Variety Comes Out

Sorry it took so long. A local tournament kept me busy. My Heroes haven't won, though, but it doesn't matter. It was good to see the damage and the benefits of September's banlist. A lot of Synchro decks that didn't stood a chance a couple of weeks before managed to beat their way to the top, as well as finding a way to bond XYZ monsters in their Extra Deck.

It turns out that the decks are making their way around the banlist as best as possible. Aside from Inzektors, pretty much every deck is able to become meta. Until one shows up, one thing is for sure: After DARK and LIGHT monsters lost most of their power, it's time for EARTH monsters to rise. And there are great XYZ contestants. Let's see some:

Darkness after the Chaos

After living for about with strong and nearly unbeatable decks (unless you'd use any counter-strategy or play extremely defensive) like Chaos Dragons, Inzektors and Wind-Ups, came a banlist that could have made it's job six months ago. Aside from practically destroying Chaos Dragons decks and balancing all the others decks, the list did something else: brought a dark past back.

TeleDAD decks (a.k.a.: Teleport Dark Armed Dragon) were a top deck in many tournaments before March 2009. It had a quite variety of DARK monsters almost ready to perform Synchro Summons with Psychic-Type Tuners and quite a knack to make the summon of Dark Armed Dragon possible. Now, their cards are far cheaper and September 2012 banlist made it possible a better comeback.

Rekindling the FIRE

After the banlist previously posted here was confirmed official, people can expect less from handless decks like HERO and Infernity and a little more from any other deck not harmed with new limitations. But there is a deck that it hasn't shown much but it's still quite powerful, even by the fact that the banlist didn't affected it at all. We're talking about Lavals.

As many other archetypes, Laval's Synchros are well worth to take most space in the Extra Deck, rather than regular Synchros and XYZ. Their affinity to the Flamvell archetype is also useful as many Laval monsters are FIRE with 200 Defense points. Which makes them perfect for the massive summoning Spell Card ever existed:

Power Balance

At March 1st, Konami really surprised every single player by not conducting their usual and proper job of keeping the game level balanced by forbidding and limiting certain cards for the Advanced Format. Inzektors, Wind-Ups, Chaos Dragons and Dino-Rabbits continued unaffected since their release. That is, until September.

It was released after the World Championship the most likely confirmed banlist and it will pretty much fix whichever mistakes Konami did:

Just for the artwork

A Hero Lives with a Dark Destiny

After being away for a while, we're back. This time, we're going to talk about a variation of a deck that people are starting to be fond of: Elemental HERO, or, more precisely, A Hero Lives.

Most people haven't care much about their Life Points being used as a cost, so defending themselves with cards like Solemn Warning and Solemn Judgment didn't see much. Oddly enough, using Life Points to get offensive makes some people reluctant. That's why this kind of HERO deck never got popular. But with the release of Escuridão, things can be different.

Let's have a different view of that deck with this card:

Aiming for the Stars

In the beginning of the game, the one an only thing that mattered was the attack point of the monsters. High points were pretty much everything back then. After that, monster effects mattered most. Low attack points could mean nothing if they had a huge effect. Then, what became most important was the creature itself: if one of them was a Tuner, it could mean a very powerful monster summoned from the Extra Deck.

Today, the main concern of almost every deck are the monster's levels. Equal levels and easy ways to bring them to the field means easier XYZ summons. Some decks focus in a certain range of level and try to gather monsters in that range. But it doesn't mean all the effort has to come from one single part of the game. Let's review a card that was mentioned before:

Hope for the Best

There are always those situations where you can't control the situation. Since most decks acts differently, the answer works the same way: Chaos Dragons summons more and more monsters on the field and the deck don't relies on luck. Inzketors and Wind-Ups need, some part of their strategy on the field working as a start, but still got some sort of speed themselves.

But what about decks that just explodes in their first hand and them only waits for the top deck help them? Luck doesn't work for everybody. So what these decks do is just try to control the field with what they got and hope for the next card be good.

There are ways to increase your chances, just as this one:

Being a better player

Again, I'm taking a break of talking about cards. This time we're going to talk about a thing far more decisive than cards in the game: the player.

In a way, in a duel between 2 decks of equal potential, if a player does every move exactly as it supposed to be,no misplays and no bad choices and he/she still loses, there's only luck to blame. If there is at least one misplay, the player has the total right to blame himself/herself (although he/she shouldn't take it too seriously, it's a game, after all). If both players do misplays, the overcome of the duel is just chaotic, so it would be best if in these games there was a judge or a spectator with enough knowledge to point out the misplays.

But, in a tournament, no matter what level it is, there are some other conceptions that makes the game different than casual one. We can see this while playing some decks:

Coring with Koa'ki Meiru

They say that many archetypes Konami has released weren't truly made to be good ones. The truth is, they're right. Unless your favorite archetype is being used by a main or at least recurrent character at the current Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime, new cards probably won't be created. It's even worse if you're a fan of something from Hidden Arsenal or Duel Terminal, but, at least, you know how to not expect anything new. Konami might surprise you with new cards from a forgotten archetype, but sometimes it takes half a decade to do it.

That means we don't see many representatives of every archetype nowadays. After a banlist, no Ice Barriers at all (Trishula). After the XYZs becoming the Extra Deck dominating card, we're start to missing the Ally of Justice (Catastor). Sometimes, no scraps as well (Dragon). I know, the game changes, and we're supposed to adapt ourselves, but exactly how we haven't see anyone in the TCG using any of the cards of the only archetype that actually was built to be an anti-meta?

After a long introduction, let's check our first Koa'ki Meiru card, Doom:

A lower level of chaos

Hey guys! Nice to see you again.


See, we're almost always talking about how awful the metagame is just because you have to play pretty much everything that beats that kind of deck and/or play some other meta, otherwise you won't win. Almost always they abuse of some chaos strategy by exploiting advantage of some LIGHT and DARK monsters from the graveyard and keep a high field control by destroying or negating your cards. But there was a kind of deck that have won some tournaments at Japan and can make use of the Chaos strategy, as well as some unusual, like Exodia and Final Countdown. Sadly, this kind of deck ended mysteriously, just like it has started.

We're talking about the Mystic Piper deck:

The Seal has been broken

Today, I'm not going to do the regular thing and talk about some cards to defeat Meta, but rather talk about what Konami announced recently: A special card that is going to be released in the Legendary Collection 3: Yugi's World: The Seal of Orichalcos.

Counting with your cards

Most players who try to play meta decks without any knowledge of how those works usually have some problems, mostly because of the card's rulings. However, most players that keep doing that or when some try for their first time building a different deck of their own, they often don't know a simple basis of what makes a deck resilient is not which card you put, but how the card works in the deck.

We will start looking at a, somewhat, forgotten card:

Countering the odds

It's always time to change to newer things. Except this time we're going to take a better look to the old cards.

Not a long time ago, effect monsters showed their importance in the strategy of the decks, being in a larger number than Spells and Trap cards combined in decks like Junk-Doppel and Agents. Today it's the other way around: in every meta deck we're starting to have fewer monsters, with Trap Cards being sometimes the dominating kind. It seems that having more monsters to ensure the strategy have become less important than disrupt your opponent's strategy.

At an different time, Spell Cards (maybe in the time when they were called Magic Cards) could change the entire duel, even if a few were played. Back then, not every card would have a free cost in order to be played, but even if they had, it was worthy in those days. Nowadays, things are sightly different. Spells with free cost are pretty much the only option, as every card in your deck counts and you can't afford risking your strategy just to disrupt your opponent's.

So, even if the times have changed, it doesn't means that these cards have lost their meaning:

Tricking with traps

We're back! And just like we promised, we're going to talk about some Traps that fit any deck.

It seems that traps these days aren't that surprising anymore, unless you're not playing against a regular Meta Deck. They just don't surprise you like they used to, as people are more aware of which Traps usually are or are not (if any) in each deck. The face-down cards aren't visualized anymore as "does he/she has something troublesome there?". Instead, they're often seen as "I don't care what he/she is going to do, I'm pretty much aware of what these Traps are, so I'm gonna get rid of those". And turns out that they can: we live in a time where Mystical Space Typhoon is unlimited, Heavy Storm is not forbidden and cards like Lyla and Gemini Spark are more popular than ever.

The most tricky face-down cards in the game are now just a game of odds, as they almost never changes from deck to deck, and since we got many ways to destroy them, most often people are forced to do fake sets. That's why we're offering a suggestion to act like Safe Zone does: Some underestimated Traps that do the trick whenever you want and annoys your opponent like hell:

Monsters at your Side

Well, here we are again.

Today we're going to talk about some monster who should be at the Side Deck in these days, but, somehow, they're not. Maybe people will find some uses to these, try them, and, with some luck, win tournaments. Shall this become their destiny, most people will regret not having these cards before their price's rise.

Anyway, we already know that we can't underestimate any card nowadays, as it can be a matter of time we can profit with them. But, for now, here are some monsters for your Side Decks:

Unusual Spells

Good evening, everybody.

This time, we're here to show some good unsual Spell Cards that could fit easily in almost any deck, but for some reason they're not considered or, if so, they're sided in most cases. Like the last time, talking about two at time makes the subject easier to understand, as well as there's always room for more cards and/or suggestions of yours that we can talk about.

So, we have here two Normal Spell Cards that weren't that special when created, but this current gameplay makes both astonishing. To start, the already very known Smashing Ground:

Easy Traps

Greetings, friends.

Today we're going to talk about some not so popular Trap Cards that, most in commmon, has no requirements to meet or cost at all and even though they can give some headaches to your opponent, most people see no use for them. In these days, if you can't negate your opponent's cards nor you can't protect your own, every card of yours should be able to activate at any time.

Let's start with Compulsory Evacuation Device:

Play with your brain, not with your money

Many players already knows the metas and the decks that are winning most tournaments. However, not all recognize the power of some cards which counters or increases the power of some meta decks. Because of that, when the winner of some tournament gets there using some unusual or weird card, the price of it increases ridiculously. And then, a former cheap card that was rarely seen becomes a high-priced (depending on it's rarity and number of releases) meta card, usually hard to get. Examples of that are Fiendish Chain e Inzektor Sword - Zektkaliber.