10 Obscure Qliphort Techs

Nowadays, Yugioh as a deckbuilding game is probably long gone. The time when you can confidently bring your home brew deck into some local tournament and win it is probably not gonna come anymore. And in absence of home brew deck, we got a bunch of card with the same name that obviously says, "pair me with card X" and you can get a pretty powerful deck. Ah, archetype, how I hate you for simplifying deckbuilding process. Regardless, this is the reality of today Yugioh that we must embrace.

Now talking about archetype, most of the time Konami didn't give enough card to fulfill the minimum requirement of 40-card deck. This makes people turn their head into some techs to fill their missing cards. Finding good techs is the core of deckbuilding in Today's Yugioh. Eventhough decks can have the same 20+ cards, but they can be different in terms of the tech they used. In the end, your tech choice became your only edge when you play against other people, in terms of deckbuilding.

Today, I'd like to talk about some Qliphort techs that most people didn't use. Pot of Duality, Upstart Goblin, Performapal Trampolynx, Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, Forbidden Chalice, Vanity's Emptiness, and Skill Drain are the most common tech people use when they run Qliphort. They are chosen because they were simply the best and the most versatile tech that people can find, but is it true? As choosing the right techs is the best edge you can have, aside from technical play, it is thus important for you to explore more tech possibility for your deck to gain more advantage.

Firstly, let's talk about some of the less obscure first.

1. Magical Hats

I saw this card being used in Rosty Elkun's Qliphort that brought him to top 16 of ARGCS. The card is great as you can search for two Saqlifices from your deck and then search two more Qliphort monsters in the end of Battle Phase. The problem of the card is that it is easy to play around. When your opponent knows that you run Magical Hats, then they will try to avoid entering Battle Phase as the card can only activate during Battle Phase.

Therefore, the card is most effective only as a surprise when your opponent doesn't know that you have it. When your opponent already knows about the existence of the card in your deck, then you should just side it out. The benefit by doing this is that your opponent will still got the pressure of entering Battle Phase while you won't have a dead card.

2. Dynatherium

Like Magical Hat, this card is also popularized by Rosty Elkun to some extent. The card is obviously good as a sideboard tech in mirror (because you won't get the downside effect as Qliphort usually has no monster in grave) but its also good against other people who happened to side heavily against you.

Most of the time, people are too afraid with Qliphort that they put like 9-10 S/T destruction post-sideboard. Fairy Wind, Twister, Storm, name it. The problem is, when they put to many S/T destruction, they'll have less monster removal traps. This can let you summon a Qliphort and Dynatherium to make Exciton and wipe out their field full of removal traps and just watch them regretting their decision.

3. Sealing Ceremony of Mokuton

If I'm not mistaken, this card is also used by some people whose name I can't remember to top an ARGCS prior to the release of SECE. The card is really good when you're fighting your archnemesis, the Burning Abyss, to stop their never ending cyling of Dante and Cir.

However, with the release of SECE, we got Soul Transition and Qliphort Stealth. Stealth can help you solve the Dante-Cir Cycle by bouncing the Dante to deck, while Soul Transition is simply far more superior than Mokuton as it gives you some card advantage.


4. Limiter Removal

I saw the card on some decklist that topped regionals during the first week of Qliphort release. However, the card is redundant as your board of 2000+ machine are usually enough to deliver lethal damage without the help of Limiter Removal. And if you only want some combat trick during damage step, you can always use Forbidden Chalice which is still good even in early game.

Those four cards, although not popular, has shown a pretty good result by showing up in a Top deck list of premiere event. Now, let's dive deeper into the more obscure tech of Qliphort.

5. Turnabout

I first found the card in some Pojo discussions and I immediately interested in it. This card is basically a Book of Eclipse with no downside except that it isn't a spell card.

Against Burning Abyss, the card can stops your opponent's play because they can't summon their Malebranches when they control face-down monsters (which is counted as a non-BA monsters). Against mirror match, having this card set in your S/T zone means that your opponent won't be able to OTK you for a single turn. More importantly, the ATK/DEF and level of your Qliphorts that has been turned face-down will be reset.

This card gives a huge tempo advantage which is a wonder why nobody wants to use it. One logical reason is that perhaps people loves Skill Drain better when they want to control their opponent's Tempo. The other reason is that the card is really hard to be played. To get a full advantage of this card, you'll need to make sure that you activate it right when you know your opponent won't have any follow-up play, which requires a lot of reading skills.

6. Frontline Observer

This is basically an alternative of Odd-Eyes that eats your normal summon. I doubt the card will be good in Qliphort deck that demands more speed rather than card advantage.

But it's still a generic pendulum searcher which may come in handy once Konami released some OP Pendulum card that happened to be Earth. Who knows?




7. Into the Void

I ran into this card once when I went to an online tournament held by Yugioh Indonesia. The player that played the card also play a playset of Trade-In which I don't really like since it has possibility to be a dead card. However, I'm really interested with Into the Void as it is another cantrips that thins your deck, outside of Upstart Goblin, and the downside doesn't really matter since you can always put every card in your hand to the board when you play Qliphort.

However, when I dig more info regarding the card, I found that it has a quite nice interaction with Qliphort Monolith. You see, the ruling of Into the Void in Yugioh Wikia said that the discard effect "doesn't start a chain." Which means that after you discard your hand, you can still activate Monolith's effect to draw more cards. It basically nullify every downside the card gave! Playing 3 copies of Into the Void alongside 3 copies of Upstart Goblin means that you run a 34-card deck which increase the chance of drawing Scout in the first turn. And if you think that's not enough, you can also run this card below:

8. One Day of Peace

Yes, another cantrip, because why not? We love 37-card deck, so how can we don't love 33-card deck? Giving +1 to your opponent might be a downside, but who cares about card advantage when you can put 8000+ damage out of nowhere before their advantage even matters?

Many OTK deck from the past played 3 copy of this card because of the same reason. The other reason is that the card gave them time to gather their OTK pieces without having to worry about defense.



9. Burden of the Mighty

This is probably an exclusive tech for mirror match. Qliphort mirror match is usually determined by a battle of fist. No matter how many MST you have to destroy opposing Scout, in the end the one who wins are the one with better beatdown. So why don't we just reduce opposing ability to beatdown?

With Burden of Mighty, normal summoned Qliphort will only be at 1400 ATK, while tribute summoned Qliphort will be at 2000-2100 ATK. All of that are beatable by your single Qliphort equipped with Saqlifice or pumped by Scale 1.

More importantly, your opponent will have to think twice to use their MST. They can destroy Scout, but they can't beat our monster or they can destroy our Burden of the Mighty but risking of getting OTK'd next turn. However, the card is still vulnerable to Spell-Shattering Arrow.

10. Prohibition

Now this card is basically a universally used card so why am I talking this in Obscure Qliphort Techs article? Because I think the card is an absolute beast when combined with Apoqliphort Towers. You see, Apoqliphort Towers is a beast, no doubt, but it is not unbeatable. Sattelarknight can use Honest to beat it down, Nekroz player can use Decisive Armor, and Bujin has like a million Honest.

However, what needs to be noted is that the solutions to answer Apoqliphort Towers are usually easy to be predicted for each deck and most of the time there are not many. Therefore, if we summoned Towers and then activated Prohibition to call their only out to Apoqliphort Towers, then we'll have a perfect beast, untouched by anything. That's merely a theory, though, because I haven't really tested it, but just thinking about it makes me super excited.

So, there you go, the 10 obscure Qliphort techs which you can consider to bring in your Qliphort deck. Most of the arguments I provided here are merely an arguments with no proof yet, so feel free to give your counter arguments. I think that the discussion about techs are something that is lacking in current Yugioh community as many people are more eager to discuss about some overpriced cards or some conflict between OCG/TCG, which is sad, because there are more to Yugioh than just that.