Stop Trying to be Too Clever

Because odds are you’re probably doing something incredibly stupid.

In between the whole Swordmy and Starlight Violinist endorsement and the want to make the Phantom Blaster Break Ride work a bit better, people have been coming up with the weirdest decks in order to try and milk these otherwise average cards for all their perceived worth.

I’m honestly not sure why. Part of me suspects it’s because of all the builds I’ve gone up against built around one guy, all of which were terrible and inconsistent, but apart from that, the desire to be original with what you’re doing seems to escape me. My own Dragonic Overlord “The X” deck for example does include a few choices most people don’t think of running, but you can just read my tips on how to not be a retard with it regarding why I picked what I picked. It was all done for the entirely selfish reason of wanting it to be more consistent; not because I wanted it to “adapt to suit my playstyle” which is an excuse to not try and be critical.

The desire to be original seems to stem from the frankly childish Yu-Gi-Oh mentality of all your decks having to be original do not steal hurr durr. What annoys me are people who deliberately give flack to these people while trying to build decks that are overly complicated and no more effective than the netdecking devil-children. Thing Abyss, I’m looking at you.

There’s a reason people netdeck: some folks either do not have the skills necessary to build a deck from the ground up, or don’t want to, or simply want to wait for smarter people to iron out the flaws so they don’t waste money buying shit. It’s not without its disadvantages of course, since if a crap choice is regarded by the consuming masses as good then the stupidity levels in the immediate vicinity go up, but for the most part netdecking is basically just a means to play without being left behind. In theory.

But even then people would still end up netdecking unintentionally even if they wanted to build from the ground up. As long as that person follows some common sense advice then I would say that their build is basically going to be the same as someone else’s version of it, allowing for a few odd choices. It’s basically like the Pokémon TCG. Think about it; as soon as you turn over your first Vanguard, that’s already giving away about half the deck choices in there, more if it happens to only work for a certain set of cards. After a game is over I could make a decently educated guess as to your entire structure, if you were generous enough to hand me a pen and some paper. Not that you would, I’d have won and you’d be salty as fuck, generally. Even if I can’t get a handle on what your choices are initially, after the actual strategy is revealed I could at least make decent guesswork out of it.

Originality’s great and all, but if my teammate’s success (or lack thereof) at Team League was anything to go by, originality does not mean that it would work. I wouldn’t even say that it was necessary; any improvements I would make to a deck would never come at the expense of a main strategy simply because I could. Decks that do something to extremes and have a fairly one-track mind tend to be hard to trip up as a result. It’s over-rated as a virtue anyway; you can hardly be original with something if everyone else at the same time is trying to build something at the same time as you. You’re almost never going to win the race to be ‘first’ so therefore it would probably make more sense to simply wait for everyone else to straighten shit out before you start building for yourself. Odds are your build wouldn’t even be that unique anyway.

But even if someone actually managed to shy away from the supposed “traps” and actually managed to make a deck with choices that other people didn’t think to run, I find that most of the time, they quickly discover that the reason people don’t think to run them is because they’re deliberately trying to avoid the BAD choices. I haven’t seen a single original choice that didn’t directly come at the expense of something better. Do you know why I run 4 Perfect Guards in everything? Because I know that it is stupid to try and shoehorn in something not-amazing at the expense of something boring, but effective. Yes, they’re forced, but they do the job so damn well I would never lose them. After that, they grow bored and then move on to something else. This usually stems from the fact that the people doing this don’t actually think about what went wrong and they just brute force their way through several decks hoping that what they chose initially was right, which means avoiding having to do more work. Smart as I am, I generally don’t do this, not when common sense basically means my decks build themselves.

So all in all, I would say that while you copying a deck isn’t inherently bad, at least take the time to understand why they chose what they chose. Maybe you can then say “that’s fucking retarded” and leave it alone so you find someone smarter to copy. Then when you have a deck you think is reasonably decent, you can then play it and discover if they were talking out of their ass or do have a point. It’s called “peer-review”. That’s science. And I’m all about the science.

Yes, this is me saying you have my fullest permission to copy all my decks. Don’t worry, it’s not a trap. I’m not THAT much of a dick.

Suggest 6 Crit 6 Draw and receive a scornful response from me at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com