Reversal Quiz OTK
At first glance, "Reversal Quiz" is a weird and silly card. Sacrificing the entire board to play a guessing game which might not have any benefit at all is asking for trouble and probably ends in a swift beating from your opponent and therefore him winning the duel. However, with a little creativity and the right cards, "Reversal Quiz" can become a fast way to defeat your opponent.
Playing style[edit]
The most common form of Reversal Quiz OTK wins through significantly lowering the user's life points and playing "Reversal Quiz" while two of any combination of "Fuhma Shuriken" and "Black Pendant" are on the field. The "Fuhma Shuriken"/"Black Pendants" activate after the effect of "Reversal Quiz" finishes, removing the rest of your opponent's now swapped and low life points.
The cards needed for this OTK are "Reversal Quiz", "Wall of Revealing Light" or any other cards that can significantly lower your own LP through damage or cost, two "Fuhma Shuriken" and/or "Black Pendants" to deal the final damage and any card that will either reveal the top card of your deck or lets you manipulate what is on top.
Fundamentally, the only thing the deck needs to work besides "Reversal Quiz" is a way to reduce its user's LP and a way to finish off a severely weakened opponent. Cards like the aforementioned "Wall of Revealing Light" or "Backs to the Wall", along with attacks from the opponent's monsters serve to achieve the former, while cards like "Fuhma Shuriken", "Black Pendant" and "Lava Golem" serve to achieve the latter. When using "Backs to the Wall", keep in mind that you will need at least one Six Samurai Monster in your graveyard. On the plus side, after activating "Backs to the Wall", any damage should seal the deal, with even "Sparks" doing enough damage to finish the opponent. Further options to lower one's own LP are "Dirge of the Lost Dragon" and "Ghost Sister & Spooky Dogwood": Play "Ghost Sister" during your own turn to ensure that the opponent cannot summon monsters and you will lose half your LP in the End Phase; with "Dirge" you simply have to name one of your own cards to half your LP.
"Reversal Quiz" itself is a rather demanding card, and the Reversal Quiz OTK deck should contain mostly spell cards or cards like "A Feather of the Phoenix" and "Crystal Beast Cobalt Eagle" to help ensure that "Reversal Quiz" succeeds. Another very useful card to use in this deck would be "Plaguespreader Zombie". You can use any number of ways to send it to the Graveyard and then use its effect to place a card on the top of the deck. Stall cards considerably help the deck, as do draw cards, especially "Upstart Goblin" which not only lets the user draw a card, but also gives the opponent 1000 extra life points which are likely to be stolen back later. Although stall cards like "Waboku" and "Threatening Roar" can be used in this deck, many of those cards are traps, which tend to conflict with "Reversal Quiz"'s effect in a deck that should mostly consist of Spells.
Due to it's gimmicky nature, the opponent is likely to catch on to the win condition of the OTK after the first duel, and will react with side decking against it if possible, or will avoid wasting disruption effects on meaningless cards and target "Reversal Quiz" instead; this obviously makes things a lot harder for the "Reversal Quiz" player. This deck, as an OTK deck that runs mostly Spell cards, has much in common with other OTK decks like the "Life Equalizer"/"Blasting the Ruins" OTK and some variants of "Diamond Dude Turbo", and concepts from the others could be integrated into this deck. If built properly, this deck could easily transform into a different OTK deck between duels, as it only requires about 10 key cards. At the very least, the deck and side deck combined should have a method of reducing the user's own life points, should the opponent choose not to chip away at them for the first few turns.
One of the options to know the top card when "Reversal Quiz" is played is "Deep Diver". By using "Deep Diver", you can choose the card to go on top of your deck, guaranteeing a correct answer. You can also use "Field-Commander Rahz" which allows you to place one level four or lower warrior from your deck to the top of the deck. Further options include "A Feather of the Phoenix", which doubles as both "Reversal Quiz"-enabler as well as a "get back from the GY"-option after "Reversal Quiz" was negated, and "Gishki Diviner"/"Gishki Chain", both able to look at the top cards of your deck, with "Gishki Chain" even being allowing to rearrange the cards in any order, potentially to get closer to key cards that are still missing in the combo. The deck card rearranging is further supported by cards like "Big Eye" and "Fruits of Kozaky's Studies", which allow one to know many of the next cards to be drawn, and rearrange them in any order desired.
It is worth noting that "Convulsion of Nature" is not compatible with "Reversal Quiz"'s effect, as the deck would be flipped between activating "Reversal Quiz" (when all cards on the user's field are sent to the GY) and guessing the top card of the deck. But since "Convulsion of Nature" would make a gimmicky strategy even more reliant on gimmicks, it's better to have more useful and consistent options for the deck.
There is a number of variants when building a Reversal Quiz OTK, which are further described in this list:
- The "Reversal Quiz Cheating" variant has nothing to do with actual cheating, but it still allows you to know the top card of your deck at any given time. Simply fill the deck with the maximum number of Spell cards, with "Wall of Revealing Light" being the only exception to this rule. When doing this you can guarantee the top card of your deck is a Spell card as long as you have drawn into "Wall of Revealing Light". To make this variant somewhat consistent, you need to fit the deck with a massive number of search and draw cards, not unlike certain "Exodia" decks. "Hidden Armory" can search for both "Dark Pendant" and "Fuhma Shuriken", "Terraforming" and "Demise of the Land" can fetch "Mystic Mine" to stall the opponent, "Upstart Goblin" is even better in this variant due to it being another Spell card, "Into the Void" can be risky but has potentially no drawback at all, "One Day of Peace" allows a further card draw and gives breathing room to collect the combo pieces, "Pot of Extravagance" uses a resource that is completely irrelevant to this deck, "Pot of Duality" has a drawback that cannot trigger without playing monsters and "Card of Demise" also works well with the deck thinning.
- The "Quiz Hope Destruct" strategy runs the decks main cards,but also puts in cards that deplete your life points a bit slower, such as "Mirror Wall" since it costs 2000 LP to maintain. When your life points are about 2000 - 4000, use "Hope for Escape" to gain a big boost in card advantage by drawing two or more cards; this is especially helpful if you are also running "Gift Card" and "Upstart Goblin" to boost the opponent's life points. "Self-Destruct Button" was a very good option when things looked bleak, but since it has been banned for years, this doesn't really pose an option outside of Traditional format.
- The "Chicken Zephyros Megadraw FTK", certainly a naming accident on par with "Super Anti-Kaiju War Machine Mecha-Dogoran", is a "Reversal Quiz" variant that uses the field spell "Chicken Game", which allows you to simultaneously deplete your life points and thin through your deck. "Blackwing - Zephyros the Elite" fulfills the dual role of bouncing "Chicken Game" for an extra draw and costing 400 life points. With three "Chicken Game", three "Pseudo Space" and a "Zephyros", it's possible to pay 7400 life points, leaving you and thus your opponent at 600, where "Fuhma Shuriken becomes lethal. Using "Royal Magical Library", "Terraforming", and various draw spells, it becomes easy to draw almost your entire deck, until you have "Quiz" and "Shuriken" in your hand and only one type of card left in the deck. Cards like "Foolish Burial" and "Dark World Dealings" are key for putting "Zephyros" in the GY. "Magical Mallet" can save you in the rare case where "Shuriken" or "Quiz" is the last card of the deck. "Soul Charge" can also be used to deplete your LP and summon additional "Libraries" for more draw power. Unfortunately, "Soul Charge" and, more importantly, "Chicken Game" are banned in the TCG, whereas the OCG has "Chicken Game" at three.
Recommended Cards[edit]
Recommended cards
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Weaknesses[edit]
- Like a number of other decks that try to go for a certain amount of cards to win, simply having bad luck will kill the strategy. If your "Reversal Quizzes" or the life-costing traps are in the bottom part of your deck, you are simply going to lose because you cannot stop your opponent for prolonged periods of time; 0 life points can't be swapped with the opponent, and the price of a failed or absent "Reversal Quiz" is nearly always the duel.
- The Reversal Quiz OTK is incredibly weak against burn. At times, the deck goes incredibly low to switch a miniscule amount of LP with the opponent, so any effect that will burn away that slither of health before "Reversal Quiz" is played is not only dangerous, but outright deadly to the strategy.
- Simply negating "Reversal Quiz" or other important parts of the combo will kill this deck with relative certainty.
