Subject: Combo and Strategy - Mike B

Well its me again for another essay-like insert to Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh! page. 
No, I'm not putting in a combo or a strategy (Well I kind of am but anyway 
. . . ) This essay is about how comboes and strategies apply to the gaming 
world of Yu-Gi-Oh!

First, combo. A combo in this game is using any 2 or more cards in 
conjuction with eachother to help you win the game or inflict damage to 
your opponent. There is no reason to create a combo to help you lose. For 
an example of a combo, I will use La Jinn equipped with Axe of Despair. 
This is a combo because the two cards work together to create a 2800 ATK 
4-star monster. Now, playing La Jinn and then activating Mirror Force when 
your opponent attacks is not a combo. That is strategy. You would most 
likely do this to draw out your opponent's most powerful monster (s). 
Strategies are using the cards that you have to create a combo.

Let's go on to a simple combo. Let's say you play Share the Pain to destroy 
your monster and your opponent's monster. Well, this may not seem like a 
combo but it is. There are 3 cards involved; Share the Pain, your monster, 
and your opponent's monster. Now, in reality, only one card has an effect 
being activated. But let's say we add another card to the lot. Last Will. 
Well, now we can bring another card to field, bringing our total to 5 
cards. But wait, there's more. Say the face down card of yours is Sangan. 
Well, let's add an Exodia piece to the fray, making our total 6 cards. One 
of our cards was lost, right? So let's activate Michizure making the total 
now 8 cards; Michizure and your opponent's monster. So you have gotten one 
Exodia piece, destroyed 2 of your opponent's monsters, and put Witch of the 
Black Forest onto the field, ready to ATK then die for another part, and so 
on. But if I were to activate another Share the Pain at this moment, I've 
just broken the chain. Let's look at a very complex card for combo ability.

Maha Vailo

This card is not completely complex, but I can make it. First, I play it in 
attack mode. I end my turn. My opponent destroys it, and at that time I 
activate Call of the Haunted to bring it back. Its ATK is 2050. My opponent 
attacks it again, but I activate Metalmorph, bringing its ATK to 2850. His 
card (GAF?) is now destroyed. A relatively simple combo involving only 3 of 
your own cards, 2 of his/hers.

Now to look at strategy. In Yu-Gi-Oh! there are 2 types of strategy. The 
first type is Deck Building, and the second type is looking at your hand, 
field, and graveyard to find good comboes. For Deck Building, it is 
straight forward. You want a deck that will win or is fun or is original. 
Pick what you want. A fun deck? Take Clown Control. I've heard most people 
have fun with it. Original deck? Well I can't tell you. That's why it is 
original. But let's say we pick a beatdown for the purpose of this article.

I want strong attackers for my deck. 1800 lvl 4 work well. Add 2 Summoned 
Skulls, some Dark Elves, and a couple GAFs. The standard Magic and Traps 
and voila. The perfect deck. Well where is the strategy? The sidedeck. Now 
you want your deck to be able to stand up to many different types of decks. 
So throw some in, test it out, try again. Some people don't care for this 
part. Some take weeks, months, soon to be years to develop the perfect 
strategized deck. One that will be able to take out any other deck, easily, 
simply, but most important, they will have fun doing it.

Now back to strategy in the game. If you have La Jinn on the field, they 
have GAF in ATK mode, you're not going to leave it there like a sitting 
duck. You want to back it up with Mirror Force. But the strategy comes in 
when you have a back up for Mystical Space Typhoon or Heavy Storm. Say you 
have Magic Jammer, or Prohibition.

Well that's it from here! My e-mail is 
<mailto:frieza_00@hotmail.com>frieza_00@hotmail.com . Don't add me to your 
MSN. I've deleted at least 4 less-than intelligent people who decided to 
add me. You can send me mail, I like that. I got some good input from my 
last article.

See ya all later! I like a good e-mail once in a while!

Mike