From: GUYOBRAINS@aol.com [mailto:GUYOBRAINS@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 7:27 AM

Subject: The Rant to End All Rants, Part 1: "Staples", Act 2 - Neo King of Games

I'm back! I got quite a few responses to my previous article, most of which were from people who completely disagree with me. And that's good. I want you to challenge me. It means that people are reading what I have to say and responding.

In the first installment of The Rant to End All Rants, I said that there aren't any staple cards. Let me rephrase that.

There aren't any staple monsters. Staple spells and traps are so few that you might as well say there just plain aren't any real staple cards.

Breaker is NOT a staple. There are plenty of cards that can make what makes him a "staple" useless. For example...Trap Hole, Bottomless Trap Hole, Divine Wrath, Skill Drain, Solemn Judgment, Torrential Tribute, the list goes on. You may be thinking "Well, just use his effect to destroy those cards!" Um...the point is that those cards get rid of him before he can get rid of them.

One person who sent me an e-mail said that people don't think of Cyber Dragon as a staple. Okay, let's try this again. For the most part, if people have Cyber Dragon, their playing it in most of their decks. So how does that not make it a staple?

Some people also said that I forgot that Cyber Dragon is good in a Soul Control deck. Of course it is. But my intent was for you to realize that Cyber Dragon does NOT belong in a Warrior deck. I'm sorry I forgot about Soul Control, for those many of you who pointed it out to me. But really...other than for that or a Machine deck, or maybe a LIGHT deck, Cyber Dragon is not a great choice. Think about it. Usually, unless you get it early on (which is unlikely to happen unless you run two or three in your deck), when you summon it (hopefully via it's effect), it's not gonna be strong enough to stand up to whatever the opponent has.

People also told me I forgot that Sangan is a staple. No it's not. There are plenty of times when Sangan is useless. It can be a waste of space in a Skill Drain deck. Skill Drain decks usually consist of monsters with a lot of ATK power. A Skill Drain deck shouldn't have monsters with 1500 or less ATK. And late game, Sangan could be a bad card. If the game drags on long enough, you could pull off Sangan's effect, only to find that you don't have any monsters to search with it.

My point is this...there are no staple monsters. Spells and traps on the other hand...now that's a different story.

First off, let me say that cards of mass removal are NOT staples (except the ones that are banned). Dark Hole and Heavy Storm are not staples. Sure, if you don't have anything out when you get 'em, they're awesome. But I personally have not found many situations where Dark Hole could help me, and Heavy Storm could probably hurt you more than Dark Hole could.

Mystical Space Typhoon IS a staple spell. It is one of few real staple cards. It can be used right away or saved for later, and allows for S/T destruction during either player's turn. Dust Tornado is on the borderline between staple and not. Being a trap, it's quite vulnerable before it can be activated. It could easily be destroyed by...well, by an opponent's MST, Dust Tornado, etc. But it does allow for the same thing as MST and you can set a trap afterward. I wonder...I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone do that though...

A lot of people run multiples of Sakuretsu Armor. It's not a staple, though. Especially not now that Mirror Force is back. Sakuretsu Armor is good if it isn't stopped. But think about it. It can be stopped by Jinzo, MST, Dust Tornado, really any form of S/T destruction or trap negation. Waboku is an excellent replacement for Sakuretsu. Waboku's chainable and basically stop all attacks from the opponent that turn. Sure, it doesn't destroy anything. But would you rather destroy one attacker and still lose or stop all three, four, five, however many attackers and have at least one more turn (maybe the turn you needed to draw Mirror Force). Therefore, Waboku is a staple.

Smashing Ground. This card is NOT a staple. Really, any card with an effect like this one isn't a staple. The thing is, there are times when cards like Smashing Ground just can't target what you want it to target. Therefore, it isn't a staple.

That's all I'm gonna say for now. The point is this. People are deciding which cards can be used in any deck no matter what the deck type is. That's wrong. There are very very few cards that can be used in any deck without hurting it. And all of those are S/T's.

So, in summary, there are no staple monsters and few staple spells and traps. So, that's about it. The next part of The Rant to End All Rants will be about card advantage. Until then...

Send all questions, comments, and deck themes to GUYOBRAINS@aol.com.

Before I go...everything in here is an opinion. My opinion, to be exact. So if you think that there are staple monsters, then that's your opinion.

Also...the title of these articles is a title. I don't actually believe it's going to end any rants. But it makes it sound epic...which it kind of is. I mean, has anyone else gone into a multi-article ranting about everything in the game? I didn't think so.

And finally, expect several more long articles like this one. All of them rants. If you wanna stay to read 'em, well, I applaud you for your courage.