Think fast: what’s the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG’s most common opening move? If you answered “a set card to each zone,” you’ve recognized one of the many patterns that have developed in this game. Yu-Gi-Oh! has been around for a few years now, and players have had plenty of time to come up with the most effective ways to use certain cards and play in certain situations. In general, on the very first turn of the game, neither player knows anything about the opponent’s deck. Both players also want to keep each other in the dark as long as possible without revealing their own strategies. The best way to do this while keeping yourself protected from attack is to set a monster and a spell or trap. The actual cards involved with the move vary from deck to deck and game to game, so this is a very broad example of the kind of pattern I want to talk about. A more specific example of a pattern in dueling is the homework problem I presented you with at the end of the last School of Duel. For those of you who missed it, here it is again:
Your opponent goes first. He summons Sangan and sets a spell or trap. You have Cyber Dragon and Banisher of the Radiance in hand. Why shouldn’t you play them both?
The answer lies in looking at play patterns that have been established over the years. If you’re an experienced player, you probably looked at that question and just blurted out, “Easy: they’ve got Torrential Tribute.” You’d likely be right as well. If you haven’t been playing for very long, however, you might not have picked up on that. Why is it so likely that you’ll be blown away by Torrential Tribute if you summon both monsters? Because over the years that those cards have been out, players have figured out that Sangan and Torrential Tribute work very nicely together. You can blow away all of your opponent’s monsters and lose essentially nothing since Sangan will just allow you a search and replace itself. Furthermore, playing Sangan face up is an open invitation to attack . . . an invitation that people might have taken a couple of years ago. When Breaker the Magical Warrior was around, having Sangan out with Torrential Tribute set used to be a great way to lure out Breaker and blow it away before your opponent could harm one of your more important cards. Of course, a couple of years ago, you were allowed to have three copies of Torrential Tribute, making it as important to expect as Sakuretsu Armor is right now. However, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Now we have Cyber Dragon, and Torrential Tribute is Limited, but we still see the same pattern of play crop up. Falling into the Torrential trap has become a lot more deadly these days too, especially if that Sangan goes to fetch out a Don Zaloog or Spirit Reaper.
Aside from the overarching patterns of play that have been developing since the game began, there are format-based patterns that develop quickly after a change in the Forbidden/Limited list or a major change in the card pool that continue on until it changes again. Let’s say you’re dueling an opponent who summons Hydrogeddon, sets a spell or trap, and ends. You can get a basic idea of what the card behind the Hydrogeddon is simply by recognizing that Hydrogeddon needs to beat a monster in battle in order to claim its effect. Thus, you’d think that the set card is one of the quick-play spells commonly used to help Hydrogeddon win battles, such as Shrink, Rush Recklessly, or Enemy Controller. Of course, summoning a Hydrogeddon on your first turn is a rather careless move unless you do have something like Enemy Controller, and even then it’s iffy at best (due to the huge number of ways your monster could be blown away without ever making it to the battle phase).
Still, this is one of the tricks that more experienced players tend to use in earlier rounds of large events to try and eliminate opponents quickly. This and similar plays involving Don Zaloog are definitely moves to watch out for. In fact, the Don play is probably much more devastating in the long run since it can just strip you of a card you needed to make a comeback. At this point, however, it should be noted that we’re making a pair of critical assumptions here. First, we assume that our opponent knows what cards work well together in his or her own deck, and second, that the opponent has those cards. These assumptions, while generally useful, can also lead us to fall for bluffs that a less experienced player would simply ignore. This is something that generally drives the established players crazy, and also something I’ll discuss a little more later on.
Name seven cards that an arbitrary opponent has in his deck in less than 60 seconds. Go.
I’ll bet a lot of you are really surprised that you not only had an answer for the above exercise, but also ran through the cards in a lot less than 60 seconds. In fact, I would wager that the speed at which you did it and the seven cards you picked are directly related to how long you’ve been playing in competitive events. Off the top of my head, I came up with Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute, Ring of Destruction, Heavy Storm, Snatch Steal, Sangan, and Mystical Space Typhoon. If I wanted to expand the list to ten cards, I’d include Spirit Reaper, Call of the Haunted, and at least one Sakuretsu Armor. “But wait, what if my opponent is playing Diamond Dude Turbo or some other crazy combo deck,” you say? That’s fine—maybe he or she isn’t actually playing some or all of those cards, but until you see proof otherwise, you assume the opponent is. We assume that our opponent is playing these cards because if we were the opponent, we’d want to have those cards on our side. All of the cards on the list above have proven to be among the most powerful and useful in the game. Some of them even earned a place on the Forbidden list at one time or another. We’ve come to expect that people will play the best cards available to them, and rightfully so. After all, the goal of participating in a tournament is usually to win, is it not? Intentionally ignoring powerful cards strictly because they are powerful is madness, as is thinking for even a second that your opponents will not be equipped with the best cards available to them.
Perhaps the only advantage available to someone who is entering his or her first major event (when compared to someone who has made Day 2 of numerous SJCs) is that the newer player doesn’t necessarily think the same way that a more experienced player does. The new player may see the situation outlined in the homework from last week and drop both monsters anyway without regard for the possibility of Torrential Tribute or even Mirror Force. What’s more, it might pay off! It drives many players crazy when an aggressive play works out well for the aggressor, but what they fail to realize is why it makes them so angry: they’re so in tune with current patterns of play that anything outside of the norm automatically seems wrong.
I think it’s fair to say that since September, the deck that most players default to when they have nothing better to play is a Monarch build. Monarch builds do their thing by completing various sequences of plays that all have the same ending: the summon of a Monarch. Before March, the main sequence was “Search for Old Vindictive Magician with Apprentice Magician > flip Old Vindictive Magician to blow up a monster > tribute the spent Magician for Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch to force the opponent to discard.” Right now, we have a few common sequences of plays, most of them involving Gravekeeper’s Spy or theft cards like Soul Exchange and Brain Control. Regardless of what the patterns are, the turns leading up to the execution of these play sequences are constant. They all involve doing essentially nothing. Check out the match between Lazaro Bellido and Shane Scurry in Columbus if you need any convincing of that fact. There was a painful amount of nothing going on in those duels, and I had the feeling that I was the only person there who found something intrinsically wrong with that. People get away with a lot more bluffs these days than they used to simply because other players won’t be aggressive when they have the opportunity. That’s something you can take advantage of. Controlled aggression is the way to go right now if you want to break through to the Top 16. Keep applying pressure with your attacks in order to force your opponent into breaking his or her play patterns.
By “controlled” aggression, I mean that you should always be mindful of the power cards that your opponent has yet to play (Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute, etc.), but you should also take each turn as an opportunity to force your opponent to use such cards in a less than ideal manner. Card Trooper is an excellent card for this sort of thing. Remember, your opponent only has a limited number of ways to stop you from attacking. Every one of them he or she uses early on is one that the opponent doesn’t have later down the line. Additionally, every card that you destroy without letting the opponent activate is another piece of removal he or she doesn’t have later on. If you play more spell and trap removal and switch up your tactics to a point where you make attacks that you might have not even considered making before, you’ll score a lot more damage that your opponent wasn’t planning on taking. In the end, all that extra damage will lead you closer to a win. The lesson here is this: be mindful of your opponent’s potential answers to your plays, but don’t let fear of the unknown stop you from doing the things you need to do to win. If you can strike a balance between aggression and discretion, you’ll be that much closer to your big break.
School of Duel will return once again after Force of the Breaker previews, so until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
HOMEWORK: You’re all planning to go to the Sneak Preview on May 5th/6th right? When you get back, I want to know what new card from Force of the Breaker you think is going to have the biggest impact at Nationals. It doesn’t matter which Nationals as long as you explain why you think the card is going to have such a big impact on your country’s metagame.