Dark Maltos

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Dark Maltos's Dueling Dome
Belonging
May 2, 2006

Hey guys, im back from hiatus, and I’ve managed to get my big ugly mug on the pojo page thanks to the discovery of my USB cable for my digital camera. Finally all of you that dream about me so very frequently can have a face to put to the Kuriboh that’s been floating around for far too long now, not that im saying I’m a floating Kuriboh but…aww well you know what I mean. Anyway, I’d better get on with the article before I’ve completely blown your mind with my messed up humour.

Feeling like you belong somewhere is an important feeling in all walks of life, and once more determines the outcome of everything we do. Being in our own environment is essential to the progress we make as people . Belonging to a place can give a really big confidence booster , as we are settled in our surroundings and we know what to expect.

If you are in a place where you feel you do not belong, quite often you follow a destructive path and downward spiral of suspicion, discomfort and irritation. These negative feelings are always felt whenever we try something completely new , its not only human nature, but also a basic instinct. Any creature hates being out of its usual surroundings, and can often find it difficult to adjust, and that’s exactly what we are seeing in Yugioh today.

Of late, many duelists have been introduced into an environment that they were not used to, and one that most certainly was not friendly.

The current change in the dueling environments for duelists on a global scale has been a difficult one to adjust to. Every ban list duelists are forced into a new environment , one where their resources and intelligence are put to the test, one where they must rely on their ingenuity and mental capacity in order to thrive.

Some duelists find themselves quick to adjust to these extreme changes of duel styles, be it aggressive or drawn out, regardless, they find themselves able to adjust with relative ease, and hopefully they learn something on the way. Other duelists however are not so fortunate or gifted.

Some find themselves unable to evolve to fit their new environment and either become extinct (i.e., quit) or become almost scavengers taking the pickings from other players brilliance (net deckers), but either way a species of duelist is forced into regression.

Wow, this is starting to sound like something out of national geographic isn’t it? There must be hundreds, nay thousands of people reading this and thinking ‘What the HELL has that got to do with Yugioh?!?’ , so I’ll explain without going onto a deeper metaphorical level.

With each ban list the stronger duelists are weeded out from the weak, with some adjusting to the changes excessively quickly , others taking a bit more time to settle. The minority that cant adjust sufficiently either quit or follow the strategy that a more advanced player has constructed. Its pretty much the natural order, but things have changed. The environmental shift last time was too much for the stronger duelists to bounce back from , and the most recent shift may have been beneficial, but it seems it was too little too late.

The trinity format was a format that I thought I really belonged to. I ran a fiend deck back then, and it was a damn good one, so good in fact that it could compete with the best chaos decks and emerge victorious frequently. They were the days, I could run anything I liked whenever and it wouldn’t matter because I could pull through and win with it. I ran End of Anubis for gods sake, it was fantastic !!

The format that followed, which I think henceforth should be called the Regressive Format knocked Yugioh back a step, and I think I got hit by it the hardest. After the banning of the trinity, my beautiful, unique deck crumbled, and chaos it rival with it. Fortunately, I still had my fiends to use, Chaos user had virtually nothing, I mean who wants to run Chaos sorcerer right? (do you guys remember that? ) Anyway, I felt as though I’d been left high and dry, with a massive spell shortage. UDE had banned and restricted a lot, but had only released Dark hole back to us, and my deck was now suffering from what can only be described as ‘Spell Shortage.’ I remember looking through my spell cards, desperately trying to find suitable replacements for my fallen spells, settling for cards like Smashing Ground and fissures as replacements. Now I knew from experience that these cards were at best average, but as it stood there was nothing else for me to use. Surprisingly, I found that I was not alone in the use of these 1 for 1 removal cards. Others had been forced to run them as well, unable to find a decent, suitable replacement.

My decks went through a variety of changes over that format, from Fiend to Armed dragon, back to fiend , and then finally, most recently a Dark Magician deck, but it wasn’t until the end that I realised one thing, which s why I think the previous format should be christened the Regressive format.

The game had started receding skill wise, and players were beginning to run the cards that only 6 months ago they had deemed virtually useless. Cards like smashing ground and Fissure had changed from the reluctantly used replacements to staples, and previous staples like Jinzo had been disregarded and deemed ‘N00bish’ by the dueling public. I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing. Players literally eating their own words , following the Advantage cult as though it were religion or law, running cards they had so recently deemed intolerably inferior and worshipping them to a point where any questioning of their relevance was deemed blasphemy. Chaos sorcerer now appeared all over the place, and although I had always thought of him as a very good monster, now there were outcries of how Broken he was, and how his ultimate banning was the only solution.

The game had regressed to a state here players had gone from advanced, thought provoking individuals to virtually mindless sheep , using simplistic monotonous cards repetitively over and over. But what brought about these seemingly extremist changes?

Well basically the banning of the Chaos genre changed the environment so abruptly and explosively, that no players could sufficiently adjust and find a sense of belonging in what resulted. Chaos had reigned for over a year and when that was gone, followed by the restriction of virtually every other seemingly good card, left only the most simplistic cards available to the players. This made the players evolve backward instead of forward and blinded them to virtually everything they once knew and respected. Because they felt so out of place they turned their back on the principles they had once so cherished and slowly became near mindless animals in terms of dueling. Yugioh nearly died, the passion had been taken. Little did I know that the feeling I had that something was missing from the very moment the new ban list had been enforced would be one that followed me around for the next 6 months , and the usage of simplistic cards would eventually consume all of those that used them.

Over time, the game became more and more stale, new cards released did nothing to reconcile this. Duelist began to focus on ways to utilise multi flip monsters over and over to provide ‘unlimited advantage’ , not realising that this was all pointless since the only cards they could draw into were ones that were virtually useless, except for drawing into other useless cards. Anyway, I digress.

The abrupt change had left no place for belonging, the format wasn’t even reminiscent of its predecessor , and slowly all cognitive thought was squeezed out of all the duelists until all they could do was count how many cards they had at any given time, dooming themselves to the oblivion that the prospect of Advantage slowly became .

Well, that’s it for part one, I’ll conclude this as soon as a I get a few decent replies. I want to know what you feel before I conclude this , and completely address the point of the article.

Till next time,

Toddyhole@aol.com