October 2007
The Delayed Minus - HydroDragon
Situation - You're facing a nasty looking dog and
you're holding a squeaky toy in your hand. What do
you do? You throw the squeaky toy off a nearby
cliff.
In today's game, every serious player is aware of
the 'Advantage' concept. In simple terms, it
underlines that cards or combos that make you end up
with more cards (or the opponent less cards) than
you originally started with [b]gain[/b] advantage.
Cards or combos that make you end up with less cards
(or your opponent more cards) than you originally
started with [b]lose[/b] advantage. And cards and
combos that end up with the same number of cards
break even and [b]keep[/b] advantage.
This philosophy is a good starting point for the
game, telling us correctly that cards such as Magic
Jammer, Raigeki Break, Tribute to the Doomed and
such things should not be used. However in recent
times, with the release of cards that work while in
the graveyard or in the RFG pile, the concept seems
to have a few loopholes.
One of these is the 'Delayed Minus' (As I call it)
idea. It's the use of cards that either gain
advantage or break even when they're activated, and
only lose advantage later on in the duel. Such cards
are Reckless Greed, Over Destiny, Return of the Six
Samurai, Limiter Removal, Wild Nature's Release, and
many more. People frown on cards such as Magic
Jammer and Tribute to the Doomed, but they lose the
same (or even less in some cases) advantage than the
cards I listed. Why are these 'Delayed Minus' cards
used so much? It's because they give you temporary
boosts in the game. Reckless Greed for example, lets
you draw 2 cards but makes you skip your next 2 Draw
Phases. This means that you gain nothing, since you
would have drawn the cards you gain from the Draw
Phases you lost, but you lose Reckless Greed itself.
This is a good example of the 'Delayed Minus' idea
since in the turn you activate it you gain a card by
drawing 2 and losing Reckless Greed, the next turn
you break even by drawing nothing in your Draw
Phase, and on the next turn you lose advantage by
losing another Draw Phase.
Limiter Removal and Wild Nature's Release both lose
you at least 2 cards in Advantage, but before that
your monster gets an astronomical boost in attack
power that will usually either end the duel or make
a big dent in your opponent. Return of the Six
Samurai summons a Samurai from your graveyard which
is destroyed in the End Phase, making it a minus 2
in advantage terms. However having special summoned
the Samurai you can now summon another Samurai and
get both of their effects, usually meaning that the
combination breaks even.
Over Destiny, I feel, is very under-rated. Until now
its only use has been to dump your Destiny Hero Disk
Commander in the graveyard. Practically, it was a
'Foolish Burial' for your Disk Commander that always
lost you 1 card in advantage unless you tributed it
for a Monarch. After Foolish Burial is released to
us, many would think that this card would become
useless. But I'm sure that you realise that there is
one more Destiny Hero that does well in the
graveyard. Destiny Hero Dasher! Not only that, but
many forget that Over Destiny summons the monster to
the field until the end of the turn meaning that you
can even swarm with it! Dasher has an impressive
2100 attack points and players will hesitate to use
their traps on a monster that is already 'dead'. The
only problem with this theory is getting a level 6
or higher Destiny Hero in the graveyard, but Destiny
Hero Malicious is always at hand to solve this
problem.
Anyway, people that aren't featured writers rarely
bother to write this much so I'll stop here.
Thank you for reading!
