What I've Learned: Side Decking

YCS Phily was sure one hell of a weekend, I'll tell you that. I learned so much about this game in just one weekend of playing it was pretty remarkable. I could talk about that experience all day. Although my biggest lesson I learned the entire time was in the Marriot Hotel's lobby from a guy you've probably all heard of, Billy Brake.

It was really late and everyone who hadn't gone to bed was hanging out and playing for cards. So Billy walked into the room and asked me if I wanted to trade seeing as we were the only ones not really doing anything (I was watching my friend play and backseat dueling like a mofo). We looked through both of our binders but were only seeing small stuff so we just decided to play for a Caius. I had played lots of good saber mirrors but never in my life have I played one as good as this with the exception of game 1. I went 2nd and my hand was:

So I set my Darksoul and got Fautroll when he attacked into it with his Emmersblade. I proceeded to absolutely destroy him because I sacked the shit out of him. YYYYYYYYYYUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
He was a good sport and it didn't really seem to bother him. The pesky Emmersblade was disposed of pretty easily and I'm pretty sure I killed him that turn. The real fun began in game 2. Brake just completely outplayed me. For those of you who don't remember, YCS Phily was VERY early in the format to the point where people weren't exactly sure what to side just yet. Both of us started decent hands, none of that Cold Wave crap. I sided a couple of basic cards in for the matchup that everyone at that point had found out to be at least somewhat useful (Nobleman, Effect Veiler, Thunder King etc) and sided out my shitty gimick cards I was playing (Come on, you know everyone was playing them in the begining of this format) . But Billy sided in much better than me. I remember feeling pretty annoyed attacking into his set snowman eater with my Fullhelmknight late game and the last thing I would expect at that point was having to take down a heavily protected Banisher of the Radiance (which killed more than its share of my Darksouls and Emmersblades). That game really showed me what side decking can do.

My opponent sided into a completely different deck and it caught me off guard. Brake heavily cut down on his Saber lineup and sided in a bunch of anti meta cards. Even though his side was heavily geared towards the mirror that game was really an eyeopener. It showed me what some of the best side deck cards in the format were and made me value side decking even more then I did before (and I've always thought it was very important). I knew Brake was and still is a lot better than me as a player even though I think I'm a lot better than I was back then, I didn't realize how outplayed I had gotten. Game 3 ended with me winning due to an awful hand on Brake's part, but the prize of victory from what I had learned from that match was worth much more than an ultra Caius.

The moral of the story is: side decking wins games. Think hard about what cards are in your side deck and if they deserve a slot. Don't randomly choose filler for your side deck. Every slot should be used to counter a good deck and help steer the way towards victory in your favor. That being said, here is a list of some great cards to side deck this format:

-Snowman Eater
-Thunder King Rai-Oh
-Doomcaliber Knight
-Banisher of the Radiance
-Effect Veiler
-Spirit Reaper
-Cyber Dragon
-Nobleman of Crossout
-MST (If not mained)
-Starlight Road
-Pulling the Rug
-Gottoms Emergency Call
-Mind Crush

Well I hope that article helped! Thanks for reading! Remember that if you ever want to write for this site just shoot me an email: worldbystorm55@aim.com

-Alex

Deck Profile: Antimeta, The Stun Variant

Hello readers! I hope you all enjoyed the videos I posted earlier. It was a somewhat casual match between me and my friend Dylan playtesting before regionals. I have always been a fan of Antimeta decks since I started playing competitively. I honestly don't know what draws me to Antimeta variants, but something about them intrigues me. In this deck profile we will be looking at a deck called Stun. The deck ended up winning a 400 person regional YCS a while ago but was quickly forgotten by many players. Regardless of the success of Hero Beat, Gemini City, Light Beat, or whatever you want to call it at YCS Toronto, I still think that this decktype is the way to go if you want to play Antimeta. It costs a pretty penny but if you are committed to playing Antimeta this decktype will give you the most solid results. Let's take a look at the decklist:

Decklist:


-40

Monsters:

-14
-3 Doomcaliber Knight
-3 Thunder King Rai-Oh
-3 Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
-2 Banisher of the Radiance
-2 Cyber Dragon
-1 Spirit Reaper

Spells:

-15
-3 Pot of Duality
-3 Book of Moon
-3 Smashing Ground
-2 Mystical Space Typhoon
-2 Enemy Controller
-1 Dark Hole
-1 Monster Reborn

Traps:

-11
-3 Solemn Warning
-3 Dimensional Prison
-2 Bottomless Trap hole
-1 Royal Oppression
-1 Torrential Tribute
-1 Solemn Judgment

The build starts off with a small monster count. The brilliant thing about this deck is you can afford to run such a low monster count because of your Duality and still almost always have a monster to work with. The low number of monsters also makes it so you can play a lot more spells and traps then you would be able to normally play, which means a ton of removal. But anyways, onto the actual monsters. All of the monsters in the deck shut down multiple top tier decks and all of them will disrupt almost every deck you'll play against with their effects. My personal favorite in the deck is Doomcaliber Knight because of his amazing effect and good stats. Fossil Dyna is another amazing card the deck plays. You can either play it as a control card to not let your opponent special summon or you can set it and when it is flipped you blow up every monster on the field that was special summoned. Thunder King Rai-Oh is also flat out amazing against SO many decks. Cyber Dragon is big beatstick you can special summon and works wonders in the Machina matchup or against pretty much every deck that plays machines because of Chimeratech. Banisher also messes with tons of decks because of the dependence on the graveyard that is so popular in today's meta. Spirit Reaper is also great in a variety of situations and is mostly used for stalling and discarding your opponents cards. Next we'll take a look at the spells and traps for the deck.

I really don't have much to go into about the spells and traps for this deck. Simply put, you play Pot of Duality for consistency, Enemy Controller and Book of Moon for versatility, Staples, and a bunch of removal. Massive amounts of removal makes it so most of the time your opponent won't have a monster on the field and you'll be swinging away with your Thunderkings while they can't do anything. My favorite trap in the deck is a tie between Solemn Judgment and Solemn Warning so I decided to choose a picture of both of them. But going back to what I said earlier, this deck really protects its monsters and part of the reason why it wins is because of that. So if you want to play Antimeta this format I think you should definitely be playing Stun.

Peace,

Alex

Turbo Pack 4 Spoiler and Opinion

So after a long day of regionals, (in which I scooped to my teamate and dropped then made a ton of money) I came home to a nice shower and duelist groundz. As soon as I went on DGZ I instantly looked at the Turbo Pack 4 thread and surely enough, the set was posted. The list is:

Ultimate Rare:
Tragoedia

Ultra Rare:
Gottoms’ Emergency Call

Super Rare:
Debris Dragon
Blackwing – Sirocco the Dawn
Deep Sea Diva
Compulsory Evacuation Device

Rare:
Dunames Dark Witch
The End of Anubis
Psychic Commander
Advanced Ritual Art
Bark of Dark Ruler
Swallow Flip

Common:
Wattkid (the monster formerly known as Oscillo Hero #2)
Oscillo Hero
Mokey Mokey
Key Mace
King of the Skull Servants
Dark Hole
Amazoness Spellcaster
Gladiator Proving Ground
White Hole

My first thought was out of any ultimate why choose to reprint trag? I'm sure it will look great as an ulti but I think it's a pretty random reprint. The ultra being Gottoms' E-Call is the nuts. That card will be really hot I can assure you. Lots of people will want it. 3/4 of the supers in the set are also amazing reprints and will look great. Blackwing players look forward to the holo Sirocco, QD/Debris players look forward to the holo Debris, and who the hell wouldn't want super Diva? Complusory getting reprinted at this time is sort of random but it certainly isn't a crap super by any means.

Now let's look at the rares for the set, oh wait, they're all randoms. Swallow Flip is ok I guess but the rares for the set are definitely nothing to write home about. The commons are also pretty subpar aside from the Darkhole reprint. The Mokey Mokey and Proving Ground reprints are cool though. Overall Turbo Pack 4 is far from a bad set. All of the holos are pretty good, the lower rarity stuff is pretty meh (with a few exceptions) though. I can't complain though.

Peace,

Alex

Yugioh Duel: Salvo DAD vs Machina Gadgets Game 3

Yugioh Duel: Salvo DAD vs Machina Gadgets Game 2

Yugioh Duel: Salvo DAD vs Machina Gadgets Game 1

Deck Profile: Machina Gadgets

Deck Profile: X-Sabers, The Standard Build

Hello fellow duelists, this will be the first real post from the up and coming competitive Yugioh blog. In this post I will be talking about X-Sabers. Sabers are a deck that has taken competitive play by storm. Sure it took them a while to get good but now they are in many players opinions, the top deck of the current format. I have had lots of firsthand experience with the deck and I topped a regional with it a few weeks back.

The first thing that should be understood about X-Sabers is that there are 2 very different variants of the deck. The standard build and the teched out build. We'll go into that later. As much as many players hate to admit it, Sabers are a combo deck. Now is that a reason to say that Sabers can't win any other way besides the Coldwave, Boggart, Tuner, Fautroll(s) play? Hell no. But that play and variations of that play (Gottoms' E-Call etc) are what the deck revolves around. The deck can win a slow game because it plays a bunch of very good monsters but most of the time when you play the deck you'll win with a big push.

Now let's go into the different Saber builds. I'll start off with the standard build and how I think it should be played. For a sample of the decklist, I'm going to use my own build that I topped with recently.

Decklist:

40

Monsters:

-17
-3 XX-Saber Emmersblade
-3 XX-Saber Darksoul
-3 XX-Saber Fullhelmknight
-3 XX-Saber Boggart Knight
-3 XX-Saber Fautroll
-1 X-Saber Pashuul
-1 X-Saber Airbellum

Spells:

-11
-3 Book of Moon
-2 Pot of Duality
-1 Cold Wave
-1 Giant Trunade
-1 Monster Reborn
-1 Dark Hole
-1 Mind Control
-1 Reinforcement of the Army

Traps:

-12
-3 Gottoms' Emergency Call
-2 Trap Stun
-2 Bottomless Traphole
-2 Solemn Warning
-1 Solemn Judgment
-1 Torrential Tribute
-1 Royal Oppression

Now before anyone second guesses any of my choices I have explanations for everything. It has been proven over time that triple Emmersblade and triple Darksoul is the best and most consistent way to run Sabers. Because all of my deck is Sabers I can search everything in my deck with the two cards (with the exception of Emmersblade getting Fautroll). It makes your draws better and makes sure you can search out your combo pieces. Emmersblade and Darksoul are both spectacular cards and I don't see why they wouldn't be maxed out on. 3 Fullhelmknight is also just way too good not to play in here. It is an amazing tuner with two really good effects. 3 is a staple for the deck. I absolutely love 3 Boggart Knights. It increases the odds of getting one of the combo pieces for your big push and is quite an amazing card. I can see reasoning as to why you would only play 2 but I really prefer playing 3 copies of Boggart Knight. It took me a very long time to realize that 3 Fautroll was the way to go but it worked out very well for me. I also believe that whether you want to play 2 or 3 Fautrolls is personal preference but I believe 3 is superior. If you play 2 Fautrolls, yes you will still have very easy access to the combo play but if you max out you will have a Fautroll waiting to be dropped whenever you can and that is absolutely devastating. The second reason I believe 3 is much better is that if you play the extra copy then you will be able to do the combo with multiple Fautrolls at times and that play is just flat out broken. A single copy of Pashuul comes in handy in tight situations and also serves as a different level tuner that can actually be better than Fullhelmknight at times (for instance Boggart Knight + Pashuul=Hyuneli, access to level 5s and level 8s, etc). A single copy of Airbellum is also useful in a number of situations and serves as another level 3 tuner for the deck. That's all with the monsters.

Now let's get started with the spells. Every card in here is pretty much a staple to the decktype. I'll briefly explain a few cards though. My personal preference is Duality over Sarc. I'm sure this blog will have an article about Pot of Duality in the future so I won't go into Duality much. I really like ROTA in here just for the reason that it's kind of like playing a 4th Fullhelmknight and a 2nd Pashuul. It gets you whoever you need and thins the deck. I think ROTA is just a very good choice for the standard Saber variant.

I think I'll have another small explanation for the trap lineup. I really like 3 Gottoms' Emergency Call mained because if you're winning like the deck should be you will be playing lots of mirror matches in the top tables and E-Call is the best card for the mirror match. The rest of the traps are all staples in my opinions and the MVP is Trap Stun. It can serve as a mini Coldwave or Trunade but you have to watch out for Book of Moon and Enemy Controller. I will go into more info about my preferences about staple cards in future articles.

Well I guess that about wraps it up! Thank you for reading! But stay tuned because we have got some awesome stuff in store for you.

A preview of what's to come soon:
-Video Segments
-Gameplay Videos
-Deck Profile: X-Sabers, The Teched Out Build

And remember, if you're interested in writing articles for this site do not hesitate to email me. worldbystorm55@aol.com

Peace,

-Alex

COMING SOON!