Solemn Judgment
is my favorite card, and back when I regularly played it was a common sight in
my deck. It was often my “Reviewer’s Choice” pick. I did eventually give up
running it in the main deck and may have even given up running it from my side
deck: I don’t recall exactly because quite frankly that was when I really lost
interest in competitive play. So it was with mixed feelings when I started
paying attention to this game again and I saw Solemn Judgment not just
being side decked by fans of the card but being run even in the main deck by
competitive players. Solemn Judgment has always been a good card: negate
all but a few “from hand” effect Monsters Yu-Gi-Oh has always been a game that
rewarded versatility in card function, and you don’t get much more versatile
than that. Unlike so many of the top cards that I lament about being
overpowered, Solemn Judgment comes with what might be the perfect
balancing cost, at least for a card such as this: half your current Life
Points. Rarely is this card not somehow helping you out. Either you negate
something for the win, negate something to avoid losing, or you’ve baited out
some removal with it. There are a few key circumstances I can think of when
this card is “bad”, but what are they? Pretty much when this is down to protect
something, and both are nuked by an effect at the same time… and you can’t
negate that effect because doing so means you can’t survive or negate some
lethal option you know will follow it up. Or if you set one early game and it
gets tagged by Nobleman of Extermination. There are many times when a
different card would be better, but nothing as versatile.
What really concerns me is why this card is so good right now. Yu-Gi-Oh has
degenerated to a state where once again the game is about swing. Far too often
you have to negate your opponent’s card because if you don’t, they have a
game winning combination. Not a skillful winning combination that their deck
had to be based around and they had to out duel you for at least a few turns to
pull off, but of a virtual auto-win from drawing into the appropriate “just
don’t play them stupid” power cards. Quite literally formulaic plays of
Field Clearing Card A + Special Summon B + Normal Summon C = Victory D
Card A doesn’t have to be a Heavy Storm or a Lightning Vortex so
don’t think we are talking about just two cards out of 40, nor do we need both.
Why? Because most of the time players don’t want to over commit to the field
because of the fear of mass removal, and so we tend to go for a minimalist
approach: one Monster in play and/or an S/T. As such a piece of one-for-one
removal is often enough for the formula to hold true. Likewise, Special Summon
B can include cards like Brain Control giving you an opponent’s Monster
(not technically a Special Summon) or a Monster surviving longer than expected,
as that is likely due to it being spared while an older Special Summon or
floater was destroyed instead. The fact that separate turns of effort can stack
but don’t have to makes the situation worse, not better. Normal Summon C is
worth mentioning because it is often combined with parts A and B and because it
adds the damage needed for a win. No, you won’t usually score a true OTK with
this. You may end up having a combo that stretches out over multiple turns, and
most of the time the damage isn’t going to be 8000 points. When I normally
rally against OTK decks, I point out that technically a OTK, like a monopoly,
isn’t inherently bad. Final Countdown and Destiny Board are OTK
decks, and I don’t have a problem with them. The reason is that in order to
succeed with them reliably, you have to build your deck around them and even if
you just add them to a deck for the occasional win, well you really can’t:
Final Countdown has a high enough cost that a deck that raises its win ratio
with it technically is structured for it even if it wasn’t intentionally
designed that way. Destiny Board is a minimum of a five slot investment
and slowly erodes your S/T Zones, again making it require focus to work in a
deck. Likewise, a business with a monopoly could theoretically do everything
“right”: generate its income by the scope of its sales turning the fractional
profit into something worthwhile and just choosing to be “good” people and work
as diligently to ensure all the things competition normally forces a company to
provide, like product innovation. Instead the “swing” I speak of comes from
cards that are “must runs” with few exceptions, and when they aren’t a lucky,
literal OTK they just build up over the general use of themselves over the turns
instead of a “true” combo.
That isn’t a good way to win, and shouldn’t feel very rewarding.
So Solemn Judgment itself becomes a veritable must run because you
need something that can ruin these serendipitous combos. Otherwise you have
to hope for the luck of it being spread out over at least two turns so you can
use your own overpowered cards for a defense equally lacking in skill. It is
always worth half your LP to win or avoid losing if the alternative is not
winning or a certain loss, respectively.
Now, this still doesn’t answer the question of why this is my favorite card.
First, I enjoy the imagery. The Japanese name is something along the lines of
“Declaration of God”. The art is relatively appropriate to that: while I don’t
believe God is some old white guy with long hair and a beard, it’s a common
image used for Him (especially in western cultures). The effect actually does
match up to what I really believe of God: negate almost anything for half your
Life Points: a price asking of yourself that you can always pay, but always have
to think about. Not 100% accurate, but if this card matched up to what I
believe of God 100%, it’d be utterly broken. Unless you’re new to the game, you
should also know how fun/devastating it is to hear those three little words:
“God says ‘No.’”.
No, I am not quite done yet. I have to get all my writing out of my system. So
let me tell you how I got my three copies of this card. The first was a lucky
pull/find: a local gas station had Metal Raiders boosters, when the set
was still the latest available and only a few weeks old, only $2 a booster… so I
bough nearly a whole box (that is all they had and four or less packs had been
bought from it before me). No Mirror Force, but in the long run I am
much happier to have pulled this instead.
Copies number two and three were obtained by what almost seems like divine
intervention. Literally the first official, sanctioned, weekly YGO tournament
was happening. I kept talking to and making sure it would occur just late
enough I could make it from my last class of the day to the store, which was
just on the other side of campus, so I could play. I’d been a regular patron of
the store, Mayhem Collectibles, for years as a comic book geek and had shifted
to TCGs. I arrived a minute or two before the tournament was scheduled to begin
and… it had already started. Yu-Gi-Oh attracted a lot of younger players and
since it was a school night, the store owner didn’t want to keep them out too
late. He didn’t like starting without me (he knew I was coming) and felt bad
about it, so he gave me a pack of the then brand new set Magic Spell
Ruler. I’ll be honest, I was no where near as grateful as I should have been at
the time. From it I pulled… Toon Mermaid, 1st Edition! Since
the set was so new I managed to trade it for the last two copies of Solemn
Judgment I needed, and helped me remain competitive and winning and at least
the occasional local event until roughly the era of Chaos Control.
Ratings
Traditional:
3.5/5
Advanced:
4.5/5
Art:
3.5/5
