What the deck needs is the new banlist (less snatch and brain to worry about)

But on your reasoning issue, it should never really be an issue. 90% of the time you should be able to end the game with or without reasoning before a specific level becomes a necessity. In those other times, reasoning will indeed screw you over, but keep in mind, if any other level rolled off, or your morphing Jar rolled off, you'd be equally screwed, so is it really hurting you that much more ?

I agree this deck does need the next ban list to come out, whatever it may change.

The main probelm I've been having lately is with the Zombie deck I'm testing out. Basically the two decks try to knock each other out as quickly as possible before the other can mount an offensive. Generally there's a set Spell or Trap and a set monster on turn 1 that I want to deal with. So ideally I want to Reasoning into Irou or Yashi and then either use Reinforcements of the Army to grab the other one, or play which ever one I already have in my hand. I know that's a best case scenario but it's something I keep running into. Thinking about it more I guess it's generally more important for me to have Irou so I can deal with a face down Pyramid Turtle. Maybe that means I just need to cut one Kamon to my side deck and move the Irou in my side deck to my main deck.

I've been considering adding Book of Moon into the deck. Besides the obvious combos it has with Irou, it can also be used to flip Morphing Jar face down when I pull it with Reasoning. Not sure if it's worthwhile yet or not.

That's the problem, you are only playing one deck, and its your own deck. Zombies don't stand a chance in real competition, because they are entirely graveyard based and easily stopped. They'll peek once, then die forever. They aren't the real threat. And most decks do open with a set to each zone, but that shouldn't be insurmountable if you don't have yaichi and irou. I mean, what if you don't have reasoning ? You can have all the copies you want, you can only drop one samurai, and it'll have no effect.

If the banlist resembles the WC2007 banlist however, then naturally switching a kamon for an irou is a good choice. Then replace the jar with Trooper and you have the same balance in your deck again.

I honestly think the real problem I'm facing is my own familiarity with this deck. I know how it runs and how to attack it to win, so it ends up being a good and bad thing. Sometimes I get stuck over analyzing things and coming up with elaborate situations that are unrealistic for me to counter.

I may still try out Book of Moon, I have to give that more thought.

To avoid targeting ? Why not just main your spell shields. Problem with book, apart from the fact that any limited card never shows up when you need it, is that your samurai's have extremely weak defense and generally don't enjoy being face-down.

But I get your dilemma. My problem is generally that I'll have a build and then have an epiphany on how to make it even better, in theory, and then when I play it it ends up playing worse. In the end there is only one solution : testing, testing and more testing.

I might main deck my Spell Shields. The times that I've used them they seem really effective, especially in this metagame. In this day and age people expect that when they play Brain Control, Snatch Steal, or any other Spell that it's going to go through. In testing I actually haven't been able to use it on Snatch Steal or Brain Control yet, but being able to negate important cards in my opponent's deck plus Destiny Draw, Metamorphosis and a host of other things, is appealing to me in the main deck.

You do make a good point about Book of Moon that I wasn't thinking about. Flipping a Samurai face down could effectively shut off my other Samurai which is bad news for the deck. If they are face down, I was probably going to lose it in battle anyway, so why waste the effort.

Testing, testing, testing is always the name of the game for me. It helps me throw all of my bad ideas out the window pretty quickly and they certainly seem like they out weigh my good ideas.

Maindeck at least something that helps curb monarchs, and spell shields are as good as pulling or mask of restrict in that regard. I thought of just speeding it up and getting the kill before I ever saw a monarch. Boy did that ever backfire. Sometimes sticking with what works is good too ;)

Have you played any Samurai mirror matches? I've always wondered how those would go.

I've played two in official competitions. Its extremely funny when you draw snatch steal or brain control :)

Of course my experiences won't tell you much, since in neither case did the other player own more than a single grandmaster (he was only released in secret rare form here. I got mine on the internet). Needless to say I won both without too much effort.

Yeah running only one copy of Grandmaster seems like suicide in my eyes. I'm trying to upgrade all my promos to Secret Rares but it's quite the task.

I have two, and I have to be honest, I like the promo's better. Dunno why. They basically look the same to me, except that striped shiny lettering on the secret puts me off. And funnily enough I like the secret cydra better than the super (I have 2 ulti, 5 super and 2 secret, until June I only had 2 cydra altogether :p they are getting cheap on the trade market)

I think you just made up a new word, funnily :cool:

So Belgian, what do you think about adding Foolish Burial, not sure how many, to this deck if the rumors about us getting Starter Deck 13 are correct and then adding in another copy of The Warrior Returning Alive to help get to Grandmaster of the Six Samurai faster. Just a thought.

I tested it once, with nearly as positive results, when I thought we were going to lose reasoning. I packed another WRA and two foolish burials instead. I'd love it, but I really don't see where i'm going to fit it in.

I'm not quite sure where I'd fit it in yet, but luckily I don't really have to worry about that until October. I'm just really starting to get antsy about the new ban list cause I want to start converting this deck to whatever it will be but it seems like it's still a well guarded secret.