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FanatikMonk on Yu-Gi-Oh!

Fusing the Creative with the Competitive
March 14, 2006

            Hi all, I’m FanatikMonk and I’ll be writing Feature Articles here on Pojo.  Well, now that we’ve gotten through the blatantly obvious, lets move on to more pertinent issues. 

            The average kid/person entering into this game expects thrilling, short duels in which you make a few big plays/combos and win quickly, just like on the show, and is shocked to find the lack of diversity in many “competitive” decks.  In fact the current Meta is so extremely different from anything shown on the show that any onlooker would think we were using entirely different sets of cards.  Why is this?  Many people argue cards on the show aren’t competitive.  Many say there isn’t room for creativity in this game outside of basic deck-types (tomato control, flip-flop, warrior, etc.).  Yet the terms competitive and creative are ever-changing and are influenced by every individual deck in the Meta.

Competition

            At the core of any card game (or any game in that case), is gaining advantage over your opponent.  Your deck in Yu-Gi-Oh is basically a river of resources and each card must flow logically into the others providing a constant stream of advantage in order to win.  Destroying monsters, stopping spells and eradicating traps cause disruption in your opponent’s strategy and prevents them from retaliating in full force. 
 

            Many people also value maintaining the tempo of a duel as a form of advantage.  No deck survives everywhere and under every set of circumstances (hence, why burn and mill decks are dangerous) and it is up to you to create the proper context for your deck.  A duel’s atmosphere and tempo are core components to winning.  Let’s face it without G-Bind and level-Limit burn wouldn’t stand a chance, right?
 

            These are the two basic components of competitive play: tempo and advantage.  While I could easily write 5 pages on the importance of each, suffice to say they’re critical aspects of game play and are how we decide what can be deemed competitive and what cannot.  Deck-types that take hold of both concepts are labeled competitive and, depending on the Meta and the environment, they may be deemed “Tier 1” and only “Tier 1” decks make it into tournament play and are viewed by most duelists as competitive.
 

            But is their another way to define competitive?  Is there a way to incorporate creativity into the competitive?  Let’s face it, no one wants to play the same duel for the next 3 years, so a little diversity is more than appreciated.  I’ve written articles for this game for over a year now for various sites and my goal cannot be described better than “Fusing the creative with the competitive.”

Creativity

            Think about the best duel of your life, or how you would envision it.  You’re dueling a tough opponent with a deck you’ve never seen before, where every twist and turn is full of new surprises, new combos and innovative, advantage-gaining mechanics.  It’s not the warrior vs. warrior match up; it’s not tomato control vs. chaos; it’s something more.  The best duels keep you on your toes and force you to think about and re-evaluate your deck and your play style.  The best duel pushes you to your creative limits and transcends the realm of “luck.”  The best duel is what we’re all striving for.
 

            Now, I personally take the side of the “opponent” in the “best duel.”  Using a deck crafted around their own personality, built with blood, sweat and tears, forged out of the strength of winning and the knowledge of loss, I play with every ounce of my soul in union with my deck. 

          At heart, I am a deck builder and, like an artist with a canvas, my deck is my creative outlet.  Over the past year I’ve built at least 20 different decks based off of new cards or different combos.  When Gearfried the Swordmaster debuted, I built a guardian/gearfried deck featuring 3 blast with chains as tech.  When DR2 was released, I built an aggressive reversal quiz deck that went beyond the traditional OTK format.  Currently I’m running a Strike Ninja deck featuring Blowback Dragons and Brain controls as tech, a monarch deck built off of cycling treeborn and enemy controllers to gain advantage and an earth/zombie deck using staunch defender to force advantage (try it with jujitsu you’ll love it,) but my greatest love has been a deck that I built from scratch as a joke.  On forums to get people to read a post I’d put the topic as “Kuriboh Control!!!” as a way of grabbing attention, but one day I decided that it had to be possible to create a deck that draws advantage from kuribohs and still have fun doing it.
 

So let’s take this deck as a case study of fusing the creative with the competitive.

Monsters (19)
Chaos Sorcerer x 3
Kuriboh x 3

Winged Kuriboh x 3
Winged Kuriboh LV10 x 1

D. D. Warrior Lady x 1

Breaker the Magical Warrior x 1

Magician of Faith x 1
Sangan x 1
Shining Angel x 2
Dekoichi the Battlechanted locomotive x 2

Tsukuyomi x 1

Spells (18)
Dark Hole x 1
Double Spell x 1
Emergency Provisions x 1
Enemy Controller x 2
Heavy Storm x 1
Mystical Space Typhoon x 1
Pot of Avarice x 1
Premature Burial x 1
Snatch Steal x 1
Swords of Revealing Light x 1
Transcendent Wings x 2
Metamorphosis x 1

Messenger of Peace x 1

Nobleman of Extermination x 2

Wave-Motion Cannon x 1

Traps (4)
Call Of The Haunted x 1
Ceasefire x 1
Magic Cylinder x 1
Torrential Tribute x 1

Total: 41

            My original build for this deck was entirely burn based and used stealth birds to cause damage and Winged Kuriboh LV10 as tech, but I soon realized the deck could be modeled to fit a more aggressive profile.  After play-testing everything from Mobius to Time Seal I realized there were three big problems with the deck:
 

1.      Summoning Lv10 required some fairly situational combos.  You’d have to do it early enough to have cards in hand but still be subtle enough with your approach that your opponent wouldn’t hold resources and hit you with a big swing next turn.

2.      If you were able to get Winged Kuriboh 10 out, you’d be hard pressed to find advantage after that.

3.      There are a lot of cards in this deck that have a one time use and become useless without the addition of other cards (Transcendent Wings, Winged Kuriboh Lv10).

It’s with these in mind that I created the final product and tailored it to be used for tournament play.  This deck was created mid-December during the height of warrior play and as such needed to bar their speed and limit their removal, so with that in mind lets take a look at the monsters in this deck first.

The Kuribohs (Winged and otherwise) were implied by the theme, so 7 cards in the lineup are set initially.  D.D. Warrior Lady and the Shining Angels combo well with the Winged Kuribohs providing access to them in the midst of the battle phase or a D.D. Warrior Lady to halt further aggression.   Tsukuyomi and Dekoichi provide an excellent draw engine for the eventual discard I’ll be making or to compensate me for one already made.  Finally, Chaos Sorcerer provides late game advantage and will always have something to remove (I mean I’m dropping kuribohs anyway, right?)  Establishing a quick 1 for 0 can keep your opponent off balance long enough to regain control of the tempo of the duel.
 

Now the spell lineup was created with two things in mind.  First, I wanted it to run similar to burn/stall so that my opponent was encouraged to wait for openings in my defense and then atk with a big swing.  The inclusion of scapegoat, messenger of peace and swords, three very powerful stall cards, allowed such a scenario to take place.  Pot of Avarice and metamorphosis are excellent pieces of tech for this deck and added even more tempo control.  Nobleman of extermination was a replacement for the initial two Mobius I had in the deck, but work well due to the small number of traps in this deck and their scarcity in other decks.  Now, Emergency Provisions and Double spell may look like terrible choices for any deck but they’re actually very appropriate here (see problem 3.)  They allow me to dump useless spells like transcendent wings or an early Avarice for something more valuable.  I have double-spelled for the game (drop transcendent, enemy controller, avarice, messenger of peace, etc. for Crossout, dark hole, heavy storm) and is appropriate in a deck like this that lives for big swings (plus, with 18 spells, it’s pretty hard not to use it.)  Emergency Provisions is gorgeous because of its chain-ability.  Enemy controller finally provides a fail-safe for late game moves and combos well with winged Kuriboh (tribute a winged and you take 0-damage and get a monster).
 

Traps are fairly self explanatory if you remember that I started this as a burn build and simply dropped G-Binds and barrels for spells.

          Now the absolute best thing about this deck is that it top-decks miracles!  Top decking a winged Kuriboh or Kuriboh can further stall the game and allow your opponent to continue building resources.  Avarice allows you to cycle through your Kuribohs endlessly and still provide advantage; it’s fiendish and beautiful at the same time.  Combine these top decks with effective stall and you have a control that can break the tempo of any “Tier 1” deck.

This is only one example of the kind of creativity available in this format.  I’ll continue exploring this Fusion in the future and will also dedicate a lot of my writing to helping n00bs break into a moving game.  Thanks for reading and I’m more than open to comments and questions.  Happy dueling!

-         FanatikMonk

Clayton_Nelson@brown.edu