Skill and knowledge, Past and Present.
>
>starting off with a small bit of history, i started playing yu-gi-oh 
>the
>day it came out(or atleast the day i found it in a store while it wasnt 
>there the day before, maybe the stores where late but nm). and since then 
>have had alot of fun playing the game as it was, at the time the game was 
>pretty slow and speed wasnt a factor as it often toke a long time for 
>players to summon up their dark magician/blue eyes white dragon,. usualy 
>done by calling upon strong defense monsters like a giant soldier of stone 
>or perhaps an elf. obviously this kind of tactic was almost fail prove 
>cause the strongest monsters where still 1800 at the very best. and the 
>worst thing that would happen was walking right into a traphole, or a 
>reinforcements<very letal at the time>. and where deemed good strategies, 
>better yet even game winning.
>
>eventualy the second wave of starterdecks hit the stores and fairly 
>well
>causing a shift in power with toon monsters and fusions, not to forget to 
>allmighty timewizard wich could really wreck a duelist. then there also 
>was a relinquished possing a true nightmare, sure enough summoning him was 
>tricky but once he was out it was pretty hard getting away again with a 
>better monster, and using something like ultimate offering likely was the 
>only way to truely get ride of it since it could call upon more monsters. 
>1 to destroy relinquised's equip, 1 to destroy relinquised himself, 
>provided they where strong enough..
>
>speed wasnt really all that much of a issue yet and tributes where 
>still
>good, personaly i used a deck based on relinquised, stalling till i had 
>him and could steal others. now at some point here i left the game for a 
>while, either i ran out of money or school was taking a toll on me(yea 
>right). anyway, at some point later i returned to the game and still had 
>my old deck with him, knowing enough about the cards there where out when 
>i left, though when i started playing again i was shocked., at the time 
>the new evolution decks had come out and these had cards with made my deck 
>by far inverior to almost everything trown at me, monsters that where 
>suposed to be tributes fell pray to powerup monsters and monster removal. 
>and before id even have 2 monsters on the field my oponent would have a 
>army set. obviously thing had been speeding up and my old fasion deck just 
>was no match, it might have been though, had i known all the new cards 
>that where being trown at me, rather then look in awn at a noblemen of 
>crossout taking out my maneaters. lil did i know that a few magic jammer 
>and tools of the bandit could take care of half the problem but the point is..
>ya cant fight what ya dont know. just look at some tournements you been 
>hearing about lately, where a person with a totaly unexpected deck wins, 
>or gets pretty high, cause people just dont see it coming and dont have a 
>clue what they are up against. mind you  that with enough time people do 
>adjust, as have i. climbed up to be one of the better duelists with my 
>ritual deck none the less, rituals are seen as bad hand management, but 
>who needs a hand when you can summon up a whole army and crush you oponent 
>in 1 fell swoop? there is a ritual for every occasion., untill something 
>new comes out wich just renders your currect deck unusuable, you can see 
>what i mean by taking a small look into the past, every deck has met its 
>era in wich it couldnt keep standing, but at the same time things recycle, 
>its not just new cards that take a person by suprise, its old and 
>forgotten cards aswell, as for example gravekeepers, or toons. are sure to 
>atleast supripse somebody so much they can hardly think up a strategy 
>since its not a everyday thing, against gravekeepers all those lovely 
>reborns dont work no more, and against toon ur inpregnatable wall suddenly 
>seems more like a shred of paper, untill you figure out what ur upagainst 
>and adjust, digging deep enough in your memory to remember what can defeat 
>cards like that and use that instead, much like now chaos monsters, using 
>ur graveyard to special summon, but now adays the removal cards are huge. 
>tribute to the doomed, offerings to the doomed, mirror force, dark hole, 
>torinal tribute, raikegie. BUT since they are out there and some are used 
>more then others almost every deck has something against them. this 
>however does not mean if a deck doesnt have the standard removal or 
>counter its a bad deck, its mearly a new way of doing things and often 
>enough its going to work simpley cause people dont see it coming.
>
>in conclusion..
>skill and knowledge are both nessesary in a duel, the knowledge to know
>the cards, and the skill to use them,  the knowledge to know what action 
>to take , and the skill to exacute that action. if all else fails, dig in 
>the past to deal with the present.
>
>airninja13@hotmail.com magic-snake
>
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