Showing posts with label Countering Cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Countering Cards. Show all posts

30/11/2012

Level 6 Synchro

I think that anyone noticed that, LV6 Synchros actually left aren't that good. The moment Brionac was banned, synchros lost the little playability they still had, why's that? Brionac is one of the best synchros level 6 is easily accessible and the effect was really versatile and not limited to once per turn. Little cost that could be abused to clean for OTKs or looping (just think of all the Infernity Loops or Fableds, or random FTKs, and so on). However, Brionac was the first and usually sole synchro option when going for LV6, because other weren't even a quarter of Brio's power. Still, Brio was banned, and we lost our LV6 synchro option, effectively killing lots of comboes or power-plays, may it be synchro climb or just a random synchro to draw with Librarian's effect. People almost instantly decided either to totally drop the synchro part in their deck to focus on XYZ sheningans (or main deck ones, like BLS and such) or to find a substitute for brionac. The main choices were Iron Chain Dragon and Gaia Knight, the Force of the Earth. Let's analyze them:

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters You can remove from play all "Iron Chain" monsters from your Graveyard to have this card gain 200 ATK for each card removed, until the End Phase. When this card inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent, send the top 3 cards of your opponent's Deck to the Graveyard.
Well, why do some people choose this over gaia? Because of the milling effect. Still, I totally find this unuseful, if not dangerous for yourself: setting-up your opponent's grave isn't a good thing for the 80% of the deck in this meta. 2500 ATK is good, but gaia's 2600 are better, since he doesn't need to sucide against stardust, shi en and others.
To be blunt, then, I totally don't like this card, and I (I, ME, that's personal, you could particularly like this card for some unknown reasons, and, if you do, it is unuseful to talk, since you're probably so convinced that nothing would change your mind) won't recommend anyone to play this card over Gaia.

Let's see him, now.

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters
Well, no effect. Actually, this card is better than Iron Chain, in my opinion. 2600 ATK, better than Iron Chain's 2500. No milling effect, thus no risks in attacking your opponent to deal some damages, but, what's more, there's no effect at all. The awesome thing about this part is that Fiendish Chain doesn't do a thing against this, and, even though this one is really improbable to happen, your opponent can't randomly veiler this card just to have a random LIGHT monster in the grave for BLS. Good card, if I were to choose between one of those, I would, without any further thinking, choose this one. HOWEVER, there's one more thing I want you to see. There's a synchro option that only few players consider, and just a little part of those plays:

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent. This card gains 300 ATK each time it inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent.
So, what about this card? He's the thing I wrote this post for. I like this card over both Gaia and Iron Chain because of the piercing effect. Everyone in here hates, at least a bit, Reaper, right? Well, Reaper hates this card. Why having a card that deals constantly damage to the opponent while building-up its strenght shouldn't be considered for competitive plays? This runs over spy, while dealing damages, or even over recruiter. This runs over Mother Grizzly (yeah, lol), while dealing damages. However, the main reason is that this card by itself totally defeats the purpose of setting a monster to avoid battle damages, and that's great. After little time, if protected and well-played, this card can even be better than gorz when he's summoned after the opponent's deck's boss' attack.

Overall, Gaia should be used, Uruquizas too. If you have one slot, play the one that would be better in your meta (gaia is good against decks like rabbit, six and others that have some monsters under 2500 ATK, uruquizas is good against, strangely, Inzektor, some wind-up situations, reaper, and cards like Maestroke, eventually GK, sometimes GB), I usually like uruquizas better (on DN), but depends on my deck and if it plays easily summonable beatsticks over 2500 ATK. If you have two slots, don't hesitate to play both.

That's All Folks.

22/09/2012

Yubels, Guess Who's Back? Back Again? Yubel's Back!

For those who don't know, the title was referring to Without Me, by Eminem.


Yeah, yeah, yubels, love them. I always loved this archetype because of it's destruction ability. I believe the main reason I love this is because of the fact it was the first original deck I built by myself. Macro Yubel, actually, using Scout Planes and Survivors to have a giant field advantage against the opponent, while having the antimetish factor offered from macro. At that time, XYZs didn't exist, but they would have been a great power-up for the deck.
So, recently, I found myself reading some old cards on wikia, and accidentally read "Yubel". Aw yeah, there we go. I started working on that, and actually built something that works. I'm into WU Rabbit recently, once I started using it in Madolches, I'm thinking of it pretty much everywhere, and after quite some time (well, not really, actually just 5 minutes), I realized it was perfect for the theme.
Let's firstly say, for those who don't know, that a yubel deck aims to the second form of yubel, terror incarnate, since it can litterally wipe out the field, while being the last man standing, not attackable (or, to be precise, is attackable, but no player would like to do that). What if we combine this with something that's not on the field during this card's effect's activation but that comes back later? Free advantage over the opponent.
I'm actually playing a great sending&reviving engine (3 grepher, 3 armageddon, 1 reinforcement of the army, 1 foolish burial, 3 call of the haunted, 3 limit reverse, 1 monster reborn, 2 swing of memories), that usually makes yubel incarnate during your first or second turn. While easily setupping this and destroying opponent's plays, we have to patiently wait for Wind-Up Rabbits (considering how we thin the deck, that's not even that hard) or tutor some with tour guide into tour guide into zenmaity into rabbit. After we did this, we're constantly in advantage over the opponent, if he doesn't want to die from Rabbit's attacks, he'll have to summon something, that can't attack neither rabbit nor incarnate (if he attacks rabbit, you'll just chain its effect, if he attacks incarnate, he's kinda dumb, and it will make no damage to us), then incarnate will destroy that monster, and the opponent minused of one just to avoid a simple 1400 direct attack. What if we have multiple rabbits, though? That'll be 2800, or even 4200, giant total attacks, aren't they?
However, once you encounter madolches (it happens, I did it, the single game last 1h and 10m, that because he wanted to end the game and I had to have dinner, but we were about to finish it, anyway) you'll have some hard time, since they recycle them forever, while accumulating cards. That's why I do play a teched Sacred Phoenix of Nephtys. 2400 ATK beater, destroyed in end, when summoned gets rid of chateau and other S/Ts, while incarnate gets rid of monsters. That'll make your opponent losing lots and lots of cards.
Don't know how much experience you do have, but probably you do know PACMAN, don't you? It's a quite awesome deck I'm playing actually, along with this, madolches and other things I'm trying, that goes into many +1s with des lacooda, while getting rid of opponent's resources with swarm of locust/medusa worm, and burning lps with stealth bird, wave-motion cannon and magical cylinder, while stalling with swords of revealing light and messenger of peace. Well, this deck is something like that. You basically never -1 yourself (while pacman does actually +1 itself alot) but you minus the opponent alot (compared to the -1/2 that pacman does). What's more, yubel has some more stall ability, and kills actually more, probably, while putting tons and tons of pressure on the opponent.
I'm liking this deck alot, because its worst match-up was inzektor, but now there are fewer, and this does work great. It has no particular bad match-up against other decks, has some good match-up here and there, but there's a problem. This deck does fear a true staple in every extra deck: Zenmaines.
Zenmaines' effect prevents it to be destroyed, and kills a card when you use that effect, that means that if incarnate tries to kill zenmaines, it'll just detach a material to kill incarnate itself (doesn't matter that incarnate will evolve, since even the destroying effect that nightmare has can be negated via zenmaines' effect, and destroying a card again).
Luckily, every player does play only a copy of this card, so once you kill the first, you're safe in most cases, except pot of avarice, that's why I'm considering maining crows here. Other than hitting zenmaines before poa, you can hit some combo pieces, and even that single hornet your opponent does play.

Conclusive thoughts: the deck has potential, should tweak a little more my actual build and then post it.
Ja Ne (See Ya, japanese for who doesn't know)

17/09/2012

Card of the Week #15: Starlight Road

When a card or effect is activated that destroys 2 or more cards you control: Negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card, then you can Special Summon 1 "Stardust Dragon" from your Extra Deck.
Yeah, stardust's card. Some rulings on wikia's page, didn't want to write them here because they are way too much and pretty much any of them was important, so read them before continue, unless you already know them.
So so, what's about this card? Great card, I'd say, negate a mass-destruction effect and SS another destruction negator with a good body, 2500 ATK.
This card is so useful and versatile that you'll have tons of ways to use that. While this card acts mainly as protection from S/Ts where it is played, it provides a good body that can be used for last pushes or as further protection more generic than this card itself. For example, lots of players use to use heavy storm and then negate this card all by theirself because they needed protection from BTH for the boss summon, or a Typhoon on their favourite Continuous Spell/Trap or Field Spell, or because they want to use some mass-destruction effect and fear an opponent's starlight. There are tons of plays with this card, that's why I decided to talk about this.
This card can not only protect from heavy storm, but even from DH, Judgment Dragon, and other mass-destruction.
Only for this reason, I'd play 1 in any deck, but I'm here mainly to talk about another thing:
What about double Starlight?
I'm actually trying to play double starlight pretty much anywhere. Let me explain it better:
Torrential is an overplayed card, without considering staples like dark hole or heavy storm, but there is even mirror force, and other generic cards. Other than those, there are even themed cards like Judgment dragon, and they're not the only ones. So, I thought, why not to play double starlight? Assuming that you know the Psychological and Mind Crush concepts (if you don't, read here, it's a madolche post, but it explains fairly well what's Mind Crush and how to use this for Psychological uses), if you play a deck that usually doesn't play starlight, your opponent will be a little mind crushed, but nothing special, while, if he thinks you do play only one after seeing the first one, and then gets starlight'd again, there's the true mind crush, other than making it easier to draw the first one and do the first mind crush. The first starlight's mind crush usually makes your opponent not fear anymore it, so he'll play cards not only thinking you finished your starlights, but, if he's easy-minded, he'll forget that you could have other negation cards, such as judgment, bribe, warning, and so on.
Playing 2 starlights is good even because of ordinary protection against destruction cards, it isn't only a Psychological matter.
However, no matter how good this card is, there are tons of players saying "The Huge Revolution Is Over is way better than starlight, it's a counter trap". That's not totally wrong, the main difference is being a counter trap, thus not negable via trap stun or royal decree, but both cards aren't that played, and not negable via warning. Starlight, on the other side, is vulnerable to these 3 cards BUT it SS a Stardust, one more negation card, and two of those cards aren't really played. So, I usually choose Starlight over huge because of the high amount of protection it gives and because of the opponent's lack of warnings (if you use warning on starlight, you'll have one less warning against my tiara). That's the usual reasoning.
Huge, on its side, have the possibility to protect even if the opponent's destroying 2 cards he owns. Let's say he uses scrap dragon's effect, it's possible to use huge and kill scrap.
I myself use huge only in jam machine deck, because of the unability to SS.
Well, That's All Folks thanks for reading.

P.s. here, we took a tin the day before yesterday, here's the video of the unboxing. It's in Italian, though.


25/08/2012

Bluffing, DN and IRL

Taking DN as the representative of virtual games, tag force, world championship (DS), YVD, YGO Pro, they're all pretty much the same, as long as your opponent is a real player and not a CPU.

The image says all about this technique

Bluffing, one of my favourite techniques in this game, how to use it (for newbies) and how to act against it (for pros and wannabe pros).
Bluffing is a techinque took from poker, that has been used in pretty much all the game cards, doubt could be a good example (for those who don't know, or call it with another name, the player discard a cards facedown, and says it is a 6, for example, another discards a card that should be a 7, but you can doubt of it, if the card isn't a 7, the one who discarded it will take all the cards discarded, if it is, the player who doubt-ed will take all the cards, instead).
In YGO, we'd use this technique to stop some opponent's moves, if he isn't a careless player, or we make him believe we have a poker hand (aka. awesome hand), limiting his moves. Let's say you have a mirror force set on the field, while the opponent has two stardusts and you have 2 cards in hand (random card and MST) and 4700 LPs.
Seeing it from the opponent's point of view, attacking shouldn't be a bad idea, in the worst of cases he'll drop a D-Prison or a Fader, but he can't go into gorz, since he still have a card on the field. If you were the player b that has double stardust, what would you do? You'd attack with the first, player A chains mirror force, and you negate with one of the stardusts, then you attack with the second for damages. At this point you won't think of nothing in his hand, it's a mind game, you won't think that he has gorz after he used mirror force, since gorz is limited at 1 it is less-probable for player A to draw into it. BUT, what if player A, during his turn, uses typhoon on his own mirror force? Wouldn't player B think that player A has a gorz in hand? Because if it isn't that move would be pointless, and since gorz here could have been game, too, you don't want that to happen, and you wait for something to respond to gorz.
That's one of extreme bluff, risking everything, since you would have gained only a turn activating that mirror force, surely that wouldn't have been enough (not surely, probably, depends from the other card you have in hand), while making your opponent think you have gorz, will have you gain tons and tons of turns, except if the opponent is lucky, lol.

However, extreme bluff is one of the rarest ones, everyday life consists mainly of ordinary bluff, such as "Player A sets a Dark Hole when the opponent has stardust on the field, making player B thinking he has D-Prison, instead." or "sets gold sarcophagus and D-Prison, if the player B MSTs one of the twos he'll always fall in player A's trap: MST on sarcophagus, he'll think both are bluffs, so he'll attack freely and get hit by prison; MST on prison, he'll think the other one is another protection trap and thus won't attack". Profit.
Bluff on DN usually consists of setting some of the less important cards first, since some tend to hit cards on the center with MST, or setting more and more cards when you have a bad hand to make him think you have a powerful backrow ready to exterminate everything.
The difference from IRL to DN bluffs are, mainly, that IRL you can help yourself with your body, some smiles, for example, can make your opponent think you drew what you needed. Bad situation, opponent has full field, you're at top deck, draw gold sarcophagus, smile as you're limitating yourself from laughing hard, set gs and end turn. What would you think if you were the opponent? Of course, player B (the one with full field) could be careless or having an MST/Heavy Storm, but doesn't matter, you have a chance of winning like this.

When you're in one of this situations, where you see the opponent doing something like what we saw up here (setting GS, but thinking it is mirror force), what could be the best response? Put some monsters in defense is, usually, the best thing to do, and then attack. Even if it'll need two turns to kill the opponent, three if he uses that mirror force (that is a gs, so that won't ever happen, but you don't know that) on the second turn of attacks, but with that few draws he has, they won't be enough, except for DH, lol.
Against the two set cards, I'd play it differently, I'd set my MST and end turn, killing only one of the two cards isn't enough, so I'd prefer waiting for the second MST or heavy, and use this mst as mst bait (maybe one of the two set card is mst itsellf) or using it to negate some power plays with Dragon Ravine/DW Gate/Necrovalley+big beater/call of the haunted, etc...
Against Gorz, no way, continue attacking freely, if he MSTs his mirror force. See it from the opponent's point of view, if he really had gorz, what would be the point into MSTing his own mirror force? He could simply have used mirror force on one attack and drop gorz on the second one, mantaining that MST for future uses.

Sorry for the kinda fast post, hope it was useful, however, but on this argument there weren't lots of things to talk about. I did this because I fell in love with that image mainly, lol.
Well, See Ya.

31/07/2012

Card of the Week #11: Forbidden Lance

Target 1 face-up monster on the field; until the End Phase, it loses 800 ATK, but is unaffected by the effects of other Spell/Trap Cards.

Random Rulings:
1.This card targets.
2.You can use this card in the Damage Step.
3.You can use this card on a monster with less than 800 ATK and make him 0 ATK with protection from spells and traps.

Explanation:
Fist is clear enough.
Second is because during the damage step you can activate only cards that change ATK values and Counter Traps.
Third doesn't need explanations.

Fast close look, then to the real review:
Quick-Play Spell, quick-play is surely the best kind of spell card, probably even better of trap cards.
Activable in damage step, less counterable and more versatile.

As always, being a spell card, it's hard to write more in the close look, however, let'sgo to the real review.

Forbidden Lance is a card of the forbidden brigade (Forbidden Chalice, Forbidden Lance and Forbidden Garment. UPDATE: Dueling Days did a post about the entire trio, however I was planning on reviewing this card and had the review written from the last week, so I posted it however).
All of the cards from the forbidden brigade have a thing in common, they modify the ATK while doing some modifies to the monster, making possible to use their effect during damage step. For example, forbidden chalice on snowman eater.

Returning on our card, why am I reviewing this? It's a great card, it initially shined in GBs, lowers opponent's monsters ATK to destroy them with GBs or protect them from nasty spells/traps.
However this card gradually took place in lots of decks. Actually I'm playing this in madolches, basically the same thing of GBs, protect them both from attacks and spells/traps, not bad.
Still, this card became played in lots of places for the second effect mainly, protect some monsters from Bottomless in no matter the deck, on dollka to protect his summon, can stop nasty dimensional prisons or fiendish chains.
However, this card wouldn't have been played if it hadn't the other lowering-ATK effect, I believe. Yeah, it would've been way more broken for some decks, but wouldn't have seen play in other decks that needed that loss of ATK. Just consider again GBs and Madolches, it would have been bad for them. But consider Rabbit Laggia, yeah, happiness wouldn't stop so easily.

Back again to the real card, since you can use it against opponent's monster that wouldn't just result in a loss of 800 points of ATK and spell/trap invulnerability. Just consider I faced a vylon deck, he went into a giant monster, photon thrasher while I had Tiara without chateau. Thrasher itself wasn't enough, so he summoned cube, synchroed into sigma, equipped from the hand double mage power, vylon segment (protection from my set down, just in case it was a d-prison/mirror force), vylon material and while he attacked he equipped with sigma's effect another mage power. The ATK was 1800+2500+2500+2500+600=9900, I had 6000 LPs, it would have been enough.
When I activated lance on his sigma I was like "Sorry, I didn't intend to hurt your feelings", LOL.
It was game since he had only 700 LPs left. Well, rage quit before admitting defeat.

This card is basically used because of its versatility as I said, so it's not intended for closed-minded persons. You should always consider all of the situations while playing with or against this. When you're against GBs, consider always the half of your monster's ATK via shrink or 800 ATK less via forbidden lance, but don't forget that your monster could be affected with other S/Ts and that could make your maths go crazy.
Just consider all of the conditions of the field while using this. That's what you need to know while playing. I know this could seem obvious, but lots of peoples I know lost games because of that.
Example: My friend had lance face-down and shura, few in hand that didn't matter and 4000 lps. While opponent had hanzo and super-transformation setted (know because he searched that having no hand and then set) and 2100 lps.
Opponent used super-transformation on his turn, my friend used lance on his shura, opponent tribued then his hanzo and went into Jurrac Guaiba, attacked shura and went into laggia, subsequently won game because he stopped my friend's main move.
Of course my friend said that it was bad luck, I stopped him and said what he did wrongly.
He could have done Lance on hanzo, making him tribute his shura and going into random guaiba that couldn't have done nothing, at least going into Utopia/Maestroke after attacking. Then summon blizzard, revive Shura, go into brio, discard 2, attack and win.
Of course he said "Oh, I didn't think about it", with a Poker Face. He lost an online tournament for that, with real prizes. If he won that game he would have taken a set of tour guides and sangan (not that sangan costs something, but it's to make it effective and play-ready).

Well, this was all for today, hope you enjoyed it, since the card is one I like a lot.
Some anticipations: Madolches (tomorrow or the day after tomorrow I'll post a build of it), working on some random decks, and some ninja things. I've already decided the card for the next cotw, I believe you'll like it.

Stay Tuned.

26/07/2012

Tests: Gishki FTK and Nimble OTK

Well, I tested alot those two, and I'm really happy, here are the results of the tests:

Gishki FTK: is really consistent, can resist for a turn or two or even win via beatdown when you don't succeed into doing the full combo on first turn. If you resist for more than 3 turns, you're probably going to win. Just hope your opponent doesn't set too much.

Nimble OTK: this post was mainly for this one, I tested it, something like 30 games, and I haven't lost even once. That's Awesome. I encountered lots of bad Match-Ups (deck that set too much and Inzektors, those two mainly), but ever win, even with bad hands. It comboes too much for the opponent to handle it with those backrows, pretty much the same of fableds. Opponent had a full field, Laggia+Dollka+2 set cards, I had nothing on the field and pretty much a bad hand I don't fully remember. Once I succeded into getting rid of dollka, everything was easy, just stalled and drew into Dark Hole, that stopped laggia, luckily the opponent didn't have starlight, then I made the opponent waste all of the XYZ materials of dollka, then comboed, I made him waste all of the set cards he had, and win. It was kinda a big table-flip. Just consider that the two set cards were solemn warning and solemn judgment. Was kinda hard.
I did pretty much the same against T.G. Antimeta and Machina Antimeta, kinda hard, but won however. Inzektor bugged me more than I expected, but got rid of them however, caius wins games.

Overall:
If you want something to play IRL, play Gishki FTK, if you can, play Nimble OTK (I think that nimbles are released in OCG already, am I wrong?).
Those are two awesome decks, nimble is the best one, though, but gishki is cheap and TCG-ready.

20/07/2012

Gishki FTK, list and tips


Monsters: [11]
3 Gishki Shadow
3 Gishki Vision
1 Royal Magical Library
2 Evigishki Mind Augus
2 Evigishki Soul Ogre

Spells: [29]
1 Card Destruction
1 Cup of Ace
2 Gishki Aquamirror
3 Hand Destruction
3 Into the Void
1 Magical Mallet
1 Monster Reborn
3 Moray of Greed
3 One Day of Peace
1 Prohibition
3 Salvage
3 Trade-In
3 Upstart Goblin
1 Wonder Wand

The Extra isn't needed, I put them in just for fun, and, as you can see, totally random. Don't even copy it since it sucks (the extra), lol.

Well, coming to the deck, I explained it fastly in the other post, here I'll dig deeper into it. It's a project I had in my mind for a lot of time, and finally found the way to use it with One Day of Peace (before I had to use Hand Destruction to win, but it's a -1, and that made me lose everytime).
Basically, it was born to be an FTK that could win beating, but after few tests I realized how stable it is and doesn't fully need the Beat part. However, since it can be done with the card that are already in, it's not a bad thing.
How the FTK work:
1.Draw all of your deck, may seem hard, but it's easiest in here to finish the deck than in Exodia FTK to draw all 5 of them. This can be done using Trade-In mainly with Soul Ogre, and other cards that require to discard along with the recycling abilities of mirror to have always a discard fodder.
2.Once you're with no deck, summon augus, recycle the maximum number  of One Day that you have in your grave, and fill the other spots with Upstarts and Into the Void. Use a random draw card, while putting a counter on library, to draw another one, then another one, then another one, then draw with library, till you finish the deck again, use mirror's effect, recycle a Mind Augus and put it back, then use a draw card to draw it and use it tributing mind augus to summon another mind augus. Rinse and Repeat till opponent's deck out.

The deck is surprisingly stable, if you're hand testing it, so without considering opponent's veilers, you should be able to do the loop on first turn something like 90% of the times, if you're playing the deck good. Here some tips about how to play some cards:

Cup of Ace is still under testing, however I feel it being good enough to be played, when you get Head, draw 2 will grant you the win, more likely, if you get Tail, it would be a -1 that added a counter on Library, not good, but still not totally bad. While playing this card, you should be aware of opponent's situation and yours. Don't use this early, because it could help your opponent getting veiler, so use it when strictly necessary, preferably with library on the field.
Gishki Shadow and Vision, those two are to be played wisely because of Moray of Greed. When you draw Vision, always use his effect to get Soul Ogre preferably, if you have run out of 'em, just take augus, but, when you draw Shadow, you'll need to think a lot. He's an important target for Moray, but if you have other 2 or feel like risking, you can search mirror to thin the deck and have less dead draws, but if you don't, keep it, could be important. Salvage recycles them easily, and, in desperate times, you could recycle a salvage with augus if needed at the end of the combo to take your recycled mirror easier.
Magical Mallet and Moray of Greed and Trade-In, I don't like too much the first two, but they're good. The third one is especially good, I'd like to play more than 3 of them, sad. Mallet recycles your hand in cases of bad hands, while Moray is a 0 that put back your rituals to add them back next and to draw other 3 fresh cards. Be aware of all the possible situations while playing those three.
Wonder Wand and Monster Reborn, if you decide not to play one of those two, just drop the other one too. However I fully recommend playing both, they were better than expected, just awesome. Veiler on Library? Wonder Wand, draw 2, then reborn. Wonder Wand generates a free counter for Library, too.
Prohibition, the card I decided to use against Veiler. It's good, doesn't -1 you, but it doesn't create pluses. Of all of the card to stop Veiler, this is the be(a)st one.
Hand Destruction is a always good draw card, especially here since we happen to have dead mirrors in hand we want to the grave to recycle a Soul Ogre for a Trade-In and kinds. It makes your opponent draw too, while discarding his full hand.
Card Destruction act as the same of hand destruction, but it has a good side that could be seen as bad sometimes: it makes you and your opponent discarding everthing. You can set cards to avoid that, your opponent can't, and that would kill him. Sometimes I'd recommend playing it before summoning Library, your opponent could have got some veilers while playing, and that would be bad. It's up to you, though, remember that this deck is one of the hardest I ever played.

Tips for how to play the deck itself:
Be aware of the hardness of this deck. It's really hard to be played, and it's easy to misplay, take your time, you're playing an FTK, you're already considered anti-sportive, so you won't be blamed for thinking a lot for a single card activation. I'm used to this kind of deck, so I play it kinda speedy, but not anyone can.
Be aware of Veiler. Think always of what your opponent could have in hand based on what he's discarding, he won't have, on first match, veiler if he have already discarded multiple macro cosmos and d-fissures, since Veiler can't be played with those on the field. Same thing if he has discarded a macro cosmo and he's playing rabbit, it means he's playing forbidden chalice or fiendish chain in place of veiler.
Be aware of sharking. If you're playing a deck like this on a torunament, your opponent won't let you replay a card you used wrongly, this takes us again to the first rule for thsi deck, don't misplay.
Keep in mind what this deck needs to loop once you've finished drawing your deck. I was talking with a person I know about this deck on Dueling Network, I lent him the list, he tried it while I was building another thing, when he finished he said "this deck sucks, it won't never start the loop at the end, it's bad". Then I stopped building and went to see his duel. He wasted all of the draw cards and forgot a lot of times Library's effect (again, first rule), so once it was at the start of the loop, he had no draw cards and a veilered Library. He even used Wonder wand without any reason even if he had another draw card, and then when he reborned Library, the opponent veilered it and it made my acquaintance lose.

The deck is really hard, more than it could look like.
For the side deck, if you're going to use it in tournaments, I'd side: 
Dark World Dealing, I'd play it in the main since it is good, in 2 copies, maybe, but if we encounter a DW we're dead, so I prefer side it when we face non-DW decks.
Heavy Storm, the point of the deck, mainly is to win game 1 and game 3, but adding heavy storm during game 2 could help you winning it and don't risk anything else. Against everything, except trap-less deck.
Dark Hole, same with Heavy, only that it is against Rabbit. It is way less must than Heavy.
2x Mystical Space Typhoon against Macro and D-Fissure, mainly, but even set card. It's to be played against decks that set too much and play Starlight Road.

Other cards are fully personal. You could even side a Broww against Dark World, but that would be kinda occasional, it's up to you, though. The main card to side out are cup of ace, magical mallet and prohibition (if the opponent doesn't play veiler).

Test it, it won't make you disappointed. Well, this was all, See Ya.

06/07/2012

Random Post: Wind-Ups, Forbidden Brigade, Effect Veiler and One Day of Peace

Really don't know what to talk about, but wanted to write, random post then, random updates, and random thoughts.

Wind-Ups won WCQ, yeah, a lot of blogs talked about this, just check em out from my blog roll.
Reassuming it all, Wind-Ups won because:
-Players don't play Maxx C anymore, too much traps;
-Players are reducing the number of Veilers, since they needed more space in the main, and since they all thought there will be no Wind-Ups because they get killed easily, the first time they thought of reducing were those veilers;
 -Luck, I believe.

I continue considering Wind-Up a bad deck, mainly because I don't like it, but all they do is wipe out opponent's hand before they start playing it, and end the turn with a Zenmaines, nothing special...Well, that's awesome, but not invincible, just think of Inzektors that could top deck a Damsel, Chaos Dragons that could top deck BLS/Sorcerer, rabbit that could go into walking Judgment/Divine Wrath, HEROes into stratos, then bubbleman and blade amor (even if that wouldn't kill totally zenmaines), or however, a reborn for every deck, LOL.

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Forbidden Brigade, I like to call them like this, Forbidden Lance and Forbidden Chalice, good cards, an ATK reducer OR s/t immunity AND an ATK booster OR a quick-play veiler. I like them, don't forget that forbidden lance could be used on opponent's monster even to make them immune to S/Ts, like if your opponent is going to use an ATK booster ike chalice itself on his monster, you could use lance, lower his ATK by 800, and that monster won't even get the 400 boost. Well, that was a stupid example, but it is still one.

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Veiler? Don't like it anymore. I find it bad that he can't negate on your own turn, I'd rather play Forbidden Chalice, how many times I'd have liked to activate something but couldn't because of an opponent's laggia that was there before I could draw veiler? Surely a lot of times. If I drew into Forbidden Chalice instead, I could have used it on laggia, and then combo as I liked...and Laggia is only one of the examples, there are a lot. The only advantages that veiler brings are:
-he can be activated from the hand (main one);
-he's a tuner.
However, I continue liking chalice more than veiler, expecially in HEROes that I'm actually testing.

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One Day of Peace, AWESOME card. draw 1, opponent's draw 1, no damages this and the next turn. Drawing and preventing OTKs is surely better than Cardcar D turn losing, because you couldn't deal damages that turn, but opponent can in his turn, what's more cardcar d eats your normal summon, and cannot be setted, unlike one day of peace, this is a giant advantage when you're playing HEROes with Bubbleman.

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Should be all, just some random updates without any real reason aside from the "I wanted to write something" one. See Ya, remember to add me on DN (Leodip), and if you have some questions on anything, just ask there or under the comments.

11/06/2012

Card of the Week #4: Forbidden Chalice

Target 1 face-up monster on the field; until the End Phase, it gains 400 ATK, but its effects are negated .
Random Rulings:

Target 1 face-up monster on the field; until the End Phase, it gains 400 ATK, but its effects are negated.

If a monster like “Fusilier Dragon, the Dual-Mode Beast” is targeted with “Forbidden Chalice,” it has 3200 ATK, then 2800 ATK after the End Phase.

Forbidden Chalice, I always loved this card. It's like a focused Skill Drain that, like its counterpart, Forbidden Lance, has a double use. Well, let's see it:

Quick-Play Spell, this kind of card is the best in the world, you can activate them in opponent's turn like Traps, you can activate them in your turn like spells, but you can even use them in some phases where spell card can't activate (spell card activates only during main phase 1 and main phase 2, while quick-plays can be used pretty much in every phase, and even in some substeps hard to reach, like damage step.

Negating Effect, negates 1 monster effect. Being only for a turn, you can use it to run over monsters that have an effect that make them indistructible by battle or card's effect. You can stop even monsters that have an effect that activates only once, like a gadget, that activates when summoned, you can stop that card, and your opponent won't be able to activate it the next turn, if the gadget stays alive.

Boosting Effect, can be useful on your monsters to run over other monsters, and won't probably help your opponent, since you're going to negate monsters that have giant effect, like Rescue Rabbit, and those monsters usually have low stats, making them no more than monsters that can run over another copy of themself.


Note how this card doesn't have a restriction of which kind of monsters this card can be used, so you can use it on normal monsters, or you can use it on monsters that have their effect negated yet, like if there is a skill drain on the field.

Why do I prefer this card over skill drain? (of course it changes from deck to deck)

Forbidden Chalice doesn't affect our games, letting us to use our monster's effect.

Even if Skill Drain negates the effect of all the monsters, it requires 1000 lp, and the fact that affects all of the monsters isn't necessary good.

Skill Drain stays on the field, that means that if it is MST'd its effect wil vanish and you've payed 1000 lp for nothing, while Forbidden Chalice isn't negable if not with a spell/trap negation at the moment of its activation, but that's not assured, since most deck play only Solemn Judgment to negate spell and traps, some (rabbit laggia) play laggia, but if you use chalice on opponent's laggia, he won't negate it, and you can do all of the comboes you want, summon a big monster, and kill Laggia.

Forbidden Chalice modifies attack, that's good to power-up your monster, but it could be used to negate monster's effect during damage step, making it harder to counter.

Forbidden Chalice can negate barbaros' effect in damage step to make him a 3400 ATK beater 'till the end of the turn, and 3000 for all the rest of the turn.


Of course in some decks, skill drain is far better. Decks that have monsters that have bad effect, decks that don't need effect, decks that have monster's effect that activates in the graveyard and so on, but Chalice is more versatile and playable in more decks.

Overall: this card is versatile, can counter pretty much all of the decks in actual meta (inzektors, rabbit, chaos dragon, Wind-up) and even some fun deck that could be seen (Dragunities, random synchro deck, and so on), and even staple cards played in a lot of decks, Tour Guide mainly. The ATK boost is useful on your own monsters, and usually it doesn't help opponent's monster.

That was all, See Ya.

05/06/2012

Useful Rulings and Game Mechanics #2: Kind of Summons, Inherent Summon and External Effects that Cause Summons and How to Negate them

Wasn't sure under what label post this, if in tips for pro playing or rulings, but since this one is going to be a giant post, that would be a giant rule.
Make sure to have read this or know the argument "Chains" good before reading this.

Basically, what are the two kinds of Summons? Normal Summons and Special Summons, I think everyone knows 'till here.
Normal Summons are limited to once per turn, this is a game mechanic (or rule, call it as you want, I'll call them Game Mechanic, but think at them as you want), but there are cards that can freely break this one, like Double Summon or Ultimate Offering, making possible summoning more than a time per turn. The latter breaks another Game Mechanic, the one that says that you can Normal Summon only during your turn, making possible to summon during opponent's battle phase. However breaking Game Mechanics like this isn't a bad thing, because it is expressed by the card itself, so it isn't like "breaking" them, but more likely "ignoring" them giving an higher priority to the cards' effect. In this kind of summons are included gemini summons, normal summoning a gemini monster while he's on the field.

Then there is another kind of Summons, Special Summons. In this kind of summons are included ritual summons, performed via a ritual spell card, fusion summons, performed via polymerization or cards like that, contact fusion summons, performed with two monsters on the field that fuse without using any other card, Synchro Summons, performed via 2 or more materials, and one needs to be a tuner monster (it is specified what kind of monster you need to synchro, but usually they are a tuner and 1 or more non tuner monster), which the sum of their level is equal to the monster you need to summon, XYZ summons, performed via overlaying 2 or more monster with the same level to summon a monster that has a rank (not a level) equal to the level of those monsters, and Chaos XYZ Change Summons, by overlaying a given XYZ monster to summon another one, it is specified on the card what kind of monster you need in order to summon him, Inherent Special Summons, Special Summons caused by the card that's going to be summoned itself or by game mechanics (all of the kind of special summons listed before are inherent special summons because they were caused by game mechaincs), and lastly Special Summons caused by other cards' effect, cards like monster reborn.

That was a long introduction, wasn't it? Well, now let's arrive to the point of the post. A lot of people don't see the difference between inherent summons and other kind, so let's explain them.

Let's see a card:
Neither player can add cards from their Deck to their hand except by drawing them. During either player's turn, when your opponent would Special Summon a monster: You can send this face-up card to the Graveyard; negate the Special Summon and destroy it.
This is the main card that causes problems with other player, someones say that you can negate the summon of a monster summoned via monster reborn with this, but they are wrong.
Let's think about it and examine his effect:

During either player's turn, when your opponent would Special Summon a monster: You can send this face-up card to the Graveyard; negate the Special Summon and destroy it.

So, basically, what does it says? It says that by tributing himself you can NEGATE the summon of a monster. Does this remember you something? Yeah, it does, read the other "Useful Rulings and Game Mechanics post" (I linked it at the start of the post). It is like Solemn Warning. 
We said in the other post that Solemn Warning needs to be chained directly to the effect you need to negate because it NEGATES a card's summon/effect. This one is the same, but why this can't negate Reborn while solemn can? Because Solemn says:

When a monster would be Summoned, OR when a Spell Card, Trap Card or Effect Monster's effect is activated that includes an effect that Special Summons a monster(s): Pay 2000 Life Points; negate the Summon OR activation, and destroy that card.

The bolded part is the one we need, it can negate the activation of a card that Summons. But why Rai-Oh can't?
Well, we'll need chains here.
As you know you can't use an effect while a chain is resolving, so let's think of a chain with only a chain link.
Player B uses Monster Reborn targetting Hyperion in the Grave while Player A has Rai-Oh on the field, a chain is formed. No one chains nothing else, because Rai-Oh can't be chained to a card that SS another card. Resolving the chain we'll SS Hyperion from the grave, and since we are resolving a chain, player A can't negate hyperion summons, because, you know, you need to chain a card that negates directly to the card you need to negate. Hyperion will safely be summoned and he will (probably) kill Rai-Oh attacking him totaly fucking-up player A.

By reading the other post you'll know why Bottomless can destroy and remove Hyperion at that point.
So, Rai-Oh can negate only Inherent Special Summons. So you can negate a fusion summon, a synchro summon, an XYZ summon, the summon of (for example) Cyber Dragon, but not the SS of (for example) Sangan summoned via tour.
To recognize easily non-inheren special summons you can check the card text that has the problem solving card text in it. If it has a colon ":", it isn't an inherent special summon. For example: (Gorz the Emissary of Darkness)

When you take damage from a card your opponent control: You can Special Summon this card from your hand. You must control no cards to activate and resolve this effect. When Special Summoned this way, activate the appropriate effect, based on the type of damage.
● Battle Damage: Special Summon 1 "Emissary of Darkness Token" (Fairy-Type/LIGHT/Level 7/ATK ?/DEF ?). Its ATK and DEF are each equal to the amount of Battle Damage you took.
● Effect Damage: Inflict damage to your opponent equal to the amount of damage you took.

The effect that summons himself isn't inherent because of the colon, the effect from battle damage isn't inherent because it does summon another card and the third doesn't summon anything at all.

There's still a little more tricky card we need to see:

While this card is on the field: Either player can Fusion Summon a Fusion Monster without using "Polymerization", but the Fusion Material Monsters are banished instead of being sent to the Graveyard.
How does Fusion gate works? Let's see it.

While this card is on the field: Either player can Fusion Summon a Fusion Monster without using "Polymerization", but the Fusion Material Monsters are banished instead of being sent to the Graveyard.

There are colons at the start, so even if it is a Fusion Summon, it is a non-inherent summon.
This card is one of the trickiest card ever. We know that TK can't negate non-inherent summon, so he is out of our game. After have read this pretty much everyone that doesn't know this card well would say "Solemn Warning FTW!!!". But he/she would be wrong. What does Solemn Warning exactly do? Solemn can only negate inherent summons and cards that generate summons, BUT, reading it closely you'll see that it says "when...is activated", so it can stop it only when you activate that card, even if you aren't going to summon anything, just like how you can negate Starlight Road or Macro Cosmos with Solemn Warning. So either you stop this card on the activation, or you bottomless the monster summoned or you MST Gate after they removed the materials (being a field spell, it needs to be on the field to apply its effect, so you'll make your opponent remove fusion materials and nothing will be summoned.

If you've learned everything that is written here, you need to learn when and how to apply it.
I'd recommend to study this for random cards like call of the haunted, monster reborn, tour guide from the underworld, but even for Gladiator Beasts, HEROes and things like that. Well, was a long post, but I think it was pretty easy to read because of images and random text. Well, That's All Folks.