Timeater Monarchs (November 2015 Format)

The year was 2015, I was slowly but surely starting to grasp the ropes of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh and yet I was still trying to come up with weird deck ideas that may somehow be able to hold their own at my locals. I remember buying cards online one day and coming across a Level 6 DARK Machine Monster called Timeater.

The effect of Timeater simply stated that if it destroyed an opponent's monster by battle, your opponent would skip their Main Phase 1. A pretty unique effect if I do say so myself. I obviously knew the card wasn't great, but I simply had to build a deck based around it one day.

After failing miserably at a Regional with Tribute Stun, I focused a bit more of my time on building a Timeater deck. Around this time I had also discovered a Spell Card called Terminal World which prevents both players from getting their second Main Phase. With these two cards, you can essentially skip your opponent's turn by destroying one monster, as your opponent is forced to go straight to their Battle Phase and then straight to their End Phase, meaning that the only cards they can play are Quick-Play Spells and Traps.

As I mentioned previosly, I had taken a Tribute Stun deck to a Regional, that deck comprised of a fairly large Monarch Engine, so I essentially rebuilt that deck but with Timeater in mind, and the decklist you can see on this page is the result of a lot of theorizing and playtesting.

The most basic way you can lock your opponent out of their turn requires an admittedly fairly specific board setup and 3 cards in your hand (only 1 of which is searchable). Those cards are Black Garden, Timeater and Terminal World, you also need a monster to tribute and your opponent cannot have a monster whose ATK is 1900 or more. Here is how to do the lock:

1. Tribute a monster to summon Timeater (you can also Tribute your opponent's monster if you have Stormforth).


2. Play Black Garden and then Terminal World.


3. Attack into your opponent's monster with Timeater. When the monster is destroyed Timeater's effect will activate, skipping the opponent's next MP1.


4. Your opponent passes their turn


5. You now need to summon any monster to your field without tributing Timeater, Black Garden will activate giving your opponent a token.


6. Attack into the token, Timeater will activate again.


7. Your opponent skips their turn.


8. When it comes back to your turn you can now Tribute Summon for a Monarch or summon another low-level monster and keep the lock going.

Is it convoluted? Yes. Is it fun? Heck yeah.

Let me explain some specific choice cards and potential deck changes that could've been made:

Caius the Shadow Monarch: You can't rely soley on Timeater for the deck to work, you have to run some actual good monsters and Caius was still somewhat decent at the time when I played this deck. It's just good removal.

Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch: I ran this specifically because it's good for the lockdown. Seeing as the Monarchs have mandatory effects, Caius isn't so good if your opponent doesn't have backrow, Thestalos however can be played regardless of what field your opponenet has. Hand Piercing also can be used outside of the combo to restrict the opponent. You can side out Thestalos for other Monarchs/Tribute Monsters if you're up against a deck that plays a lot of GY effects.

March of the Monarchs: This can definitely be replaced with Return of the Monarchs if you like. My logic at the time of building this deck was that I have a lot of draw power as it is so it's very unlikely that I don't see any of my Tribute Monsters, so protection was probably a better idea for certain matchups.

Chicken Game: This was a card I didn't run in my Regional deck, but it makes a lot more sense to run, especially considering that I'm played 3 Terraforming and 3 Black Gardens anyway. I can simply get all the draws that I want and then prevent my opponent from using it by setting Black Garden.

Black Garden: Outside of the lock, this card is also pretty useful in other ways. It can create a small barrier for you if your opponent does a lot of Special Summoning, filling up your field with Tokens, and also those Tokens can be Tributed for Timeater or a Monarch if you need to. I'd recommend shutting off Black Garden first though. Another admittedly situational use would be if there are 3 Tokens on the field, you can destroy them to summon back 1 Monarch from your GY, giving more Tribute Fodder or Damage Output.

Solemn Warning: This was simply the last card I threw in, I built the deck specifically to go against Pendulum decks (which were mostly Majespecter at the time) and Solemn Warning hard counters them, but it's also just useful in general. However you can literally change this card up with anything else you want, be it another Monarch, a different Trap, more draw power etc.

The Extra Deck almost doesn't matter with this deck, hence why there are the Utopia cards in there, the only monsters I remember going into were Gauntlet Launcher and Slacker Magician. Just play whatever Rank 6s you want.

And that's about it for this list, it's outdated now but at the time it managed to get me 3rd Place at my locals. I remember going up against someone playing Pendulums and locking them out for 5 turns which was pretty neat. But for the most part it plays like a basic Monarch Deck with Black Garden. If you're looking for an old format deck to play that's somewhat fun and unique, maybe give this one a try.