Subject: Chance Decks - They're Fun! Try one out! Sorry for writing so much this week :P As I say, chance decks are a lot of fun. Take those nice risky cards like Time Wizard, Barrel Dragon, Goddess of Whim, and maybe even Blind Destruction or Chosen One, and you've got a deck that **COULD** turn around the duel in one turn if you're "lucky." See, that's what a LoD card and a card in the 305 expansion (Threat from the Demon World) are here to do! Make Chance decks better! The LoD card is second coin toss. Basically it lets you redo a coin toss per turn (ONE coin toss - see the Barrel Dragon math lesson). The Second card is essentially second dice roll. It does the same thing, but with dice. Dice currently aren't very important, but will be with the release of 305 (there's this group of chess piece cards that all have cool dice effects, as well as some other dice cards). Currently, however, there ARE a few cards that use Dice in the English game: Blind Destruction, Graceful Dice, and Skull Dice. Let's look at these first: 1. Blind Destruction: 1/6 chance of destroying a level 1 monster (sinister serpent's all I can come up with), level 2 monster (nimble momonga? giant germ? definitely yata, anyway), level 3 monster (hayabusa, WMH, dream clown, Injection Fairy Lily), level 4 monster (basically every beatdown monster), level 5 monster (legendary fisherman), or level 6+ monster (skull, hino-kagu-tsuchi, yamata dragon, tyrant dragon). Overall, I think this is a really cool card because of its potential. Most people don't really like randomness, but this card can really help if your opponent has a bunch of monsters on the field. Unfortunately, if they're running a beatdown all of them will be level 4 (there might be some axed Hayabusas or a lily) and if they're running gravity bind all of them will be level 3 (exception being possibly clown control with crass clown). Odds don't look so good there. However, I've experimented with this card and it really works combined with stall cards. You can just keep rolling and rolling and rolling... 2. Graceful Dice: 100-600 pt ATK (def?) increase to your monsters for one turn, and it's a quick-play. That's an average of 350 points. Now, if this only affected one monster it would be crap (rush recklessly would be better). The important thing about this card is that it affects ALL of your monsters on the field, so it can do some serious damage if you have a line of weenies (preferably direct-attacking weenies) on the field. I mean, if you've got 4 direct-attacking weenies on the field and you use this card, that's an average of +350 per monster, which comes out to +1400 total. Of course, you could always get less (+400) or more (+2400). The cool thing about this card being quick-play means you can use it in response to an attack and jack up your monster by JUST enough to kill the attacking monster. Or something like that. 3. Skull Dice: The opposite effect, and on all of your opponent's monsters. This card and Graceful Dice have different uses. Skull Dice sucks in a direct-attack weenie deck, but it can be useful in other situations. It's a normal trap, so it actually has less uses than graceful dice (can't be used when jinzo's on the field, and can't be used the turn you draw it) but at least it's a DIFFERENT card from Graceful Dice so you can put 3 copies of both in the same deck. It's a lot of fun, but I don't recommend this for you hard-core tournament players. There are also several strong (and risky) cards that use coins in this game. Unlike Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh isn't based heavily on coins at all. There are still some decent cards to mention, though. 1. Barrel Dragon: The best thing about this card is that, if its effect doesn't work, there's no drawback. 1/2 chance of killing a monster, 2 tributes, 2600 attack is a pretty well-rounded monster. This is about the only chance card people even use seriously. 2. Time Wizard: Really awesome possibilities. If it goes off it's a Raigeki. If it doesn't, you lose at least 250 LP and a monster. The main problem with this card is when it backfires. Otherwise, you don't have much to lose if you play this card in, say, a gravity bind deck. It'd be better than Dream Clown if it didn't backfire, in fact... pity it does. But Second Coin Toss changes the probability of working from 50% to 75%, and 75% is a fairly safe probability to play by. 3. Goddess of Whim: Less game-breaking than Time Wizard can be. If it goes off you have a 1900-ATK monster for one turn. If it doesn't you have a 475-ATK monster for one turn. Not so good. (Just in case you wanted to know, if it backfires you CANNOT use Reverse Trap to bring it back up to 1900. It will stay at 475. That is because the Goddess' ATK is not being decreased by a fixed amount. This is also why you cannot use Reverse Trap with Megamorph and get the bonus if your LP is higher) Still... I BELIEVE that the Goddess' doubling effect includes any modifiers to its ATK, so this could potentially turn into a powerhouse. And now for those rare chance cards that don't really use coins or dice... 1. Chosen One: People don't play this card, and with good reason. You basically discard 2 m/ts from your hand and have a 1/3 chance of special summoning out a monster from your hand (if it has its own special summon requirements, it obviously isn't a legal target), and if it's not summoned it's sent to the graveyard. Most people think this risk is too high. I happen to think that this is a really fun card because it both puts pressure on your opponent to choose an m/t and it normally makes them underestimate you. Besides, the monster is SENT TO THE GRAVEYARD if it isn't summoned. That means you can revive it. The only really bad part is the sacrificing of two m/ts. That's not gonna do much for your card advantage. Fortunately, you can remove the m/ts with something like bazoo or skull lair and at least put them to some good use that way. 2. Parasite Paracide: This isn't really even a chance card, but its usefulness depends on when your opponent draws it, which is fairly random. -1000 LP and your opponent's monsters become insects. An added bonus that most people don't realize is that your opponent now has a crappy 500-ATK monster on the field. That you can attack. And do a lot of LP damage. The combo with Insect Barrier doesn't work that well because there are other ways to stop your opponent from attacking. That are better. Overall, the best cards to use here are the coin ones because Second Coin Toss really helps them out (particularly Time Wizard). Once the dice card comes out there'll be a LOT of other cards to choose from that use die that are better, but I still like using Blind Destruction. I've cobbled together a 57-card chance deck with the following: Barrel Dragon Chosen One Blind Destruction Time Wizard If you think that looks crappy, you're wrong. I have actually successfully summoned Barrel Dragon using Chosen One several times, and Blind Destruction tends to help me more than hurt me. You should be putting a lot of revival in this deck though (Time Wizard and Blind Destruction can really kill off your monsters) so add stuff like spear cretins and the shallow grave. By the way, if you don't understand why I made it 57 cards big, it's because I put in 3 nimble momongas, 3 giant germs, and 3 bubonic vermin in the deck. They REALLY help thin it out. This deck actually works; I've playtested it in WWE and so far it's only lost once out of 10 or 15 duels (I've unlocked every duelist, by the way). Oh, I also added 3 fiend megacyber just for a kick, and I'm really starting to like this card. Oh, a really fun situation is to activate a Blind Destruction (or two or three) right after you use Cyber Jar's effect (set all of your monsters) and hopefully kill off some of your opponent's monsters. Once I activated all three blind destruction. It was so cool, but the game froze :( If you're tired of those mindless beatdown and gravity bind decks, try this deck out for a spin. You'll laugh SO HARD when your Time Wizard kills off a Jinzo or an army of Dream Clowns... "Uh.. let's see.. I summon Time Wizard.. flip the coin.. oh look, all your monsters are dead. Now I use Chosen One... oops, you picked my Barrel Dragon. Say bye to your life points." (I am fully aware the probability of that is one in six, but those are half-decent chances) Questions, Comments, Rants: qc@fengyuan.com -Pegasus