Category: YuGiOh - Life... Successfully

Thousand Dragon from Metal Raiders - An Old School Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review

10/25/2019

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

One of the key cards in Yu-Gi-Oh’s second North American set, Metal Raiders, Thousand Dragon is a secret rare still highly sought after by collectors because of its nostalgic value. It has been reprinted at common several times, including Starter Deck Joey, Dark Beginnings 2, Legendary Collection 4, and the Speed Duel Starter Deck: Duelists of Tomorrow, and once at rare in Millenium Pack 1. Still, as one of Joey’s favorite cards from the early Yu-Gi-Oh anime and one of the more powerful cards in the first couple of sets, Thousand Dragon gets a ton of collector love.

Thousand Dragon is a basic Fusion monster, who lists Time Wizard and Baby Dragon as his fusion materials. He has 2400 ATK and 2000 DEF, solid numbers for a fusion monster from those materials. Having these two monsters and a Polymerization could mean big trouble for opponents in the early days of casual Yu-Gi-Oh play. Of course, someone could answer him with a Dark Magician, Blue-Eyes White Dragon, or Serpent Night Dragon. But, removal was at a premium in those days, with Fissure and Dark Hole the most common answers, and Raigeki tough to come by. He was never a very competitive card, but he was fun and quite rare to pull.

Even unlimited edition copies can still fetch a few dollars if they are graded and authenticated by PSA. The PSA SMR report lists PSA 8 copies for $20 and PSA 9 copies for $30. On eBay, the PSA 9 copies can fetch even $40. If you happen to have one graded a Gem Mint PSA 10, you may expect $100 - although completed listings fall closer to $75. These aren’t bad numbers, but 1st edition is where the long-term value of this card lies. First edition PSA 8 examples have an SMR price of $75, PSA 9 examples around $150, and PSA 10 can command a whopping $450. One sold in September 2019 for over $650.

As of 10/25/2019, here is where the population of these graded cards stands:

Unlimited - 14 PSA 8, 36 PSA 9, 32 PSA 10
First Edition - 12 PSA 8, 33 PSA 9, 62 PSA 10

Interestingly, there are many more 1st edition PSA 10 examples in existence, but it’s easily the more desirable card. If you’re purely a collector, a PSA 9 or PSA 10 unlimited edition example is fine. If you’re looking for ROI, definitely hunt for the 1st edition PSA 10. It’s a nice card to own just to have a piece of Yu-Gi-Oh history in your possession.

YuGiOh Finance: Elemental Hero Cards Are a Good Investment?

2/19/2019

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Long ago, my brother and I were very much into collecting YuGiOh. His favorite cards were the Elemental Heroes, as he was a big fan of the YuGiOh GX anime series. Interestingly enough, the Elemental Heroes have actually aged quite well, as have their counterparts, the Neo-Spacian cards. While Elemental Heroes have gone in and out of the competitive scene (here’s to you Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin!) the cards have actually remained quite relevant in YuGiOh Finance!

YuGiOh Prices is perhaps the greatest YuGiOh Finance resource there currently is. They track the Top 100 Most Expensive Cards that are metagame-relevant. As of February 2019, the top card is Ultimate Rare Cyber Dragon, which is probably not a surprise to anyone. Not only is Cyber Dragon a great deck archetype, but it’s an iconic YuGiOh card - which also happens to be from the YuGiOh GX era.

Despite its many reprints, Cyber Dragon has three printings that have appreciated over time, the original Ultimate Rare printing in Cybernetic Revolution, the secret rare Collectible Tin printing, and the Dark Revelation 4 Ultra Rare printing. In just the past year (feb 18 to Feb 19) both the DR4 Ultra Rare and CRV Ultimate Rare have risen in average price by 140 percent!

But, among the Top 100 Meta-Relevant cards are a number of Elemental HERO cards:

Elemental HERO Air Neos
Elemental HERO Bladedge
Elemental HERO Bubbleman
Elemental HERO Neos Knight
Elemental HERO Shining Flare Wingman
Elemental HERO Shining Phoenix Enforcer
Elemental HERO Flame Wingman

Outside of Bubbleman, seeing seven Elemental HERO monsters in the Top 100 Most Expensive Cards is actually pretty surprising, isn’t it? Well, like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon, YuGiOh is a Trading Card Game with a HUGE casual player base. Beyond being iconic to fans of the YuGiOh GX anime, the Elemental HERO cards, especially the Fusion Monsters, are just nice to look at.

(Elemental HERO Thunder Giant was also on this list, but recently fell off. We'll still look a look at him in this article, though, as he's an interesting card.)

So, let’s take a look at the finance implications of each of these Elemental HERO cards and figure out which printings are the best investments for your YuGiOh binder.

Elemental HERO Air Neos - Strike of Neos

Printed only in Strike of Neos, this Elemental HERO fusion has both ultra rare and ultimate rare printings. While ultimate rare cards are typically far more valuable than their ultra rare counterparts, this is not the case with Air Neos. Whereas the Ultra Rare version is up 123% over the past year, the ultimate rare is only up 98% in the same time. Both versions have an average price around $65, with 1st edition copies going for a bit more. Ultimate rare YuGiOh cards are notoriously condition sensitive, so Near-Mint ultimate rare copies of this card will be more valuable in the long run.

From a playability standpoint, Air Neos does have a good ability. He has a base 2500 ATK, but when your Life Points are lower than your opponent’s, Air Neos gains ATK equal to the difference. That’s pretty bonkers! Unfortunately, he returns to the Extra Deck at the end of the turn. It’s still a VERY powerful ability, nonetheless, so it makes sense that players want this card around to play in their casual HERO decks.

Still, Air Neos is difficult to summon since it requires specific monsters to be Fusion Summoned. Fortuantely, a card from Savage Strike called Neos Fusion allows you to get around not only his summoning restrictions, but also having to shuffle him back into the deck that turn! So, if you can get him onto the field, Air Neos is extremely deadly in the right situation.

Elemental Hero Bladedge - Elemental Energy

A casual fan favorite, Elemental HERO Bladedge is a key to one of the original boss Fusion Monsters, Elemental HERO Wildedge. On its own, it's a 2600 ATK monster with the ability to inflict piercing battle damage to monsters in defense position. It's also an EARTH-type Warrior monster, which is useful in certain deck builds. Really, it's the collectible appeal of this card that's putting it into the $20 range.

Elemental Hero Bubbleman - Elemental Hero Collection

Bubbleman is easily the most competitive of the six HEROs we’re looking at here. He’s seen top deck play as recently as October 2018. Not only is he a Level 4 monster, but he’s the only card in your hand, you can Special Summon him from your hand. If you control no cards and have no cards in your hand when he’s summoned, you can draw 2 cards. That ability is actually pretty relevant, not to mention all of the Fusion monsters Bubbleman facilitates Summoning.

Being a competitively relevant card, even common printings of Elemental Hero Bubbleman have appreciated in price between 2018 and 2019. His original rare printing in Cybernetic Revolution is still relevant, as well - up 47% in a year! His ultimate rare printing hasn’t fared nearly as well, though.

What puts Bubbleman on this Top 100 cards list, though, is his secret rare printing from the Elemental Hero Collection. It’s up 80% in the last year and keeps appreciating.With an average price of $27, they’ll dry up fast when players decide they want a full playset (three copies) of this particular card!

Elemental HERO Neos Knight - Extreme Victory

Like Air Neos, Elemental HERO Neos Knight is considerably more valuable in Ultra Rare than in Ultimate Rare! Up 87% year-over-year, Neos Knight has an affordable average price of $13. The ultimate rare averages $11, despite being considerably rarer, and is only up 30% over the past year.

Unlike Air Neos, Neos Knight doesn’t have to return to the Extra Deck at the end of the turn. Here’s what he does:

“This card gains ATK equal to half the ATK of the Warrior-Type Fusion Material Monster used to Fusion Summon this card, other than "Elemental HERO Neos". This card can attack twice during each Battle Phase. If this card attacks or is attacked, your opponent takes no Battle Damage.”

Not only can Neos Knight be an extremely powerful beat-stick, but he can attack TWICE in the same battle phase. The downside is that he inflicts no Battle Damage. But with 2500 original ATK, you’re really just using this guy to clear the path for your other monsters to do the rest of the work. The other downside is you need to fusion summon him, although you don’t require a Elemental Hero Neos (or a Gemini-summoned Neos Alius) to summon him.

Neos Knight has popped up in competitive decks in the past, particularly Qliphorts in mid-2016. But it sees the most play in the online game YuGiOh Duel Links. Still, with Neos Fusion making this guy a lot easier to summon in a pinch, Neos Knight is much more viable than it was before!

Elemental HERO Shining Flare Wingman - Elemental Energy

One of the original big boss Fusion Monsters of the Elemental Heroes deck, Shining Flare Wingman is the Fusion between Elemental HERO Flame Wingman and Elemental HERO Sparkman. He gains 300 ATK for each "Elemental Hero" card in your graveyard. Also, when he desteroys a monster by battle and sends it to the graveyard, you inflict damage equal to that monster's ATK in the graveyard to your opponent. Ouch. No wonder that the Ultimate Rare printing of this card was pushing $60 in March 2019. The Ultra rare original printing is also moving up.

Elemental HERO Shining Phoenix Enforcer - Enemy of Justice

Shining Phoenix Enforcer is an extremely powerful Elemental HERO fusion monster. Just read this:

“Must be Fusion Summoned and cannot be Special Summoned by other ways. This card gains 300 ATK for each "Elemental HERO" card in your Graveyard. This card cannot be destroyed by battle.”

Unlike some of the other Elemental HERO cards we’ve mentioned, Phoenix Enforcer’s ultimate rare printing is actually by far his most valuable, followed by his ultra rare printing in the same set. The ultimate rare is up an insane 983% in the last six months to an average price of $58! The ultra rare is “only” up 188% to an average of $14

While Shining Phoenix Enforcer is difficult to summon in a competitive environment, casual HERO players love this guy because he is easily a finisher for the deck. He’s also an important card in the YuGiOh GX anime. There’s a lot to like about this card.

Elemental HERO Flame Wingman - The Lost Millenium

Jaden Yuki’s signature card from the GX anime, Flame Wingman has been a favorite of YuGiOh collectors since the day he was released in The Lost Millenium. But, his original ultra rare printing has actually bottomed out recently. Collectors seem to be favoring two other printings. Interestingly, it’s not Flame Wingman’s rarest printing - the Elemental Hero Collection secret rare that put it on this list - that’s seeing the most action. Rather, it’s the Legendary Collection 2 Mega Pack Secret Rare (up 58% to $9.50) and the Lost Millenium Ultimate Rare (up nearly 100% to $24). For this card to double in a year, with a lot of that movement in the past month, this should be an important target for any Elemental HERO collector.

Honorable Mention:

Elemental HERO Thunder Giant - Dark Revelation 3

Thunder Giant is actually a pretty good fusion monster. He’s easier to summon and doesn’t leave the field like the Neos fusions. Even though he has to be Fusion Summoned, it’s not required to have “Elemental Hero Sparkman” and “Elemental Hero Clayman.” Thunder Giant has 2400 ATK and is a Level 6 monster. He also has a fairly good ability:

“Once per turn: You can discard 1 card to target 1 face-up monster on the field with original ATK less than the ATK of this card; destroy that target.”

So, this is a pretty sweet card for a HERO player. But, there are a lot of printings of this guy - being a popular card from the YuGiOh GX anime. Which is the best? In the case of Thunder Giant, the Dark Revelation 3 Ultra Rare is the most valuable. It has an average price of about $80 and is up 43% in just the last three months. It’s a great investment for the serious HERO collector.

Like with Pokemon, YuGiOh is a game with a huge casual player base but also a strong collection base. By identifying the printings of each card that are appreciating on a regular basis, you can make smart decisions that will make your YuGiOh card collection a good investment. While YuGiOh Finance hasn’t taken off the way that MTG Finance has, it may get there eventually. So, don’t worry about reprints of your favorite cards, as long as you know the key printings for each popular card.

Any YuGiOh finance questions? Comment below, and we’ll do our best to answer them!

What is the Most Expensive Card in Yu-Gi-Oh?

1/28/2019

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

In February 2019, the most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh card was the Shonen Jump 2010 Prize Card, Stardust Divinity. The second most expensive was the Shonen Jump 2013 Prize Card, Grandopolis, The Eternal Golden City. Neither card can even be used in a Duel, due to the fact that each can win you the match if it attacks directly. In February 2019, a copy of Stardust Divinity was listed for $19,999 on eBay.

What Does Stardust Divinity Do?

Stardust Divinity is a Level 10 Fairy-type Synchro Monster that requires 1 LIGHT-attribute Tuner and 2 or more non-Tuner Fairy-Type monsters. It can’t be Special Summoned except by Synchro Summon. If this monster attacks your opponent directly and reduces their Life Points to 0, you win the Match.

Like Grandopolis, the Eternal Golden City, which we’ll look at next, there are replica copies available on the market, as well.

What Does Grandopolis, The Eternal Golden City Do?

In January 2019, a copy of Grandopolis was for listed for sale at $18,999.99 USD on eBay. This listing made Grandopolis at the time the most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh card for sale..

Grandopolis is a Rank 8 XYZ monster that needs 3 Level 8 monsters to summon. It has 2800 ATK and 3500 DEF. He must be Special Summoned by Xyz Summon and no other way. If Grandopolis attacks your opponent directly and reduces his or her life to 0, if one of the original Xyz Materials was a Machine-type monster, you win the Match. While this is somewhat difficult to actually pull off, because it can win the match, like Victory Dragon and other similar Shonen Jump Championship prize cards, it can never be used in an official Duel.

There’s a replica of Grandopolis, The Eternal Golden City out there that was released in 2014. One replica copy was graded by Beckett Grading Services as a Gem Mint 9.5 and sold for an undisclosed best offer on eBay. There was another Grandopolis replica listed on eBay in January 2019 for $1200. If you absolutely want to own a Grandpolis, the Japanese version is available for $10 - $15 on eBay.

What’s the Next Most Expensive Yu-Gi-Oh Card?

The runner up for the most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh card is another Shonen Jump Championship Prize Card. This is the 2017 Shonen Jump Championship prize card, a Link monster called Iron Knight of Revolution. Like Grandopolis, it also cannot be used in a Duel.

Iron Knight of Revolution requires 3 Machine-Type effect monsters to successfully Link Summon. When this Extra Linked card attacks your opponent directly and reduces their life points to 0, you win the Match. In many ways, this is probably the superior monster. In any case, a copy of Iron Knight of Revolution was listed on eBay for $11,999 in January 2019.

What’s the Most Expensive Playable Yu-Gi-Oh Card?

For a long time, the most expensive playable Yu-Gi-Oh card was Crush Card Virus. This is actually still the case in 2019. Two copies of the Shonen Jump Championship 2007 ultra rare printing were listed on eBay for about $3,000 - one of which was in lightly played condition and the other in near-mint condition. Another two copies of the Shonen Jump Crush Card Virus were listed on eBay for $4,995 each. Of course, if you really want to own a Crush Card Virus, a Gold Series 2008 copy sells for a little over $35.

But in February 2019, the surprise unbanning of Cyber-Stein in a late January 2019 Forbidden & Limited update caused the Shonen Jump prize card to be listed for about $10,500 on eBay. Of course, Cyber-Stein has a rare printing in Dark Beginning 2 which sells for as low as $13, plus with the Extra Deck limited these days to 15 cards and no one really playing that many fusion monsters, Cyber-Stein was no longer broken enough to worry about. It’s still fun to summon a Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, though - even at the cost of 5000 Life Points.

What’s the Most Expensive Card in Yu-Gi-Oh History?

There are many other expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards out there, but reportedly a one-of-a-kind Black Luster Soldier printed on stainless steel is the #1 most expensive card in the game’s history. It was the prize given to the winner of the first-ever Yu-Gi-Oh tournament ever held in Japan back in 1999. According to Gemr.com, in 2016, the stainless steel Black Luster Card was valued at around $10 million and reportedly sold at one point for $2 million!

The most expensive Black Luster Soldier that you can buy otherwise is the Duel Terminal 7 rare printing which you can buy for roughly $5 in 2019.

In January 2019, the most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh card in competitive play was the Ultimate Rare printing of Cyber Dragon from Cybernetic Revolution, a card that was selling at the time for around $100 USD.

Why the Destiny Hero Disk Commander Errata? - A Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review

11/12/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Once one of the most popular decks in Yu-Gi-Oh, Destiny Heroes returned to modern Yu-Gi-Oh in 2018 with the Legendary Hero Decks. Because it was included in the decks, it was decided to return Destiny Hero - Disk Commander from the Banned and Restricted List to Unlimited status. This means you can now play three copies of one of the most powerful Destiny Hero cards of all time in your deck… But, wait, there’s an errata?

That’s right. There was no way that a monster that could draw you two cards every time it returns from the graveyard to the battlefield could be brought back into play without some serious limitation on its effect. So, Konami continues their rather frustrating trend of nerfing old cards just to make them legitimate cards that can be played in tournament decks without severely warping the competitive game.

The “new” Destiny Hero - Disk Commander after errata is extremely different than the original version. This little Level 1 Warrior monster originally read like this:

“When this card is Special Summoned from the Graveyard, draw 2 cards.”

Wow, that sounds pretty busted… It was. There’s a reason why Destiny Hero decks dominated Yu-GI-Oh for a long time. That is some nuts card advantage. So, how can they make it fair enough for it to return from the banned list?

Here is the Disk Commander Errata:

“Cannot be Special Summoned from the GY the turn this card was sent to the GY. If this card is Special Summoned from the GY: You can draw 2 cards. You can only use this effect of "Destiny HERO - Disk Commander" once per Duel.”

Wow, that’s a lot of deck. Let’s break this down.

Cannot be Special Summoned from the GY the turn this card was sent to the GY.

OK, this bit is understandable. This makes the effect a bit more fair, right? You can draw 2 cards if you Monster Reborn this guy, but you can’t do it until next turn, OK?

If this card is Special Summoned from the GY: You can draw 2 cards.

That sounds awfully familiar. So, if that’s all, that’s not too bad of an errata. Let’s all run three copies of Disk Commander!

Oh, wait, there’s more…

You can only use this effect of “Destiny HERO - DIsk Commander” once per Duel.

Ick. You mean we can only draw two cards ONCE? Hmm… well, that makes playing three copies rather pointless, doesn’t it?

You can see why this errata was made. It’s a double-whammy, but there are many reasons why this is necessary. First of all, it’s easier to Special Summon monsters from the GY more often than ever. Drawing two cards is still obviously quite good, and being a Level 1, there are plenty of reasons to want to play this card just as material to summon a Synchro, XYZ, or Link monster. But if its effect is only good once per turn, is it still worth playing?

I say yes. If you are playing a dedicated Destiny Hero deck, it’s totally worth playing one copy of Disk Commander, pitching it to Destiny Draw to draw two cards. Then, there are a myriad of ways to take advantage of him being there and Special Summoning him. Also, Elemental Hero Stratos was returned to one copy per deck in September of 2018, so he’s an obvious monster to choose with Stratos’ ability.

Destiny Hero - Disk Commander is still worth playing even with this double-edged errata craziness. There is pretty much zero reason to play more than one copy in my opinion. I hate the errata, but I understand the reasoning for adding both of those restrictions on his effect.

What do you think of the Destiny Hero - Disk Commander errata?

Here are some other Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game articles you may enjoy:

- Yu-Gi-Oh Blackwings Deck 2018 Profile
- Can a Gladiator Beast Deck Still Be Competitive in 2019?
- GOAT FORMAT! - Intro to the Format and Original Aggro Control Deck
- Fire Princess Burn - Old School Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck Profile!
- The Legendary Fisherman - Old School Yu-Gi-Oh Deck Profile

Foucault’s Cannon – A Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review

8/28/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Foucault’s Cannon is a Normal Pendulum Monster from the Duelist Alliance expansion set for the Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card Game. This is a Level 5, DARK-attribute Spellcaster-type monster, meaning it also requires a Tribute to be Normal Summoned. While 2200 ATK isn't great for a Level 5 Monster, it's at least respectable. It was one of the first of a few Pendulum Normal Monsters released, along with Flash Knight and Dragon Horn Hunter.

It's also a Normal monster that has a Pendulum effect, something that had never been seen before! During the End phase that this card is played in a Pendulum zone, you can target one face-up Spell/Trap Card on the field and destroy it. This, of course, includes other Pendulum Monsters. When this card was released, there were also tons of relevant face-up Spell and Trap cards in play in the metagame. Overall, this is a fairly good effect.

With Spellcasters a fairly viable archetype all of their own, it seemed this monster might have some potential. But, as more of the ARC-V sets were released, it quickly became outclasses. Still, in a vacuum, this isn't a bad monster at all. Spell & Trap destruction is certainly very splash-able and Pendulum Normal Monsters certainly would get better and better. Foucault’s Cannon also has a Pendulum Scale of 2, making it a great lower-end scale in a Pendulum-heavy deck.

Due to seeing basically zero competitive play, it’s a very inexpensive super rare card. Still, it's worth looking at for its place in the early history of Pendulum monsters. It's certainly not the worst monster out there.

Dragon Horn Hunter – A Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V Card Review

8/28/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

The first of the Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V expansion sets, Duelist Alliance, introduced a brand new card type to the card game: Pendulum Monsters. After players were introduced to the Pendulum Summoning mechanic with the Space Time Showdown Super Starter Deck, we got to see the mechanic in full force in the Duelist Alliance set. Here we’ll take a look at the Sneak Peek Participation Promo, Dragon Horn Hunter. It would turn out to actually be a decent monster!

What’s particularly interesting about Dragon Horn Hunter is the fact that he’s a normal Monster, a Level 6 DARK-Attribute Warrior with 2300 ATK and 1000 DEF. These stats are nothing special. However, as a Pendulum Monster, when he lives in one of your two Pendulum Zones he has a Pendulum Scale of 3 and gains this effect: “All Normal Monsters gain 200 ATK. You take no battle damage from battles involving Normal Monsters you control.” That’s a very good effect.

Dragon Horn Hunter really pushes you to play Normal Monsters. As it turns out, there’s an easy way to search out this card: Summoner’s Art from Tactical Evolution. Also, being a DARK-type monster is good, as it can provide the necessary DARK component for many other cards. It also means that playing classic Normal Monsters such as Summoned Skull - also a potential target for Summoner’s Art - becomes far more plausible.

The greatest con to this card is obviously the fact that he relies quite heavily on the Pendulum mechanic. You’re going to need to push out high-level Normal Monsters to simply overpower your opponent if this guy is going to make much of a difference. The ATK boost he gives isn’t much, but taking no battle damage from battles involving your Normal Monsters could make a Normal Monster based Pendulum Summoning deck a realistic option.

As it turned out, Pendulum decks with Normal Pendulum Monsters would turn out to be competitive. As we saw with the Space Time Showdown Starter Deck, Normal Monsters were being pushed with the advent of the Pendulum Summoning mechanic. In 2016, this card was good enough to appear in some competitive Pendulum Magicians decks at a single copy.

While it didn’t stay relevant in competitive play for long, as it would become outclassed with future sets, there were a couple of lists that took full advantage of this creature’s power. Overall, Dragon Horn Hunter was a good role player for a time in some builds of Pendulum Magicians, a deck that would go on to evolve into one of the better deck archetypes in all of Yu-Gi-Oh! For a Sneak Peek promo, that was a pretty good time in the spotlight.

Flash Knight – A Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V Card Review

8/17/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

While Flash Knight may simply be a rare card from Yu-Gi-Oh’s Duelist Alliance expansion set, this Pendulum Monster would prove himself to be rather useful. He’s a Level 4 Light-Attribute Normal Monster with 1800 ATK and 600 DEF, easily search-able with Reinforcement of the Army. The most important part about the Flash Knight is the fact that he has a Pendulum Scale of 7. Combined with a creature like Dragon Horn Hunter in your opposite Pendulum Zone, you then have the ability to summon Level 4 to Level 6 monsters with ease at the beginning of each of your turns.

Was Flash Knight going to be a good option for a deck based around Pendulum Summoning high-level Normal Monsters? While the range is a bit limited, topping out at Level 6 as previously mentioned, there are plenty of strong Normal Monsters that fall in between those levels. In fact, the Knight did see some competitive play, including some Regional Top 8 Draco Performapals decks like this one.

For only a mere rare, the Flash Knight actually proved himself to be a fairly useful monster. He was useful enough just as a scale, and having 1800 ATK isn't too shabby, either! As one of the first ever Pendulum monsters, the Knight held his own for awhile before being outclassed by flashier, badder Pendulum monsters. But let us never forget the exploits of this brave Level 4 Knight!

Battle Fader - YuGiOh Old School Duelist Card Review

7/17/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Battle Fader is a monster that’s been around since the days of Absolute Powerforce. It was a monster that was still being played a great deal when I was still playing competitive Yu-Gi-Oh. Since then, Battle Fader has been reprinted a great many times, including in ultra rare and secret rare! Even with so many reprints, the foil versions of Battle Fader are still sought after enough to keep their price from falling too low.

While Battle Fader hasn’t seen consistent competitive play since 2016, it does see the occasional play in Domain Monarch and even Cubic decks. Of course, it still sees play in local tournaments, as well, as a card that can play many different roles.


How does Battle Fader work?

Here’s what Battle Fader does, using the latest errata:

When an opponent's monster declares a direct attack: You can Special Summon this card from your hand, then end the Battle Phase. If Summoned this way, banish it when it leaves the field.

Not only does Battle Fader negate the attack, but it ends the battle phase altogether. It also doesn’t target, so it gets around monsters that can’t be targeted with abilities or effects of cards. Unfortunately, if it leaves the battlefield in any way after being summoned this way, such as effects that would return to hand, it gets banished. This is to prevent players from simply recycling Battle Fader to continuously negate attack after attack.

However, one of the coolest things you can do with Battle Fader is to play a deck that plays Imperial Iron Wall. This continuous trap card prevents cards from being removed from play. This means that it will instead go to your graveyard or your hand, meaning you can reuse it. Iron Wall was pretty popular when this card was first released, and actually still sees play in True Draco decks in 2018.

Can Battle Fader be negated?

Let’s cover some common spells and traps that could interact with Battle Fader. One common question is how Book of Moon works against Battle Fader. Really, it doesn’t, because Battle Fader’s ability to negate the attack and end the battle phase resolves before it’s actually face-up on the field. So, Book of Moon doesn’t negate Battle Fader, only puts it face down. The same is true for Forbidden Chalice.

It’s also important to note that Skill Drain, which is an extremely popular way to shut down effect monsters, can’t stop Battle Fader’s ability. Other trap cards that miss the timing to stop Battle Fader include Breakthrough Skill and Solemn Judgment. However, Solemn Warning, which negates the Summon entirely, can prevent Battle Fader’s ability to end the Battle Phase.

Besides Solemn Warning, the best ways to stop Battle Fader are Majesty Fiend and Vanity’s Emptiness. Majesty’s Fiend stops effects no matter where they are, so Battle Fader can’t be Special Summoned from the hand at all. Vanity’s Emptiness negates any Special Summons, but as of this writing, it’s forbidden in tournament play. So, in official tournaments, Solemn Warning and Majesty’s Fiend are really the best ways to stop Battle Fader.

Which is Better? Battle Fader VS Swift Scarecrow

Swift Scarecrow is a nice little hand trap monster that gives you the same effect as Battle Fader. However, since Battle Fader is a level 1 monster that you can Special Summon and use as material or tribute fodder to Summon a better monster, Battle Fader is going to typically be the superior card.

Other Similar Cards to Battle Fader

If you’re looking for a Battle Fader alternative    besides Swift Scarecrow, there are a couple of other monsters that do something similar.

There’s Speedroid Menko, which lets you Special Summon it in Attack Position when an opponent declares an attack. While it doesn’t negate the attack or end the battle phase, it does put all of your opponent’s monsters in Defense Position… except for Link Monsters, of course… So, against Links it’s pretty bad, because it’s only 100 ATK. Still it’s a cool card and it’s Level 4 and 2000 DEF.

Construction Train Signal Red can be Special Summoned by his effect when an opponent’s monster attacks. But, if you do, you change the attack target to this card and proceed to damage calculation. While he can’t be destroyed by that battle, you can still take damage. However, he can be Special Summoned in Defense Position, and he has 1000 ATK and 1400 DEF. Also, he’s a Level 3 Earth monster. So, there are some cool things you can do with him.

If you want to just stop attacks, there are the Kuriboh monsters! There’s Kuriphoton that lets you take no damage if you send it from the hand to the Graveyard, if you pay 2000 LP to do so. Of course, there’s also the old school Kuriboh cards that can negate attacks or prevent battle damage… Kuriboh only lets you not take battle damage. Winged Kuriboh lets you take no battle damage the turn that he’s sent from the field to the graveyard. But none of these guys get you a Special Summon, although there is The Flute of Summoning Kuriboh! Also, there’s the Link Monster Linkuriboh (which can actually use Battle Fader as material.)

What Decks Play Battle Fader?

Because it’s essentially a free Summon, Battle Fader makes awesome Tribute fodder in Monarch decks and is also great material for Ritual Monsters, Synchro Summons, Rank 1 Xyz Monsters, and even Link Summoning! (Linkuriboh, anyone?)

Battle Fader has seen competitive play since 2010, way back to Shonen Jump Championship Edison in Gravekeeper Burn and Quickdraw Dandywarrior. In both those decks it helped set up Synchro plays. It saw play in Frog Monarchs as Tribute fodder. Over the years, it’s seen play in Chain Burn, Chaos Dragons, Dragon Rulers, Hieratic Dragons, Mythic Rulers, and a wide variety of other Monarch decks, plus others. It’s just a really versatile card.

How would you play Battle Fader?

Yu-Gi-Oh Build Around Me! - Pacifis, the Phantasm City & Phantasm Spirals!

7/16/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Once in a while, we’ll pick a random card with YGOProDeck’s database to build around for fun. Today, it’s Pacifis, the Phantasm City! This isn’t bad at all, since it’s part of the Phantasm Spiral archetype! This Field Spell is pretty sweet! And there’s a deck out there we can tech!

First, we’ll look at Pacifis itself. It’s a field spell that counts as “Umi” while it’s face up on the field. For our purposes, though, this won’t matter so much.

“You cannot Normal or Special Summon Effect Monsters the turn you activate either of this card's effects (even if this card leaves the field). Once per turn, if you Normal or Special Summon exactly 1 Normal Monster (and no other cards): Add 1 "Phantasm Spiral" card from your Deck to your hand. If your opponent activates a card or effect (except during the Damage Step), and you control no Tokens: You can Special Summon 1 "Phantasm Spiral Token" (Wyrm-Type/WATER/Level 8/ATK 2000/DEF 2000).”

This is a really powerful card. As we’ll see, we’re really only going to be Special Summoning Normal monsters a lot of the time. So, this isn’t really an issue. The Phantasm Spiral support cards are actually quite good, too, so that first effect is actually extremely important. The second ability is also particularly awesome. I mean, who doesn’t want a free 2000 ATK and 2000 DEF monster that’s level 8?

So, how do we build around this? Let’s take a look at a June 2017 regional Phantasm Spiral deck that actually fared quite well. Except… we’re going to make a couple of quick changes for it to be legal with the May 2018 Forbidden and Limited List. The changes are actually in our favor.

Monsters
2x Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring
3x Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit
3x Kabazauls
3x Megalosmasher X
3x Phantasm Spiral Dragon
3x Rescue Rabbit

Spells
1x Dark Hole
3x Fossil Dig
3x Heat Wave
3x Pacifis, the Phantasm City
1x Phantasm Spiral Crash
2x Phantasm Spiral Grip
1x Phantasm Spiral Wave
2x Pot of Desires
1x Raigeki
3x Terraforming
2x Unexpected Dai

Traps
3x Phantasm Spiral Battle
1x Phantasm Spiral Power
3x Quaking Mirror Force
1x Skill Drain
2x Solemn Strike
1x Solemn Warning

Extra Deck

Xyz
1x Abyss Dweller
2x Bahamut Shark
1x Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer
1x Evolzar Dolkka
1x Evolzar Laggia
1x Gem-Knight Pearl
1x Number 38: Hope Harbinger Dragon Titanic Galaxy
1x Number 39: Utopia
1x Number S39: Utopia the Lightning
1x Steelswarm Roach
2x Toadally Awesome
1x Tornado Dragon

In the original list piloted by Michael Craig at the Seattle, Washington Regionals, he ran one copy of Maxx “C” and 2 Dark Holes. At the time, Rescue Rabbit was limited, as well. We gotta cut the Maxx “C” and the 2nd Dark Hole. But, Rescue Rabbit is unlimited! As it turns out, triple bunnies is actually a huge improvement for this deck! Let’s break it down.

Creatures Breakdown

A lot of this deck focuses around Phantasm Spiral Dragon, as we’ll see. There are a ton of ways to Special Summon him with the Phantasm Spiral Spells and Traps. He has 2900 ATK, which is PLENTY good! He also has 2900 DEF, which is actually pretty above average. He’s going to be one of your main beatstick monsters in this deck, obviously, as well as a way to Xyz into some Rank 8 Xyz monsters, especially Number 38: Hope Harbinger Dragon Titanic Galaxy.

We have five hand-traps in the form of two Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring and three Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit. With these we can shut down shenanigans from the deck and effects on the field. Ash Blossom is the one most people play, but both are great.

Rescue Rabbit is really awesome in this deck because he grabs our level 4 Normal Monsters in Kabazauls and Megalosmasher X. Being Water attribute and Dinosaur type, these monsters help us access some great Rank 4 Xyz monsters. Kabazauls is a pretty ancient 1700 ATK monster while Megalosmasher is a far more recent 2000 ATK level 4 beatstick. Really, they exist for Xyz summons, but they can do damage if you need them to. Playing 3 Rabbits gives us more consistency, which is cool.

Spells Breakdown

Let’s get the obvious ones out of the way. Dark Hole and Raigeki help us keep the board clear. Terraforming is obviously to get our Field Spell. Pot of Desires helps us draw out of bad hands, even with that steep 10 card banishment cost. The rest we need to look at more closely.

Three copies of Fossil Dig help us dig out our Dino monsters. With three Rabbits, we may able to trim a copy, but we can always grab that third Kabazauls or Megalosmasher X. Heat Wave is actually one of the better spells in the deck. This card can only be activated at the start of Main Phase 1, but that’s OK. When you play it, neither player can Normal or Special Summon an Effect Monster, until your next Draw Phase. That’s actually extremely brutal for most decks, but not this one.

Unexpected Dai is another way to Special Summon one of our Level 4 Dinos to play. It’s another consistency card, but this one is only good if you control no monsters. Still, it’s going to be good in a lot of situations.

Now we’ll get into the Phantasm Spiral spells. We already covered the field spell in Pacifis. Phantasm Spiral Crash is an Equip Spell that gives the equipped Normal Monster the ability to inflict piercing battle damage. Then, when that monster deals battle damage to an opponent, you can Special Summon a Phantasm Spiral Dragon from your hand, deck, or graveyard and equip it with this card. If that wasn’t good enough, you can then switch an opponent’s monster from Attack to Defense position. You can only use this effect once per turn, because otherwise that would be pretty silly.

Phantasm Spiral Grip is similar to Crash, except this deck runs two copies instead of one. Grip gives the monster 500 ATK and if that monster destroys a creature by battle, you can Special Summon a Spiral Dragon and inflict 1000 damage to your opponent. This one may actually be better in some cases as you will likely run over a lot of things.

The last one is Phantasm Spiral Wave. This one is particularly strong because it makes the equipped Normal Monster unable to be destroyed once per turn. If it’s battled that turn, at the end of the Battle Phase, you can do the Spiral Dragon summoning thing. While that Dragon can’t then attack like with the other two, your opponent then has to discard a card. So, it’s still a decent card.

Traps Breakdown

First, we’ll get the staples out of the way. Two copies of Solemn Strike and one copy of Solemn Warning deal with summons that need to be nipped in the bud right away, and with Strike, problematic monster effects. Skill Drain is really good in this deck, and it’s too bad we can only run one. It hoses so many decks.

We also run three copies of Quaking Mirror Force. If you don’t know what it does, this is how it reads:

“When an opponent's monster declares an attack: Change all your opponent's Attack Position monsters to face-down Defense Position. Monsters changed to face-down Defense Position by this effect cannot change their battle positions.”

This is fine because we actually want to beat on opponent’s monsters with our Phantasmal Spiral support. It’s bad against Link monsters, though, who are immune to it. Still, it’s a strong card.

Phantasm Spiral Battle is a pretty awesome Trap card, as it can be activated from your hand if you control an “Umi” field spell, which Pacifis just happens to be! If you control only Normal Monsters, you can blow up one card on the field. Then, you can banish this card from your Graveyard, you can target one Normal Monster on the field and equip all Phantasm Spiral Equip cards you control to it. While very situational, it can help you live the dream of summoning all three Phantasm Spiral Dragons in one turn.

The last card is Phantasm Spiral Power. Here’s what it does:

“If all monsters you control are Normal Monsters (min. 1): Target 1 Effect Monster your opponent controls; until the end of this turn, it loses 1000 ATK and DEF, also it has its effects negated. If "Umi" is on the field, you can activate this card from your hand. You can banish this card from your Graveyard, then target 1 Normal Monster you control; equip 1 "Phantasm Spiral" Equip Spell Card from your hand or Graveyard to that Normal Monster.”

Being able to deal with a bigger Effect Monster is great, being a hand trap is better, and recycling an Equip Spell is awesome! You only need one, but it’s great!

How Competitive Are Phantasm Spirals?

Before Link Summoning, this deck could be pretty good. It has a nice little Xyz Summoning engine and really messes with other decks’ strategies. That being said, it’s extremely reliant on its engine. But, when it works, it’s really tough to stop. If you tweak the Extra deck to include Links, though, it’s probably going to hold its own.

Outside of the meta hand trap creatures, this deck is very cheap to build. Would you build Phantasm Spirals?

Kaiser Glider - Yu-Gi-Oh Old School Duelist Stories

7/14/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Kaiser Glider is one of, if not the first ever Yu-GI-Oh cards that I bought on eBay. It was actually the ultra rare reprint in Dark Revelations 1 that I bought, and not the original Dark Crisis ultra rare printing. It’s been reprinted multiple times since, once at rare, and several times at common. While Kaiser Glider was never a top-level monster, he was one of my favorites for a long time for what he can do.

This golden Dragon that Seto Kaiba played in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime has two fairly relevant abilities. The first is that he can’t be destroyed in a battle where both monsters share the same ATK. More often that not, this means that the Glider can ram into other 2400 ATK monsters and actually win. This meant things like Jinzo and later the Monarchs, which is actually pretty relevant.

But the real reason you would play Kaiser Glider was his bounce ability when he’s destroyed. When he’s destroyed and sent to the GY, he lets you send one monster on the field back to its owner’s hand. Important to note is that he must be sent to the grave, which means if he gets banished instead, his effect doesn’t activate. This was less of a problem back in the day, though.

Kaiser Glider is also a Light-attribute Dragon, which made him fairly good in the casual Traditional Chaos decks I built at the time. Traditional is the format where nothing is banned and all forbidden cards are limited to a single copy. There weren’t a ton of good Light-attribute monsters back then, so I actually played this guy a fair amount.

Plus, this was pretty good when someone brought out a Chaos monster that they may not be able to easily re-summon after removing 1 Light and 1 Dark monster from their grave. So, this actually could mess up people’s Chaos Emperor Dragon plays. People could just remove it with Black Luster Soldier’s banish ability, though. Still, it would mean the OG Soldier couldn’t attack that turn. But most of the time, it just meant people couldn’t deal with him UNLESS they brought out a BLS or didn’t have a monster in play when they removed it. It really proved to be a nice monster for me back then, though, even in tournament play.

Was Kaiser Glider ever actually good? Yes, and no. Because he required one tribute to summon, people preferred to play Airknight Parshath who could generate a lot more card advantage and did piercing battle damage. I actually never really liked Parshath back in the day having only 1900 ATK, although he was clearly the better monster when it came to terms of card advantage. But that didn’t mean that Kaiser Glider wasn’t annoying to people, because people really never thought about having to play around it. It was pretty fun to ram him into Jinzo, Mobius and Thestalos - although he was kinda bad against Zaborg… More times than not, he would be helpful and I can’t remember him ever being bad.

Kaiser Glider in Duel Links

Like a lot of older Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Kaiser Glider is fairly decent in Duel Links. There’s a lot of popular ways to summon him fairly easily in that game’s metagame, especially Dragon’s Rebirth. While Dragon’s Rebirth is a good Yu-Gi-Oh card, it’s much stronger in the 20-card Duel Links format where tribute monsters are actually very strong.

While he’s not a top card in the game, his bounce ability is very strong, although his first isn’t nearly as often. He’s also usually 2700 ATK due to Seto Kaiba’s ability to start the game with the Mountain field spell in play. So, while he really never sees competitive play anywhere, he does see a fair share of Duel Links play for Kaiba fans.

Kaiser Glider in Goat Format

There are a number of things that Kaiser Glider has going for him in Goat Format. One is that he’s a Light-Attribute Monster, which is very important in Chaos decks. Also, his ability to not be destroyed by monsters with the same ATK in battle is actually fairly relevant. Here’s a list of meta monsters that he actually wins in battle against:

Granmarg the Rock Monarch
Jinzo
King Dragun
Mobius the Frost Monarch
Ryu Kokki
Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys
Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch
Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

While that’s not a long list, it means that Kaiser Glider is actually a decent sideboard tech against Monarchs and even Zombies and their boss monster. He also answers Sacred Phoenix, which was actually a pretty popular card at one point. He even deals with the occasional King Dragun play. The funny thing is, if you happen to control one, you can Special Summon Kaiser Glider from your hand.

The bounce ability is pretty good, too, just for tempo purposes. It does mean that you want to summon Kaiser Glider into a situation where his ability will be profitable to you. He’s a bit situational, which is why many people didn’t play him back in the day. But, there are definitely spots in which he’s good. He’s great to toss and bring back with Call of the Haunted or Premature Burial, too. He deals with most of the offensive threats you’re going to face, too.

Is he the best sideboard option in Goat Format? It depends on what decks you plan to face, really. But, he’s worth a shot I think, especially if you play against a lot of Monarch decks. Just remember you don’t want him bouncing Zaborg or other Monarchs. You have to deploy him just right for him to be at his best. But, he’s pretty brutal when he bounces fusion monsters, too, which are obviously rampant due to Metamorphosis.

Kaiser Glider in Modern Yu-Gi-Oh!

One crazy thing about the Glider is how good he actually is against Synchro, Xyz, and Link Monsters. He’s simply outclassed nowadays, but if he dies and hits the Graveyard and he bounces one of those guys, that’s pretty costly. Of course, there are just so many ways to banish things nowadays. While he may not be relevant today in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh, I’m sure many Dragon players found an excuse to jam him. He was never actually a bad monster and could cause some tempo swings on his own.

Did you ever play with or against Kaiser Glider?

Starter Deck Yugi - Old School Yu-Gi-Oh Deck List and Review

7/7/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

In North America, Yu-Gi-Oh began in late March 2002 with Starter Deck: Yugi and Starter Deck: Kaiba. Today, we’ll be looking at the Yugi deck! While Starter Deck Yugi didn’t have a monster with quite the power of Kaiba’s Blue-Eyes White Dragon, there are some sweet cards in this starter deck.

Let’s get right into it!

Monsters
Ancient Elf
Ansatsu
Baron of the Fiend Sword
Beaver Warrior
Celtic Guardian
Claw Reacher
Curse of Dragon
Dark Magician (Ultra Rare)
Doma The Angel of Silence
Dragon Zombie
Feral Imp
Gaia The Fierce Knight
Giant Soldier of Stone
Great White
Magical Ghost
Mammoth Graveyard
Man-Eater Bug
Man-Eating Treasure Chest
Mystic Clown
Mystical Elf
Neo the Magic Swordsman
Silver Fang
Sorcerer of the Doomed
Summoned Skull
The Stern Mystic
Trap Master
Wall of Illusion
Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress #1
Witty Phantom

Spells
Book of Secret Arts
Card Destruction (Super Rare)
Change of Heart
Dark Hole
De-Spell
Dian Keto the Cure Master
Fissure
Last Will
Monster Reborn
Remove Trap
Soul Exchange (Super Rare)
Sword of Dark Destruction
Yami

Traps
Castle Walls
Dragon Capture Jar
Reinforcements
Reverse Trap
Trap Hole
Two-Pronged Attack
Ultimate Offering
Waboku

Monsters Breakdown

First, we’ll look at the “boss” monsters of the deck: Dark Magician, Summoned Skull, Gaia the Dragon Champion, and Curse of Dragon. Dark Magician is only 2500 ATK for two tributes, but he’s iconic, and would later have a lot more support. There are actually many ways in this deck for him to actually beat Blue-Eyes and his 3000 ATK, too. Meanwhile, Summoned Skull is 2500 ATK for only one tribute. While he has far less defense, you’re not looking to play these guys in defense mode!

Gaia the Fierce Knight (2300 ATK) and Curse of Dragon (2000 ATK) are pretty underwhelming tribute monsters, but if you happen to have Gaia the Dragon Champion and Polymerization, they make a decent Fusion monster. Even with only 2600 ATK, you could summon him with the necessary monsters in hand, not just on the field.

Also, they happen to be pretty sweet ways to get rid of opposing monsters that you steal with Change of Heart or Tribute with Soul Exchange. At this point, they were still very playable monsters, too.

Ancient Elf is a 1450 ATK, 1200 DEF Light Spellcaster, which at the time was pretty average. Ansatsu is a level 5 Earth Warrior with only 1700 ATK and 1200 DEF. He’d be one of the first monsters out of every Yugi deck as I remember. Baron of the Fiend Sword was decent though, a level 4 Fiend with 1550 ATK and 800 DEF.

Beaver Warrior is familiar to many Yu-Gi-Oh anime fans, but with only 1200 ATK and 1500 DEF, this Beast-Warrior had trouble being competitive. Celtic Guardian is also an iconic Yugi monster, with only 1400 ATK and 1200 DEF. Still, a lot of people played him just because of Yugi.

Despite being one of the worst creatures in the deck, Claw Reacher and his 1000 ATK and 800 DEF is actually one of the more sought after creatures from the Yugi deck! It’s because this is his only printing. So, this is a card you may have been pretty quick to toss in the old days, but he’s pretty collectible now, especially in 1st edition

Doma the Angel of Silence isn’t particularly good, but people still collect her in 1st edition. 1600 ATK and 1400 DEF aren’t bad, but she’s a level 5, requiring a Tribute to Normal Summon. That’s not really so good.

Dragon Zombie has a whopping 0 DEF, but with 1600 ATK for a level 3 monster, he was certainly playable at the time. People really loved this guy, I remember.

Feral Imp is yet another iconic Yugi monster, but his stats are pretty mediocre: 1300 ATK and 1400 DEF. He was playable in the LOB days, though.

Giant Soldier of Stone is an iconic Yugi monster that was actually very playable. With 1300 ATK and 2000 DEF, he’d actually get some attacks in sometimes. This big guy actually saw play for quite awhile.

Great White was a pretty fair monster, too, with 1600 ATK. The 800 DEF was bad, but you didn’t play the Shark to be in defense, of course.

Magical Ghost actually has the same stats as Feral Imp, but a Dark Zombie. He’s mediocre

As bad as Mammoth Graveyard is, with only 1200 ATK and 800 DEF, I always really liked the art on this guy. I think a lot of people did.

Man-Eater Bug is one of the really good effect monsters in this deck. There weren’t a bunch back then, and plenty of people would run three of this guy. He’s a flip effect monster that destroys a monster on the field. Just make sure your opponent has something to blow up, or he eats one of your own guys or even himself - which is kind of weird. If you needed an answer for Blue-Eyes, he’s one.

I’ve always loved the flavor of Man-Eating Treasure Chest and with 1600 ATK, he was actually a decent monster at that time.

Mystic Clown has 1500 ATK and 1000 DEF. Those aren’t great stats, but he’d beat a lot of stuff at that time.

Mystical Elf has a lot in common with Giant Soldier of Stone, not only a classic Yugi card, but she also has 2000 DEF. 800 ATK is pretty lousy, but she held down the fort.

Neo the Magic Swordsman was one of my favorite monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh for a long time, and with 1700 ATK, he was playable.

Silver Fang is the Wolf version of Mammoth Graveyard. Great art, and really mediocre stats: 1200 ATK / 800 DEF.

Sorcerer of the Doomed 1450 ATK / 1200 DEF

The Stern Mystic is a Yugi deck exclusive. With 1500 ATK and 1200 DEF, his stats aren’’t that bad, but he’s a flip effect monster. His effect is interesting, in that he turns all face-down cards face-up so you can look at them, then puts them back without any effects activating. It’s actually an interesting card in the context of the time, as he could prevent you from falling into something bad. He’s also better than most of the other monsters in the deck.

Trap Master was actually extremely good at the time this deck was printed. You didn’t have Heavy Storm, which was in Metal Raiders, or Mystical Space Typhoon in Spell Ruler. His 500 / 1100 stats are pretty blah, but his effect was really good at the time. You had to be careful, though, because if your opponent had nothing face-down, you’d have to select one of your own face-down cards when he’s flipped. But that’s usually not going to be an issue.

Wall of Illusion is one of the best monsters in the Yugi deck. With 1850 DEF, he was a really nice wall, but his effect made him even better. Any monster that attacks him returns to the hand. The Wall was a staple stall card for a very long time, I believe until 1900 ATK level 4 monsters with drawbacks came later beginning with Gemini Elf. Sure, most tribute monsters people actually played ran it over, but at a major loss in tempo. One of my favorite Yugi cards and strangely would still be annoying to run into in modern Yu-Gi-Oh! (Some link monsters wouldn’t even kill it, mind you.)

Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress #1 is Blue and he’s a Dragon. Sure, he only has 1400 ATK and 1200 DEF, but… well, he looks nice in a binder.

The last creature in the deck is Witty Phantom, an OK fiend with 1400 ATK and 1300 DEF. Nothing special

Wow, monsters were pretty underwhelming back then, weren’t they?

Spells Breakdown

Book of Secret Arts was a pretty popular equip spell at the time, as a Spellcaster-Type monster equipped with this card increases its ATK and DEF by 300 points. It made Neo the Magic Swordsman 2000 ATK, which is pretty nuts. Of course, Kaiba’s La Jinn the Mystical Genie of the Lamp (the best level 4 beater at the time with 1800 ATK) got up to 2100 ATK. (People stuck this on Maha Vailo later to great effect, too.)

Card Destruction was an awesome spell that would be later semi-limited and then limited to one copy per deck. While it could technically benefit your opponent, discarding your hand and drawing that many cards could be greatly advantageous to you. You had to be careful in trying to hold onto things in your hand because you never knew when this was coming.

Change of Heart was one of the more busted Yu-Gi-Oh cards of all time. And I loved it. You could steal any monster of your opponent’s until the end of turn. It didn’t even matter if it was face-down. This was particularly fun with flip effect monsters. Your opponent’s Man-Eater Bug could eat itself. (Again that’s horrible). Really, though, you basically used this to get a free Tribute monster or to steal your opponent’s boss monster and whack them in the face with it… before turning it into a free Tribute monster.

Dark Hole literally sucks all of the monsters into a black hole and there’s much sadness, usually mostly for your opponent.

I’ve never really liked De-Spell, because it targets Spell Cards on the field. At this point there weren’t many that you’d play face-up other than Equip spells. But before things like Mystical Space Typhoon, this was actually really playable. Heck, I think people played it into Spell Ruler era to get rid of Mage Powers and Axe of Despairs and what not. But in these early days, you were just using it to kill Swords of Revealing Light. That’s really it.

Dian Keto the Cure Master gives you 1000 LP, which is honestly pretty good if you’re stalling. They say life gain doesn’t win games, but as someone who used to play one of these in like every deck ever, it actually does.

Fissure was one of the best removal cards at the time. In fact, it really was the only one besides Dark Hole and Raigeki in spell form. It destroyed the monster with the least ATK that your opponent had, but a lot of times, that was still something you needed gone. Many a Blue-Eyes have fallen to a lowly Fissure.

Last Will is actually an extremely good card. If a monster on your side of the field was sent to your Graveyard this turn, your can Special Summon 1 monster with 1500 or less ATK from your Deck once during that turn. You could play 3 copies of this for awhile, and it’s been banned forever. While it doesn’t look that bad on the surface, play with three copies of it and you’ll see why it’s so good.

Monster Reborn is one of the most iconic Yu-GI-Oh cards, and it was rightly banned for years. Bringing back a monster from your own graveyard is fine, but from your opponent’s graveyard? In Modern Yu-Gi-Oh, this card was unbanned simply because it’s just not as busted anymore. This was pretty dumb when it wasn’t limited. Fortunately, that was like for a month - if you cared about lists, which most people didn’t.

Soul Exchange is a card that saw play in competitive Yu-GI-Oh for years, especially during the Monarch Control era. I’m pretty sure it was limited to one per deck at one point, because using your opponent’s Monsters to summon Monarchs is pretty mean. Sure, you don’t get a Battle Phase during the turn you use it, but that price is worth paying.

Sword of Destruction is a pretty good Equip spell that gives a Dark monster 400 ATK, but it loses 200 DEF. Who even cares about the DEF?

Yami increases the ATK and DEF of all Fiend and Spellcaster-Type monsters by 200 points. That’s pretty important in this deck. This field spell alo decreases the ATK and DEF of all Fairy-Type monsters by 200 points. That can be relevant, I suppose. Suddenly, a lot of those weaker monsters become incredibly average.

Trap Cards Breakdown

Dragon Capture Jar was specifically made for the Kaiba matchup. This continuous trap card was actually pretty good at keeping the mighty Blue-Eyes White Dragon at bay.

Reinforcements was a pretty sweet combat trick kind of trap. Giving a monster 500 ATK until end of turn was going to win you a lot of battles. It would make Dark Magician trade with Blue-Eyes at the very least.

Remove Trap looks great until you realize that it only destroys face-up trap cards. Bye, bye, Dragon Capture Jar! Although, there’s another really good continuous trap card we’ll get to in a moment.

Reverse Trap is actually a pretty nasty card. I’m not sure how many people played this competitively, but it’s actually really, really mean. It turns all increases into decreases and decreases into increases. It could really screw your opponent over, which is awesome. In this very early meta, this was actually a really good card.

Trap Hole was actually really powerful at this point in Yu-Gi-Oh. Face-down traps were so hard to get rid of that this was a great way to deal with bigger monsters being Normal Summoned. It didn’t hit special summons, but if you happened to have three of these, you could make your opponent miserable.

Ultimate Offering is probably the best trap card in the whole deck, and it got pretty busted later on. It’s been banned for a long time. With a low cost of only 500 LP, you can Normal Summon or Set an additional monster. This card was super busted until it finally got an errata that said you could only use this effect during your own main phase or your opponent’s battle phase. Otherwise you could just use it whenever you felt like, which is pretty stupid. This card would be out of control in today’s Yu-Gi-Oh, which is why it’s going to stay banned. Back then, it wasn’t broken, just really good in the right deck. This card could help you catch up from behind on the field very easily. The cost was just so low.

Waboku is a card that’s still good, actually. It stops all Battle Damage inflicted by opponent’s monsters. However, your monster still does. So, when battling two creatures with equal ATK, you’d actually win the battle. It’s such a good card that’s seen competitive play forever.

Improving the Yugi Starter Deck

For about a month after this and the Kaiba deck were released, you could play 3 of any card. But in May 2002, there was the May 2002 Limited list, which covered these decks and Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Limited were Exodia the Forbidden One and the Exodia pieces, plus Change of Heart, Dark Hole, Monster Reborn, Pot of Greed and Raigeki. Limited to two copies were Card Destruction and Swords of Revealing Light.

So, if you were to improve this deck, what would you do? First, you’d want to bring the deck down to 40 cards. We also really only have LOB to work with. There’s a few ways we could decide to go. We could choose a defensive strategy to stall out until we draw 5 pieces of Exodia, or we can try being more offensive and summon Gaia the Dragon Champion. Thing is, Card Destruction is just going to kill your Exodia pieces. Gaia beats everything but Blue-Eyes, but those two Tribute monsters are going to clog up your hand..

Really. the best way to go is actually to buy 3 copies of the Kaiba deck and get 3 La Jinn and 3 Battle Ox, which were the best level 4 beatstick monsters back then. Make sure you get staples like Raigeki and . Then, buy 2 more copies of the Yugi deck so you can load up on Fissures, Giant Soldiers of Stone, Man-Eater Bugs, Neo the Magic Swordsman, Trap Masters, Trap Holes, and Wabokus. You’ll only play like one Summoned Skull for a tribute monster and just play a grindy game that can stop more complex strategies easily. Believe it or not, Blue-Eyes, great as he is, was pretty easy to stop back then.

This great May 2002 deck list from the Format Library is probably the best deck you could build back when it was just Starter Decks: Yugi and Kaiba and Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

Monsters
3 Battle Ox
2 Giant Soldier of Stone
3 La Jinn Mystical Genie of the Lamp
3 Neo the Magic Swordsman
1 Summoned Skull
3 Man-Eater Bug
3 Trap Master
2 Wall of Illusion

Spells
1 Change of Heart
1 Dark Hole
1 De-Spell
3 Fissure
1 Monster Reborn
1 Pot of Greed
1 Raigeki
2 Swords of Revealing Light

Traps
2 Reinforcements
3 Trap Hole
3 Waboku

This deck can pretty much deal with anything you’d run into. Bigger creatures would usually fall into Trap Holes or be done away with by Fissure or Raigeki. It’s actually a really skill-intensive format since people who played competitively were usually playing pretty much the same deck. The game’s early days were actually pretty interesting.

How would you build a place a deck based off of Starter Deck: Yugi?

How to Get the Most Out of a Yu-Gi-Oh Booster Pack: Pharaoh's Servant #1

7/2/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

I only have one thing to say about Pharaoh's Servant… JINZO! Also, the card quality of the fourth expansion set for Yugioh is WAY higher than the first three… So, let’s head over to Yu-Gi-Oh Pack Simulator and see what we can pull from this classic set!

7 Completed
Dokuroyaiba
Earthshaker
Bubonic Vermin
Lightforce Sword (rare)
Darkfire Soldier #2
Flame Champion
Type Zero Magic Crusher
Insect Imitation

OK, this pack is pretty bad. Then again, Lightforce Sword was a highly sought-after card because it was one Yugi Moto used on the anime. It may be worth less than $0.25 today but there’s a Super Rare version out there, just because it’s an iconic Yugi card. It also wasn’t a terrible card back in the day. Removing a card from your opponent’s hand at random is super annoying, and it could’ve been your opponent’s best card for all you know. You also had ways to really mess up your opponent’s hand with cards like Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, and The Forceful Sentry that all saw plenty of play at the time. So, Lightforce Sword was pretty good in a deck that just wanted to ruin your opponent’s day and make them hate you.

Fortunately, there are some good commons in this pack. 7 Completed is a pretty sweet equip spell for Machine-type monsters. You could use to have a Machine-type monster gain 700 ATK or 700 DEF. Guardian of the Throne Room from Magic Ruler was a pretty awesome target for this Equip Spell, making him 2350 ATK or 2300 DEF. Even today, this card is worth north of $0.25 and some of its reprints are worth more than $0.50!

Dokuroyaiba is worth $0.05 just for this flavor text: “A boomerang with brains that will pursue a target to the ends of the earth.”

Earthshaker isn’t the most exciting way to blow up monsters. But it’s interesting. You choose 2 Monster attributes and your opponent chooses 1. All Face-Up Monsters on the field with the chosen attribute are destroyed. Timed correctly, though, it could be pretty miserable for your opponent, as they could lose one or more monsters and you may be out nothing. It’s worth somewhere between $0.10 and $0.20 because who would play it now? Back then, though, you could sneak this in and no one would see it coming.

Bubonic Vermin was a cute card back in the day. Still worth roughly $0.25 today, this little guy could flip and give you another Vermin from your deck in face-down Defense Position. These guys were great Tribute fodder back in the day, although they may not really do much now.

Darkfire Soldier #2 was easily one of the best cards in this pack back in the day, as 1700 ATK for a level 4 monster was awesome! I remember people actually playing this card. He’s worth $0.10 today, but back then, I think he was actually a card that people wanted on a regular basis!

Flame Champion is a level 5 monster with 1900 ATK. Meh. Even back then, this isn’t a monster you’d play unless you were going all dedicated Fire monsters or something.

I think people back in the day may have played Type Zero Magic Crusher. It’s worth about nothing now. But a continuous trap card that let you discard a Spell Card to deal 500 damage to your opponent was nothing to sneeze at. Those could be the last few Life Points you needed for the win. Was it a great card? Not really, but it could win you a game here and there.

Insect Imitation is a $0.25 common we may not think much of today, but Insects were a real deck back in the day. This was a good way to get a better monster into play very quickly. The cool thing about this card was that you could summon the monster in attack position or FACE DOWN defense position. It was a cute way to get a Man-Eater Bug into play face down, if you had a level 1 insect to tribute. This is a card that’s actually way better now, but who would play it? Well, it does see play in Duel Links…

This is a pretty garbage pack, unless you like collecting the old sets. Also, back then Lightforce Sword was worth the pack, as well as the 7 Completed and Darkfire Soldier. You can’t win ‘em all!

If you want me to “open” a particular pack that’s available on Yu-Gi-Oh Pack Simulator, let me know in the comments!

How to Get the Most Out of a Yu-Gi-Oh Booster Pack: Magic Ruler / Spell Ruler #1

7/1/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Magic Ruler (later known as Spell Ruler) was the third major set release for Yu-Gi-Oh in the TCG. Today we go to the Yu-Gi-Oh Pack Simulator to open a pack of Magic Ruler! Interestingly, Spell Ruler, being the re-release of the set, is actually more valuable. As we open this pack, I’ll go into just what cards from this set are valuable, because a lot of the COMMONS are highly sought after!

Let’s get rippin’!

Guardian of the Throne Room
Psychic Kappa
The Reliable Guardian
Tyhone #2
Hiro's Shadow Scout (rare)
Boar Soldier
Sonic Bird
Final Destiny
Turtle Oath

By today’s standards, this pack looks like steaming garbage. But at the time, this was actually a halfway decent pack. Also, were we opening Spell Ruler, we’re probably making our money back if we only paid a few bucks for it. Let’s see why.

This is an interesting pack, because the rare isn’t the best card in the pack. That’s not to say Hiro’s Shadow Scout was a terrible card back in the day. While making your opponent draw 3 cards sounds horrible, you get to discard any Spell Cards among them to the Graveyard. That’s not bad, at all! Of course, it could backfire and you could give your opponent free cards. But the Scout was more of a sideboard sort of card that you would use against certain decks. Spell cards became really important in this set, of course. This is a $0.25 rare today.

The commons in this pack are actually pretty interesting. The first is Guardian of the Throne Room, a LIGHT Machine monster with 1650 ATK and 1600 DEF. Those are great stats for a Level 4 monster at the time! In fact, the Spell Ruler printing of this card is worth over $0.50! The funny thing about the Guardian of the Throne is his popularity today actually has more to do with the Duel Links game, in which it was still playable for quite some time. Back in the day, this was a good monster that people played. He was a good little Machine in the right deck. The Magic Ruler version isn’t worth much at all,though.

Psychic Kappa may not seem to be a monster we’re interested in, but at $0.50 market price (higher for Spell Ruler), there’s obviously some market for him! Turns out that he’s the “budget” replacement for Frog the Jam, a McDonald’s Promo Card worth close to $4 in some Frog decks. That’s because he’s a level 2 vanilla Aqua monster, meaning he’s actually playable in the right deck. If you told someone you know that this card had a trade value of $1 or so, they’d probably think you were dumb. They would be wrong.

The Reliable Guardian was a solid quick play Spell Card back in its day. It gave a face-up monster 700 extra DEF until the end of the turn. That’s definitely not nothing in old-school Yu-Gi-Oh! People who love the old school stuff have paid as much as $1 for the Spell Ruler version, but the Magic Ruler version is pretty worthless.

Tyhone #2 is worth $0.25 because… level 6 vanilla Dragon? I have no idea.

Boar Soldier is a 2000 ATK level 4 monster… as long as your opponent doesn’t control a monster. You can’t even Normal Summon him. He’s terrible. He wouldn’t be bad with Skill Drain in play, but by the time that awesome Trap Card was released, there were better options to play than this.

Sonic Bird is only worth $0.25 today, but this was an awesome card for a long time. It’s just been reprinted to death. When he’s normal summoned, the Bird searched out a Ritual Spell Card from your deck to your hand. That’s really good because Ritual Monsters were amazing back then. They’re still pretty good, actually, but there are better ways to search out those cards now. This is still an awesome Old School card, though. (I played it in my Pegasus Starter Deck, of course, for Black Illusion Ritual!)

Final Destiny isn’t worth much today and I don’t think it was back then, either. But you could discard 5 cards and blow up everything on the field. That’s such a crazy drawback, but in the rare situation that it was good, it was really good. Talk about a last ditch card!

The last card is Turtle Oath, and at $0.25 for the Magic Ruler version, you probably aren’t too excited. The Spell Ruler version is close to $0.75, though. That’s because this is the card that summoned Crab Turtle, a perfectly decent Level 8 Ritual Monster with 2550 ATK and 2500 DEF. That extra 50 ATK made a BIG difference against things like Summoned Skull and Dark Magician, monsters that were big in the game at the time. So, back in the day, you really wanted this card. Crab Turtle was a common, too, so he wasn’t hard to get! Had we gotten both in this pack, it would’ve been pretty cool.

So, what we’ve learned is that we want to open Spell Ruler more so than Magic Ruler! Pretty much everything is this pack is worth something if you open it from that set - except Psychic Kappa, which is just always worth something. Personally, I’d be trading the Psychic Kappa, since while Frogs are a cool deck, I wouldn’t be using it. I’d rather get a Goat Format staple for it.

BEATDOWN! - Old School Yu-Gi-Oh Deck Profile (2003)

6/29/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Today we’re taking a look at a Yu-Gi-Oh! Beatdown deck from the 2003 Legacy of Darkness (LOD) Advanced format. The list is from the Old School Expert on YouTube.

Monsters
1 Airknight Parshath
1 Cyber Jar
1 Fiber Jar
1 Jinzo
1 Exiled Force
3 Gemini Elf
1 Injection Fairy Lily
1 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
1 Magician of Faith
1 Sangan
3 Spear Dragon
1 Witch of the Black Forest
1 Yata-Garasu

Spells
1 Confiscation
1 United We Stand
1 Premature Burial
1 Monster Reborn
1 Change of Heart
1 Snatch Steal
1 Dark Hole
1 Raigeki
1 Heavy Storm
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 The Forceful Sentry
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Pot of Greed
2 Graceful Charity
1 Painful Choice

Traps
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Magic Cylinder
1 Mirror Force
1 Imperial Order
1 Torrential Tribute

SIDEBOARD

1 Axe of Despair
1 Dark Ruler Ha Des
2 Fissure
1 Magic Jammer
1 Mage Power
2 Magic Drain
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Penguin Soldier
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Trap Hole
1 Waboku

Here’s the breakdown video from the Old School Expert on YouTube!

Monster Cards Breakdown

Airknight Parshath was a meta monster for a long time. While 1900 ATK doesn’t seem that great on a Level 5 monster, his effects make up for that. The piercing battle damage and card draw when he did battle damage were the reasons you played him. Oh, and he was one of the few good Light monsters back then.

Cyber Jar and Fiber Jar are busted cards. Fiber Jar, honestly, was an awesome reset button, something that was great against the beatdown mirror match. Cyber Jar was a great way to swing the game back in your favor, too. It could help your opponent more than it could help you, so you had to time playing it correctly. I usually did. I played a LOT with Cyber Jar.

Jinzo is awesome, and the only reason I didn’t play him back then was I didn’t have one for years. He shut down all traps, which meant your monsters could usually attack pretty freely.

Exiled Force is an amazing monster. He was limited to one copy per deck for good reason. You’d play him and tribute him to kill any monster your opponent had, even face-down! He saw play deep into my own time playing, and when Warriors became better and better, Reinforcement of the Army often searched him up. He actually got better over the years, when there were more ways to special summon him. Even having to use your Normal Summon was often worth it.

Gemini Elf is actually one of my favorite monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh based on flavor. I played the lovely Elf twins later in Spellcaster decks, but not really in my early decks. She was awesome.

Injection Fairy Lily was another card I never owned early on. I did play her at one point, and man, paying 2000 LP for her to gain 3000 ATK was simply pretty dumb. I played her in Spellcasters later, and she was pretty busted. (I’ll write about my awesome Spellcasters at some point, believe me!)

Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer was an awesome meta monster for years. Oddly, he’s really still pretty decent in Modern Yu-Gi-Oh, too. But, man, I loved this guy. Removing monsters from your opponent’s Graveyard and keeping them from banishing things (a big deal back then, too) was pretty sick. Having 1800 ATK was good too. I think I played two back then, and that’s my preference. But one is good.

Magician of Faith was just good. Get back the spell card you needed. I think they only banned her because she just became too much of a staple. Magical Dimension made her busted, too; oh, that card…

Sangan got you a lot of good stuff, anything with 1500 ATK or less. Even with his errata, he’s still actually playable; you just have to be choosy with what you get.

Spear Dragon was the other premier beatstick monster at the time - other than Goblin Attack Force. Like Attack Force, Spear Dragon went into defense after attacking. The advantage of the Dragon was that he would inflict piercing battle damage. Soon after the time that this deck would’ve been built, Final Attack Orders from Dark Crisis suddenly made these monsters good; they also got the 1900 ATK Archfiend Soldier to back them up. I never played that deck myself, but it actually was pretty good. And Spear Dragon was good enough that even with the drawback he was still very playable.

Witch of the Black Forest was banned in tournament play when I played, but dang she could get almost anything good back then: anything with 1500 DEF or less. She’s playable in Modern Yu-Gi-Oh, with a similar errata to Sangan, but still not bad.

Yata-Garasu was in every competitive deck back then because of the “Yata-Lock.” Making your opponent skip a draw phase and have the Spirit Bird bounce back to your hand was just too busted. Yata was banned by the time I played, thankfully.

Spell Cards Breakdown

Like many decks at the time, the spell cards are all pretty much what you’d expect to see in many decks. There was the hand control trio of Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, and The Forceful Sentry, all of which would eventually be banned. There were your grave reanimation cards like Monster Reborn and Premature Burial.

You had your monster stealing cards in Change of Heart and Snatch Steal. Monster destruction came in the form of Dark Hole and Raigeki. The spell and trap destruction suite ran 1 Heavy Storm and 2 Mystical Space Typhoon. The draw cards were a Pot of Greed and 2 Graceful Charity. Also, Painful Choice was a pretty sweet card to fill your graveyard, and was later banned for all of the crazy stuff you could do with it.

The card that’s really unique to Beatdown is United We Stand, Actually, most beatdown decks, including the one I used to play, played Axe of Despair and Mage Power in the main deck. (This deck has them in the sideboard). United We Stand gives the equipped monster 800 ATK for each face-up monster you control! It would actually be banned for some time due to its power level. Maha Vailo decks were a thing at the time, too, and this was at least 1300 ATK just with that crazy powerful guy.

Trap Cards Breakdown

You didn’t really play many maindeck traps in this deck, since you run Jinzo, of course. But you played the staples: 2 Bottomless Trap Hole, 1 Magic Cylinder, 1 Mirror Force, 1 Imperial Order, and 1 Torrential Tribute. Imperial Order was a stupid card and I’m glad they banned it; that spell-cancelling card was just way too unfair.

Sideboard Breakdown

The Old School Expert’s list runs Axe of Despair and Mage Power, beatdown staples, in the sideboard. Honestly, I understand why. This deck isn’t based around Maha Vailo, the 1550 ATK Light Monster that gains 500 ATK for each Equip Card equipped to this card. A lot of beatdown decks were. But a heavy reliance on Equips isn’t always the best way to go, as MST would often just blow them up during combat and 2-for-1, or even 3 or 4-for-1 you if you had multiple copies on the board.

Fortunately, you had ways to stop people from blowing up your equips: Magic Jammer and Magic Drain. Magic Drain saw play far longer than Magic Jammer, despite the fact that Drain is in some ways worse than Jammer. Magic Jammer requires a discard from you, though, and Drain gives your opponent the option to discard a Spell Card of their own to counter the Drain.

Nobleman of Crossout is a card that I usually played in the maindeck, but at this point, a lot of people were playing beatdown, so this card was better in the sideboard. Later, everyone would play two Noblemans main board. Not only did it banish the facedown monster, but it also was murder to flip effect monsters. The interesting thing is that both players had to reveal their decks to remove any copies of that flip effect monster. So, you got to learn a lot about each other’s decks. And if you were playing the same monster, it could actually backfire on you. Usually, though, I rarely ever had this happen to me.

Solemn Judgment wasn’t a card many people played in the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh. You could run three. But one copy in the sideboard makes sense, as an answer to something that you couldn’t otherwise deal with.

Fissure was probably some of the best removal available at the time. It wasn’t always the best card, but hey, it was playable. Smashing Ground would be way better later.

Trap Hole was in the sideboard for extra monster removal. Swords of Revealing Light and Waboku were good in the beatdown mirror. Swords gave you both an option to stall while you build your position back up and Waboku could help you “win” some unfavorable battles.

The two monsters in the sideboard are two that I played in my main board. Dark Ruler Ha Des could run over anything except Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Dark Magician, and Summoned Skull at the time. Believe it or not, none of them saw a ton of meta play. While you couldn’t special summon Dark Ruler Ha Des from the grave, his effect made up for that: he negates the effects of any monsters he destroys, including things like flip effect monsters, Sangan, and Witch.

Penguin Soldier seems weird in a beatdown deck, but if you were going up a deck that ran big fusion monsters or ritual monsters, this little guy was huge. Also, he really could set your opponent back a turn or two, especially if you bounced two of your opponent’s guys back. People wouldn’t see it coming. It was pretty sweet.

My Thoughts on Beatdown

I used to run a deck with a similar theme to this beatdown deck. But, as I played a little bit later than this, I had access to some cheaper beatdown monsters, such as Archfiend Soldier and Skilled Dark Magician, instead of the much more expensive (at the time) Gemini Elf and Spear Dragon. They were also Dark monsters. Don’t get me wrong. I love Gemini Elf. But they were a lot harder to get back then.

I also didn’t own a Jinzo. So I played Dark Ruler Ha Des instead. Actually, he was a really good card in those days, as he shut down so many effects. He also ran over Jinzo and Monarchs, which made “good players” mad. Lolz. I used to play Summoned Skull, too, because I was both good and bad at the game at the same time. I never played much Airknight Parshath. I thought he was too weak for a tribute monster bad then. I feel differently about him now. I think he’s pretty sweet now, especially for the piercing battle damage and card draw.

Fiber Jar wasn’t legal in tournament play by that point - although I owned a really beat up copy that I played in Traditional duels (those without the forbidden cards). Cyber Jar, on the other hand, was one of my best friends.

I also didn’t get to play the hand control spells like Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, and The Forceful Sentry, although I think Duo was available. I didn’t think Duo was all that great. All three together are devastating, though. That’s especially true when you’re playing beatdown, because you can really slow your opponent down picking apart their hand.

Had I been playing when a lot of these cards weren’t banned, I’m sure I would’ve played them in tournaments. I was still playing Traditional at this time, as I didn’t like the idea of forbidden cards. That’s why I played Chaos...and a lot of people still do!

I really like the Old School Expert’s deck and personally I’d only make a couple of changes, like two copies of Kycoo instead of one. I wouldn’t ever have been able to afford Mechanical Chasers, which were no joke $200 at that point. So, I would’ve settled for Spear Dragon. Like him, I never really liked playing Goblin Attack Force. This probably is the deck I would’ve played pretty much.

Did you ever play beatdown? It was such a fun, innocent deck that just doesn’t really play well in today’s Yu-Gi-Oh. But it still needed a ton of strategy, and everyone’s beatdown deck was a little different. So much fun!
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GOAT FORMAT! - Intro to the Format and Original Aggro Control Deck - Yu-Gi-Oh Old School Deck Profile!

6/26/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Goat Format is probably the best way ever to play Yu-Gi-Oh! It’s based off of the April 2005 Forbidden/Limited List, often better known as the “banlist” and includes cards up until before Cybernetic Revolution. The reason Cybernetic Revolution isn’t included is because of Cyber Dragon and Cyber Twin Dragon, which badly warped the game at the time. So, Goat Format is considered the best format of all time.

The best deck at the time was Goat Control, a deck built around Scapegoat, Thousand Eyes Restrict, and Metamorphosis. By the time I started playing seriously, I didn’t play in organized tournaments right away, and I was using the October 2005 list for Traditional format, which has no banned cards. I didn’t start playing seriously until Enemy of Justice in 2006. So, I never built a Goat Format deck, but many cards I used were a big part of the format.

Let’s take a look at the banlist that defined the format:

April 2005 Forbidden/Limited List

Forbidden:
Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End
Fiber Jar
Magical Scientist
Makyura the Destructor
Witch of the Black Forest
Yata-Garasu
Butterfly Dagger - Elma
Change of Heart
Confiscation
Dark Hole
Harpie's Feather Duster
Mirage of Nightmare
Monster Reborn
Painful Choice
Raigeki
The Forceful Sentry
Imperial Order

Limited:
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
Breaker the Magical Warrior
Cyber Jar
D.D. Warrior Lady
Dark Magician of Chaos
Exiled Force
Exodia the Forbidden One
Injection Fairy Lily
Jinzo
Left Arm of the Forbidden One
Left Leg of the Forbidden One
Morphing Jar
Protector of the Sanctuary
Reflect Bounder
Right Arm of the Forbidden One
Right Leg of the Forbidden One
Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys
Sangan
Sinister Serpent
Tribe-Infecting Virus
Twin-Headed Behemoth
Card Destruction
Delinquent Duo
Graceful Charity
Heavy Storm
Lightning Vortex
Mage Power
Mystical Space Typhoon
Pot of Greed
Premature Burial
Snatch Steal
Swords of Revealing Light
United We Stand
Call Of The Haunted
Ceasefire
Deck Devastation Virus
Magic Cylinder
Mirror Force
Reckless Greed
Ring of Destruction
Torrential Tribute

Semi-Limited:
Abyss Soldier
Dark Scorpion - Chick the Yellow
Manticore of Darkness
Marauding Captain
Night Assailant
Vampire Lord
Creature Swap
Emergency Provisions
Level Limit - Area B
Nobleman of Crossout
Reinforcement of the Army
Upstart Goblin
Good Goblin Housekeeping
Gravity Bind
Last Turn

Notably, Metamorphosis, Scapegoat, and Thousand-Eyes Restrict weren’t restricted to one copy per deck yet. While Goat Control wasn’t the ONLY deck in the format, it was like 90 percent of the format or something. I never played more than one Scapegoat in my decks, and I typically played a blend of Beatdown and what I like to call Aggro Control. It was sort of random but strangely effective. I didn’t have the money for the best cards at the time, but I ran enough meta cards that I usually won more than I lost.

So, had I begun playing Tournament play during Goat Format, which is strangely enough when I started actually playing seriously, what would I have been up against? Here’s a typical Goat Format deck, based on a list from Format Library:

Monsters
2 Airknight Parshath
1 Asura Priest
1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 D.D. Warrior Lady
2 Magical Merchant
2 Magician of Faith
1 Morphing Jar
1 Sangan
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Tribe Infecting Virus
2 Tsukuyomi

Spells
2 Book of Moon
1 Delinquent Duo
1 Graceful Charity
1 Heavy Storm
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Pot of Greed
1 Premature Burial
2 Scapegoat
1 Snatch Steal

Traps
1 Call of the Haunted
2 Dust Tornado
1 Mirror Force
1 Ring of Destruction
2 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Torrential Tribute

SIDEBOARD
2 Legendary Jujitsu Master
2 Mystic Swordsman Lv2
1 Book of Moon
2 Creature Swap
1 Dust Tornado
2 Seven Tools of the Bandit
3 Trap Dustshoot

FUSIONS
3 Thousand-Eyes Restrict
1 Dragoness the Wicked Knight
1 Darkfire Dragon
2 Dark Balter the Terrible
1 Fiend Skull Dragon
1 Giltia the D. Knight
1 Reaper on the Nightmare
1 Ryu Senshi
1 Dark Blade the Dragon Knight
1 The Last Warrior from Another Planet
1 Gatling Dragon

One point of contention with the Goat Format is the legality of Exarion Universe. He was a tin promo during 2005, and a monster I ran with regularity. However, many Goat Format players forbid it from being played. If you can play it, though, it’s a 1800 ATK / 1900 DEF monster with the Dark Attribute.

It has an interesting secondary effect that you can choose to activate if you attack a Defense Position monster. You can have it lose 400 ATK and inflict piercing Battle Damage. This is an ability I actually used a lot. That was 1000 piercing damage if I attacked a Magician of Faith. Owie. So, personally, I love that guy. But to be honest, he was pretty busted - which is why I played him. I made a LOT of people running Apprentice Magician Engines at the time MAD!

Blade Knight was a great one, too, a tin promo that many people disallow in Goat Format. I played him, too.

My Take on Goat Format - The Aggro Control Deck!

So if I were building a Goat Format deck, it would not play Metamorphosis. I never really got into that sort of deck. I’d play something more like the decks I used to play. This list doesn’t have Blade Knight or Exarion Universe, but if I were allowed to play them, I would! Here goes:

Monsters (18)
1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
1 Airknight Parshath
1 Dark Ruler Ha Des
1 Jinzo
1 Asura Priest
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
1 D.D. Warrior Lady
1 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
1 Old Vindictive Magician
1 Gravekeeper’s Guard
2 Gravekeeper’s Spy
1 Skilled Dark Magician
1 Skilled White Magician
1 Night Assailant
1 Magician of Faith
1 Sangan
1 Spirit Reaper

Spells (13)
1 Brain Control
1 Book of Moon
1 Enemy Controller
1 Graceful Charity
1 Lightning Vortex
1 Heavy Storm
2 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Pot of Greed
1 Premature Burial
1 Scapegoat
1 Smashing Ground
1 Snatch Steal

Traps (9)
1 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Dust Tornado
1 Mirror Force
1 Ring of Destruction
2 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Trap Dustshoot

SIDEBOARD
1 Cyber Jar
2 Legendary Jujitsu Master
2 Mystic Swordsman Lv2
1 Mobius the Frost Monarch
1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch
1 Magician of Faith
1 Night Assailant
1 Gravekeeper’s Spy
1 Gravekeeper’s Guard
2 Necrovalley
1 Magic Cylinder

Back in the day, I didn’t have Jinzo or Mirror Force. But nowadays, they’re so easy to get, so why not have them? I also used to run 42 or 43 cards and never had a problem. In a Goat Format with Exarion and Blade Knight, they’d be two extra cards. But I’m going to go without them because some people don’t like them in the format. And that’s OK with me.

So my approach to the meta may be rather unorthodox, and I’ve applied what I know now. This particular list needs to be play-tested heavily, but in general this is the way I’d go.

The sideboard looks really strange, but the beauty of Yu-Gi-Oh is that your sideboard can transform your entire deck. And a few of these cards actually were in my sideboard back then, even though back then it was literally 15 good random cards. There’s a reason Cyber Jar is in there, by the way.

Let’s break it down.

Monster Cards Breakdown

I don’t think Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning needs any introduction. He and Breaker the Magical Warrior (very much in this deck) flip-flopped being my favorite card of all time. BLS is now and forever. When I sold off my entire Yu-Gi-Oh collection, I kept my Gold Rare copy that I got played for about $10. Not a great financial move in hindsight, but he actually won me tournaments with Blackwings and Gravekeeper Twilight nonsense. So, he’s seen real battle, and that’s worth keeping him for me.

This is the guy that wins me the game when he drops. I have NEVER LOST a game of Yu-Gi-Oh where he came down. Ever. I’m serious. My secret rare one had the same success rate. He was stolen. It was very sad.

Airknight Parshath is a card that I liked but never played much. But he’s vital as a Light Monster. There were more Light monsters I played like Kaiser Sea Horse, but I only played him to summon Blue-Eyes White dragon or later on the almighty Super Conductor Tyranno (which won me a lot of games, actually) with a single Tribute. The card draw is nice.

Dark Ruler Ha Des was one of my favorite monsters back in the day. Why not? He beat Jinzo! He also negated the effects of monsters he killed, including Sangan. So badass. I played him in a Dark World deck later and just, wow. He also murders Flip Effect monsters and especially the Gravekeeper flips. Ironically, I play a lot of those.

Jinzo is Jinzo. He stops all traps. Plain and simple.

That’s four tribute monsters, which sounds like a lot, but as you’ll see, I always have tribute fodder.

Asura Priest was never one of my favorite monsters. But a Light monster with 1700 ATK that could attack all your opponent’s monsters is pretty good. I had a common DB2 copy back then. Great spirit monster, though.

Breaker the Magical Warrior is a freaking awesome monster, and besides Envoy of the Beginning, he is my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh card of all-time. He’s a 1600 ATK monster, technically, but the spell counter gives him 300 ATK. Later, decks that abused Spell Counters would make him super special awesome. But even on his own, he was a staple of a lot of decks. Removing that spell counter to essentially be a Mystical Space Typhoon was sweet.

D.D. Warrior Lady was a staple at the time because she could just get rid of stuff. She was a great rattlesnake when you played her face-down. 1500 ATK and 1600 DEF are kind of meh stats. But she’s worth playing in this format.

Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer was one of my favorite monsters at the time, too. Turns out I was right to play him, because he was a format destroyer! He actually shut down Chaos decks at one time! He stops your opponent from banishing stuff from either graveyard, so he stops opponents from summoning BLS, but not you! (I guess Chaos Sorcerer is legal in Goat Format, and I used to play him, too!) He also allowed you to remove up to 2 monsters from your opponent’s graveyard each time he dealt Battle Damage. Ouch. I could run two, but one is usually enough.

This is when you start seeing how obsessed I was with Spellcasters back then. Sure, Breaker was a staple, but I went way beyond. Old Vindictive Magician was an awesome common back in the day from Magician’s Force. I think I opened a pack with both this AND Wave-Motion Cannon in it and Skilled White Magician. Pretty sure that pack was Dark Revelation 1 because the Magician was rare. I think I traded the Wave-Motion Cannon to my brother.

Anyway, Old Vindictive Magician was the Dark Spellcaster version of Man-Eater Bug. She saw a lot of play back in the day in Apprentice Magician decks. But she was pretty good just as a random one-of, too, especially in this kind of deck, as you’ll see. Also, her flip effect monster destroys a monster of the field, BUT it can only be one of your opponent’s. This is a HUGE advantage over Man-Eater Bug, which would have to destroy one of your monsters if your opponent didn’t have any and it was flipped.

When I first started playing competitive Yu-Gi-Oh, one of the first decks I played was Gravekeeper’s. I thought the Gravekeeper monsters were awesome! So, I later built the Gravekeeper engine into my decks. In most decks I’d build with Gravekeeper’s, I’d play 3 Spies, 2 Guards, and 3 Spear Soldiers, plus 2 or 3 Necrovalley. But in this Goat Format deck, I play just 2 Spies and 1 Guard. This isn’t uncommon from what I’ve seen of top decks in the format.

Usually, when you flip Spy, you’d get another Spy, then flip the other Spy for the Guard. If you had both Spies in hand, that kind of blew, but it became discard fodder to Graceful Charity, Lightning Vortex, etc. If you flipped the Spy and had no targets left, the opponent could look at your deck to confirm and that was an annoying amount of information to give up. (I’m not sure if you can just say “fail to search” nowadays in Yu-Gi-Oh like you can in Magic the Gathering.).

Still, you played these guys for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Spy has 2000 DEF and Guard has 1900 DEF. That is higher or the same as many other monsters in the Goat Format. That means your opponent is often taking Battle Damage and you’re getting value. The Spy gets you a special summon, and the Guard returns a monster to the hand. That’s DEVASTATING against Fusion Monsters, for example. Also, you are almost guaranteed to have a Tribute available for your boss monsters. There’s another reason they’re in here, too, as we’ll get to later.

Speaking of Skilled White Magician, I played a couple of them back in the day. Actually, I played one of them and Neo the Magic Swordsman for a long time. Neo was one of my favorite Old School cards, and by this time he wasn’t as big, and I actually did play a second White Magician later because 1900 DEF is pretty sweet. But in this deck, I like the trade-off that D.D. Warrior Lady gives me. The 1700 ATK is usually “good enough” and I really needed the Light monsters. I actually don’t find Asura Priest all that good in some matchups, but it is good against Goat Control, after all. Skilled White Magician is somebody I could play face-down, potentially have a tie or even a battle in my favor. Then I could turn him into attack and do some damage!

There’s only one Skilled Dark Magician in the list because I really wanted a 1900 beater but beatdown isn’t really what this deck is about. He deals with a lot, though, and I really liked this guy back in the day.

Night Assailant is very much like Old Vindictive Magician, but with an added effect if he’s discarded from the hand. You get to get a Flip effect monster back to your hand, except this card. At the time you could play two copies, and if I remember correctly, he was limited because you could get another Night Assailant back and keep looping them. It was sort of like a weird Sinister Serpent effect, a card I chose not to play in this particular Goat Format deck. There’s a reason I don’t, that I’ll get to in a minute. (It’s not his unfortunate recent errata, either.)

Magician of Faith is self-explanatory. You could play two back then, and sometimes, this deck does play two, because there’s a copy in the sideboard. There’s a reason why that you’ll see when we look at this deck’s sideboard.

Sangan gets you any monster with 1500 or less ATK in your deck. He was a popular target for Metamorphosis to pull out Dragoness the Wicked Knight. He’s actually legal in today’s Yu-gi-oh with an errata that I feel doesn’t matter that much. Basically when you search something, “...you cannot activate cards, or the effects of cards, with that name for the rest of this turn. You can only use this effect of "Sangan" once per turn.” Honestly, that errata is relevant, but hardly makes it bad. But, good to keep in mind.

The last monster is Spirit Reaper. Honestly, I feel like he’s better than Sinister Serpent in this deck. He’s really hard to get rid of in defense position, and can occasionally discard cards from your opponent’s hand when he attacks. In Goat Control, Serpent is better because he gets you Thousand-Eyes Restrict with Metamorphosis. Also, his errata that banishes him from the Graveyard at the end of turn after end of turn makes him really meh. If Goat Format players prefer to use him with his original busted text, then I’d play him as a 41st card in this deck.

Spell Cards Breakdown

Onto the spells, I actually play a lot of good stuff kind of cards. These are mostly cards I actually played back in the day. I was mad that Monster Reborn was banned at this point, but I had all of these other cards already.

I actually had an ultimate rare Brain Control back in the day. Brain Control was so busted back then. Then they recently gave it an errata that you can only steal monsters that can be Normal Summoned, basically level 4 or lower monsters. Even with that restriction, though, paying 800 LP to steal an opponent’s monster is awesome, especially if you then tribute it. It’s pretty lousy in today’s game, but even with the errata it’s good in Goat Format.

Book of Moon is so good. Not only does it recycle your flip effect monsters, but it’s great to flip down your opponent’s attacking monsters. It’s also a great way to deal with Jinzo or Summoned Skull or other big stuff you may not be able to run over. I’m fine running one. I don’t think I’ve ever played more in my deck. Also, this kills Spirit Reaper as soon as he’s targeted. Book of Moon is just sweet.

Enemy Controller is good for two reasons: changing battle positions of your opponent’s monsters, and stealing monsters. You have to tribute a monster to steal your opponent’s monster, but grabbing an opposing BLS is pretty insane. Really, this card is just good, and I ran one most of the time.

Graceful Charity is busted good draw power. Yeah, you have to discard two cards, but most of the time, you had a reason to discard one card or another. You had Call of the Haunted and Premature Burial to bring dudes back. Tossing a Jinzo in the grave was always fun. Drawing three cards was worth the discards anyway.

Lightning Vortex was basically the Raigeki of the format. It destroyed all of your opponent’s face-up monsters. The drawback was that you had to discard. But most of the time, I’d just toss a Light or Dark monster, whichever I needed to summon BLS (or Chaos Sorcerer that I often played) and went to town. Pretty busted.

Heavy Storm is sweet. Blow up all of the spells and traps. Have a nice day.

Nobleman of Crossout is a card a lot of people played two of, because of flip-effect monsters, and all of the other monsters that people played face-down. Against certain decks I’d side out one copy, like Beatdown. But hitting a Cyber Jar, Gravekeeper’s Spy/Guard, Night Assailant, or even just a Magician of Faith is pretty sweet. And if it’s a flip effect monster, you get to banish the others from their deck with that name. This card made scoops happen for me back in the day, because I made them mad.

Pot of Greed: draw 2 cards. Simple as that. Everyone ever everywhere ran it.

Premature Burial is an equip spell that costs 800 LP to summon a monster from your Graveyard. You usually saved this for your Tribute monsters. This is my favorite way to bring out Jinzo or Airknight. Dark Ruler doesn’t work, because he can’t be summoned from the Graveyard. But this is a good card that usually brought something important back, like Sangan.

This isn’t Goat Control so why is there one copy of Scapegoat? It’s purely in there for stall purposes. I like it better than Swords of Revealing Light, honestly. You can’t tribute summon with them. The card’s actually better in today’s game, believe it or not. Really, Scapegoat just buys me time to answer things like Thousand-Eyes Restrict. Who’s going to steal a token?

Smashing Ground smashes all of the grounds. Really, smashing the thing with the highest defense is very relevant. That was an expensive short print common back in the day. It’s one of my favorite all-time cards. Against some decks it wasn’t as good, but that’s what you have a sideboard for, and I always played it game one.

Snatch Steal is busted. Even though you have to give your opponent a free 1000 LP every one of your opponent’s Standby phases. It’s still banned, and for good reason. You could steal one of your opponent’s Fusion Monsters, like Gatling Dragon or whatever, and bash them in the face with it. I usually saved it for a big monster, sort of like Enemy Controller.

Trap Cards Breakdown

Onto the traps, I play nine, which is kind of a lot in a format with Jinzo everywhere. But I have so many ways to deal with Jinzo. These are all worth playing. One may surprise you but they’re all really strong,

‘Bottomless Trap Hole is what I saved for something big I couldn’t deal with. It’s awesome. It’s STILL good. Solemn Warning is better, but Bottomless is classic.

Call of the Haunted is great monster revival, but it also has that cute interaction with Jinzo. If you bring out Jinzo, the effect of Call of the Haunted is negated. So, if you or your opponent then plays Heavy Storm, your Jinzo stays.

Dust Tornado saw a lot of play because Mystical Space Typhoon was at one. But what’s cool about this card is that after you blow something up, you can set a spell or trap from your hand. That’s nifty, so you can set Call of the Haunted or something you can activate next turn.

I didn’t have Mirror Force back in the day, but this card swings the game in your favor so often you have to play it. This card was banned for awhile just because of how powerful it is. It’s so good that it STILL sees play in Modern Yu-Gi-Oh. You just played it. I used to hold this card in my hand until I REALLY needed it, too, once I had it later.

I had a promo Ring of Destruction back in the day, and this card won me a lot of games on its own. It’s a pretty symmetrical effect: target 1 monster your monster controls and destroy it, then deal damage equal to its ATK to both players. Trouble is, when they reprinted this card a few years ago, they added an errata to it so they could unban it. That errata said that the monster has to have ATK less than or equal to your opponent’s LP. Basically, they nerfed it a lot. Still, it’s actually still playable. Funny thing is, back in the day, I used to do exact damage with this card. But, honestly, it was pretty busted when you could just go: hey, this monster has more ATK than you have LP… bye-bye!

Two copies of Sakuretsu Armor was pretty standard back in the day, even if you had a Mirror Force. I think I ran three copies at one time, because this card was pretty easy to get. It made attacking sort of scary because you could always hit a Sakuretsu Armor. Great card that’s way too slow in today’s Yu-Gi-Oh.

Torrential Tribute was always a sweet card and at this time it was limited to one. You really only ever played Tribute when it benefited you. It also had a nice interaction with Gravekeeper’s Spy, because even after you blew everything up, the monster still Special Summoned… after everything else was gone. This was actually really important, because then you could just drop Jinzo, and yeah…

Yes, I play one main deck Trap Dustshoot. Sending a monster back to the deck from the hand is awesome. People used to play 3 in the sideboard, and I really never liked that. I used to play Mind Crush, too, but honestly, in this format, I think one Trap Dustshoot is better than Delinquent Duo because you get to see what your opponent has. That information tells me what I’m looking at, and sometimes it’s enough to know what I’m playing against. If I pull it game one, as long as my opponent has at least 4 cards, it’s pretty much always good. I always felt like siding into three copies would result in dead draws. That’s my experience. Oftentimes I’d side it out in game two or three. It always worked for me, honestly.

So that’s the deck. Those choices I made are based on my experience from playing in the formats immediately following Goat Format and just knowing what those cards in the Goat Control deck do. I’ll go over my strategy for the deck, because there is a certain way to pilot the deck. But first, the transformational sideboard… my favorite crap to do in Yu-Gi-Oh!

I may have been ahead of my time with the Transformational Sideboard. I actually would stick Exodia in my sideboard sometimes, too. I actually won games that way sometimes. Pretty hilarious. But in this format, even without Confiscation and The Forceful Sentry running around, I didn’t want to do the Exodia troll in Goat Control. It’s too cutthroat a format, honestly.

But I did transformational sideboards a lot, mostly because I love making people mad when they sideboard for a certain matchup, only to face a totally different matchup. So in this case, I switch into a Gravekeeper Monarch deck. I bet no one sees that coming. Then, when they go to pop Mask of Restrict and other stuff into the deck, I go back to the old strategy.

The Transformational Sideboard

Here’s how this works.

Cyber Jar is in my sideboard. That’s because I find Cyber Jar to be horrendous against Goat Control. It was awesome when I played because Metamorphosis was at one. But if I’m playing a deck where my monsters are consistently going to be better, Cyber Jar is awesome. I really just don’t want to give the Goat player more cards. It’s why I don’t play Morphing Jar, a card I played as soon as it was cheap enough to get financially when I played competitively. Why give your opponent free cards unless you know they’re going to get monsters strictly worse than yours?

Legendary Jujitsu Master was an awesome sideboard card back in the day. I played them, actually. They were great. They bounce any monster that attacks them to the hand. They made an awesome play against Goat Control’s bigger monsters. Mystic Swordsman Lv2 was awesome against face-down monsters, killing them without even flipping them. I had one of these back in the day. For some reason I never bothered to have two. My brother had an ultimate rare one.

So far, the board looks pretty normal. This is when it gets weird. I have a Mobius the Frost Monarch and a Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. Mobius is a boss, killing up to two spells and traps on the field. Zaborg the Thunder Monarch killed a monster, as long as your opponent had one… otherwise he’d just kill one of yours or himself. It wasn’t optional. So why these guys? Yeah, they’re good. But they’re part of the puzzle.

We have an extra copy of Night Assailant and Magician of Faith. Ok, that’s interesting. I can loop Night Assailants through discards. The extra Magician gives me an extra Light monster and easier ways to get Spell cards back.

Then there’s another Gravekeeper’s Spy and Gravekeeper’s Guard. That’s right. There’s more ways to Tribute Monsters easily and this deck can stall even better.

Then, two copies of Necrovalley. You see where this is going. Suddenly, beatdown decks run into a wall. The graveyard gets shut down. It does shut out my BLS, but that’s worth the price. It also makes my Gravekeeper’s guys huge walls.

Then there’s a Magic Cylinder. Sometimes, this card is just better than Ring. I won a lot of games with Cylinder back in the day. But it’s so dead with Jinzo and I don’t like it as much in Goat Format. Not that it’s bad, mind you. I just like to pick my spots with it.

So, what’s great about a transformational sideboard is that I can go all out, because I love the Gravekeepers/Monarch mix. I’m usually going to board out Scapegoat in that case. Goats are really in my deck to stall. This deck is built for the long game, as we’ll see in a moment.

Deck Strategy

My strategy with Yu-Gi-Oh is the same as it is for me in Magic the Gathering: passive-aggressive. I never overextend myself. I let my opponent play into my hands. I have so many answers that work on offense and defense. They say defense doesn’t win games of Yu-Gi-Oh, but in my experience, a balance of offense and defense does.

I’ve always been the type to play face-down monsters and maybe one trap card and see what happens. When I get a similar response, I just wait things out. If I have answers, I’m just going to hold them. Sure, they could have a Morphing Jar, and that would suck. But that’s what I have Nobleman of Crossout for, and why I have two of them - facedown monsters. And if I do hit a flip effect monster, I get to see their Deck! Woo-hoo! If I’m playing against Goat Control I can even guess their hand to some degree.

When I first started playing, I was very aggressive. But whenever I’ve played aggressive decks, especially in Magic, I just burn out too quickly. Even when I played a swarm deck like Blackwings, I was pretty passive-aggressive, and that served me well. I have a lot of decent ATK monsters, some decent DEF monsters, and a bunch of monsters that blow stuff up or get stuff back. If I start too slow and fall behind, I can usually come back pretty quickly.

In Magic, this is what you call a “mid-range” deck. I’m not sure you can do that in today’s Yu-Gi-Oh with how fast things happen with all the special summoning. But in old school Yu-Gi-Oh, this strategy served me well. Heck, it worked into my E-Hero days at the end.

Why Don’t I Just Play Goat Control?

In Goat Format, most people play the top deck, like most people in Yu-Gi-Oh do - really any competitive card game. I hate doing that. That being said, I love Goat Control. But I wanted to do something different. This deck isn’t exactly anti-meta, but my monsters beat a lot of Goat’s monsters. I have Asura Priest to clear away goats. I have lots of ways to kill monsters I can’t otherwise beat. Nobleman of Crossout does minimal damage to my deck. It can ruin my Gravekeepers, but I can win without them anyway, even after boarding.

Also, this deck looks a lot like Goat Control. If I really wanted to, I could build a Transformational sideboard into Goat Control. Maybe not doing so makes me a bad player. I dare to be different, though. The Monarchs do a lot of work, and the added Gravekeeper pieces help me consistently have Tribute fodder.

The monster destruction package, for me, is really satisfying. People played some of these cards in various builds of Goat Control. Tribe Infecting Virus looks good against my deck, because I have so many Spellcasters. But not really. Most of my Spellcasters are role players.

The other thing is that this deck is not doing one thing. It does several things, and while that sounds bad, everything works together. Really, my deck’s win condition is winning a war of attrition. And dropping Black Luster Soldier, Envoy of the Beginning when I know you don’t have an answer. That, too.

The deck is designed to baffle you, really. If you don’t know what’s in my deck, you really won’t after I’m done sideboarding. If I know I’m off to a bad start, I’m gonna learn what you have without giving away much. You’ll sideboard based on what you’ve seen, and I can tune my deck with tech based on what I expect you’ll side in and out. I feel like sideboarding is really a huge part of Goat Format because that’s where the decks really differ the most.

That being said, I’m playing to basically sit back and let you run into my answers for stuff. I’m gonna be bluffing a lot, most likely. I love that mind game, and that’s what’s so awesome about this time in Yu-Gi-Oh! Then again, I think that’s still a big part of the game; the better player is usually still going to win. But, having the best meta deck certainly helps.

And, you’ll probably see me play a deck that transforms into Goat Control. Because I’m a troll like that...

A Last Bit of Advice on Goat Format

If you really want to be involved in Goat Format, you really want to have the main deck on hand. Still, it’s good to know what else was good in the meta. And, while Goat Control is actually an awesome mid-range type deck, I really want to see how my passive-aggressive Aggro Control does in the format.

If you build this deck, or something like it, let me know how you do!

How to Get the Most Out of a Yu-Gi-Oh Booster Pack: Metal Raiders Booster Pack #1

6/25/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Today, we’re headed to Yu-Gi-Oh Pack Simulator to open a classic Yu-Gi-Oh pack of Metal Raiders! This is where things started getting good! Or did they?

Before we begin, I’ll point out that these are the newer packs that we’re opening. So, these packs could contain both a rare and a foil card!

Here goes:

Water Omotics
Morinphen
Armored Lizard
Lady of Faith
Masked Sorcerer (Rare)
Solemn Judgment (Ultra Rare!)
Electric Lizard
Doma the Angel of Silence
Launcher Spider

Hurray! We got a very good card. Solemn Judgment was one of the best cards from Metal Raiders, although it didn’t see much play in the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh! In 2018, it returned from the banlist after some time in banishment. So, this card is easily worth the pack, about $6 TCGPlayer market price (as of 6/25/18) with a median price of about $7.00. For those that don’t know what this card does: pay half your of Life Points and negate just about anything. This is a great card, with a huge cost, but it’s often worth playing late in the game to buy yourself a much needed turn to turn the game around

Masked Sorcerer is pretty worthless, but his ability to draw a card is pretty good. That is, if you ever get a chance to attack and actually deal battle damage to your opponent’s life points. Back when it was only this set and Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon (and the Yugi and Kaiba Starter Decks), though, this was actually a playable card. The card draw was definitely good. Later, there would be Toon Masked Sorcerer, which can attack directly with Toon World on the field. That’s a way better card.

Most of the other commons are normal monsters that were useable back in their day, Launcher Spider, especially. The only other common worth mentioning is Electric Lizard. Why do we care about an 850 ATK and 800 DEF monster? Well, when a non Zombie-type monster attacks him, that monster can’t attack next turn. That’s pretty nice flavor. Somebody ran three of these back in the day, I’m sure.

How would you get the most out of this Metal Raiders pack? Personally, I'd keep the Metal Raiders Mirror Force and call it a day. But, if you're a real value seeker, you could trade it for an Ultra Rare Solemn Judgment from Battles of Legend: Relentless Revenge and get $4+ of extra cards.

There you have it: a halfway decent Metal Raiders booster pack! Want me to open a certain pack? Let me know in the comments!

How to Get the Most Out of a Yu-Gi-Oh Booster Pack: Legend of Blue Eyes Booster Pack

6/25/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

With Magic the Gathering, I’ve done a few simulated booster pack openings and they were a lot of fun. So I decided why not do it with Yu-Gi-Oh using the Yu-Gi-Oh Pack Simulator? At the time of this writing, it doesn’t have every Yu-Gi-Oh set, but it has a ton of them. We’ll first open a Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon pack, and see what we get. Then, we can see what value we may be able to get out of it.

Being the first English Yu-Gi-Oh set, it’s highly collectible. Even some of the commons are valuable!

Here we go:

Meda Bat
Fireyarou
Basic Insect
Terra the Terrible
Dragoness the Wicked Knight (rare)
Two-Mouth Darkruler
Petit Angel
King Fog
Kumootoko

If only we could scale the packs and only open the heavier ones for foils…Then again, we actually have a good rare…

Dragoness the Wicked Knight is a $1 card for unlimited copies (as of 10/2019). 1st edition copies are pricier, though. A near-mint copy could command $8 or more, which is what we'd have here in this pack. While a 1200 ATK level 3 fusion monster doesn’t seem too exciting, she’s one of the first Yu-Gi-Oh cards ever printed. She’s never been reprinted either. And believe it or not, she DOES see play!

That’s right. Dragoness the Wicked Knight sees play because A) she’s an Instant Fusion target being a Level 4 or lower Fusion monster, B) she’s a Warrior, which is always a relevant tribe, and C) she’s Level 3. In this Gouki deck from 2018, she’s a key piece in summoning the Link monster Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights and the Xyz monster M-X-Saber Invoker, among other things.

Also, she used to see play in the famous Goat Control deck of 2005. So, with Goat Format being its own cool little format, this card sees play in most extra decks in that format, since you can use Metamorphosis to tribute your Sangan and get his effect while getting a 1200 ATK Fusion into play.

The eight other commons are normal monsters worth about $0.10 each. Most likely, if you actually opened this pack, you probably paid $10 or more for it. But if you paid $7 or less, you made out with a useful rare. From this set, that’s never a bad thing!

How would you get the most value out of this pack? I’d find a trade partner who’s looking for this fusion monster at a fair price and get some solid deck-building pieces in return. This is a case of “trading down” where you can end up ahead. Of course, were this a 1st edition pack, I’d be holding onto it for my retirement. These cards in 1st edition get so pricey!

Hope you enjoyed this virtual pack opening! If there’s a set you’d like to see me open, let me know in the comments!

Fire Princess Burn Deck - Old School Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck Profile!

6/21/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Many old school Yu-Gi-Oh players will say that 2003 to 2005 was the “golden age” of the competitive game. As I came into Yu-Gi-Oh around the time of Dark Beginning 1, the first major reprint set, I enjoyed the tailend of this “golden age.” The last “old school” set of Ancient Sanctuary had recently come out, along with the first ultimate rare set with Soul of the Duelist. I’d say those early days of Yu-Gi-Oh were my favorite, too. While the years since have had their ups and down, the game was a lot of fun back then.

Today, we’re going back to 2003, though. Around the release of Labyrinth of Nightmare - a freaking awesome set, by the way - the competitive game was actually based mostly in two archetypes, beatdown and burn. There were various permutations of both, but those were basically the best decks in the format. The competitive game would expand a bit in the next year or so, but the Labyrinth of Nightmare Advanced format is very nostalgic for we older Yu-Gi-Oh players.

One of the best Yu-Gi-Oh decks in 2003 was Fire Princess Burn. The Old School Expert on YouTube did we Old School Yu-Gi-Oh fans a favor by sharing a Fire Princess Burn deck list from 2003. Interestingly enough, a lot of this deck is still playable today. Then again, it’s way too slow for today’s format. Let’s take a look at this classic Yu-Gi-Oh burn deck!

Monsters

1 Cure Mermaid
1 Cyber Jar
3 Darklord Marie (Marie the Fallen One)
3 Fire Princess
1 Morphing Jar
3 Nimble Momonga
1 Sangan
2 UFO Turtle
1 Witch of the Black Forest

Spell Cards

1 Card Destruction
1 Dark Hole
2 Graceful Charity
2 Messenger of Peace
1 Monster Reborn
1 Painful Choice
1 Pot of Greed
1 Premature Burial
1 Raigeki
1 Swords of Revealing Light
1 Tribute to the Doomed

Trap Cards

1 Call of the Haunted
1 Ceasefire
3 Gravity Bind
1 Imperial Order
1 Magic Cylinder
1 Magic Jammer
1 Mirror Force
2 Solemn Wishes

Thanks to the Old School Expert for featuring these Yu-Gi-Oh decks on his YouTube channel! Here’s his video:

The strategy of this deck is very straightforward. Get your Darklord Maries (formerly Marie the Fallen Ones) into the graveyard (GY) and one or more Fire Princesses on the field. Let’s see how this deck does this.

Monster Card Breakdown

In this Fire Princess deck profile, we’ll split the cards into what’s banned today and what isn’t. First, we’ll start with the meat of the deck, all but one card of which is still legal in tournament play in 2018.

Three copies of Fire Princess make up the heart of the deck and about half of the overall strategy. Back in Labyrinth of Nightmare, the Princess was a super rare and much more valuable. She was a common in DB1, meaning she was easier to get, but still just as powerful. Having 1300 ATK and 1500 DEF as a four-star monster is fairly underwhelming, but her effect is awesome: any time you gain Life Points, inflict 500 points of damage to your opponent.

This is really strong, as unlike some other burn decks, this deck is actually based on YOU gaining life while using Fire Princess to do the dirty work. Building that life point gap in your favor is how this deck can be fairly consistent.

Two copies of UFO Turtle serve as a way to get your Fire Princess into play. When the Turtle is destroyed by battle, you pull a Fire monster with 1500 or less ATK from your deck and Special Summon it in attack position. There are only two copies, since the other Turtle and the three Princesses are your only legal targets.

Three copies of Darklord Marie make up the other half of this deck’s main burn engine. But, as they are level 5 monsters, to summon her you have to Tribute a monster. Fortunately, there are enough ways to discard her into the graveyard to take advantage of the real reason you play her. During each Standby phase that Darklord Marie is in the graveyard, you gain 200 LP. You gain this 200 LP for each one in the graveyard, too.

Cure Mermaid is only at one copy in this list, although people were known to run more. This 1500 ATK water monster had this ability: “As long as this card remains face-up on your side of the field, increase your Life Points by 800 points during each of your Standby Phases.” While not a bad card at all, she’s fine as a one-of in the deck, although I remember people playing two copies or even three.

Nimble Momonga is the other big life gain card in the deck. There are three copies. The cool thing about Momonga is that when he’s destroyed you gain 1000 LP, but then you get to summon up to two other copies from your deck. This is great for defense, but it’s also good to thin your deck out by a couple of cards, too. This guy was actually played in a variety of different decks because of his versatility.

Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest were seen in almost every deck of the day. When he’s sent from the field to the graveyard, Sangan searches out any monster from your deck that has 1500 or less ATK and adds it to your hand. Witch of the Black Forest is similar, but she finds a monster that has 1500 or less DEF.

Back then, each of these tutor monsters were limited to one per deck. There was a time you could even play two Witches! These guys were always great for deck consistency. It wasn’t until later when you could bring them back again and again and abuse their effects that they were finally banned - although Sangan was legal for far longer than the Witch. But in 2018, Konami not only unbanned these two, but unlimited them! Hurray for old school cards coming back!

Onto what’s banned, the first was legal for quite some time until recently. Morphing Jar was an extremely expensive card when this deck was being played, and it was restricted to one copy per deck. It would actually be banned for a time while I was playing, although it’s unlimited to three copies now. This is a great card in the deck because not only does it let you reload your hand by discarding what you have and drawing five new cards, but it gets Marie in the graveyard. This is a pretty solid card, but it’s not legal in tournament play as of May 2018.

The only other monster that’s banned in tournament play is for good reason. Cyber Jar is one of the meanest, most lopsided cards of all time, in my opinion. It was even legal when I first started playing tournaments. It’s a flip effect monster that destroys all monsters on the field, then you and your opponent reveal the top 5 cards of each of your decks. You special summon any monsters level 4 or lower from among them to the field and add the other cards to your hand. Of course, Cyber Jar could backfire on you, but it was also a way to get Fire Princess and your other key monsters into play.

Spell Card Breakdown

We’ll start with the banned cards in the deck, most of which were deck staples at the time. Painful Choice is probably the most important of these. This spell card let you search out 5 cards from your deck and reveal them. Your opponent chooses one to put into your hand and the other 4 go to your graveyard. Getting this early in the game was always great, because you could potentially choose all three of your Darklord Maries to get them out of your deck. If you had a Monster Reborn or something to get your Fire Princess back right away, you could toss one of them to Painful Choice, too.

Painful Choice helped you get your deck going very quickly. Because of how many decks could use it to great advantage, it eventually was banned. In the 2018 game, it would be the most broken card ever because of how important the graveyard is to today’s game.

Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity were extremely powerful draw cards that would eventually be banned as well. There’s no strategy to Pot of Greed; you just draw two cards. Graceful Charity, which would be at two copies for some time, was a bit more strategic, since although you draw three cards, you have to discard two. However, in this Fire Princess deck, you hope to be able to just toss two Maries.

Card Destruction was legal for years but banned in recent years. This card forces you and your opponent to discard your hand and draw new cards equal to the number you discarded. It was pretty good for reloading a dead hand, but it could help your opponent out, too. It’s just too good in today’s game for filling the graveyard.

The last banned card is Premature Burial. This card wasn’t really worthy of being banned at the time because as an equip spell, it could be destroyed very easily. But, people would discover how easy it was to abuse this card in later years. Other cards would come that allowed you to abuse Equipment cards, which would lead to Premature Burial being banned. But, it’s a great card, because if you have to toss one of your Fire Princesses, you can get it back easily.

Now, onto the unbanned cards, we look at perhaps the best card in the deck: Messenger of Peace! Honestly, the Messenger is one of the best old-school cards that still has seen play in recent years. This continuous Spell Card says: “Monsters with 1500 or more ATK cannot declare an attack. Once per turn, during your Standby Phase, pay 100 LP or destroy this card.” That 100 LP price is so tiny for what it does. There are two copies in the deck, as while you probably want a third copy, drawing into a third can make it a dead card. Personally, though, I’d run three and just run 41 cards. It’s that good, and you want to make sure you get it ASAP.

The monster destruction package in the deck is all still legal in 2018: Dark Hole, Raigeki, and Tribute to the Doomed. While Tribute to the Doomed was often considered a pretty underwhelming card, it can target. The drawback of discarding a card isn’t even a big deal, as you can pitch a Marie or other unneeded card. Decks that played big tribute monsters, like Blue-Eyes White Dragon, also played this card so they could bring back the Dragon with something like Monster Reborn. Of course, Monster Reborn is legal in 2018, too. Not only can he revive one of your monsters, but he can get one of your opponent’s monsters, too! Nifty.

Trap Card Breakdown

The trap cards are all pretty vital to this deck, and the only one banned today is Imperial Order. That’s because Imperial Order is a nasty, dirty card that was banned before I even started playing. Imperial Order negates the effects and activation of all Spell cards.

While Imperial Order has a drawback of requiring the owner to pay 700 LP during each standby phase, this isn’t really a drawback, because you can just choose to destroy it when it no longer suits you. It allowed lesser decks to win games all the time, which is why it was banned.

Onto the cards that make the deck tick…

Solemn Wishes is a sweet little Continuous Trap card that gains you 500 LP each time you would draw cards. While it’s not for each card you draw, this card is going to gain you a lot of life. While three copies would seem better, as having two gains you 500 LP twice, three just clogs up your Spell and Trap zones too much.

That’s because there’s another important Continuous Trap card in the deck, three copies of Gravity Bind. If you can’t get Messenger of Peace to stick, Gravity Bind prevents all monsters Level 4 or higher from attacking. You don’t care about attacking in this deck, anyway. Gravity Bind will often win you the game by itself, and it’s nearly as good in 2018 as it was then - although XYZ and Link monsters get around it by lacking levels.

Ceasefire is a burn deck staple, dealing 500 damage to your opponent for each effect monster on the field, including your opponent’s! It even flips up face-down monsters and negates the effects when they flip. This is a great card for many reasons and it continues to see play in Chain Burn in modern Yu-Gi-Oh! In 2018, you can even run three copies! Back then, and rightly so, you could only play one copy.

Magic Jammer was a card a lot of people were actually not using as much by 2003, but the Old School Expert (and myself) still loved this card. It stops any Spell Card from being activated, for the cost of a discard. Again, that discard can still be to your advantage.

Magic Cylinder was a staple in many decks at the time, but was particularly powerful in burn for obvious reasons. Not only does this Labyrinth of Nightmare secret rare - reprinted since a billion times - negate the attack, but it sends the damage right back at your opponent. Oftentimes, Magic Cylinder could finish a game on its own. One of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh cards of all time, you can play three copies in 2018! But back then, you could only run one, because this card is nasty. Really, it still is.

The last two are format staples: Call of the Haunted and Mirror Force. While Call of the Haunted isn’t played nearly as much in the modern game, it was a great way to revive a Monster that you pitched into the Graveyard earlier. Mirror Force, today at two copies, still is in many modern decks, sometimes in the sideboard.

If I Were Playing This Fire Princess Burn Deck…

Really, the only thing I’d change if I were playing this burn deck in the format that it was made for, is a third copy of Messenger of Peace. There are enough discard outlets in this deck that if I find that third copy as a dead card, it’s not a big deal. I really just want to make sure that I get a Gravity Bind or Messenger of Peace to stick. Otherwise you’re going to be in trouble.

The other thing about this deck is consistency. If you can’t get one of your Fire Princess to stick, it can be miserable. Still, I wouldn’t play a third UFO Turtle, because it’s going to be dead more often than not. This deck is pretty much good as it is.

There were many other burn variants at the time, but they were usually somewhat similar to this. Many people played the full three copies of Cure Mermaid, for example.

There was also Skull Invitation, a trap card from Pharaoh's Servant that would deal 300 damage for each card that went to the graveyard to the owner of the card. You’d be ahead enough in Life Points where this was actually more in your favor. For me, it would’ve been a decent sideboard card, and it was a common by the time I played.

Another Trap card I remember being played sometimes, often in the sideboard, was a short print also from Pharaoh’s Servant called Numinous Healer. This trap card could be activated whenever you took damage to your Life Points. You’d increase your life points by 1000, and for each Numinous Healer already in your Graveyard, it would give you an additional 500 LP. There’s actually a cute combo with Skull Invitation, since the damage you’d take from Invitation could let you activate Healer. While this combo is cool, it’s very reliant on trap cards, so Jinzo would give you a very bad day.

Not long later, Magician’s Force would give the deck Wave-Motion Cannon, a card so powerful it would even be banned for a time.

When I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh “for real” the Fire Princess deck had a lot of new tools. Ancient Sanctuary was the set that was just released when I began playing seriously. This set would give the deck some new ways to go. There were so many great burn cards in the set.

Some people opted to run a Solar Flare Dragon package in addition to Fire Princess for extra burn damage. There was also a Spell Card called Goblin Thief which heals you 500 LP and inflicts 500 damage on your opponent. It was a pretty nasty card with one or more Fire Princess in play.

Spell Absorption would come much later with Flaming Eternity. Way later, in Light of Destruction, there was Golden Ladybug. These cards are awesome, but they’re way out of this era. If you were burning this sort of deck today, though, they’d be highly considered. There’s also “Nurse Burn,” a totally different kind of deck that still sees some play in Modern Yu-Gi-Oh.

Burn has continued to be an awesome archetype in Yu-Gi-Oh! While Fire Princess Burn is much too slow in the Modern game, it was an awesome deck back in its day, and still an awesomely fun deck to play.

Have you ever played with or against Fire Princess? Would you build a Fire Princess burn deck today?

The Legendary Fisherman - Old School YuGiOh Deck Profile

6/20/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Oh, Mako Tsunami and your silly fish deck! Actually, The Legendary Fisherman is quite the classic card. Over the years, especially with the invention of the Mermail archetype, he’s actually become a fairly interesting card to build around. But the real fun with The Legendary Fisherman began with a Field Spell card from Legacy of Darkness, A Legendary Ocean!

Yeah, there’s the Legendary Fisherman II and III, but those are for another day...

The Old School Expert on YouTube built a 41 card deck based around The Legendary Fisherman and A Legendary Ocean. It’s based on an actual deck he played back in 2003 during the Legacy of Darkness Advanced format. While his list wasn’t really meant to be competitive, and more as a fun tribute to Mako Tsunami, it’s a deck that can hold its own.

Monster Cards (16)

3 The Legendary Fisherman
1 Amphibian Beast
3 7 Colored Fish
3 Aqua Spirit
2 Magician of Faith
2 Penguin Soldier
1 Sinister Serpent
1 Witch of the Black Forest

Spell Cards (Magic Cards) (15)

2 A Legendary Ocean
1 Change of Heart
1 Dark Hole
1 Delinquent Duo
2 Graceful Charity
1 Harpie's Feather Duster
1 Monster Reborn
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Painful Choice
1 Pot of Greed
1 Premature Burial
1 Raigeki
1 Snatch Steal
1 The Forceful Sentry

Trap Cards (9)

1 Call of the Haunted
1 Imperial Order
1 Mirror Force
2 Solemn Judgment
2 Tornado Wall
1 Torrential Tribute

Here’s The Old School Expert’s deck Legendary Fisherman profile video:

So, what’s so great about The Legendary Fisherman? He’s a level 5 monster for 1850 ATK? Even back in his day, he wasn’t that great. His ability isn’t bad though. If you have the field spell “Umi” on the field, he can’t be targeted for attack by monsters or be affected by Spell Cards.

OK, that’s awfully niche. “Umi” isn’t all that exciting of a field spell. You may notice it’s not even in this deck list. That’s because A Legendary Ocean is an upgraded version of Umi. Not only does it count as “Umi” when it’s face-up on the field, but it reduces the level of all Water-type monsters in both player’s hands and on the field by one. It also gives all Water-attribute monsters 200 ATK and DEF. That means A Legendary Fisherman becomes a Level 4 monster, meaning you don’t have to Tribute Summon for him. Suddenly, he becomes a lot better.

The other big monster in the deck is a single copy of Amphibian Beast. While this 2400 ATK vanilla monster isn’t too exciting, he gets to be 2600 ATK with A Legendary Ocean or Umi on the field. That’s enough to beat just about any big monster at the time, including Summoned Skull and Jinzo. That’s why he’s here.

For the beatdown, there’s three copies of 7 Colored Fish. He’s 1800 ATK on his own, and 2000 ATK with A Legendary Ocean in play. He beats all of the beatsticks of the day with 2000 ATK.

Aqua Spirit is a card that’s continued to see play well into 2018 in Mermail decks. This level 4 monster has 1600 ATK, which isn’t bad. You can only Special Summon Aqua Spirit, with the cost being removing 1 Water monster from your graveyard from play (AKA banishing). That’s not bad. Heck, it’s still playable now! Ordinarily, you really would want only two copies of Aqua Spirit, but back in this time, there weren’t a ton of great Water monsters to play.

In fact, there are only three other Water monsters in this deck. Two of them are two copies of Penguin Soldier. One of the better monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh for a long time, this little flip effect monster was a Starter Deck Joey exclusive for years. His effect: You can return up to 2 Monster Cards from the field to the owner's hand. Talk about really messing up your opponent’s plans! He’s a sweet little tempo card that saw play even into the Synchro Monster and XYZ Monster eras of the game!

The last Water monster in the deck is one that was banned in tournament play for years: Sinister Serpent! It would later be unlimited after a very controversial errata that we’ll get to in a minute. Originally, the Serpent could be brought back to your hand on any Standby phase that it was in the graveyard. Basically, it was always a free discard or throw-away monster. This made it a little too good, and after being limited to a single copy for a long time, it was finally banned.

But with the release of Premium Gold: Return of the Bling, Konami decided to errata the Serpent, adding an important phrase:

“During your Standby Phase, if this card is in your Graveyard: You can add it to your hand, also banish 1 "Sinister Serpent" from your Graveyard during your opponent's next End Phase. You can only use this effect of "Sinister Serpent" once per turn.”

With the addition of that all-important phrase, Sinister Serpent was considered “fixed” and taken off the ban list. It actually became unlimited. But it means that his ability became far, far less useful. So, if you play by its current errata, keep this in mind.

Witch of the Black Forest was banned in Yu-Gi-Oh for years because it could seek out just about any monster, 1500 DEF or less, you’d want in your deck. She gets pretty much everything in the deck, except the Fisherman. But in 2018, Konami decided we can have three copies again. Hurray!

The Spell Cards besides A Legendary Ocean are all staples of the time. There’s 1 Change of Heart and 1 Snatch Steal for stealing opponent’s monsters. There’s 1 Dark Hole and 1 Raigeki for monster destruction, legal in 2018. The classic now-banned draw power of 1 Pot of Greed and 2 Graceful Charity would be reduced by 1 Graceful Charity in the not-so-distant future.

There’s also the hand control duo of Delinquent Duo and Forceful Sentry, often joined by Confiscation in many decks. These cards would be later banned for giving players too much information and providing too much of an advantage to whoever played them first. There’s the banned Harpie’s Feather Duster, that destroys just your opponent’s spell cards. There’s two copies of Mystical Space Typhoon, as important a card as ever in 2018. Then, Monster Reborn, legal in 2018, and Premature Burial (banned for quite some time) for monster recursion.

There’s also 1 Painful Choice, a card that was always too good in many decks. But it took awhile for this card to be banned, because you had to know how to play it correctly. With Painful Choice, you pick 5 cards from your deck. Your opponent chooses 1 to put in your hand, then the other 4 go to the graveyard. While this deck doesn’t take advantage of the benefits of filling your graveyard quite as much as others, even at the time, it’s still good in the deck. You can throw a big monster in the graveyard to Call of the Haunted, Monster Reborn, or Premature Burial or just thin out your deck with cards you don’t really need. Still, I don’t really like this card in this list, as is.

For the trap cards, there are several staples: 1 Call of the Haunted, 1 Imperial Order, 1 Mirror Force, 2 Solemn Judgment (was unlimited at the time), and 1 Torrential Tribute. In 2018, Solemn Judgment is at one copy and Imperial Order is banned, as it has been for years.

Imperial Order was a really dumb trap card that negated all Spell Cards and you could only stop it if you had a Mystical Space Typhoon to chain to its activation. While it had a drawback of having to pay LP during each standby phase, this was actually an advantage, as the player who controlled it could choose when they no longer needed it.

The last cards in the deck are 2 copies of Tornado Wall. It’s a stall card that’s only good with “Umi” - or “A Legendary Ocean” - on the field. It reduces the damage of all attacking monsters to your Life Points to 0. You can get away with a single copy, though, since it’s going to be a dead card so much of the time.

If I Were Building This Legendary Fisherman Deck…

Honestly, I think this deck is pretty good as it is, if you’re just playing for fun as it’s meant to be played. I would personally swap the Painful Choice for a third A Legendary Ocean. I’d also cut one Tornado Wall to bring the deck down to 40 cards. I may also opt instead for a third Penguin Soldier. While the deck doesn’t really need it badly, I like it for slowing your opponent down and it gives you another needed Water monster.

With the 2018 card pool, Xyz Monsters, and Link Monsters, and whatnot, there’s a sweet little rogue deck here. But this is an Old School deck meant to be played against old school decks. For what it is, it’s awesome!

Have you ever played with or against The Legendary Fisherman? I’d love to hear your stories about this card!

Sky Scourge Invicil - Old School Duelist Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review

6/20/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Sky Scourge Invicil is a neat super rare card from Yu-Gi-Oh’s wildly popular Force of the Breaker set. It was never worth a ton of money, but it was included in some Counter Fairy sideboards (back in the day). Invicil is a bit of a niche card, but when the right monster is tributed for it, the effects it offers are pretty neat.

Invicil can’t be Special Summoned, but that’s OK. If you tribute a Light Fairy-type monster to summon it, you negate the effects of all Spell cards. Basically, Invicil becomes Imperial Order on a stick. While you could just play Spell Canceller instead, which can be Tributed with anything to negate all spells, in a Fairy deck, it’s good enough. It’s also a lot cheaper price-wise.

But that’s not all. If you tribute a Dark Fiend-type monster instead, you get to negate all Trap Cards instead. Basically, you get a poor man’s Jinzo, not that Jinzo is even expensive. He used to be, though. There have been decks that play both Fairies and Fiends to good effect, but this is the less used option since you can just run Jinzo (and his 2400 ATK) instead.

Back in the day, I think what hurt Sky Scourge Invicil from seeing much play was that he had only 2200 ATK. There were plenty of 2400 ATK tribute monsters by that point, so this poor fellow would just get run over. Also, Spell Canceller was more versatile than Invicil for the Spell-cancelling ability. And Fiend decks weren’t falling over themselves to get a worse Jinzo.

Still, Invicil was easy to get as Force of the Breaker was a very popular set and people would groan seeing Invicil instead of Raiza the Storm Monarch as a super rare in the pack. So, if you played Fairies or Fiends (or both) this was a nice card to throw into your sideboard.

The Sky Scourge Invicil Sky High Price Spike

In June 2018, the formerly $1 Sky Scourge Invicil shot through the roof in price. It hit $30 at one point! Ultimate rare versions, formerly $3, shot up to over $75, some copies even breaching $100 on eBay! Who the heck bought all these guys out?

Dunno.

Some players apparently got wise to the fact that there just weren’t a ton of Invicils out there. After all, Fairies are still very popular among the casual Yu-Gi-Oh crowd and a lot of Fairy players have held onto their playset of three copies over the years.

Also, did anyone actually buy Invicil at the sudden price spike? It doesn’t appear that way. Invicil came back to earth pretty quickly, but at a higher price than before. Seems this monster needed a price correction for years. With how old Force of the Breaker is at this point, it’s not crazy that Invicil is a $5 card.

Sure, Invicil is a niche monster. Being Earth-type isn’t very synergistic with Fairies, either. But being Earth-type has other advantages. The game of Yu-Gi-Oh is so different today and when a card like Invicil outlives its usefulness, it’s easy to use it as material for something else.

Sky Scourge Invicil is no Spell Canceller or Jinzo. It’s in a weird space in between the two and only useful in very particular decks. But Yu-Gi-Oh is a game of archetypes and synergies, and Invicil in the right deck is definitely effective. This is also the kind of monster that doesn’t seem all that worthy of a reprint, so it’s a nice collectible card, too.

What do you think of Sky Scourge Invicil?

Spell Canceller - An Old School YuGiOh Card Review

6/16/2018

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

One of the cooler ultra rare cards from Magician’s Force was a card called Spell Canceller. This level 5 monster prevents the activation of Spell cards and negates the effects of any Spell cards already in play. Basically, he’s an Imperial Order - a card that’s been banned in tournament forever - on a level 5 monster with below average attack and defense stats.

Later reprinted in Dark Revelation Volume 1, Spell Canceller was always an interesting card. This Machine monster has found its way into many sideboards over the years. Spell Canceller and Jinzo have also teamed up in control decks. In that deck, Jinzo will shut down trap cards, and Spell Canceller will shut out Spell cards. It's a strategy that has continued all the way into 2019.

The deck that has run Spell Canceller the most in recent years is Burning Abyss. Starting in 2005, Burning Abyss sideboards would run two or three copies as a way to shut down matchups that relied heavily on spell cards - and there are many of them. While Burning Abyss has faded from the competitive spotlight, Spell Canceller still finds itself in a lot of sideboards.

Spell Canceller VS Pendulum Monsters

The other thing that’s made Spell Canceller more popular in recent years is the invention of Pendulum Monsters. In fact, it was Pendulum Monsters being introduced to the game that created a huge new demand for Spell Canceller. After all, Pendulum Monsters are treated as Spell Cards when placed in Pendulum Zones, and Spell Canceller not only negates the effects of Pendulum Monsters already there, but new ones can’t be played, either. Spell Canceller essentially makes Pendulum monster decks unplayable.

As a level 5 monster with only 1800 ATK and 1600 DEF, he doesn’t really seem worth Tributing a monster to summon. But he certainly is, since he can shut down entire decks. Also, with Synchro, XYZ, and Link Monsters in play today, if he’s no longer needed, it’s easy to use him as material for another monster.

Spell Canceller is a great example of a monster from many years back that still sees play after over a decade of existence. He’s becoming a pretty rare card, too, and it’s hard to say if he’s going to see a reprint. This is definitely an old-school Yu-Gi-Oh card that you want to keep an eye out for, because it’s just going to keep seeing play.

Cockadoodledoo! - A Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review

6/14/2018

by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

I’m not sure what surprises me more: that there’s a Yu-Gi-Oh card called Cockadoodledoo, or that a card called Cockadoodledoo is actually good. Originally printed in the Judgment of the Light set and reprinted in the 2014 Mega-Tins Mega Pack, this Ultra Rare Level 5 Tuner is much more than it first appears.

With 1600 ATK and 2000 DEF, the Winged Beast Cockadoodledoo seems nothing to write home about, not for a Level 5 monster. But the effects is where this rooster gets interesting. If there are no monsters on the field, you can special summon Cockadoodledoo from your hand as a Level 3 monster! That’s pretty neat. But if your opponent controls a monster, and you don’t, you can special summon Cockadoodledoo as a Level 4 monster!

There’s only one drawback to Cockadoodledoo. If he leaves the field for any reason, you banish him instead of sending him to the graveyard. This is sad, but considering how versatile he is, it’s worth the cost. As a tuner, he can help summon just about any Synchro Monster there is.

Unsurprisingly, Cockadoodledoo has seen some competitive play, from way back in late 2014 in Qliphorts decks to ABC-Dragon Buster decks in 2018. Being able to be Level 3, Level 4, or Level 5 depending on the situation is quite a boon in any Synchro-happy deck. This is a very good card, despite how silly the name and art would make it seem.

Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire - A Yu-Gi-Oh Secret Rare Card Review

6/13/2018

by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

An Old School Duelist’s Review of a New School “Fur Hire” Yu-Gi-Oh! Card

Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire has really caught my attention from the Yu-Gi-Oh Dark Saviors set. Dark Saviors introduces the “Fur Hire” archetype to the game, and in many ways, they remind me of Blackwings, except potentially more consistent! The Fur Hire monsters are great at swarming, which can lead to all sorts of shenanigans. In particular the Porcupine Warrior, Beat, who looks rather like a cat with a porcupine suit to me, is very important to the deck’s strategy.

Like other Fur Hire monsters, Beat allows you during your Main Phase, you can special summon another Fur Hire monster from your hand, as long as it’s not another copy of Beat. What makes Beat special is that if any monster "Fur Hire" is special summoned while Beat’s in play, you can add another “Fur Hire” monster, except another Beat, from your Deck to your hand. This is really solid, because it means you can always keep loading up on monsters into your hand. While you can only use either effect once per turn, that’s more than good enough.

As a secret rare from Dark Saviors, a set in which cards are either Super Rare or Secret Rare, Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire is one of the more sought-after cards in the set. While Beat has a really powerful second effect, his stats are a bit underwhelming, a Level 3 warrior with 1200 ATK and 500 DEF. Still, no “Fur Hire” deck should go without playing the full three copies of Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire, just because he helps your deck’s consistency in adding monsters to your hand for a constant onslaught.

Do you like the “Fur Hire” monsters? They seem pretty cool to me.

Yu-Gi-Oh - Solemn Judgment and Monster Reborn No Longer Banned in Tournament Play (February 2018)

2/4/2018

Classic Yu-Gi-Oh cards Solemn Judgment and Monster Reborn are unbanned from the Forbidden List.

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

Solemn Judgment and Monster Reborn were staples in almost every Yu-Gi-Oh for many years. But there came a time when Konami decided that these cards were too powerful and too much of an auto-include to remain legal in tournament play. For years, these two cards weren't allowed in tournament play.

But in Feburary 2018, Solemn Judgment and Monster Reborn were removed from the Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden List and moved to the Limited list. This means that you may now play one copy of each of these cards in any deck in tournament play – effective February 5th, 2018.

Plus, after July 15th, 2019, Solemn Judgment was unrestricted, meaning you could play up to three copies in a deck!

So should everyone go out and grab some copies of Solemn Judgment and Monster Reborn to slot into their decks?

Absolutely!

Solemn Judgment is an awesome counter trap card originally printed in Metal Raiders, but has been reprinted many times over the years. It allows you stop a summon or the activation a spell or trap card. The cost is half of your Life Points. While this seems like a hefty cost, later in the game when your life points are already low, this isn't a huge cost.

Once, many decks would play three copies of this card. One copy is perfectly fine to have as a catch-all counter. But, now that it's again unlimited, it will be interesting to see just how many people play three copies again. It's a great card for just about any Yu-Gi-Oh deck and a classic Yu-Gi-Oh card.

While Solemn Judgment was always a good card in competitive play, Monster Reborn is easily the more iconic Yu-Gi-Oh card of the two. Monster Reborn saw tons of play in the anime and what it does is extremely straightforward: special summon a monster from either player's graveyard. Yes, that's extremely powerful. But Konami decided that it was time to bring back this classic card to competitive play to see how it fares.

Both of these cards will be showing up all over the places. It will be interesting to see how these two cards fit into today's top Yu-Gi-Oh decks.

Yu-Gi-Oh Old School Duelist Reviews - Legendary Six Samurai - Kizan

11/30/2017

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Six Samurai have always been one of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! Decks. When I returned to the game for a short time awhile back, Six Samurai was the deck I played. It was good, and it was cheap.

The release of the Spirit Warriors booster pack brought brand new Six Samurai monsters to give the deck some newfound power! They’re called the Secret Six Samurai. The Level 1 Tuner, Secret Six Samurai - Fuma, seems to be the best of the lot by far.

But the best selling Six Samurai from the set (and the best selling Yu-Gi-Oh card on TCGPlayer in November 2017) is Legendary Six Samurai - Kizan.

Kizan is very straightforward. If you control another Six Samurai monster other than Kizan, you can special summon Kizan from your hand. If you control two other Six Samurai monsters, he gains 300 ATK and DEF. He’s been a staple in Six Samurai decks since his release in Storm of Ragnarok.

With Spirit Warriors releasing new Secret Six Samurai monsters, I’m excited to see a classic Yu-Gi-Oh deck get some new blood!