Rogue Deck Spotlight: Scareclaw Deck, Ultimate Defense!

How to Play/Playstyle

The deck focuses on flood control on the field while providing incredible incentives based on the monsters you summon around your big bad, including a few support cards to help. A few cards also help for easy XYZs and Synchros, so there’s a lot of versatility when setting up for first turns or baiting out your opponent on your second.

The boss monster of this deck is Scareclaw Tri-Heart, and each of his “underlings” gives him a considerable boost for many actions. Each monster has persisting effects while face-up on the field, which is only fair since each has 0 ATK.

To give you an idea of some of the carry cards for the boss card: Scareclaw Astra provides Link monsters in the Extra Monster Zone an additional attack based on the number of defense Scareclaw monsters you control. While Scareclaw Acro provides Scareclaw monsters in the Extra Monster Zone 300 ATK for each Defense monster you control. Even Scareclaw Belone can provide piercing damage against opponents once their monsters are in defense from Tri-Heart’s lingering effects. As you can see, there are several cards that can prove useful in almost any encounter (and that’s not even all of them)!

And we can’t forget Scareclaw Reichheart, an imperative card to any Scareclaw deck, and for a good reason. It’s your main searcher that’ll allow you to drag out powerful Scareclaw traps and spells. And as an added bonus, if there are more than three monsters in Defense Position, you’ll be able to get an additional draw.

Important/Boss Monsters

Scareclaw Light-Heart – Using only materials in the Main Monster Zone, once summoned to the Extra Monster Zone, allows you to search out a Primitive Planet Reichphobia. It can also be summoned from the grave if you control a Visas Starfrost, so you may want to get this during your first turn when you get the chance, as it’s easy to recover.

Scareclaw Tri-Heart – This card makes any monster on the field go into Defense Position as well as not being affected by any Defense Position monsters effects besides Scareclaw monsters. It also has the effect of special summoning a Scareclaw from the grave and searching for another from your deck, making it a searcher in its own right.

Other Great Cards

Primitive Planet Riechphobia – While automatically searching out a Scareclaw monster or Visas Starfrost on activating, it also decreases enemy monsters’ ATK and DEF by 100 points for each Defense Monster on the field. Also, if there are three or more Defense Monsters on the field you can target one card your opponent controls and destroy it.

Also, some definitive Traps and Spells like Scareclaw Arrival can special summon a Scareclaw monster or Visas Starfrost from GY. Whenever your Link Scareclaw Monster is destroyed you can banish the card and negate its destruction. Scareclaw Straddle can increase the ATK/DEF of your Scareclaw monster or negate effects that target them as well. Scareclaw Sclash, usually your first pick during your initial combo set-up, can allow one Scareclaw monster to attack while in defense and negate effects by tributing a single Scareclaw monster.

Visas Starfrost can provide excellent Synchro summoning possibilities into turn-over cards like Baronne de Fleur and Swordsoul Supreme Sovereign – Chengying since it’s Lvl6 and most of your Scareclaw monsters are Lvl4 being great for Lvl10 Synchros. 

Another great card I found to work great with this deck is Parallel eXceed. I usually run three so it can show up in my initial hand because, after the second turn, it’s more likely that your opponent has set up several disruptions and negations for you to deal with.

Main Strategy/Core Combo

The goal of this deck is to have disruptions set on the field while also having Scareclaw Tri-Heart on the field to deal with your opponent’s monsters that could destroy it. The more Scareclaw Traps and Spells, as well as Monsters you have in your initial starting hand, make your combos much more efficient.

The easiest way to get things started is summoning a Scareclaw monster (if it’s Reichheart, great). Link into Light-Heart, search Primitive Planet Reichphobia, then add another Scareclaw monster (in most cases, it will be Reichheart, if you already have two or more Scareclaws in your hand then go for Visas Starfrost). Whatever way you can, either through Special Summoning additional Scareclaws or grabbing Scareclaw Arrival to summon from the GY, Link summons Scareclaw Tri-Heart. Now, the thing to remember here is that you cannot Special Summon monsters except Scareclaw monsters for the rest of the turn after you use its effect. So, if you have a Parallel eXceed or Visas Starfrost and want to go into a quick XYZ or Synchro, do so before you use his effect.

If I’m not sure what my opponent is playing, I usually go for a Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir since it wouldn’t affect my Scareclaw monsters in Defense nor Tri-Heart and be an additional negate, so they’d have to deal with two monsters that put their monsters into Defense and negate their effects. For Synchros, it’s easiest to utilize Virtual World Kyubi – Shenshen on first turns once you know your opponent’s archetype, but of course, the problem solver will always be Baronne de Fleur.

It’s also incredibly easy to I:P Masquerena into Apollousa, Bow of the Goddess on your opponent’s turn with all the Special Summoning you can do, so keep that combo in mind.

Thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoy Scareclaws!