Heh, I am hoping the title will catch alot of people's attention. This is an article that I wrote for another site that I thought the community of YuGiOhRealms would enjoy. Well enjoy ^_^


With the recent drought that has been intuitive/intelligent deck and sideboard surrounding competitive play I thought it was time to throw my 2 cents into the ring.



Deck building is without a doubt the art form of any game; the part where the player truly gets a chance to put his/her own unique spin on what he/she will be competing with.

No one is going to disagree with you when you look at the meta game and openly declare that it is infested with Chaos, Hand D., and First Turn Kills so would it not be just as wise (if not much wiser) to adapt to the current trends rather then to cling to them? Most of the players that I have encountered seem to be infatuated with the idea that the ideal way to combat Chaos is to mirror it in an all out battle of who gets the luckiest draws. Allow me to impart a little rock-paper-scissors lesson upon all of you. Is the best way to beat rock by using another rock? Granted, the paper by most standards seems rather weak, unstable and flimsy however when conditions are permitting (and we're to the point where they most certainly are) the paper is the best suited to get the job done.
In all fairness, Chaos and the other aforementioned types are all fine and good in their own right. It's simply the fact that they're used so frequently that it's caused the game to get a little stale. However it isn't very hard to build your deck so that it is practically immune to these threats. With a little tweaking and a little utilization of the ol' brain you'll find that it'll be much easier to break away from the trends rather than conforming to them.

First of all it's important when building your deck to have a clear goal or focus. For example in a Zombie Control deck this goal would be to be continually have your monsters constantly regenerating so that not only are you maintaining field control (through the fact that most zombies require extra measures to be gotten rid of) but you are maintaining hand advantage by not having to constantly be summoning a monster to either protect your life points or in order do damage to your opponent. Not only that but when used correctly zombies can be incredibly quick hitters and in a game of speed, that is an absolute necessity.
Think of this; your opponent has a Don Zaloog on the field, you summon pyramid turtle and play creature swap. You then proceed to attack the Pyramid Turtle with your recently acquired Don, not only discarding a card from there hand but also bring out a Vampire Lord to the field and attacking them directly. Not only having them lose both a card from their hand and deck but also having them take a quick 2200 damage while gaining significant field advantage. Not to mention that by playing Metamorphosis on that Vampire Lord during your Mainphase 2 you have now brought to the field one of the most devastating cards in the game…Dark Balter the Terrible. Think of this, the average deck ratio at the moment is 16 monsters, 19 magic and 5 traps (I'll be discussing this later as well), doesn't it make sense to have a little back up for what constitutes nearly half of the average deck. Dark Balter is that back up, and by paying 1000 life points you can negate the majority of the useful magic cards in your opponents deck, and when Balter is out not only will your opponents be intimidated out of using their precious spells but he also manages to wipe out such meta staples as Sangan, Witch of the Black Forest, D.D Warrior Lady and Night Assailant. Zombie Decks also have a built in support for anti Chaos, the all powerful Book of Life. Book of Life not only allows you to revive one of your zombie monsters but it also removes one of your opponent's cards from play. Now consider that the average chaos deck runs somewhere between 4-7 light monsters. The most difficult part playing Chaos is getting one of those Light monsters in the Graveyard and by making it much more difficult for those monsters to stay there you've increased your chances of winning immensely.

Now I'm not one to preach only one type of deck so I feel that it is time to move on to something else. A type who's usefulness dates back to the Labyrinth Of Nightmare. The Fiend. The typical Fiend deck actually applies tactics that are in a way similar to that of the Chaos deck (removing monsters from play quickly to get out a game breaking monster), however Fiend decks play very differently and from my own personal opinion, aren't nearly as cheap. The fiend deck is particularly good against control, mainly because it is, in a way, it's very own form of Aggro-Control. For instance Dark Necrofear and Dark Ruler Hades (a personal favorite of mine) each have excellent field control elements. Necrofear is almost guaranteed to return to the field at least one time and not only take away from your opponents field advantage but also add to yours, this is especially excellent because it can create a potentially large gap in field control and has a decent attack and noteworthy defense for how easy it is to summon. The Dark Ruler Hades is a an absolute monster, negating the effects of any monster he (or any other field on your side of the field destroys) and with 2450 attack he's no slouch. Negating the effects of monsters destroyed by fiends is often taken for granted, but think about how many cards have effects that can be negated by Mr. Hades.
Here's a short list of the cards that see tournament play that Hades manages to crush:

Sangan
Witch of the Black Forest
Shining Angel
Mystic Tomato
Magician of Faith
Night Assailant
D.D. Warrior Lady (This is a big one)
Pyramid Turtle
Cyber Jar
Fiber Jar
Sinister Serpent
Dark Necrofear
Stealth Bird
Morphing Jar
Emissary of the Afterlife
Mask of Darkness
Apprentice Magician

That certainly isn't too shabby, and if you look at that list you will most likely notice that a pretty decent amount of those cards see play in the Chaos Deck. Now it's time to come to what is probably my favorite Fiend monster at the moment, Night Assailant. Not only does Night Assailant have the useful (although dated) "Man Eater Bug" effect, but also whenever he is discarded directly from your hand you have the opportunity to return a flip effect monster from your graveyard to your hand(when it is discarded it cannot be the target of its own effect, just for reference). This card works excellently when combined with either Card Destruction or Graceful Charity, not to mention that it's a brilliant defense against Hand D. So that pretty much raps up the fiend section of this article.

Now that I'm no longer discussing individual deck types it is time to examine how relatively "Old School" decks can remain competent in today's Meta. Like I said previously a focus or goal is the key element. Now after you have managed to establish this goal, it is time to support it through the cards that you think will bring out the best in your deck or simply help you achieve your goal in the shortest amount of time possible.

Say for example your goal is to create a situation where your opponent has very few cards in his/her hand and therefore very few options. There are many ways to do this, in fact many more than what is currently being used by the majority of Hand D. players, but once you have this in place look through a card database (or simply your own collection) and pick out every card that you think could possibly help you to create the best build of your deck. Now if you are using the entirety of the card pool you should be able to pull out at least 60-120 (absolutely no staples yet!) cards that in some way shape or form could contribute to what you are attempting to accomplish, however when you are looking through these cards be sure to keep an open mind. Chances are you will see something that would be considered a road less traveled approach, or (gasp) an original way to accomplish what is a popular if not somewhat contrived strategy that is currently prevalent in the game.

Now should you happen upon something like this you should try to optimize the deck's usefulness in the realm of competitive play. You can do this by having built in counter measures to the decks that are currently in style, in fact a good deck can do this without compromising it's overall goal. However what makes an exceptional deck is when you can integrate the counter techniques and not only have them be able to peacefully coexist with your goal, but actually compliment it. Examples of this would be the aforementioned Night Assailant in the Fiend deck, who not only neutralizes Hand D. but also serves as fodder for Necrofear, and also the aforementioned Book of Life which not only makes it much more difficult for the summoning of the Chaos monsters by removing a card from play, but also summons what could be a game breaking Zombie monster to the field.

I can't begin to list the number of innovative combos that my friend and I have created (some are too devastating to be listed on these pages, but to anyone willing to send me a few Morphing Jars, I could guarantee one of the most creative decks ever) so I'll have to get back to just the basics. So you've got probably around 60-80 cards that you think could legitimately be used to win you some duels. It is essential that you test play all of these cards in as many situations as you possibly can for optimal results. Test them in every combination possible, test until you get absolutely sick of testing (or if you're a mental wiz you can do all of this in your head). By that point chances are that you will have found the cards that flow together the best. After you have decided upon what works for you and your goal it is time to add in the staples. (See next Post)

In my opinion the staples are the cards that should be added last when building a deck, otherwise you may have clouded judgment and only find cards acceptable that live up to the standards set by the staples. When looking at cards that essentially belong in every deck, it makes perfect sense to work backwards and add the cards that make your deck unique (or simply separate it from any other deck type). So once one has found those 30-33 (non staple) cards that belong in his/her deck, it isn't an issue to simply drop the staples right in there due to the fact that all of the cards in the deck should already work excellently with each other. This should be to the point where adding the staples has only the effect that it betters the flow, by adding cards that are capable of being relatively self sufficient (i.e. Raigeki).

After the deckbuilder has successfully went through all of these steps and tests it is time to get to work on an element of strategy that is often overlooked in casual play. However, this is something that is an absolute necessity when competing on a serious level. This of course is the Side Deck or Side Board, whatever you may call it, the Side Board (as I will refer to it from this point on) and no good player will attempt to decry the need for a side deck. The Side Board allows for a general versatility that may or may not already be present in your deck. With some creative side decking one should be able to face of against almost any deck and still manage to emerge the victor.

When creating a Side Board it is essential to have the current meta game as your foremost priority, as this is what the Side Board is a weapon against. First one should examine the dominant deck types and find weaknesses or countermeasures. After doing so it should be much easier to pick out cards that fit into your counter measures.
Let's examine the weaknesses the First Turn Kill decks that have become prevalent in the regional tournament scene.

Paying Life Points to Deal Damage-This is one of the big ones for FTKs, FTK players will often have to pay most of their own life points in order to deplete yours and this is something that should be taken advantage of through the Side Board.

The following cards deal with FTK quite nicely:
Poison of the Old Man
Ceasefire
Curse of Darkness
Magic Drain
Delinquent Duo
Forceful Sentry
Confiscation
King Tiger Wanghu
Torrential Tribute

You should notice that many of these cards are capable of being chained to do damage at the last minute, which can give you an easy win. Burn is very effective against FTK, as is Hand Control. This is because FTK decks are like puzzles and by eliminating the key pieces to the puzzle it will be very difficult for your opponent to complete his devilish and more than slightly cheap vision. As for the King Tiger, he makes Catapult Turtle and Magical Scientist harder to get out.

Side Boarding against Chaos and Hand Control decks is a little different, as cards such as Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer should be main decked anyways (do to the overwhelming amount of Chaos decks circulating), however there are still some definite strategies that help to make theses decks less effective.

The following cards work against Chaos/Hand Control:
King Tiger Wanghu
Night Assailant
Soul Release
Magic Drain
Curse of Darkness
Cyber Jar
Delinquent Duo
Confiscation
Forceful Sentry

King Tiger yet again manages to wipe out some of the search cards (Tomato and Angel), which makes maintaining field advantage more difficult for Chaos decks, not to mention he takes care of pesky Hand Control buggers such as Don Zaloog and Spirit Reaper. Soul Release kills Chaos due to the fact that you can remove 5 of their monsters in one fell swoop. Magic Drain works nice against Hand D. because you either negate the effect or force them to discard a magic card. Cyber Jar replenishes your hand, and the Hand Control cards yet again allow you to disrupt the puzzle your opponent is attempting to construct.

Well, this certainly has been a rather lengthy article, but I've enjoyed writing it and I hope that you all enjoy reading it. I'd appreciate any feedback or argument that you may have so don't hesitate to post a reply and I also hope that you found this article helpful in one way or another. Until my next article, take it easy everybody.

darn, no replys

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OOOH O WEEEEEE!!

its no wonder you havent had replies yet. There is a lot to wrap your mind around. Excellent job and analysis of Chaos and Control. I hope people will go back and read it a couple of times BEFORE responding to it. (heh, thats what I ended up doing before I responded) I also had to go cut and paste to add it to the summary that pyrofire14 provided in his thread.

good job Des-

One thing that has always been around and mentioned is using King Tiger Wanghu in the side Board. As there are those who consider staples in the Main Deck, there are those who consider staples in the sideboard. KTW has to be as close to one of those as I have ever seen. But for some reason, he is not nearly as frequent in the main decks. Another monster in that boat is Banisher of Light. And nowadays, Jinzo is getting benched on a more regular basis.

I will say that I always encourage people using a deck for the first few times NOT to use a sideboard. I think that unless you have that special ability to predict reactions in your meta and how your own deck responds, that using a sideboard too early simply distracts a player from fully realizing the strengths and weaknesses in their main deck. Also, because metagames alter so drastically from region to region, I will almost never give advice on sideboard material other than those items that I feel are truly lacking from the main deck strategies.

Instead I train my people to use the initial build alone, make corrections to the main deck after they start to notice what cards are dying in their hands or becoming consistently poor draws. then Re- test. Before anyone attempts to build their side material, they should come as close as they feel they can with the main deck. This excludes, of course, making changes to weaknesses that would otherwise ruin the theme of the deck. Otherwise you need to just build a different deck. (but hey, that happens sometimes. Not every idea will work)

Back to the Desolutionist.

very true.......but there are so many people who do not even care to side deck....I tried to explain it without getting too specific or too broad. People make sidedecking alot more difficult than it really is, only because that is what they read. They read it in articles as some sort of almighty skill that only serious players do. Then they explain it in the most difficult way possible. All you need to know when side decking is; use cards that counter deck types that are common in your metagame. That's all you need to know. But I must also stress, dont use cards that you wouldn't run in your deck. By this I mean, don't put the card "Double Snare" into your side deck, just incase someone is running Jinzo. Instead put in a more versitle card such as Book of Moon.

But it all comes down to this: Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Hold on a sec...I thought that DDWL's effect can pre-empt the resolution of Hades' effect...?

Dark Ruler's negation effect negates D.D. Warrior Lady's effect.

*Bump*

Heh, Any other replies???????????????????????????????????

Very true. The biggest problem with 'staples' is that they tend to work in a variety of decks, and to good effect, so people will just slap'em into their deck. It's best to see what your strategy is before just popping stuff into your deck. For some people, Giant Trunade works better than Heavy Storm. Dust Tornado can work in place of MST (duh). In RFG decks, Premature Burial can become redundant. You gotta clarify the goals of the deck in your own mind and playtest it to see what works best. Brainpower = good.

Umm,

Hello there,
I am not squid. my name is Jeremy Newb (not a pun, I swear). I am young and inexperienced to this game. After trying to read this article, I realize that I need help to become a decent deck builder. How would I go about choosing the cards that would help me build an awesome deck, based around one of my favorite new cards: Grave Protector?

(uh, Im still not squid. I swear)








*teehee*

Grave Protector

As long as this card remains face-up on the field, monsters that are destroyed as a result of battle are returned to the owner's Deck instead of being sent to the Graveyard. The Deck is then shuffled.

Well Jeremy Newb,

Well to base a deck around Grave Protector, you must find a good combo(s) that abuse Grave Protector. Look for cards that benift from it's weaknesses/strengths or makes Grave Protector nothing to gawk at (A.K.A. Synergy)

You could possible use this card as a *kicker* to your Spirit deck because once spirits hit the grave, they are useless.

Sadly to say, this card has very few benefits other than the aformentioned Yata/Spirit thing. The only other card that i can think of that works well in conjunctoin with Grave Protector is Serpentine Princess combo which allows you to Special Summon a Level 3 or lower Monster From your deck to the field. This can be a nice combo when you look at the plethora of casual/tourney play monsters that fall into this category.
Good Card Pulls with this Combo Include:
Sangan
Mataza the Zapper
Exodia Pieces(sure why not, mix in a little Compulsory and it's a decent combo)
Spirit Reaper
Magical Scientist(Major)
Sinister Serpent
and many more...

But then you have to come back down to reality and realize that this card simply isn't very plausible for competetive play. Granted it may work well against Chaos decks for the short period of time that it will remain on the field and if you have a deck built around it or simply with a decent amount of support you could get something going but these are either minor benefits or simply aren't going to happen very often.

Then again.....I could be wrong. There are countless numbers of combos, yet to be discovered.

~P.S.~ I am hoping that "Jeremy Newb" was just a bold attempt by Squid, to get me to explain how to build a deck from a different angle.

~P.S.S.~You couldn't have picked a harder card to build a deck around

Oh for the love of Reversed Worlds! How did you discover me?? Ill never make a good batman sidekick. And the whole reason I chose Grave Protector is because it IS such a hard card to build a deck around.

But, if you would prefer something easier, how about....End of Anubis. That keeps it on the Graveyard angle. (Im not going to make it that much easier, ya know)

Or you could try the card that I am playing around with right now: Piranha Army (hehehe)

You had me fooled, squid. -_=

Grave Protector could have some potential in a beat/rush deck. Put in some high tribs, then Monster Gate and Last Will to grab Protector, then beat their face in. It'll slow them down a lot by recycling their monsters, while you mount the offensive, with possibly some Jeroids and Newdorias as support.

IMO, End of Anubis = Fiend Beatdown. His main deal is to mess with the ever-so-tender graveyard to cripple that vantage point, then with 2500 attack, he'll tower over most of your opponent's monsters, thus covering two fronts at once. When he's on the field, you could even pull a Robbin Goblin or '' Zombie behind him, and he'll be hurting three focal points at once. THat would be evil.

Yep, Squid is the evil one :devious: <That's Squid

I'd like to bring these decks to the attention of others on YuGiOhRealms. (Yay! Community deckbuild!)

These are decks that I (and I am sure Squid) dont want to be a basic beatdown, just for the sake of running these specific cards. I would want these cards to be abused for there effects.

I guess we will start with the Grave Protector deck. Anyone is welcome to pitch in ideas or combos.

something wrong with protector is that in order to cram a lot of monsters in your opponents deck, he would have to stay on the field for several turns, ot you could speed things up, after slowing them down, for example

deck 3x g binds, 3 grave protectors, 3x metaza the zapper and some equip card, 3x axe of eapair would work best probably

the point is to cram your opponents deck with monsters, which can hurt them epecialy if you also have dark ruler since their effects will be negated

well anyways get g bind on the field, let your opponent summon 4 or 5 monsters, then with grave protector atack all their monsters with your metaza eqiped with axe, there is one main reason why you should wait to attack and not attack as soon as they summon a monster
- they will be using magic and trap cards, or at least they will try to use magic and trap cards, you should negate them with magic drain, baltar, and or course MST or dust tornado
this helps to deplet their magic and trap pool faster since attacking them s they come would mean they will be drawing more monsters as turns pass, and their're deck will not be hurt as much, if you do this they will have many monsters in their deck and since they can only summon 1 monster per turn their hand will become mostly dead weight

IDK if this could be considered a good strategy but was the only thing that came to mind, i hope you'll understood this