Starter Box Constructed

Welcome back to my little series where I go over a bunch of very old, very small OCG constructed formats! Last time, we went over the Starter Box's theatrical release, and this time we go over... The Starter Box's regular release!

So, what's different? Five cards! According to the wiki:

• The cards included differed between the theatrical and retail releases contained: The theatrical release exclusively included "Aqua Madoor", "Trial of Nightmare", "The 13th Grave", "Dark King of the Abyss", and "Turtle Tiger"; the retail release instead contained "Genin", "Kageningen", "Rock Ogre Grotto #2", "King Fog", and "Spiked Snail".

You'll notice one big hitter off the bat: Aqua Madoor is gone! One of the two only good monsters this format just kinda went poof, and left a terrible card to fill the vacuum. The same can be said for the other cards we included in our previous deck: Dark King, Trial, and 13th Grave are all gone... Although not all of the replacements are unusable. Spiked Snail and Rock Orge Grotto both sneak into this decklist, but not because they have high ATK values, or indeed make this format any better whatsoever!

So the bad news is that we're still cowering in fear of Blue-Eyes, and aside from that, high DEF monsters rule the coop. The good news is that all these high DEF monsters are nothing compared to the might of Flame Swordsman's 1800 ATK, meaning that Poly-based strategies are slightly more viable now! Viable enough to include in this decklist, at least, since the remaining monsters do not help us defend well at all, so why not include Flame Swordsman's mediocre fusion materials?

So thus goes our monster list: Blue-Eyes, Flame Swordsman materials, and every single monster with high DEF, with Green Phantom King being the best here at 1600, Ancient Tree coming close at 1500, Rock Orge Grotto and Fiend Reflection at a passable 1400, Spike Snail at a mediocre 1300, and Ray & Temparature taking up our absolute dreg spot at 1000, useful only for chump blocking.

The sideboard is slightly interesting this time because, aside from the usual Capture Jar, Remove Trap, Raigeki, and Two-Pronged meta, there exists a little subgame you can play between Flame Swordsman and Green Phantom King. GPK has got himself 1600 DEF, so increasing it by 200 with the effect of Forest brings it to 1800, meaning Flame Swordsman can't beat over it. But if you put Sogen on the field instead, the opponent's field spell goes away, and you get a boost to Flame Swordsman to boot. So if your opponent is ever crafty and sides in Forests, you can side in Sogens to counter this stragetgy. However, you're not likely to have the Swordsman, and your opponent is even less likely to both being running a bad field spell and have the right card to use... So it's all really just for fun. (Isn't this all supposed to be for fun?)

Finally, you might have noticed Celtic Guardian over there in the sidedeck. What's up with him? At 1400 ATK, he's the second-highest ATK normal monster here, but still generally unable to beat over the set's defenders. Still, he's better than the Spiked Snails and Rays & Temparatures. Howeverm he's not strictly part of the set, per se; he was given out as a preorder bonus for buying the Starter Box early. Do you consider this preorder bonus card to be part of the set or not? If yes, sub him in over those aforementioned monsters. If you don't, leave him be. You can even play the Field Spell Game between him and the Ancient Tree, if you're so inclined.

Otherwise, all my notes from the last starter box still apply. Have fun (or don't), maybe get yourself a cool fusion summon, and play some truly heinous card games!