Icezark Turbo

Intro:
I have stuff planned for the more interesting stuff from ORP1 (and a lot of video backlog) but for now here's a funky brew with one of the worst 2 tribute monsters in the format.

Icezark the Unequaled, contrary to its name, is a rather weak card. Coming out in KP05, this card was released 2 sets before Thunderbold the Lightningfire Deity, which grew to become one of if not the most feared decks in the metagame. While both decks can share consistency tools to an extent, there are many things that set them apart that makes one much worse than the other. These negatives can be summarised to:
1. Worse Targets
2. Level Mismatch (Ship of Seven Treasures /  Trade-In are less consistent)
3. Less Reliable Retrieval Methods
4. Inability to beat over anything on its own
5. Not counting itself for its own effect (Icezark needs Warriors, is a Winged Beast).That being said, Icezark isn't devoid of interesting things to do, within the small pool of playables there are some hidden gems to mess around with.

Deck Choices:
Icezark is ran at 3 as it's the build-around, nothing much interesting to say here, but as for the other cards,
The key Warrior we aim to summon is Captain Uniform No. 39: Junior Baseball King, Home Plate. It has a solid effect to gain a big chunk of attack points in any scenario, making it the go-to option in most boardstates. It also has an additional effect that triggers at a low life total, but that's not as important as the attack gain, especially earlier into the game. Since we want to be able to use it often, we're running the maximum amount that we can allocate in a deck like this, which is 2 copies (this mirrors CAN-Melo:D being ran at 2 in Thunderbold). Duplicate names matter less for Icezark as only the 2 shuffles need to be of different names, so you can shuffle 2 names including a Home Plate and summon the 2nd from grave if need be. Being Fire attribute also means you innately play through Barrier Statue, which is a nice trait to have.

Running Home Plate means that we'll have to play some Level 4 Fire monsters, and there are a couple solid options, notably Barrier Statue of the Inferno, which could lead you to build the deck with a Miginagi the Talismanic Warrior package (alongside Trick Pigeon, which funnily enough has Miginagi stats), however, we ended up not playing this package to fit in more consistency tools, otherwise Icezark will have a hard time resolving. Instead, we've chosen 3 Jarmalewe and 3 Doctor Red Robe, which might as well be 6 copies of the same card, they're here as the biggest Normal Pyro monsters to fuel The Noodle Art of Saucery, a strong draw spell that disregards the levels of the discarded cards, and can even send Spell/Traps if you have too many of them in hand. You can make the arguement to run more Normal Monsters, but in practice the 6 I've ended on works well enough and frees up space for more utility. For the last set of Level 4 Fires, we're running 3 Chemical Cure Red, which may seem like an odd inclusion, it only mills a card to gain 500LP, but it's its 500 DEF that we care about.

That's because we're aso running 1 Black Luster Soljersey - Envoy of the Drying. This was the card I originally was expecting to be the best Icezark target, but despite that not being the case, it's still quite good. The removal effect can help you play through certain traps that need you to attack into specific types of monsters or just acts as a extra damage push if you're about to activate Icezark twice. Since the effect also puts the target to the bottom of the deck, it also disrupts certain cards that need targets in grave to function. Its effect requires 2 500 DEF monsters of different attributes, and almost made me put in Black Luster Soljersey as well, but chose to run cards with more utility. Instead, we're playing 3 Fillan Dwarf as another 500 DEF monster, but this time it's an Earth monster. Its actual effect does come up from time to time, but what we're really interested in is the requirement: milling 2 cards. We need the graveyard setup for a lot of things and this lets you accelerate that. These 2 attributes represented by Fillan Dwarf and Chemical Cure Red (Earth and Fire) are the only ones we need, we expect to find our targets eventually with the amount of digging at our disposal and we're only playing 1 BLS in the first place. But if you do want another attribute I used to play Lightwave Dragon as a mill 2 that's a Light. 

For the rest of the high level warriors, 1 Kimeluna the Lunar Dark Decider and 1 Digisoon the Music Fiend can both be used to out defensive threats like Wicked Shadow Dark Lurker (Home Plate also can do this), but both have overall different purposes, Digisoon gains extra attack, allowing it to beat over cards that are bigger than 2500 on its own, which Home Plate can do, except Digisoon doesn't require graveyard setup, but is more dependant on your opponent's actions. Kimeluna, on the other hand, is used to end the game, flipping blockers into attack position to run over with your beatsticks. It also can shift things to defence to beat over easier as well, depending on the situation. It doesn't have any attack on its own, however, so you will have to pair it up with something else to do anything. Its 2500 defence also makes it a good wall, like these next 2 monsters, 1 Yamiruler the Dark Delayer and 1 Yamiruler the Dark Delayer - Supreme Soldier Spear, which is the only card here that is from ORP1. The original Yamiruler can only activate when normal summoned, so you get no utility from summoning it off of Icezark, but it has great base stats and if you hard draw it you can use it to stun your opponent for a turn. There's some matchups where that stun effect doesn't matter, but in those matchups you can choose to set the Yamiruler as a defensive wall to play around cards like JAM:P Set! and Satellite Pegasus. Supreme Soldier Spear however, allows you to play through certain types of backrow by protecting your Warriors (and technically Celestial Warriors) from being destroyed by Traps, allowing you to bypass cards like Mirror Force or Dark Revelation. Icezark unfortunately doesn't get the protection, however, though a 2000 attack body is the least of your concerns.

As for low levels, 3 Amazing Dealer shouldn't be that surprising, one of the go-to options if your deck needs consistency and that is exactly what we need. We could also play The Strange Specter of Celestial Severance but I felt that it wasn't necessary and Fillan Dwarf already kind of fills that role, though there are some flex slots in the deck that you can swap out for them if you so choose. Currently those slots are occupied by 2 Galactica Jamais Vu and 1 Mezame the August Awakener, Mezame can fetch any of your high level warriors, but there are some matchups where it just doesn't activate, and it's not particularly necessary to the gameplan, and its low level doesn't help for one of our spells, so we're only playing the 1. Jamais Vu is here as I've had games where I've lost important spells too early, and being able to recycle them is nice to have. Even if you don't get to consistently activate it, you don't mind that much, as at worst it's just low level fodder.

Now for the spells, 3 Trade-in and 3 The Noodle Art of Saucery, followed by 1 Graceful Charity and 2 Enraged Scale Liberation all for consistency, Enraged Scale Liberation has the added benefit of reducing your lifepoints, which can theoretically enable the second part of Home Plate's effect. Finally 3 copies of Heavenly Revelation as our way of retrieving Icezark. Unlike Thunderbold, Icezark doesn't need to be Normal Summoned to activate, so we can make use of this generic card to fetch it back, even comes with an extra attack boost to help beat over certain cards or just for additional damage. I used to run 2 but after having them get milled over and over again I've started running the 3rd one, and drawing multiples isn't bad either, assuming you have the setup.

Conclusion:
Overall, this deck plays as if it were Baseball, but with a toolbox. A 2000 beatstick summoning another is quite reminiscent of Uniform No. 99: Junior Baseball King Dragon, Home Grandra. However, that toolbox allows for the deck to be less linear in its gameplan, allowing it to adapt to more situations, at the cost of being overall less consistent. The deck isn't particularly competitive, but shockingly, it isn't that terrible, and importantly, it's a fun deck to pilot.