A Hero Lives with a Dark Destiny

After being away for a while, we're back. This time, we're going to talk about a variation of a deck that people are starting to be fond of: Elemental HERO, or, more precisely, A Hero Lives.

Most people haven't care much about their Life Points being used as a cost, so defending themselves with cards like Solemn Warning and Solemn Judgment didn't see much. Oddly enough, using Life Points to get offensive makes some people reluctant. That's why this kind of HERO deck never got popular. But with the release of Escuridão, things can be different.

Let's have a different view of that deck with this card:

In a way, many Destiny HERO monsters were released out of their proper time. Think of how long it took to Malicious or Diamond Dude being used and eventually to get some cards of the Archetype in the ban list. After that, nobody used them anymore, so why use them now? HERO monsters, Elemental, Destiny and Evil have merged themselves in one main archetype and there is one monster that can make good use of of them all: Elemental HERO Stratos.

Like all searchers in great archetypes, this one has been limited. The main reason is because Elemental HERO decks have many cards to search the searcher, usually, 4; with A HERO Lives, they have 7! Being the key card of any HERO deck, Stratos has now a better chance to get in the field and search for Diamond Dude. Likewise, this dude helps a lot with it's effect: as a HERO deck has plenty of normal spell cards, including A Hero Lives itself, which can bring Stratos with no cost and no need to have an open field.

Many other Normal Spell cards can be used as well, like Destiny Draw and Trade-In, avoiding the cost (although, sometimes it's useful), but the one that helps most is this:

Obviously, if you plan to use this card, you'll have to add a Level 8 Destiny HERO, like Plasma, Dogma or even Dreadmaster. The point is to summon Diamond Dude right away and use it's effect, attack, overlay it for anything, but make sure to make good use of it. As targeting a Destiny HERO is in the activation part, this is useless if milled by Diamond Dude. Make sure as well to find yourself a way to get the Lv 8 Destiny HERO into the grave, even if you have to pay the cost for Destiny Draw.

Keep in mind that pretty much nothing can negate the effect of the Spell Card sent by Diamond Dude, so you can bypass the Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En, Naturia Beast and Traps effects. And having some XYZ monster in the Extra Deck always helps, as Diamond Dude is going to be destroyed in the End Phase. Being a DARK and a Lv 4 Warrior makes it easier to be brought to the hand/field and makes it a great XYZ material. Have a Plaguespreader Zombie in the deck as well to make sure Dude's effect works.

We're done here. Try to build yourselves a deck with these cards and you will be surprised. See'ya next time and remember: Play with your brains, not with your money.