Notes & Combos

Although I did finish my climb to M1 with Rescue-ACE for Season 30 (R-ACE best deck for real...), I was heavily intrigued by the most recent development / variant of Pure Snake-Eye: SHS Snake-Eye.

Since I spent the most time climbing with this deck (and testing new cards in the process), I wanted to share what this deck can do, with all of its strengths & weaknesses.

What is SHS Snake-Eye?

As we all know, the Superheavy Samurai engine is one of the best, if not the current best, way to access a Rank 4 or a Synchro 8 / 10 (even without a Normal Summon). Quite a number of these Rank 4s are searchers which can get the monsters you need for a combo.

While Pure SHS once had Gear Gigant X, MD now has Infernal Flame Banshee, which can incidentally search two incredibly strong monsters in the current format: Snake-Eye Ash and Snake-Eyes Poplar.

With the current banlists to Snake-Eye (including the next one with Bonfire to 2), Pure Snake-Eye, while it has decent consistency options like Chicken Game to keep up with the current meta, can struggle to be consistent and set-up powerful endboards against FKSE, R-ACE, and others.

This is where the Superheavy Samurai engine comes in, as not only Wakaushi + Bike + Piercer is a 1-card Snake-Eye Ash / Poplar but also gives them one or two omni-negates throughout the combo.

Additionally, the SHS cards have equips that can be sent to the GY for Diabellstar or OSS, allowing them to be summoned for free akin to sending Wraitsoth or Birth to the GY in Kashtira Snake-Eye.

The greatest advantage of SHS Snake-Eye is the sheer consistency and resiliency it provides to the Snake-Eyes engine as Wakaushi, Bike, and Piercer are all starters that lead to the engine via Banshee. This allows SHS Snake-Eye to stuff their deck with a larger amount of handtraps compared to FKSE or R-ACE.

Additionally, the SHS engine absorbs handtraps like Imperm, Veiler, Nibiru, Ash, etc. which would've been targeted towards Ash, Poplar, Diabellstar, and OSS. With the power of the Snake-Eyes Engine, this means they can either full combo against your opponent's depleted hand or OTK them going second.

There are still huge caveats to the SHS engine such as the lack of S/Ts being able to be used (such as Imperm), weakness to Maxx "C" (not even Bagooska helps us out here with S:P, hence the Accel Synchro Stardust Dragon), and the horrendous garnet that is Monk Big Benkei (though with a 2nd SHS card, it's less of an issue), but I firmly believe that this is the best way to play Pure Snake-Eye.

How does Scales work in this deck?

Scales provides additional oomph to the SHS engine while it is being handtrapped, by turning a Soulpeacemaker and a negated Scarecrow into a Synchro 8 or a Rank 4 of choosing. In cases where you are not handtrapped, this can lead to a 1C board w/ 2 Omnis without Elf. For going second, it can further extend the SHS engine for additional bodies or summon powerful boss monsters like Baronne before committing to Snake-Eye plays.

However, I'd like to try a deck version without Scales, since it is a brick (in a deck that already runs a substantial amount of bricks) that's not as good going second as I'd hoped.