Invited Author: Hariz
Country: Brunei
Introduction
My name is Hariz and recently I was given the privilege of creating this article for the Jellymon Deck after winning with it at a recent Digimon League Event at Gamer’s Tavern, Brunei on 20th August 2023. Ever since they introduced Jellymon into the game, I’ve always tried to slide her supports in some of my blue decks but it still just didn’t felt very viable nor necessary at times. Then came RB01 when they introduced the Lv6 Amphimon, I was hyped because it was the start of when Jellymon could be its on independent deck rather than just a support package.
But something was still lacking, it was still getting outshine and couldn’t perform just as fast and consistent like other decks. It wasn’t because there wasn’t enough jellymon cards to support the mechanic but rather the newer support for BLUE wasn’t generic enough for other blue decks to utilize till the introduction of BT13 and the new Amphimon ACE from the LM Booster. Let’s Begin!
The Goal and how it works
So before we start, I’ll explain on how Jellymon/Amphimon deck works and what is the goal of the deck. The deck wants you to have 7 or less cards in hand, strip off the digisource of your opponent’s digimon and have a bunch of ‘jellymon in its text’ cards in the trash to trigger certain conditions. Building this deck with just that knowledge however makes you randomly dunk your hand when not necessary or even play too much of the jelly cards which you don’t have to. Below you’ll see my rendition of the deck that I recently use and I’ll explain how it worked out and my match ups.
Jellymon Decklist (3-0)
This was the only 2nd time I brought the deck to an event, the 1st time time I built it was purely Jellymon Tribal and it showed what which cards I needed to play more, what I needed to play less or which ones I didn’t need to play at all. But just cause I didn’t play in my deck doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, it just means it belonged in a different focus or didn’t suit my local Meta. My local meta is run by a lot of X-antibody and other Blue decks like Mirage Gao, Blue Flare, Ulforce and at times random once in a while.
The Boss card: Amphimon
Let’s talk about the old and new Amphimon, RB01 Amphimon has an on digivolve and attacking ability to trash sources and bottom deck an opponent’s Digimon by discarding cards and filling up your trash. Not only does it have board control, it also has the protection ability from deletion not only for itself but for other Blue Cards aswell. Yes ‘OTHER BLUE CARDS’ meaning it can protect your ACE cards or any other key cards you don’t want to lose by returning 3 cards with Jellymon in its text.
The issue I had find with this Amphimon before the LM Supports was that it wasn’t a finisher, it was too defensive and you slowly poke opponent while they try to slowly recover, it was missing that certain pressure. Then came the new Amphimon from LM Booster. Now some may think because its an ACE Card, its mainly just for defense, but I find that this Amphimon is at most will be your main attacker. Downside is that its DP is quite low and unless you have jamming or the RB1 Amphimon ready, you might feel hesitant to swing with it most of the time. The Ideal setup would be if when you have both Amphimons on the battle area, RB1 Amphimon for the Defense and refilling your resource and the LM Amphimon do all the damage.
The Weakness
The weakness of the deck… well I’ll be honest it has quite a lot of weaknesses but so far I stumble upon while playing this deck,
I’ll break it down into the type of decks you need to look out for instead of specific decks .
- Decks that De-digivolve your stuff: The fact that the level 6 is an ACE card the moment it gets de-digivolve, opponent over flows 4 memory, it’s even worse if there was a zudomon under it and if opponent can get rid the whole line that overflows for 7!
- Decks that minus DP: It has 0 protection against cards that lowers its DP. RB1 Amphimon can only protect itself and you’re other Blue Digimons from deletion, but if their DP stays 0 it will still get removed.
- Decks that run X-Antibody: The moment you face these decks that run the X-Antibody Option, you cannot bounce their digimon because you can’t trash the X-antibody at all with any of the Jellymon cards. This is literally the bane of the Jelly Deck. That is why you need to run other cards to just remove the digimon entirely to help you buy time.
- Jogress Decks? : I’d find jogress decks takes awhole lot of work and resource to remove because the stack is just too long and too much time and resource needed to remove. Not Impossible…but yeah..
Reliable Support
Amphimon can’t trigger their abilities if the opposing digimon has any cards in their digisource so in order to strip those ees away you need to discard cards to remove each cards under , but what if I tell you you can basically just pay less and still get value? With the help of the new Goma Line and good’ ol reliable cards like Sourai , you can basically remove 1-4 cards from other digimon source while having a body with Zudomon and aswell as control your handsize from going 0. But of course there will be a match up against an X-antibody deck where you can’t remove the source, so Ikkakumon can help with stalling while the opponent builds up.
Matchups
Game 1 : Diaboromon
My 1st opponent was against a diaboromon Deck, against this deck I had to be very cautious of their Diaboro ACE and also make sure to finish the game before they can generate their token army. The night before I had practice with the deck and you cannot be greedy and wait for the diaboromon hoping to let you counter evo, they will get rid of your Lv4 and lv5. Luckily for me however, my opponent was not able to set up his Arata before he could swarm his token army.
Game 2 : Xrosheart
Now Xrosheart, it was one of the top meta decks during its prime time because not alot of decks could do anything to it once they set up their tamers and resources, but even so its still a strong deck even today and can snowball out of nowhere when you least expect it. In theory I really think Jellymon deck could counter Xrosheart and other xros decks because it can remove sources from both digimon and tamers, why I say theory is because this was my first time playing against it with the Jellymon deck. RB01 -14 Thetismon also allows you to trash sources from their tamers and make them unable to suspend and activate effects for a turn. Thanks to this I was able to deny his key sources and slowed the deck down abit.
Game 3 : Yellow Vaccine
Finals, well I’ll be honest this was one game I really thought was gonna end my streak. So many decks I manage to avoid like X-antibody decks that day but eventually I knew it was coming. I was afraid of how easily he can ramp evo because of the vaccine engine and how much minus dp cards he was packing in. My deck has no protection against minus dp cards. The game went just as I predicted, he manage to keep clearing my field with his Seraphimon and his other dream crushing messengers, but at that same time I tried to build up my raising area and wait to find an opening just like I did in my Game 1 with the Diaboromon deck. Earlier in the game I manage to chip in abit of his security that just so I don’t fall back too far behind. When I found the opening I manage to remove back his board, the downside of evolving on your ACE Cards against a blue deck sometimes is that it makes it easier to trash it for the overflow.
Tournament Summary
Some would say I got lucky, because of either my match ups were easy or the number of players was not a lot to beat my streak, but that would be an insult to my opponents if I did not acknowledge their level as a player and the challenge they gave me that led to my victory. This was only my 2nd tournament I brought the deck for action and there are so many other decks I have yet to test against with it.
Summary
This deck has potential, the new supports gave it the extra edge to be competitive worthy. It’s a deck that can fight almost anything now but not everything, it still has weaknesses as I mentioned and all you can do is try to play around it and pray for the best, because the only way out of it is to go through, in Malay we say ‘LANGGAR SAJA!’ . I hope I inspired some people to give the deck the chance or see it in a new light.
Special Thanks
Special thanks to DigimonMeta for giving me this opportunity, I had waited so many moments when it’d be my time to make an article about one of my winning decks.
Thank you to my longtime friend Khai who recently played and won with his Gammamon deck the same week which also wrote an article about it here, if he didn’t played his gamma deck that night, Id probably would have debuted the deck longer.
Thank you to my group of friends from ‘Team Trials’ El, Alvin Tan, John , Ronnie and Yuzu who helped me grind through my Digimon Journey, I hope one day they all too can have this privilege to make an article and lastly thank you to all the people I’ve met and played with to get to this moment.
This game means a lot to me and this article is abit of how I was also able to express abit of gratitude for the game and bonds I’ve made thanks to it. See you next time.