In the beginning, there was beatdown. ATK, DEF, and level were the most important parts of a monster card because everybody knew which effect monsters were good and played three of each of them. It wasn’t too difficult considering that there were only two worth running. Decks were basically “three Wall of Illusion cards, three Man-Eater Bug cards, three Summoned Skull cards, lots of other big monsters with powerful spells and traps thrown in.” Then, all around the country, people began to take notice of something else that existed on each monster: its type. Wall of Illusion and Summoned Skull were Fiends! Hey, so is La Jinn, and it has 1800 ATK! Oh look, there’s a field spell that pumps up Fiends and Spellcasters! All of a sudden, it wasn’t just beatdown anymore. It was Fiend/Spellcaster beatdown. Five years and who knows how many sets and promos later, a very similar process continues to take place in the minds of players everywhere. We have a new set and a new Forbidden and Limited list, and in honor of these, this week’s School of Duel is all about how new decks are devised.

First though, let’s talk about the little brain-teaser I left as homework before the break. I received a lot of answers to this one, none of which were correct. For those of you who forget what I’m talking about or didn’t see it to begin with, here’s the puzzle:

To complete this puzzle, successfully identify the five cards that fit the following clues:

All of the cards have the number 1000 written somewhere on them. One of them has it written four times.

There are exactly twice as many spells as traps.

Only one of these cards can activate its effect while Macro Cosmos is in play.

Four of the five cards have been seen in one of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV series.

Exactly one of these cards is currently Forbidden.

Two of them can be activated on either player’s turn.

The biggest problem people were running into on this puzzle was the wording of the conditions. Really, it’s all in the wording when it comes to these puzzles (well, rulings too in the case of one of them). Condition one is easy as there are only two cards in the entire game that fit that bill. Destiny Hero - Double Dude and Mecha-Dog Marron are the two cards that have 1000 written on them four times. Which one of them is correct will be determined by applying the later conditions. Things that are not correct include monsters that have the word “Thousand” on them somewhere. A few people put Thousand-Eyes Restrict on their list, which simply cannot be right due to the fact that I specified that the number 1000 had to be written on the card. The second condition (with help from the sixth) tells you that the breakdown of the five cards must be two monsters, two spells, and one trap. It can’t be five monsters and no spells or traps because of condition six.

The third condition doesn’t help you decide at all between Double Dude and Marron since neither of them will achieve their effects if destroyed while Macro Cosmos is active without outside assistance. It does, however, point you towards what the spells might be. What spells can you think of that have “1000” printed on them and don’t work while Macro Cosmos is in play? Emergency Provisions and Wave-Motion Cannon are the only ones that come to mind for me. One of them was seen in the TV show (Jaden uses it all the time) and the other has not been used. That leads in nicely to the fourth condition. Since Wave-Motion Cannon was never used in the show, Destiny Hero - Double Dude has to be the card with four instances of “1000” on it. Three cards are solved, two remain. The remaining two must both have been seen in the show. One of them needs to be Forbidden, one of them needs to work while Macro Cosmos is in play, and one is a trap while the other is a monster. At this point, many people went for Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End and Statue of the Wicked. Unfortunately, neither of those can be activated during either player’s turn. Statue of the Wicked’s effect can activate on either player’s turn, but you cannot ever actually activate the card. There is, however, a rather famous trap card from the show that can be activated on either turn even while Macro Cosmos is out. That card is Exchange of the Spirit. This leaves the last card basically up to you as long as it follows the rest of the conditions. I picked Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder.

Now that we’ve got all the old business out of the way, let’s begin with the new business. Why do we feel a drive to create new decks and strategies? Sometimes it’s just a desire to be different from everybody else, but in terms of why new decks appear at major tournaments, there can be many explanations. The major one is that new cards were released that are obviously good. Gadgets were obviously good. The Duelist Pack ultra rares are obviously good. The Six Samurai cards along with Grandmaster are obviously good. All these cards have appeared at a major event, and all have put up respectable finishes including a win for Destiny Hero - Malicious and Destiny Draw. Another big reason for new decks to be created is if a particular unused strategy suddenly becomes viable once again due to a metagame shift. Chimeratech Overdragon decks fall into this category. The primary reason people played it at Shonen Jump Championship Orlando was that it absolutely ruins Gadgets, and since Gadgets were the expected metagame, clever players put two and two together to get massive OTK potential.

The final way that decks are introduced to top level events is when someone pulls something out of nothing. It’s somewhat difficult to describe exactly what I mean by that, but I can certainly give you some good examples. Vincent Tundo’s Life Equalizer/Blasting the Ruins combo deck is a prime example of pulling something out of nothing, as is the Empty Jar deck from back when Cyber Jar was still legal. In general and as demonstrated by these examples, decks that are pulled together by taking various cards that have existed for a long time but haven’t really been used are generally combo decks and almost always difficult to pilot. I think the lone exception to the “difficult to pilot” description that I can think of is the Last Turn deck. If I recall correctly, the extent of the decision-making abilities required to run that deck were something like, “Do you win? If not, draw the game and try again.”

Now that we know the reason why decks come into existence, let’s take a look at how it happens. Every successful deck needs a win condition, a card or combination of cards or actions that it takes to win the game. For the Destiny Hero deck, the win condition is a massive Dimension Fusion fueled by Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade. The win condition of generic Monarch decks is to play a lot of Monarchs and attack the weakened opponent. The win condition for Gadgets is to eliminate all your opponent’s playable monsters while you still have a ton of expendable Gadgets. Whatever card or combination of cards you pick as the win condition of your deck directs all your future decisions, since they all need to be made with that win condition firmly in mind. Let’s take the Samurai deck from this week’s Almost There as an example to work through. That deck wins by loading the field with Samurai that eliminate the opponent’s options and deal huge amounts of damage at the same time. So, first question of the day:

What one card is absolutely vital for the Six Samurai to do their thing with maximum efficiency?

It’s not a very difficult question, is it? Sometimes the key cards in a strategy are fairly obvious, and this is one of those cases. The answer, for a quick 10 points, is Grandmaster of the Six Samurai. The Samurai can’t use their powers if they’re alone or if only a duplicate copy of the same Samurai is on the field, so the obvious way to maximize their speed and efficiency is to include three copies of the Strike of Neos sneak preview promo and secret rare!

Our next step after determining the key card in the strategy is to develop a base of support cards for that strategy. Support cards either directly or indirectly contribute to the speed or stability of your deck. For the Samurai deck, Reinforcement of the Army is the ultimate support card, because it both speeds the deck up and provides you with quick, easy access to most of the cards you need. Samurai also need experimentally chosen numbers of each of the smaller Samurai to ensure that you have enough access to the most important effects. To make sure that you continue to have that kind of access even after your opponent has done his or her best to clear your field, The Warrior Returning Alive, Call of the Haunted, and Premature Burial are there to make your Samurai permanent fixtures in the game.

Question number two:

The Six Samurai are all about teamwork. Which spell card allows them to defeat almost any monster in battle regardless of whether or not your opponent decides to attack?

The answer to this one is less obvious. I bet that a good number of you got to “defeat almost any monster in battle” and immediately started shouting “Shien’s Castle of Mist!” at the screen. Unfortunately, that’s just not good enough for me. I want my support card to work regardless of whether I’m on offense or defense. The answer, once again for 10 points, is The A. Forces. Is it worth a slot in the main deck? Probably not. In fact, it’s probably not necessary at all due to the sheer power of the cards it supports, but the fact remains that it is an option and a darn good one, if you choose to take it.

Finally, once you’ve garnered the support for your own deck, you need to find the cards that will help you block your opponent from disrupting you. Even decks that seek to win in one turn need cards like this. Last Turn ran Self-Destruct Button and Solemn Judgment to make sure the opponent would never win a game. Slow burn decks use all the stall cards available to them to make sure they live long enough to win. Even Chain Burn used Waboku and Threatening Roar as both a way to stay in the game and to build chains. For most decks, especially aggressive ones, the best cards for stopping your opponent are the ones that block attacks while destroying monsters. Old favorites like Mirror Force come to mind, along with Sakuretsu Armor and Widespread Ruin. In a Six Samurai deck, another card immediately comes to mind: My Body as a Shield, which helps to eliminate or at least mitigate the threat of mass removal cards like Lightning Vortex and Torrential Tribute. After all, the opponent is never going to beat you by simply trading one card per turn for one of your Samurai, especially since it will likely be revived next turn. The problem is if the one spell they decide to play while staring down Great Shogun Shien, Grandmaster, and any other Six Samurai is Lightning Vortex, you’re out of luck if you haven’t got a way to counter it. Sure, Grandmaster will return a Samurai to your hand, but you just lost three to five valuable monsters, and your opponent is now free to play spells and traps at will.

Aside from simply adding cards to help minimize your deck’s weaknesses, you should also be developing gameplay strategies to help you deal with given situations. For the last question of the day, take a look at this situation:

Your opponent has a set monster, a set spell or trap, and one card in hand. Torrential Tribute has been played, Mirror Force has not, and you don’t have My Body as a Shield. You do have The Six Samurai - Irou, Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, and Great Shogun Shien in hand. What move should you make to minimize risk and maximize reward?

Obviously, you want this turn to end with you having three monsters in play and your opponent having a bare monster zone and less life than he or she started with. Unfortunately, just slapping all your monsters down and swinging for the fences is fairly reckless, wouldn’t you say? The smart play here (and the one worth 10 points) is to special summon Irou and the Grandmaster in attack position, and then drop Shien in defense position. That way, you can still eliminate the opponent’s face-down cards with Irou and attack with Grandmaster, and if he or she does have Mirror Force, you haven’t lost your Shien and Grandmaster has popped a card back to your hand. What you do from there depends on any other cards you might have that I just didn’t specify.

That’s going to wrap it up for my overview of how new decks get made. If you scored well this week, it’s likely that at the very least you understand where these ideas come from. This is good. If you scored not-so-well this time around, my suggestion is to pick your favorite card or combination and apply these steps to see if you can build a functional deck around them. It doesn’t actually have to beat anyone; you can goldfish with it if you like. Just try to make something that can win, even if it doesn’t always do it. This format, like the last one, is one where deckbuilders can really let loose and show the world what they’ve been working on in the lab. I plan on enjoying it thoroughly, and so should you! Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

HOMEWORK: For the next installment, I’d like you to think about side decks. Specifically, I want to know what kind of factors influence the way you construct your side decks. This is definitely one that I’d like readers to respond to, so email in your answers to this little poll.

Rate these factors in order of importance to you when you build a side deck:

The decks that were run at the last Shonen Jump Championship.

The decks people play at your local hobby league.

The decks your deck has a weakness against.

Specific cards your deck has a weakness against.

Alternate strategies that you could side deck to and from.