Feature: A World of Changes

Greetings, Yu-Gi-Oh players! It's been a very long time since I've updated this site, but I resumed playing competitively a few months ago and spent that time learning about the current state of the game in order to get back into the swing of things. Obviously, a lot of things have changed in the time that I've been gone, and I thought that giving my thoughts on some of these changes would be a perfect way to get back into regular posting here on the blog. I'm glad to be back, and I hope you all enjoy reading the new (and old!) posts on the site.

Click through for the full article after the jump!

Feature: Heavy Storm, the Ultimate Double-Edged Sword

The new September forbidden list brought a lot of surprises to competitive Yu-Gi-Oh, and will surely change the entire pace of the current format, but there is one returning card that immediately and single-handedly will change the game as we have grown to know it over the past two formats, and that is Heavy Storm.

Feature: Dimensional Forest

So, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I've been teasing a new deck that I've been testing at a few of my locals over the past few days on Twitter and various forums. Well, after a lot of play testing both in tournaments and with my group of YGO buddies, I'm finally ready to reveal the deck list and concept!

March 2011 Format: What to Expect

The March 2011 format is just around the corner, and a lot of talk and speculation has been floating around the internet about the shape of the format to come. This ban list brings with it a lot of unexpected and game changing limits/unlimits, and I'd like to jot down a few words about what I expect to see in the next six months.

The March 2011 ban list is bringing a lot of changes to the game, but these I feel are the most important and are what I'm going to spend the majority of this article talking about:

- Goyo Guardian: Banned

- Cold Wave: Banned

- Blackwing: Kalut the Moon Shadow: Limited

- Honest: Limited

- Dandylion: Limited

- Book of Moon: Limited

- Gateway of the Six: Limited

- Card Trooper: Semi-Limited

- Spirit Reaper: Semi-Limited

- Icarus Attack: Semi-Limited

- Chaos Sorcerer: Unlimited

That's a lot of things to cover! Like I said, the landscape of the current meta-game is about to change dramatically, and the changes I listed above are going to be solely responsible for that.

Goyo Guardian and Cold Wave:

I don't really think anyone saw the banning of Goyo Guardian coming; it definitely took me by surprise. However, the more I think about it, the more it starts to make sense. Goyo is a 6-star, 2800 attacker that can steal a monster if it destroys it by battle. If it were a higher level monster, or even had lower attack for it's level, it would be balanced; but because Goyo is so easy to make and gets over so many powerful creatures, I can see the logic behind it. Not to mention the fact that Exceed monsters are right around the corner; I think Konami wanted to limit the number of effective 6-star monsters to encourage players to use Exceed monsters when they're released, and to also keep Exceed monsters from being run over too easily and stolen by Goyo.

So, what does the banning of Goyo mean for the upcoming meta-game? Brionac, and LOTS of it. Without the default six star option of Goyo, players are going to be resorting to Brionac plays a lot more frequently, simply because they don't have a better choice. Coupled with the amount of heavy trap hate that's sure to take place this format (Trap Stun, namely, though Seven Tools of the Bandit will be seeing a lot of play as well), Brionac is going to be a pretty common sight. As a result of both of these, I also expect to see Effect Veiler make a huge comeback, with at least one main decked in practically every deck.

Cold Wave may have been banned, and while I'm sure most of the dueling public couldn't be happier, I wouldn't count your blessings just yet. With the limiting of Book of Moon, traps are going to be the new name of the game, and thus Trap Stun, Seven Tools and Royal Decree are going to be huge this format as well. It's up to the player and their deck's play style to decide which route they want to go, but all three of these cards are going to be everywhere. The days of Cold Wave into a Black Rose or Judgment Dragon nuke may be over, but rest assured that players will find other ways to safely make these huge plays.

Kalut and Honest:

Let's be honest here (no pun intended!) -- both of these limits have needed to happen for a while. I admit that I was surprised to see Kalut go to one, but just like with Goyo, the more I thought about it the more I saw the logic behind it. Being able to drop either of these from your hand when attacking or attacked (or, in Kalut's case, when you're attacking directly, potentially for game), is some pretty broken stuff.

For Kalut and Blackwings, this is going to pose a serious problem for the deck moving forward. While Kalut plays were never the focus of the deck, having that support to help Blackwings' relatively low attack monsters get over the biggest boss monsters in the game was a huge advantage for the deck. Blackwing players are going to have to be much more cautious with their single Kalut now, and will be forced to find cards to replace it. The general consensus seems to be a pair of Smashing Ground, which I expect to become staple in the deck as it does a decent job of removing huge monsters, similar to Kalut's purpose, and also helps push through for advantage with direct attacks from Spirit Reaper. Of all the limits on the new list, I think this hurt more than anything else and may have effectively knocked Blackwings down to tier 2 all by itself.

Limiting Honest, however, is not nearly as much of a devastating blow to the decks that use it as Kalut was for Blackwings, particularly in pure Lightsworn decks which can easily re-use and abuse that one Honest via Beckoning Light and Pot of Avarice.

Dandylion:

This is a limit I don't think anyone was surprised to see. With the advent of the Synchro mechanic and the abuse that allows via Fluff tokens and Debris Dragon (a whole deck was made around it, for God's sakes), it was a limit that really needed to happen. With this limit, the semi-limit of Debris Dragon and the unlimiting of Chaos Sorcerer, I expect current Debris-Plant decks to switch over to a more Chaos oriented build. Debris-Plant decks are the most poised to easily abuse Chaos Sorcerer, and I think in order to remain competitive they'll have to do just that. Debris-Plants have been tier one for this entire format, and I wholeheartedly expect Chaos Plants to carry that torch in the new format.

Book of Moon and Gateway of the Six:

This is the single most game changing limit on the entire list, and anyone who disagrees clearly hasn't been playing this game long enough to know any better. When I first started playing Yu-Gi-Oh competitively, Book of Moon was limited. When it came to three, it singlehandedly defined that entire format and has continued to be a staple at three in almost every deck. Before Synchros existed it wasn't as useful, but being able to stop a synchro play, re-use flip effects, stop direct attacks and all kinds of other things, ultimately led to Book of Moon reclaiming its place on the Limited list, and I wasn't at all surprised. I actually predicted that this would happen back on September's ban list.

The single best defensive spell in the game is now down to one, and there really are no replacements. Enemy Controller is the next best thing, and I'm sure plenty of people will be trying that out in Book of Moon's place. Forbidden Lance may also see some play to try and fill the hole. Being such a universal card, this has a huge impact on a lot of decks, but the primary concern here is Blackwings. Without Book of Moon AND Kalut, the deck has really taken a huge defensive hit, one that it may not be able to recover from in the new format.

Synchro plays are going to be a lot more successful in Book of Moon's absence, however. The effects this is going to have on the game are really too far-reaching to completely predict, but I can guarantee by the time we reach the end of this format, everyone is going to be lamenting their lost Book of Moons.

Gateway is one of the most broken support cards we've seen in a really long time. I wasn't surprised to see it hit by the new ban list, but I WAS surprised to see it limited. Most of us expected Gateway to go to two so that Samurai's would still be overpowered and thus make all kinds of money for Konami. Apparently Konami had other ideas! Gateway being at one definitely makes a huge dent in Six Samurai, but it's not even close to being the proverbial nail in the coffin. I fully expect this deck to stay firmly seated in the realm of tier one decks, especially after Shien's Dojo releases in Extreme Victory, which will likely break the deck all over again. Hold on to your Kinetic Soliders and Puppet Plants; Samurais aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Card Trooper, Spirit Reaper and Icarus Attack:

Continuing the trend of changes no one saw coming, Card Trooper and Spirit Reaper are both back to two. It's hard to really predict the impact these two cards are going to have on the meta-game, but I can safely say that both are going to be seeing heavy play this format, most likely in Chaos Plants! Spirit Reaper is an excellent stall card with a devastating discard effect; coupled with its Dark attribute, the card is instantly splashable in a lot of decks. I predict that 2 copies will become staple in Blackwing builds moving forward, as well as in Chaos Plants. The meta-game may have also just found its MVP side card of the format in Spirit Reaper as well!

Card Trooper is a bit murkier at this point. Outside of Chaos/Debris-Plants and Lightsworn/Twilight, I don't see it having much use at two, but I'm sure that some ingenious player will find some way to abuse it in a way that none of us could have predicted. I think this might be the dark horse card of the new ban list; we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Icarus Attack is yet another hit to Blackwings. Clearly Blackwings were hit hardest on this banlist, and when combined with the other limits the deck recieved (Kalut and Book of Moon going to one), Icarus Attack at two may just be the end of Blackwings' tier one reign of terror. The amount of players using Blackwings is obviously going to plummet; the deck will be no where near as ubiquitous as it was before, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it fall safely into a tier 1.5/tier 2 position as a deck that still does its job of keeping the broken tier one decks in check.

Chaos Sorcerer:

I'm going to be upfront about this from the very start -- I think Chaos Sorcerer being at three is going to define this format. I think that, a format or two from now, people are going to look back at March 2011 as being the "Chaos Sorcerer format". I think decks are going to be made and tailored specifically so that they can play Chaos Sorcerer at three. Chaos Plants are just the first, most obvious option, but I think Twilight is going to see a resurgence in play as well, with the focus of the deck being on spamming and reusing Chaos Sorcerer.

It's anyone's guess what other crazy Chaos decks we see spring up as a result of this, but again, I have no hesitation in saying that Chaos Sorcerer is going to be THE card of the March 2011 format.

So, now that we've waded through all of that, let's talk about the new tiers and how they're going to shakedown!

Tier 1:

- Chaos Plants

- Six Samurai

- X-Sabers

- Gravekeepers

Tier 1.5:

- Gladiator Beasts

- Frog/Formula Monarchs

- Light Hero Beatdown/E-Hero (Post- The Shining release)

Tier 2:

- Blackwings

- Lightsworn/Twilight

- Machina

- Disaster Dragon (Dragon Ravine is about to give this deck the boost it needed to really be competitive)

- Scraps

Gladiator Beasts always see a resurgence at the start of every format, and I don't expect this format to be any different. Keeping in that vein, I also expect this format to follow the pattern of GB's falling off the tier list a month or two into the format when it's had time to define itself.

Gravekeeper's will keep their top tier position due to their amazingly favorable match-up against Plants and all of their variants and the fact that the deck really has no inherently unfavorable matches.

X-Sabers received almost no limits on the new list outside of the universal hits in Cold Wave and Book of Moon, the latter of which benefits the deck more than hindering it. With Trap Stuns flying everywhere and traps in general sure to be huge this format, Hyunlei is going to be that much deadlier.

Six Samurai are still a strong, very competitive deck post-March. Though they lost two Gateway, I know the deck will find a way to rain on everyone else's parade. I do expect the sheer volume of the deck being played will decrease pretty substantially, but the deck isn't going anywhere. It may see a dip in play until Extreme Victory releases, bringing Shien's Dojo along with it, but rest assured Samurais are here to stay.

Everything else in the tier lists is pretty self-explanatory. If there's one thing I'd like to say about the tiers for this coming format, it's that the lines between tiers 1, 1.5 and 2 are pretty blurry; any of these decks could easily top a YCS or regional, holding its own against the rest of the meta-decks. In my opinion, that's a good thing! Variety in a game like this is never bad.

So, there you have it! Better get your decks primed and ready, because next week the new ban list takes effect and we're all in for a whole new landscape of dueling!

Feature: Proper Side Decking

Hey guys! This is an article I've been promising and hyping up for quite a while, I've just never had the motivation or the clarity to actually sit down and write it! I know this is something a lot of you have been looking forward to reading, so I wanted to make sure I did the best job I possibly could, because side decking is easily the most important part of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh play.

Side decking really boils down to a a series of choices and meta-calls. In order to make an effective side deck, and then also use it in the most efficient manner possible, a player has to be absolutely familiar with his own deck and with the decks he or she expects to come up against in a tournament setting. Obviously, this is easier said than done, and it can be a huge learning experience for a new player.

So, let's start with the basics. As a player you are given fifteen slots to use for a side deck. The most common tactic is to side deck cards that will help you in your most disadvantageous matches, and while that is generally a good idea and rule of thumb, it's not always what a player should follow when choosing what cards to put in their side deck.

A more effective way of siding is to look at your own deck and to address its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, as a Blackwing player, a majority of my side decked cards are concerned with either A.) Monster removal or B.) Increasing my offense. Blackwings have a lot of trouble with monsters with high attack, and being as they run so few monsters to begin with, protecting them from the opponent's creature effects is vital. So, in my case, cards like Nobleman of Crossout, Chain Disappearance, Cyber Dragon and, of course, Thunder King Rai-Oh, are very helpful in most of the matches I'm likely to come across.

Being able to identify your own deck's weaknesses is a very valuable skill. Looking objectively at a deck that you've likely spent a lot of time and money on perfecting is difficult to do, but it will ultimately make your side deck choices easier and more effective.

The choices one makes for the fifteen cards they side deck is vitally important to their success as a player in the tournament scene. Side decking is somewhat of an art, and it takes practice. Obviously, with only fifteen cards to work with, we can't possibly hope to cover every deck we may come up against, but we should still be working to make our side decks as versatile as possible.

This brings us back to a principle of core theory in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh play, known as "utility". Utility is a term that refers to the level of usage a single card may have. Put simply, it's a measure of how useful a card is going to be in any given situation and, using this concept we can then determine how many copies of said card we should play or side deck.

Take, for instance, a card like Book of Moon. Book of Moon has an outrageous level of utility, because it is useful in a whole slew of different situations. You can use it to block a direct attack, to turn a monster face-down to prevent a Synchro summon, it can be used to recycle a monster's flip effect (Ryko, Morphing Jar), etc. When you draw a Book of Moon, it is almost never a "dead" card -- that is, it always has some use and benefits the player. It has, as we say, a very high utility.

On the other hand, we have cards such as Gorz, the Emmisary of Darkness. Gorz is a great card, and can definitely turn games in your favor when used at the right moment but, due to its summoning requirements, it tends to have a very low utility in the early game, with its usefulness increasing as the game goes on. A limited usefulness gives cards a low utility, and its generally cards like these that we want to avoid when side decking, though there are certainly exceptions.

So, having said all of that, let's get down to business with a sample side deck!

1x Vanity's Fiend

1x Treeborn Frog
1x Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
1x Blackwing - Elphin the Raven
1x Giant Trunade
1x Swords of Revealing Light
1x GB Hunter
1x Book of Moon
1x Magic Cylinder
1x Blackwing - Breeze the Zephyr
1x Starlight Road
1x Metal Reflect Slime
2x Blackwing Bombardment

As you can see, this side deck is what we would call a pretty bad one -- but why?

There are a lot of cards at one, which as we all know, is terrible for consistency and most of the cards have a very low utility, which means that they likely won't be very useful in any match up and more often than not likely won't ever ended up being sided in in game two and, if it comes to that, game three; not to mention none of them help to further a Blackwing deck's main strategy.

So how do we fix this? Well, a side deck is very dependent on the player's main deck because, as I said earlier, the whole point of a side deck is to address the main deck's weaknesses in match ups against other meta decks. Let's start by identifying some of the Blackwing deck's major weaknesses and unfavorable match ups.

Weaknesses:

- Monster Removal

- Opposing monsters with high attack and/or defense

Bad Match Ups:

- Gravekeepers

- Frog Monarchs

It's immediately evident why Blackwings have trouble with both of these decks. Gravekeepers are essentially a glorified beatdown deck, and the 500 point attack boost that Necrovalley provides all of their creatures, combined with the monster removal of Gravekeeper's Descendant poses a huge threat to Blackwings.

Frog Monarchs are also a bad match because they play so few cards to the field at once, making Icarus Attack, the deck's biggest threat, essentially worthless. When used in tandem with the removal power of Caius and Raiza, this match has the potential to get very ugly for Blackwings as well.

So, having identified our weaknesses, let's look at some cards that could help us address them. When side decking, we shouldn't be concerned with siding cards that "shut the opponent down", or, more simply, cards that only take care of one card in one deck. As I mentioned previously, we want our side cards to be as versatile as possible, so we'll almost always been in search of those "one size fits all" cards to include in our side decks.

Obviously high attack and defense is a big problem for Blackwings, so Cyber Dragon is a great answer to these sorts of things, not to mention a lot of other current meta decks also have trouble with high attack, so Cyber Dragon will fare very well in almost any player's side deck. It's also great in the Machina/Gadget match, due to the introduction of Chimeratech Fortress Dragon.

Thunder King Rai-Oh has been a staple side deck card for a very long time now, and while its overall usefulness has gone down somewhat this format, it's still a great card worth side decking. Being able to negate a synchro summon as well as stop the opponent from adding cards from their deck to their hand outside of drawing is a great thing. It also prevents Pot of Duality from being activated, and the 1900 attack is just icing on the cake.

Nobleman of Crossout will help us take care of annoyances such as Ryko and Snowman Eater, both of which are seeing pretty heavy play in today's meta. It also has the potential to remove from play a recruiter monster such as XX-Saber Darksoul, Gravekeeper's Recruiter or Sangan. A very versatile card.

As you can see, we're siding cards to address our biggest concerns, which cover a pretty large variety of matches. This is the key to effective side decking. Without utility and versatility, your side deck more or less amounts to a worthless stack of fifteen cards.

But, almost more importantly than the cards you side is the number of a card you decide to play. It's a basic principle of logic and probability that the more copies of any one card you play, the more likely you are to see said card in a duel. Applying this principle isn't as simple as it sounds on paper. There are obviously some cards that are going to be more important to a player, and it's those cards that we should be playing multiple copies of because we not only want to have a higher chance of seeing them and thus using them in a duel, but we also will have a higher probability of seeing the card much sooner in a duel.

As anyone who is familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh will know, most often it matters most who gets which cards first. So, when deciding which cards you're going to side deck, think long and hard about the usefulness of that card, how much and how soon you want to see it and then decide on the number of the card that is appropriate to place in your side deck.

Often it will be the case that you'll wish to side more copies of a given card and simply do not have the room. This is all part of the art of siding -- prioritizing certain cards and weaknesses over others and then making decisions from that information. As I've said, it takes practice and a lot of play testing to really find a side deck that not only works for your deck, but for you as a player as well.

Finally, wrapping things up, let's look at another, much better side deck!

2 x Cyber Dragon

2 x Thunder King Rai-Oh

2 x D.D. Crow

2 x Nobleman of Crossout

2 x Trap Hole

2 x Chain Disappearance

2 x Dust Tornado

1 x Mind Crush

For those of you keeping record, this is actually my current side deck for my Blackwings! Rather than explain everything, however, I think it might better benefit you all to analyze the side deck yourselves and try to see my reasoning for the cards and how many uses they may have in different match ups.

I hope you all enjoyed this article and get some use out of it. I plan on writing more technical pieces like this in the future, so, as always, don't be afraid to give me some feedback on what you liked and didn't like about the article -- that's the only way for me and my blog to grow!