(CCG Tips) Some Ideas for being more ... original? -- PHOENIX ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Mark J Kuntz Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 03:05:32 -0600 Some Ideas for being more ... original? -- PHOENIX Instead of complaining about how there's no originality, I'd like to offer my thoughts on how one could become a more original player. I don't know if "original" is really the word I want to use, but I think it's close. First and foremost, I think what has helped me the most in growing into my own style of play is having friends around me who are worthy adversaries whom I trust, and, who will push me to be a better player. Have your friends duel with you, practice all the time. You'll start to get bored of the same old strategies and look for new ones, to keep the duels from getting stale. Look through your cards. Look through all your cards. I've rummaged through tens of thousands of cards just looking for a common copy of something for some deck I was building, and I flip through god knows how many cards. Stop and read some of those cards. Especially if you're building a themed deck (like, Zombie?) you might find that there are some interesting, albeit probably sub-optimal cards that you didn't even know you had. If you're just flipping through cards trying to find that second Creature Swap, if you see a card that has artwork that's eye catching, stop, look at the card, examine its effect and stats. Get more interested in every card, in all the pieces you can use, instead of memorizing what all the "new tech cards" do. Put new cards in your side deck. Put Brain Jacker in your side deck, or Threatening Roar. Put new cards from the newest set in your side deck every so often, and then side them all in after one game. This will keep you up on which new cards actually work well and which ones don't. Also, really look at the newest powerful cards that everyone is talking about, and decide whether or not they actually will work well in your deck. I put Brain Jacker, Chiron the Mage, and Feather of the Phoenix into my deck one day, and quickly realized that the first card I always choose when getting Vampire Lord'd was .... Feather of the Phoenix... wonder why. Probably because it's the card I could use the least and puts me at the highest disadvantage for using. Albeit it's a fantastic effect. Any card I want is pretty good. If you play advanced, try to examine which parts of your deck you would take out to put in all those banned cards you can't use. I really tried this one day, and my deck was worse because of the banned cards than it was without them. I couldn't separate what had become a more cohesive deck without all the broken cards that didn't need a deck built around them. If you play traditional, try to beat someone using an advanced format deck. If you can do this, you're already a better player. Build more than one deck. Having multiple decks and playing them all regularly will give you that mental thing where you'll always be thinking as you look through a pack you've just opened... "Okay, now, which deck could this rare go into..." Any deck that is capable of winning is at least somewhat original. You had to build it. As long as you didn't directly copy another's decklist (which I do not recommend, by the way) it's in a sense, original. To close, I'd like to put my two cents in on originality in general. I'm not going to bad mouth anyone for complaining about originality, and I'm not going to say that there isn't enough originality or anything like that. I'm going to say this. There are cards in this game that are good in any or most decks. What makes a deck truly original, however, is how it is played. My deck is chock full of limited and semi-limited cards, and the rest are things like Magician of Faith and Blade Knight. I was never the one to take the initiative and say, hey, any of these cards are probably really good, and I should have them in my deck no matter what. But how I play my deck, which strategies I like to use, it's a pattern, and people who play against me a lot can recognize this. Originality is about knowing how you like to play. It's not about what deck you play. There are always good plays, even a "best" play, but there is never a "correct" play. As a good duelist, you try to make the "best" play you can in a situation, but when that play isn't clear, you have a choice, and the choice you make defines your play style. That is originality. The choices you make in given situations that are your own, at that time, with those cards. I hope this makes sense to someone other than me. If you really want to bicker with me, send the e-mail to mark.j.kuntz@gmail.com. Yes, that's my real name. No, I won't tell you what the J stands for. PS. Would you watch the Yu-Gi-Oh CCG World Championship Tournament if it was on television?