To anyone
who may be reading this article,
I would consider myself to be a
veteran duelist. I have been playing the game since the days of magic ruler.
From September of 2003 to present I have watched the fun disappear from
yugioh. I can remember my first competitive experience three of my friends
went to the yugioh mall tour at the Mall of America. It was here that the fun
in yugioh left me. I met a man who owned a deck full of rare cards at the
time, where as i ran a deck full of my favorite monsters the special summon
magic rulermonsters all rarities. The man i dueled cleaned my clock and
grasped my deck right after we were done and started pulling cards out of it
and deeming them as being unplayable cards that shouldn't exist in any decks.
From that day on i began to change the way i played yugioh, i no longer cared
about having fun while i dueled, i began to play for blood, to win. It wasn't
until i received a complete set of Exodia from my buds for my B-day that fun
came back into my game play. I began to think of ways that i could make decks
that could harness the supreme power of exodia.
Most tournament players would deem Exodia
the forbidden one to be unplayable due to the amount of control decks that are
going around and because they need more trap cards than other decks. I would
argue that these people are crazy. Much to my disappointment the release of
Jinzo in tins shattered the world of trap cards in yugioh. I myself owning a
two psv jinzo's was steamed to see it be released in a tin and saw it as a
curse. Now i think that they did yugioh players a favor by making jinzo so
attainable. Tournament players typically play with about 17-19 magic/spell
cards, 4-6 traps cards and 16-18 monster cards. This is very poor dueling
strategy if you ask me. Limiting yourself to 4-6 trap cards because of one
lousy card is nuts. I understand that magic and trap removal is another large
aspect of the game. This is more poor dueling. Lets take this into
consideration if a player only have 4-6 traps and you have all magic/trap
removal cards in your deck 3 mystical space typhoon, harpies feather duster,
heavy storm, and breaker the magical warrior. You have wasted the same amount
of cards in your own deck to counter the traps of another deck. Now im not
saying that these cards are useless because i would definatly side deck them
incase you played a gravity bind weenie deck and needed the magic/ trap
removal but to start the match off with them is a poor strategy. More duelists
need to use their brain instead of going with the
flow.
This brings me to meat of my article Exodia.
There are numerous types of exodia decks. Stall decks, Speed decks. Recursion
decks, Necross decks, Defense decks, and Unlimited draw. I'm sure there are
others as well as these. All of these decks have their own problems. I would
like to start out this article with Stall Decks involving cards such as
Woboku, Thunder of Ruler, A Feint Plan, Zero Gravity, Negate Attack and the
Windstorm. All of these cards buy time in an Exodia deck, Cards such as
Gravity Bind and the Messenger of Peace also buy time but are risky because
they are permanent cards making them vulnerable to the Magic/Trap removal that
plagues the game. Intertwining this with speed decks, cards such as woboku and
thunder of ruler are even better than cards such as the jar of greed. They
allow you to draw another cards by ensuring that you stay alive for another
turn. These trap cards are some of the most underestimated common cards in all
of yugioh. To go with speed we have cards such as the cyber jar morphing jar
#1 pot of greed and graceful charity. Thinning your deck as fast as possible
increasing your odds of drawing the five exodia pieces and claiming your
victory. Combos such as Mystic Tomato, apprentice magician to summon the
pieces to the field and emergency evacuation device and penguin soldier to
return them offer quick solution to the pieces being on the field. Recursion
decks similar to these often involve monster reborning cards to bring the
pieces back from the graveyard and cards to return them to your hand giving a
solution to the problem of returning exodia the forbidden from the graveyard
to your hand, as well as bringing your witch of the black forest and sangan
back from the graveyard for another easy piece in your hand. I cant see
necross decks being competitive at the moment its all too difficult to pull
off right now, but hats off to anyone who can pull it off. Defense deck offer
a great solution to the beatsticks that plague the game. 1900 attackers fall
just short of the 2100 defense commons that are being printed now and offer a
barrier to protect your life points. The only problems to this strategy are
the goblin attack forces and giant orcs of the world. But with a combination
of stalling cards the cards conviently switch to defense mode with a solid
defense of ZERO. With the release of dark crisis and the butterfly dagger
people began to say exodia was now playable again and many exodia duelists
were excited to get there hands on the dagger to pull off this sweet combo. In
all truth these decks have always been some of the most competitive decks in
the game.
Here are some of the cards that i have
found to be most helpful with my exodia decks
(Morphing Jar #2)
buys another turn clears jinzo off the field in deck allowing traps to come
back
(Des Feral Imp) Any cards back into your deck good deal exodia the
forbidden one, drawing cards your cyber jar stuff you don't want to be removed
from play
(Pharaohs Treasure) any fool knows an exodia deck will only have
40 cards in it this card offers a yet another solution to retrieving the pesky
head of exodia
(Card Destruction) pure draw no hesitation to play it with
all the way to get exodia pieces back
(Des Lacooda) possibly the best
drawing card in a stall deck you allowed to get another card every turn you
can flip summon it way good deal.
(Maharagi) Perfect for speed deck don't
like you next draw ditch it and take another card from your deck.
(Cyber
jar) Pure draw power be fearless with it with all the stalling cards and ways
to get exodia pieces back it doesn't matter if you get them on the
field.
Mystic Tomato, Apprentice magician, Painful Choice, Backup Soldier,
Upstart Goblin, Appropriate, the list could go on
forever
I would also like to
comment on the fact that raigeki and harpies cannon soldier and cards such as
these do not belong in an exodia deck you want cards that are going to allow
you to draw more cards not destroy there cards. It doesn't matter if they have
a field full of 1900 attackers, if they cant attack you because of stalling
cards then you have them beat.
In wrapping up this
article i would like to comment that i returned to yugioh mall tour a year
later with my exodia deck and won 9/9 games with it beating the kid who made
the deck master abilities azuri my combination of stalling and drawing left
his beatdown deck in the dust. I would like to state that all duelists should
have a sense of dueling originality and i hope that this article may help any
duelist who has retired there set of exodia from tournaments to give it
another shot and shock the socks off some poor duelist who is expecting the
deck full of the plagued cards of yugioh
Thank you for reading my
article
Hate/Fan mail can be sent to me at MikeIke64@hotmail.com
Mike Douglass-White