Anteaus! The Challenge of Burn! ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: ObnoxiousCelt@aol.com Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 11:31:58 EST Anteaus! I have returned because you have proked me, but this article has nothing to do with you! I recieved an email from somebody who will remain unnamed, challenging the strength of the Burn deck!Ohhhh no. You do not challenge the burn deck and get away with it. Here was the email I have recieved. Just two simple lines. "Burn was too powerful for its own good. It was? Since when? Show me a decent Burn deck." He was making reference to how I called the restricting of Gbind and LLAB a good thing. But you wish to know how burn was strong? VEry well. I will explain but first we have to look at the idea of Yu-Gi-Oh. The idea of Yu-Gi-Oh is to knock your opponents LP down to 0. It is as simple as that. With the exception of a handful of alternate routes, (Exodia/Destiny Board/Final Countdown/Deck Out/and in Japan Victory Dragon) knocking LP down to 0 IS the main route. Now there are two ways of doing this. Sheer brute force or the Burn. Now looking at the burn there are two kinds of cards in it. The defense and offense. And even then they are broken down more. We will start with the defensive cards. Defense cards are broken down into two different catagories. Attack Defense and Defense Defense. Attack Defense are the cards which stop attack. LLAB, GBind, and MoP. You can also add Wall of Revealing Light for good measures, but that may be overkill. Now my challenger wanted to know how burn was too good and I will stop here because this is where the weakness and mistakes of most burns lie. THEY ONLY RELY ON THEESE 3/4 CARDS! Thats is the mistake. M/T is still in the game and will PWN theese guys. Its a simple fact. Everyone runs Heavy Storm, MST, Dust Tornado, Mobius, Breaker, etc. And in the Traditional, HFD still lives. So that is the problem here. However, there are ways around this. A good burn will have alternate methods to stop attacks. My alternate method is the Gora Turtle. Thats right, the Gora Turtle. Im sure your not familiar with this happy little goon so here is his stats Gora Turtle Water/Aqua 3 star 1100/1100 Effect: No monster with an attack of 1900 or more can attack. (just putting in the quick version. not the exact wordings) In todays meta, for beatdown all monsters are 1900 or more. TIV commits suicide to stop this guy through effect. Yes I know Turtle cant stop the elemental searchers or TIV not need for them. He's the Jinzo stopper. Other cards for the Attack Defense are the Ojama Trio. Knock out 3 spots to summon monsters, can't go wrong with that. 2000/2100/2200 defenders and a Chorus of Sanctuary will stop anything short of BLS. And Mask of Restrict!. That's right Mask of Restrict. Mask of Restrict is a simple trap from the old days that stops tributing in all shape form and way. Thats correct. ALL TRIBUTING. That instantly knocks out the Mobius threat. Jinzo needs dumped and revived. Horus cant move on to the next level. Cannon Soldier cant get rid of the tokens that are in the way. And any garbage monster stay garbage on the field. With such an armada, and more, of Attack Defense cards, a burner is guarenteed to have at least one in his opening hand. Moving on to the next phase, we come to the Defense Defense cards. Theese cards are strictly the cards that defender the defense cards. Confused? Well I'll explain. Like I already said, the weakness is the dependancy on m/t cards. So defense is needed for them!. Meet Magic Reflector. A simple magic card which lets you put a token on a continous magic card so the token is destroyed instead of the magic card. LLAB likes this and so does MoP. This will guarenteed them safe passage to anoy your opponent to know ends as they now have to target it with BOTH of Mobius power, MST and a Dust Tornado, or Heavy Storm and all of the above. Next up is Judgement of Anubis. A trap which for a discard will not only stop the magic which destroys m/t (ala MST and Heavy storm) but lets you blow up a monster to inflict damage. A desfense card and a burn package all in one! BA BAM! We reach my personal favorite m/t negator. Prohibition. Yeah, you heard me. Prohibiton. The big 2 m/t removers is MST and Heavy Storm. I personally start with Heavy Storm if neither has been used then MST to stop it. BEst way to annoy is to have MST/Heavy Storm prohibited and its in their hand. Ha ha ha. Magic Jammer, need I say more? And the last example goes to... Mask of Restrict again! Just for the stopping of Mobius and prolonging the Jinzo factor. Now that we have gone through the defense factor, it is obvious that a good burners defense will have its own way to stand up to whatever the opponet can throw. A good burner can stop your opponet before they can destory your m/t/Gora. So lets move on to what makes Burn great! The attackers! he attacker's aren't even true attackers. Theyre the cards which decimate your opponent and actually prove most annoying to your opponent. This is the other factor of burn which is beautiful. The mental factor. Your opponent is forced to watch their life widdle away, and they can't do anything which causes them to make desperate angry mistakes. But we'll get to that some other time. I see the attacking cards as tools of war, so let's look at the attacking aresenal. Stealth Bird and LAva Golem are the big 2. 1000 damage each turn, 4-8 turn win for you. Theese 2 cards are what I call your Fighter Jets. They do alot of damage in a short amount of time. Plus Lava Golem can get rid of Jinzo and you cant go wrong with that. Bowganian- Meet your marine. Causing 600 damage per each of your standby phase he's just a thorn in your opponents side. Secret Barrel- Meet the fun of the Tank division of your deck. Massive unwielding damage in a short time frame. Ceasefire- This is the fun of the Napalming in your deck. Everything is nailed by this and causes massive damage to your opponent. Balloon Lizard- The Land Mines of the deck. He just sits their all prettyful untl he goes boom and takes out a LARGE chunk of life. Raging Flame Sprite- I call this happy little guy the Red Baron. You just can't seem to kill it and it slaps you something fierce! Just watch out for Snoopy... heh heh heh Tower of Babel- Here is your Atom Bomb. Takes a little work to make. But when it goes off, FLASH! KABOOM! Wave Motion Cannon- Meet your Hydrogen Bomb. It takes time to make, but when it goes off nothing survives. NOTHING. With this force combined with defense, your opponet will crumble quickly before your military. So you see my nameless challenger? That is why a burn is so powerful and why they can do what needs done. They obey the most basic laws of the game. To widdle LP. Antem out. animorphs17@hotmail.com