On December 1, Elemental Energy became legal for premier-level events, and players wasted no time in trying out the new cards at the San Francisco Shonen Jump Championship. I’ve been testing out the new cards as well, and today I’d like to give you my take on some of the more popular cards from Elemental Energy, along with my thoughts on some of the most (and least) prevalent cards in the current metagame. First, though, I should explain how I tend to evaluate cards.
As you may have guessed by the title, the criteria by which I look at cards are power, consistency, and utility. I define a first measurement of power as the ability of a card to generate card advantage. Using this measure, the value of a card like Dark Hole is obvious, due to its potential to create up to a five-for-one trade in resources. However, this type of measurement is incomplete, and using it on its own is a good way to miss out on some fantastic cards. For example, Smashing Ground wouldn’t seem too good, as it only creates an even trade of resources—your spell for the opponent’s monster.
The second measure of power, then, is the card’s ability as compared to other similar cards. If we add this factor in, and then evaluate Smashing Ground as compared to other normal spells that generate one-for-one trades, Smashing Ground rises to the top as quite possibly the most powerful piece of non-limited spell-based removal in the format. I’ll examine Smashing Ground in greater detail later on, but first I’ll warn you that simply looking at the power of a card isn’t enough to analyze it properly.
Allow me to provide you with an example of a lackluster card with an extremely high power level: Archlord Zerato. Measuring only by power level, Archlord Zerato should be warping the metagame with its potential five-for-one resource swing. Its ignition effect is the same as the effect of Raigeki, the most powerful monster removal spell ever printed, and yet we never see Archlord Zerato in play. Why is this? Because it’s horribly inconsistent and requires a larger resource investment than you’d expect by only looking at the costs and possible outcomes of activating its effect.
The dimension of consistency outlines how easily and how often you can use the effects of your cards. To demonstrate this, I’ll use the previous comparison between Raigeki and Archlord Zerato. We’ve already determined that the power levels of these cards are the same, but now we’ll find out why Raigeki is forbidden and Archlord Zerato is relegated to the back of the trade binder.
In general, spells are the most consistent types of cards, while traps are the least consistent. Effect monsters tend to float from one end of the scale to the other, based on their conditions and restrictions. In our comparison above, Raigeki already scores points in consistency for being a spell, because we can activate as many spells as we want during a turn, and all we need to play Raigeki is for our opponent to have a monster. You can also recycle it from the graveyard as well to get its effect multiple times.
On the other hand, Archlord Zerato has to be brought out by tributing Warrior of Zera while Sanctuary in the Sky is on the field and you have Zerato in your hand. After that, it can’t be revived from the graveyard if it’s destroyed. However, you can use its effect as many times as necessary during a turn—though once per turn should probably be sufficient. The counterpoint to this boon is that Sanctuary of the Sky still needs to be on the field in order for the effect to resolve successfully. In short, it’s a miracle in itself to summon Archlord Zerato, and even if you do, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to use its effect. In contrast, all you have to do in order to play Raigeki is draw it. You’ve probably figured this out by now, but the reason that traps are automatically the least consistent cards is that they can’t be used as soon as you draw them, whereas spells and most monster effects can. However, what traps lack in consistency is at least partially made up by their high utility.
My final dimension of analysis, utility, is one that many players seem to have a hard time grasping. As such, it’s probably the least appreciated of the three dimensions. Utility is, at its simplest, a measure of how many situations in which a card is useful, as compared to its activation timing. I like to think of it as a ratio of the number of phases (plus the damage step) in which the card would be useful, to the number of phases (plus the damage step) in which the card can be activated. There is an exception to this rule, which is when you can’t play the card at any of the times you’d need it. In that case, you shouldn’t bother playing the card at all.
The closer to one the ratio is, the better the card’s utility, as compared to other cards with the same function. A ratio that’s greater than one means that the card would be great if you could use it when you needed it. A ratio of less than one would mean that there’s more timing for the card’s activation than could possibly be useful to you and that utility probably isn’t going to play into your final decision on the card as compared to others with the same function. In greater detail, the less-than-one case signifies that if you can find a more powerful or consistent card that still works in the phase you need it to, that you’d probably be better off with that card than the one with the looser activation timing. All of this may seem complex or possibly bizarre, so allow me to put this “Dimensional Analysis” into action on some of the popular (and a couple of the unpopular) cards in this initial Elemental Energy-legal format.
Pot of Avarice: This is a good card to start with, due to its similarity to everyone’s favorite smiling bit of pottery. The effect of the card is to draw two cards after shuffling five monsters back into your deck. The primary concern is the two cards you draw, netting a two-for-one resource exchange. The power level of that effect has the same magnitude as Pot of Greed, but the actual power level of the card is significantly lower, thanks to the shuffling of five monsters into your deck. You’re actually increasing your deck size by three, which is potentially lowering the value of the cards you draw.
Unlike Pot of Greed, Pot of Avarice isn’t an effective card when you’re digging for answers, and it can be somewhat inconsistent in practice. It requires that you shuffle five monsters from your graveyard into the deck, which usually means that the earliest you’d get to play it is your fifth or sixth turn. That can be sped up, but it requires the dedication of other deck slots to self-replacing monsters and cards like Magical Merchant in order to do so. It’s also difficult to claim the effect of Pot of Avarice more than once per duel, even if you do have multiple copies or recycle one through Magician of Faith. This can also be reduced by using self-replacing monsters and Magical Merchants, as the monsters sent to the graveyard by the Merchant along with the searchers themselves are returned to the deck for reuse by the first Pot.
Finally, drawing two cards is most useful to us when we have the greatest chance to be able to immediately use them. Those times occur during the main phases, which is coincidentally when you can activate Pot of Avarice, giving it a utility ratio of 1. What this tells us is that Pot of Avarice is actually incredibly good as long as you build your deck to support its use. I was quite amazed that the Top 8 players from San Francisco were able to use it as often as they did when they were playing decks with only one Magical Merchant and few to no search monsters, though it was later admitted by Andrew Long that he frequently sided out his Pot. This is basically the reason why Pot wasn’t working for him.
Finally, this example shows us that if we’re simply evaluating the card in a vacuum*, we don’t get a true picture of the card’s worth. When we say a card is good, we’re really saying that it’s good as compared to something else. For example, Pot of Avarice is good when compared to Reckless Greed, or Pot of Avarice in a deck with support for it is amazing compared to Pot of Avarice in a deck with nothing supporting it. Here’s another relevant example, in response to recent threads of discussion on the Internet.
Enemy Controller: The Controller is one of the most hotly debated cards in this current format, but many top players seem to agree that its current place is as a solid tech card rather than something you’d want in your main deck. Why is this the case?
Well, its two effects are equivalent to a watered-down Book of Moon packaged together with an alternately costed version of Brain Control. It’s not as good as either, though, so its power level is low, as compared to either of those cards. The card’s consistency, on the other hand, is extremely high. You can use it the second you draw it, in most cases, and the only limitation on the effect is that you have a face-up monster to target. There is a limitation on the second effect of the Controller (that you tribute a monster as you activate the card), but the overall consistent usability of the first effect pretty much cancels it out. As a quick-play spell, you can also use it during the opponent’s turn, making the success rate of its effect even higher. A final note regarding Enemy Controller’s consistency is that a chained Book of Moon can negate the effect of Controller, but due to the Book’s limited nature, this is an unlikely case and doesn’t really impact my analysis.
Finally, Enemy Controller can be useful in every phase of the game, but not in the damage step—as switching control or position of monsters during the damage step is crazy talk that makes the rules explode. Fortunately, Enemy Controller can be used in every one of the game phases, making its utility ratio 1. Based on its consistency and utility, the card should be amazing and in every deck, but it obviously isn’t.
This is because the actual power level of the card is so low that it’s incapable of creating card advantage on its own. Sounds bad, right? Well, bad compared to what? Compared to taking a hit from Spirit Reaper or Berserk Gorilla, using Enemy Controller is great. Compared to playing Soul Exchange and tributing the opponent’s Cyber Dragon for your Mobius the Frost Monarch instead of your Don Zaloog, using Enemy Controller to give up Don for an opposing Dragon is a pretty bad idea. Using Enemy Controller to force the opponent’s Cyber Dragon into defense mode so you can automatically destroy it with Drillroid is excellent, but using Enemy Controller just to block a direct hit (unless it would be fatal) is a pretty lousy idea.
That was some pretty deep stuff this week, and I didn’t get quite as far as I would have liked. When we return with new material in January, I’ll take some time to finish off the cards that I wanted to analyze. While you’re waiting, feel free to pull out those old Top 8 decklists that you’ve been wondering about, and try a little bit of analysis to determine why those players chose what they did and why things turned out the way they did. It might just make you a better player. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
—Jerome McHale
jcmchale AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu
*If a card can’t be compared to anything else in the game, this method doesn’t work so well. In those cases, try to compare it to something with a similar intent. For example, Exchange of the Spirit is unlike any other card in the game, but it’s still the focus of a Combo deck. Try comparing that Combo deck as a whole to other Combo decks that work in the format.**
**This kind of stuff is really hard to explain, and frequently it’s even harder to understand. Please send me an email if you have any questions. I’ll be on break from school, so I should have time to answer them all.