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

6/29/2018

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by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist
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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!


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Monster Cards Breakdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Spell Cards Breakdown

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

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

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


Trap Cards Breakdown

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


Sideboard Breakdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



My Thoughts on Beatdown


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6/26/2018

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by  Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist
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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.


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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!



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

6/25/2018

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

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

Here we go:

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

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

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

6/21/2018

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 by  Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist
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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?

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Cockadoodledoo! - A Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review

6/14/2018

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by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist
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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.


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

6/13/2018

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by  Phoenix Desertsong,  Old School Duelist

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

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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.


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