Format. It is Special Summoned from the hand if you control 2 or more "Ancient Warriors" and gains 300ATK for each opponent's monster during your turn and if your opponent controls more monsters than you it can make up to 2 Attacks in the Battle Phase.
Loyal Guan Yun is what we can call Normal/Rare Format Pseudo-Pankratops because it only enters the field by Special Summon from the hand if only the opponent controls Monsters and its interaction effect can only be used if your opponent controls more monsters than you. He, like the Fearsome Zhang Yuan, protects his OTHERS "Ancient Warriors" monsters, only in this case he protects them from card effect targets. It gets a lot worse if you're going first or draw it when you already have an established field but it's still possible to Special Summon it out of hand with Three Visits.

Three Visits is the ROTA of "Ancient Warriors" Monsters in Normal/Rare format. All you have to do is Normal or Special any "Ancient Warriors" to trigger its effect and add an "AW" Monster with a different name from the Deck to the hand. This pairs well with the Ingenious Zhuge Kong that Special Summons. Also when it is sent from the s/t zone to the GY you can Special Summon an "Ancient Warriors" from your hand functioning as a Double Extender. It only stays on the field for 2 Standby Phase after activation which means you always want to send it to the GY during the same turn of its activation so you don't lose card advantage and for that we have the "Ancient Warriors" Level Monsters 4 to perform this function.
Borrowing of Arrows has a simple field interaction effect similar to Deceptive Jia Wen's of cutting ATK in half. But its main effect is when sent to the GY and you must control 2 "Ancient Warriors" of DIFFERENT ATTRIBUTES to activate it which is to put 1 "AW" Continuous Spell/Trap from Hand or Deck Face-Up on the Field. As you first need to have 2 "AW" of different Attributes on the field it needs you to establish a setup prior to its activation to work but the deck is competent in leaving this effect alive.
East-by-South Winds is the "Ancient Warriors" Continuous Spell which makes the deck competitive in N/R Format because "Ancient Warriors" Monsters are cards that you will rarely use as an Extra Deck Monster material since the LINK-2 Double Dragon Lords is not available and you need to maintain field presence to control the match. So it will be East-by-South Winds that will do the job of you being able to clear any threat from the opponent's field because it basically has no effect on the field and yes you just want to send it from the s/t zone to the GY and with that it will make your opponent unable to respond to the activation of the effects of your "Ancient Warriors" Monsters and they even gain an additional effect during the Battle Phase whenever declaring an Attack will destroy an Opponent's card without targeting. With that you take control of the game and put the opponent in Time because on your next turn you will most likely have lethal damage on the table to win the duel.
The Trap Defense of Changban protects your monsters from Spells/Traps during the opponent's Battle Phase until the end of the Damage Step so you avoid taking cards such as Wall of Disruption which is very annoying in this format. It also works as a Negate Attack as the opponent will not be able to target your "AW" Monsters for Attacks and generally you will only have them as an attack target option. And in GY she can banish herself when the opponent declares an Attack to Special Summon an "Ancient Warriors" straight from the Deck. The only detail is that you can only use one of the effects per turn, but it's simple for you to make combos that can send the Defense of Changban to the GY on your turn to use the GY effect on the opponent's turn.

It is because of interaction effects like the ones presented above that "Ancient Warriors" Cards gain a lot of value when you go second for being able to deal with the cards that the opponent has on the field via the engine. So it's always recommended to go second with this deck to get the most potential out of your cards, plus some of them have effects that are only useful if your opponent controls Monsters like Loyal Guan Yun or depends on you going to the Battle Phase to do something like Halve the opponent's monster's ATK with Borrowing of Arrows, enter by Special Summon and lower the opponent's monster's ATK by 1000 with Fearsome Zhang Yuan, be able to attack twice each Battle Phase with Valiant Zhang De, or Prevent that the opponent activates Spell/Traps eff until the end of the Damage Step with the Defense of Changban or the best of all available options which is East-by-South Winds which prevents the opponent from responding to their effects from "AW" monsters besides them destroy a card without targeting each time they declare an Attack.

//////////////////////////////////////////Comments:

One of the most common plays is using Three Visits to add Ingenious Zhuge Kong to the hand that will be Special Summoned.

Ingenious Zhuge Kong can negate the activation of his own Spells/Traps that you activate on the field and that way you can even on turn 1 make great plays that wouldn't be possible involving other Archetype Monsters.
One of the best moves in the deck is using Borrowing of Arrows to place the Trap Defense of Chagban Face-Up. And then you send the Trap to the GY with the Eccentric Lu Jing or Graceful Zhou Gong so that it becomes a Special Summon from the Deck on the opponent's turn which is usually the "Hand Trap" Fearsome Zhang Yuan because it protects from destruction per battle.
An example of application of these cards is you activated Three Visits and Normal Summoned Eccentric Lu Jing and added Ingenious Zhuge Kong to the hand that entered the field and then you activate Borrowing of Arrows and with that you can negate its activation with the Ingenious Zhuge Kong when sending the Three Visits to the GY and with that trigger the effect of Borrowing of Arrows to put the Defense of Changban face-up on the field and then use the effect of the Eccentric Lu Jing to send the Defense of Changban to the GY and add the Three Visits from Follow Up and leave the Trap in the GY to Special Summon an "AW" from the Deck on your opponent's turn when declaring an Attack on your monsters.

Fearsome Zhang Yuan's hand trap effect becomes a pop in the damage step if your monster destroys the opponent's and your opponent won't be able to chain set cards it has from not being in the Battle Step. In addition to its protection effect from the other "AW" Monsters against destruction by battle it makes its field presence very solid.

Link Apple and Dogmatika Punishment are on the decklist because you don't care about the Extra Deck so their usage doesn't conflict with the deck. Link Apple is basically an Upstart Goblin of the N/R format if you don't banish a LINK Monster with its effect in hand and I don't even use LINK Monsters in the Extra Deck to prevent it from activating the Special Summon effect instead of drawing cards. Punishment destroys any monster on the field no matter its ATK and if it is a monster with 1700ATK or less you can send the Fossil Machine Skull Wagon to the GY which is a Spell/Trap Pop. On the other hand, Fog Blade has very good applications in this deck since you won't always go second so it's a good interaction card to set going first and it's a Continuous Trap which has synergy with the Level 4 "Ancient Warriors" Monsters that can send it to the GY to activate its effects. Also in specific cases you can use the Fog Blade on your own monsters to prevent your opponent from targeting them for Attacks ensuring they survive the Battle Phase. And it is not Hard Once Per Turn so if you have 2 Fog Blade set you can use them in the same turn and negate monster effects twice.

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