From: Andrew Phillips [magic707@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 8:56 AM To: yugiohdepartment@pojo.com Subject: Killer Deck-Bang for the Buck-Andrew Phillips Hello, my name is Andrew Phillips and this is the first article I have written for YuGi-Oh. I recently have gotten in to the game and have played in numerous UpperDeck King Duelist tournaments, many of which I have won or finished in the top 4. I play in Atlanta, Georgia at various card shops and we have a large following! The deck that I will analyze today is one that I have been tuning (which means making it better for those non-card gamers) and have won two tournaments in which I have not lost even a duel in a match! I kid you not! The deck has extreme explosive power tempered with powerful monsters, traps, and spells. The deck was recently updated with Magic Ruler, which in my opinion has improved the quality of the deck and overall speed. I will give you the current incarnation of the deck and analyze and discuss plays. Please note that the version you are about to see is pre-Magic Ruler because the set had not yet been made legal for UpperDeck Tournaments. Bang for the Buck Monsters 3x La Jinn Mystical Genie of the Lamp 3x 7 Colored Fish 3x Dark Elf 3x Man-Eater Bug 3x Jurai Gumo 2x Summoned Skull 1x Black Witch of the Dark Forest 1x Magician of Faith Spells 1x Pot of Greed 1x Dark Hole 1x Raigeki 3x Tribute to the Doomed 1x Heavy Storm 1x Change of Heart 1x Monster Reborn 3x Stim Pack Traps 3x Trap Hole 2x 7 Tools of the Bandit 2x Magic Jammer 1x Solemn Judgment 1x Mirror Force SideDeck 2x Swords of Revealing Light 2x Dispell 3x Walls of Illusion 3x Block attack 1x 7 Tools of the Bandit 1x Magic Jammer 2x Card Destruction 1x Heavy Storm At first glance you might look at this deck list and laugh at the choices. Jurai Gumo! Stim Pack! This deck is terrible! I thought the same thing at first, but after seeing the power when these cards are played you begin to see how powerful they really are! Jurai Gumo may or may not cost half your life but he always attacks for 2200 even if you miss the coin toss. Most people argue that Stim Pack is a waste, that each turn it decreases the ATK of a monster. This is true except that if you pay attention to a game that most monsters are only on the field for two turns in most cases. This means by the second turn that the Stim Pack has turned into a Sword of Deep-Seated. Not to shabby. Take for example a first turn Dark Elf or Jurai Gumo. Drop one of these and equip a Stim Pack and you have a 2700 or 2900 monster on first turn. Take that Summoned Skull! Or the best case scenario is to Change of Heart an opponent's monster and Tribute to play Summoned Skull and then Stim Pack it! That's over 3200 points of direct damage first turn! Take that Blue Eyes White Dragon! Now I know with Magic Ruler coming out that Stim Pack is obsolete. There are numerous replacements such as Malevolent Nuzzler (+700 ATK, no drawbacks), Axe of Despair (excellent choice, +1000 ATK), or Megamorph (double ATK, first turn kill here!, Play Tribute of the Doomed on opponent's face down creature then play Dark Elf and Equip with 2 Megamorphs and pay 1000 life, putting you at 7000, to attack and thus raising Dark Elf's ATK to 8000!). The SideDeck is also important against certain match ups and cannot be overlooked! But for the purposes of this report I will use the deck I won with. Now on with the report. The Tournament was held at Galactic Quest in Buford, Ga on Saturday Sept 21 at 2:00 p.m. About 35 people showed up for the tournament. We would have to play 5 rounds of single elimination (which means you lose, you out!). Play was fast and brutal! Round 1 Jeff Hill Jeff was a nice guy that was playing in his first tournament. So I had to go slow and explain the rules to him at various times. I won the coin flip so I chose not to go first. Now some people may ask why I didn't go first. The reason is simple, I get to attack first. I look at how my opponent sets up his field. If he sets a lot of traps or magic cards I'll Set a Man-eater bug on my turn and play Heavy Storm or my own traps. If my opponent plays only a monster and it's face up I can usually drop a bigger monster or Stim Pack one and make it bigger. This is key to good plays, you never want to fall behind in the number of monsters you have compared to your opponent. This is why Man-Eater Bug is so good, he can block one monster and kill another one! Anyway I beat Jeff in two straight games that take about 3 minutes a piece. Jeff was playing several starter decks combined together. I usually started with Man-Eater Bug or killed his opposition with monster kill cards and went in to finish up with large monsters. My life points were at around 2000 for both games due to Dark Elf and Jurai Gumo, but life points don't matter if you won. Most people in the tournament are still just starting and I'm finished! Round 2 Tyler Tyler has played in a previous tournament and had more experience than Jeff. He was playing Polymerization and Large Fusion monsters, he also had Elegant Egotist and The Harpy Sisters. Overall Tyler had a decent deck that was plagued by bad draws and poor plays. I would usually counter his Polymerization with Magic Jammer or Solemn Judgment. Then I would play a large creature and try to rush him to the win. The second game depended on my SideDeck, I put in Swords of revealing Light and Magic Jammers and Walls of Illusions. I took out Summoned Skull and Heavy Storm because it was weak against him. I used the Swords a few times and the Walls to bounce back his monsters to buy enough time to slip in with Jurai Gumo and take him out! This match unfortunately took about 10 minutes to win, Oh Well! Round 3 Matt Matt was an older gent who enjoyed the game and had great luck today. Matt was a large amount of fun to play against. We would joke about every play we had and by the end of the first game we had a crowd around us listening to our rants and jokes. He would play La Jinn and I would scream "Broken!" and "That guy will cost me the game" and next turn proceed to play my La Jinn and trade of with his. I would play Monster Reborn and Matt would exclaim that my mother would also play with that card and I would reply, "I know that your Mom plays with this card Matt after I visited her last night!" He would ask how his 60 year-old mom was doing and I would reply that she changes her diaper on a regular basis. This is what the game boiled down to, the most unsportsmanlike-like conduct you ever have witnessed and we loved it! It was back and forth for a while but I usually had the upperhand. Both games were closer than I would have liked, but in the end I defeated Matt and moved into the semi-finals. Semi-Finals Round 4 Zack I have played Zack before in a previous tournament so he was of course somewhat hesitant to play me again, but fate did not smile on Zack this day as both games can down to me playing two Jurai Gumos and smashing his face in about 3 turns or less. He play a lot of Dragons hoping to abuse the Lord of D., Flute combo, bu he only got it once and his team was Mirror Forced away. We joked around afterwards and discussed what we would play after Magic Ruler was allowed in the tournaments. Zack discussed that he and few other had stumbled upon and great deck design and would unveil it at the next tournament. We shall see if it yields results. Finals Round 5 David David had won a tournament that I was unable to attend and thus we were both ready to test who was the better Duelist. We had similar decks, but I ran Dark Elfs and Jurai Gumo which gave me the edge over his weaker 1800 ATK monsters. The first game saw him Change of Heart my face-down Man-Eater Bug which he flipped to kill my Dark Elf and he Tributed the Elf to play Summoned Skull which I trap holed and countered with 7 Tools of the Bandit. The game ended with Dave at 0 life and me at 250. Very Close! Game 2 was entirely mine. I drew every good card Raigeki, Pot of Greed, Change of Heart, Mirror Force, 2 Magic Jammers and 3 Jurai Gumos. Final score me at 91.5 life (Thanks to Solemn Judgment) him at -4200 life. We shook hand congratulated each other and I collected several packs of Magic Ruler and the adoration of dozens! Looking back I'm going to add Megamorphs. This would greatly enhance the deck, but other than that I will keep the core of the deck the same. If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me at magic707@hotmail.com. Thanks to Galactic Quest for Supporting this fantastic game. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx