Ice Barrier

~~Ice Barrier~~

Ice barriers have long been an extremely weak archetype with extremely good cards in it. Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier has been on and off the banlist since she 2010, now finally being at 3 copies.  Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier and Dewloren, Tiger King of the Ice Barrier have both seen time on the list, and the archetype has a non-once per turn ROTA in Medallion of the Ice Barrier. Despite this, the deck has historically been really, really bad, and it wasn't until the most recent wave of support in Battles of Legend: Terminal Revenge that the deck would become actually playable. 

~~STANDARD COMBO LINE~~

Normal Revealer of the Ice Barrier, activate effect.
Special Hexa Spirit of the Ice Barrier from deck, Hexa send Mirror Mage of the Ice Barrier.
Mirror Mage effect in grave, grab Speaker for the Ice Barriers.
Summon Speaker since you control an Ice Barrier.
XYZ Bahamut Shark  using Revealer and Speaker, activate effect
Summon Toadally Awesome (Summon 5, protected from Nibiru, the Primal Being)
Link summon Marincess Coral Anemone using Hexa and Bahamut Shark
Coral Anemone effect to summon Mirror Mage from GY
Mirror Mage effect tributing Coral Anemone, generate 3 Ice Barrier tokens.
IF YOU HAVE Georgius, Swordman of the Ice Barrier IN HAND, SUMMON HIM HERE. SUMMON REVEALER FROM GY USING HIS EFFECT, SYNCHRO 10 INTO Lancea, Ancestral Dragon of the Ice Mountain
Effect of Speaker in GY to generate another Ice Barrier token.
Synchro 9 into Ravenous Crocodragon Archethys using Coral Dragon and 3 tokens. (Alternatively, if you are going second, you can make Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier here to hand rip and assist with the breaking of a board)
Chain Link 1 Ravenous, Chain link 2 Coral Dragon to draw 4.
IF you drew into Icejade Ran Aegirine+ 1 water, use effect of Ran Aegirine to summon herself+Token
Synchro 10 into Icejade Gymir Aegirine if you have already summoned Lancea, if not, summon Lancea.

~~During Opponent's Turn~~

Twice per turn, if your opponent special summons a monster, Lancea can summon an Ice Barrier from Hand, Grave or Deck.  It also lets you change the battle position of an opponents monster when you do, which is quite useful against Tenpai.
General Raiho of the Ice Barrier forces your opponent to discard to resolve monster effects activated on the field. This includes effects that tribute the monster activating the effect. If they don't discard, the don't get the effect. This can be beneficial, but it also lets Yubel stay on field if they don't tribute another monster.
Warlock of the Ice Barrier is Anti-Spell Fragrance. Use it as you would that card.*
Georgius, Swordman of the Ice Barrier prevents your opponent from activating monster effects in the GY. You can get a lot of use out of the Georgious summon by getting Warlock in grave before summoning Georgious, as Georgious summons an IB monster from GY, thus getting you 2 floodgates for the price of 1.
Spellbreaker of the Ice Barrier just blanket prevents the activation of spells, so long as it remains on field. Quite useful against Runick variants, however, it also locks you out. I have it in the side deck currently.
Speaker for the Ice Barrier prevents your opponent's monsters from changing from defense position. Little to no benefit outside of specific matchups.*
Revealer of the Ice Barrier prevents your opponent from tribute summoning. Little to no benefit outside of specific matchups.*
Hexa Spirit of the Ice Barrier drops opponent's Atk/Def by 500. Little to no benefit outside of specific matchups.*
*These require you to control another Ice Barrier monster. I typically summon Raiho or Georgious first to ensure the others will be active.

Icejade Gymr Aegirine lets you protect your monsters from destruction/banish by card effect, which is IMMENSELY useful in a lot of matchups. This is a quick effect, BUT if you chain it to an opponent's card effect, it lets you banish the card you chained it to. Which means that Field Spells/Continuous Spells will NOT resolve if you chain it to the activation of those effects, as they will no longer be on field. 

~~Techs~~

Cartorhyn the Hidden Gem of the Seafront is a monster that provides an extra normal summon of a Water or Earth monster by discarding itself. This can be QUITE useful for extending past Nibiru, depending how you open. It being a rock can also be very useful if going second, as you synchro 8 into Adamancipator Risen - Dragite, and use it's effect to excavate 5. If you sided in Nibiru as well, this gives you a pretty high chance (assuming you didn't draw either Nib or Cart in your opening hand/turn draw, or have additional draws off of Pot or Mulcharmy, a base chance of 17% to hit one on the first excavate, with a total chance of 64%) of hitting a Rock monster for Dragite's effect to bounce, which can be quite useful.

Pot of Desires  is obviously quite useful as a draw card, particularly if going second. Swordsoul Supreme Sovereign - Chengying gets a lot of benefit off of the Banish 10, with your combo naturally banishing at least one card as well, it gives you a 4100 beatstick to help push for game with against weakened opponent's monsters (-1100 Atk/Def). It doesn't NEED to be ran, as the deck doesn't struggle with draw power whatsoever (having a combo that draws 4 naturally can make it redundant). 

White Aura Whale is a boardwipe. I don't really think I need to explain it. You can opt into running Crystron Quandax to quick effect synchro into it during your opponent's turn and prevent them from setting up board presence. 

vs. Fiendsmith or Tenpai Going First- You can play Ice Barrier, Necroworld Banshee, Tidal, Dragon Ruler of Waterfalls, and Zombie World in order to stop your opponent from being able to use Fiendsmith or Tenpai combos. Dump Ice Barrier to GY somehow (Revealer discard for cost, Crocodragon discard for cost). Activate it's effect to banish itself + send a level 5 or higher water monster (You can set up Raiho or Wayne in GY this way) to add Tidal. Tidal effect to discard itself and 1 water monster (Mirror mage, if you haven't already used it's effect) to send Necroworld Banshee to GY. Banshee effect to add Zombie World. This creates a VERY one sided floodgate at the cost of shutting Toad off if you don't have an aqua in hand, as all your Ice Barrier monsters don't care about Type, whereas the Fiendsmith cards VERY MUCH care about being Fiends and Tenpai REALLY need to be dragons. ~~UPDATE~~ With the new Banlist you no longer really NEED to run Ice Barrier. 


Fishborg Launcher is a really good target to send off of Tidal, Dragon Ruler of Waterfalls. It enables you to turn a board that might just be Toad+Crocodragon pass into Toad + Lancea, which is infinitely better and fits the deck's gameplan more. If you open absolutely cracked or draw insane off of Crocodragon/Coral Dragon, you can potentially end on Lancea + Toad + Gymr + Chengying, which is a bonkers field, assuming you don't eat exactly Dark Ruler No More or Forbidden Droplet send 3. 

Volcanic Scattershot is another good target to send off of Tidal- sort of. It's a card you ONLY side in when going first in game 3 when time's coming up. Burns your opponent for 500. Pretty simple, pretty cheesy. 

~~Strengths~~

The deck has a really strong board going first. Realistically you can end on your boss monster with 9/10 hands, and as long as you're able to get the standard line, you hit Toadally Awesome on your fifth summon, protecting you from Nibiru, the Primal Being. Being able to set up floodgating effects reactively is quite good. Having a non-once per turn ROTA in Medallion of the Ice Barrier can be HUGE at times, as well as having an in-archetype Monster Reborn- Freezing Chains of the Ice Barrier, which can also protect your monsters, assuming you build your board correctly. You also have a good chunk of your deck that is available for hand trap space, due to the amount of starters and searchers you run, but I personally have opted to run a version that is heavy on the gas.

~~Weaknesses~~

The deck has trouble making strong boards through Dimension Shifter and other Macro Cosmos effects, depending on how you open. The card just fully shuts off Mirror Mage, Georgious' effect, Speaker's second effect, and Freezing Chains entirely, while also limiting your recoverability.  It also shuts off Gymr's recursion. That being said, if you open EXACTLY right you can still end on Lancea + Toad, it's just going to hurt a lot more to get there, and you best pray that you don't have to discard one of your floodgates. 

Dark Ruler No More and Forbidden Droplet both kill the deck. Not having access to any effects on field completely destroys your gameplan, and you just kinda lose if that's the case. If you open hand traps and are able to get Lancea's effect off when it gets removed you might have a chance as you can go into either Trishula, however you need that summon to be Chain Link 1. Otherwise, it's a near guaranteed GG, game 2/3 situation. 

You will have a lot of trouble vs Graveyard heavy decks if you opt to summon Raiho before Georgious. Giving them free discards kinda cooks you.

The deck has quite a lot of starters and extenders, but it has quite a few devastating choke points. If you opt for the crocodragon draw 4 line without going into toad, you get absolutely cooked by Infinite Impermanence or Effect Veiler  target Coral Anemone. Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring on Revealer, Mirror Mage or Hexa effects can be horrible if you have a rough opening hand. 

Mulcharmy Fuwalos. That is all. The deck REALLY struggles under Fuwalos, as you're guaranteed to let your opponent go AT LEAST +1 off of it, but the bigger issue is that it forces you to play lower to the ground. Lancea pass is still a decent field, but it's nothing when compared to the amount of handtraps+board breakers played by the current meta deck, as it is still liable to eating an Imperm or Ash. 

~~Summary~~

Modern Ice Barrier is a floodgate deck that diguises itself as a mid-range combo deck. It has so many starters and extenders that you're not likely to brick as hard as some of the other rogue-level decks out there, but being vulnerable to almost every handtrap and boardbreaker being ran in the current format makes playing against decks that run more than 9 slots of non-engine quite difficult. It's a deck that, somewhat uniquely I feel, has a really good matchup into All Gas No Brakes-style decks, as you're able to force them to burn resources at a speed that they might not be able to keep up with. Being able to refresh your hand helps with quite a few decks, as the deck isn't as hungry for engine space as some other rogue decks, so you get to see your non-engine handtraps a lot more (assuming you aren't running Tidal package).