The booster set Legacy of Darkness released in July 2003, after Labyrinth of Nightmare and before Pharaonic Guardian.
Resources
FormatLibrary calls this era Fiber Format, named after Fiber Jar.
Here’s the Legacy of Darkness set list.
Recent tournaments (with winning decklists) for this retro format: FFM10 and FFM09
How does Legacy of Darkness affect the game?
- Monsters like Exiled Force, Injection Fairy Lily, Fiber Jar and Yata-Garasu are meta. But spell/trap lineups are the same as previous sets.
- Exiled and Lily are 2 targets that make Giant Rat viable. Creature Swap is viable for recruiter decks that use both Tomato and Rat (but is an inconsistent card otherwise)
- Reinforcement of the Army is released, which can be paired with Gearfried the Iron Knight and Blast with Chain (released in this set as well). But otherwise, ROTA doesn’t see much play until the set
- Airknight Parshath is released, giving players another good tribute monster option to compete with Jinzo. But LV4 monsters Bazoo and Gemini trade into it.
- Asura Priest is a side deck option against recruiter decks, and has some synergy with Creature Swap.
Yata-Garasu, while very good, I’d argue is not always a staple card, and was perhaps slightly overrated at time of release. It’s powerful when you have control of the board and can attack directly, but if the opponent has the control of the board, it can be a “dead draw”, so it’s not always consistent.
This is one of the top deck lists, and what the meta looks like
The other winning deck uses only 1 Torrential Tribute but has a Time Seal.
Quite similar to the Labything of Nightmare meta. And there are some cards which were widely considered staples at the time that aren’t used in the main deck:
- Premature Burial. MST counters it, and there’s no tribute to revive.
- Magician of Faith. This I’m curious about. Is it because it’s too weak early game?
- Change of Heart. Possibly due to no tribute monsters. And a lot of targets that aren’t ideal (i.e. Fiber, Witch/Tomato/Sangan). And less Magician of Faiths to counter with it.
- Harpie’s Feather Duster / Heavy Storm. In 2003, against the decks people were playing, I would 100% use both of them. But in retro formats, people play around these cards by using chainable traps like Time Seal and Jar of Greed, making them less valuable unless you side against burn.
There are replays of the matches on the formatlibrary pages but here’s 1 example of the winners finals.