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Cloudstrife 189 on Yugioh
The secret to dueling: A Direct Correlation
September 15, 2009

Over the past years, I've seen many duelist complain about why they can't win. They come up with their own original decks and lose, they netdeck the Regionals/SJC/National champions' winning decks and lose, and even have other people build their decks for them and of course, still lose. However, i'm not saying this happens to each and every person, but for people that this applies to, I hope this article helps.

I will start off with a short story of my SJC Indy expirence. The day before the event, I was dueling with my glad beast deck against Ryan Newburn and his famous LS deck. Somewhere around the 5th or 6th beating, I decided that glads just weren't doing it for me. Even after all the advantage they generate, I was still trying WAY too hard to win the duel. This is not the same problem for blackwings who instantly win the duel after all their advantage is created. No, glad beast have to fight til the very end each and every time. So that evening, I decided to go back to my hotel and take a variant of Adam Corn's black salvo deck to the jump the next day, and this is where my story truly begins.

That night at the hotel, I make the deck, and crush everyone in my room 2-0 for the entire night. Feeling overly confidant, I go to bed and wake up early the next morning, eager to attend the jump. As fate should have it, my first round was up against no other than Ceaser Gonzales who is playing salvo dad as well. To make an incredibly long story short, he crushes me like no other. He was playing the entire game extemely defensively with moves like "draw,pass" while I was trying to inflict as much damage to him ASAP with doom lords and fear mongers before he could utilize his combo. My agressive plays were my downfall and he 2-0's me.

Now, I don't know if any of you guys have played with salvo dad, but it is not aggressive at all. The whole method behind the madness is to play it slow until you get all your combo pieces and then you explode. But throughout the whole day, I just didn't want to take it slow. I was trying to peck my opponent's to death with these weak destiny heroes and dekochi's before my opponent could release their own combos. Sad to say, this is not the way you play the deck. By the end of the event, I think I beat half my opponents only because they were like WTF are you doing and they had no idea if I was playing some wierd variant or not....

And that is when the revelation began. I am not a slow tempo duelist. I hate stalling until time is called, or until my combo is finally developed. It just isn't me. However, obviously that is how the deck is meant to be played. I like OTKing my opponent's or being very aggressive. I think a friend of mine made a good point when he said "WTF were you doing taking salvo control?" I told him that it worked really good in play testing but he said that's besides the point. At the time, I didn't fully understand what he meant and proceeded to walk back into my hotel room and that's when it hit me. I saw my team mate playing a thunder king/barboros/skill drain/opression build against glads. I stared upon the table and couldn't believe my eyes. His opponent had glad beast samnite, laquari and equestte on the field and my friend had skill drain, oppression and solemn and also had a thunderking and barboros in DEFENSE MODE!!!! I immediate started going bananas and screaming at my team mate for letting this happen. I said "how in the f*** can you be defending against a glad beast deck when ALL of your monsters are stronger then his and you have him locked down via solemn,skill drain and oppression????" He started rambling some excuse about how his life points were low and how he was going to beat him next game when he could side deck in some glad beast hunters and jijistu maters...

I damn near punched him into next weak. I told him that he needs to be aggressive against glads and that this wasn't how his deck was meant to be played. And this is where the point of the article finally comes into play.

I don't think there are currently any decks that do all the winning by themselves. Same thing can be said about the player. If I can use a quick example, lets take a look at tennis. It's not so much as the raquet winning because its $500 dollars or the player winning because he's just that good. No, I think that its because of the combination between the player and their raquet that creates the "unbeatable" team. There are many types of raquets you can buy; ones that create topspin, one's that slice well, one's for power hitters,etc. Its up to the player to find the proper raquet to go with their hitting style. The same can be said about YGO. If you're an aggressive player like me, then you need to play with a deck that can express your aggressive playstyle. It does you no good taking Adam Corn's salvo deck to an event and attacking all day with doom lords and fear mongers like I did. You should be taking a beatdown variant like LS,BW or even Thunder king/skill drain. Because no matter how good players say the deck is, its only that good if you have a style of play that corresponds to that. I constantly wonder how good me and my team mate both would of done if we would of switched decks for the event and if he would of took the defensive black salvo, and if I would of taken his beatdown skilldrain/oppression.

And this also applies to helping people with decks in the future. I think that you should ask them what type of duel style that player currently likes, and then, and only then, help them make a deck. Just grabbing their cards and making changes that you think go well with the deck does nothing for the player if they don't know how to play it, or don't want to play it like that. Speaking on my own behalf for my meta, I know a lot of my local players would do a lot better at an event taking a deck with a playstyle they're use to as opposed to taking Corn's newest version of Cornarchs or salvodad.

So in conclusion, I just want to say that I deeply believe that the secret to dueling is found between the player and his/her deck. I believe that if you can correlate the two playstyles, then, and only then, will you create a force to be reckoned with...

-Cloudstrife 189
"Tray Massengale"