[BenTheGreat1210@aol.com]
Ban-list and a Look at Zombie
Decks
I decided to write a little rant on the Ban List since,
appearantly, many of the kids who come to my Toys R Us tournament this saturday
were shocked to find out that some
of their favorite cards were about to go
the way of the dodo. Besides, I ran a Lava Golem deck this week and, while it
did well (loosing only to one chaos deck) none of the
matches were of
particular interest. However, this kid, the one w/ the chaos deck who was able
to hand it to me twice, was quite upset to learn that a large portion of his
deck would have to be scrapped (although he was happy to learn that both
types of tourneys still plan on being held). Anyway, I digress. Now, i know that
a good deal
of writers and duelists better than i have written in-depth
pieces on the subject, but i want to share my opinions on the matter as well.
So here is the list, as i have read anyway, andwhat i think about it,
especially in regards to the tournaments at my store.
YATA- Pretty
much the most powerful card in the game. Strong enough, ironically for such a
weak bird, to provide an expirienced duelist with a ridiculously high chance of
winning, and often gives poor duelists a fair number of victories as well.
Obviously, in a card game where cards are played, then discarded, the 'power' to
replenish your
hand is critical. Cards like yata that can stop this
permanently bother me. Drawing in this game, IMO, should not be a power, but
more of a fact, something that WILL
almost always happen, regardless of the
circumstance. Yata messes this all up. I am fine w/ cards like drop off and time
seal, b/c at most, they will only stop you 3 times,
6 if you are
running the max # of each (and in that case you are probably not going to win
anyway.) But yata can stop you from drawing for an entire match. A very cool
card in its own right, but just scary powerful to be allowed. (for the same
reason i think that its stupid Yugi is allowed to, and chooses to play w/ the
God cards in the
anime and movie).While it, like all cards IS counterable,
history has proven that it often isnt. the CED lock can pretty much not be
blocked unless you play Solem
Judgement or something b/c of the
multi-trigger effect. anyway, this is a lot on yata and there are a bunch of
cards left.
INJECTION FAIRY LILY- Personally, i have no idea why
this card is on the list (for now anyway). A few people (girls not suprisingly),
play this cute little card, and have
moderate success. MODERATE. A very good
card, but 2000 lp is a LOT of lp. couple that with the fact that if you play her
against me, i will magic cylinder you, and it will
hurt. Not sure why shes
here, i only hope that she's freed soon.
CYBER JAR- The banning of
this makes me sad, especially since i just recently acquired it and its one of
my favorite flips. I guess i can see why though, helps with field
controll,
fills your hand, ect. However, its a flip, and its already restricted, and its
not a sure bet thanks to Nobleman of xout, sauske and the bunch. i frankly just
like it
for its drawing power, and i guess that alone is a decent enough
reason to ban it. we have a good amount of drawing cards already. and in a game
about speed, i dont
know how many more we need. (again, i personally would
like the game to be a little slower, more like building an army rather than
sending in commando units).
FIBER JAR- I have never played this
card and have rarely had it played against me. I think the power to reset a duel
is awesome, and frankly i dont mind it too much. The
problem comes in when
people reset the duel like a million times. IMO this could be fixed if they just
changed the ruling to something like once the card is flipped, and the
duels reset, its removed from play or whatnot. I like it, i wish it wasnt
here. moving on...
HARPIES FEATHER DUSTER- Like i said, i prefer a
slower gameplay, one that usually involves traps. HFD is too good. one of the #
of cards on this list w/o any sort of
draw back or balance.Now, while i tend
to run a decent amount of S/T protection (usually an amount comprable to my S/T
removal- not sure why
judgement of anubis isnt played more often),
many decks do not. HFD is too unbalanced really to be allowed any more,
especially given the amount of S/T removal at our
disposal. Losing this card,
i feel can only help the game. If anything openning a spot.
RAGEKI-
The monster HFD. pretty much, i dont like this card for the same reasons. No
draw backs. When we have a good amount of monster removal/ feild
advantage
cards in our decks (or binders) already (dark core, rageki break,
DD Warrior Lady, Tribe). A brief sidenote: I personally think more monster
removal cards should take the
form of Monsters, like DD Warrior Lady and
Tribe. I just like the idea that a monster is removing a monster. While it gives
us the problem of adding 'monster staples' to our
decks, i think that there
could be equivelant cards made that would work w/in other deck archtypes. Thats
my thoughts on it anyway.
CHANGE OF HEART- Another card, pretty
much the best at what it does, changing control of a monster. Another one of
those 'no drawbacks' card, unless you count that
its a spell speed 1. It
doesnt really annoy me that its on the list. In the current game, monsters are
on the field for a very short amount of time, and being left defensless,
even
for a turn, is a crushing blow (granted maybe you should have packed a waboku
:-p) In my prefered game mode, a bit slower, more like limited, where 2
monsters
on the field at a time would be more standard, Change of heart
wouldnt have to be banned. But again, we have other viable options (enemy
controller, creature swap), which
work just as well. So heart can stay here i
guess.
IMPERIAL ORDER- Cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap. i know i said
i liked s/t protection, but i dont like this card. I dont like Jinzo, I dont
like anything that stops an aspect
of the game near indefinatly (yata). I
mean, yeh i know the can be countered, its a trap, blah blah blah. I just dont
like it. i especially dont like that you dont have to pay.
700lp~ thats not
that much. pay it! grrrrr
PAINFUL CHIOCE- I like this card a lot. I
think banning it will hurt some really 'original' deck types. Exodia Necross,
Gate Gaurdian, ect. While Card destruction is a viable
replacement. I really
like Painful Choice. It adds some strategy on the part of both you and your
opponent. A mind games sort of scenerio. Perhaps if it was choose 4
discard
3 or something a little less strong, it wouldnt have found a home w/ the
forbidden.
DELINQUENT DUO- Yeeeeeeeh, its pretty strong. 1000lp for
ditching 2 of your opponents cards? Personally, as i play a Zombie deck, i like
seeing this card played against
me. They think they're all bad stealing 2 of
my cards...oops? Despair from the Dark? they find out that there are much badder
baddies than their two little imp-ish type
spell creatures. I like the idea
of hand destruction decks, this card is the crux of many of those decks.
Therefore, Im not all that happy seeing it here.
Well, thats all
that I have read is on the list. And if they're not, or if i forgot some ect, at
anyrate this was a pretty decent look at some of the games more played
cards.
Now, onto a deck type that is growing increasingly popular, and i
believe will be even stronger after the ban....Zombies!
Lets start
with some general characteristics...
Offensively- these cards
typically are not all that strong. I mean it took untill AST to get even a 1800
beatstick-ish monster. Thankfully, its common. Zombie Tributes, too,
are in
general not all that tough in terms of attack (ones that are playable that is).
Patrician and V.Lord (two of my favorite cards) are only 2000. Ryu Kokki at
least is
2400, good, but not great. And Despair is 2800, great, but harder
to play than the others. I personally like to use a Mystic Plasma Zone, since
most the playable zombies
are dark anyway. Gives them a boost (Field cards
are so underrated), and distracts your opponents
MST's.
Defensively- i feel that this is one of the strongest deck
types around. Spirit Reaper, Reaper on the Nightmare, Patrician-Lock with them
both. If you can protect 2 monsters
on your field for an # of turns like
this, the match is looking up. If anything, at least you're annoying your
opponent. V.Lord keeps comming back. Despair, his brother Fear
and
Regenerating Mummy are the ultimate protection against Hand Destruction and can
help block the old CED combo. Now a lot of people say defensive, like lp gain,
is a losing strategy in Yugi. However, the Pistons were able to take a
defensivly-minded team and crush the offense-only west coast Lakers. And
besides, a good
defense leads to excellent field advantage for the most
part. And who doesnt love field advantage :)
Effects- This ties
into the above section. Zombie effects, unless you are playing a Zombie
desruction deck, often lead to field advantage. With out cards like Rageki CoH
and Cyber Jar to weaken that advantage, a Zombie player is sitting pretty
until he/she draws what they need to move on.
Speed- Speed, one of
the most crucial aspects in Yugi, is a double-edged sword for the Zombie
duelist. 3 new searchers in pyramid turtle, Call of the mummy, and 3
copies
of the best recursion card in the game (outside of Reborn) helps add a
swarm-esque attribute to the Zombie deck. Pyramid turtle is basically a Zombie's
Tomato.
True, not as good as Witch or Sangan b/c it has to be involved in
battle, but still quite potent. Call of the Mummy is critical in alleviating the
stress of carrying 4-6 tribute
monsters (as i believe a Zombie deck has to).
Not as able bodied swarmers as warriors possibly, but good. Now the bad part.
Like i mentioned with Call of the Mummy,
Zombie decks are very tribute heavy,
a result of having pretty bad 4 stars, and a lot of potent upper level monsters.
Thankfully, Pyramid Turtle helps too. Both thinning the
deck, so you can get
those support cards you need to mantain your field advantage, and easilly
getting a level 5 or up monster onto the field. Book of Life is
AMAZING.
Better than Reborn IMO, that is if you are playing a Zombie deck.
You can have 3 of them, remove a monster from your opponents graveyard, and
Special summon that
V.Lord who just happened to get beat up. Its often nice
too, because i find myself slamming a Ryu Kokki into a BLS Envoy. 600 damage,
but no more BLS, revive Kokki,
remove BLS. True you lose the hand management
game and 600lp. But 600lp is negligible, and i think its a fair price to destroy
what is often the backbone of many decks.
Des Lacooda, helps your drawing
power as well, letting you use some offerings to the doomed w/o setting yourself
up for a yata lock.
Yes Zombie decks are tribute heavy, may not
promote the best hand management, and are not strong enough to win you the duel
in 1 turn. But they are very resilliant,
and increasingly well supported.They
can disrupt the hand, robbin zombie, soul abosorbing bone tower, V.Lord, V.Lady,
etc, adding versitility to their list of characteristics.
Since Chaos decks
seem to rely on weaker monsters in general, i dont find the atk weaknesses of a
lot of Zombies to be a huge disadvantage. While many of the decks
seen at
this years world championships were chaos (and by many i mean all), i think that
soon Zombies will begin to give them a run for their money, being a
more
streamlined unit.
Sample Zombie Deck in Post-Ban
Environment
Monsters =18
1x Vampire Lord (One of the best cards,
let alone Zombies, in the game)
1x Ryu Kokki (Strongest 1 tribute Zombie, can
deal w/ BLS Envoy)
2x Patrician of Darkness (Patrician-Lock, Attack Spirit
Reaper)
1x Despair from the Dark (Protects against Hand Control)
3x
Regenerating Mummy (Best 4 Star zombie Protects like Despair)
2x Spirit
Reaper (A wall, one of the best stall cards in the game)
3x Pyramid Turtle
(Special Summon high level zombies, deck thinner)
1x Sinister Serpant
('monster staple')
2x Double Caston (Help's get out Despair, 1700
atack)
2x Des Lacooda (Draw power during Patrician Locks)
Magic=
18
3x Book of Life (Recursion)
1x Monster Reborn (More Recursion)
1x
Creature Swap (New CoH)
2x Call of the Mummy (Special Summon high level
Zombies)
1x Pot of Greed (Draw)
1x Graceful Chairity (Draw again)
1x
Mirage of Nightmare (Draw once more)
1x Darkhole (Field Advantage)
3x
Mystical Space Typhoon (S/T Removal)
1x Heavy Storm (More S/T removal)
1x
Mystic Plasma Zone (Bump up those low Attack Stats)
2x Offerings to the
Doomed (Field Advantage)
Traps= 6
1x Ring of Destruction (More
Monster Removal)
1x Call of the Haunted (Recursion again)
1x Raigeki Break
(a card i Really find versitle)
1x Magic Drain (Just to mess with their hand
a bit)
1x Waboku (Field advantage for one more turn)
1x Mirror Force
(Field advantage again)
Total= 42 (I like the idea of a 42 card
deck, w/ all the special summoning going on anyway)
Side Deck =
15
2x Metamorphasis (Reaper on the Nightmare, Thousand Eyes Restirct, Dark
Baltar...get em out w/o problem)
1x Swords of Revealing Light (Stall...like
spirit reaper)
2x Soul Absorbing Bone Tower (If you want to play hand
control)
2x Vampire Lady (If you want to play hand control)
1x Card
Destruction (Hand control AND a means to dump High level Zombies to be
reborn)
1x Scapegoat (Solid card)
1x Tribe Infecting Virus (Would have put
it in the main deck. but if it is reborned against you, you have some
problems)
1x DD Warrior Lady (Great card, not a Zombie)
1x Robbin' Zombie
(Hand Control deck)
1x Spell Shield Type 8 (S/T protection)
1x Judgement
of Anubis (Look above)
1x Waboku (an extra Waboku)
This is
pretty much the deck i play, except i prefer to go the Metamorphasis route, b/c
people dont really expect me to Thousand Eyes Restrict their Tyrant Dragon.
Anyway, there are multiple varitations on this deck type, and there will be in
the future. anyway...
Comments? Questions? Love? Hate? I love mail
so hit me up at
Benthegreat@aol.com