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by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  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:
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?
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by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  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? by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  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!
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! by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  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! . by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  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!
by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist 
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:
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! by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  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? by Phoenix Desertsong, 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 on this monster 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. by Phoenix Desertsong, 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. by Phoenix Desertsong, Video Game Fanatic  Kameo: Elements of Power is a fantasy adventure/action platform game for the XBox 360. The game was created by Microsoft Game Studios. It features excellent graphics and a multiplayer co-op mode that you can play locally or online.
What Do You Do in Kameo: Elements of Power? Kameo: Elements of Power takes a somewhat unique approach to fantasy action games. You are in control of Kameo, who has the power to transform into a wide range of elemental warriors. These creatures are collected throughout the game and have unique powers and abilities tied to elements such as earth, water, and fire. As you progress through the game, you’ll find yourself switching back and forth between the warriors while solving puzzles and working your way through the levels. In each level, you’ll often use at least two or three different warriors to take advantage of various abilities. What Are Some of the Elemental Warriors That Kameo Controls? Each of Kameo’s elemental warriors has fun to use abilities. Some characters are only used for certain purposes in parts of the game and aren’t needed later. But many of the characters are useful throughout the game. The first warrior you play as with Kameo is Pummelweed. This character is an Earth elemental warrior who’s a vine-like plant creature. Pummelweed has tentacles with red flowers which he uses as boxing gloves. You’ll return to using this warrior on multiple occasions for his melee combat abilities. His signature move is an extremely powerful uppercut move. Another great warrior you use with Kameo is called Major Ruin. He is an armadillo-like creature whose abilities make him a sort of wrecking ball that’s also useful to jumping over gaps.is useful in jumping over gaps and can be useful in defeating enemies. What the Best Parts of Playing Kameo: Elements of Power? The multiplayer co-op mode is considered one of the best parts about Kameo. You unlock the multiplayer missions as you progress through the single player story mode. Also, the game is beautiful graphically with thoughtfully designed player characters. There’s a great mix of action, adventure, and strategy which makes it a must-have game for any platform video game fans. Buy Kameo: Elements of Power on Amazon. 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 Phoenix Desertsong
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. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist
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! Can a Gladiator Beast Deck Still Be Competitive in 2019? - Yu-Gi-Oh Old School Duelist Stories11/29/2017 by Phoenix Desertsong Can Gladiator Beast Bestiari & Friends Still Impact Competitive Yu-Gi-Oh?
But nowadays, Bestiari is unlimited. So why has no one seemed to notice that there’s a chance for Gladiator Beast decks to be competitive again in 2019 and beyond?
What made Bestiari so good? Gladiator Beasts have this crazy ability that allows them to swap out with other Gladiator Beasts from the deck at the end of the damage step of a combat that monster has been involved in. While there are bigger Beasts and other very useful Beasts, Bestiari was the primary engine of the deck. Not only can he destroy a Spell or Trap card on the field (face-down or face-up) when he’s tagged in from the deck, but he’s the necessary piece for a Contact Fusion into Gladiator Beast Gyzarus. Not only does he have 2400 ATK, but he destroys 2 cards on the field when he enters! Then, he can tag back out after combat and get you two other Gladiator Beasts! Gladiator Beasts really were a cool archetype because there is actually a lot of important decision-making and strategy to playing the deck properly. But as new and quicker decks hit the scene (Blackwings FTK for example), Gladiator Beast decks sort of took a back seat. So, in the world of Xyz overlays and Pendulum monster insanity, could they still be competitive? The last time a Gladiator Beast deck won a major tournament was 2014. Check out this list that won the Bulgaria National Championship in June 2014. Main Deck (40 Cards) Monsters 2x Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Bear 1x Coach Soldier Wolfbark 1x Gladiator Beast Bestiari 2x Gladiator Beast Darius 2x Gladiator Beast Equeste 2x Gladiator Beast Laquari 1x Thunder King Rai-Oh Spells 1x Book of Moon 1x Dark Hole 3x Fire Formation - Tenki 3x Forbidden Lance 3x Mystical Space Typhoon 1x Shrink Traps 2x Black Horn of Heaven 1x Bottomless Trap Hole 1x Compulsory Evacuation Device 2x Dimensional Prison 3x Gladiator Beast War Chariot 2x Mirror Force 1x Needle Ceiling 1x Solemn Warning 1x Torrential Tribute 2x Vanity's Emptiness 1x Wiretap Extra Deck (15 Cards) Fusion 1x Chimeratech Fortress Dragon 1x Gladiator Beast Essedarii 2x Gladiator Beast Gyzarus 1x Gladiator Beast Heraklinos Xyz 1x Abyss Dweller 2x Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Tiger King 1x Daigusto Emeral 1x Diamond Dire Wolf 1x Evilswarm Exciton Knight 1x Gagaga Cowboy 1x Gem-Knight Pearl 1x Maestroke the Symphony Djinn 1x Number 101: Silent Honor ARK This deck isn’t even playable as constructed anymore, as the banned & restricted list has changed a bunch, I didn’t recall Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Bear joining the deck along with Fire Formation - Tenki. But I was pretty much gone from Duel Monsters at that point. Using input from another top 8 list from a Lisbon, Portugal Regional tournament earlier that year, I’ve come up with this revised list Main Deck (40 Cards) Monsters 1x Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Bear 3x Gladiator Beast Bestiari 2x Gladiator Beast Darius 2x Gladiator Beast Equeste 3x Gladiator Beast Laquari 1x Gladiator Beast Retiari 2x Thunder King Rai-Oh Spells 1x Book of Moon 2x Fire Formation - Tenki 3x Forbidden Lance 3x Gladiator Proving Ground 1x Mystical Space Typhoon 2x Pot of Duality 1x Raigeki / Dark Hole Traps 1x Black Horn of Heaven 1x Bottomless Trap Hole 1x Compulsory Evacuation Device 2x Dimensional Prison 2x Fiendish Chain 3x Gladiator Beast War Chariot 1x Mirror Force 1x Solemn Warning 1x Torrential Tribute Extra Deck (15 Cards) Fusion Monsters 2x Gladiator Beast Essedarii 3x Gladiator Beast Gyzarus 1x Gladiator Beast Heraklinos XYZ Monsters 1x Abyss Dweller 1x Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Tiger King 1x Bujintei Kagutsuchi 1x Diamond Dire Wolf 1x Gagaga Cowboy 1x Gem-Knight Pearl 1x Lightning Chidori 1x Maestroke the Symphony Djinn 1x Steelswarm Roach Or really whatever XYZ Monsters you want really. This revised deck-list is just a starting point, but right away, you can see it is considerably different than the last world-beating list that Gladiator Beasts enjoyed. Let’s go through what makes this deck tick. The Fire Fist package is cute but is actually a nice little addition to the deck. Gladiator Beast Darius and Gladiator Beast Laquari are Beast-Warriors, so Fire Formation - Tenki is a really nice card to have. The extra 100 ATK is something, but adding one of your Darius or Laquari to your hand is even better. The Tiger King is a useful Xyz monster to have around, too. Having 3 copies of Bestiari means that we can run the three copies of Gyzarus in the Extra Deck. Really, what made this deck so blasted good is something you can do again. Darius is really cool because he can Special Summon a Gladiator Beast from your graveyard when he enters the field from the deck! While the effect is negated, you can easily grab a dead Bestiari for a quick Gyzarus summon. Really it’s just a great way to recycle Gladiator Beasts that were destroyed back into the deck. With 3 Bestiari, Darius becomes more important than he has been in years. Equeste is similar to Darius, except that the Beast goes to your hand, not the field. In some cases, this is even better. Laquari is the big beater of the deck, as he becomes a 2100 ATK beater when he’s summoned from the deck. He’s also the primary piece of contact fusion summoning Heraklinos. One Retiari has been a staple in Gladiator Beasts decks for a long time. His ability when summoned from the Deck is to remove 1 card from your opponent’s Graveyard. While this isn’t always relevant, it can mess up a lot of strategies. It’s the most expendable of the Gladiator Beasts, but having one is necessary so that you can have enough different Gladiator Beasts with different names in the deck. Thunder King Rai-Oh was limited to a single copy for a time, but now he’s back to two copies allowed per deck. What makes him so good in Gladiator Beasts is that he shuts down players being able to add cards from their deck to their hand. While this seems really bad with Gladiator Proving Ground in the deck, Gladiator Beasts decks have been playing Rai-Oh for years due to his other ability: you can sacrifice him to negate a Special Summoning. So while you may have a dead Gladiator Proving Ground or Fire Formation - Tenki in hand sometimes with Rai-Oh on board, that ability to stop a special summon is too big not to play! Onto the spells, Book of Moon is a staple. In Gladiator Beasts though, it’s even better as it can allow you to flip a monster into face-down defense position so you can survive a combat with a bigger guy. Gladiator Beasts are one of those unusual decks with which it’s sometimes advantageous to deal damage to yourself during combat. Being able to tag out is how this deck functions, after all. We’ve already gone into Tenki, so let’s discuss another staple in Forbidden Lance. Having had the chance to play with Lance years ago, I’ll say it’s probably the most important combat trick in the deck. Having a monster lose 800 ATK is huge. But it can also save your creature from a Spell or Trap card, too. It’s one of the most versatile quick-play spells in Yu-Gi-Oh. Awesome card! Gladiator Proving Ground is really bad with a face-up Rai-Oh on board, but the rest of the time, it gets any of your Gladiator Beasts to your hand. Usually, Gladiator Beasts decks play 3 copies of Mystical Space Typhoon. But since we have 3 Bestiari and so many other important spells and traps, we had to cut down to 1. Two more copies could be put in the side deck for certain match-ups. While Pot of Duality is no longer limited, two copies in Gladiator Beasts are enough. It’s such a Special Summon happy deck that Duality can cost you a turn. But the card selection Duality provides is worth running it. After all, you don’t have to tag out every turn. However, in today’s game, I could see replacing these with the two MST we cut. I’d have to playtest this build a ton in order to answer that question. The trap cards are pretty much all classic Yu-Gi-Oh staples. Gladiator Beast War Chariot is the only one that needs special explanation. This card has always been powerful, but negating the activation of an Effect Monster’s effect is activated AND destroying that monster is very powerful. The only drawback? You have to have a face-up Gladiator Beast on the field. Seems fine and better than ever. What About the Other Gladiator Beasts? There are other Gladiator Beasts that used to see a lot of play, but aren’t in this deck. Let’s see if they still might belong, at least out of the Side Deck. Gladiator Beast Hoplomus. A base DEF of 2100 is nothing to sneeze at, and when he’s summoned from the deck, it’s 2400 DEF. He’s basically just a wall, but there are still plenty of monsters that can’t beat 2400 DEF. Still, he’s not as good now as he was in the Gladiator Assault days. Gladiator Beast Murmillo. This little fish has a powerful effect: destroy 1 face-up monster. With only 800 DEF and 400 ATK, and being Level 3, he’s just not the best main deck option anymore. Still, he blows a guy up, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Gladiator Beast Samnite. Being Level 3 is what hurts Samnite these days. He also brings a Gladiator Beast from your Deck to your hand, which while good, is just another bad combination with Rai-Oh. He requires the deck to be built differently than what we have right now. Gladiator Beast Secutor. This little guy can actually summon TWO Gladiator Beast monsters. It’s a shame that he hasn’t seen play in years. But, with only 400 ATK and 300 DEF, he's really weak. The payoff can be worth it, though. Still, he may be worth a shot in place of Retiari in some match-ups. The primary issue with these 4 guys is that none of them are Beast-Warriors. If we were to eliminate the Fire Formation Package and a Proving Ground, they may all fit. But would the deck be as good without the added card advantage? Maybe, maybe not. Only playtesting can tell us. Can Gladiator Beasts Compete in 2018 and Beyond? Since 2014, I have seen Gladiator Beasts decks occasionally win an odd tournament here and there. Nothing major, though. I really feel as bigger and more explosive archetypes have been released, Gladiator Beasts just sort of got left behind. But there’s still a lot of power in this deck. Also, it’s possible that the Fire Formation package isn’t even necessary. Perhaps our old Gladiator Beast friends that we haven’t included - Hoplomus, Murmillo, Samnite, and Secutor, in particular - actually belong instead. My feeling is to include them in the side deck, along with other meta-busting cards and see what the best build shapes up to be. While I won’t be building this deck anytime soon for myself, I feel like there are plenty of duelists out there who’d love to give the old Gladiator Beast toolbox a spin again. The deck is extremely inexpensive to build nowadays. Why not? Did you ever play Gladiator Beasts at any point? Is this a deck you would ever build again, just to play it for fun? Let us know in the comments! Here are some other Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game articles you may enjoy: - Yu-Gi-Oh Blackwings Deck 2018 Profile - Is a Toon Deck Now Competitive with Toon Kingdom? - 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 by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  With the release of the Ixalan set in Magic the Gathering, Mono-White Vampires became a competitive deck. Previously, Vampires had been in Black and Red, with the occasional Black/White Vampire. Ixalan released a number of mono-White Vampires, including the Legendary Creature Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle.
Mavren’s ability gives you a 1/1 Vampire creature token with lifelink whenever one or more of your nontoken Vampires attack. While one token doesn't seem like a huge deal, the incremental advantage adds up quickly. The added ability of lifelink on those tokens also makes it much harder for your opponent to wear you down over the course of a game. It also helps that available to those Mono-White Vampire decks was Anointed Procession, a token-doubling Enchantment. Add to that early Mono-White Vampire decks often played Angel of Invention which pumps all of your other creatures by +1/+1, suddenly making those tokens suddenly twice as scary! With Vampires being a popular tribe in Magic the Gathering, there's also a lot of casual demand for Mavren Fein. Vampires are a huge deal at the kitchen table, and Vampire Tribal Commander decks also want Mavren. A few select decks play the Dusk Apostle more than others, including decks led by Edgar Markov, Vona, Butcher of Magan, and Elenda, the Dusk Rose. While Mono-White Vampires didn’t become a long-term contender, Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle is still a good card. Especially in Commander where Vampires love creating tokens, the additional tokens from Mavren are a great complement to an already powerful tribe in the format. The only downside is that many Vampire decks don’t play White, but those that do are happy to have Mavren Fein around to help press the attack. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  Gaining life is a very popular thing to do in Magic the Gathering. While most life-gain specific cards don't become widely adopted in competitive play, they are a huge part of casual "kitchen table" Magic. However, there is a lot to like about Sanguine Sacrament, an instant from the Ixalan set. Not only can this card gain you some life, but you even have the chance to reuse it over the course of the game! Let's break it down. Sanguine Sacrament is an instant that costs XWW. This means you must have two White mana and enough mana to pay for X to make it worth casting. Already, this seems like a fair investment, as later in the game, you can pump quite a bit of mana into this card. Being at instant speed means you can potentially use this card gain yourself enough life in order to not be dealt lethal damage. Best of all, you gain twice as much life as you pay for X.
Now, to make this card "worth" casting, you need to be able to invest quite a bit of mana into X. However, there is one thing about this card that makes it potentially valuable: when you cast it, you put it at the bottom of your library instead of putting it in your graveyard. That's actually a really big deal. Because this card is an instant, you can use it early in the game when you may not otherwise have a play in order to gain some quick life, even if it's only 2 or 4 life. Every point of life matters in Magic. While this card wasn't going to see much play in Standard nor Modern, there is the possibility that this card may still see play in a semi-competitive combo deck. A deck that can produce a good deal of mana can make great use of this card. The real place for Sanguine Sacrament to shine is in Commander (EDH), where life-gain is not only useful, but can be an asset. There are many win conditions in Magic that involve having a certain life total, and this is one way to potentially gain yourself enough life to satisfy them. There's Felidar Sovereign, for example, which lets you win the game if you have 40 or more life at the beginning of your turn. Sanguine Sacrament being at instant speed means that you can cast this card at the end of an opponent's turn. It can be a quick and dirty way to gain enough life to let the Sovereign win you the game. It's not the only way to win with this card, but it's one of the more popular ones. In EDH, there's also a popular creature called Rhox Faithmender that doubles any lifegain effect that you may have while he's on the battlefield. Also, a popular enchantment called Sunbond gives its enchanted creature as many +1/+1 counters as points of life that you gain. Sanguine Sacrament definitely belongs in any MTG deck that runs those cards. Sanguine Sacrament is worth keeping an eye on because it does something that's popular in casual Magic, and casual Magic players make up the majority of the player base. It can fit into a wide array of strategies, and while it's not a primary card to enable a strategy, it does complement them. Lifegain is always going to be good in Magic. Also, since it has the ability to either keep combo decks alive with its effect or even win the game by increasing your life total beyond a certain level, it's always going to have some demand. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  Winterflame from Khans of Tarkir is no Fire // Ice. Whereas Fire // Ice, a popular Legacy card, was a split card which let you choose which half to cast, Winterflame gives you the ability to get one or both effects. Most of the time, you would choose both. But it’s not quite as good as the classic split card.
Fire for 1R gave you the option to split the 2 damage between one or two creatures or players. Ice gave you the option to not only tap a target permanent for 1U, but also drew you a card. Winterflame is definitely a powered down version of these two effects. It only allows you to tap creatures, which isn’t quite as useful as Ice, plus you don’t get the benefit of drawing a card. It’s much weaker than Electrolyze, which is basically Fire except that it also draws you a card, also for 1UR. It’s a weaker version of those two cards. Adding drawing a card as a third option while still only allowing two to be chosen would have made this much better. As it is, Winterflame probably wasn’t even good enough to be a rare. Although Khans of Tarkir turned out to have plenty of powerful cards, Winterflame was certainly not one of them. It didn’t really see any sideboard play. Even in Commander, a format that tends to adopt many competitively shunned spells, only a handful of Melek, Izzet Paragon decks bothered to include this card. Outside of Khans of Tarkir Limited (drafts and sealed deck), this card was pretty much a dud. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  If any Magic the Gathering deck archetype was boosted more than Humans by the Avacyn Restored set, it would be Angels. Being that the premier card of the set Avacyn, Angel of Hope is an Angel, this should have probably been an obvious consideration of Wizards of the Coast Research & Development. It couldn’t be overlooked that once relatively unplayable Angel cards suddenly have a bit more value because of this set. In particular, Requiem Angel is very glad Avacyn is now free of the Helvault!
(See, something good did come out of that awful mythic rare from Dark Ascension!) Requiem Angel is a 5/5 flyer with a six mana casting cost (5 colorless, 1 White) with a decent effect. Whenever another non-Spirit creature you control dies, you put a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying onto the board. For 6 mana, this is OK. She gets better alongside Herald of War, also from Avacyn Restored, who can reduce the casting costs of your Angels for each +1/+1 counter on the Herald. This means you can cast Requiem Angel for as little as one mana, not that it would happen often. Requiem Angel was a neat card, but she never really saw Standard play, which shouldn’t be too surprising due to her position on the mana curve. Requiem Angel in Commander / EDH Interestingly enough, Angel Tribal Commander decks, such as Sephara, Sky’s Blade, aren’t the key home for Requiem Angel. Rather, she’s great in the Commander decks that can best take advantage of the Spirit tokens she creates. Notably, unlike a lot of creatures who generate tokens when other creatures die, Requiem Angel doesn’t care if those creatures are tokens or not, which is a major plus in decks who basically thrive off of their token generation. No Commander has recruited her as much as Teysa Karlov, whose ability to copy triggered abilities and give creature tokens vigilance and lifelink makes Requiem Angel an obvious include. Her predecessor from Guildpact, Teysa, Orzhov Scion, has also recruited Requiem Angel to create the 3 white creatures she can sacrifice in order to exile a target creature. For quite some time, Ghave, Guru of Spores was the Commander she was paired with most. This seems a strange pairing until you consider that Ghave decks produce a lot of tokens, especially Saprolings. So, when any of those Saprolings die, especially when sacrificed using Ghave’s ability, you get a Spirit token. Another Commander who takes advantage of Requiem Angel is Jazal Goldmane. This makes sense since Jazal can boost the flying Spirit tokens the Angel creates. It makes even more sense when you consider Requiem Angel was re-printed in the same Commander 2014 deck as Jazal. Token-happy commanders such as Thalisse, Reverent Medium, Emmara Tandris, and Darien, King of Kjeldor also co-opt her services on more than a few occasions. While she’s hardly any sort of token deck staple, Requiem Angel is a good one to have around for those Commanders who can maximize her abilities. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  Q: How much are 100 Magic playing cards worth?
A: This is one of the more interesting Magic the Gathering finance related questions I’ve been asked. It really comes down to what is in those 100 cards. If it’s mostly land cards, then the stack is relatively worthless. If it’s 100 commons and uncommons, typically no vendor will buy them, since typically stores buy in bulk of 1000 at a time and pay about $3-5/thousand. If there are rares in the pile, you’re looking at least $0.08 to $0.10 per rare, and likely more depending on what the rare is. A stack of 100 rares, for example is going to get you likely $8 or more from a local game store that buys Magic cards. But it’s more likely to be a mixture. It is true that you can buy lots of 100 Magic the Gathering cards for anywhere between $4 and $8 online. Some have more rares than others, and some will have more duplicates than others. But as far as selling them yourself, if there’s nothing of substantial value among the 100 cards, you’re probably looking at a value of between $0.25 and $1. You can learn a lot more about what Magic cards are worth in my post: Magic Card Values: What Are My Magic the Gathering Cards Worth? by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist  Boros Affinity in Pauper?
Pauper is a highly competitive tournament format in Magic the Gathering. It is a format of only common cards, with a relatively small ban list. For years, the format really shined on Magic Online, but now, it has become supported in Paper Magic, as well. What's great about Pauper is the sheer amount of competitive decks you can play. This particular deck, a Boros Affinity deck, once went 4-0 in a Daily Event. While this list we’re looking at today is from 2013, the archetype is still very viable. The best part about this list, is that in MTGO terms, the deck only costs about 10 tix. As you'll discover though when we peruse the list, about 8 tix of that is for the 2 copies of Pyroblast in the sideboard! In paper, it's a mere $40 or so. This is a ridiculously cheap deck! Affinity was always a strong archetype in Pauper, but wasn't getting 4-0 in Daily events until this list popped up. So, what makes this Pauper Affinity deck different? Let's take a look! The Deck List! Creatures 4 Ardent Recruit 4 Vault Skirge 4 Court Homunculus 4 Porcelain Legionnaire 4 Glint Hawk 3 Auriok Sunchaser Non-Creatures 4 Bonesaw 4 Bonesplitter 4 Galvanic Blast 2 Prophetic Prism 2 Lightning Bolt 1 Flayer Husk Land 7 Plains 4 Great Furnace 4 Ancient Den 3 Boros Guildgate 1 Mountain 1 Vault of Whispers Sideboard 3 Stone Rain 2 Lone Missionary 2 Journey to Nowhere 2 Flame Slash 2 Pyroblast 2 Smash to Smithereens 2 Electrickery The Creatures! While this is not a typical Affinity deck, having Artifacts does indeed matter quite a bit here. Starting off with our Ardent Recruit, we have a 1/1 guy that has a Metalcraft ability that gives him +2/+2. Metalcraft is attained by having at least three artifacts on the battlefield. Since the artifact lands (Great Furnace, Ancient Den, and the lone Vault of Whispers) count towards activating this ability, you're most often going to be getting a 3/3 creature for 1 mana! Vault Skirge is a Pauper stalwart. For 1 and a Phyrexian mana (black or 2 life) you have a 1/1 flyer with lifelink. With the one copy of Vault of Whispers in the deck, it's possible to cast it without paying the 2 life. But being an artifact itself, as well as having lifelink, it's worth paying the life just for the creature (especially if casting Skirge gives you Metalcraft!) Having four of these in the deck guarantees a pesky 1/1 flyer with lifelink that gets better with the equipment in the deck! Next we have four Court Homunculus. The Court Homunculus is similar to Ardent Recruit, in that it costs a single white mana, except that it gains +1/+1 as long as you control any other artifact. What's especially interesting about him, though, is that he himself is an artifact. If you simply control another Court Homunculus, it becomes a 2/2. If that wasn't enough, we have a full playset of another Pauper favorite, and one-time Tempered Steel stalwart, Porcelain Legionnaire! For two and a Phyrexian mana (White or two life), you get a 3/1 with first strike. Being able to play him on Turn Two is ridiculous, and he himself is also an artifact! Glint Hawk is a fun little card which used to abuse Mox Opal when it was legal in Standard. But the Hawk became relatively forgotten outside of some Pauper Affinity builds. But in this deck, Glint Hawk works well with the several 0 drop artifacts in this deck. Also, if you would miss a land drop anyway, you can bounce an artifact land back to your hand in order to replay it. The Hawk is a 2/2 flyer, so this down-side really isn't too bad. You have a full playset of these, as well. The last creature is a trio of Auriok Sunchaser. It's a 1/1 for 1W, but its Metalcraft ability gives it +2/+2 and flying! A 3/3 flyer for 2 mana is pretty silly. Non-Creature Lineup! As if the deck couldn't win with just its creature lineup alone, the non-creature spells are pretty interesting, too! The first one is a zero drop, Bone Saw, an equipment that has an equip cost of 1, and gives the equipped creature +0/+1. Seriously, though, you're rarely going to care about equipping this. Mostly, it exists to more easily activate Metalcraft, and to give you something to bounce for Glint Hawk. Next is a full playset of Bonesplitter. It's probably the best equipment in Pauper outside of perhaps Armadillo Cloak. It's a staple in White Weenie, which has been a very competitive strategy in Pauper over the years. Bonesplitter costs only 1 to play and only 1 to equip. It gives a creature +2/+0, and with the flyers in this deck, you can get in some cheap evasive damage very early on! Galvanic Blast is an okay burn spell until you see that it deals 4 damage to target creature or player if you have Metalcraft! Without Metalcraft, it's just a Shoc. But with how often you’ll have Metalcraft, the 4 Galvanic Blasts can almost win you the game on their own! Paired with the 2 Lightning Bolt in the main board, you have plenty of both removal and direct damage. Lastly, we have Prophetic Prism and Flayer Husk. Prophetic Prism is a two-drop artifact that draws you a card when it enters. It also allows you to filter your mana, which is very important in this deck! The Flayer Husk is a Living Weapon equipment that comes into play with a 0/0 creature token attached to it. The Husk gives its equipped creature +1/+1, so it's a nice cheap creature. When the creature dies, or you find a better target for the Husk, it gives that creature +1/+1 for an equip cost of 2. It's not quite Bonesplitter, but it works well. The mana base is 7 Plains and 1 Mountain, with 4 Great Furnace (the red artifact land), 4 Ancient Den (the white Artifact land), 3 Boros Guildgate (red/white), and a single Vault of Whispers (for help with casting the Vault Skirges). The Sideboard! As is the case with many Pauper decks, the majority of the cost of the deck comes from a single card in the sideboard. In this case it's Pyroblast. Basically, what Pyroblast does for a single red mana is counter any target blue spell or destroy any blue permanent. If you don't want to spend the $8 or so to acquire them, though, you could probably just switch them out for 2 more copies of Lightning Bolt. The rest of the sideboard is typically Pauper staples. 3 Stone Rain lets you keep decks off of their most important lands or colors. 2 Lone Missionary can be boarded in against more aggressive decks or burn decks. Gaining that 4 life can certainly be a big deal in certain matchups, especially where this deck will need to race often. For creature removal, we have 2 Journey to Nowhere, 2 Flame Slash (which deals 4 damage to target creature, but is at sorcery speed), and the aforementioned Pyroblasts. We also have Electrickery, which with its very cheap overload cost murders all 1 toughness creatures on your opponent's side of the board. Lastly we have Smash to Smithereens, which is played in many sideboards in other formats. It's excellent artifact removal that also deals 3 damage to that artifact's controller, all for 1R! Impressions of the Deck It's easy to see how this deck wins. It requires very little mana to get going and can survive land destruction and artifact destruction, since it plays plenty of copies of 1 and 2 drop cards. The most expensive card casting cost wise in the deck is technically Porcelain Legionnaire. That will be boarded out in certain match-ups anyway! The best part about this deck's creatures is that they are bigger than their mana costs would lead you to believe. There are plenty of flyers in this deck, and the Bonesplitters alone can lead to some very quick damage. The creature line-up can hold down both the air and ground quite well! Also, the deck has a nice burn package in it. The only thing I'm not crazy about in the deck is probably the lone Flayer Husk. I'd personally run a third Lightning Bolt, and I'm not sure the deck needs the Vault of Whispers or a fourth Legionnaire, either. If I removed these, I'd max out the Bolts. The main reason I feel this way is that 4 Blasts and 4 Bolts in some combination can kill a player outright. But the list, as is, should work fantastic, as it proved in that Daily Event. Side-boarding doesn't look too hard with this deck, either. Honestly, the sideboard probably will only be relevant in mirror matches or against Delver decks. The deck is quick enough that it can win in a hurry. I can see card advantage perhaps becoming an issue, but each card you play delivers a ton of value. Also, the power of each card you can swing with makes up for that. You don't have to overextend yourself with this deck in order to win, which I really like. This deck picks up where White Weenie really started failing. As long as you have that single red source and Metalcraft, this deck can beat you in the air, on the ground, and with pure burn spells. I still want to see 4 Bolts mainboard, and this is something I'll be playing around with myself. If you're looking to get into competitive Pauper, this is the deck to try, I'd say! Minus the Pyroblasts, you're looking at a maximum $6 investment. Not much to lose here, especially since the artifact lands are the majority of that expense, and they're always good to have in Pauper! Plus, you may have the majority of the cards already if you've been playing online for awhile, if not all! Congrats to twoduckcubed for authoring and piloting this 4-0 to victory! Here is the deck list! If you’re looking for a newer, albeit more expensive (30+ tickets / $70), version of this Boros Metalcraft deck, check out this tournament winner piloted by Klybby in October 2017. by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist  When compared to his predecessor in the original Zendikar, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is easier to cast with a potentially much more devastating ability. He only costs 4 mana to the Bloodchief of Ghet’s 7 mana casting cost, meaning he gets into play much sooner. Also, the Bloodchief has a tap ability, which while good, it doesn’t beat the Traitor’s ability. The Traitor of Ghet causes any opponent’s non-token creature that dies to be exiled and you get a 2/2 Zombie token out of it. Also, you can pay 2B and sacrifice a Vampire or Zombie, except himself, to put 2 +1/+1 counters on Kalitas. He even has lifelink!
In Standard, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet proved himself to be a major competitor, making him a $20-25 card in mid-April 2016. He’s pretty good in Modern, too! Because of this, his price tag put him a bit out of reach for some Commander players for some time. When he left Standard, however, his price dropped closer to $12, allowing for more people, especially EDH players, to fit him into their collections. There are so many good mono-Black Commanders already. But Kalitas not only can get you an army of Zombie tokens while shutting off any graveyard-based strategies. He can also make himself bigger, meaning he could potentially take out players on his own. So, why hasn’t Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet become more of a player in EDH where it seems like he would be very powerful? Part of the problem is that he prevents any decks that work at all out of the graveyard to function, while still being able to use your own graveyard. Basically, he can draw hate very quickly. As a member of the 99, he’s still quite useful, but again he draws a lot of hate. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is definitely one of the more powerful Legendary creatures from recent sets. The pieces are there for him to lead formidable decks, and perhaps a bit too formidable for your everyday Commander group to want to deal with on a regular basis. EDHREC has a good sampling of decks with Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet as the Commander. You can check out their Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet page to get an idea of what sorts of EDH decks people build around him. by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist  The Legendary Dragons of Kamigawa are some of the more memorable cards from Champions of Kamigawa. Two of them are considered to be very good, two more of them are pretty good in Commander, but one has never really caught on as a Commander himself. This is the Green Dragon, Jugan, the Rising Star. His effect is good enough that he’s seen play as part of the 99 in some decks. But can you build around him?
Since Jugan’s ability is all about +1/+1 counters, you sort of want to go all out on this theme. Unfortunately, a lot of the best counter-abusing cards are in White. So in Green, you’ll want to take advantage of all of the token producers and use cards that can benefit from having a bunch of counters placed on them. On top of lots of ways to ramp your mana and create lots of tokens, there are plenty of ways to make your token army deadly. Thanks to one TappedOut user with a decent Jugan Commander list, I was able to come up with this deck list below. Whereas the list I found focused primarily on tokens, I found other cards to blend the counter and token strategies in even better ways. Commander Jugan, the Rising Star 3ggg Creatures (16) 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1g 1 Champion of Lambholt 1gg 1 Eternal Witness 1gg 1 Fertilid 2g 1 Lifeblood Hydra xggg 1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer 2g 1 Wild Beastmaster 2g 1 Bloodspore Thrinax 2gg 1 Fangren Firstborn 1ggg 1 Forgotten Ancient 3g 1 Fungal Behemoth 3g 1 Ant Queen 3gg 1 Bane of Progress 4gg 1 Hydra Broodmaster 4gg 1 Rampaging Baloths 4gg 1 Avenger of Zendikar 5gg Spells (45) 1 Hardened Scales g 1 Helix Pinnacle g 1 Earthcraft 1g 1 Regrowth 1g 1 Revive 1g 1 Sword of the Animist 2 1 Arachnogenesis 2g 1 Ashnod's Altar 3 1 Awakening Zone 2g 1 Beastmaster Ascension 2g 1 Blasting Station 3 1 Cultivate 2g 1 Deep Reconnaissance 2g 1 Harrow 2g 1 Journey of Discovery 2g 1 Kodama's Reach 2g 1 Nissa's Pilgrimage 2g 1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar 1gg 1 Search for Tomorrow 2g 1 Squirrel Nest 1gg 1 Beacon of Creation 3g 1 Explosive Vegetation 3g 1 From Beyond 3g 1 Harmonize 2gg 1 Hunting Wilds 3g 1 Into the Wilds 3g 1 Parallel Lives 3g 1 Seer's Sundial 4 1 Skyshroud Claim 3g 1 Doubling Season 4g 1 Eldrazi Monument 5 1 Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury 3gg 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter 2ggg 1 Nissa's Expedition 4g 1 Nissa, Worldwaker 3gg 1 Primal Vigor 4g 1 Restock 3gg 1 Caged Sun 6 1 Death's Presence 5g 1 Nissa's Renewal 5g 1 Akroma's Memorial 7 1 Boundless Realms 6g 1 Howl of the Night Pack 6g 1 Praetor's Counsel 5ggg 1 Decree of Savagery 7gg Lands (38) 36 Forest 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  Many of the Legendary Creatures in Magic the Gathering’s Legendary-happy Kamigawa Block are absolutely terrible as Commanders. A few of them are actually pretty cool. One you rarely hear about is Infernal Kirin.
Similar to his Blue counterpart, Cloudhoof Kirin, he has an ability that activates whenever you cast an Arcane or Spirit spell. Unlike Cloudhoof, though, who mills cards from the top of a target player’s deck, Infernal Kirin causes players to discard cards equal to the converted mana cost of the card you cast. This makes it a lot more hit or miss. But, it can be potentially devastating, as well. There are plenty of good Spirit and Arcane spells, but not nearly as many in Black as there are in Blue. However, the good news is that there is plenty of support for discard in Black. So while all-out Spirit Tribal is necessary for Cloudhoof Kirin, the same is not true of Infernal Kirin. The Spirits and Arcane spells you do play in an Infernal Kirin deck are somewhat random. But because it’s the converted mana cost of the cards you care about, they don’t even really have to be all that good to begin with. It’s a fun deck to try, even if it’s not the most consistent at following the Commander’s gameplan. You can actually build an Infernal Kirin deck for as little as $50! If you're looking to build something fairly competitive around Infernal Kirin, you can build either a Spirit Tribal deck or a Discard themed deck. How would you play Infernal Kirin? by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  Ghoultree is one of my favorite rares in Magic the Gathering's Dark Ascension set. I don’t think it’s hard to see why. Yes, it costs 8 mana to cast, but it’s a 10/10 Zombie Treefolk (awesome creature type combination, by the way) that costs 1 less to cast for each creature card in your graveyard.
It’s not impossible to see Ghoultree being cast for as little as 4 or 5 mana as the game progresses. The single Green mana cost means that you don’t have to be playing strictly mono-green to cast him. Many of the more powerful Green cards have multiple Green mana symbols for a reason. Having only one means that you can potentially cast him for just a single mana. That’s a lot of value. This card is full of flavor, and it’s actually a good card. Kudos to the design team on this one. It never became any sort of competitive staple, and certainly didn’t help top 8 any Star City Opens or Pro Tours. But, it definitely helped win a Friday Night Magic tournament or two. Zombie decks were extremely powerful during the original Innistrad era and this guy saw play when Return to Ravnica came around. Just as an out-of-nowhere big guy it was hard not to find a way to jam him into a fun brew. Obviously, Ghoultree is a good card in EDH, where the likelihood of him being cast for a single green mana is not only possible, but likely. Sapling of Colfenor smiles upon this guy as a strong Treefolk ally. Doran, the Siege Tower doesn’t mind having him around, either. Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant love having a ton of creature cards in the graveyard, so why not get a 10/10 for one mana? There are definitely applications. Being a Zombie doesn’t hurt his cause, either. Just having a 10/10 beater without trample isn’t the best thing in Commander. But, if Ghoultree is cast for next to no mana or cheated onto the battlefield some other way, he can become a Zombie Elephant in the room that someone needs to deal with. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist  With the printing of Modern Masters 2017, plenty of Magic the Gathering cards often played in the Modern format saw huge drops in price due to their being reprinted in the set. This led to Modern decks being built at an astonishing rate, including Eldrazi Ramp. One of the cards featured in that highly competitive deck is Matter Reshaper, which wasn’t reprinted in Modern Masters 2017.
The Matter Reshaper only costs 3 mana to cost, but one of those must be a true "colorless" mana. In Eldrazi decks, this is really never going to be a problem. His “when it dies” effect is also very powerful. When the Reshaper dies, you look at the top card of your deck. If it’s a permanent card that costs 3 mana or less, he puts it into play, including if it’s a land. If the card isn’t a permanent that costs 3 mana or less, you put it into your hand. Either way, he can easily replace himself by putting another card into play or another one in your hand. Sure, if Matter Reshaper gets removed from play (exiled) by a removal effect like on Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares, you won't get the ability. But, more often than not, you'll make sure that he dies. In any case, if he hits the graveyard, you will get something out of him, either way, which is important for keeping tempo. The height of Matter Reshaper’s popularity was in February 2016, as Eldrazi decks were rampaging through the competitive Standard scene. In October, when cards from Oath of the Gatewatch were no longer eligible to be played, there was suddenly a huge supply available. As Modern isn’t nearly as popular as Standard when it comes to competition, his value has suffered over the years, making him one of the cheapest Magic the Gathering playable creatures out there. This rare creature from Oath of the Gatewatch is probably one of the more underrated Eldrazi. Years on, he still sees a good amount of play in a variety of Modern and Legacy Eldrazi decks. As part of a smaller set that was opened a lot, there are a lot of copies out there. If you’re planning on playing Eldrazi any time in the future, this is a card you want a play-set of on-hand (four copies). Eldrazi is his best deck, obviously, and while that’s the only niche he really fits into, that's a highly competitive deck archetype that's not going anywhere. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist Worst Fears was playable in Standard. Is it good in other formats like EDH?  Worst Fears is a mythic rare card from Magic the Gathering’s Journey into Nyx set. A quick look at the card from veteran Magic players saw the popular effect of the Mirrodin artifact Mindslaver on a sorcery. That seems pretty good, until you realize you only get one shot at it, as it’s removed from play after you cast it.
Controlling your opponent's turn is always fun. Yes, Worst Fears does cost eight mana - seven colorless and one Black - which is a bit pricey. But, considering that casting Mindslaver costs 6 mana to cast and the activated ability costs 4 mana, this is a relative bargain. Unlike Mindslaver, though, you can't reuse this card, as it's exiled as soon as it's played. As an artifact, there are many ways to get Mindslaver back into play and use it again. That reusability is why the original Mindslaver is so good, after all. Being a one-shot effect, is this really worth playing? Still, Worst Fears can be a pretty scary card. Especially late in the game, being able to control an opponent's turn can be devastating. Also, having only a single black mana in its mana cost makes it playable in a wide-array of control shells. Even then, many players consider Worst Fears a waste of a mythic rare slot. Then again, I can understand them not wanting to print an effect like this at rare for Limited purposes - even if it was on Mindslaver back in the original Mirrodin days. In today’s Magic, being able to draft this at rare would have made it too much of a problem. That’s why when Mindslaver was reprinted in Scars of Mirrodin, it was bumped up to mythic rare. Just as it was in its original Standard heyday, it was yet again an important card in that Standard format, as well. Modern Tron made heavy use of Mindslaver to great effect for many years, so it was thought Worst Fears could be played a bit in Constructed. Of course, eight mana is a lot, regardless of the format it’s being played in. But, the 8-mana sorcery did sneak into a few Standard decks back in 2014. It did see play in a few Mono-Black Devotion decks, a major competitor during Theros block Standard. One 8th place Standard PPTQ UB Control deck ran a copy in the sideboard. Pro Ali Aintrazi even played a mainboard copy of Worst Fears in his January 2015 Sultai Delve deck at a Standard Open in Washington DC. A "Mono Green" deck even ran one copy in its sideboard, as this Green deck splashed Black mana for Pharika, God of Affliction and Doomwake Giant. Since early 2015, it hasn't seen much in the way of competitive play, in Modern, or otherwise. Worst Fears does see some play in Commander. The Commander who's made the best use of this sorcery is Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge. Jeleva has an ability to exile cards from the top of your deck, and you can cast any instants or sorceries from those exiled cards without paying their mana cost. This means you can play Worst Fears for free whenever you want. In other Commander decks, it's just not really worth an 8 drop slot. The later in the game Worst Fears is played the better, so it's a good effect. But, since you only get one shot at it, you had better play it at the perfect time. Really, it's best if you can find a way to cast it for free. Otherwise, it's not worth casting in most decks. While it had its uses back in its Standard legal days, nowadays you'd be better off with Mindslaver. |
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