Saturday, August 30, 2008

The new metagame?

In the past format, we have seen 3 decks battle each other to the death in each tournament. These 3 deck im sure u all know, r lightlords, gladiator beasts and dark arm synchro. Here, the winner wasnt obvious, lightlords had judgment dragon, dark decks had DAD and other synchro and the Gbs had gyzarus, heraklinos and prismer.

Then slowly, the DAD deck to become more synchro oriented and adding even beast cards such as rescue cat, x-saber airbellum, and more. Thus it became the priest cat synchro.
Then hit the banlist of the format! DAD decks got weaker since rescue cat, dark arm dragon and rescue cat were all semi-limited. Semi-limiting them might not make such a difference but it does make the deck 10% weaker maybe? Lightlords lost judgment dragoon by one. Their only winning card was gone. They dint have Ehren or charge of the light brigade like the TCG. So, it is quite predicted the lightlords are slowing dropping out of the metagame.

The new banlist shall be taking effect starting tomorrow(sept 1st) and most people are very very sure that gladiator beast will be the one to prevail. the fact that not a single card was touched and that test tiger is coming soon just makes it even worse. E-hero Prismer and test tiger is just crazy. For just one card you can get out Kaiseris and most likely hit for damage and tag out 2 more GBs and mostly end up to become Heraklinos. This is a crazy combo and test tiger is to blame.

So, we need a new deck to take out this evil evil deck. Don get me wrong im nt showing Gladiator hate here. Its just major Major dislike. I looked through lightsworn and they just cant do anything against Gb unless they got a godly hand of 2 judgment dragoons. Unless they can have a card that effect is "add judgment dragoon to hand", they will just be outpaced. Now dark arms syncrho. In the past format these 2 decks were always on par with each other. The result will always be about 2/3 out of 5 games. It would be the same for Gb too. But now the speed has dropped and Gbs have gained test tiger. yea sure Dark decks get allure but i don think it is that consistent. You may not agree with me here but what im trying to say here is that allure gets you two cards and that gives you a 50/50 chance of good or bad. It could be 2 good cards/ 1 good 1 bad or 2 bad. But the test tiger and prismer is a definte combo. Searching out gyzarus is consistent and is already 100% advantage. Even if your opponent bottomless trap holes Gyazrus, you will still not be at loss. Its one bottomless to one test tiger.

I looked and looked and researched and all i could find was one solution. Zombies. Spikes and Baron talked about this deck to be tier one this format. This deck is probably the most aggresive and consistent right now. Why? They got book of life, monster reborn, zombie master, mezuki and more in the deck to reborn cards. GB have Darius and monster reborn. Against zombie fast summoning they have lost. Dont forget we are soon to get Gatekeeper of hell Il Blud.

Next draw cards, Gladiator beats dont have any draw card because they dont want to draw. All they want is a consistent adding to hand which is enough. That is why they play proving ground, e-hero airman and reinforcements to do the job. Zombies have a consistent fast adding prowess ranging from sangan, goblin zombie, foolish burial and card of safe return.

Dont forget zombies will have problems aginst defeat Corn Control which runs Prime Material dragon, vanity Fiend and royal oppresion. All anti-meta decks shall beat zombies. That is why we side-deck dust tornado, twister, whatever and even shrink. Shrink just gets better this format. It annoys Honest, stops GBs abruptly and kills off prime Material dragon and VanityFiend. Why? Becasuse even a 1200 attack monster with shrink can kill any of those 2 2400 attack titans. so zombie master makes it super worthwhile. Mezuki and more stuff even pyramid turtle can do the job. Easy peasy

Dont forget zombies now gain a new ally. Im talking about none other than Tragoedia. Tragoedia is just gay. Nobody cares MUCH about the level copying effect. Tragoedia is a change of heart. I repeat ITS NOT BRAIN CONTROL but Snatch steal! But better! Zombies have looked for a very worthwhile way to discard mezuki and we found this demon. Zombie synchro decks that run d-hero diabolic guy just found something to take control of prime material dragon or vanity fiend.

Furthermore, people talk about royal oppresion. It cost 800 life points to negate a special summon. Dont forget zombies are a deck that are capable to perform 8 special summons! Its not like other decks. Just 3zombie master, 3mezuki, 3 book of life, and 1 monster reborn already make up 10 cards. Don forget to include zombie carrier, goyou guardian, and a crazy lot more. Damage taken earlier in the game troubles your opponent too. Zombie master already is capable to deal more than 2400 damage in one turn if ur opponent wans to stop everything summoned.

Zombies now gain royal iron wall. This card not only stops all remove from play decks which are the one killer of zombies. Dont forget royal wall does more and more gay stuff like stopping Dark arm dragon, allur of darkness and more cards of the dark deck. It also prevents d-hero diabolic guy abuse and Zombie carrier from being removed form play. If Card of safe return is on the field, carrier is a free summon every turn to either act as ur defense against attacks or for syncrho summoning. Stopping bottomless trap hole is useful to isnt it? I mean it stops the remove from play part but the monster will still be sent to graveyard and destroyed. But zombie special summon fast remember? So what's there to worry?





These 4 cards here are the new pioneer for an otk combo with zombies. If you had read the last chapter of my fanfic you would have see Zhi Li use this combo. As long as cards like solemn judgment, divine wrath, jinzo isnt on the field, you are most likely to win the game. Allow me to explain.
This combo can be used in 2 ways. 1st way is to use only one hedehog.
1) reborn carrier without paying cost since COSR is on field.
2) revive hedghog and draw 1 card
3) Get out arms aid(level 4).
4) repeat this combo.
5) If u wan to u, may special summon carriier over n over again and sync with the level 4 arms aid to become level 6 monster such as Goyou guardian, Bruinac or anything else. With the anmount of cards drawn from Card of safe return from this process or other earlier combo it will be likely that you can clear your opponent field for Briunac effect. Than that would be good game.

Combo #2. This is definitely the better combo. However it takes at least 2 or 3 bolt hedhog in the grave. But that wouldnt be hard since there is zombie master, hand severing, snipe hunter, foolish burial bla bla to do the discarding.
1) reborn carrier + 2 hedhog and draw 2 cards =D
2) get out your goyou
3) repeat this process once more and get out one goyou. 2 more cards drawn =D
4) get out your briunac. 2 more card drawn =D. Use briunac effect and clear field. I think 6 cards should be able to do the job.
5) With only 2 monster spaces left just get out one Arms Aid and attack to win the game XD

This combo is extremely versatile and dangerous to play off. You can play a combo deck based on it now or just splash it into ur zombie/ synchro deck. Getting out syncrhos more consitently and faster and better outcomes than the priest cat deck which can only get out level 6 syncrho and only one at a time and (maybe 2 if you have pot of avarice)

Zombies might just be the new deck to beat or to beat GBs. Its fast consistent and with different tech, we can just stop GB. Innovate now.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Card review: Arms Aid

Anybody who has been keeping up with the metagame now will probably know that Gladiator Beasts are pawning the shit out of everybody else.....

Lately, attack power is becoming something that is becoming more and more important. Cyber dragon is an example. Look at Worlds. Possible nearly every single deck ran him there. he was just so important to counter GB. Since GB dint have test tiger at that time, it was even better! People would have to trade off a special summoned laquari to kill it. That was why Japanese representative who won the the World Champs ran Andal.

Also, if anyone has been reading the metagame articles anyone could see what this week's topic is. Power. Any card that has good strength, easy to summon requirements, good states are bound to be run. Konami predicted this and automatically limited cyber dragon. Instead they are giving us vice dragon who can do the same thing except retain its powerful attack. =.= useless. but its there for tributing and synchro summoning the same stuff cydra was used mostly for.

Enter :[arms aid]



attack 1800. def 1200
machine/ synchro /light/ LEVEL 4
effect: You may equip or unequip this card anytime fo the duel to one monster, the selected monster gains 1000 extra attack points. If the monster destroys a card in battle, inflict damage to opponent equal to the attack of the monster destroyed.
At first, when u look no one will probably think much of it. People will just say "oh mi god! this isnt the ultra rare i want to get from the yuusei pack! I want the other one whatever it is..."
Now i will delve into why this card is so good. Maybe after you read this u too will like arms aid. Firstly the fact that its a synchro earns a top point. Everybody knows how good synchros are this format as they are so easily summoned through so many methods from emergency teleport, jutte knight, x-sabe airbellum and more....
Secondly, its level is what catches my eye. If you look carefully its a lvl 4 synchro. Now no synchro is lvl 4 besides this. Being lvl 4 opens up many possibities! In fact if one doesnt have any monsters to make a stardust or a goyou, this card being in the extra deck will come in handy. I knwo 1800 attck isnt much but look at these days cards. 1800 is something quite big and gladiator beast have nothing to kill it. I repeat nothing. Well, unless they have test tiger of course, but look at their top scoreres laquari, darius, equite, bestiari all cant do anything. They will have to suicide a laquari which is a good move since laquari is so good and is the source of heraklinos. Futheremore, if you play hedghog synchro like I am going to you will find that arms aid gets even better! If you ahev only one hedghog in grave, and a zombie carrier, you cant go more than lvl 4 right? Of course assuming that you have card of safe return and Royal iron wall out you can summon 3 arms aid! Why?
1) carrier reborns.
2)hedghog too.
3) synchro
4) repeat (the cards arent removed from play because of royal wall. Besides, you egt to draw more from COSR's effect that actiavtes because hedgehog revives.)
Looking from that easy loop, you can see that you can easily get out a 2800 attack monster and a 1800 monster as well. In fact you can even get out lvl 6 and 8 synchro. How?Look on:
1) SYCNRHO summon out arms aid
2) revive carrier and synchro with arms aid to form briunac/ goyor guardian
3) repeat and repeat.
4) discard as many cards out for briunac's effect( you get alot from the reviving of bolt hedghog and COSR)
Did i mention it does so well against most decks namely gladiator beast
Well this is so because gladiator beasts depend on attack. In the OCG gladiators are gonna get more and more common since test tiger is only a rare, andGB kaiseris is also only normal. So..yea Gb flood! Like the metagame authors said, attack is important. In this case arms aid is so useful! Boosting a card up by 1000 attack is so good. U can equip it to ehero airman and give it 2800 attack. You can give another synchro more attack points. How about a goyou guardian that steals monster with 3800 attack and deals extra damage sound to you? Or a 3500 attack stardust? In fact people have always been complaining that stardust has too weak attack. So a 3500 atk stardust is almost invincible. Judgement dragon cant touch it, DAD cant touch it goyou cant touch it (but briunac can .... =.= )
Oh it can help Gladiator beasts too!
LOL all this while i have been talking about this card being a big help against gladiators. Now it seems like it can help gladiators. No im not talking about gladiators against other decks. It already has a big advantage against almost eveything else. But im talking about the gladiator mirror match. Gladiators will definitely love to run synchros. Think stealing ur opponent's gladiators n tag out your own. In fact you could also use arms aid to solve the attack problem....Of course you shoudlnt worry about performing synchro summons since the gladiators you waste will be compensated by darius' revival effect. Besides that synchro summoning is actually beneficial to the gladiator decks. Stardust blocks out murmillo, gyzarus and stuff like that. Arms aid solves heraklinos. Goyou is just cool, And briunac makes the one objective of gladiators(stay on field n tag) gone!
Arms aid isnt actually broken. Its just something i think that has some potential in the current metagame. Causing infinite loop in the hedghog synchro is one good reason to play it,and giving more strength is just what we need.
Funny isn't it how attack power is the answer to Gladiators ?

Saturday, August 2, 2008

The new banlist (predictions)

Well its just one month to banlist folks and i here wanna make a speculation. The banlist is probably the most crucial part of the yugioh game where broken decks will have their power-reduced and broken cards will stay in our binder and collect dust.

So here is the changes to the banlist (IMO)

Banned cards.
ADDED: Dhero diskguy- do i have to mention why? [limit reverse], [arms hole]s, briunac loop, zombie madness, [destiny draw] everything makes this card just so good and i am really sick of seeing this card (actually i never seen one because no one in my area has it and neither do i =D)

Premature burial- why? because its broken. thats why. briunac loops it infinitely, arms hole recycles it and everything its so much better than [call of the haunted]. The fact that the monster isnt gone from the field when this card is bounced back to hand/deck makes it really nifty around Briunac and [giant trunade]

Dimension fusion- its banned in TCG. Its bound to be banned anyway. The banlist will most likely look as alike as the OCG/ TCG ones anywya. That makes this card banned whether we care or not.

Restricted to one

Added: Breaker the magical warrior- originally banned. I dont see why it shouldnt return, its not much of a threat anyway. Anyway if you guys have been observing the previous banlists, breaker has been banned at every march banlist and released back at every september ones. Will it be the same this time? We'll just have to wait and see.

Gladiator beast Bestiari- Im not gonna limit kaiseris because this is the root of evil in gladiator beast decks, Why? kaiseris can be stopped if this card is gone! Why people wanna limit kaiseris i also dont't know. This card is more splashable than [GB kaiseris]. Look at it this way. If [GB bestiari] is gone, 3[GB kaiseris] in ur opponent extra deck also no need to fear. If we limit kaiseris and we kill off 1 [GB bestiari], its not gone yetr! 2 more bestiari in deck/ hand will still be able to contact out the [GB kaiseris] in fusion deck! If u [Bottomless trap hole]d [GB kaiseris] and say its gone forever ur opponent will still be able to create havoc with [GB bestiari] around. But if u bth [GB bestiari] or [dd crow] it when it gets to grave, its gone forever no more signs of [GB kaiseris]. I hope this isnt confusing and hope u guys agree with me on this 0ne....

Dark armed dragon- Konami dint kill this guy off in the previous banlist because they wanted TCG to have a chance to use it...They got their fun we got our fun [ and unfun =( ] so its time to say bye bye to this guyt. If restricted to one, its no more of a mayhem hehee....

Judgement dragon- another crazy crazy card that screams ban me or you will never see the end of lightlord decks!!! Pay 1000 points to destroy whole field and still keep this card on the field? Just damn crazy...3 turns later you got game....

Honest- This is crazy card also probably the best best best cover card monster ever! A [magic cylinder] and [reactive armor] rolled in one! IT cant even be predicted and it isnt affected by [light-sealing mirror]! siaw!!

Rescue cat- This lil kitty is more than meets the eye. It can really kill. The [rescue cat] synchro deck is really dominating the OCG meta now and i think it should be killed off or just kill of [x-saber airbellum] which i dont think will be a wise decision since promos are banned anyway....

Caius the shadow monarch- broken broken broken >.< everyone agrees on this one right?

Mezuki- oh my god, monster reborn for zombies. did its job too and stay on field or was a discard cost! Herey! Herey! Limit it! Limit it!

Confiscation- i just think this gem should be given back to us. I really miss the good old days when we would open the game with [confiscation] and then pay 1000 lp and see that look of despair or " shit ur just damn lucky..." on your opponent's faces. Sigh good times...good times...

Snatch steal- With the amount of monster-relianced metagames i think its time we get back an old card that can really change the game tide and has that " in your face" or " have a taste of your own medicine" written all over it. Steal [dhero BlooD] with it and your opponent is in deep shit.

Gladiator beast war chariot- a free counter trap that negates all sort of monster ignition effects ? N the only cost is to have a GB ont he field? This card screams kill me off or you'll regret it!

SEMI LIMIT LIST

Card of safe return- A bit too much at 3 a deck. Lets see it at 2 . Maybe its not so crazy? Plants and zombies abuse this card so well...

Reasoning + monster gate: okay i put 2 different cards in one cause they both hacve abt the same effects anyway. If one makes it int0 a deck the other is bound to be in as well, Oh well...

Royal oppresion- Im a bit still reconsidering this since its an anti-meta card thats too well. I know i know...Must kill meta, if this card become the new meta then how? Anyway itts maindecked and sidedecked to much...So keep at 2 a deck la....

OFF-list
Light and darkness dragon - doing no harm, come on konami let it back at 3.

Well, thats all im posting about. I'm bound to repost another one before the banlist (maybe in 3 weeks time?).

Im signing off now. Hope you guys agree with my decision, I know it looks a little bit like baha's but most people know what should be done or not, right? By the way guys i didnt include Magician of black chaos becuase its not doing any much harm now, I agree its broken but konami usually only bans the card if its really doing a lot of mayhem. Look so many other broken cards how come only some gets limit? So i sure hope this is good news if MOBC isnt gonna be limited (well at least thats my opinion)

Till next time, play hard play fair and have some fun. Im starting on a fanfic tomorrow. Its about the 5 signers but gonna change the characters, cant have yuusei running around all the time right? =D

off topic: Nick im not gonna ban Deon Lim from coming to this blog. In fact what im trying to say is that i CANNOT do thatIts your problem with him you settle it do NOT bring it to public and on to the World Wide Web. I hope this isnt offending you now, and i wont take sides
i'll just sit on top of the fence.
Look at it this way, its free will.
You cant BAN a person practically.
I mean look even if u say i ban "DL" or "asskicker" (no pun intended, no offence either) but they can still come and look and read and post in message box right?
Its free will. In fact if you ban them they might just make a new name and spam this blog even more and this will disappoint and make the other readers feel uncomfortable.
So what can you do? Settle things out with Deon. Things and action should be taken after consideration and looked upon on a neutral point of view not by feelings and personal issues. Take care man =)