Into the Abhyss:
A Reptiles Introduction
Written By: Trey Parker (Mchalo3a)
Edited By: Iceberg
July 8th, 2021
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The year is 2006. Yugioh is in the midst of the GX era. Cyber Dragon has rocked the TCG, Heroes are bad (and will be until Perfect Circle gives them a home two years later), and I was 10. While I was a stupid child who didn't play yugioh anymore because it was a dumb baby game, a little archetype was released by the name of Aliens. This was yugioh's first full archetype using the Reptile monster type. One of four: Aliens, Worms, Reptilliannes, and Evoltiles.
Until now! Earlier this year, Ogdoadic (or Abhyss, which is what I'll be calling them from here on) was released! Finally, a competitive archetype made up of adorable little snakes!
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Did I say adorable? Because I meant to say "Borderline Eldritch Monstrosities". And porting them into Trinity from the TCG is easy! Just add the Lair of Darkness engine, run some general control tools, and-
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Oh. Yeah… That's not going to work. Plus the Summon Limit of Trinity plays very poorly with the Abhyss. So, what now? Do our snakes languish in unplayability? Forced to a life of irrelevance?
No. They aren't. But we know that, because if they were I wouldn't be writing this.
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The Remnants: Lore and Basic Cards
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If you aren't interested in mythology, or my ramblings, feel free to skip this paragraph and move on to the cards. The definition of an Ogdoad is a group of eight divine beings, usually in some kind of pantheon. Interestingly, there are actually nine snakes in the Ogdoadic archetype. Could this refer to one of them not being divine, or maybe the Overlord rules over the gods? I don't know for sure, but I found it interesting. Additionally, their apparent connection visually to Egyption Mythology had me do a quick search on the Egyption Snake gods, and I found two of interest: Apopis, the evil enemy of Re, the Sun God, and Nehebkau, a snake god that originally started as a diety of chaos, but was calmed and now resides as the judge over souls passing to the afterlife. I believe the second god has a possible connection to the Abhyss, as they're a collection of light and dark reptiles, representing agents of chaos and order. They also gain bonus effects when leaving or entering the graveyard, or the afterlife. Am I right, or stupid? You decide!
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As for the cards themselves, I'd like to discuss Nunu and Nauya specifically. They're the deck's playstarters, and I'd like to explain what you send and why. If you need to, you can check out the Ogdoadic archetype here.
Alright! Now which of those wriggly boys are we going to send to the graveyard, and why? Well, early game your goal is to use Nunu to send Zohah in order to create rank 4 and link 2's. These can help unbrick your deck and get you access to your grind game. Be aware that Aleirtt is a trap early. He's here to help us recover banished snakes late, but you're almost never going to choose him over your other three dark snakes.
And speaking of traps, you'll notice I'm not actually running Zohah's counterpart. In my opinion, and I could be wrong, there is no reason to send him off Nauya. Unlike Nunu, it doesn't create any combos and doesn't progress our end game. Keurse lets you search out Water Lily with Nauya, and Aron is the closest thing Trinity has to Dark Law, but we'll cover him later.
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Snake Rain: The Combos
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Combos with Abhyss are interesting. Because of the summon limit, we're forced away from a massive, 1 turn resource loop and are instead forced to plan ahead, and build both our access to our engine and board presence over several turns. So, moving forward keep that in mind: our combos aren't here to win us the game, but instead create a slow, strangling advantage…
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Not unlike a boa constrictor.
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In hand: Snake Rain, or Nunu, the Ogdadic Remnant
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Activate Snake Rain, discarding a card, or discard Nunu by its own effect.
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Send Nunu and Zohah. The other two you send are based on the board, I prefer Aron and Amunessia as a general choice. If your starter was Nunu, you'll end up with access to just Nunu and Zohah.
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Add Zohah to your hand by discarding a card.
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Special summon Nunu by its own effect.
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Normal summon Zohah.
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Overlay into King of the Feral Imps.
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Search Nauya with the King's effect.
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Discard Nauya to send Keurse from the deck to the graveyard.
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Following me? Great! While this combo only ends on a 2300 body, we end up with, at minimum, access to both our Remnants and 5 reptiles, which is hugely important for Water Lily. This is your bread and butter, and gets you exactly the cards you need for future turns. The early game of this deck is almost entirely dedicated to getting here, and there's even a basic combo to get us here:
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In hand: Tour Guide or Sangan
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Normal Summon Tour Guide and search Sangan, or Normal Summon Sangan.
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Link into a link 2 if possible, such as Wee Witch, Phoenix, or Codebreaker. If you started with Sangan, link into Almiraj.
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Activate Sangan to Search Nunu.
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Sadly, Nunu is not worth spending points on, so instead it's best to have ways to find it. If you've already got access to Nunu, Sangan can instead search out your Amazement Starter, Summoner Monk, or even Rescue Rabbit. If you have a turn where you can spend your summons on this, you'll find it to be one of your most flexible combos. However, it's not our only use of Tour Guide:
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In hand: Tour Guide
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Normal Summon Tour Guide, searching Claw Reacher (any level 3 normal fiend works here, choose your favourite!)
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Link into Cherubini.
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Use Cherubini to send Dandylion to the graveyard.
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Dandylion summons two tokens.
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Link the tokens into LANphorhynchus.
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Link Cherubini and LAN into either a 2 mat Apollusa or a 2700 attack Doublebyte Dragon.
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One card negate/big beater combos are huge in Trinity. When in doubt, summon a big bungus! Speaking of which:
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In hand: Dandylion
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Normal Summon Dandylion.
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Link into Almiraj.
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Use Dandylion to summon two tokens.
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Link the tokens and Almiraj into Berserker of the Tenyi.
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A big 3k beater, all from 1 card. What more can you ask for?
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Slither Along: the Midgame Plan
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Once you've got access to your engine, the deck's grind game really shines. Each of your big snakes has a way to summon themselves from the graveyard at a cost, and an ability once they're summoned. However, these effects are seperate.
This means cards that revive from the graveyard, like Super Team Buddy Force, Call of the Haunted, etcetera can get your big snakes on board without giving your opponents advantage. You can also use Water Lily as both a foolish burial and a monster reborn. Otherwise, just try to accumulate advantage while keeping your opponents off board.
Now, let's discuss play patterns you'll be using throughout the midgame. The common combo is as follows:
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In graveyard: Keurse and Nauya
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Set a monster for your hand, Zohah is repeatable.
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Tribute the monster for Keurse's effect. This will allow your opponent to special summon from the graveyard.
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Keurse sunmons Nauya to search Water Lily.
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Link the two monsters away, or tribute them for your King or Queen.
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You can do this line repeably so long as you have a level 4 Abhyss monster in your graveyard, since Keurse banishes the snake she summons, and once you've run through the link plays, you'll be relying on Aron.
I mentioned the fact that he's comparable to Dark Law, and I mean it. When your opponent adds a card to their hand from anywhere, except by their draw phase, they discard at random. Additionally, if a monster enters their graveyard from anywhere, you add a light or dark reptile from your graveyard to your hand. Recycle him, and your Remnants, to gain incremental advantage and replace the cards you lost from your initial combos.
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Snake Oil: The Honorary Snakes
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While Tribal decks are common in Trinity (I guarantee that if you look at the most recent ycs there's some kind of warrior toolbox in the top 4), it's very rare that they're entirely pure (Unless they're warriors). Because of that, I wanted to touch on some of my non-reptiles and explain why they deserve a slot, and hopefully encourage you to think outside of the box too! No deck is ever done, and I guarantee my list above is not the most optimal.
Rescue Rabbit is here for a free rank 4 as two normal reptiles. From here you could either go into King of the Feral Imps, and finish the first combo searching Nunu, or go into a link 2 reptile. It just gives you such a huge advantage without asking for anything in return.
Amazement is my newest addition, and it looks like what the deck was missing. It's a 6-7 card engine (3-4 traps, a searcher spell, and the two monsters) which really ups your disruption as well as giving you a big body that searches out even more traps.
Summoner Monk is the final honorary snake I'd like to talk about. They let you discard a spell to special summon a level 4 monster from your deck. This includes Nunu. And Rescue Rabbit, meaning everything I just said about the rabbit applies here. Overall this card gives you so many options that you'll almost always be happy to see it.
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Leaving the Abhyss: The Conclusion
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Unfortunately, I don't expect more support for our slithery boys for a long time, but in my opinion there's enough here for a meta relevant deck for the foreseeable future. The Abhyss play well within Trinity's rules, and allow you to build advantage by playing on both players' turns. There's a resource loop, an instant speed board wipe, and even Water Lily, seriously I cannot stress how broken this card is.
So, does this deck interest you? Will you join me, and heed the call of the Abhyss?
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