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Ace’s Multi-Purpose Writing Module #7
Concept Starter Decks, or…
You can’t please everybody. Ever. Don’t even try it.
By: Ace of Spades - 05.20.05

            Everyone starts out with a Starter Deck. Or four random card packs. The starter deck is much more common, of course. With the chance of getting a shiny card and several decent ones, the starter deck is quite alluring. Even experienced players await starter decks, in hopes of getting good cards for cheap.*

            And this, my friends, is where things start to go awry. It is a known fact that no two players ever have the same enjoyment of a starter. Some value getting lots of good cards for 10 bucks, while others whine about children being able to get their shiny cards easier. People like Evolution decks, others like the Structures.

            This is why I am proposing a new set of decks, with one for every conceivable player in the game, for possible release in 2006. Konami, I hope you’re reading this one.

Starter #2006-01

“Cheap Cards at Cheap Prices”

3x Chaos Emperor Dragon – Envoy of the End
3x Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
3x Dark Magician of Chaos
3x Jinzo
3x Horus The Black Flame Dragon Level 8
3x Vampire Lord
3x The Creator
3x Yata-Garasu
3x Exodia – Head of the Forbidden One
3x Gemini Elf
3x Needle Worm
3x Royal Decree
3x Meteo the Matchless
1x Skull Servant 

All cards would be in Ultimate Rare form.

It’s plain what the audience of this deck is. It’s aimed at poor people with bad luck. The cards don’t make for a very good deck, of course, but it’ll be very easy to make a good one with them. Take what you like and sell everything and rake in truckloads of cash to go towards more cards, video games, mafia debts, whatever.

This is also fun to use when you want to annoy the rich people who rip off little kids. I can hear it now, “Now little kids will have the cards they can use to beat me! I’m quitting!”.

Starter #2006-02

“Bait and Switch”

1x Dark Magician (no new art)
1x Blue Eyes White Dragon (no new art)
1x Some random, unreleased card from the anime that nobody cares about
3x Sword of the Deep-Seated
3x The Unhappy Maiden
1x Gravekeeper’s Spear-Soldier
3x Umi
2x Cliff the Trap-Remover
1x Two-Headed rex
3x Ultimate Insect
1x Mega-Ton Magical Cannon
3x Mass Driver
1x Toon Summoned Skull
3x Serpent Knight Dragon
2x Garoozis
2x Shadow Spell
2x Shadow of Eyes
1x Cold Wave
3x Black Luster Soldier Ritual
1x Battle Ox
2x Fake Trap 

Like the twisted sister to the first one, this is to please all of those who want to keep their card binders intact. Meanwhile, all of those hoping for something game-breaking will be disappointed beyond belief.

I can hear the calls for the burning of UDE offices and the yells of “I told you so!”.

Starter #2006-03

“The Last Dinosaur”**

(X)x      All of the dinosaur-support cards in the game
(40-X)x A bunch of insect-support cards to fill out the holes

See that upper-case “x”? That’s what we call a variable. I can use a variable in place of actually studying the game and learning exactly how many Dinosaur cards there really are in the game! What a country!

We take all of the dinosaur-based cards in the game and throw them in a box. Since there’s nowhere near 40 dinosaur cards in the game, we’ll use Insect cards to fill in the spaces.

Why? Dinosaurs and Insects are the two most asked-for themes to have support. Hold your e-mails, I’m getting to the Sea Serpents later.

The beauty of it is, if you find out that a Dinosaur deck is absolute garbage, you can swap in the remaining Insect cards and some staples from the side-deck, and woila! A new deck that’s slightly less garbage.

Starter #2006-04

“For the Kids”

40x Random cards pulled from the processing plant in the back of the UDE factory

The kids shouldn’t care. I mean, odds are they’ll find at least one card they’ll recognize from the car-toon.

There is a difference between this one and #2006-02, however. Whereas the “Bate and Switch” deck will be promoted as a great deck with good, new cards, and heralded as game-breaking, this “Kiddy” deck will have no promotion or fanfare at all. It’ll be advertised as “Hey Kids, Yugioh! Cards! Dark Magician!”. Experienced players and kids will be fooled.

What sheep the consumers are! They have no idea that I’ve been triple-crossing them! They’ll never guess that I am really ADAM! Hold on, that’s my call from the CIA director.***

Starter #2006-05

“Upper Deck Championship 2006 Deck”

Okay, I’ve pretty much given up trying to write out full deck-lists. I mean, it’s not like I really have time to do stuff like this.

At any rate, the decks would be identical to the Nationals winners from the current year, much as the title would suggest.

BUT.

If you’re any sort of decent player, you’ll probably already have all of the cards in it. I mean, National decks haven’t been terribly creative lately, so what’s to say that next year will be any different?

The deck will most likely consist of the new staples, the standard game-winning combo and maybe a touch of originality with a unique card not found in most decks.

How will I solve this 2.5% margin of error? Simple. Konami places a random shiny card into every deck. That way, not only will the deck be somewhat accurate, but people will be able to make outrageous claims about it.

For example, a player receives a Fire Princess as the unique card. It’s not a cookie-cutter anymore, oh no. It’s now a Fire theme deck. You pulled a The Legendary ocean? Cool, no longer is your deck a boring Beatdown/Control deck, it’s now a Water deck. Pretty sweet, eh?

Starter 2006-06

“Rage of the Sea Serpents”

6x All of the Sea Serpent cards in the game
34x Yugioh Tip Cards

Every single one of the 34 Tip Cards would read as follows.

“Go buy a different deck. I mean, the only near-good thing in here is Leviadragon – Daedalus and we didn’t even give you his support cards. What in the name of Pojo were you thinking when you handed over the cash for this game.”

Starter 2006-07

“Limited Edition Holographic Ultimate King of Games Expensive Edition”

It would be basically the first Yugioh starter deck, the Yugi one, except the Dark Magician would have some sort of Platinum Holographic Technology. The card would be holographic all across and would have 100 additional ATK, with 1 less Level Star. The card would be so holographic, it would be impossible to make it shinier.

Seriously, exposing it to extreme light would be equal to a Class-6 Military Explosion, easily enough power to destroy any typical third-world country.

It would retail for $3999.99, and any person buying it would have to go through a full background check by the United States military. Purchasing a Class-6 Military Explosive is dangerous business, after all.****

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And with that, I would make every player happy. Except any normal player, that is.

ALERT TO PEOPLE WHO WISH TO E-MAIL ME

Refrain from sending me your decks. I just don’t have time or patience, so just send it to someone else, like a Deck Mechanic. As anyone who has sent me their deck can attest, I haven’t really been replying promptly. Okay, I haven’t replied, period. And I apologize for that.

ALERT END

You’ve probably noticed my mysterious points crop up throughout articles. I’ll award points based on your knowledge of whatever stuff I decide to reference. What could these points be worth? I don’t know, I’ll think of something.

These are the few, the proud, the people with Reference Points (RP)

-Kyle Maier (7 pts)
-shepard Schiff (2 pts)
-C Ryan (2 pts)
-Jason Kilts (2 pts)
-David Agosta - “dagosta” (2 pts)
-SUSAN CLOUSE (2 pts)

Congrats. Points can still be awarded for older references.

----------

Well, it’s been a fun romp through the marketing procedures at Konami and the stereotypical competitive Yugioh players. I hope everybody realizes that this is all in good fun, and-

*ding-dong*

Somebody is at the door. Why, it appears to be a mob of Yugioh players all demanding my head. Well, I guess I’d better take my leave before I lose a body part or something. It’s been fun, guys, and I just- OH NO! THEY’RE IN THE HOUSE! STAY AWAY FROM MY-

-Ace of Spades, who is seeing Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith today, and

you’re not, neener, neener neener.

Ace can be contacted at ctrlaceofspades@gmail.com

Hey kids, now you can read about Ace’s zany life at his web journal thing. Linkage: http://ctrlaceofspades.blogspot.com/

*Yeah, you’ll notice I didn’t use an opening scene thing like the previous two. Apparently, they were much more funny in my head. I had this one planned out wherein the remaining COTD reviewers I hadn’t used in an article yet made plans to assassinate me for some reason. Before I knew it, it had taken up half the article and that just wouldn’t do.

**Catch the reference, win points.

***Catch the reference, win points. The more specific you are, the more points you get.

****It should be noted that I did absolutely zero research into Standards for shipping and purchasing of military-grade explosives. Heck, I’m not sure if there is such thing as a Class-6 explosive.