This season I decided to climb to Master I with Chimera, a deck which is a lot of fun to play both going 1st and 2nd. I started with a pure Chimera build (with just the Patchwork engine for the extra fusion power) while testing with the new Illusion cards, but ended switching it up to try the Yubel engine, which adds an additional monster negate to the end board in addition to extra fusion materials (this isn't an original idea, you can find other decks online using the Yubel engine like this)
The Chimera archetype is centered around the retrains of Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast and the newest addition to the Yu-Gi-Oh list of types, the Illusion monsters. The main gameplan of this deck is to summon Beast/Fiend/Illusion Fusion Monsters, while protecting your board and disrupting your opponent with the Illusion monster effects in the GY and Chimera Fusion plays, most notably summoning Guardian Chimera during your opponent's turn, gaining a lot of advantage that way. When going 2nd, you have the potential to OTK, by using some combination of big fusion monsters (either Guardian Chimera or Chimera the Illusion Beast), Nightmare Magician and/or Super Polymerization, but even if you don't OTK, you can setup a decent board after draining your opponent's resources.
The standard 1 card combo goes like this:
With this, you will rip 1 card from your opponent's hand, have a monster negate (Mirror Swordknight), a negate for effects that target your cards (Cornfield Coatl) and setup for a potential Guardian Chimera play with Chimera Fusion. Just don't forget that Swordknight and Coatl require you to control one of the Chimera fusions that are treated as "Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast" (Guardian Chimera doesn't count!)
With the Frightfur Patchwork and Gazelle the King of Mythical Claws (or Cornfield Coatl to search it), you can go for a different combo, usually more safe against handtraps:
This combo ends on basically the same board as before, but you have more card advantage and follow-up, plus you setup your negates before the normal summon of Mirror Swordknight, meaning the rest of your combo is protected from most handtraps (no more Imperm on the Berfomet or Ash on the Swordknight).
If you open with Nightmare Throne (the Yubel engine), you can use it to destroy Spirit of Yubel from the deck and then use its effect to summon Yubel. From this point, you can go directly for Phantom of Yubel to protect the rest of your combos, or use Yubel as fusion material first if you don't feel threatened by handtraps. If you draw one of the garnets and no field spell, remember that Berfomet the Mythical King of Phantom Beasts can send a Yubel monster to the GY, since they are fiends, so you can also access Phantom of Yubel that way.
Regarding the remaining cards: Master Tao the Chanter is a good send off the Berfomet the Mythical King of Phantom Beasts effect, to summon back an Illusion from the GY. Nightmare Magician is not mandatory, but it's really fun to use and I like it a lot, plus it helps OTK, came up way more than I thought it would. Super Polymerization is a good board breaker, especially in conjuction with the Yubel monsters, but even standalone can break apart some boards, and I also like that it can be useful both going 1st and 2nd. The handtraps can be whatever you like, but one thing worth noting is that you draw cards during your opponent's turn with Guardian Chimera, so I actually prefer Effect Veiler over Infinite Impermanence in this deck.
The side decks include some cards I've tried or at least considered including, but didn't make the final cut: Emissary from the House of Wax is a cool defensive card, which you can search with Gazelle the King of Mythical Claws when you don't need anything else, even though it's a bit situational. King Tiger Wanghu can grant you a win against decks like Yubel, but otherwise does little. Diabolica the Draconique General could be useful to send off Berfomet the Mythical King of Phantom Beasts in grindy games, to get back Big-Winged Berfomet from the GY, since you turbo through your deck really quick (this archetype could really use some form of shuffling back your monsters into the deck), I didn't try it since I didn't want to add another garnet.
I hope you enjoy the deck, also check out the video to see the deck in action! I'm always open to feedback and ideas, so feel free to share those too!
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