Introduction
About the Author
Heyo, i'm
. I'm a relatively new player only playing some Speed Duel with a small attempt at learning the regular TCG years and years ago. I'm not new to TCGs in general though. I've been playing Magic: The Gathering on and off for around 10 years and have gave a few others a shot like Force of Will and Cardfight Vanguard among others.I have played in 2 N/R tournaments so far, No Riches? 1 and 2, placing 4th and 6th respectively with Megaliths.
Overview
N/R Megalith is a combo oriented ritual based archetype that uses a controlling playstyle to choke our opponent out of resources and OTK at a moments notice. The level 4s also allow you to ritual summon any ritual monster, even outside of archetype. This allows you to bring in other powerful ritual monsters to compliment the game plan.
I will preface this by saying this is obviously tailored to the event version of this deck. The event has Loading... limited and Loading... semi-limited. This hurts the resiliency of the deck more than anything, and leaves us very vulnerable to banish removal like Loading... . Everything is applicable to the deck even without a ban list, ratios are just slightly different.
- Cards
- Combos
- Notes
Core Monsters
The Megalith monsters themselves are separated into 3 different categories based upon their level and common effects.
★★
Megalith Phul (1x)
★★★★
All level 4 Megaliths allow you to ritual summon any ritual monster from your hand by tributing from your hand or field (Refer to the Pebble Ruling in the notes tab, its important for this effect). in addition to their own effect when they're ritual summoned themselves. Their effects are also NOT once per turn, which can make combos pretty insane.
Megalith Ophiel (3x)
Megalith Hagith (3x)
Megalith Och (1x)
★★★★★★★★
All level 8 Megaliths can discard themselves to act as a ritual spell to summon another Megalith from hand and in addition their own effect.
Megalith Bethor (2x)
Megalith Phaleg (3x)
Core spells/traps
Megalith Unformed (3x)
Megalith Portal (1x-2x)
Megalith Emergence (1x-2x)
Out of archetype ritual monsters
I generally don't recommend running more than 2 or 3 of these.
Demise, Agent of Armageddon (0x-1x)
Lord of the Red (0x-1x)
Odd-Eyes Gravity Dragon (0x-1x)
Blue-Eyes Chaos Dragon (0x-1x)
Nekroz of Clausolas (0x-1x)
Additional monsters
Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands (3x)
Senju of the Thousand Hands (2x-3x)
Engines
As of right now the only competitive engine and generally thought of as mandatory is the following
Impcantation
Consistency and extension engine. You generally never want to open up with Candoll as our only way to activate it is the single ritual spell. Remember you can only use 1 of any of the Impcantation monsters effects once per turn. Talismandra will fetch whatever we need to start or extend our combo.
Generic spells/traps
There are a good amount of generic spells and traps you can use and we usually have somewhere around 4-8 slots for them. The only card generally thought of as mandatory is Loading... (3x) because of how vulnerable we are with Phul at 1 to backrow. After that its more so what you expect to see or are afraid of the most. I recommend Loading... the most, and you are not limited to what is shown here.
Extra Deck
I'll mostly only list what i consider must includes here for the extra considering the amount of options and actual lack of use of the extra in this deck due to the restriction of Impcantations and nature of the deck itself.
Number 70: Malevolent Sin (1x)
Number 82: Heartlandraco (1x)
Pentestag (1x)
Cross-Sheep (1x-2x)
Geonator Transverser (1x)
Draglubion Package
Combo lines aren't varied as much as an archetype like fully powered Adamancipator, but it will heavily depend on what your opener is. I'll try to give the "basic" combo relying on as little cards as possible, and an example of one of the best openers we can have with 2nd turn follow ups to both. These are all assuming you're going 1st against no interruptions on either turn. These are not the only hands or combos this deck can do. Use this as a guide to figuring out the lines that are possible with any of your given hands.
"Basic" combo
Requires Loading... , a random level 8 Megalith, and a random level 4/8 Megalith. We will use these cards in our hand as an example:
- Activate Loading... to ritual summon Loading... using Loading... as tribute.
- Search Loading... using the on summon effect of Loading... .
- Activate Loading... to ritual summon Loading... using itself as tribute.
- Search Loading... using the one summon effect of Loading... .
- Activate the 2nd effect of Loading... to ritual summon Loading... using Loading... as tribute.
- Return Loading... to hand via Loading... 's on summon effect making it level 8.
- Use Loading... 's effect to ritual summon another Loading... from the deck using the Loading... in your hand as tribute.
- Search Loading... using Loading... 's search effect.
- Set Loading... and pass turn.
This sets us up for the following play on our opponents turn
- Activate Loading... and return Loading... to the field
- When we decide we want to during our opponents main phase, activate Loading... to ritual summon Loading... from the deck using both Loading... s on field, sending one back to the deck and one to the grave.
- Activate Loading... to pop 3 cards on our opponents field.
So after 3 pops assuming they have no other plays we are ending our opponents turn with a level 8 Loading... , Loading... and Loading... on field, 3 unique Megalith names in grave, and can bring back either Loading... or Loading... with Loading... s effect. We can OTK on our upcoming turn if our opponent fails to produce a board past our pops.
High powered combo
Using this hand. Senju/Manju and Phaleg/Bethor are interchangable
- Activate Loading... to special summon itself and Loading... from deck, revealing any ritual monster
- Activate Loading... 's effect to search Loading...
- Activate Loading... to ritual summon Loading... using Loading... and search Loading... with it's effect.
- Activate Loading... to send Loading... to the graveyard to return it to hand and special summon Loading...
- Search Loading... using Loading... 's effect
- Activate Loading... to ritual summon Loading... from hand using itself to search and then activate Loading...
- Activate Loading... to summon Loading... from deck using Loading... as tribute.
- Target Loading... with Loading... 's second effect and bring back Loading... to hand with Loading... 's on summon effect making it level 4.
- Normal summon Loading... and search Loading...
- Activate Loading... to ritual summon Loading... using Loading... , searching Loading...
- Activate the Loading... on board to summon the one you just searched using itself as tribute
- Search Loading... from Loading... 's effect and return Loading... to hand using Loading...
- Link summong Loading... using Loading... and Loading... as material
- Use Loading... 's effect to ritual summon Loading... from deck using the Loading... in hand as tribute to a zone Loading... points to.
- Activate Loading... 's on summon effect, and Loading... 's effect drawing and discarding whatever we drew and our Loading... in hand targeting whatever for his second effect.
- Acitvate Loading... to ritual summon the Loading... in or hand using both itself and the Loading... on field.
- Set Loading... and pass.
This ends with a board of Loading... , level 4 Loading... , Loading... , Loading... , and a set Loading... to setup for the following.
- Activate Loading... and return Loading... to the field, activating Loading... to return Loading... to hand
- During our opponents main phase activate Loading... 's effect to ritual summon Loading... and pop a face up monster. This activates either of Loading... 's effects that we can optionally use.
- Also during our opponents main at any point after, activate Loading... 's effect to ritual summon Loading... from deck using itself and Loading... as tribute and activate Loading... 's effect to pop any 4 cards. This also triggers Loading... 's effects again to optionally use.
After a potential 7 pops we end with a board of Loading... , Loading... , Loading... , Loading... , and Loading... . We have 4 unique names in grave, several Loading... targets, and the ability to just OTK as usual.
"Pebble" Ruling
Taken from this reddit thread.
There are currently level 4s and level 8s in the archetype, and the level 4's ritual summon effect requires to tribute monsters including itself. If you want to ritual summon a level 8 monster with the level 4's effect, you have to use itself and another level 7 or lower monster in hand or on the field because the level 8 monster will fullfill the required levels so you cannot use the level 4 on the field as a tribute.
For example, if you had a Megalith Ophiel(level4) on field, Megalith Bethor(level8) and Aratron(level8) and no other monsters in your hand, you can activate NONE of the ritual summon effects because you don't have the required tributes for the level8s in hand, and Ophiel cannot activate its effect because Ophiel cannot be one of the tributes. This ruling is so crucial to the archetype as you can easily run into this situation.
Example Decklists
Closing statements
So first off i'd like to thank all of the TOs and their communities for providing a place to play and help this format thrive. Its imo extremely fun and diverse and we still have a while to go before the format itself gets close to being "solved". This has been a lot of fun as a newer player, and i hope the community continues to grow even after the in game event.
For the deck itself, it is extremely strong, and while it might not be top 2 with the N/R event ban list it is still a very good contender and top tier strategy.
I'd also like to specifically thank
for being the homie and showing me a lot of what this format has to offer while helping me out with decks, and Domnostein for helping me out with the combos and other card choices/ratios for Megaliths specifically.