How’s it going, readers? Today I will be discussing the under-used deck known as frog monarchs or frognarchs for short. This deck has so much potential that has not been awakened yet, just sleeping waiting for the right user to abuse it. Well that day has come! Well let’s start with its name, “Frog Monarchs,” as its name suggests, it’s a deck which combines both the, “Frog,” and,

​“Monarch,” monsters.

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Deck List:

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Monsters (27)

3 - Swap Frog
2 - Treeborn Frog
1 - RoninToadin
3 - Caius the Shadow Monarch
3 - Raiza the Storm Monarch
2 - Illusory Snatcher
2 - Light and Darkness Dragon
1 - Obelisk the Tormentor
1 - Gorz the Emissary of Darkness
2 - Tragoedia
3 - Battle Fader
2 - Maxx "C"
2 - Effect Veiler

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Spells (13)

2 - Soul Exchange
3 - Enemy Controller
1 - Creature Swap
1 - Pot of Avarice
1 - Foolish Burial
2 - Mystical Space Typhoon
1 - Heavy Storm
1 - Dark Hole
1 - Monster Reborn

     

   The idea of the deck is to use Treeborn Frog for tribute fodder. Treeborn frogs revives itself every standby phase as long as you control no spell or trap cards. A first turn Treeborn is usually what the frog player is looking for and to help with this you play cards such as Swap Frog and Foolish burial. Swap frog is the second frog I will be discussing, his effect lets him special summon himself from his hand by discarding a water monster and when he is summon (normal or special) you can put a water monster from your deck to your grave (Treeborn or Ronintoadin). Next on our list of frogs is the previously mentioned, Ronintoadin. His effect is a bit different from the rest, he allows himself to be summoned from the grave by banishing another frog.  This allows double sacking or even triple that much easier. In fact most of your bigger plays will be involving him.

    

  Now next are the Monarch monsters, All monarchs have the stats of 2400 att and 1000 def and all of their effect go off when they are tribute summoned and a nice note to know is that they are all MANDATORY, which means if you tribute summon Caius and nothing is on the field but Caius, Caius gets banished. However the only two we run are Caius the Shadow Monarch and Raiza the Storm Monarch. Caius when tribute summoned he banishes any card and if it’s a dark monster, your opponent take 1000 damage! So on top of being of 2400 beater, he deals burn damage, no wonder why he’s looked upon as the best monarch. Next is Raiza, his effect is when he is tribute summoned, he returns one card to the top of the owner’s deck. There is also a Raiza Lock where if you get Swap Frog + Raiza, you can use Raiza’s effect to top deck one of your opponents cards, then use Swap Frog’s effect to send Raiza to the hand and with Treeborn frog in grave you can do that every turn! Deck seems pretty good now right? It’s one of my all time favorites.

 

     

   Next on our list of cards Is what the Pojo forms like to call, “Honorary Monarchs,” these are monster’s that are used in the deck without having, “Monarch,” in their name. Just to name a few are Illusory Snatcher, Light and Darkness Dragon, and the mighty Egyptian God, Obelisk the Tormentor. Illusory Snatcher is a new card from Return of the Duelist which allows itself to be summon upon tribute summoning a monsters, it also takes the monster Type, Attribute, and Level. This allows us easy access to rank six monsters as well as rank eight if you are running level eights. Light and Darkness Dragon is an amazing card as well, its effect negates everything, literally, for the cost of only 500 att and def. Which means you can negate any four cards before the guy runs out and on top of that when he is destroyed and sent to the graveyard, he revives another monster for you! The only downside to him being that he can only activate once per chain.  Finally we have Obelisk, our big bad boss.  If you get Obelisk out, you probably just won this game. His summon cannot be negated, he cannot be targeted spells, traps or card effects and you cannot activate anything on his summon. Did I mention he has 4000 attack? The only  downside being to this big beater is his summon requirement which is 3 tributes but hey we have treeborn, ronintoadin, enemy controller, soul exchange, Tragoedia, Gorz for nothing right?

     

   Now for the rest of the monsters, they are all hand traps. Why run hand  traps? Don’t forget we cannot have any spell or traps on the field or else Treeborn cannot come back on the standby phase. So for our hand traps we run Effect Veiler, Maxx “C”, Battle Fader, Gorz the Emissary of Darkness, and finally Tragoedia. Veiler and Maxx “C” stop our opponents plays, while Gorz, Fader and Trag all protect us from dying as well as they become tribute fodder afterwards or a huge beater.

     

   On to our spells now, Soul Exchange is probably your most underrated card ever. It allows you to tribute your opponents monster for your summon but you cannot attack that turn. But that’s fine, we’ll go into LaDD (Light and Darkness Dragon) then sit there. Enemy Controller is also easily abused for us, since Treeborn comes back during the standby phase and the standby phase is endless, we can constantly tribute Treeborn frog for Enemy Controller and take our opponents monsters for our own liking. Creature swap is for the same thing but for monsters we want permanently such as Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning or Dark Armed Dragon. Finally we have Pot of Avarice, this allows us to recycle our Monarchs for more use as well as our hand traps and it lets us go +1 off it. There’s a reason this card was put to one. Anyways that’s my article for you guys for today, I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll be back soon!

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- BlackValleyTyler
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