60k... Just got there

Well, it's kind of sad, and at the same time, kind of funny.
Reaching 60000 visits (+3, at the moment of the screenshot) in a period in which I'm neither writing nor playing much for a couple of reasons means that the visits are on old posts, which also means that my old work is appreciated (and newer ones, like Traptrix and CEM).
ATM, you may have noticed, I'm from Ubuntu. That's because I had a couple of troubles with my pc (long story short, my 7 years old cousin managed to format my pc right when I was about to create a dual boot for ubuntu and win7 in the 30 seconds I was in the bathroom), and lost most of my works (not YGO related). This means I'm currently trying to rewrite all I had written (was working on a visual novel), retrieve my music (hell, only from Lucky Star I had 4 GB of stuff), GIMP Brushes, textures, .XCFs, C4Ds and so on.
Luckily, I watch anime in streaming, if I had it on my PC, and lost all of that, it'd be an incredibly stunning shock.
(On a side note, this season's anime is pretty nice, I'm loving what I'm seeing.)
What's more, I wasn't liking the meta that much. It's surely better than the one before, but I was probably expecting too much from it, and it disappointed me right away.
I'm kinda sucked in by school, too, I'm on the third year of High School, meaning I've got 5 teachers out of 7 changed, and this is pretty tiring.
What's more, I wanted to start studying Kanjis, too, but I couldn't work that in my week's schedule.
My parents aren't home this week, and I've got to care for my brother (and help him with homeworks, other tiring stuff), I'm at my grandma's home, which doesn't allow me to do all of my things as I'd always do.
Looking forward I see a stressful week, hope that doesn't turn out to be as stressful as I thought...

Seeing as you shouldn't expect posts for the 60k visits, the special this time is the full screenshot, uncut, uncensored. Usually I'd turn off the bookmarks, or altogether cut the upper bar of the browser.
Not that awesome of a special, but deal with it, better off than nothing, uh?

Have a Nice Day ^^

...

I believe that, if not all, most of you have heard of Sixth Sense being printed in TCG in Joey's World and being emergency limited, right?
I don't have anything against the emergency banlist for it, aside from it being at 1 instead of being banned. Ya know, a totally lucksack card that could be a +4 or +5, or that at the cost of a -1 mills from 1 to 4 cards.
Decks that can use this: ALL
Decks that can abuse this: everything that likes to mill, ED, LS, Zombie, DAD decks, Roids, Meda-Bat...
Basically, everything.

Yeah, I know, maybe this is too much hate for a card that will be gone on december, but still...
Oh well, good side is that, unless your opponent plays cards to retrieve exodia pieces from grave, this card isn't THAT good in Exodia (it needs you to take a not so indifferent risk). However, a variant that uses Swift Scarecrows and a Piper engine may easily use some cards to recycle monsters, too. Alongside Where arf thou? and stuff, this may be the strongest non-FTK Exodia deck available.

Oh, well, I'll be playing this card somewhere, somehow, just to be able to finally use it after 10 years of wait, and then will be more than happy to ditch it for the banlist.


GG

Fiddling Around with: Chaos-End Master

I was playing around with the new Dododos, thinking of how nice they were, and I was brainstorming for more options on how to search Gasser to the hand and summon Witch to get him face-down, instead of relying on a searcher+Tsukuyomi (which was, for those who want to try it, probably the most efficient way to play it). One of those searchers was Chaos-End Master (CEM for short). CEM special summons a LV5+ monster with 1600- ATK when he destroys a monster by battle.You may think that this card is a +1 (assuming you used a card to boost his 1500 ATK) but pretty hard to pull off and without any real result, but that's not it. Start by considering that it is a LV3 LIGHT Warrior Tuner, pretty nice set. Let's first see a couple of possible synchros to go into:

Ipocrisia: Traptrix Antimeta

Monsters: [14]

2 Maxx "C"
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

2 Summoner Monk

3 Traptrix Atrax

3 Traptrix Myrmeleo

3 Traptrix Nepenthes

Spells: [11]

2 Forbidden Dress

3 Forbidden Lance

3 Pot of Duality

2 Terraforming

1 Seal of Orichalcos

Traps: [15]

1 Bottomless Trap HOLE

1 Compulsory Escape Device

2 Dimensional Prison

1 Macro Cosmos

2 Mirror Force

1 Solemn Warning

2 Trap HOLE

2 Traptrix Trap HOLE Nightmare

3 Void Trap HOLE

I promised, didn't I? That I would post this after the meta defined down a bit. Well, this is it, full of meta calls.

First of all, let's start saying that the Extra matters little to nothing, but on a second though, I'd add 1 catastor in place, maybe, of Utopia Ray or something else. The side is there, not really studied and tested, but that's the concept and should, approximatively, work.

As of the main, if I weren't to play that kind of side, I would have rather played 1 Terraforming and 2 Orichalcos, but I'd have to side two terras each game in which I used those fields.

Well, let's start:
As I already said in the previous post, the Sisters' strenght relies on +1s whenever you use a card, mainly because when you use that card, your opponent already wasted a couple of resources in order to summon the monster you've destroyed. To this, you can add Nepenthes' and Myrmeleo's searches, resulting in some effective +1.
It has some great control, that's for sure, and the monsters are relatively big under Orichalcos. Sure, they don't compete with >2300 ATK monsters, but still, Dress and Lance help there respectively against 2900 or less and 3100 or less, when paired with orichalcos and Atrax.
The deck can effectively main Macro Cosmos, and, if willing, even Dimensional Fissure (probably in place of a Void Trap Hole).

Maxx "C" is there for EDs (predominant deck, most likely, of the format) and as draw power. They're, indeed, substituting CCDs. If you don't like it, you can freely go back to Cardcar D.
Grand Mole here tries to solve one of the two main problems this deck has: big monsters. If the opponent manages to summon a big monster like Maestroke (which isn't hard at all to summon and we have pretty much no way to counter with our traps) or Gachi (which is slightly easier because of Atrax+Orichalcos) or other stuff like that and they keep it in defense, we have no way to kill them and, thus, killing the opponent. Grand Mole bounces the monster and, if they attempt to summon it again (assuming it is one of those we can counter) even though they went through our traps the first time, they won't be able to do so a second time. If they succeed to, oh well, we can just bounce it again, hopefully.
Summoner Monk brings more Sisters for some more consistence. Summoning Nepenthes this way is even more awesome than drawing into it, too.
Atrax, Myrm and Nep deserve no explanation, aside from Nep being in three copies. I didn't really like it that way, but it happens often to draw into no monsters (Yeah, DN hates us, I know) and this tries to extablish a better field alongside Monk. Keep in mind that Nep+Trap Hole is generally a good or decent start. Even BTH is okay, but someone may dodge it. You never know. After Nep activates her effect once, she's gone for good most of the times. When she survives, though, she will give you many pluses. However, by no mean protect her unless you need to kill the opponent's monster or you didn't manage to use her effect yet and have no other monsters.

As for the spells, you may see alot of them, compared to how many you'd expect, but that's because most of them act as traps but are, at the same time, monk fodder.
Dress+Lance acts as main protection, alongside Mirror, Prison and so on for our Atrax. I managed to kill a couple of comboes, too, hitting a monster with Lance so that nothing could be equipped to it. I even saw one of the biggest suicides ever of a monster that had 5000 ATK and dropped to 1700, crushing against my 2300 Atrax. Dress is mainly protection against BRD, whom may be lots of troubles if you don't manage to have a void or a nightmare.
3 Dualities are for consistency, and most of the times I wished I could play more.
2 Terra and 1 Orichalcos. I would have liked the opposite, so that the Terra was pretty much always live, and to reduce the DDs. What's more, if you extremely needed to XYZ, you could set one orichalcos over the other, even though you couldn't use it. With my side, though, it's needed to main 2 Terras. If you won't play that kind of side, I'd say 2 Orichalcos and 1 Terra.

The Traps are quite a lot, uh? Still, sometimes you may lack them if you don't play accordingly to your hand. The deck isn't that skilled, but still, it isn't totally skilless. Just think before activating something and it's all good.
CED, Prison and Mirror act as main counter to monsters once they are on the field. If they maanged to summon something big before you could set your traps, without those and mole, you'd have lost. This way, instead, you have some kind of counter.
Warning is the only trap that activates on the summon that isn't a hole trap, and thus not searchable. Though, it is too awesome to not be played.
As for the Holes, I chose this exact set after a little meta breakdown. I think this is one of the best combinations. BTH is must at 1. Void Trap Hole should be the one with more copies of itself and Trap Hole and Nightmare are to be played accordingly to the player in a total of 3/4 copies.


Let's see the PROs and the CONs of the deck, instead:
PRO: has counters that vary from nice to awesome for pretty much every deck;
CON: there are a couple of DDs, expecially some Holes against some decks;
PRO: can summon some nice beater with ease;
CON: being nice beater doesn't mean good/awesome beater, and we can't drop stronger than 2300, usually:
PRO: has lots of monster removal;
CON: not always it is effective and sometimes the opponent may just summon the boss before we can drop our traps on them;
PRO: the monsters are usually well protected;
CON: when they aren't, them being killed is most of the times a great loss because of the lack of recycling and reviving power;
PRO: when you manage to effectively control the opponent, most of the times it results in a lock;
CON: when you don't, you are probably going to have your ass kicked;
PRO: it manages to destroy pretty much everything if you play it right;
CON: control cards from the opponent are game-killer for you.

Resuming the advantages and disadvantages of the deck, it has some great control over the opponent with crazily good match-ups against other decks, but it basically loses to traps and big undestroyable monsters.

I've had some nice results with it, against most meta decks. I won to some Antimeta, but surely I lost more than won against them. Being able to side Decree is awesome (Atrax lets your traps activate even if decree is on the field). The rest of the side is awesome when it comes to certain decks, but it may be totally useless against others. I already said, that's mostly the concept of the side, not the real side itself.

Try it, you won't be disappointed.

See Ya.

P.s. Usual Lore, "Ipocrisia" means "Hypocrisy". That's to point out how traptrix work with their traps, they say they're able to dodge them (they all dodge Hole trap cards) but in the end, they suffer from them, not being able to practice what they preach.

Traptrix and (Anti)Meta

You know them, don't you?

Traptrix

a.k.a.

dem lolis

(IT'S A TRAP!)

Traptrix, Lolis or Traps, no matter how you want to call them, this is what they are: Trappers. They do whatever is possible to lure and trap you and your monsters in one of their many traps. They have a pretty nice lore, too, but I won't stop on it and focus on their utility. If you want to read the lore (I suggest you to do so), read it from this beautiful article on tcgplayer.

Staying on our topic, instead, you know I won't start a review without giving some proper explanations on why I'm trying them and on them themselves, and this time my reason for playing them is that I wanted to find some underdog antimeta that could flip tables. Traptrix (you may find discussion of them under the name of Kowakuma or Mesmerizing Maneater, too) are an unique archetype that works with the "Hole" normal traps. Let's see them singularly:

All of them have an effect that lets them dodge Hole cards, making those little things totally unaffected by them. They all are LV4 EARTH.

-Traptrix Nepenthes, the one on top left is the only Plant-type Traptrix. What it does is Special Summoning or Searching a Traptrix monster, excluding other copies of herself, from your deck, making her the recruiter of the archetype. When does this effect trigger? When a Hole normal trap is activated. Of course, it has the usual "you can only use the effect of "Traptrix Nepenthes" once per turn". Well, this was to be expected. With her 800/2000, she has the biggest defensive body among the Sisters (not that they really are sisters, but let's call them like this, as of now).

-Traptrix Atrax, the bottom one, is the Beater of the archetype, with 1800/1000. She is, like Myrmeleo, an Insect, and has two effects: one lets you activate Hole normal traps from your hand, this means that you can, theorically speaking, activate them on your first turn; the other effect gives all of your normal traps immunity from negation and makes their activation not prevent-able, basically, Decree and Trap Stun do nothing.

-Traptrix Myrmeleo, the one on the top right, is our official searcher for traps. It is usually summoned only to activate her effect or rarely to Xyz, because of her body not really special in anything, with 1600/1200. Still, this body means nothing compared to her effects: the first one activates upon Normal Summon, and lets you search a Hole normal trap from your deck; the second one activates upon Special Summon and (mandatory) makes you destroy a Spell or Trap on the field. Myrmeleo, for the first effect, is the most splashed one, creating a little engine that yet has to be well-defined.

Now that we have those, what do we do? Well, you probably noticed how they tend to be against the meta, because of their nice searching of Traps, but how can we use it?

In order to answer this, let's see what we can grab, mainly:

There are some others, but I didn't bother putting them here, because they are not relevant now and they won't, probably, for the near future.

Those are:

-Bottomless Trap Hole, the most known and generic one. Most likely, the best one, too. Triggers on normal and special summon and only needs the monster to be the opponent's one and to be 1500 ATK or more. As of the new banlist, you are only allowed to play one, sadly.

-Trap Hole, the oldest one. Only triggers on normal summons, and kills them if they are 1000 ATK or more, not that bad, at least. Given that we can search it and that it can potentially hit some meta decks coming, it deserves some spots.

-Void Trap Hole still follows the Bottomless and Trap Hole series, needing the monster to be special summoned and have 2000 ATK or more. What's good is that it negates the effect of the monster right before destroying it. Basically, if the opponent special summons Kuraz, even though that's a trigger effect upon special summon, you are able to kill it right away and avoid his effect.

-Deep Dark Hole is a little different. The "deep" part at the start of the name was to differentiate it from "Dark Trap Hole", but in Japan it had a different name, and with the Lolis being able to search them, they decided to change Dark Trap Hole's name to Darkfall to avoid ruling problems and not using the usual "except 'Dark Trap Hole'" part. What's good with Deep Dark Trap Hole is that it can stop all of the big Synchros from ED Plant, but has the ability to stop T.G. Wonder Magician against some T.G. decks and other options. However, what makes it good is that it doesn't neither target, nor destroy, it simply banishes. Stardust cannot negate it and all of the monsters which activate their effects upon destruction won't get anything from it.

-Traptrix Trap Hole Nightmare is the themed Trap Hole for Traptrix. What it does is hitting the monster when he thinks he is safe (basically what Franco Ferrara said). Let's say your opponent goes into Hyper Librarian, he then goes into Stardust with a Dragon and Spore, he attempts to draw with Librarian, but he won't be able to. Nightmare is on constant fight with Void Trap Hole, because the range of things they hit is pretty much the same, with few differences. Void can destroy the monster right upon summon, but it has the requirement of it having 2000 or more ATK, while nightmare doesn't have this last restriction, but needing the monster to effectively activate its effects. I consider Void better just because a skilled player would simply go into beatdown with the monster he summons and then wait the turn after to use the effect, unless it is mandatory. If the opponent knows we have Void he'll as simply avoid going into some bosses until he is sure he can drop two.

Yeah, you probably noticed: we theorically have answers to everything the meta may offer, that may be the main strenght of those Sisters.

This everything has a flaw, though, what is it? Consistency. Yeah, theorically speaking, they have lots of consistency, Nepenthes searches the Sisters and Myrmeleo searches the Traps, so where is the problem? Ya know, I tried them, 3 PoDs (which are, currently, staples for me) and even 3 CCDs, but it's not like I could fix the problem of having enough monsters in hand. Even if I did have those monsters in hand, I probably lacked the Traps to work with, I as simply, can't happen to balance them. The more I try to balance them, it changes build:

Most of the times it becomes a Rogue with Pachys and stuff with an engine made of 3 Myrms, 1 BTH, 2 Void Trap Hole and 2 Trap Holes;

Some other times it becomes a Ninja deck with some of the Sisters' engine which slows the deck down;

Other times it becomes a semi-lockdown which is way too inconsistent and has tons of negative match-ups.

However, those problems can all be solved with the right build, the real problem is defining the build itself. This is because the next meta yet has to form, and being this an Antimeta, you have to know what to counter while building. If you don't know that, you're building against something that won't see play.

This was a fast review of the principal cards, but I'll be explaining more when the meta settles down, with a couple of techs I already know.

See Ya

P.s. as you've seen, this is the first time I'm using those icons for the cards. I worked on them a little bit, and they'll be standards from now on. What I noticed before was that the posts were too plain. I don't like them to be too full of stuff which is not something of matters, but I guess this won't hurt. What's more, I developed them in a way that they are easy to work on and create, and I'll be slowly building a library with those cards so that I won't have to create an icon again of a card I already used.

My New Meta

Let's start saying that I only tested decks I intend to play either IRL or on DN, but mostly IRL. Here are the results:

Faced tons of Infernities, some Chain Beats, no Karakuris (yet), a little bit of GBs, some rogues, less Hieratics than I expected and then the usual random decks that you could encounter in the other meta, too.

I tested: Chain Beat, Legacy and Garden, with and without the Traptrix engine; Infernity, only Monk build; Gladiator Beast, not too much, though; my teammate is testing T.G. Antimeta, but I didn't hear the results yet; I'm going to test GKs and Malefic whenever I have time.

-As of now, I'm really loving Chain Beat, with the Garden build. With the right hand it can deal with all of them, only suffering Wingbeat of a Giant Dragon, but we can deal with it, pollinosis and the cards that deal with their monster that they'll target for Wingbeat itself, waiting for the moment when you draw into pollinosis to directly deal with that Wingbeat. Garden makes it possible to easily kill big creatures, and you can escape Master Key Beetle+Safe Zone with Compulsory Escape Device, assuming you played it correctly. If you're playing the traptrix build, you have access to more destruction power and control. Macro and fissure are pretty awesome, expecially against Infernity, and they're even easier to access in the Legacy build than in the Garden build because of the drawing power.

-Infernity, on the other side, has the potential to kill EVERY deck, assuming you started right and first. With the monk build, I may even say that 4 times on 5 you start decently, with 1 of them being awesome, 2 of them being pretty good, and one being decent. However, you may have your games killed by your opponent if he goes first, it's pretty easy for him to block you, assuming he got a decent hand. With Hieratic not having much (or any) backrow, it is a pretty easy match-up, and GB isn't too big a problem, because most of the control cards they have are battle related (at least, they aren't heavy on traps on the summon), but still, can have a couple of counters. Macro can kill Infernities BUT we now have a good counter. Aside the 3 regular MSTs, we can pretty easily summon Diamond Dire Wolf.

-From the few tests I did with Gladiator Beast, I realized it has a couple of possibilities, but it's not THAT strong as many are saying recently (I'm not confusing it with the OCG). However, it has a recyclable MST (bestiari), a focused DH (Murmillo), continuous monster's effect negation (Equeste+Chariot), easy to summon beatsticks (Essedarii and XYZs), a more feasible Icarus' Attack (Gyzaurus) and Icarus itself. It is an awesome deck for what it does (toolboxing). The bad side is: it hasn't got the speed Infernity has, and cannot instantly go into +1s and extreme control like Chain Beat.

The results are: I'm probably going with Chain Beat Garden IRL and Infernities on DN (maybe I'll even build them, sooner or later, but that's pretty costy), while I'm testing other stuff.

Sorry for the short post, but it was just a little overview.

See Ya.

Oi, oi, New TCG Banlist: IT sucks (or not?)

Banned:
Little Dragon of Fire
Little Dragon of Win
Little Dragon of Earth
Little Dragon of Water
Damned Stratos

Card Destruction
Gateway of the Six
Heavy Storm
Monster Reborn
Pot of Avarice
Spellbook of Judgment
Super Rejuvenation

Solemn Judgmnet
Ultimate Offering

Shock Master

Limited:
Atlantean Dragoons
Fire Fist - Spirit
Deep Sea Diva
Genex Ally Birdman
Rescue Rabbit
Thunder King Rai-Oh

Evigishiki Mind Augus

Dewloren, Tiger King of the Ice Barrier

Constellar Ptolemys M7

Dimensional Fissure
Gold Sarcophagus
Royal Tribute

Bottomless Trap Hole
Compulsory Evacuation Device
Eradicator Epidemic Virus
Macro Cosmos
Soul Drain
Torrential Tribute

Semi-limited:
Mezuki
Plaguespreader Zobmie
T.G. Striker

Fire Formation - Tenki

Dimensional Prison


Freed
DH - Malicious
The Agent of Mystery - Earth
Tsukuyomi

A Hero Lives
Black Whirlwind
E - Emergency Call
Hieratic Seal of Convocation
Pot of Duality
Scapegoat


NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, and NOPE.

Oh, come on, konami! Why'd you do that?
Before starting complaining about the 99% of this Banlist, let's start saying that, differently from the OCG one, this is from September to December, and a new one will be on January.
Oh well, let's read the banned list and decide whether to continue playing YGO or not:

Banned:
Little dragons, thanks god.
Stratos, fuck yourself
Card Destruction...? Would have hurt that much leaving it there?
Gateway, ohw, darn it. Konami HATES warriors.
Heavy Storm, I'd be okay with this IF they put that damned Trunade at 1.
Reborn, I'm about to cry with this one, really.
Pot of Avarice, was it really helping any deck that could have been top meta?
Judgment&Reju, thanks god.
Solemn Judgment...okay, I know it may be related to Heavy, but I wanted it.
Ultimate Offering, again, was it helping any top meta?
Shock Master...Wind-up....I guess. But still, I wanted it to stay.

Limited:
Dragoons&Spirit are regular hits for FF e Mermail.
Deep Sea Diva is an hit for Mermail, again.
Birdamn ,well, was on the other banlist too, and, while I would have preferred it at three, I won't rage over this one.
Rai-Oh-Oh-Oh, leaving some space for SB, uh?
Mind Augus...yeah? What's that? Another hit for Gishki FTK?
Dewloren...oh, come on.
Ptolemys, while hitting more Gishkis, this was probably meant for constellar themselves.
Fissure, darn it.
Sarcophagus...ED, I guess.
Royal Tribute, they thought of GK as broken. Luckily, I saw many players not even maining it.
BTH, CED and TT, various hits due to Heavy Storm. Reasonable.
EEV...looks like it is in the same condition as Ray-Oh.
Macro, going the Fissure path.
Soul Drain, probably similarly to BTH, CED and TT.

Semi-Limited: (at least, this is short)
Mezuki&Plaguespreader, boosts for Zombie. I don't really see the point, but these two are pretty nice. expecially plague (for my decks, I mean).
T.G. Striker. Uhm...Well, I kind of like it.
Prison, not like more than 2 were played, anyway, but this is to prevent them at three after the limiting of the other traps.

Freed:
Malicious, I like it, expecially alongside Plaguespreader.
Earth, not that it really matters, but alongside Striker, it may mean the return of TGAgent.
Tsukuyomi, simply, it was useless on the banlist.
Lives&Call, after having slaughtered HERO with Stratos banned, at least they power it up a little bit.
Whirlwind, they're slowly making BW stand back on its feet. I have never been a fan of BW, though (I hate it, TBH).
Seal of Convocation, they're indeed powering Hieratic to their best. Right now, it is one of the candidates to the top decks, alongside SB.
Scapegoat, I already liked it with the OCG banlist.


Overall: Well, I started by hating it, but in two hours of time, my opinion radically changed. From "I definitely hate it" to "hmm, well, I've got a couple of things to do". I started writing this at 10 am, and the time I finished it at about 12.30, in 2 hours and thirty minutes, we know that anyone can change their mind.

By the way, if you want to read a less long, more generic, meta-towarded and balanced review, read LFN's one, mine was more an outburst than anything.

Well, See Ya.

New Banlist: I Suck

Maybe it's a little late to talk about the new banlist? Oh well.
As you most probably know, the banlist aims to take back most of the old decks and put them on the same level of the current ones who got hit. That's, possibly, to make more and more decks playable in the meta.
I won't comment the Banned, you can read of that everywhere, and most probably all of the other reviews are better than the one I would have written if I attempted to, so, go ahead and read the other ones.
As for the meta itself, instead: I suck. I just noticed, I suck. I was definitely overjoyed for that ban, it brought the meta to the best I could expect, but still, I suck. After that break, when I came back, I started to suck. I can't build anything decent, I can't foresee what could be in the next meta and prepare to counter that and since I didn't follow much the latest sets, I probably don't know more than you readers about new decks and comboes and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to build something decent around that.
What will happen, then? I won't quit YGO, not definitely. I'll stick with my decks I have IRL and try to get them to their best (this is still doable, since I have the basic list), them being GK, GB and HERO, mainly, but even Malefic and some Rogue or stuff like that.
Sadly, I'll probably have to netdeck for the first period, as long as I have enough willpower to continue playing actively on DN, hoping I can ditch that soon enough.
As for the blog, I'll try not to disappoint the few readers left, and still post some ideas and use it like a way to store nice ideas and share them with you.
Said this: I suck.

Stay Tuned.








(if you're thinking that, no, I'm not depressed, don't worry)

Felt like it: I'm back, guys!///The Theory behind Plusses

Hey guys, how have you been? It's been a long time, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah, I know, I said I had no interest in the current meta, but I'm not taking back my word, I still have no interest in it. So, why am I writing? Well,  I felt like it. What's more, the Banlist is a Ray of Hope for me, it'll hopefully crush or enormously hurt ED and SB, "hopefully"... Let's just hope it is like that.
Then, then, what's moving and exciting me right now? If, let's say, ED and SB get injured so hard that they can't be played anymore, what will be left? Everything! As of now the meta is:
Tier 1: ED and SB;
Tier 2: Everything else aside 4funs.
You do realize that if the Tier 1 gets crushed, we'll have a various meta, at least for the first part of the september-march period?
If you follow the upcoming sets, you probably noticed that all (most) of the new cards form decks that aim to control. This simply means that the next meta will probably see lots of old decks reborned through the beautiful art of Heavy-Trap decks, a couple of fast decks, and brand-new decks whom, as said, aim to control, leading to a slow format.
Ahhh, this brings back memories, in a meta where if I couldn't play a deck because the idea behind it wasn't consistent enough, I could simply add those 11-12 traps and be happy.

Well, let's get to the point of the post: after having explained why I'm slowly getting back at the game, here's some little theory-oh.

Card Advantage Theory
Most of you, if not all, have used or read/heard this thing at least once and, most probably, you know what it means: the Card Advantage Theory (CAT, from now on) says that in this game, msot of the time, the player who's winning is the one with most cards on the field and viceversa. "Why's that?" you may (or may not, I don't care, lol) ask. It is as simple as that: the player with most cards is more likely the one who has more possible counters to the opponent's moves. If I have 10 cards and my opponent 8, we could balance it out saying that 8 of my card nullifies my opponent ones, and I'm in +2. This supports CAT, indeed. This means that the CAT takes into consideration your opponent's plusses and minuses, inverting them. For Example, if you both have no cards in hand and you have a One Day of Peace set and you activate it, you lose one card (-1), you draw one (+1), your opponent draws one (-1)=-1. So, yes, One Day of Peace is a -1.

CAT applied to cards
Even cards follow CAT's rules, let's use the very example of +1: Thunder Dragon
You have one card in your hand, Thunder Dragon, activating it, you lost 1 card, but you added other two. 2-1=1. Congrats, you just went +1.
But, let's talk about a +0 (well, mathematically speaking, 0 doesn't have a symbol before it, but usually you'll see it with either a + or a -, so let's keep it): Upstart Goblin.
Activating it, you lost one card, but drew one. 1-1=0.
This was a +0, nothing to be really proud of, but nothing bad, either.
Let's talk, then, of the infamous -1s: Spellbook of Power.
Activating it you lost 1 card, and just gave 1000 ATK to a monster, without other income. 0-1=-1. Damn, you went negative, that's no good, is it?

Exceptions and whatnots
What we saw in the last paragraph, mathematically speaking, is that Thunder Dragon is good, Upstart is meh, Foolish is bad, but is that right? Well, not. You mustn't forget that there are variables and that sometime card quality is what matters. Unless you have something that needs discard fodder, are you really having some use for those Thunder Dragons? I believe not, that's why Thunder Dragon is under-used, seeing use only in FTKs or similar thingies, because it thins the deck, lets you go +1 and provides discard fodder for Dark World Dealing.
What about Upstart? If what you did didn't provide you any advantage but just made the opponent gain 1000 LPs, what was its use? Again, deck thinning. Playing Upstarts basically lets you go under the 40 card limit. Playing 3 in a 40 card deck will make it like you're using 37 cards, which improves your deck. Let's just say you can bypass the 3-card limit, how would a deck made up of 35 Upstarts and 5 pieces of exodia be? Simply unarrestable, whoever goes first without the opponent reacting with a droll and lock bird wins.
And then, what about Spellbook of Power? It's an inconfutable -1, so it's bad, right? Damn no. This is one of the whatnots I was talking about, it has a "side effect". When it destroys a monster in battle, you get a Spellbook spell from your deck. This means that you lose the card you activate (-1), search one (+1) and destroy an opponent's monster (+1). All in all, it becomes a +1. You happy now, SB player?

Applications
Why is this rule so important in YGO? As said before, the player who has more cards is most likely the one winning, but why does it matter if there are cards that are -1, -2, -3 or +1, +2, +3? First of all, let's just say that we're speaking of an at least semi-competitive game-scene, where no one plays plain -1s aside from Foolish Burial, SB of Power and similar (because, in the end, they aren't really -1s or have a real purpose). Considering that you start with 6 cards, you shouldn't waste them, but use them to produce more cards. What an ED player does is a combo on first turn that usually takes him to about +6 (+6 from the original number, resulting in about 12 cards). Do you realize why EDs are so strong right now?
What about SBs, why are they so strong? That's because they have +1s of about +3/4 but that they do repeteatedly, plus eventual stuff from Power and such.
This means that Card Advantage can easily vary. If you keep on using 1 for 1 (you lose one card in exchange for another from the opponent, like MST) you'll eventually lose because the opponent will plus if you don't have a consistent plus engine. What's behind Antimeta is exactly that, it doesn't use simple 1 for 1, but uses cards (even though they are mostly one for ones in the end) that won't let the opponent plus. The example I use the most is "Veiler that Stratos". Of course locking their pluses isn't that helpful if you don't have a way to plus yourself, but what if the way to plus yourself is minusing the opponent? That is a legit way of plusing, I said before, an opponent's -1 is a +1 for you. Let's say, then, that you are playing a control deck, you have a 1200 ATK Dyna and a Garden on the field. You'll instantaneously notice that the opponent isn't able to SS big monsters while it is needed to have an AT LEAST 2400 ATK monster to ram into Dyna, as of now. You don't leave him ways to ATK you and to damage you (you're locking Garden's summons with Dyna) and when you summon you don't plus him. Given that you have a big monster, you're free to set your monsters and then flip them if you want them at full force.
Doing so, you'll either keep the opponent at your same number but with less useful cards or you'll be minusing him always.

Decks
The kind of decks that work with this mindset are mainly Control, Stun and Antimeta, Stun being the one who uses is the best. I named Chaos Stun a couple of times, my favourite Stun deck ever I'm renewing. Either in the next or the one after the next post I'll write about it and the renewed list I'm working on.
Control has the option I named up there of Garden+Pachy, for example, while Antimeta lives off that, with Pachy on the field and several backrows.


Well, well, liked getting back at writing a lil bit, hope I can fully return blogging.
Stay Tuned.

50.000 Visits: not quite

Wanted to screen this exactly at 50.000, but over the night I apparently got 100+ visits. Well, nothing to complain, though, but I wanted to say a couple of things:
First, thanks to all the reader for reading the blog even when I didn't post, I get around 100 visits per day when I'm inactive, and that's awesome. Checking the stats for the blog, I noticed that most of the visits are on my Useful Rulings and Game Mechanics and on some of my decks. It's good to see that a blog that has been active for an year can last on its own for quite some time even without updates.
Second, about the readers again, is awesome to see that I get that many readers reading my blog, but, sadly, only few of them partecipate posting in the comments. Ya know, in 1 year and 5 months of blogging, I've only got 155 comments, most of them were on a quarrel about a deck that an user said I netdecked (on its side, it's true that my deck was pretty much identical ot his except a couple of choices and that his was older, but still I explained all of my card choices and stuff, just check it out, search OniDAD on my blog or look at the list of my decks) (what's more, I just noticed that I've been getting some visits from a post on pojo because of this again, good to see I'm on their mouth again, really). What I want to say is: you read and make me happy, you comment and make me happier. If you read this, comment under here just to let me know.
BTW, all of my readers, even Diabound, took me where I am, and I can't be happier for this.
I'd as well write a special post for the 50k visits, but don't have time for that, sorry. I'll try to write something as soon as possible.

Thanks and Stay Tuned.

Quick Post///New Gigavise

Yai, I'm back, even if only a little bit. I finally have finished school, freeing tons of time, but I'm busy with other stuff. Still, I've got a little spare time recently, and I read some stuff about a Chaos Plant engine with Evil Thorns in order to go into Slacker Magician (Shyneet). Reading it, I wanted to get back a moment on plants and remembered my favourite plant deck ever: Gigavise.
Write Gigavise on the search bar, I talked a lot about it in various posts even though I never got serious about it looking for a realy competitive build. Recently, even though my internet still sucks, I got to test something, and realized a pretty good OTK combo for Gigavise. If it's not OTK, hell, it's awesome however.
Considering Celestial Dragon (Starform), I thought that it could fit in there, and thus put it in the extra, even not knowing how to summon it. While playing against a DW (first and only game of that day, though), he had a Grapha on the field and a couple set cards. I had Lonefire (and Super Solar Nutrient, thus a random LV2 or less plant would have been good, too), Supervise and Heavy Storm.
Here's what I did:
Heavy Storm, he activated a reckless greed, the other one was a Skill Drain that was destroyed. Given that he had Skill Drain set, it was pretty safe to assume he didn't have Gorz in his 4-card hand. I tried to deal the most possible damage, maybe OTK, luckwisely. From there, summoned Lonefire, activated its effect, summoned Gigaplant, activated Supervise on it, used Gigaplant's effect to summon Lonefire that summoned a Spore from the deck, went into Power Tool with Gigaplant and used Supervise's effect to bring back Gigaplant, Power Tool's effect, chose Supervise, Supervise, Mark of the Rose. There I thought "I hope it is Supervise", I didn't calculate anything, so I don't know at which point it would have been an OTK, so the longer I could get the combo going, the better. He chose Mark. Here, he got that one card between three that he shouldn't have taken. Thinking about it, I noticed.
I used Spore's effect from the grave banishing Lonefire, went into Celestial with Power Tool and then used Mark of the Rose on Grapha. Safe play, 2700+3200+2400=8300.
There I noticed, "what a good combo, if the opponent has only a 2400+ ATK monster on the field, that's OTK, no matter what he picks with Power Tool, nice".
What I love about Gigavise is the versatility, and this added to my possible plays from the on. If he didn't have a monster, I would have kept Mark and Spore in the grave, attacked with Power Tool and then with Gigaplant. If he didn't do anything, good, I have possible comboes ready for the next turn if he doesn't have DH or stuff. If he did something, like, say, Gorz, I'd have dealt him 4700 dmg to start with, and then, in MP2, I would have stolen his gorz to go into Dracossack with Power Tool, leaving him with just a token that could only beat one of my tokens or into a Big Eye to steal even his token.

I don't currently have the time to playtest this, and thus can't come up with a good build, but the skeleton should be about:
2/3 Gigaplant
1 Spore
1 Copy Plant
1 Lonefire

3 Super Solar Nutrient
0-2 Miracle Fertilizer
1 Foolish Burial
1 One for One
0-2 Hidden Armory (I don't really like it, TBH)

+Staples
With this skeleton, you can build a turbo build based on Gigavise, but you can insert other supports like BLS, Evil Thorn, a LS Engine and stuff for a Chaos Plant Gigavise, or 2/3 Inmato+3 Cherry Inmato for an Inmato, maybe with some monarchs, everything's possible.
Keep in mind that you can drop the fertilizers and the armories in order to slow down the combo but make it more consistent and have slots for other supports you want to play.
I, for myself, would like more an Inmato engine, whom I talked about but have actual troubles finding it, because it gives easier access to DAD, monarchs (and gigaplant), Stardust and Catastor/Librarian, other than deck thinning.

Well, if my internet gets a little more stable and I free more of my time, I'll be back at playing and writing.
See Ya.

Long time no see

Sorry for that, but I'm having quite some problem logging in recently. I wouldn't say I'm losing interest in the game, I still do some games on YGOPro from time to time and follow new packs and cards as I always did, but still, I'm not into the game that much. First of all comes the usual problems with my internet connection, it has worsened recently. Second, I've got lots of things to do for school and eventual works, other than other hobbies like animes and reading. Last but not least, those few times I play on DN or YGOPro, I realize that the meta is more and more monotonous I believe that in 10 games I did in the last week I met something like 6 Elemental Dragons and 2 Spellbooks with 2 other random/fun/noob decks (random means another meta deck, then 4funs and then random 54-cards decks with random stuff in it).

I'll Be Back

Viruses, Gotta Infect 'em All

Scary, isn't it?

Viruses, from Crush Card Virus, the forbidden one, to Deck Devastation Virus and Epidemic Eradicator Virus, they're all scary traps that deplete the opponent's hand and field and disrupts their game.
Crush Card Virus, aka. CCV, is the most known one: it's banned for a reason, just tribute a random Sangan and you can kill all of your opponent's plays by destroying all the monsters with 1500 or more ATK from their field and hand and for three turn, other than checking pretty much all of the cards they have and the ones they draw for the remaining three turns.
Deck Devastation Virus, DDV, is the easier to activate as of now, since it requires only a 2000 ATK or more DARK monsters, compared to the 2500 or more for Epidemic and CCV that's forbidden by the banlist. Destroying all of the monsters with less than 1500 ATK is a great effect, since Wind-Ups die to it, and lots of other decks from the past banlist do too. Sadly, this new meta isn't that reliant on little monsters. Sure, you can kill Diva, Infantry, Marksman, Linde (before they summon her) and likes, it does kill Chicken, Spirit and Panther for LV3 Fire Fists and it destroys Spellbook Magician of Prophecy, but still all of these decks have great search power and can retrieve from the grave with ease and doing so swiftly avoids DDVs effect.
Epidemic Eradicator Virus, aka. EEV, is the hardest one to activate (not considering that CCV is on the banlist), but it has a great effect. Tributing a 2500 or more ATK monster to choose between Spells or Traps for the opponent to keep under control is awesome. Spellbooks totally die to this, Dark Worlds too, Raven and Trance Archfiend aside, not considering that Fire Fists lose all of their tenkis and Tensus and so on. What's more, being able to play this card without heavy minusing yourself is an awesome thing because you can destroy all of the staples, no matter the deck, and if the deck you're against to isn't spell/trap reliant, you can side this card out.

Now you'll be thinking "Well? We all know the Viruses, what's the point in explaining them?", right?
In these days I'm experimenting a concept I had in my mind for quite a while, but lacked some pieces for working correctly in the past. Thanks to T.G. Striker, from Pojo, I discovered how to work with it and it's working indeed.
Remember my Toolbox post? I basically said that Extra Deck's Toolbox is awesome because you can have whatever you need without waiting to draw into it, just into two materials to go into it. Same here: considering you'll have to summon a 2000 or more ATK DARK monster for DDV, you'll have to draw into 2 specific cards, at least, one is DDV itself, the other one is the monster. However, since it has an high ATK, it is likely that that monster will have to tribute a monster or two, or activate a specific card or anything really. To fix this, we'll just have to use the Extra Deck. If we were to make a list of all of the valid targets for DDV or EEV that reside in the extra, it would be extremely big, about 60 cards (if you want to see them, open DN and search there). Considering only the XYZs, though, the list would shrink to 17 cards:
2000 ATK or more.
Black Ray Lancer
Evilswarm Bahamut
Evilswarm Thanatos
King Feral Imp
Magi Magi ☆ Magician Gal
Number 50: Blackship of Corn
Queen Dragun Djinn
Shark Fortress
2500 ATK or more:
Adreus, Keeper of Armageddon
Chaos Xyz: Dark Fairy Cheer Girl
Evilswarm Ophion
Evilswarm Ouroboros
Hierophant of Prophecy
Number 11: Big Eye
Number 22: Zombiestein
Number 40: Gimmick Puppet of Strings
Number 88: Gimmick Puppet - Destiny Leo
(incoming Number 66: Master Key Beetle)

As you can see, many of them are generic or easy to summon. For DDV, Blackship of Corn is a godsend, since it is already a staple and totally generic. If we want to specify, then, every deck that has access to R4s is DDV-ready. As for EEV, consider that Adreus is generic, Big Eye is too, and even Number 40 (number 88 is hard to summon, not counting him). As of that, every deck that can summon R5s, 7 and 8 is EEV-ready.

Still, using DDV this way is, a -2 for the materials of the Xyz, then a +1 for the summon, then a -1 for the tribute and a -1 for DDV itself. On you, this is a -3. EEV is another thing, summoning 2 lv5, 7 or 8 monsters usually wastes lots of resources, making it a still worse card in terms of costs, excluding broken decks and easy plays, namely elemental dragons.
What can we do for this? We need something that makes this a 0, or at maximum a -1. Other than using the summoned monster's effect first, what else can we do? Reborning it is a great thing. Let's say you have an Adreus in the grave because you used it before, just Call of the haunted would make a great EEV target, but there's more to this.

Reborn for XYZs

Xyz Reborn is a +0 upon summon, however, considering it attaches itself to the summoned monster, you should be able to use that monster's effect and plus (corn destroys an opponent's monster for a +1, Big Eye steals one making it, theorically, a +2, Adreus destroys a card for a +1), then you can tribute it for virus.

We've come to the engine itself, finally. I've been testing this for the past 2/3 days, and it looks good:
0/2 Xyz Reborn
0-2 EEV
1/2 DDV

Usually it is 2-2-1 where I can summon R5/7/8 or 0-0-2 where I can summon R4.
The engine is even entirely side-able so that you can side as much hate as you want against Spellbook, DW, or whatever.

Try to splash it, you'll like it. If you need some ideas:
Gem-Knights, preferably sided since it generates lots of minuses. You can go into Prismaura and Citrine and then Big Eye.
Elemental Dragon, easy enough to figure why, you can tribute Big Eye and LaDD. Either sided or mained it's ok.
Constellars, Adreus is the way. It's ok either if mained or sided.
Umbral, they have Master Key Beetle, awesome EEV target. I'd say mained, but we'll have to wait their release on DN/YGOPro.

The possibilities are really lots and lots, you'll just have to try them.

See Ya

Naturia Beast, Relevance in the Meta

1 EARTH Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner EARTH monsters
During either player's turn, when a Spell Card is activated: You can send the top 2 cards of your Deck to the Graveyard; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy it. This card must be face-up on the field to activate and to resolve this effect.

Naturia Beast, one of the Naturia Synchros Trio (not considering Leodrake since he hasn't a negation effect), arguably the best among them. I named this card lots of times in the past, from Iron Chains, to Madolches, from Beast Synchro, to Karakuris and other lots of thingies. I noticed the strength of Karakuris, mainly, in this meta, with that Naturia Beast, but someone (Desmond Johnson) managed to show it to the world. I must admit that his build works a lot better than the one I was trying for this meta. It had pretty much the same basics, only that I played 3 decrees for the sake of drawing them as early as possible and go into a lock with Naturia Beast. However, they were quite the DDs, but sometimes they were way too useful, I'm still confused about them. Another thing Desmond noticed and I didn't was that Solar Wind Jammer could SS itself without monsters on the opponent's side.
Back on today's topic, Naturia Beast. Well, you should know by now what the next meta is going to look like, right? Mermails and Fire Fists till the release of Spellbook Judgment Day, where they'll become part of the meta, then, once HA7 is released, Evilswarms will be the main antimeta choice.
Beast is unstable in this meta, Spellbooks dies to it (aside Junon+3 Spellbooks, for that exact reason you should aim to the win as fast as possible), Fire Fists will be slowed down till they have a beater (tenken+something, reason why I used to play 3 decrees in my build), Evilswarms don't have access to Pandemic, but they can run over Beast with just Ophion (Decree is helpful here, too) while Mermails aren't really that affected, aside salvage and such, but they can kill beast with ease. For those reason, Naturia Beast is quite controversial.
However, when judging a certain card, you must always consider what type that card is: Infernity Launcher is way more broken than Mirage, even having the same effect, pretty much.
This card is the same thing: it is a synchro, thus it resides in the extra. Considering your extra a toolbox, as I always do, this card can be brought to the table when needed, and not waiting to draw it and being a DD from time to time.
If you are against Mermails, you'd rather go into Stardust than Beast, but against Spellbooks and Fire Fists the latter is awesome and against Evilswarm you'd go into a beater for their Ophion or, if you've got Decree, into Beast to attempt a lock, if they aren't too close to summon Ophion.
The decks that can afford easy summoning of Beast (and possibly barkion) have some potential not only for Beast itself, but even for the synchro ability: if you can summon Beast, you surely can summon Catastor, that's a great card itself, probably Stardust and Scrap and maybe Black Rose. Having that kind of toolbox (considering all of the XYZs, too) is a great arsenal for a player's deck.

I hope some other original deck makes it to the top of some important event, originality is always a good thing. Maybe some will be able to do so via Naturia Beast, who knows.

See Ya

Hit 40.000 Visits!

Just 10 visits away from perfection

That's 40.000, yahoooo! It took 1 month and 30 days to get 10k visits, while it took 2 months and 14 days to get to 30.000 from 20.000. Thank you all for the support. Lately I haven't been around too much, but still you gave me so many visits.
Thanks to my "followers", usual readers of the blog even if not subscribed, to occasional readers, to readers of other blogs that read mine in the suggested blogs, to googlers, to users that linked one of my blogposts to a friend of their and that friend of their that read it. Thanks to the other bloggers for keeping readers entertained while I wasn't active and thanks to Konami for keeping this card game (it hurts to say so, because Konami has lots of things to be blamed about). Thanks to 4kids for dubbing this and Italian dubbers for making me know this game using the anime. Thanks to internet, I couldn't have followed this game without it. Last but not least, thanks to my YGO-playing friends for keeping me playing this game, both online and in RL.
Thank you all for 40.000 visits, it wouldn't have been possible without you all.

One last thing: I'd like to dedicate this one post to mike, from dueling legacy. I believe I never posted on your blog, but still I used to read it. I think I'm speaking for all of the bloggers: we'll miss you.

As a special for the 40.000 visits: I'm studying some probabilities thingies, if I can get it done I'll post it as soon as possible.

March 1st: Next Meta, Renewal

With the coming of the new banlist, I've got lots of things to do. The two things aren't related, I'm busy because of other thingies, and thus I didn't have time to work on my decks for the new meta more than a little bit. For this exact reason I decided to write this post about changes in Yugioh and changes that will affect my decks and how.
First of all, general meta:
Meta should be easily Mermails and Spellbooks, highly supported by Konami, and Fire Fists.
Fire Fist is a great deck that I don't like to play (sadly, others say it is plenty of fun) and has a lot of potential. I don't know this one very well, but it is easy to guess that after some time after the banlist (about 3 weeks at most) most will drop Vorse Raiders. The reason Vorse Raiders were played was pretty much DDV. Currently, though, the main thing that DDV hit was Wind-Up, and the latter won't see much play, even though I'm really liking this one now. Bear aside, the deck doesn't even cost too much (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not really expert with prices).
Mermail and Spellbooks won't change much, Mermail is play-ready from the first days of the new meta without any problem, while spellbook is still waiting Judgment Day in the TCG.
Hand Traps are about to become useless, since neither Veiler nor Maxx are that good against those decks. However, if you're forced to play one (like me with Hootcake in Madolches), play 2 Veilers and you're okay.

This is our meta. End.

My decks:
Let's first say that the next meta I'm probably working on my decks more than usual, if I get some time, because I wouldn't want to play one of those three for tournaments (even on DN, I just don't want to). I'm probably working on them to make them meta-ready, and thus have big advantages against those decks. As of now, I'm playing Gate HEROes, AZ kills Mermail and I can do something against Spellbooks. However, even though I didn't test yet against Fire Fists, they should have the upper hand, because my AZ's blow-ups can't do a thing against a previously on the field bear or an addition tensu's summon.

For the other decks, let's see Chain Beat. Here is my previous list, I believed I changed it alot, even though not remember how, even before the new banlist. As you can guess, Tour is bad now in this deck, since I can't bring Zenmaity anymore. This isn't that hard to update, I just have to change my main search engine for Rabbit with another one. Tenki's the way. Dropping the entire Tour engine we get 4 slots, dropping a Warning will result in 5. We have multiple ways to use those. 3 Tenkis and 2 Bears. Provides search power and additional searchable monster hate. With 2 TKs this is a viable option, however I'm trying to get this in RL, and thus I can't make it cost that much. For a budget build it will simply be 3 Tenki and 2 Winged Rhynos or 2 Tenkis, 2 rhynos and 1 Horn (great card), or 3 tenki, 1 rhynos, 1 horn. I believe the latter is quite unstable, since I've got 4 targets for 3 cards. It's true that tenki has a power-upping effect, but 3 for that isn't that good, and opening multiples maybe isn't awesome. What's more, 3 could clog your S/Ts, so I'm using the second. In the other changes I already did there is an Orichalcos mained. It's great because Rabbits becomes, usually, 1400+500+100=2000, more than TK, and Rhynos can take care of Megalo, Junon and Soko.
I'm waiting for Thunderbirds and HA7 to play them, and the build should change alot.

Infernities XYZ. A general guide here. Well, I'm not playing this in RL for economical reasons, but with Lavalval it could be great against Mermails: they can't play Macro Cosmos and we have easy access to Dweller. Spellbooks could be a rough match-up, but I think we can handle them and possibly OTK 'em. Fire Fists are still unknown to me, so I don't know.

Collapserpent-Wyburster Monarch. Here the list. As usual, it can get Dweller out, thus it is good thing against Mermails. It plays Vanity's Fiend leaving only Undine and Pike+infantry as an out to it. As for spellbooks, we can't get Shock Master out, but Caius, Vanity's Fiend and Soul Exchange can give them an hard time. No MUs here.

Madolches. As you probably know, there'll be Hootcake in LTGY. That one card will give us Madolche player a giant push in the right direction. We can easily do Tiara on turn 1, if necessary (it sure isn't). Of course we have access to Dweller as nothing, and with some effort to Shock Master, too. Having both is great for the next meta.

There will be the main decks I'll work on, given what I know right now.


Here is all I could write in these days, sorry if I'm really busy and can't write more. See Ya.

Quick Updates

You may have noticed I'm a little less active lately, reason being bad connection and lack of time, so here's a little update on the current situation:

Banned, I'm definitely going to play WUs post-banned, I'm liking the deck alot. I'm going for a Control build with 11 traps or so, 1 bear, 1 gorilla, 3 tenkis, 3 rabbits and aiming to control the field with Dire Wolf+Rabbit or even Shock Master sometimes. Wind-Up Warrior is working awesomely to me, I'm thinking of bringing him to 2, while 1 soldier could take care of TK other than being great material for R5 Xyzs. If Warrior used on himself had more than 1900 ATK, he would've been a mainstay for me in threes.
I heard someone is trying to play the deck in a turbo build with Summoner Monks, but I think that's the worst way to do it.

Tournaments, I'm going to a Fly to YCS tournament next Sunday, gonna be quite funny, and will be my first tournament in RL. Finally.

Blogging, I'm working on something, you'll be able to see it in at the worst in a week, but I think 3 days will be more than enough, if I have a decent connection. Hope you'll like it.

Hope I can be back in the less time possible. See Ya.

1st March 2013: Banlist Revealed

Forbidden:
Sangan
Wind-Up Zenmaity

Limited:
Wind-Up Magician
One Day of Peace
Solemn Warning

Semi-limited:
Tsukuyomi
Thunder King Rai-Oh
Advanced Ritual Art

Freed:
Spore
Blackwing - Kalut the Moon Shadow
Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner
Shien's Smoke Signal
Mind Crush

Let's start first saying that, as most of you know, March's Banlist is the economic-based one. Konami always tries to get as much money as they can from it.
If you didn't know, it could be guessed by seeing this. Let's see the balist closely, now:

Sangan Forbidden. Got a tour? I won't mind Torrential Tributing you on the second monster's summon instead of the first or none at all.
Zenmaity Banned. Got a Wind-Up? Well, you'd better change how it's built.
Magician Limited. Read up here, has pretty much the same meaning.
One Day of Peace Limited. Sad. I loved that FTK.
Warning Limited. Not that I care, in RL I didn't even have one even though I play 4 Antimeta decks, lol.
Tsukuyomi Semi-limited. It's been limited for 6 months, I tried hard to use it succesfully somewhere, but found nothing, only Prophecies are good enough.
Rai-Oh Semi-limited. That's great for lots of meta decks, expecially the ones that are coming.
ARA Semi-limited. Like this. I always wanted to play Herald with 2 ARAs, and I always loved Demise OTK.
Spore Freed. Nah, I don't give a fuck, only places where I'd play it are Gigavise decks, and I'd always play 1 Spore and 1 Copy Plant, aside from Glow-Up back at 1 at least.
Kalut Freed. Hate Konami. I hate facing BWs, and with three Kaluts it will be just worse.
Lumina Freed. Like this. I used to play Lightsworn XYZ since when they semi-limited Lumina, and It'll just get better.
Shien's Smoke Signal. Oh. Like Samurais, but I don't want to play them.
Mind Crush. Meh.

As you could have guessed, most of the cards were for economical reasons. Sangan Forbidden because they stopped selling Tour and the new decks won't really use the Tour Engine.
Same thing for Zenmaity and Magician, they stopped selling WUs, and they want to clear the way for new decks.
ODOP enabled a really good FTK that wasn't expensive and with cards they already stopped selling. At 1 it'll be way harder to loop, even though it is possible. Luckily, it reduces the power of Exodia Decks and Final Countdown.
Rai-Oh cleared the way for other decks, Prophecies mainly since they're getting Judgment of the spellbooks.
Lumina is a LIGHT support for a LIGHT deck, and we're getting Judgment of the Light briefly (relatively), random supports for light monsters.

Now, New meta's thoughts:
Prophecies and Mermails for sure, I think there'll be some WUs rebuilt for the meta, some samurais for the first month, and if it is successful it will see some more play. Herald will be played, and will be a lot more stable than in the past. Some more BWs.

Personal Thoughts:
Sad for my Chain Beat, but I'll be able to play some more techs. I wanted to play serpentine princess, and in april we'll get Thunderbird. I'll restart playing Herald and Lightsworn once again. I'll definitely play WUs.

Post-Banned Wind-Up

Nope, the ban's not out. I think I will use this kind of posts to expose my thoughts about the banlist: single talks.
Supposing that WU is being hit by the banlist, what could it be? What would WU-Players gameplay change into?

Magician limited
If this were to happen, I think WUs would change to a more control build, with Rabbits being searchable via Tenki that would search bear and gorilla too for extra field control. Rabbits would plus with Factory every turn, and possibily go into Diamond Dire Wolf keeping that Rabbit on the field for free destruction every turn. While the banlist will be effective starting March 1st, Hidden Arsenal will be out in April, letting TCG-players using their Emerals to recycle Wolf and such, and probably a new little loop will appear.
The best things to do would be either the Dire+Rabbit or Shock Master, as always.
Magician+Shark will now result into:
NS Magician, SS Shark, SS Rabbit via Magician, Shark+Magician=Dire Wolf
OR
NS Magician, SS Shark, SS LV4 via Magician, go into Shock Master with a -1
OR
NS Magician, SS Shark, SS Rabbit, banish Magician, Shark at 3, Rabbit+Shark into Zenmaity, SS Rat via zenmaity, SS Rabbit via Rat, banish Rat via rabbit, when needed, or do it during your opponent End Phase. Next turn you'll have Rat and magician for sure, maybe even zenmaity and rabbit.
Or something else I can't really think about, because I'm not a WU player, and I don't really care, I would go for Control builds, and thus those three, random summoning to go into a R5 or 3, or at the best a combo that wouldn't minus you that summons Shock Master, are good enough.

Factory Limited/Semi-limited
Not much to say about this, it'll let your search power down, you'll play 3 magician if you weren't already, and go for the usual Magician-Shark combo.
If anything, this could change the number of Rabbits in the deck, or, at least, prevent the addition of other rabbits in form of tenkis.
I wouldn't like this since it would make that deck just more luck-based than it already is.
However, this is probably the more likely to happen since it would be pretty much the same than Black Whirlwind.

Hits on Shark/Rat/Rabbit
I don't think this is likely to happen, but still it reserves a mention. Shark could be limited, but I can't see that being that dangerous to the deck, just decreasing the probabilities of drawing into it first turn.
Rat, not that it makes that much of a difference, the only thing that would hit the loop by hitting this is the ban, but it just doesn't reserve this. I really can't see this being hit, but some do, saying that it would hit the grind plays of the deck, I don't think so.
Rabbit, nah, some think it will be hit, but I don't think so, neither I want it to, since it'll quite hurt my Chain Beat, even if we are getting Thunderbirds in April and thus I'd be able to replace it.

Torrential at 3
I don't know how many would play this in 3 copies, but it's sooo good against WUs that it would give it quite the hit. They stop Spells? Set torrential and lance, summon a TK or something like that. Good.
They go second? Set Torrential+other Backrows and possibly SJ/Starlight.


I expect WUs to be hit, mainly factory or magician, giving more space to new decks from HA7 so that they cna sell it properly.

That's All, Folks!

Suppressor Dragons, Combined and Single

Who are the suppressor dragons? They're an archetype composed of 4 monsters, one for each element (remember that in YGO elements are EARTH, WIND, FIRE and WATER. All are LV7, the sum of their ATK and DEF is always 4600 and have got similar effect. Basically:
*Name* LV7 *corresponding attribute*/Dragon ATK+DEF=4600
You can banish 2 Dragon-Type or *corresponding attribute* monsters from your hand or Graveyard, except this card; Special Summon this card from your hand or Graveyard. During your opponent's End Phase, if this card was Special Summoned: Return it to the hand. You can discard this card and 1 other *corresponding attribute* monster to *so-called discarding effect, different for each one*. When this card is banished: Add 1 *corresponding attribute* Dragon-Type monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only use 1 "*name*" effect per turn, and only once that turn.

Great, right? Well, you didn't read their discarding effect, still.
Redox, the EARTH one is a walking Reborn for your grave, no other restrictions. You can even summon himself, if Konami is ok with discarding first and then targeting the monster. Poor stats, though, 1600 ATK and 3000 DEF
Blaster, the FIRE one is a walking raigeki break, with no other restrictions. Discard him and a fire and destroy one card. Doesn't trigger Handmaiden, sadly, but it could set-up the grave for an Handmaiden mill and destroy a nasty backrow. Probably the second with better stats, 2800/1800. Great attack to run over anything, DEF good enough to block Maestroke Flip and Attack, if he doesn't have other monsters.
Tidal, the WATER one is a walking foolish burial. Probably the one with the worst effect but more applications, since it'll give Mermails a good discard, eventually can be summoned to XYZ with Megalo into Abyssgaios or Drago-SAC, a monster that's receiving lots of love, recently. 2600/2000, probably the better stats among them. Basically, the ATK is good enough to run over pretty much everything Blaster would run over, but his DEF makes him better against Maestroke. However, you should realize based on your deck and your playstyle which one has got the better stats for you.
Tempest, the WIND one is a walking...uhm...really, a walking itself. Discard it with a WIND monster and get another Dragon from your deck. That's quite of broken, isn't it? Dragunities will have tons and tons of fun with this card. Being LV7 helps more in Drago-SAC based decks or even standard Beastcraft decks. The deck where it shines the most, however, is Dragunities, as I said earlier, since it can search pretty much every combo pieces for Atum Dragunities and, in combo with Ravine, it can search REALLY everything you need. 2400/2200. Oh well, at least it suicides into Laggia. You won't summon it the most of the times, or, if you do, you'll XYZ him in the 90% of cases.

A question lots of people asked me is "can they work together?". My main response was "they aren't out on DN, I won't test them till that time. When they will, I'll try to confirm my theory where they could, even though not as a really competitive deck".
Basically, throw in some remotion, Necroface, GS and Dimensional Alchemist, and they'll be discard fodders for themselves, eventually summoning them all back and XYZ, while RFDD (Return from the Different Dimension) works as our own Rekindling.
Engine:
3 Redox
3 Blaster
3 Tempest
0/3 Tidal
1 Necroface
0/1 REDMD
3 Treasured Sword of the Seven Stars
3 Gold Sarcophagus
0-2 D.D.R.
0/1 RFDD

You can splash this engine pretty much anywhere.
Heraldic Beasts want to be in the grave, and they want discard fodder.
Plants, do I even need to talk?
Skill, well, this will negate their return effect, and on the field they effectively don't have any useful effect. Redox can reborn Barbaros, and the latter is a target for Treasured Sword (TSSS)
And I'm keeping one for another review, because I like it more than the other, even though the Plant one has access to easy Shooting.

However, I myself think that those monsters should be used on their own. Redox is great in both Rock Stun (or Skill Rock Stun) and Gem-Knight, other than Heraldic Beast (triggers Leo, and eventually Summons him back from the grave); Tidal is great in Atlanteans and Mermails, discards like hell, and I'm looking for good WATER monsters for Heraldic Beasts to use its effect to send Leo to the grave and trigger him, even though it could not be needed; Tempest has Dragunities, R7 WIND Abuse, and lots of uses for searches; Blaster can be used in Lavals (meh) or in Fire King to destroy themselves and use their effect, and Qilin could eventually send it to the grave to have another easily accessible Beater that will return to your hand to use its effect, and, even though I never played Fire King, I think they can access Skill Drain without losing much or even anything, and that's just great.
TSSS is just awesome, a +1 if you use it on a Suppressor, or a +0 on other monsters. If one, a random one, of those dragons had an use while in hand, I'd play 1 TSSS and 2 of the named dragon, even though it's pretty risky. Or I could play 1 TSSS, 1 Dragon and a monster searchable via that Dragon LV8 for Trade-In. More risky than the one before, but more useful, and Magical Mallet COULD help shuffling back the searchable Dragon. But I don't know, they just conflict too much with the FTK mindset.
Gold Sarcophagus is just way too good, on Necroface on first turn it could plus you so much that you couldn't even think about it. Assuming you just drew the first 6 cards of your 40-cards deck, and that one of those was GS, use GS on Necroface (thinning by another card). Milling 5 cards has high possibilities of banishing at least one of those 12 Dragons (91%, approximatively, thanks to Fabio Borges), and, if you drew into Necroface, you could just banish a Dragon and make it a +1 (search with the dragon+GS' Dragon-GS).
I, as one, see lots of power in those monsters, and lots of hidden uses that I won't discover till they'll be out on DN, assuming I have a good enough internet connection to log into DN without making it crash.
That's All Folks.

P.s. I LOVE Tempest, can't wait for it to be on DN.

Happy Birthday!/Buon Compleanno!

Yup, my blog just became one year old, 30th January 2012 was posted the very first post (well, not really, I'm going to explain this later) on the blog, an introduction to the blog.
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Yup, il blog ha appena compiuto un anno, il 30 Gennaio del 2012 è stato il giorno in cui è stato postato il primo post di questo blog (non proprio, c'è una storia dietro che spiegherò più tardi).

Looking back to some posts, I noticed how I got better in both general writing skills and english skills, not considering YGO skills and knowings.
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Guardando qualche vecchio post, ho notato come sia nettamente migliorato sia a scrivere in generale che in inglese, senza considerare YGO.

I was looking forward to this day, but really didn't know what to post. Or, TBH, WHICH to post, since I had lots of ideas but didn't know which one to use. This is what I decided: little tips on the blog posted in both italian and english.
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Aspettavo con ansia questo giorno, ma non sapevo veramente cosa postare. O, per meglio dire, QUALE postare, dato che avevo moltissime idee senza sapere quale usare. Ho quindi deciso: piccole chicche sul blog postate sia in italiano che in inglese.

The blog started as a way to express some of my knowings about YGO and as a deck and ideas gallery, but it was in Italian. I created the domain and wrote the introduction to the blog in Italian. I did no spam or such, I just wrote that off to remember me that it existed and what I would have want to aim for with that blog, since I was pretty busy in that period.
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Il blog è nato come un modo di esprimere alcune mie conoscenze in ambito di YGO e come una lista di deck e idee, ma in italiano. Ho creato il dominio e scritto l'introduzione del blog in italiano. Non ho fatto pubblicità o nient'altro, ho solo scritto quell'introduzione per ricordarmi dell'esistenza del blog e di cosa ci avrei voluto fare, dato che ero piuttosto occupato e non avrei potuto scrivere.

However, after leaving it dead like that for quite some time, I decided to start fresh and switch to English. That was because, for the first time in my life, I had a not that great mark in English at school, B. It was a test promoted by the Trinity College, it was the second one I did, and I skipped 3 levels (the trinity exams are divided in levels, the very first time it was in elementary school, since I went way too good for level 1, 2 and 3, they decided to make me do 4, but they changed their mind again and went for the 5, asking me for permission).
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Comunque, dopo averlo lasciato a morire per un po' di tempo, ho deciso di ripartire e passare all'inglese. Questo perché, per la prima volta  nella mia vita, ho avuto un voto non troppo buono in inglese, B. Era un test promosso dal Trinity College, il secondo che facevo, dopo aver saltato 3 livelli (gli esami del Trinity sono divisi in livelli, il primo l'ho fatto alle elementari, ma dato che sono andato molto meglio del necessario sia per i livelli 1, 2 e 3, hanno deciso di farmi fare il 4, ma hanno cambiato idea nuovamente e mi hanno fatto fare il 5, dopo avermi chiesto il permesso).

The fifth wasn't even that difficult, grammatically speaking, I had good enough knowings for other lots of levels. However, starting from the fifth, all of the levels required that you brought a topic along with you, choosing from some your teacher proposed you. Mine was Coke, a friend of mine brought Pizza and so on. I'm good when we talk about getting some ideas or concepts in my mind, or when it is English, however I'm REALLY bad at learning by heart, thus I continuously forgot names or other things that you can't conceptualize.
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Il quinto non era nemmeno più di tanto difficile, dal punto di vista della grammatica, avevo buone conoscenze anche per molti altri livelli. Comunque, partendo dal quinto, tutti i livelli richiedevano che assieme al parlato venisse portato anche un topic (argomento), scegliendo fra alcuni proposti dall'insegnante. Il mio era la coca cola, un mio amico portò la pizza e un'altra mia amica portò gli scaldatelli. Sono bravo fino a quando si tratta di capire alcune idee o concetti, ma se devo imparare a memoria, dimentico continuamente nomi o altre cose che non si possono concettualizzare.

Thus, that day, I went there without remembering anything, before the exam started I stayed there talking with a girl that already did the test and that was waiting for me before leaving. I didn't even tried to repeat what I studied, because I would have forgotten it back, so I just tried not to get stressed by talking and laughing a bit. The exam itself didn't go that bad, because my speaking skills covered pretty much all of my lack of knowings about the topic. Of course, even though I tried to cover it, he noticed I didn't know most of the things about the topic. I took B, but that was balanced with the conversation with the examinator.
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Quindi, quel giorno, sono andato li senza ricordarmi nulla, e prima che l'esame iniziasse sono rimasto a parlare con una ragazza che aveva già fatto il test e che aspettava me per andarsene. Non ho nemmeno provato a ripetere il mio topic, perché lo avrei dimenticato nuovamente, quindi ho solo cercato di non stressarmi parlando e ridendo un po'. L'esame in se non è andato male, perché le mie abilità nel parlare (presenti anche in italiano, durante interrogazioni di storia, che uso per coprire i buchi dovuti alle date e ai nomi) hanno coperto più o meno tutte le mancanze riguardo il topic. Ovviamente, nonostante abbia provato a coprirle, l'esaminatore ha notato che non sapevo una buona parte dei fatti riguardo il topic. Ho preso B, ma è stato bilanciato dalla conversazione in inglese con l'esaminatore.

However, dunno why, it took a lot of time before we knew how the exam went. I did the exam in the last year of middle school, but I knew the results about the half of January of the first year of High School. I then decided to prove myself on my English skills, to see if I were good enough to talk and write fluently in English, and so it was. As the time passed, though, I noticed getting better and better, learning slangs, being able to understand an English-speaking person, began speaking with an American accent, and being able to sustain a full conversation with English-speaking people. I was pretty satisfied, and having the blog wrote in English meant that I could link by lists to everyone if someone asked me for a specific decklist. Basically everytime I post a deck is because someone asked me the list, and more rarely when I want to show it because I like it.
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Comunque, non so perché, i risultati ci misero tempo ad essere rivelati. Ho fatto l'esame nell'ultimo anno di medie e ho saputo i risultati a meta Gennaio del primo anno di superiori. Ho quindi deciso di mettermi alla prova sulle mie abilità d'inglese, per vedere se ero abbastanza bravo per la parte pratica dello studio dell'inglese, parlare e scrivere, e infatti lo ero. Mano a mano, comunque, ho notato che diventavo sempre più bravo, imparavo slang, diventavo capace di capire una persona che parlava inglese e sostenerci una discussione e iniziato a mostrare un accento americano (ancora mi chiedo la ragione). Ero piuttosto soddisfatto, e avere il blog scritto in inglese significava che lo potevo linkare a chiunque mi chiedesse una lista. Praticamente, ogni volta che posto un deck è perché qualcuno mi ha chiesto la lista, o, più raramente, quando voglio veramente mostrare un deck che mi piace.

This was the big story behing the blog, I was so satisfied that the exam didn't matter anymore to me, and they didn't even send an official certificate or likes, so, officially, I never did that exam, it's kinda lollish. If I wanted to, I could even re-attempt to it, but I don't wanna. And now I'm happily writing on my beloved blog, when others that had an A because they learnt the topic word by word now have something like 7 or 8 at maximum (with 10 as a maximum, for those who don't know this kind of ratings), while I'm happily being marked as a 9 without studying,and I like that (not needing to study, I mean).
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Questa era la grande storia dietro il blog, ero così soddisfatto che non mi importava più niente dell'esame, e, dato che non mi hanno nemmeno mandato un certificato o cose simili, ufficialmente non ho mai fatto quell'esame. Se volessi, potrei anche riprovare, ma non voglio. Ora sto scrivendo sul mio amato blog, quando gli altri che hanno avuto una A perché hanno imparato il topic parola per parola ora hanno 7 o 8 al massimo, mentre io ho felicemente 9 senza studiare, e mi piace (non dover studiare, intendo).

Well, this was all, once again, Happy Birthday! See Ya.
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Questo è tutto, e, ancora una volta, Buon Compleanno! Arrivederci.

Madolche Magileine

When this card you control is destroyed by your opponent's card (either by battle or by effect) and sent to your Graveyard: Shuffle this card into your Deck. When this card is Normal or Flip Summoned: You can add 1 "Madolche" monster from your Deck to your hand.

Well, great, uh? I LOVE this card, she's quite of awesome. Not because it is an auto-searchable stratos that recycles herself, that is perfect for naturia synchros, for arcanite or for her splashability, but because of her art. Oh, come on, a witch on a fork with eyes with different colors and that's quite "moe", why shouldn't you love her?
Put aside how lovely she is, she's the centerpiece of Madolche decks, makes the deck work. Search another copy of her, resulting in a +1 in no matter the deck, then if she's destroyed, you get to recycle her making her another possible target for another copy of herself.
Let's see why this card is good in steps:

Recyclability and Searchability
The titles says it all. Starting off this card on first turn is a pretty consistent opening, since it doesn't really reveal you deck (saying that you're splashing her in another deck aside madolche and spellbook), conducting to misplays based on misjudgments. It is a +1 on the very first turn and as a splashable engine it is a lot more stable than Gadget's, that basically do the same thing in some decks (Gadget are sometimes, or it's better to say "were", used only as an engine to generate +1s in stun decks or such) but eating more slots in the deck. For stun decks based on +1s, gadget are still better, but in decks where you can continuously stun your opponent's monsters, this card is way better. Doesn't eat too many slots if compared to gadgets, leads to less dead draws (double gadget in hand), is better for long games since magileines recycles themselves continuously.

Versatility
Magileine is spellcaster, and thus she works wonders with Spellbooks, power makes her a 2400 that searches when destroys a monster. Being spellcaster is awesome with some random LV3 Tuners to go into Arcanite and destroy two cards. Going into Naturia Synchros with a LV1 EARTH Tuner or LV2 (won't consider Landoise since I don't like him, aside from a few decks). Being LV4 makes her great R4 XYZ material in two turns.

Engine Expandability
The engine should be 3 Magileines alone if the deck supports them, otherwise you should include some monster hate, too, but that depends on the deck. However, what's great about this deck is that you can expand it, too. Add Butlerusk and you'll have a walking Terraforming that afterwards makes you a R4 XYZ, add in Cruffsant in a deck where you play beast supports (Horn of the Phantom Beast is good, too) and you'll have a 1500 at the worst, 1800 usually, and eventually 2100 and so on, recycling you magileine for more searchs and +1s, while having a monster that could be used for bounzer, big-eye, drago-SAC or whatever based on what you're playing.

Dodging Ability
Dodges BTH, makes your opponent's Solemn Warning a waste of 2000 LPs (since you'll get to recycle her), if on her alone TT turns into a -1 for the opponent and so on. If you attack with this into WU Rabbit, you'll have the upper hand, tenki or factory aside.


Really, the only bad sides of this card are not working when flipped face-up (an attack, for example) or Special Summoned and having poor ATK. That's it. And you should love the artwork.

See Ya.