Yu-Gi-Oh! Locals Legends: Telefon Fairy
It’s not often that cards centering on dice rolls find a place in competitive Yugioh, with the most notable example being from 2006’s Cyberdark Impact, in the form of Snipe Hunter. Yet, with recent imports of the new Morphtronic monsters, one particular piece of support stands out as something of a design quirk: Morphtronic Telefon’s lack of a Hard-Once-Per-Turn, or HOPT. HOPTs are used in Yugioh as a means of preventing loops, or the overuse of a certain effect, and Telefon very well may be an outlier in modern design, with ways to loop between two copies for infinite LP & infinite Link Material. Crucially, however, and why you’ve not heard about this dial-up design faux pas, is that its combo only works going first, generally, on top of being extraordinarily weak to interaction. In today’s Locals Legends however, I want to go over a list I took to the Sneak Peek for Battles of Legend: Crystal Revenge at my local game store, where I managed to roll my way into an undefeated finish. This is an exploration of Telefon Fairy.
Telefon Fairy, or more accurately, Morphtronic Ishizu Vernusylph, is an amalgamation of all the high-quality EARTH-Attribute support that’s slowly been released this past year, taking advantage of the interruption & grind present in much of the recent Fairy cards. That said, what makes this particular build so deceptive is its ceiling: By getting 2 copies of Morphtronic Telefon into rotation, at any point, you essentially have carte blanche to produce an endboard of near-infinite negation. The Vernusylphs are vital to this game plan, cycling through EARTH monsters and generically summoning them back from the GY, which naturally benefits from the high-mill environment we create via cards like Agido the Ancient Sentinel, and what’s already present in the likes of Tearlament. One lesser-used Vernusylph specifically, being Vernusylph of the Awakening Forests, even lets us place Telefon directly in the GY, easily hitting that 2-copy threshold we need to go off. Finally, and perhaps in the funniest twist of fate, any of our Level 4 EARTH Fairies, and Telefon, meet the requirements for Naturia Beast (1 EARTH Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner EARTH monsters), wholly shutting off Spells and milling us further.
Slotting in naturally to these Vernusylphs is the brigade of EARTH Fairies currently holding residence in the format’s best deck, affectionately referred-to as the Ishizu Fairies. These four cards, being Agido the Ancient Sentinel, Kelbek the Ancient Vanguard, Keldo the Sacred Protector, and Mudora the Sword Oracle, each either shuffle cards back into the Decks (Helping us recycle our Extra Deck or shut down Tearlaments), or mill each player (helping us ‘see’ more cards, for our combo). They also often trigger when discarded for Vernusylphs, or even Herald of Orange Light, a powerful, PSY-Frame-esque handtrap. This deck runs a plentiful number of 1-ofs, on top of being a shocking 60 cards, so the ability to see as many options as possible is always preferred. We’re only on so many cards as to reduce the rate at which we draw our searchable 1-ofs, often being Field Spells, negation, or extension.
The question remains though: Why was I playing this deck at the premier for Battles of Legend: Crystal Revenge? That comes down to the final portion of this massive undertaking: The Dice support within that aforementioned set. Within BLCR, three cards vital to this strategy have just now come out: Dimension Dice, Dice Dungeon, and Morphtronic Impact Return. Because these cards are so new, I’ll go over them briefly. Dimension Dice is a comically impressive searcher for any monster that requires a Dice Roll, with no HOPT, making multiple copies an instant means to reach our 2-copy threshold on Telefon. Dice Dungeon is not only a searcher for Dimension Dice, but also turns it on (with Dimension requiring a face-up card mentioning dice, to activate). Finally, Morphtronic Impact Return is a Trap we want in our GY, to summon back a copy of Telefon, potentially restarting our combo from a broken board in the following turn. Between Dimension & Dungeon specifically, we have 6 more effective copies of Telefon, greatly increasing this deck’s floor.
Beyond these three core engines, the rest of the deck is a search-heavy core of ways to find these vital pieces, with cards like Terraforming, Set Rotation, or especially Machine Duplication. We also have a mini-package for Therion, including a single Therion “King” Regulus and Therion Discolosseum. These are easy ways to find a monster effect negation in the middle of our combo, either through lines that get us a Field (Terra, Rotation) or an EARTH Machine monster (Clockwork Night). We also have 1-ofs for both Fairy sub-engines, given how accessible everything truly is. For Vernusylph, Vernusylph in Full Bloom and Vera the Vernusylph Goddess are fantastic as a back-up plan, providing monster stealing, bounces, and out-of-chain negation, and it wasn’t rare for me to rely on this package when the Telefon line wouldn’t work out. Ishizu’s Fairies in turn get pieces of Gravekeeper’s Trap and Exchange of the Spirit, which, when combined, are a total lock on our opponent’s GY. That’s easier than one might think, too, given our mills and ability to run 3 Foolish Burial Goods.
My sidedeck for the event was a mixture of equalizers (Dark Ruler No More, Evenly Matched) and counters to our own counters (Droll & Lock Bird, Imperial Iron Wall), topping it off with the premier sidedeck staple, Forbidden Droplet. I would play something similar again, if I’m to be honest, though your mileage may vary, depending on the event. In actually playing the deck, your goal should be to try and find your 2 copies of Telefon as often as possible, even setting up negation in the form of Herald or Regulus beforehand, although it’s completely fine to get negated on your way. The good news is that ‘trying again’ in this deck, after a stalled turn, is fantastically easy with our grind game, and even hampered turns often end on at least Vera, or a live Ishizu Fairy. Your Level 4 Monsters are a vital resource, for both Naturia Beast and/or Abyss Dweller, and even Number 85: Crazy Box has a place in the list as a last-resort way to turn on Dimension Dice, which is honestly so neat. If you’ve played any form of Gouki, the Extra Deck lines here for infinite material & LP should be evident, and Telefon even helps us win in time, so there’s no worries about getting to Battle Phase.
On the whole, I couldn’t be happier with this list for the time being. While some 1-ofs may come and go, depending on how tight space is within the deck, there’s a good chance we’ll continue to see pieces like Vera shine brightly in any deck that fits her. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see a more pure variant of Vernusylph down the line, focused on turboing her out; that negation is genuinely something any deck in the current metagame needs to respect. Telefon is likely to see more and more play as time goes on, though from quite a bit of my experience, it is currently sequestered in hyper-fragile FTKs, something I’m not keen to do, given the card already gains you enough LP to win in time. Overall though, the biggest takeaway is that this list, which can so readily make Abyss Dweller and Naturia Beast, is that many decks these days are going to be propped up by existing support, rather than their own; to play ‘pure’, a deck would need some ludicrous tools on its own, to deny itself things like the Bystials, or Ishizu Fairies.
I don’t get to play as much physical in-paper Yugioh as I used to; long gone are the days of showing up at the card shop with a new flavor of Herald of Perfection control and duking it out with folks I’ve known for years. That said, being able to brew this list, and get on the ground floor of a deck that’s likely going to be primed for further success (so long as the Ishizu cards aren’t the banlist targets), has inspired me to get back into more local play. Something about the connections you make, especially when doing silly combos like Telefon Loops, are indescribable in comparison to Yugioh anywhere else. If you can roll a 1 or higher on a 6-sided dice, this deck might just be for you.
So that’s that! I’m extremely thankful to be able to delve into a deck I’ve been cooking up for a long while, and it’s a great opportunity to prove the mostly-shrugged-at Battles of Legend: Crystal Revenge is worth some investment. There’s gems in there we weren’t able to touch upon in this article, although sometime in the future I’m aiming to explore more strategies with the tools it provides! If you have any suggestions or questions about my list this week, let me know in the comments below!
One last piece of fun trivia: The original Agido, which Agido, the Ancient Sentinel is based on, utilized dice rolls in its effect! It seems things come full-circle for cards, and I was tempted to play a copy, if only for the comedy factor of its “synergy” with Dimension Dice.
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