Welcome to the Yu-Gi-Oh! portion of MECHAHAMMER! The article series that every reader has been clamoring for is finally back. This week, rather than discussing a play format, I’ll be taking you on a Super Sentei adventure and discussing a specific deck: The Super Quants.

GREGNOTE: Rocco specifically did not want to explain any of the jargon or terminology in here, and I completely agree with him: if you aren’t a real Yu-Gi-Oh head you won’t, and frankly don’t deserve to, understand the wildly cool and powerful secrets that are probably contained in this post. People aren’t baffled often enough, and this is a rare opportunity for you to be completely lost, which I think is worth savoring.

Super Quantal Alphan Spike, Credit: Konami

The Super Quant archetype is a XYZ summon-based archetype originally released in 2016, and it received more support in 2019. The archetype is made up of 4 different colors of Power Rangers and their trusty fairy friend.

The Rangers

The first thing to note about this deck is that the 4 rangers all have an effect when they are summoned AND an effect when they are sent to the graveyard (referred to as “GY” on modern card text). Each monster’s effect is a hard once per turn.

The Original Crew

Super Quantum Red Layer

He’s the fearless leader jumping into action ahead of his teammates. A level 5, Fire attribute, Warrior-type monster, Red Layer can special summon himself from your hand if you control no monsters (this made him particularly effective as tribute fodder for prominent tribute summon deck in 2016, Monarchs). This works in the deck’s favor as you can summon him without using your 1 normal summon per turn, which is an extremely important resource here. The only downside here is that when Red Layer is summoned he can add one “Super Quant” card from your graveyard to your hand. Not an amazing effect if all you have done so far is summon this guy, but it means you at least have a body on board. Now his GY effect is the kicker, when Red Layer is sent to the GY you can special summon one “Super Quant” monster from your GY except for “Super Quantum Red Layer”. The downside here is that the monster’s effects are negated, so you won’t get his friend’s on-summon effect. This is, however, an important combo extender regardless. Always run 3.

Super Quantum Blue Layer

The blue ranger might be the most important ranger in the crew. She doesn’t have fancy special summoning tricks like Red Layer has, but she does have a very powerful on-summon effect. Blue Layer is a level 3, Water attribute, Psychic-type monster. When she is summoned she allows you to search for any “Super Quant” card in your deck and add it to your hand. Why is this tutoring effect so important? Well it lets you grab the field spell in a world where Terraforming (a field spell tutor) is limited to one copy per deck. More about the field spell later. Blue Layer’s GY effect lets you recycle your “Super Quant” monsters by shuffling up to 3 of them into your deck when she hits the grave. Great for long grind games. We’re more concerned with the tutoring effect. Always run 3.

Super Quantum Green Layer

Green Layer is a level 4, Wind attribute, Sorcerer-type monster and we kinda don’t care about him. The other 2 are almost always run at 3 copies per monster. Green Layer can be run at 2 or 3 and if you run 3 it’s an easy card to side-out going into game 2. Let’s go into why this is the case. When Green Layer is summoned he lets you special summon one “Super Quant” monster from your hand. While this seems like a good effect it means you have to have him and another Super Quant in hand and use your normal summon on it. In this deck, removing two cards from your hand better have a really good upside, so the only time you want to do this is if you have Super Quantal Fairy Alphan, Blue Layer, or White Layer in hand as well. Green Layer’s GY effect is also half-way decent, when Green Layer hits the GY, you can discard one “Super Quant” card to draw 1 card. This is a good way to trigger an important Super Quant monster’s GY effect while refilling your hand for more resources. All-in-all a pretty solid card and seems like a good starter, but for reasons that will be explained later he is less than optimal as the normal summon.

The “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie” Crew

In 2019 the deck received two more monsters as support, Super Quantum White Layer and Super Quantal Fairy Alphan. Before this release the deck was technically playable, but it’s meta-relevance was pretty much zero. These two cards helped the deck try to contend with the increasing speed of the game, but they didn’t help enough. Still, they are pretty cool additions and add a lot more combo potential to the strategy.

Super Quantum White Layer

The new big guy. Like Tommy in the movie, White Layer comes in and takes the helm in a pretty white suit. While he may not be the most important member of the crew in this instance, the utility he adds is important. For starters, he can special summon himself for the low, low cost of sending a non-Light “Super Quant” monster from your hand or face-up on the field to the GY, allowing you to trigger a GY effect of one of his team members. This is pretty useful if there is already some GY set up from earlier, but it can help set up further plays down the line. After he is special summoned he gets to do a very cool move: send one of his teammates (a “Super Quant” monster) from the deck to the GY, changing his level and attribute to match the sent monster. That’s two very cool GY set up effects in one and changing his level helps set you up for an Xyz (pronounced eck-zeez) play to make one of your powerful Extra Deck monsters or to take advantage of the field spell. White Layer’s GY effect lets you add Super Quantal Fairy Alphan from your deck or GY to your hand. You can play White Layer at 2 to 3 copies depending on your utilization.

Super Quantal Fairy Alphan

This little funky mouse guy, playing the role of Alpha from the original Power Rangers series (get it, ALPHAn, pretty clever huh?). This cool little guy is the main combo starter for the deck, and has 2 effects. The first effect let’s you target one “Super Quant” monster you control and change the level of all face-up monsters you control to that monster’s level. This is a really powerful effect if you have an established board state and want to go into Xyz plays. The second effect is why we’re really here. Once per turn you can tribute the rat and reveal 3 “Super Quant” monsters with different names from your deck, then your opponent randomly chooses one of those 3 to special summon to your field and you send the rest to the GY. This is triggering 3 effects at the same time. This is extremely powerful as it lets you chain block your important effects from being disrupted when you put the effects on the chain. So you arrange your chain links with the effect you need to go off the most as chain link 1, then link the other 2 effects in order of importance, usually forcing your opponent to only be able to negate or disrupt the effect happening on the most recent chain link. When you activate this effect you’re most often going to reveal Red, White, and Blue Layer. You’re going to hope the opponent randomly chooses Blue Layer to summon so you can search for the field spell on summon, but if you get the other two you can make some game time decisions and adapt. You play 3 of this mouse, no exceptions.

The Field Spell and the Extra Deck

Super Quantal Mech Ship Magnacarrier

I have been hesitant to say “most important card in the deck”, but there is a reason I said that Blue Layer was the most important member. The field spell is insane. It lets you circumvent the summoning requirements of 5 different monsters in your Extra Deck. After you, ideally, have 3 “Super Quantum” monsters on the board with different attributes and 3 cards in hand (note we are saying SUPER QUANTUM this time instead of SUPER QUANT: you can’t use Alphan to resolve this effect.) You can start discarding cards to summon your Super Quantal Mech Beasts to special summon on top of the Super Quantum monsters which they share an attribute. This is why White Layer’s crew dumping mechanic is useful beyond getting a GY effect. All of the monsters you would want to be summoning with this effect require 2 monsters of the same level to be summoned normally. This lets you trade one of those monsters for one card in your hand AND treats the summon as a proper XYZ summon. Once you pull this off and have your 3 different named Super Quantal Mech Beasts on board (or in the GY); you can send the Magnacarrier to the GY, target those 3 monsters on the field (or in the GY) and use them, and their attached materials, to summon the big chungus: Super Quantal Mech King Great Magnus. Magnus King of the Computer for short.

Super Quantal Mech King Great Magnus

This is the ultimate goal. You want to pull this off as often as you can, and it’s hard to pull off for good reason. he gets different effects based on the number of materials he has attached, so ideally you want to pull off the combo with 3 different named Super Quantal Mech Beasts on the field as opposed to in the GY. If the King of the Computer has 2+ materials you can, during either player’s Main Phase (Quick Effect) shuffle one card on the field (usually an opponent’s card) into the deck. This is an amazingly powerful removal effect that can only be dodged by monsters that can’t be targeted and 90% of the time won’t trigger any effects of the card shuffled back. If he was 4+ materials he is unaffected by card effects except “Super Quant” cards. This makes him extremely difficult to remove and, with his 3600 ATK hands, an extremely potent threat. Finally, at 6+ materials (the exact amount you’d have if you pull off the combo) your opponent can’t use card effects to add cards from their deck to their hand: including by drawing. Most decks won’t be able to deal with this. There are very few outs to a big boss monster that ignores everything you throw at it. As an insurance policy, if your opponent DOES manage to remove him from the field and sent to the GY, you can special summon 3 “Super Quantal Mech Beast” monsters from your GY with different names. They won’t have any material, but at least you’ll have a field to protect yourself with. Run 1 or 2.

The Other Mech Beasts

All of the Mech Beasts gain their ability as a quick effect if they have their corresponding Super Quantum monster as material. In addition, they can take one Super Quantum monster from your hand or field and add them as material. This is important. These idiots can’t attack if they have no materials.

Gampulse

This might be the best in the Magnacarrier. It destroys Spells/Traps as a quick effect if Blue Layer is one of the materials. This guy actually saw some relatively common play on release as it was one of few XYZ monsters that could remove Spells and Traps. Run 1 or 2.

Magnaliger

This big lion is decent. Gets its quick effect if Red Layer is attached. Destroying a monster is removal. Removal is good. Nothing wrong with this guy, just not the most important one. Run 1 or 2.

Aeroboros

Despite being an ouroboros reference this one is a pterodactyl or something. Ignore that. This guy gets its quick effect if Green Layer is attached. Flipping a monster face-down can have stronger implications than destroying a monster. Face-down monsters can’t be used as material to summon any Extra Deck monsters other than Fusion monsters and those aren’t something that most decks can just splash into their strategy. Run 1 or 2.

Lusterrex

This one can help you stop your opponent’s turn in their tracks if you can use it in response to the right monster effect. If Lusterrex has White Layer as a material then it can, as a quick effect, negate the effects of one face-up monster until the end of turn. Pretty big. Run 1 or 2.

The Mech Beasts are all pretty solid. Not the reason why you’re playing the deck, but they can help you adapt your strategy if the whole King of the Computer thing doesn’t work out.

The Rest

Super Quants have some more cards: One more Extra Deck monster and 4 more Spells and Traps.

Neo Super Quantal Mech King Blaster Magna

When they released Lusterrex they had to follow-up with another Mech King to fuse him with Grampulse, Magnaliger, and Aeroboros. So enter Blaster Magna. A Link-3 monster who requires 2+ effect monsters including a “Super Quant” monster, and isn’t nearly as good as Great Magnus. The intent behind its effect is to summon all three Mech Beasts with the field spell, Link them off into this guy, then send the field spell off to summon Great Magnus with 3 materials. The upside, you get to draw a card. The downside, you could’ve had Great Magnus with 6 materials. This is not worth it. Blaster Magna is cool to run as a one-of in the Extra Deck if you can’t go into Great Magnus, but it’s not a card you’re going to rely on.

The Other Spells and Traps

Lightning round:

Magnaformation: A Continuous Trap that protects your Super Quantals from being targeted during your Main Phase 1 and lets you attach any monster you control to a “Super Quantal” you control as material. This is bad. Don’t run it.

Magnaslayer: A Trap card that equips to your “Super Quant” Xyz and increases its ATK by 100x its Rank and it does piercing battle damage to defense position monsters. You can send it to the GY during the Battle Phase so the equipped monster can attack thrice. Sounds useful. Actually useless. Don’t bother.

Alphancall Appeal: A Quick-Play Spell that replaces a “Super Quant” destroyed in battle with a Mech Beast from your Extra Deck and special summon the Layer listed in its text from your hand, deck, or GY. Seems good. Might be good in a grind game, but at the end of the day it’s not worth the slot if you’re trying to win your local meta.

Alphan Spike: A Spell card that lets you shuffle all of your opponents cards into their deck if you control 3 or more “Super Quantum” monsters, but then your opponent gets to special summon an Extra Deck monster, ignoring its summoning conditions. If you ever run this, never activate this effect. On the upside, if its in your GY you can banish this and one Alphan from your GY and activate a Magnacarrier from your deck. Seems good. Not really worth it.

Honestly ignore all of these cards. They can be fun, but they’re pretty much trash.

In preparation for this article I decided to play this deck. I played it and practiced it for 3 weeks. I wish I hadn’t. Here’s the list:

Main Deck:

Monsters (25):

Spells (15):

Extra Deck:

Link (3):

Xyz (12):

Despite wishing I was playing a different deck, I liked this build a lot. It leaned entirely into doing the combo with Emergency Teleport to get a free summon of Blue Layer, multiple copies of the Extra Deck monsters to facilitate easy Pot of Prosperity banishes to excavate for the card I need, and Diviner and Trias to get Alphan special summoned if its not in hand.

In the weekly tournaments I played I was able to summon Great Magnus a handful of times. I had a lot of fun doing it and I usually won those games. Games where I couldn’t get Magnus out I had to fight for my life adapting to what I could summon. I didn’t get any prize packs or store credit playing this deck. After this article posts I’m probably done playing this deck for a good while. I would definitely try the deck as more of a control strategy in the future and play the long game with the Mech Beast effects.

If you made it this far I commend you. Thank you for reading, and remember to believe in the heart of the cards.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Power Rangers

The Rangers