Notes & Combos

Who would've guessed that Razen is now a Snake-Eye combo starter?

The idea of mixing Vanquish Soul and Snake-Eye might not be new - I've tried something similar myself in the past, and I'm sure other people have explored this concept as well - but now with the limitations of Snake-Eye Ash and WANTED, and the increased synergy between Vanquish Soul and Snake-Eye with Infernal Flame Banshee in the game, I thought this was an idea worth revisiting, and I've been having some success with it in the WCS 2024 Qualifiers, reaching DLv Max. It's a fun twist on the fire meta.

The best hands you can have are the ones with a normal summon to start an engine, and a special summon for the other one, like Razen + Diabellstar, or Stake your Soul + Snake-Eye Ash/Bonfire for example. Many times, you can use one engine to bait handtraps, and then combo with the other, but if you can resolve both the endboard is insane.

The Vanquish Soul can also get you into Snake-Eye, and the basic one card combo works like this:

1. Summon Razen, and activate the effect to search Mad Love
2. Link Summon Rock of the Vanquisher using Razen, and use its effect to Special Summon Mad Love from the hand
3. Activate Mad Love's effect to add Continue? from the deck, and activate it to Special Summon back Razen
4. Xyz Summon Infernal Flame Banshee using Mad Love and Razen, activate its effect to search Poplar from the deck
5. From here, you can Special Summon Poplar from the hand with its effect, get Original Sinful Spoils or Divine Temple (depending on your hand, usually you really want Original but, for example, if you have Diabellstar you can access it that way and get Divine Temple instead) and do whatever Snake-Eye shenanigans you want!

Some final notes about the strategy:

• Parallel eXceed is a good extender and facilitates the Rank 4 strategy. How convenient that Vanquish Soul also has a Link-1 with a downward pointing arrow!
• Sometimes you can also go for a different Rank 4 if you wish, like Abyss Dweller
• Kurikara is really good and allows for many easy OTKs, plus Vanquish Soul is decent at baiting interaction
• If you start with the Vanquish Soul engine, you can use Poplar effect to put Razen in the S/T zone, so you can also summon it during the opponent's turn using Divine Temple or Flamberge Dragon
• Don't sleep on Heavy Borger burn effect! 3k damage is huge, sometimes you can even use it to OTK while playing around Nibiru