How to Counter Fur Hire

It’s safe to say that at this point we are all familiar with this deck: Fur Hires are literally everywhere in PvP and the more you climb the ladder the more players using this archetype you will find. It’s not the first time something like this happens in Duel Links, we have seen Relinquished, Harpies, Red-Eyes, Cyber Angels and Sylvans before the Fur Hires monsters made their appearance in the game and we can expect more decks to rise to the top destroying any competition in the future. Fur Hires seem to have a way to deal with pretty much everything: they have back-row removal, monster removal and effect negation, they are incredibly consistent and powerful. What I want to discuss here is what is the best way to deal with this deck and how to prepare your own deck for this matchup.

The main strategy of the archetype is to swarm the field, Special Summoning monsters in order to trigger their effects. The Level 4 or lower monsters are able to Special Summon from the hand any other Fur Hire monster, they don’t have particularly high stats, but they can search from the Deck (Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire), destroy face-up (Donpa, Marksman Fur Hire) and face-down cards (Recon, Scout Fur Hire) and even add cards from the Graveyard back to the hand (Seal, Strategist Fur Hire). The two higher level monsters have higher stats and can remove cards from the opponent’s Graveyard (Dyna, Hero Fur Hire) or even negate Spell and Trap effects (Wiz, Sage Fur Hire).

It goes without saying that the best way to deal with this deck is to prevent your opponent from swarming the field in the first place, which can be accomplished by either negating their effects using cards like Forbidden Chalice or locking them face-down with cards like Paleozoic Canadia or Floodgate Trap Hole, but unfortunately this is not always possible: your opponent could go first and that would already put you at a disadvantage.

What about Counter Traps?
A lot of players who don’t have access to Canadia or Floodgate, choose to go for cards like Divine Wrath or Ultimate Providence, but, while those are still decent options, they have some issues: Counter Traps are slow by nature because they need to be set first and can’t be used right away; in addition to being slow these cards also destroy the target, leaving you open for a Mayhem Fur Hire follow up play.
Since a Fur Hire player is likely to summon two or three monsters during his first turn, Lava Golem is a decent card to bring with you in order to slow them down: getting rid of Wiz, Sage Fur Hire will allow you to use Spell and Traps freely, but you still have to factor that you are not going to be able to Normal Summon a monster after Special Summoning the Golem; an Amazoness deck doesn’t have to worry about this limitation most of the times since Amazoness Onslaught gives the possibility of Special Summoning a monster during the Battle Phase.

This card is usually really annoying because of its ability to negate Spell and Traps and because of its high DEF, but Wiz can only negate one Spell or Trap card per turn: any back row heavy deck usually gives Wiz trouble and you can still force the activation of its effect with a Paleozoic Canadia or a Forbidden Chalice.
Going back to Counter Traps, if you are playing any, you should know that Wiz is not able to negate their activation because they are Spell Speed 3.

Dyna gives some form of protection to other Fur Hire monsters and the fact that it can banish cards from the Graveyard can be problematic for a lot of decks: Batteryman, Gem-Knights, Amazoness and even Spellbooks as Dyna’s effect can force the activation of Spellbook of Fate if the resources in the Graveyard are limited.
Dyna’s main weakness is obviously its DEF, but destroying the monster that summoned Dyna has the priority over using an Enemy Controller and attacking it.

Recon is another obvious problem when you are trying to take a defensive approach since it can get rid of face-down cards with its effect. If you have an Amazoness Onslaught or even a Super Rush Headlong face-down and your opponent summons a Recon to get rid of that card, you want to activate it right away: if you chain a face-down card to Recon’s effect, it will be destroyed.

Fur Hire monsters also generally have weak attack stats, the only excemption might be Dyna, Hero Fur Hire and then the next best are 1600 attack monsters. A way of taking advantage of this is by using a monster with enough attack that they cannot get over. Fur Hire players will usually use the skill Beatdown for a boost. At most they can have a 3400 attack monster on the field. An example of a boss monster that can wall them is Silent Magician. Your opponent may try to use Enemy controller, which is commonly run in Fur Hire decks, to take your boss monster but they cannot do that with Silent Magician.

Fur Hires have explosive opening plays but very few ways to maintain their resources. Additionally their best protection effect is Wiz, Sage Fur Hire which could help drain their hand quicker. Fur Hires cannot do much alone so if you manage to survive long enough to drain their resources, your chances of winning drastically go up.
Their destruction effects also need monster zones where you can special summon to pull off so after filling their zones they will have little options for removal.
Amazoness, Zombies, and Arkbrave Dragon decks have excellent recursion ability meaning that they can sometime outlast Fur Hires to win the duel.

This is a complete list of what you want to have in your deck to deal with Fur Hires.

With back row removal and Spell and Trap negation, it is really difficult to stop this deck when it goes on the offensive: Sphere Kuriboh’s effect cannot be negated by Wiz and you can use it to switch a Dyna into Defense position, since it’s highest ATK Fur Hire monster.

As I mentioned, Lava Golem is really good for getting rid of problematic monsters and the fact that Fur Hires are not the only one that love to swarm the field (Amazoness) makes it a good card to have against other decks too. Unfortunately Dyna needs only one tribute, so it’s not too difficult to get rid of this monster when the Life Points are getting low, but it can still break a stall and put on pressure on the opponent.

If there is no other way to prevent your opponent from swarming the field, tributing your own monster to steal the one he Normal Summoned is a good way to slow him down. In addition to this Enemy Controller can play a huge role in the Mirror Match: if your opponent goes first, summons multiple monsters and then sets a Canadia, you can still tribute the monster after it’s flipped face-down to take control of another low level Fur Hire and use it to summon your own monsters.

Chalice is a fast and versatile card that can work very well against different decks: you can use it to have a better matchup against Fur Hire, but it can also be used to stop a search from an Amazoness Princess, to negate the effect of a Lava Golem for a turn or even offensively to get over another monster, so it’s hardly ever a brick.

Canadia’s secondary effect and the fact that it doesn't need to be activated on summoning is what puts it above Floodgate: the role of this card is very simple and it’s another very versatile option that fits in almost every deck.

Similar to Canadia, but Floodgate locks the monster face-down: this is not particularly relevant against Fur Hires as it wouldn’t be a problem using that monster as tribute, but it can be pretty important against other decks that have no way of doing so.

Wall of Disruption can be devastating against a full field; it might be difficult to activate because of Wiz, however it is still a great card to have in general.

Now that your deck is prepared, let’s look at how you should play during a duel against this deck.

• A lot of Fur Hire players focus on the OTK aspect of the deck, using cards like Hey, Trunade! to get rid of the back row quickly and all at once. This kind of player would obviously rather go second to get that extra card, clear the field and then summon his monsters and when they go first they tend to either set a monster or not summon anything at all to preserve resources. This behaviour usually depends on who they are going against: if the opponent is a Seto Kaiba or a Vellian Crowler, meaning that there’s a high possibility that they are facing another Fur Hire player, they will be tempted to set up a strong board with some protection, otherwise they might even leave the field open.

• If you go first and set your Paleozoic Canadia or Floodgate Trap Hole against this kind of player and they manage to draw a Hey, Trunade!, there is really not much to do: this is were Amazoness would get a better chance of surviving the turn, since they can just flip the Onslaught and get additional protection by Special Summoning another monster during the Battle Phase. Having hand traps like Sphere Kuriboh is unexpected for the opponent and might really make a difference if you play your cards correctly because after trying to go for the OTK, your opponent will likely have used most of his resources.

• If your opponent does not have Hey, Trunade! or simply did not draw it, then you obviously have a better chance of winning: Canadia, Floodgate, Forbidden Chalice or anything else that can slow down your opponent in the moment he’s most vulnerable, the Normal Summon, will work just fine. Not everyone has access to these cards, but you could still play some Counter Traps, even though I’ve already explained why the destruction effect is not always good.

• A lot of Fur Hire players tend to focus on summoning Wiz early if they see your deck seems to play a lot back row rather than going for the OTK, but Wiz does have some limitations. Do not waste your cards and wait until you can force Wiz, Sage Fur Hire’s effect: making your opponent discard cards is not the worst thing, since that does narrow down the plays he will be able to make, but Fur Hire decks mostly consist of monsters, so drawing into another one will not be that big of an issue.

• If your deck does not have any form of removal, then you should be careful about getting locked by a double Dyna, Hero Fur Hire: this does not happen so often, but you should keep in mind that a level 4 or lower Fur Hire and a Dyna on the field with a free monster zone could end up like that.

Taking a different approach, here are some decks that can deal well against Fur Hires.
There is not really a deck that directly counters them, this is merely a list of decks that can give them trouble in no particular order.

This one was pretty easy to predict: a mirror match can be problematic as most of the times the resources are the same. This is where a card like Enemy Controller can make the difference and where luck also plays a huge factor: going first and setting a Chalice or a Canadia or not finding any back row at all while your opponent gets an extra card.

This deck can be very problematic for a Fur Hire deck: Onslaught can banish monsters thus preventing your opponent from recycling them with Seal or Mayhem while Queen protects Amazoness monsters from destruction by battle; Amazoness decks usually carry a lot of back row, especially cards like Canadia and Floodgate, which makes the match up very difficult.

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