To anyone who may be reading this article,
 
I would consider myself to be a veteran duelist. I have been playing the game since the days of magic ruler. From September of 2003 to present I have watched the fun disappear from yugioh. I can remember my first competitive experience three of my friends went to the yugioh mall tour at the Mall of America. It was here that the fun in yugioh left me. I met a man who owned a deck full of rare cards at the time, where as i ran a deck full of my favorite monsters the special summon magic rulermonsters all rarities. The man i dueled cleaned my clock and grasped my deck right after we were done and started pulling cards out of it and deeming them as being unplayable cards that shouldn't exist in any decks. From that day on i began to change the way i played yugioh, i no longer cared about having fun while i dueled, i began to play for blood, to win. It wasn't until i received a complete set of Exodia from my buds for my B-day that fun came back into my game play. I began to think of ways that i could make decks that could harness the supreme power of exodia.
      Most tournament players would deem Exodia the forbidden one to be unplayable due to the amount of control decks that are going around and because they need more trap cards than other decks. I would argue that these people are crazy. Much to my disappointment the release of Jinzo in tins shattered the world of trap cards in yugioh. I myself owning a two psv jinzo's was steamed to see it be released in a tin and saw it as a curse. Now i think that they did yugioh players a favor by making jinzo so attainable. Tournament players typically play with about 17-19 magic/spell cards, 4-6 traps cards and 16-18 monster cards. This is very poor dueling strategy if you ask me. Limiting yourself to 4-6 trap cards because of one lousy card is nuts. I understand that magic and trap removal is another large aspect of the game. This is more poor dueling. Lets take this into consideration if a player only have 4-6 traps and you have all magic/trap removal cards in your deck 3 mystical space typhoon, harpies feather duster, heavy storm, and breaker the magical warrior. You have wasted the same amount of cards in your own deck to counter the traps of another deck. Now im not saying that these cards are useless because i would definatly side deck them incase you played a gravity bind weenie deck and needed the magic/ trap removal but to start the match off with them is a poor strategy. More duelists need to use their brain instead of going with the flow.
     This brings me to meat of my article Exodia. There are numerous types of exodia decks. Stall decks, Speed decks. Recursion decks, Necross decks, Defense decks, and Unlimited draw. I'm sure there are others as well as these. All of these decks have their own problems. I would like to start out this article with Stall Decks involving cards such as Woboku, Thunder of Ruler, A Feint Plan, Zero Gravity, Negate Attack and the Windstorm. All of these cards buy time in an Exodia deck, Cards such as Gravity Bind and the Messenger of Peace also buy time but are risky because they are permanent cards making them vulnerable to the Magic/Trap removal that plagues the game. Intertwining this with speed decks, cards such as woboku and thunder of ruler are even better than cards such as the jar of greed. They allow you to draw another cards by ensuring that you stay alive for another turn. These trap cards are some of the most underestimated common cards in all of yugioh. To go with speed we have cards such as the cyber jar morphing jar #1 pot of greed and graceful charity. Thinning your deck as fast as possible increasing your odds of drawing the five exodia pieces and claiming your victory. Combos such as Mystic Tomato, apprentice magician to summon the pieces to the field and emergency evacuation device and penguin soldier to return them offer quick solution to the pieces being on the field. Recursion decks similar to these often involve monster reborning cards to bring the pieces back from the graveyard and cards to return them to your hand giving a solution to the problem of returning exodia the forbidden from the graveyard to your hand, as well as bringing your witch of the black forest and sangan back from the graveyard for another easy piece in your hand. I cant see necross decks being competitive at the moment its all too difficult to pull off right now, but hats off to anyone who can pull it off. Defense deck offer a great solution to the beatsticks that plague the game. 1900 attackers fall just short of the 2100 defense commons that are being printed now and offer a barrier to protect your life points. The only problems to this strategy are the goblin attack forces and giant orcs of the world. But with a combination of stalling cards the cards conviently switch to defense mode with a solid defense of ZERO. With the release of dark crisis and the butterfly dagger people began to say exodia was now playable again and many exodia duelists were excited to get there hands on the dagger to pull off this sweet combo. In all truth these decks have always been some of the most competitive decks in the game.
     Here are some of the cards that i have found to be most helpful with my exodia decks
 
(Morphing Jar #2) buys another turn clears jinzo off the field in deck allowing traps to come back
(Des Feral Imp) Any cards back into your deck good deal exodia the forbidden one, drawing cards your cyber jar stuff you don't want to be removed from play
(Pharaohs Treasure) any fool knows an exodia deck will only have 40 cards in it this card offers a yet another solution to retrieving the pesky head of exodia
(Card Destruction) pure draw no hesitation to play it with all the way to get exodia pieces back
(Des Lacooda) possibly the best drawing card in a stall deck you allowed to get another card every turn you can flip summon it way good deal.
(Maharagi) Perfect for speed deck don't like you next draw ditch it and take another card from your deck.
(Cyber jar) Pure draw power be fearless with it with all the stalling cards and ways to get exodia pieces back it doesn't matter if you get them on the field.
Mystic Tomato, Apprentice magician, Painful Choice, Backup Soldier, Upstart Goblin, Appropriate, the list could go on forever
 
      I would also like to comment on the fact that raigeki and harpies cannon soldier and cards such as these do not belong in an exodia deck you want cards that are going to allow you to draw more cards not destroy there cards. It doesn't matter if they have a field full of 1900 attackers, if they cant attack you because of stalling cards then you have them beat.
     In wrapping up this article i would like to comment that i returned to yugioh mall tour a year later with my exodia deck and won 9/9 games with it beating the kid who made the deck master abilities azuri my combination of stalling and drawing left his beatdown deck in the dust. I would like to state that all duelists should have a sense of dueling originality and i hope that this article may help any duelist who has retired there set of exodia from tournaments to give it another shot and shock the socks off some poor duelist who is expecting the deck full of the plagued cards of yugioh
 
Thank you for reading my article
Hate/Fan mail can be sent to me at MikeIke64@hotmail.com  
 
Mike Douglass-White