Hello all, and welcome to another edition of Looking at the Past. This format ushered in a new era in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, bringing to light many concepts that we take advantage of today. We’re going to be exploring the evolution of one of the most explosive decks of any format and how it has shaped the game we play; at the same time, we’ll be exploring other decks that have come and gone during the format, as well as some maddingly-good tech cards that have cropped up – and have never left. To start off, we’re going to explore a bit about what happened to shake up the format, starting with Shonen Jump Houston, which occurred only three days after the banlist was made official.

Emon Ghaneian piloted an extremely fast and deadly version of Bazoo Return, revitalizing interest in the game-changing build and making everyone aware of just how fast this format was going to be. His utilization of Card Trooper, Magical Merchant, Snipe Hunter and Cyber Phoenix all helped tremendously in filling his Graveyard with monsters, and the three copies of Smashing Ground he ran helped destroy anything in his path. His trap lineup had ten full-on Trap cards, with Return from the Different Dimension obviously the one he utilized most.

The first four tournaments of the format were incredibly varied, with many people running builds of whatever they could think of. A friend of mine piloted an ALO deck to a top-4 regional finish during this format; in essence, anything could happen. But everyone knew that Bazoo Return wasn’t going to stick around, and they were right. After his brief spot at the top once again, Marc Glass won SJC Columbus in 2007 with his amazingly well-built Diamond Dude Turbo (the deck to beat in the next format), Cesar Gonzalez won SJC Montreal with a straight-up Monarch build, and Michael Songloke winning SJC Anaheim with a Demise OTK deck.

The common theme between these three builds is one thing: speed. Bazoo Return was incredibly fast in an untested format, and Diamond Dude Turbo is an incredibly well-built deck that’s designed to swing big, Monarchs are just lumbering beasts that generate huge amounts of advantage whenever they take a step, and Demise OTK pitches Doom Dozer with Advanced Ritual Art to bring down Demise, King of Armageddon and beat face in so fast that no one knows what’s happened until they’re scooping their cards. All these decks are fast, well built, and dangerous in the right hands, and this played to many players’ advantage while searching for that format-defining deck.

It’s very difficult to write about this format simply because it’s so varied and so very, very different from tournament to tournament. Only one deck managed to take an SJC twice, and this was definitely a sign of things to come; however, there were so many builds that were winning that it was hard to keep track of them all. From Bazoo Return, to DDT, to straight Monarch, then Demise OTK, then Destiny Hero Monarchs (a mix of the last two winning builds, interestingly enough), then back to DDT, then to Theerasak Poonsombat’s amazing Machine Beatdown, then to Fili Luna with a version of Machine Beatdown (the only other deck to win an SJC twice this format), then finally to Kenny So and his amazing Burn build to finish off the format.

Can you see the pattern now? I hope not, because there really isn’t one. It’s an amalgamation of decks that are incredibly well-built, but no so well-built that they end up defining the format (although DDT and its brother, DDT Monarch, will end up doing just later on). Almost every SJC that format had a new winning deck, and its hard enough to analyze the formats with only one deck that tore up the competition, but seven?

But the real question is: what made these decks tick? What did they all have in common – surely they had something in common, to each win an SJC? What about their pilots – how good are they? Why did these decks win? Why not someone else’s build, with someone else piloting it? These questions are incredibly difficult to answer, but I’ll try my best to tackle them all. What made these decks tick is a simple one: they are incredibly well-built decks. They’re combo-oriented, which means that they’ll be faster because they have to pull all the pieces of the combo quickly in order to not slip and fall behind. They’re advantage-based builds, meaning that with every play they can generate a positive amount of advantage and thus gain the upper-hand on their opponents, while at the same time maintaining field presence and maneuvering in a way that they can always have an out no matter what. Couple those two factors with duelists who are not only at the top of their game but also some of the best duelists in the world, and you’re looking at nigh-unstoppable builds.

But that’s only one question answered. Well, maybe two, because I answered what they all have in common. Actually, now that we look at it, that’s all the questions, answered.  Hmm.

I know that this article was probably the shortest ever, but let’s face it: this format was incredibly varied but incredibly boring. There were no top-tier decks to analyze that couldn’t be explained away in a sentence, and furthermore there were no format-altering builds that ousted the previous deck from its status as top-build. So instead, I’m going to shift focus here and talk about some other things that I find interesting.

I actually have several things to discuss, the first being my Create-A-Card contest. This contest has yielded some interesting entries, some funny, some great, some average, and some that leave my scratching my head, thinking “what the…?” But let me make a couple things clear: you may submit as many cards as you’d like to, but know that only one of them will be selected (if it is selected). No person will have more than one card picked as a winner or runner-up. You may submit any type of card, whether it be Monster, Spell or Trap, and any derivative thereof.

Also, I’ll be running a poll. What this poll will be about is the future of the Looking at the Past series of articles, and it’s very simple. I’m thinking of taking this series in two directions. One will analyze further the decks that made these past formats so great – instead of analyzing the format, I’ll be looking at the decks – while the other choice will analyze specific cards that made the formats so memorable. Just e-mail me and let me know what you think, so I can accurately gauge what my readers want.

-Anteaus

Remember, you can always reach me at anteaus44@hotmail.com.