Anti-Meta Horus (March 2024)

ARCHETYPES AND DECKBUILDING 

"Pure" Horus is an anti-meta beatdown stun deck, designed to counter all the combo heavy midrange decks rampant during this "fire format." Combining both archetypes, these strategies create a powerful beatdown playstyle with easy-to-summon hard-to-kill monsters! 

The HORUS cards are maxxed out for this deck and is composed of 16 cards - 3 Imsety, 1 Hapi, 1 Duamutef, 1 Qebehsenuef, 3 Walls of the Imperial Tomb, 3 Canopic Protector and 3 King's Sarcophagus. 1 Terraforming searches Walls of the Imperial Tomb, making it another starter. 

This DOGMATIKA package is normally what you'd see in stun decks, and it is adopted for this strategy. 3 Nadir Servant, 2 Ecclesia, and 2 Dogmatika Punishment along with it's usual Extra Deck ammunition. 

7 FLOODGATES are maindecked, since they cripple most strategies that are rampant this format, while hardly affecting your Horus cards. These floodgates can be easily exchanged for boardbreakers when forced to go second by your opponent. 

The rest of the deck are STAPLE cards. This strategy opts to go for boardbreakers since it cannot fit critical mass of handtraps to stop the extremely resilient combo decks running around this format. 3 Talents are used since it's extremely good this format with all the monster effects being activated. 3 Fenrir and 3 Lava Golem are used to break boards. 1 Mudora and 1 Keldo are used since this deck discards a lot, and these graveyard shufflers hardcounter the graveyard dependent fire decks using Promethean Princess, Linkriboh and level 1 Snake-Eyes cards. 1 Called By the Grave is used to counter the multitude of handtraps running around this format. 

42 cards are used to ensure this strategy is as consistent and compact as possible while reducing the chance of drawing into bricks/garnets.

COMBOS AND GAMEPLAN 

Anti-Meta Horus' gameplan is to overwhelm your opponent with beefy difficult-to-remove beatsticks while floodgating/interrupting/negating your opponent's plays. There is no mainline "combo" to this deck - the gameplay is mostly dependent on situational decisions done by the pilot. 

First, you break your opponent's board, which is done by using any of the 12 boardbreakers in the deck. Also, Horus cards inherently break boards in-engine, whether its through the battlephase with King's Sarcophagus when attacking with any Horus monster. Nadir Servant also can use the variety of Extra Deck monster ammunition for a toolbox of removal effects, like N'tss destruction and Malong's bounce. 

Second, you establish your board and gamestate. The Horus cards fill the graveyard, set Canopic Protector for limitless summons, and maybe set up negates in the form of Hope Harbinger or Photon Lord (now affordable in the TCG thanks to Battles of Legend: Chapter 1!)

If Canopic Protector is set up on your field, you can use all your Horus monsters to make Rank 8 plays or Link plays with I:P + S:P to bring all your Horus monsters in the GY. Canopic Protector will summon them all from the GY anyways when your opponent activates any monster effect! 

From that set-up, you should be able to play a decent and powerful game of Yugioh with Anti-Meta Horus. Horus cards are surprisingly and ridiculously hard to remove easily due to their effects triggering whenever a card on the field is removed by card effect! Imsety sends a card to the GY, Qebehsenuef protects from targeting, Hapi recovers 2 from Banishment/GY, and Duamutef draws up to 5 cards! King's Sarcophagus protects Horus monsters from destruction unless they are targeted, so cards like Mirrorjade, Raigeki and Lightning Storm don't do much. Finally, Canopic Protector basically is "soul charge" for Horus, summoning Horus monsters everytime your opponent does anything! 

This deck is an anti-meta deck designed to counter the handtrap-heavy meta that is rampant in the TCG right now - and both Dogmatika and Horus strategies shrug off almost every handtrap thown at them. Impermanence, Effect Veiler, Ghost Belle, Nibiru and Droll all get easily dealt with if you sequence your cards right. The exception to this is the ever present Ash Blossom, which if well-timed may stop certain crucial plays. 

GENERAL TIPS

• This strategy maindecks 12 boardbreaking cards (3 Lava Golem, 3 Kashtira Fenrir, 3 Talents, 3 Nadir Servant). That number can be brought up to 19 by siding out all the floodgates in the deck for 3 Evenly Matched, 3 Thrust, and 1 Cosmic Cyclone. This will almost certainly guarantee you to break your opponent's board so you can set up your Horus cards during the crackback. 
• Canopic Protector is Horus' most powerful card, since it can summon all the Horus monsters from the GY as this deck's "soul charge!" Try to get this incredible card set up! 
•  When your Horus monster's effects trigger, try to leave Imsety/Qebehsenuef as last in the chain to chainblock Hapi/Duamutuf so your opponent cannot Ash Blossom or Ghost Belle their effects!
• If you have a floodgate set up along with Canopic Protector with a packed GY, you're usually going to win the game due to your endless summons while your opponent cannot do much. 
• Activate "The Zombie Vampire's" effect to set up your GY with Horus monsters while giving you an S:P Little Knight with a double banish!
   
  Want to see the deck in action? Scroll to the very bottom for the Youtube video!

CONCLUDING REMARKS