Horseshoes And Hand Grenades

Life is like a card game. The hand dealt is deterministic, but how one cuts the deck is all about personal judgment. If their judgment is right, it is possible to savor a longer and a more fulfilling life. Those who lack judgment skills often resent the world, resent others, and leave this world in despair without ever blaming their lack of capabilities. There are always those who try to improve their memory but there are none who try to improve their judgment capabilities. Needless to say, the gamble called "life" is a chain of desires that ruins the ability to judge. A vicious cycle of desires being created one after another and because of their unquenchable thirsts, people live their days in struggle. Though, of course, we are not here to talk about emotions but it is one of the key aspects for today’s topic.

Fire Fist is an aggro-control strategy, a play-style similar to Dino Rabbit, but with a slightly bigger emphasis on resource superiority and less priority on lock set-ups. Having said that, Fire Fist also share many common traits of how Inzektors take control of the board. The core of Fire Fist’s strategy is a group of monsters that are reminiscent of Jurrac Guaiba and Atlantean Marksman, a number of recurring +1 monster effects, and a group of lingering spells afterward that also serve as attack boosters and monster effect fodders. The deck quickly builds momentum and escalates to the point of being unstoppable. It rarely makes explosive plays, but it can generate field presence seemingly out of nowhere and has easy access to cards like Number 16: Shock Master with well-rounded back row protection (basically every good generic Rank 4 Exceed you can find.)

The usual suspects center around this deck are Yushi (Bear), Ensho (Gorilla), and Soko (Tiger) with recurring theme spells and traps like Tenki, Tensu, Tensen, and Tenken. After the release of V-Jump Edition 8 many builds include Wolfberk as part of their core strategy for bigger plays (there is also builds that utilizes Chicken and Spirit which is faster in comparison to the Meta type.) What Fire Fist lacks is monsters with immediate bigger bodies without the support of spells and traps but many have chosen to include Vorse Riders (DDV fodder) and Gene-Warped Wolves as their baseline hard hitters giving them more leverage in what the deck does best, beatdown. I almost forgot Horn of Phantom Beast as a potential tech card (Damage Step hello Verz!) One thing to jot down is, after the release of Lord of Tachyon Galaxy, many players will begin to include their new Exceed Cardinal Commander (oh my Pot of Avarice) and another Fire Formation spell which is Gyokko (attack boosting effect fodder Night Beam!) Overall, Fire Fist is pretty much an all-rounder.

Going into weaknesses, to start and end with, running out of Fire Formation spells. With no effective ways to recycle them the deck dies out sooner than you know it (fuck Cardinal Commander fixes that!) Fire Fist has a very fast and strong early to mid game but as the match draws longer they find themselves with little to no plays thus why the deck’s ratio is very important to avoid such circumstances. However, remember the opposite happens if players go greedy while constructing their decks. Technically, you don’t want to draw into too many Fire Formations other than Tenki (maybe Tensu.) You’d rather draw into other stuff. 

How do you deal with them? It is important to not have split focus when you are going against Fire Fist. Attempting to deal with both their monsters and back rows can result to a series of misplays or a quick depletion of resources (Side Deck excluded.) Your set of concerns should reflect upon your choice of deck, either focus on getting rid of their monsters by effect (kudos to HLG for highlighting) or their back rows. If your choice of deck packs much bigger beaters, go for the back row (a better choice in my opinion.) If not, focus on getting rid of their monsters. Paying attention to that helps to make Side Decking against Fire Fist much easier. Here’s a list of cards that works and could work against Fire Fist (depending on your deck of choice.)

Effect Veiler

Thunder King Raioh
Twister

Overworked (kudos to Baha for highlighting)

Fairy Wind

Mind Crush

Skill Drain

Mirror Force
Dust Tornado

Fiendish Chain
Macro Cosmos

Threatening Roar
Breakthrough Skill 

Malevolent Catastrophe

The only staple i included in the list is Effect Veiler seeing that many still doubt its usefulness in the coming change (not everyone but some.) I might have missed out points here and there but I hope this piece of article has come in handy for readers. If you wish to discuss anything, comment below. Work has finally starting to let up for me and thank God I will have time to prepare for Asia Championship Qualifiers. With that, more posts will follow. So, as always remember to play smart, fight hard, or go home a loser. Thank you for spending time here!