Haze Beast - Actually Quite Good!

Recently I've been testing out the Haze Beast (Hazy Flame in the TCG) archtype that came out a while back (or recently for the TCG) in Cosmo Blazers. While the Fire Fist cards gets all the attention as the number one FIRE deck in town, I find the Haze Beast being more interesting. I've only recently made a working deck, partly due to my school projects and mostly due to me not paying attention to anything that's not labeled with HERO or Hieratic. In fact, I found my interest in Haze Beast while trying to mess them with Hieratics a while back. I wouldn't say that deck failed, but its just not consistent. After a few days of testing, I've dropped the Hieratic-Haze Beast deck and went on trying to build a Haze Beast deck instead.

Being a bunch of commons and rares, I see quite a few guys at my locals, Gamers Arena play them. I'm just not buying the straight out of the pack build. I tried the "pure" build and find myself hating it. The Haze Beast engine is super powerful, and being blanket from target, means your opponent couldn't even try and Veiler your monsters. Also, being level 6s, the deck has excess to some of the most powerful XYZ monsters in the game, namely Constellar M7 and their own boss monster, Basiltrice. 

Why isn't this generic?

After some trial and errors, I've came up with a build that I feel is consistent enough and being able to pull of big plays easily. With the limitations set by Haze Beast Griffin, I tried to make sure the main deck was filled with FIRE monsters. Thats not easy considering there aren't a lot of FIRE monsters that are good in the game. Doing so also means you can't run your usual hand traps, which would cost the deck's defenses. Another thing that I kept in my would be to play Sphynx consistently, meaning maintaining a high monster count. High monster count, no hand traps and only FIRE monsters sounds like a formula for disaster, but I came up with a solution. Run monsters that don't go into the grave. We have a hand trap that does that, Battle Fader, and a very powerful monster that does the same, Rescue Rabbit.

monster (28):

3 Haze Beast Cerbereus - Instant drop, Sangan

3 Haze Beast Peryton - basically Rescue Cat 

3 Haze Beast Sphynx - Declare, Mill, call the right card type, do retarded plays

3 Haze Beast Griffin - XYZ fodder

2 Rescue Rabbit

3 Blazing Inpachi

3 Darkfire Soldier #2 (#1 does exactly the same thing, but I like #2's art more)

1 Knight of the Red Lotus

3 Royal Firestorm Guards

3 Battle Fader

1 Magna Drago 

spell (9):

3 Haze Pillar - All Haze Beast can be drop straight

3 Mystic Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Dark Hole

1 Monster Reborn

trap (3):

3 Call of the Haunted

extra (15):

1 Gaia Dragoon

2 Haze Beast Basiltrice

2 Constellar M7

1 Photon Streak Bounzer

2 Lavaval Chain

1 Number 39 Hope

1 Number 50 Black Corn

1 Queen Dragoon Djinn

1 Diamond Dire Wolf

1 Scrap Dragon

1 Stardust Radiance Dragon

1 Red Dragon Archfiend

...

Now, my main deck might be a little very weird for most of you. But I could explain ... I hope. Rescue Rabbit serves as another strategy for the deck, normally if I start first and opens with Rabbit, I would make Chain and start putting combo pieces on my deck. Since Haze Pillar (the main spell) is searchable by Cerbereus, the combo starts off pretty early in the game. Normally I would put Peryton (the broken piece of raindeer) and let all hell break loose. Theres a reason why I chose those normal monsters for Rabbit. Being FIRE is the primary reason, the other being they are both Pyro monsters. 

Guards let me recycle my Pyro monsters and draws 2. Its a Pyro monster itself so it contributes to another Guard's effect. The main engine of the deck, Peryton is a Pyro and the boss, Basiltrice is also a Pyro. If I open Rabbit, chances are I have more than enough Pyro in my grave to trigger Guards by the end of turn 2. If this card is dead in hand, I could always discard it for Peryton. 

Useless card found some use!

Another monster that you guys might have never seen play would be the Knight of Red Lotus. True, this guy is pretty much useless in every way.  But he is a level 6 FIRE monster that isn't a nomi. Yes, this guy can be tribute summoned if you want to but normally we don't do that. Rabbit fuels the grave for a Knight drop and Knight can easily put almost 4000 damage on the board. Also, there's always the option of bringing him back with Sphynx. His not really that important to the deck but I find him a very good tech to play with. Lastly, I also added the tuner monster Magna Drago so I could have some Synchro plays, primarily with Sphynx. 

Lastly, I've decided to play 3 Calls due to two reasons. The first being this deck mills quite a lot and the monsters fill the garve fast. The other reason would be Cerbereus. That thing is a Sangan for the deck and it searches out all of your combo pieces. One thing I've learned from Hieratics would be how powerful Sangan-Call is.

This deck could easily side into some Skill Drain build to counter the meta, the only monster that needs its effect on the field would be Guards and Sphynx. Another card I really wanna try siding would be Molten Destruction, to make my level 4 monsters at least 2200, more than enough to take on HERO Beat and Verz (pre-XYZ).

The Haze Beast engine is amazing, its consistent and can pull off really big plays with little effort. It does lack in the defense department and that is a major problem. I'm still testing this archtype out and nothing here is permanent  this is just the first deck that I build that's actually doing rather good. More research and testing are sure to come. Thanks for reading and please leave your comments and thoughts below.