The Haunted Doomland

Strengths;

Guenuinely oppressive cieling / end board between like CotH+Snakehair, ZW+Doomking, Vortex of Time, Varudras, Eldlich+Golden Land Forever!, our collection of Rank 6 Xyz, and our collection of Rank 8 Xyz threats; in around 1/10 games going first, if you recognize it and play it right, you can legitimately negate every single card your opponent has in their hand.

Quite consistent; you've got 3 diffferent engines that are all live over 80% of the time, and then a fourth off-shoot line that is live 33% (going first, rank 8s) to 55% (going second, Rank 4 Xyz) of the time.

Quite resilient through large starter count & redundant lines + being statistically likely to draw around 2.5 engines / lines in any given game, after hand traps this ends up around 2.1.

Zombie World straight up wins a number of matchups in genesys by hard floodgating the opponent out of the game; sorry Monarch players...

Exceptionally wide array of answers to threats. You will have an exceptional answer to almost anything your opponent throws at you.

Grind game is basically unparalleled in the format, based on my testing. As long as you dont get like hard mimighoul locked + shiftered, if it hits turn 4,5,6... you probably win.

Strong going first in building a great board. Strong going second in having a huge reliability to break boards between Titan & Exciton - a coin flip you'll have two separate board breaks, and practicaly guaranteed that you'll have atleast one.

Weaknesses;

Dimension Shifter. Gross card lol. Droll & Lock can hurt you as well, but it only affects like 50% of your hands, and due to its aggressiuve pointing it's quite uncommon - meaning it only really hurts you in the egde case scenario.

Kinda hard to play. Old cards with a number of "miss the timing" interactions. Many lines and combos where sequencing is critical. Zombie locks. A control philosophy rather than an aggressive philosophy - you can pick the wrong lines / end of lines and just lose. You can easily flood the board with cards, and then not have access to the plays you want to make - so controlling and managing this is of top priority; if you have 5 monsters on the field you can't exactly proc a snake hair negate with your set CotH, or reset your CotH with Army, or re-cur your Eldlich traps, etc. Its not exactly an advanced Branded deck, but its also much more involved than a lot of decks. If you play poorly, you will fall all over yourself and lose.

Breadth of answers and consistency of getting to them comes at the cost of having a chance that even though you might have AN answer available to get to, you might not have the RIGHT answer available to get to, which can feel kinda bad.

Due to deck building philosophy of board breakers over hand traps while relying on multi engine resilience - we are a little weak to FTK's compared to the average. Not a huge concern normally, but in my testing there are a few decks out there that cause some concern - looking at you, Tellarknights. I also ran into a Momento deck that gave me trouble here, but I dont think thats exceptionally common.

Lines;

Line A - Pumpking: Reveal Pumpking in your hand, discard it to set playable CotH, revive Pumpking, summon Changshi from Deck to bridge into another engine, Xyz Summon. Can extend this by going pumpking and searching Call of the Forgotten (guarantees an easy Doomking revival on opponents turn) or Vortex of Time (omni-Negate that might board break). Can get Pump in your hand with any of the CotH cards, or using Glow-Up Bloom, which can be placed in the graveyard by the entire list of Zombie Pile starters. Gets you a rank 6 Xyz monster and maybe CotH+Snakehair & Vortex of Time. Vulcarrion also works here if you have no GY access (zzz shifter).

Line B - Zombie World: Get Doomking in the graveyard & ZW on the field. Can be achieved with Solitaire, Uni, Gozuki, Curse of the Ancient Turtle, Delta of Invitation, Popperup, etc. Necroworld Banshee searches / protects Zombie World. Gets you Zombie World & Doomking, giving you a free banish and the monster negate.

Line C - Level 4 Spam: You'll note all the Line B starters are level 4 or Uni that can become level 4. With that you can really easily make level 8 synchros (swordsoul or Skeletal Felgrand) or Rank 4 Xyz. If you make Swordsoul (who is actually "The Three Champions of Swordsoul" in TCG, and worth 10 points not 0) you can search Dogmatika Lawbringer who then special summons itself sending Garura to GY to get you a free draw, and then giving you free access into Number 38 or Dragon Knight Felgrand. Solitaire is an exception one card start here; can tribute itself to get uni, who increases her own level to dump mezuki, Mezuki banishes himself to revive Solitaire - and bob's your uncle. Vulcarrion is also a big 2-card combo enabler here.

Line D - Eldlich: Get Eldlich on the field with Golden Land Forever! in your backrow, or special summon Eldlich then tribute him into Fallen Angel & recycle Eldlich onto the field and Xyz Varudras. Achievewd through Eldlixir's, Line B starters, Vulcarrion, etc.

Other Options;

Mercurial is an interesting choice thats available. For 10 points you can lean into Eldlich which you can use to summon Mercurial, who can then attach a Floodgate (Destiny Hero Plasma, Spell Cancellor, Jinzo, etc) from your deck and subsequently drop into the GY and be revived by CotH / Eldlixirs / Mezuki. Generally I think this is perhaps easier to play, but requires a ton a ton of points (given you probably want both Spell Cancellor and Destiny hero), and isn't as flexible or resillient since you need to lean into the Eldlich engine to make it consistent. Not quite convinced personally, but I think if you pull it off its incredibly oppressive.

Mortilux Heruvur is incredibly strong. Possible to slot him in for Number 38 and give yourself broad GY protection and your opponent a GY access floodgate. Not sure if stronger than Number 38 - Still testing. I'll also note that Mortilux is likely quite scary for this deck if he see's widespread play in other decks, potential weakness to keep in mind.