Supreme King [Trinity Format | October '23]

I've designed quite a few decks that can attempt to use Z-ARC in some capacity and thanks to the cards introduced in AGOV, you only technically need to run Gate Magician and Soul of the Supreme Celestial King in the Main Deck if you want to include it. That said, since it's still Pendulum and additionally it's an anime protagonist's deck, it has plenty of cards to support finding those same pieces and expanding on them further without the need of relying on cards outside of the engine. So, enhancing the PendMa engine further (though I consider this to be horizontal in terms of overall power and not necessarily better than it), witness, Z-ARC!

- Difficulty -
★★★★☆
Despite this being a midrange deck, your 4k/4k boss monster doesn't actually do anything. The original Z-ARC is banned at the time of writing this but a 4k/4k that can continually summon itself and gain protections whilst enhancing the effects of our cards isn't awful. It just makes it so that we don't have to play protect the castle at all. We can just focus on winning the game and navigating the board. Due to the fact that the wincon doesn't do much besides be a large body then, most of the difficulty comes from it being a pendulum deck and needing to make decisions between whether or not certain cards are better as scales or as summons that turn. Lastly, you'll need to have a Supreme King Gate occupying the Pend Zone sometimes or dual Magician Scales at others to proc some of the most impactful effects in this deck. Don't you just love Pendulum in Highlander?

 - Consistency -
★★★☆☆
Most hands you should setup a Pendulum Magician play or Z-ARC; however, it's worth pointing out that since we're not on Joker our consistency is decreased by a small margin when it comes to specifically utitlizing the Odd-Eyes cards by themselves. If you were to update the strategy, I would strongly recommend paying the 1p for Performapal Skullcrobat Joker and either dropping a Duelist Alliance or going up to 50.

- Sackiness -
★☆☆☆☆
Pendulum Call is the only real luck sacking card here. Everything else we do is literally setup. Though, we're technically on 3 copies of Pendulum Call and one way to loop it from the GY so... eh. If original Z-ARC wasn't banned this deck would sack quite a bit through resummoning it over and over.

- Viability -
★★☆☆☆
I don't think in a truly competitive environment Pendulum could ever be terribly viable, especially with the open decklists now; however, the list can take wins against complacent opponents. Furthermore, Pendulum Call and Sky Iris will protect our scales and the non-Magician engines don't actually need to Pendulum Summon at all to be effective, they just need to be on field.

Your standard play with Darkwurm/Gate Magician will just exactly copy the TCG counterpart. Scale Gate Magician and then scale Gate Zero. When you Pendulum Summon, search the Trap. Alternatively, if you already opened Gate Magician, then just scale a Gate. Use Gate Magician's effect in hand by sending Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon to the GY and summon it for essentially free then search the Trap. The Fusion Materials for the traps include any Dragons who meet the adequate requirements for the Fusion Summon; however, we'll tend to banish the Dimension Dragons themselves just to guarantee that the Z-ARC drops with its effects live. In the event we want to keep one in our Extra Deck, then we can banish an alternative Dragon and just have Harmonizing Magician or Baldrake banish the Magician whose names are always treated as those cards. A negated Arcray doesn't matter much either since we'll just use the float effect and resummon it whenever we desire. And yes, Supreme King Gate Magician is a "Supreme King," "Supreme King Gate," and a "Magician" Pendulum Monster. The Trap allows us to summon Odd-Eyes Arcray Dragon who is our stand-in for Z-ARC. As its name is always treated as Z-ARC, we can use it for all relevant effects but due to this as well, it means we can play it as an Unbound card under the Trinity ruleset.

My Pendulum decks usually aim to be flashy but as we're playing a midrange deck with very minimal Normal Monsters, the flashiest plays we can do are regulated to the following:

• Performapal Odd-Eyes Dissolver: Bait the last attack, prevent the destruction, the have 2 monsters towards Exceed the Pendulum or start your turn with a Fusion Summon of Starving Venom Fusion Dragon.
• Supreme King Dragon Lightwurm: Chronograph Sorcerer, Exceed the Pendulum, Supreme King Dragon Odd-Eyes, and Wings of Light (with Z-ARC on Field) all can enable Lightwurm to quick-synchro into cards like Supreme King Dragon Clear Wing and Supreme King Dragon Dark Rebellion. Or just go into our full roster of Synchro 8s on our own turn.

Since the engines are virtually independent and don't rely on much to get going, you can technically get away with running more standard interaction than you might be used to running with a Pendulum deck, just be mindful that your ceiling and protections aren't the greatest depending on circumstances you either make for yourself or are just simply unlucky enough to draw into.

45 Card Deck = 3 Points with 3p used.
1p Wisdom-Eye Magician (Extra Copy)
1p Duelist Alliance (Extra Copy)
.5p Pendulum Call
.5p Draco Berserker of the Tenyi

Have fun. This engine is honestly really neat and Exceed the Pendulum while being one of the cooler Pendulum Link cards in history, has like... so few practical applications that it makes me excited to see what on-summon Pendulum Monsters we'll be getting in the future.