Reasoning Gate Combo

What is Reasoning Gate Combo?

Reasoning Gate Combo (also sometimes known as "Reasoning Gate Turbo" or "H.A.M.") is a Yu-Gi-Oh! Goat Format deck distinguished by 3 copies of Reasoning and 3 copies of Monster Gate to special summon powerful monsters like 2-3 Sacred Crane, 1 Jinzo, and 1 Dark Magician of Chaos from the deck. These monsters are light and dark attributed in order to support 3 Chaos Sorcerer and 1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. While the deck can win purely off the advantage from powerful tribute monsters or quick access to chaos monsters, the deck also runs 2-3 Dimension Fusion as a finisher, with Heavy Storm or Giant Trunade to clear all spells/traps before the big kill.
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Reasoning Gate Combo Strategy

​Reasoning Gate Combo is a high-synergy combo deck that plays a passive early game until it can build a big board with Reasonings and Monster Gates. These cards put plenty of lights and darks in the grave for the deck’s chaos monsters. Then you can bring back your entire banished zone with Dimension Fusion. This allows the Reasoning Gate Combo to establish an overwhelming field advantage, if not win the game outright.
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Reasoning Gate Combo Core Interactions

​Both Reasoning and Monster Gate will mill several cards from the deck to the graveyard until they find a monster that can be normal summoned.  They will either find a game-changing monster like Dark Magician of Chaos or Jinzo, or they will find a Sacred Crane for a light and a card draw. Going through the deck rapidly allows Reasoning Gate Combo to summon its chaos monsters much faster than most decks, and a full graveyard provides more spell targets for Dark Magician of Chaos. To maximize the effect of Reasoning and Monster Gate, the deck plays only a few monsters, each with different levels to make Reasoning difficult to guess correctly.
 
Like many decks in Goat Format, Scapegoat can play a very integral part in Reasoning Gate Combo’s strategy with 3 copies of Scapegoat and usually 3 copies of Metamorphosis. Scapegoat is great for stalling the game until the deck has enough combo pieces to go off. More importantly however, the Scapegoat tokens can be used as tribute for Monster Gate, so Scapegoat itself is arguably a key combo piece for the deck. 
 
Reasoning Gate Combo will seek to combine Heavy Storm or Giant Trunade (and, in some decklists, Byser Shock) with Dimension Fusion to set up a one-turn kill. Dimension Fusion is the deck’s big finisher, and it interacts well with the deck’s chaos monsters as well as Dark Magician of Chaos. Dark Magician of Chaos can easily bring back several spells in one game (often including the Dimension Fusion itself) by using Dimension Fusion to bring it back from the banished zone. Banishing Dark Magician of Chaos via tribute for Monster Gate in order to bring it back with Dimension Fusion is quite common.
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Reasoning Gate Combo Deck Skeleton

1 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
3 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Jinzo
2 Sacred Crane
3 Monster Gate
3 Reasoning
3 Dimension Fusion
1 Pot of Greed
1 Graceful Charity
1 Heavy Storm
1 Giant Trunade
1 Premature Burial
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Reasoning Gate Combo Example Decklists

Standard Reasoning Gate Combo: ​https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=3350010

Reasoning Gate Dedicated OTK: https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=2813757

Strengths and Weaknesses of Reasoning Gate Combo

Reasoning Gate Combo is the definition of a high variance deck with high risk and high reward, though you can lower variance through deck building choices. It has potential to have complete blowout wins with a good hand, without giving the opponent a chance for counter-play. However, the deck’s biggest weakness is its potential to have unplayable hands. It relies on cheating out huge monsters with Reasoning and Monster Gate which forces the deck to run a low amount monster count, many of which are often unplayable when drawn early.  Your hand can be clogged with tribute monsters, chaos monsters without any lights and darks in grave, Dimension Fusion, Monster Gate or Metamorphosis without a target, and so on. 

Reasoning Gate Combo has a surprisingly good matchup against the most popular deck in the format, Goat Control. Reasoning Combo is great at taking advantage of Goat Control’s slow starts by overwhelming them with early Airknight Parshaths. It cannot do anything to stop Dimension Fusion, which should be easy to kill off of as long as you watch out for Scapegoat. Goat Control plays a variety of cards that are on average very poor against Reasoning Gate Combo, such as Nobleman of Crossout and spell/trap removal like Dust Tornado and Heavy Storm.
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Playing against Chaos Control can be difficult due to the fact that it plays fewer dead cards than Goat Control and has more ways to deal with your threats. The presence of the opposing chaos monsters can also make your Dimension Fusions a little worse, as you’ll be bringing back their monsters too. The fact that Chaos Control has one of the best early games in the format can make it a bit harder for Reasoning Gate Combo to overwhelm them in the first turns of the game.
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Common Misconceptions About Reasoning Gate Combo

​Many players believe Reasoning Gate players play the deck because they are not skillful enough to pilot more difficult control decks.  It is true to an extent that the deck can allow players with a lower technical skill set to steal games from more skillful players.  However, some players use this deck because they like to special summon a lot of boss monsters and prefer faster games.  Other players use this deck as a metagame pick since players may not be familiar with the deck, and are not likely to have sideboard slots tailored for the match up.  Players may bring the deck to a long tournament with many rounds to lower the risk of misplaying in later rounds due to fatigue.  The deck is a fun and powerful deck with high variance which players bring for a variety of reasons.

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Are you interested in winning in Goat Format with combo or alt-win decks? Check out these other deck guides:

• Burn deck guide
• Empty Jar deck guide
• Library FTK deck guide
• ​Dimension Fusion Turbo deck guide
• Ben Kei OTK deck guide

Here's a duel review so that you can see Reasoning Gate Combo in action:

• Siwski (Reasoning Gate Combo) vs James400 (Thunder Dragon Chaos)

Here is a tournament report from a high-finishing Reasoning Gate Combo player:

• FLC8 1st Place Tournament Report: Noelle Yves

Do you have any questions about Reasoning Gate Combo or want to share your own Reasoning Gate Combo decklist? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. Want expert help to construct your own Reasoning Gate Combo deck? Then join our Discord server.

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Thiccmaster

Daniel “Thiccmaster” Yu grew up playing Yu-Gi-Oh! casually with his brother, dueling anime style with Yugi and Kaiba Starter decks.  He started playing Goat format on Dueling Network during the 2012 Revival Era and loves theory crafting and refining deck builds.  You can also find him running along beaches or parks playing Pokemon Go, farming salt in Hearthstone or Cardfight Vanguard, or building the longest road in Catan.