Missing the Blog and More Absence from It

Well, actually, I'm pretty missing blogging, but I never have the energy to write or something to write about. If that wasn't enough, I'll be missing from the blog for a week, so, for the first time, no card of the week for tomorrow, since there'll be no internet connection. Sad.
I'll try to be more active when I'll be back. I'm writing right now on my phone some topics to talk about when I'll be back, so, fear not, I should be able to write something.
See Ya.

Card of the Week #20: Metaion, the Timelord

Cannot be Special Summoned from the Deck. If you control no monsters, you can Normal Summon this card without Tributing. This card cannot be destroyed by battle or by card effects. You take no Battle Damage from battles involving this face-up Attack Position card. At the end of the Battle Phase, if this card attacked or was attacked: Return all other monsters on the field to the hand, and inflict 300 damage to your opponent for each card returned. During your Standby Phase: Shuffle this card into the Deck (even if face-down).

Lovely card, rulings, there we go:
If the a card returned to the hand via this card's effect isn't really in the hand (Plaguespreader summoned via its own effect, for example), that card won't be counted toward the number of cards for the damages.
Bouncing a Synchro monster, Fusion monster, or XYZ monster, is counted as bouncing them to the hand, so they will be counted.

No explanations.

Let's take a close look, then:
FIRE, nothing special since it can't be summoned from the deck;
LV10, some XYZs, go into Gustav with this and another monster;
Fairy, the great one, it's just perfect for this card;
Stats, 0 ATK and 0 DEF, not that they matter given the effect.

Well, I like this card. I used to play, and recently brought back to life, a fairy deck using Freya with Court of Justice and Valhalla to bring giant fairies. Needn't to say that this card was probably one of the best star of the deck, and funnier ones to play. In three copies I drew it frequently, and frequentily I did summon it. That was to clean the field from nasty XYZs, such as Zenmaines, Maestroke, or even giant synchros and hard-to-play-around monsters. Dealing some damages was even actually funny, and game winning if used right.
In this deck I used to play Freya as LV1 to trigger Court of Justice, and ATK booster for our fairies, while Athena and this dealt damages, while krystia was frequently blocking opponent's summons. Athena+this worked wonders, since you could attack with this, get rid of monsters on the field, summon athena somehow, tribute this and SS another monster so that we didn't get the -1 that this card usually has. Athena comboed quite a bit with Superbia and another athena, summoning this as finisher some times, while dealing other damages and having a field full of powerful beaters.
Valhalla was there to summon giant beatsticks from the void, and the rest was protection and staples. Good deck it was.

Talking of this card generally, I should underline how this card can be freely summoned from the hand, grave or banished zone. The only limit it puts, is that you can't from the deck. Actually, I think that if built well, Call of the Haunted should be its best friend. SS it via coth, wipe out the field, recycle CotH somehow (still thinking of a solid way to do so), use it again next turn, profit.
While this idea is still developing, one of the most possible ones is in Burn decks or monster-less (or deck with a low monster count) as a way to stall the opponent, do some damages, and have an empty field for your moves during your turn. As a level 10, it's great for random gustavs with metal reflect slime or other cards.

Having 0 ATK makes it a workable target for Limit Reverse, but even for reptilianne vaskii, if you were to play metaion in a reptilianne deck (needed to name this one since I'm thinking of how to efficiently play and build a reptilianne deck).


Actually, this post was just a fast one to put together various uses of this card. Today I had no time to write anything, since tomorrow there's English Oral Test (side note for who doesn't remember/know: Italian is my language, English is only the language I learnt at school) and need to study something, even if not truly needed. Oh, well.

See Ya.

Once again

Lack of post. Actually, it's not a time issue, but some ideas. It's just that recently I'm not playing ygo enough to build something, or even only think of some comboes. I should make posts like "Random Thoughts", to make the blog a little more active.
If you've got something you want me to talk about, just ask here under the comments, but don't expect builds, I could give some advices. If you want, you can post your decklist and ask for fixes, I'd like to try this one too. Only original decks, though.

Card of the Week #19: Doomcaliber Knight

Cannot be Special Summoned. During either player's turn, when a monster effect is activated: Tribute this face-up card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that monster.

I wanted to review this card from quite some time, yesterday talking with a friend of mine I thought about reviewing this today, and so it was. Here, have some rulings:
-Tributing is a cost;
-The "cannot be special summoned" part of the effect is a condition;
-This effect does not target.

The first two don't need explanations, just keep in mind that you can use his effect even with skill drain on the field and that that "cannot be special summoned" can't be avoided no matter what.
The third one, instead, is a logical thing. As you all know, you can't target cards in hand or deck, so if this card hits a card in hand or deck, this means it can't target. That's the same reasoning that's behind Trishula's rulings.

Let's take a close look, shall we?
DARK, yeah, supports, and given his effect even chaos fodder;
LV4, usually a lovely level, but with this card it doesn't really matter, just keep that in mind for eventualities;
Fiend, some other good supports;
Stats, 1900 ATK is great, and everyone seems to forget that this card has a great defense, too, 1800 is really something.

I love this card, that's it. Great stats with great effect. Negate monster's effect to stop their plays, at the worst it's 1 for 1 trade, so it doesn't matter, expecially if you have some cards to back you up.

Well, why this card? As you should know, I like controllish and antimetish things, so that cards that are always there in these decks are my favourite ones. To be honest, I hated Doomcaliber initially, probably because of some bad experiences I had against him, but then I started playing chaos stun for something like 2/3 formats (before BLS was limited again) and this became one of the big three of the deck, alongside Thunder King and Chaos Sorcerer.

Why is doomcaliber so awesome? Doomcaliber has a particular ability: can negate any monster's effect, no matter where and when. The problem is that his effect is mandatory, but that's not a problem if you can work with him. Summon this, set 1 warn, 1 bribe and 1 dimensional prison and you are ready to win. While playing this card the main thing you need to control is YOUR field, and not only your opponent's. If you have nothing to back you up after you use his effect you're probably done for. I'd rather not summon him in place of sumoning him without any back-up plans or other antimetish cards in the backrow.
While you have to play being aware of this, this card is great because it can destroy giant monsters if they have mandatory effects or stop your opponent from using them if they don't have anything else to kill doomcaliber. If they do have them, you have your backrows, so anything's fine and you'll continue stopping your opponent's cards while locking your opponent's monster's effect with your still-on-the-field Doomcaliber Knight.

A pro that's at the same time a con is that doomcaliber can negate cards from everywhere, both fields, both hands, both decks, both graveyards, both banished zones, basically everywhere.
While this can be used from your opponent to kill your doomcaliber without high costs, or sometimes without any cost at all (treeborn frog is an example), you can use this to stop your opponent's key monster's effects, like the only monster's effect that inzektors will need to start comboeing, that rescue rabbit your opponent is trying to use, that Stratos your opponent is trying to summon (that has a mandatory effect, of course), that dark world's effect that your opponent used wasting a discard card only to kill that 2200 beater you have on the field (cause he gets the 300 ATK bonus from gateway, of course) and so on.

Speaking of Dark World, even though I never played them competitively recently, I started building an antimeta build that features triple doomcaliber. I'm actualyl developing this with a friend of mine that's way more expert than me about this deck, but I definitely think it has potential.
Being able to generate +1s or generally not to go into some -1s, and the ability to play skill drain, it makes Dark World a perfect deck for antimeta/control. Being Doomcaliber fiend, too, he gets the +300 ATK from gateway, making him a 2200 beater against TK or even cyber dragon, while being able to stop effects from the hand or graveyard, other than field if skill drain is not active.

I should, one day, do a general guide to control and antimeta decks, I felt the need of it sometimes.

Well, this was all, hope you liked the card and the post. Check out LFN and YGO's post about him, too, as he did a fast post about that card mained against the meta.
See Ya.

20.000 Visit Count Hit!///Look at my favourite meta-ish decks

The blog reached 20.000 visits, totally good thing, in less than 2 months from the 10.000 (actually 1 month and 28 days, since the 20.000th visit was yesterday). As a special for this new record, I should do something I don't often do: talk about competitive decks that I like.
If you're fellow readers of this blog, you should know I hate overplayed decks, but I like them when no one knows about or plays them. However it happens that I fall in love with some kind of decks that are quite played, well, shit happens.
I like Control and OTK decks, better if they're together, that's the main reason of most of those decks:
Infernities, probably the one that looks like a meta deck that I like the most. Control your opponent, stop him from attempting suicide, then go into some wild OTK. Love Infernities for their explosion abilities. I'm actually playing them with a standard, beetle-less, build. Go into void ogre and archfiend with a pair or barriers down there and subsequently win. A side note, I do play 3 barriers cause I love them.
Karakuris, you should know this one too, since I posted it some time ago. Generates +1s, goes into Naturia Beast, my favourite synchro, possibly with safe zone attached, then goes into OTKs. Lovely one.
Six Samurais, even though it's been quite some time since I last played or built them, it's been some time that I wanted to restart playing them. I like them since they can explode with a lucky hand and go into easy OTKs OR stall with shi en and one of my favourite synchros ever, Naturia Beast (and eventually Barkion, but I like Beast more). Control 'em all, then kill.
X-Sabers, I like their style too, even though I have never played them, I'd like to start, only that recently I'm having quite some problems with DN (as usual, lol), and some combined lack of time and will. They're good, once again control them, their hand, their field, and then kill. Good, good, good, and EARTH for Beast/Barkion, other than eventual grandsoil.
Wind-Ups, only recently I've started liking them, since the limiting of zenmaity. They can combo to go into something controllish and OTK the opponent, while plusing you from everywhere. And, what's more, I love WU Rabbit, so that's it. After Zenmaity's limitation, it became more and more hard to play, with lots of reasoning needed, that's why I like it. Should start playing this one, too.
Rock Stun, actually playing them. Negate your opponent's thingies, and gradually make them lose their LPs. Like this because you negate even your opponent's breathing, and negating everything is one of my major sources of fun.
Antimeta&Rogue, same for the rock stun, only that this is more lollish. Turn 1, summon pachy, set 5, opponent gets an heart attack and then win.

This was all, pretty much. Consider that for today I didn't planned on write anything, so I just wrote a bunch of random things in this post, but I think I'll take some and write something more appropriate to them in the future.

Selvaggio: Beastly Synchro

Monsters: [22]

3 Chain Dog

2 Dark Desertapir

1 Egotistical Ape

1 Green Baboon

3 Key Mouse

3 Kinka-Byo

1 Lock Cat

3 Ryko

2 Super-Nimble

3 Uniflora

1 X-Saber Airbellum

Spells: [10]

1 Creature Swap

1 Dark Hole

2 Gold Sarcophagus

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mind Control

1 Monster Reborn

2 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 One for One

Traps: [7]

1 Fiend Comedian

3 Horn of the Phantom Beast

1 Solemn Judgment

2 Starlight Road

The Extra Deck is quite randomish, but it worked well. If you want, I think I should do it too, add one other Emeral by dropping a tricorn or unicorn.

Then, back to the deck itself, how does this work? It works fairly well, I'm yet to find the perfect build, but it works.

Go into fast Naturia Beast, maybe with Horn equipped to make it a giant beatstick not overrunnable via usual methods, then do, as fast as you can, barkion to lock out the opponent's usual choices and eventually lock even all of the methods they have to kill your duo (not everyone plays monsters capable to kill other monsters, and if the draw into veiler too late they should have lost already, even because you play other protections, too.

While doing this, you have lots of beat abilities, ryko's destroying ability, uniflora's SS ability, Kinka's effect to bring back uniflora and another monster with uniflora's effect, that single creature swap control and so on.

Explaining some of the most odd choices:

Desertapir+Gold Sarcophagus, extreme SS ability, with uniflora in the grave you can virtually SS all of the beast monsters.

Egotistical Ape, discard chain dog, bring him back, go into Beast. What's more, random tuner with variable levels.

Single Lock Cat, I didn't feel the need for more than one, since uniflora can't activate its effect, only thing left was summon mouse to use its effect once destroyed, or go into armory arm. If armory was beast, Lock Cat would have been at least at 2, but usually 3.

Green Baboon, decent beater, main reason for it. As an added reason, back-up plan sometimes.

Single Creature Swap, more have been cloggy to me, and 1 just good.

Fiend Comedian, my favourite tech from some time on. Use this, either ruin opponent's plans or give you the mill you need.

I'd like to have another emeral in there because one recycles the other one so that you don't have non-beasts in the grave.

The major problem of the deck was, though, the speed. You could either start with awesome hands or bad hands that needed you to stall some turns. However the deck has one main good point: it has pretty much never a totally bad hand such as "Oh, I have these shits, I should hit the admit defeat button", you could always turn the table.

Other ideas for the deck were playing solidarity as, the most of times, we have only beasts in the grave.

What's more, I initially played Bazoo in the deck to get rid of non-beast monsters, but when I read desertapir's effect closely I noticed that it wouldn't work with bazoo's effect, so I took if out for soul release that worked, but was way too occasional, I gave up on the idea of removing those monsters like that and use emeral instead, however I thought of Transmigration prophecy while writing this post. I think it should be good, recycle your cards, make your opponent's monsters not be a valid target for lot of cards and they're done for. What's more, chainable.

I believe I'll play one dropping an Airbellum, since it felt more than anything else cloggy and useless. And, yes, it happened, I had airbellum on the field against DWs making him totally dead.

Well, that was it. As usual, the translation: "Selvaggio" means "Wild", I felt it was appropriate for the deck since this goes "selvaggiamente" (wildly) into some big synchros and beaters.

See Ya.

Card of the Week #18: Wind-Up Rabbit

During either player's turn: You can target 1 "Wind-Up" monster you control; banish it until your next Standby Phase. This effect can be used only once while this card is face-up on the field.

Yeah, mainstream card, but there's a reason. Some rulings, first:
This card can banish itself.
This card is RETURNED on the field, not special summoned.
This card's effect is SS2, so you can chain it to cards like dark hole or trap hole.

Nothing to explain, just that they all show why this card is awesome.

Let's take a close look:
Wind-Up, great archetype we've got, with tons of supports.
EARTH, yeah, yet other supports.
LV3, more and more uses.
Beast-Warrior, Horn-friendly.
Stats, 1400 ATK, goes under BTH, but that doesn't matter since this card could avoid it anyway, but <1500 ATK is a key for cards like Giant Rat. 600 DEF, low, but you won't use this, anyway.

So, why am I reviewing such a mainstream card? You know I tend to hate mainstream things, but this one is different: I fell in love with it.
Basically, I started using this in madolches because it was a LV3 monster that stayed for looong time on the field that could have go into invoker with mew (that summoned a Gelato from the hand to get a search), SS another gelato from the deck and do Excalibur or, obviously, Tiaramisu.
After that, I started playing it in Yubel, since it was a mainstay on the field that would never get rid, so that I could use it to slowly beat the opponent.
Then, the Rabbit-mania appeared. I'm playing it in tons of places, wherever it has a little of use and I have an engine that can do semi-consistently R3s to go into Zenmaity.

The card itself is a star in Wind-Ups since it can trigger Factory and Magician with ease, comboeing and such.
However, what are the points in this card that makes it so awesome?
Being Wind-Up has some supports, if you want to try something strange splashing them into something else, just be sure to play tour guide since she's indirectly a recruiter for wind-ups with zenmaity.
Being EARTH is also quite awesome, and being LV3 could let you go into Naturia Synchros.
Being SS2, this card survives to pretty much everything.
Since it returnes instead of SS, you can use this card to avoid things like Black Garden, and that's the main reason why I wanted to talk about this in first place.
Using this with black garden could, theorically, be a 2800 Beater that avoids pretty much everything, supportable via horn that is theorically again a 1600 ATK bonus on all the beast monsters. Great deck, I should re-build it for this meta.
Garden slows down opponent's moves, generates tokens to ATK to deal damages to the opponent, and if you summon waghu at full ATK, too, you should have already won the game.
Along with the World Tree you should be able to fully control the field, wanghu controls <1400 ATK monsters, garden reduces their attacks to not let wanghu be destroyed, and world tree destroys anything, maybe even burden of the mighty to control even more opponent's monsters.
Using Horns to gain card advantage and ATK advantage, rabbit that's a 2800 attacker, Evilswarm Thunderbird (OCG) that is a 3900 attacker, that should be good enough with some protection for your field spell, for your wanghu and eventually your world tree.
Good deck is good.

Well, this was quite all, today I'm kinda tired, and I've got to play the piano briefly as an audition for a band, but that's not the problem, lol.
See Ya.

Leyvaten LaDD Loop

You can Special Summon this card from your hand or your Graveyard by removing from play 1 face-up monster you control equipped with a "Dragunity" card(s). When this card is Normal or Special Summoned, you can select 1 Dragon-Type monster in your Graveyard, except "Dragunity Arma Leyvaten", and equip it to this card. When this card is sent to the Graveyard by your opponent's card effect, you can select 1 of the monsters that were equipped to this card when it was sent to the Graveyard, and Special Summon that monster from the Graveyard.

The LeyvaLaDD Loop, it always fascinated me. For those who don't know, the Leyva-LaDD Loop is a loop that uses Leyvaten to equip LaDD with its effect, and then, when Leyva or LaDD is destroyed, you use LaDD's effect to SS Leyva and equip it with LaDD once again, forming a loop.
I always liked this one, since it was, theorically, a 2600 ATK Wind-Up Rabbit (always stays on field, this more often than rabbit), only it has few holes:
1."When...You can" effect on this card's equpping effect;
2.Banishing or bouncing cards, that would break the loop;
3.Destroying your whole field.

Quite some holes, aren't they?
However, reading some cards recently and thinking (at school, we were doing math, I just didn't want to do anything and wrote some random things on my diary while thinking on this), I noticed how lots of these holes can be fixed:
1.Can't, but there aren't lots of cards that will make it lose the timing.
2.That was quite the problem back in time, but since no one plays D.D.Crows anymore, it's good, and veilers just stop the loop without breaking your set-up.
3.As we learnt with Yubel, it's not that big of a problem if we do play cards that can be chained and can survive to a mass nuke. Feel free to try Tour Engine+Rabbit.

The loop is kinda flexible, you have multiple ways to trigger it and to set-up it, and if you lack something, you can still play and stall, like leyva, equip redmd, once leyva is destroyed, SS redmd, if he survives, SS Leyva back during your turn and equip something else.

What's more this deck can count on some draw cards, such as:
1.Advance Draw, if you use it on Leyva with LaDD equipped it's basically a PoG;
2.Trade-In, helps set-upping, lets you draw other pieces for the combo other than the one you just discarded;
3.Cards of Consonance, we play aklys, and sometimes even phalanx, being both searchable via ravine, that's not bad.

To set-up the grave we've got, other than trade-in, even ravine, that's searchable via terraforming.

To revive Leyva to start the loop we've got REDMD, virtually 3 call of the haunted, monster reborn and LaDD itself, other than normal summoning, but that's quite hard to achieve.

To summon ladd and control a bit we can even use Photon Sanctuary, if you like, but we play few LIGHT monsters, I believe they aren't enough.

Mystellatein isn't a bad choice, too, but it's for more pure builds, with phalanx it's either double tribute fodder or LV8 Synchro.


Sadly recently I've got some problems on DN, I can't stay logged for more than 20 minutes, usually, after that it automatically closes, still trying to understand it. For this reason, I've got no time to test and fix, so it's subsequently hard to update the blog, but I believe I can do something.

Stay Tuned.

Card of the Week #17: Gravekeeper's Spy

FLIP: Special Summon 1 "Gravekeeper's" monster with 1500 or less ATK from your deck.

GKs, yup. No rulings for this one, easy and short effect.
Let's take a close look:
-Gravekeeper monster, supports, supports everywhere, necrovalley mainly.
-DARK, should I say something? This attribute has probably the higher number of supports, probabl even more of the LIGHT one.
-Spellcaster, spellcaster support, wonder wand, and Secret Village of the Spellcasters (yeah, lol).
-Stats, nice body, 1200 ATK and 2000 DEF, respectively 1700 and 2500 under Necrovalley, great, isn't it?

Set this, opponent attacks, get another monster, possibly XYZ or Synchro. I really like this card, it was a quite popular engine alongside guard or descendant, before the tour engine appeared.
I want to talk about this card because of some things I'm thinking of. I really hate laggia, so I like Snowman Eater a lot, I was going to review that, but then I noticed that it was in the main page of wikia, so I decided not to. Thinking of some cards with a similar effect, I thought of guard. 1900 DEF, bounce effect, not bad, really. However the review is on Spy, and not Guard, and there's a reason. In quite some time I learnt some tricks with Spy. Other than being a R4, he is compatible with Necrovalley to be a 2500 body, to give quite some problems to the already named Laggia, but even without it you can take care of cards like Thunder King. However, leaving apart this ordinary stuff, I learnt how this card's type is awesome. Spy, Summon another GK, bounce the other GK (if you summoned one that's not LV4) for Birdman, then go into Arcanite with Spy. If you summon a LV4 gravekeeper you can then just bounce Spy to reuse it and go into arcanite however. But, that's not all, if you bring Recruiter you can bounce Spy to reuse it and go into a random LV6 Synchro, while searching with Recruiter's effect. However, the main thing is Secret Village of Spellcasters. I truly love that card. Summon Spy, he gets attacked but not destroyed, get a monster, activate Village and have two bodies (one of them is 2000 DEF, the other could be pretty much anything) that lock your opponent's spells. A thing like this would be game against Dark World, but even heroes can't do too much, based on the build, though. Just solemn once their Stratos and you've won.
Just think of a deck that plays Gravekeeper's Spy, Gravekeeper's Guard, Gravekeeper's Descendant, Gravekeeper's Recruiter, Birdman, Village, Necrovalley (well, good card, if you play against a spellcaster deck you don't want to lose right away during game 1, do you?), tons of protection...
I like it.
Good Match-Up against Dark World, Rabbit Laggia, little advantage against Wind-Up, sad match-up against Inzektors, Chaos Dragon and Magical post-ABYR. Inzektor can be killed just using some protections before he can pull off some loops and comboes, Chaos Dragon puts quite some giant monsters on the field, so it's difficult to win against them, but if you manage to go into colossal fighter you should have win, while Magical is quite different. If you have Village, they'll bypass the spell-locking effect, but if you have Necrovalley they'll kill it right after activating their field spell, that they can search way faster than us. I'm siding Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell for that exact reason. If you can forbid the opponent's field spell, you shouldn't have problems anymore against spellcaster decks, go into necrovalley and you're just fine. With the side deck we can shift into a village-only build, against decks that do automatically lose against this card, or into a regular (or little teched) gravekeeper, so that you can use the advantages you still have.
I was even thinking of a little madolche engine. 3 Majoleine, 1 Butlerusk, get to search what you need, but that's just a concept.

Just for the sake of knowing, I wrote this without any pre-thinking, since the planned CotW would have been Snowman Eater, so I improvised everything.
That's All, Stay Tuned.