On April 19, 1775, the “Shot Heard ’Round the World” marked the start of the American Revolution. On August 10, 2003, Ng Yu Leung won the 2003 World Championships, beginning a Yu-Gi-Oh! revolution. At the time, his deck was considered to be highly unorthodox, and many even considered it to be a “bad deck.” Regardless of the individual opinions, everyone thought something about the deck, everyone saw it, and everyone was changed by it. This was the “Deck Seen ’Round the World.”

Ng Yu Leung

2003 World Champion

41 cards

1 Sangan

1 Witch of the Black Forest

1 Jinzo

3 Gemini Elf

3 Mystic Tomato

2 Don Zaloog

1 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

1 Sinister Serpent

1 Magician of Faith

1 Yata-Garasu

1 Fiber Jar

1 Raigeki

1 Dark Hole

1 Change of Heart

1 Snatch Steal

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Heavy Storm

1 Harpie’s Feather Duster

3 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Pot of Greed

1 Graceful Charity

1 Delinquent Duo

1 Confiscation

1 The Forceful Sentry

1 Mirage of Nightmare

1 Monster Reborn

1 Premature Burial

1 Imperial Order

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Ring of Destruction

1 Mirror Force

3 Drop Off

Side Deck

3 Electric Snake

1 Exiled Force

1 White Magical Hat

1 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

1 Airknight Parshath

1 Painful Choice

1 Scapegoat

3 Book of Moon

3 Torrential Tribute

I’d like to note that this deck has 41 cards. If someone tells you that your deck needs to be exactly 40 cards in order to win, you know they’re wrong. This deck’s goal is to exhaust the opponent’s resources, disrupt his or her hand, and set up for a lock with Yata-Garasu. It accomplishes this goal by making the opponent waste kill spells and attacks on Mystic Tomatoes that eventually result in a Don Zaloog on the field.

From there, Ng would drop a large monster such as Gemini Elf, maybe drop a removal spell, and start attacking for 1400 damage and a card from your hand, all while forcing you to discard any cards you drew to Drop Off. This sounds pretty standard for a Traditional format deck, right? That wasn’t always the case. Before this deck came around, nearly all players were still thinking in terms of pure beatdown. At this time, cards were evaluated on how quickly they got your opponent’s life points down to zero, rather than in terms of any card advantage or board presence they may have provided. The expected life span of a monster was one turn, maybe more if the monster’s name was Jinzo.

Enter Yata-Garasu. The Internet community had predicted that the release of this card would mean the end of the game as we knew it. They were wrong. Initially, the only people who were using Yata-Garasu to its potential were those who had known about it ahead of time from online spoilers. Everyone else was still so hardwired into the beatdown mentality that they refused to accept change even when it pecked them in the face—and peck them it did. The Internet community, the same people who knew Yata-Garasu was coming, beat the beatdown players easily and consistently with their relatively primitive hand-control decks.

Then came the 2003 World Championship. Despite being often maligned for the system used to choose its participants, this tournament was probably the most important in the game’s history. For the first time the people saw real hand control decks in action, and this time they couldn’t ignore them. Soon after Ng won the championship, the Yu-Gi-Oh! community ran home to see the deck he used to win, and their jaws collectively dropped. “OMG! My dekz0rs t0t4ly PWNz0Rs this!!1” was the cry heard across the Internet as the deck slowly found its way on to every major website of the time.

What they didn’t realize at the time was that their “dekz0rs” most certainly could not “PWNz0R” Ng’s. More and more people showed up at their local tournaments with a copy of Ng’s deck in hand and smashed the beatdown players. Players tried to devise ways around being completely destroyed by hand disruption, and they soon found the answer: destroy their opponent’s hand and lock them before the opponent can do the same. Once again, the Internet critics lashed out, saying that this time it really would be the end of the game. They were still wrong.

While some players did indeed quit due to the repetitiveness of duels during this time, a greater number of them tried to devise ways around it. This was about the time when the “New Age Beatdown” deck began to evolve. Airknight Parshath and Scapegoat started to become popular, because they presented ways to draw more cards and prevented players from being locked down by the dreaded bird. Warrior decks decided to fight fire with fire by including Don Zaloogs and Mystic Tomatoes of their own, and by dropping the Marauding Captains because they promoted bad hand advantage. Sinister Serpent and Fiber Jar were in every deck. Our world truly was turned upside down.

From that time until Invasion of Chaos was released, Yata-Garasu dominated the game. Every set afterwards seemed to have something new to help it do its dirty work. Tribe-Infecting Virus and Breaker the Magical Warrior in Magician’s Force was followed by D. D. Warrior Lady in Dark Crisis. With these new releases to the Control arsenal, the cards that originally made Ng’s deck unique were slowly phased out of the standard tournament deck. Drop Off became a thing of the past. Spirit Reaper replaced Don Zaloog in more and more decks. Solid Control cards were eliminated in favor of more broken alternatives from the newer sets. Eventually, the dueling world forgot why they switched from Beatdown to Control.

Whenever somebody was asked why things were the way they were, the answer was always, “Yata-Garasu.” No one remembered the time when he or she thought that Yata-Garasu was a bad card, and no one gave credit to the person who demonstrated its real power. What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, for one thing, the stage is set for it to happen again. With the new Advanced format in place for all Regional, National, and World events, the Yu-Gi-Oh! community is subconsciously waiting for the next “Deck Seen ‘Round the World.” When it does come, I hope you’ll recognize it for what it is and give it the respect it deserves.

Next week, Historical Perspectives will be brought to you by the letters “F” and “S” and the number 6. Until then play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email me at jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu