Tactical Analysis: Synergy and Utility

“H2 + O = H20 = Water” the person who figured out the chemical formula of water.

Welcome to Today’s article. We will start today with a chemistry lesson. I am sure we all know about H20 and how it is water. It is a covalent bond between 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 Oxygen atom. On their own, they are not that cool. H2 is flammable diatomic gas, which is dangerous, and O is just…oxygen, it’s not even liquid. So out of two gas, one which is toxic, we come up with a liquid which we drink? How does that work out? Well, they are emergent properties. Think Sodium Chloride (NaCl) a.k.a Salt. None of them look like salt, but when they get mixed, you get emergent properties. As you can see, because of the combination, new properties come out and give a better product than what you would imagine. The same thing applies in YuGiOh. When you make combo’s you could accomplish great things. Sure, uniting 4 normal monsters who’s combined attack is less than 1000, with a monster who’s attack power is a mere thousand might not look like a big deal. However, once you do it, the emergent properties come up and win you the game, with a simple word: “Exodia.” Sure, blowing up the field at the mere cost of 1,000 life points is great. Searching a monster with 1500 attack is also great. A monster who can stop draw phases with a single peck at the deck is also nice too. On their own, they are probably good. However, if you combine them, then you get the emergent property of a “Yata Lock.” Yes, emergent properties pop up everywhere. This is something most player seem to avoid. Why?

You see, most deck-types consist of either: Utility cards, Synergy cards, and/or a combination of both. A utility card is something that’s always useful, such as an excellent top deck. Chaos Sorcerer is a perfect example. It was almost always playable, and excellent. They usually don’t require any sort of fancy combo, and pretty much cannot make complex and super cool combos. However, as stated earlier, it’s not required. The card , in it’s nature, works excellent on it’s own. Most Cookie Cutter(CC) decks are based on this cards. They are all cards that work great on their own, and if they get the chance to make a small combo then that’s great. If it didn’t, oh well, who cares? Following this sense of logic, this makes CC deck the best decks around. This train of thought is flawed in a way, but correct in another. It is right in the sense that there is where the strength of CC lies. The mathematical possibility of having the least amount of top decks, making every card you draw useful in some way. All staples cards are considered Utility cards due to the very nature of them being able to be useful in many situations.

However, the game is not just card-on-card battle. There’s some tactical cards involved, here comes Synergy. Synergetic cards are cards that work best in combinations. Now, Utility cards could also be considered Synergetic cards. Cards like Graceful Charity, Chaos Emperor Dragon, and Chaos sorcerer. For the most part, however, synergetic cards are cards that are usually not that awesome on their own. Cards such as Cyber Stein, or OTK cards in general, are qualified as Synergetic cards. Synergetic cards can accomplish a bigger effect that Utility cards could. No Utility card could claim an automatic win unlike synergetic cards. However, we can’t forget synergetic cards are generally not good, or just plain bad, on their own. The Right Arm of the Forbidden One is pretty useless on it’s own. Therefore we enter what I like to call, the Risk vs. Rewards chart.

What is the Risk vs. Rewards chart? Well it’s not really a chart, although it could be drawn into. It is more of a philosophy. The farther you go for the rewards, the farther the risk. This applies in a lot of things, not just YuGiOh. Think the stock market. If you buy a lot of stock, then you have a chance at getting a lot of money, but you also have a chance of losing lots of money. As you put more money, you have higher chance of getting money, and higher chance of losing it. Now, there’s skills in knowing where to invest your money. You surely are not going to invest it in a “Alien Repellant” company, right? In YuGiOh we know to avoid some combos. For starters, any combo involving more than 5 card is out of the picture. Why? Well we follow the Exodia Rule:

Exodia is a 5 card “Combo.” It grants you automatic win, and nothing can stop it. Any other combo involving 5 cards or more, is obsolete.

That’s the Exodia Rule. It’s common sense, really, but a lot of the newbies seem to forget with their “ultimate” combo. Anyhow, we must try to work with small combos. The most famous combo last format was Cyber Stein + Giant Trunade + Megamorph. As you see, they are all 3 Synergetic cards, in the sense that they are not so great on their own, however, when combine they achieve a tremendous effect. Thus, the most powerful synergetic combo are OTK’s. We all know OTK decks are powerful, we have all lost to one. They are, in their nature, a bit risky to play. Even the most successful OTK decks are risky, but the rewards you can get from them are great. For OTK decks, we dedicate the deck to Synergetic cards, which means if the combo doesn’t go off, we lose as almost every card is worthless. Here is where the Risk vs. Rewards comes up again. We risk running a deck filled with cards that are pretty bad on their own, for the reward of a 1 turn win.

Experienced players usually try to find a balance for them. If you can mix the great top decking ability from the Utility cards, and use Synergetic cards that combo well with the Utility cards as well as other Synergetic cards in the deck in other provide advantages. For example, if you run a couple of Brain Control’s then running an Enemy Controller might not be to bad, maybe even a Mobius the Frost Monarch and Enemy Controller works okay on it’s own too so that’s a good balance. In the example above, we used Brain Control, a card that can work as Utility or Synergetic, with a Synergetic card( Enemy Controller). However, we also had the ability to either use the Brain Control, or the Synergetic card with a Utility card (Mobius the Frost Monarch, however this is arguable.) to get a better a effect. Combo’s like this are what lead to the best decks. Decks that abuse the power of CC but use Synergy cards to accomplish a better impact with a little extra risk.

A lot of deck builder ignore this, and use what they think are “good” cards because they are used in Top 8 Deck. Sun Tzu once said, all men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved , and he was right. If you know a tactic or combo, but don’t know the real purpose then it’s not helpful to you. This is not necessarily directed to the people who net deck other decks that they don’t know how to play, like people copying Hajime Saito’s Exodia Deck and then playing wrong with it, but rather for everyone who learns a combo. You have to analyze it. You have to ask if it’s good, why is it good, and what does it accomplish? That’s all for today, later.

-Xav

A++ Article.
Very excellent detail and accuracy. Im impressed.

I agree very nice! I love the refrence to the combo though but you wwere wrong. there is only 1 combo better then exodi that is 5 set

cyber stein
megamorph
gaint trunade
limiter removal
havng 5000 lifepoints (if this doesnt count then its a 4 card combo but stein has tons of life gaining cards)

Sweet Words I enjoyed it greatly.

You misunderstand the concept. It is means all 5 combos, other than exodia, are worthless. In your example, assuming having 5,000 life points was a card, then it's still not better than exodia. If I chain Wabaku, then i stopped you. If I have a Kuriboh in hand, i stopped you. You can't do that against Exodia.

Nice article Xav! I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work!

Excellent article Xav. It was a great read for me, keep up the good work.

~iomega

One grammar mistake in an otherwise good article.

However, Cyber Stein's state as a utility card or a synergistic card is debatable. You don't need any other cards for it to work with in order to have 5000 life points, though they help. And a free big monster is always a good thing. Seeing as you can choose which monster you get and are not actually limited to the Cyber Dragon fusions and BEUD it really can be something of a utility. It probably goes more in the section of cards that fit a little into both, like Graceful Charity (though in my opinion, once a card is utility, it remains utility despite any synergy it might have)

Hydrogen is merely flammable, not particularly toxic...unless you look at the definition of toxic, which is something along the lines of "poisonous to such and such organism." Of course, since hydrogen combusts virtually spontaneously, it too is a danger to the organism, and arguably toxic in that it can cause great harm. now, chlorine...that is one mean element...elementary, my dear watson. lol
enough of that. nice article, xav. neat analogy between something we see in everyday life (yugioh!) and something strange and mysterious (chemistry!). keep up the good work.

Well, Hydrogen might not be toxic, but H2 is. It's hydrogen gas, highly flammable. Chlorine is a mean element, which makes it a great wonder to how we mix something like that with Sodium to come up with Salt which we eat, and preserve food in.

You ever heard of wonder bread? You know why they call it Wonder Bread? Because it's a wonder you don't die from it.

Ionics > Covalents...though your analogy was fine with the water. You kind of complicated it with the table salt. Oh yeah, and nice read.

If H20 was an Ionic bond, you would be dead.

I was talking about ionics in general are cooler (IMO).

Well, they sound coolers. I heard of Ionic Gun. Ion beam, etc. Never heard of Covalent Beam, or things like that.

toxic, flammable...when it comes down to it, they mean essentially the same thing (in this case)...dangerous to us. wonder bread...uuughh...

Probably because covalent bonds are that much more difficult to break, thus making a beam version of it particularly difficult to produce; that, or more likely because the guys in hollywood just liked the sound of "ion" more than "covalent" too:)...