Domain Monarchs - November 2020

I used to be a big fan of this archetype, having invested a lot of time and love into building my own version for a good couple of years, then stopped playing it during late 2018. That was the point where I realized that, even at full power, nothing but new support could ever bring the king of bricks back to their former glory; the meta is way faster, way more consistent, and with cards like Lightning Storm, Dark Ruler No More and Forbidden Droplet becoming the new powerful staples along Ash Blossom and Infinite Impermanence (which already gave Monarch players a pretty hard time to deal with), I'm confident that Domain Monarchs have been reduced to an archetype to play with, for fun, against your friends. That being said, since there's honestly no way to take consistent wins against more competitive decks, I decided to focus on making a build that is, at least, as consistent as it can get. You will still brick from time to time, it doesn't have a perfect search engine like other archetypes do, but at least you'll be able to do its main functions and get the feel that you're playing "pure" Monarchs.

 

The main differences between this and my previous build are:

1. Having 3x copies of Pantheism allows for using Pot of Desires as a viable draw-card, without the danger of killing the only copy of the best card in the deck.


2. Same goes for the Prime Monarch, where I have 2x copies this time around, which run better than 1x with an unlimited Pantheism, hence tribute fodder is better.


3. Also, 3x copies of Ehther means easier to search, though running 6x lvl.8 Monarchs instead of 4x makes it slightly more dangerous to brick.


4. Last but not least, running 2x copies of Majesty's instead of Vanity's suits Tenacity better, though I still believe that Tenacity is very occational and not that great of a card. Plus, the lack of Allure of Darkness opens slots for less Dark monsters, which is also a reason why I chose to run Mithra instead of Kaiser Vorse Raider; Pantheism and Desires bring more consistency, meaning you can more easily draw Monarchs and not rely on KVR's double nature.

 

It's worth noting that I choose to main only 1x copy of Stormforth, as opening with even 1x when going first bricks hard. I save the remaining 2x copies for when going 2nd, while the rest of my Side Deck gives plenty of option to counter both monster-spams and spell/trap-spams.