Forum:Looking for some feedback on my Gladiator Beast deck.

Hello there, I'm fairly new to Yu-Gi-Oh, my girlfriend used to play and place fairly high in tournaments over in North Dakota, and she wanted me to get involved a bit. I fell in love with the manliness (animanliness?) that is the Gladiator Beasts and sought out to make a deck. I found some Gladiator's Assault packs for real cheap and used those as my 'structure deck', then I bought some specific cards off of Ebay to fill out my ranks. My deck's become solid enough to beat my girlfriend's Warrior beatdown/toolbox deck, and my friend's two Dragon decks, but other than that, I have little practice against others. I'd like to enter the tournaments in North Dakota, as I hear there are ones held in Fargo all the time, but I want to have my game face on when I do go. The cards that I got from Ebay are still slowly trickling in, so here's my current deck, and stuff I have in the workings to replace along with it. Notes about specific cards are in bold.

Main Deck:

Monsters- 16 (I know that number's low, but due to the almost infinite reusability of the Gladiator Beasts plus Gladiator's Proving Ground pretty much being a monster card in of itself, I think that it's fine as is.)

Cloudian, Eye of the Typhoon x1 (I know, really out of place here. I used him as my generic two tribute powerful when I first made the deck, but I plan to replace him with Earthbound Immortal Cusillu once he arrives in my post. With the ease that I can bring out two monsters without even using my normal summon of the turn and the usage of Field Spells that Gladiator Beasts like, I think an Earthbound Immortal would fit in well in my deck.)

Gladiator Beast Alexander x1

Gladiator Beast Spartacus x1

Gladiator Beast Andal x2 (I like Andal a lot, I think he's underrated. He has the highest base ATK of the 4 Star Gladiator Beasts, so he can give me some time to get a foothold without worrying about other 1900 ATK beatdowns. And when he outlives his usefulness, he becomes Fusion fodder. I use two because I also use Symbols of Duty and he makes a good card to sacrifice for it.)

Gladiator Beast Laquari x2

Gladiator Beast Darius x1

Gladiator Beast Dimacari x1

Gladiator Beast Samnite x1

Gladiator Beast Hoplomus x1

Gladiator Beast Bestiari x1

Gladiator Beast Secutor x1

Gladiator Beast Murmillo x1

Test Ape x1 (I plan to replace my Test Ape and Berserk Gorilla with Rescue Cat and Mystical Sheep #1. I'm waiting for the shipment of my Mystical Sheep before I can make that change, though.)

Berserk Gorilla x1 (See Test Ape.)

Spells- 17 (Yes, that's a high number of Spells, but Gladiator's Proving Ground might as well be a monster card. Still, it is a tad high, but I rather like Symbols of Duty, and I don't know where else to shave off.)

Colosseum - Cage of the Gladiator Beasts x2

Gladiator Proving Ground x3 (I see no point in not having three of these, and you'll have a hell of a time convincing me otherwise.)

Gladiator Beast's Battle Halberd x1

Gladiator Beast's Battle Manica x1

Indomitable Gladiator Beast x1

Spiritual Forest x1

Wild Nature's Release x2

Symbols of Duty x1

Hammer Shot x1

Back to Square One x1

Heavy Storm x1

Mystical Space Typhoon x1

My Body as a Shield x1 (I plan to replace this with Gladiator Beast War Chariot once I get it.)

Traps- 10

Defensive Tactics x2

Waboku x1 (Just in case I don't have any Gladiator Beasts face up.)

Double Tag Team x2

Ultimate Offering x1 (I plan to replace this card with Double Summon, I realized the hard way that this card could easily be used to my severe disadvantage as well.)

Call of the Haunted x1

Raigeki Break x1

Trap Hole x1

Torrential Tribute x1

Extra Deck-

Gladiator Beast Gyzarus x3

Gladiator Beast Gaiodiaz x3

Gladiator Beast Heraklinos x2

Side Deck- 15

(I'm still fairly new to the concept of the Side Deck, and I'm not too savvy on how to best utilize it. For now, I plan to use it to change up my deck's strategy and focus. I'll have one grouping to focus more on my Gladiator Beast fusions, especially Gyzarus and boosting it up to clear out my opponent's field easily, and the second one will be more focused on my soon to be acquired Earthbound Immortal Cusillu and bringing it out as quickly as possible, as well as utilizing its OTK strategy. I also have some random cards that I thought could come in handy but were very situational. I could use some feedback here especially.)

Centrifugal Field x1

Fusion Weapon x2

Re-Fusion x1

Colosseum - Cage of the Gladiator Beasts x1

Earthbound Revival x1

Earthbound Wave x1

Roar of the Earthbound x1

Witch Doctor of Sparta x1 (Gives me some nice burn while I play.)

Rescue Cat x1 (Will be moved to my Main Deck soon, see Test Ape.)

Prevention Star x1

Buster Rancher x1 (Nice for some of my low ATK Gladiator Beasts, especially Hoplomus.)

Pixie Ring x1

No Entry! x1

Parry x1

Thanks again for taking the time to read, and I appreciate hearing what you may think on the deck.

-Doctor Destructo 20:22, November 27, 2009 (UTC)Doctor Destructo

Test Tiger is a must if you want good glad action 3 copies. Gladiator Beast Equeste can grab those Gladiator Beast War Chariot from the grave. Ancient Forest is also good, Book of Moon is always good. Waboku helps in the defense department maybe you should run more. NOTE I am telling you what I know of Standard glad builds after all it is widely used. Your side deck should focus on disrupting your opponent's strategies imo. Thorin7 21:02, November 27, 2009 (UTC)

Test Tiger's alright, but kinda situational, as I already have a lot of defensive options to keep my Gladiator Beasts protected while I ram them into stuff to activate their tag out abilities. I should consider adding it to my side deck though, in case my opponent starts trying to lock out my attacks. I also considered Equeste over Samnite, but I can just use Indomitable Gladiator Beast's effect to bring the Gladiator Beast cards back from the graveyard and Samnite to bring them to my hand with about the same effort, plus Samnite's a level 3 beast, making him summonable by Rescue Cat's effect and also it gives him more synergy with more of my deck than Equeste. Ancient Forest is nice, but it'll limit my strategies too. Book of Moon is good, though "No Entry!" does about the same. Defensive Tactics is about identical to Waboku, except it's returned to my deck after use and requires a face up Gladiator Beast to use. I just use one Waboku in case I don't have any face up Gladiator Beasts. I think I do a good job of disrupting my opponents from what I've seen, but as stated, I haven't faced a wide variety of decks yet.

Doctor Destructo 21:21, November 27, 2009 (UTC)Doctor Destructo

Try a build more like this, it is much more adaptable and will give you much better results:

That should be much more consistant, allowing you to make the most of tagging in and out to control your opponents field through murmillo, bestiari, gyzarus etc. --Zooombs 13:43, November 30, 2009 (UTC)