Yu-Gi-Oh! Darkwing Blast: Ghoti Psychic
Last time we looked at Ghoti (See: Yu-Gi-O! Deck Debut: Ghoti Fish), it centered around the inherent synergy between the Level 2 Tuners & the Spright Extra Deck, although with the banning of Crystron Halqifibrax, that variant is dead in the water. Luckily, coming in Darkwing Blast is a new wave of stellar fish that might move the deck in a different direction! In particular, Arionpos, Serpent of the Ghoti is by far the strongest of this new wave, and its generic material requirement opens the door for numerous splashable engines, such as the ones used in today’s Deck Debut: Psychics.
Arionpos is one of two new Synchro Monsters for the Ghoti archetype released in DABL, and it simply does everything for the Deck: Any Level 4 + any of the Level 2 tuners makes it (or any number of Synchro 6 engines), and it provides an obscene level of filtering. At its baseline, Arionpos banishes a Fish on Summon, such as one of your Tuners for a play next turn, but also floats into another Fish when used as material, often banishing itself to search for more advantage. In effect, this usually sets up a Tuner in banish, and searches one of your Level 6 Ghoti, such as Eanoc, Sentry of the Ghoti (who we talked about in the last article), but also a new semi-handtrap, Snopios, Shadow of the Ghoti.
Snopios specifically is a key portion of the archetype’s grind game, being able to both banish your Tuners for their effects next Standby Phase, but also prevent GY triggers from your opponent, which is especially crucial in the Tearlament matchup. That said, as you’ll see in the list at the end of this article, the actual Ghoti & Fish portion of this list has been shaved down to quite a lot of 1-ofs, which become wonderfully accessible via Arionpos. Beyond that, we also got Ixeep, Omen of the Ghoti, the first & only Level 4 of the archetype. While its second effect to recycle Ghoti Traps won’t come up a ton, the simple fact that it’s an extender in-hand with any of our Level 2 Tuners means a ton, and makes Arionpos all the easier to Summon.
That’s enough about the actual Ghoti though, this is where the meat of the strategy comes in; when I was mentioning Psychics earlier as a core part of new Ghoti, I was being sincere. Ghoti are all about turbo-ing out their new Level 6 Synchro Monster, and some of the best ways of doing that are via Psi-Reflector’s package, as well as Supay, Duskwalker, or simply using Emergency Teleport to find a necessary Level 2 Tuner. For reference, the Reflector line involves searching a copy of Assault Beast, discarding it for an Assault Mode Activate, and resummoning the Beast. From there, you have a Level 6 Synchro readily available, on top of Level 7, 8, or 9 if the need arises. Additionally, not only does PSY-Framegear Gamma fit in this strategy as a handtrap, it also serves as a Level 2 Tuner off of E-Tele; beyond that, one copy of Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit even means excess copies of the spell can be used as possible disruption during the opponent’s turn.
Between Duskwalker and the Psi-Reflector engine, let’s talk about what the deck can actually accomplish with all of these Level 6 Synchro engines! Off of an Arionpos Summon, we can banish any of our Tuner names, though I prefer to banish Shif, Fairy of the Ghoti most of the time. In turn, this gives us Shif back next turn, where we’re able to Quick-Synchro into Askaan, the Bicorned Ghoti, banish an opponent’s card, search a Level 6 or lower Fish (by banishing Arionpos to its own effect), and re-banish Shif for next turn, for more material later! If you have a big fish in hand, like Eanoc, you can instead banish Paces for the initial Arionpos, but if you have an additional Level 2 Tuner, you can do quite a bit more.
Here, we’re assuming you have an additional Level 2 Tuner available, such as the brand-new Zep, Ruby of the Ghoti, as well as your standard Level 6 engine. You make Arionpos, banish another Tuner, and the immediately Sync Arionpos & the Tuner together into the final new Ghoti card of note, Guoglim, Spear of the Ghoti. If you have additional Fish lying around in the GY, feel free to banish one for Arionpos, otherwise, leave it in the grave! When the opponent’s turn comes around, we can Summon the Tuner we banished for Arionpos, and (via Guoglim’s effect) both Arionpos and the initial Tuner! This can lead, to the same Askaan removal line, but you can top it off with Ghoti of the Deep Beyond!
On the whole, I don’t think Ghoti are going to be competitive as a standalone strategy, but their use as an extremely accessible Synchro line may see play in other strategies! All you’d need are Arionpos & Askaan in your Extra Deck, a Ghoti Tuner of choice (likely Shif), and Snopios to recycle the entire ordeal. I can actually see strategies like Virtual World consider the use of this core, as well as decks like P.U.N.K., both of which are coincidentally Psychic-type! Arionpos is just such an incredible card, and I have a suspicion we’ll be seeing it somewhere, even if it’s not at-home in a Ghoti-focused list. Regardless, the below decklist is certainly able to grind out games with the best of them, and thrives in environments where they can have a single turn of breathing room to set up their GY & Banished, not unlike Salamangreat.
As you can tell, this list has a whole host of what are colloquially known as ‘Garnets’, pieces you’d rather not draw. And while it can be bad to draw Supay, Assault Mode Activate, or PSY-Fram Driver, none of these hamper your strategy to the point of it no longer working; discarding pieces to Brionac works just fine, and both Driver & Supay can be Summoned from hand, even if it’s less advantageous to do so. This is a decklist focused on getting our core combo of…just Arionpos, really (and sometimes an extra Tuner) out on the first turn, through interaction. Triple Ixeep makes any of our Level 2 Tuner lines full combo over the course of a turn cycle, and while cards like Gold Sarcophagus, or the Ghoti Field Spell, The Most Distant, Deepest Depths are possible inclusions, they’ve been shaved to linearize the strategy’s opening, before branching out.
When this wave of support was revealed, there was a resounding shrug from the community; there was no obvious ‘broken’ card, and Ghoti certainly won’t be at top tables as a pure deck. However, with this list, and Arionpos specifically, I feel as though there’s truly something here. Arionpos is simply too generic and too immediately advantageous to not see play somewhere, although it remains to be seen whether a ‘pile’ decklist like the one above, or some other strategy entirely will get to employ these extraterrestrial Fish.
And that’s a wrap on the new Ghoti support! I’m such a big fan of these cards, their art, and their playstyle, and I’m incredibly happy to be able to share the fruits of my plentiful testing. Where do you think Arionpos could see play? What does Ghoti need to hit meta contention as a pure strategy? I’d love to get your thoughts in the comments below!
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