Where Have I Been? You Know…

Man, am I digging what’s going on in Yu-Gi-Oh!.

I haven’t touched my deck in a long time. It’s been so long, in fact, that my cousin has all my cards, and I don’t think I’ve updated my deck since the September 2008 format. But, be that as it may, I can’t help but think that I like where this game is going.

The main reason I stopped playing oh so long ago (and, subsequently, stopped visiting Yu-Gi-Oh! websites) is the fact that UDE was forced by Konami to shut down production and stop what they were doing. This rubbed me the wrong way, and I can’t believe that it went down the way it went down. Not to mention the fact that metagame.com went under (for reasons that even I am unclear about), and I was left without much hope for the future of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! I’m a competitive person, so losing really my only links to the competitive scene is really tough to swallow, and I essentially said “bag it” to the game and pursued other ventures.

So, while sitting at my computer not too long ago, I thought, “I wonder what’s going on in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!?” So I pulled up pojo, and low and behold, not only is the game still going strong, but I was still considered a featured writer after seven months without publishing a thing and without reviewing a single card in all that time. I’m fairly narcissistic; I admit it, so that was a rather cool thing to see.

Anyway, I did some digging, wondering if there was any possible way I could sneak back into the Yu-Gi-Oh! scene, when I stumbled across the September 2009 banlist. And I have to say, I got my hopes up. I reviewed some new decks courtesy of yugioh.tcgplayer.com and I was taken aback at how much the scene had changed since I left it all those months ago. I looked at some of the decks that were being run and I was amazed at how slow they were. Looking through the decks I really couldn’t find any D-Hero-based decks that did phenomenally well, aside from a second-place showing at SJC Austin this past weekend. I saw some Chaos decks out there that are surprisingly familiar despite the new cards, and I have to say that I am really liking this format – on paper, anyway. It’s hard to like a format when you haven’t even played in it, but there you have it.

I love building decks. Whether they’re great, horrible, or just plain goofy, I love building them. I ran a column on Pojo every week where I featured a new deck that I had created, and I was surprised to hear that some people had actually built them and tried them out, and then sent me feedback. I was pretty flattered, to be honest. But ultimately, I love just creating decks from cards that I have lying around (or did – I don’t really have any at the moment) and seeing what I can do with them. Most of them turn out completely broken: the combo doesn’t work well, or the draw engine isn’t drawing as quickly as it needs to. Whatever the reason, building decks and trying them out has always interested me mainly because it gives me a fresh perspective on the game and why the top decks are doing as well as they are, as well as why there haven’t really been any decks that countered them. It’s a process that works for me, and I enjoy doing it.

With that said, looking at the list I saw a number of possible deck ideas. I saw immediately the Chaos deck, which has seemed to strike a chord in other people as well – this is absolutely great, in my opinion. Chaos is one of those underappreciated deck types out there, which is a shame because it is so versatile when built correctly. Chaos is by far my favorite deck type, bar none – well, except for maybe Hand Control, but that’s all but dead. Too many cards rely on the Graveyard now that Hand Control has been completely decimated, ushering cards like Don Zaloog to the wayside while not giving them the respect that they are due, in my opinion. But that’s neither here nor there.

I wanted to take a look at a deck that I had been thinking about for all of ten minutes. I’m building this from scratch, mind you, though I think that with a few tweaks it could run well. It’s Chaos, of course, utilizing a few underappreciated cards that I think could completely devastate decks if used correctly.

Monsters (21):

2x Chaos Sorcerer

2x Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

3x D.D. Warrior Lady

1x Dimensional Alchemist

1x Gorz Emissary of Darkness

2x Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter

2x Breaker the Magical Warrior

1x Sangan

2x Dark Grepher

1x Krebons

1x Reflect Bounder

1x Cyber Dragon

1x Card Trooper

1x Caius the Shadow Monarch

Magic (13):

2x Allure of Darkness

2x Book of Moon

2x Nobleman of Crossout

1x Heavy Storm

1x Brain Control

1x Mind Control

1x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Smashing Ground

2x Gold Sarcophagus

Traps (6):

1x Call of the Haunted

1x Mirror Force

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

1x Torrential Tribute

1x Return from the Different Dimension

As with all my other deck analyses, we’re going to start with the monster lineup:

2x Chaos Sorcerer

2x Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

3x D.D. Warrior Lady

1x Dimensional Alchemist

1x Gorz Emissary of Darkness

2x Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter

2x Breaker the Magical Warrior

1x Sangan

2x Dark Grepher

1x Krebons

1x Reflect Bounder

1x Cyber Dragon

1x Card Trooper

1x Caius the Shadow Monarch

What a goofy lineup, I must say. The idea here is not to create a massive combo with ten gajillion cards; rather, the idea of this monster lineup is pure, simple, raw power. And by power I, of course, mean controlling your opponent. D.D. Warrior Lady is a prime example of this – when it’s attacked you can remove it and the attacking monster from play. Simple, elegant, grand – the exact definition of what this deck is designed to do. You have Kycoo, which allows you to control your opponent’s Graveyard (and quite effectively, might I add), not to mention a Dimensional Alchemist and a Card Trooper to chuck cards into your own Graveyard (as well as Ryko). Breaker the Magical Warrior helps to alleviate those pesky back row cards as well as giving you a potent 1900 ATK monster that can break through a lot of defenses.

With Chaos decks, the idea is symmetry, not synergy. The funny thing is, however, that the symmetry in the LIGHT vs. DARK aspect is synergy, because they balance each other so well. They are foils of one another, they act together to get the job done while at the same time feeding the beast that is Chaos Sorcerer. The LIGHT vs. DARK dichotomy of the Chaos deck has always struck me as a great idea that was passed over time and time again. It’s a shame, too, because Chaos is such an elegant deck – it doesn’t need fancy combos to work. It simply does.

And now we shall move onto the magic lineup (or Spell…ugh):

2x Allure of Darkness

2x Book of Moon

2x Nobleman of Crossout

1x Heavy Storm

1x Brain Control

1x Mind Control

1x Mystical Space Typhoon

1x Smashing Ground

2x Gold Sarcophagus

This lineup is a bit more straightforward, if I may be so bold. The Allures are designed to draw from your deck – who cares about tossing a DARK monster? There are plenty to choose from. Book of Moon is one of the most underappreciated cards of all time – it’s offensive, it’s defensive, it comes with a Book, it comes with a Moon, and it comes with an Of, of all things! It’s a phenomenal card that is incredibly versatile in many situations, and its Quick-Play status makes it a wonderful card to have in your arsenal.

Moving on from that, we have Nobleman of Crossout, another incredibly functional card. It controls the field and the Graveyard incredibly well by not allowing your opponent to set cards without fear of losing them (and, quite possibly, all their Flip-effect monsters with the same name) as well as not allowing their monsters to hit the Graveyard at all (great against Lightsworn and Chaos). The rest of the lineup is pretty self-explanatory, with Brain Control and Mind Control being strict control cards, as well as Mystical Space Typhoon and Smashing Ground, and Gold Sarcophagus being the prime recruiting card of the magic lineup.

The trap lineup is probably the best, in my opinion. When I saw that Call of the Haunted was back I was certain that it was going to make big waves, and I wasn’t mistaken. The second-best resurrection card in the game makes its way back to the game, and I couldn’t be happier. The lineup is thus:

1x Call of the Haunted

1x Mirror Force

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

1x Torrential Tribute

1x Return from the Different Dimension

Again, a standard Trap lineup designed to irritate your opponent and stop them in their tracks – as well as pull off a last-minute Return, if you can. When Return first became huge I was a major fan of it – I ran first Bazoo Return, then Chaos Return, and then when it was banned for good I essentially quit playing (though not because it was gone – I had too much other stuff to do at the time).

You’ll probably have noticed the lack of Tuner cards – that’s because this deck doesn’t need an Extra Deck, in my opinion, though you are certainly more than welcome to tweak this deck as you see fit, and if you want Tuners in there then be my guest, by all means. The sidedeck is also yours to construct.

As with all my decks, feel free to take them and tweak them how you will. Just remember where you got the idea from.

It’s nice to write again. I might not be back for a while, but if you liked (or didn’t like) this article, drop me a line and tell me why. My e-mail is and probably always will be anteaus44@hotmail.com. Make sure that you put my article title in the subject line so I don’t delete the e-mail, as I have a decent spam filter on there. Yu-Gi-Oh! has long been a part of my life, and I had to cut it out for quite some time because of other things. I didn’t have the money to continue to play it, and I didn’t have the time to devote to it like I do now. I might just pick it back up again – we’ll have to see where the winds take me, unfortunately, but rest assured that you all are not forgotten.

I don’t do deck fixes anymore – I don’t have time – so please don’t e-mail me them, but I would love to hear your reactions about this article and maybe suggestions for future articles as well. Don’t be shy!

-Anteaus