September 2008
Looking Under The Bed - The Side Deck
Hey all, and welcome to another edition of "Looking
Under the Bed!" Before we dive in to the article for
today, I wanted to point out a glaring mistake in my
previous article, "Looking Under The Bed - Earth
Control." It seems that I misread the effect of
"Soul Taker," and was under the impression that you
gained control of your opponent's Monster for 1000
LP, instead of merely destroying it. That said, the
basis for the Earth Deck has been changed. Since
Soul Taker no longer does what I expected it to do,
and after much consideration, I believe that the
best alternative in this deck is Enemy Controller
(in threes). The reason for this is that you need to
be able to handle the huge swings of advantage, and
with Enemy Controller you can sacrifice a monster to
pretty much negate all that advantage, or you can
simply make that advantage a disadvantage for your
opponent by switching their monster into Defense.
Using this card in threes will more than make up for
Soul Taker's decreased playability.
I am sorry for the mistake; I pray it doesn't
detract from the main article here today.
The sidedeck. The most versatile 15 cards of your
deck. They need to be able to work in tandem, to
work on their own, to stop, to drop, to roll, and to
do all the things you need them to do. What the
sidedeck does is shores up your weak points, while
at the same time being able to replace a card in
your deck without losing an advantage. This may seem
contradictory, but when you break down a deck into
its many parts you begin to see the slight
beginnings of synergy, and the sidedeck is able to
help with that synergy and make it flow better. The
idea is to look at your main deck, playtest it, and
see what goes right and what goes wrong.
Playtesting is critical in building a sidedeck, but
before playtesting comes card choice. Card choice is
easy enough - you know your deck well, you play it a
lot, you know what needs to be fixed and what needs
to just be patched up with some band-aids. Card
choice is simple if you want to make Top-8 at a
local tourney; but if you're in it to win it, you're
going to want to take a good look at your deck and
really focus on what cards you're putting in there.
If you're playing a Macro Cosmos deck, chances are
you won't want a Bazoo the Soul Eater in there,
because not only is he a worthless card (due to the
fact that you can't pump him up), but he takes up a
slot. A better idea would be something that can
possibly help your deck: a Gren Maju da Eiza, for
instance.
It's simple card choice that can make or break a
good sidedeck, but card choice is only step one.
Step two relies on you, as a duelist, to playtest
your choices in a variety of different ways. If you
have a team, bounce ideas off them and run a
gauntlet, throwing any and all cards in your
sidedeck in while pulling a variety of different
cards out. I'm not going to tell you how many duels
you need to play to perfect your sidedeck - some
need only a match, others need 100+ games. It's how
you play and what you want in there that counts.
Sidedeck building isn't easy, and I'm not going to
point out some cards that are "staple" sidedeck
cards, because the truth is there isn't a "staple"
sidedeck. But the main thing you need to know is
your main deck. If you don't know the main deck, you
won't be able to run the sidedeck effectively at
all. That's why running the gauntlet is so important
- you need to know your deck's weaknesses inside and
out before you can even think about building a
sidedeck. You need to be prepared for any and all
matchups: Gladiator Beasts, Lightsworn, Dark Armed
Dragon, Exodia, Trick Burn (coming in a feature
article sometime soon), Warrior Toolbox, Monarch,
Tomato Control, Macro Cosmos, Gren Maju Macro, and
any derivative thereof. That's a lot of decks to
play against, but you don't necessairly have to play
against them. You could pull a Top-8 deck off of
Metagame.com and proxy it, then run your deck
against that deck until you find where you're
pressure points are. Once you shore up your
weaknesses with your sidedeck cards, you should come
out on top 80-90% of the time, in all your matchups.
That's a lot of hard work, but it pays off in the
end. If you want to be a top duelist, believe me -
your sidedeck is your best friend.
I know this article was short, but there are reasons
for that (the main one being I don't have to explain
cards or reasons why I put them in). This is a
simple reminder of what you should do if you want a
good sidedeck (and 1st place to boot), but what it
mainly was was an apology to all my fans out there
for making such an obvious mistake.
Anyway, next time I'll be taking a look at a new
deck called "Trick Burn." I'll let you figure it
out.
-Anteaus
