Dies Tormentum

I returned to the game in 2020, after about ten years away, solely because I saw that my favorite card of all time, The Winged Dragon of Ra, had received a ton of excellent support in the form of Rage of Ra. After months and months of delightedly playing The Winged Dragon of Ra the way I had always wanted to, now possessed of all the powers it had in the anime, I started thinking about the other two God cards.

Around that same time, Slifer and Obelisk received their own support cards, especially Slifer, in the King's Court deck. I immediately built a Slifer deck around the Joker's Straight/Thunderspeed Summon combo, and that deck falls short of being a true powerhouse, it works well enough, and is a lot of fun to play. 

So then I turned my attention to Obelisk, but I was slightly at a loss. Ra had the slime monsters, Slifer had the King's Knight crowd, but Obelisk the Tormentor didn't have anything specific to him. His support cards at the time included Fist of Fate, Soul Crossing... and that was it. Still, I had the other two, and I wanted to do something with Obelisk. Slime would have worked for him, and Egyptian God Slime is made in his image, but I was already doing that with Ra, and I wanted each God deck to be distinct from the other, with as little overlap as possible.

I threw Obelisk into a Monarchs build, which kind of-sort of works, but... not like the other two. Monarchs wants to be its own deck, not have to clumsily work alongside an unrelated boss monster and his support cards.

Then the Tin of the Pharaoh's Gods came out, and loosed two new Obelisk support cards on the world: The Breaking Ruin God and Soul Energy MAX!!! (three exclamation points, that's right). These two clearly were designed to work together warp Obelisk onto the field and deliver a positively nuclear payload of field-clearing, graveyard-emptying, player-burning damage. I slotted them into the Monarchs build, and when it worked, it was absolutely glorious. But cutting six cards for two new 3-ofs hurt the deck's consistency considerably. Obelisk needed something more appropriate for his new goals.

When the group of cards that came to be know as the Ishizu cards came along, I rejoiced. Here was a simply perfect home for Obelisk, on both a thematic and synergistic level. Agido and Kelbek (and Zolga) were the very monsters pictured on Soul Crossing. They milled both players to the point where I'd be able to search Obelisk with Soul Energy MAX!!!'s in-Graveyard ability, and The Breaking Ruin God also activated from the Graveyard, nuking the opponent's now-full Graveyard for game. That deck worked perfectly, absolutely perfectly, until the Ishizu cards were all banned or restricted to 1 for their unholy synergy with a certain teary-eyed, fusion-based archetype.

But just as one set of Egyptian-themed monsters was stricken from the game, another arrived on the scene in the form of Horus, in all his Glory (and Protection, and Guidance, and Blessing.)

Imsety, Glory of Horus and his three canopic friends make for an extremely formidable deck all on their own, but there's plenty of room left in the build once you have the whole King's Sarcophagus package slotted in, and I knew just what I wanted to fill that empty space with. The Horus deck made a name for itself pretty quickly, and players have mostly learned how to deal with the very consistent threat it presents (mostly by removing King's Sarcophagus from the field). But throw in Obelisk the Tormentor as a surprise dose of 4000 extra damage (or more, with The Breaking Ruin God's in-Graveyard effect, and you get a deck that is reliable, powerful, and an absolute blast to play. 

Discard Soul Energy MAX!!! to either Imsety, Glory of Horus or King's Sarcophagus, and you'll be able to search Obelisk at will. You can even summon Obelisk as part of this effect, during the Battle Phase, no less, piling on an unexpected attack from an Egyptian God after the servants of Horus are have taken their turn. The ease with which the Horus monsters summon themselves from the Graveyard ensures you'll never run short on tributes for Obelisk, either to summon him in the first place or offer unto him as additional sacrifices for his monster-destroying/Graveyard-emptying/player-burning effect.

Obelisk the Tormentor was considered the strongest of the three Egyptian God Cards at first printing, with his fixed attack points and protection from targeting. He was consequently the least supported in later releases, and therefore the most difficult to build around in the end. With these new Horus monsters, Obelisk finally has a deck worthy of an Egyptian God.

This is the Day of Torment.