Hey all, and welcome to my newest series of articles, “Looking at the Past.” These articles are designed to analyze the metagame of a particular era in Yu-Gi-Oh! and break it down to a point where we can begin to see the patterns in deckbuilding and sidedecking and find what makes these decks tick. As stated in my last article, “Looking Under the Bed: Comparisons,” I launched the introduction to this series of articles. And, judging from the title of the article, we’ll be looking at the format before the banlist; from this game’s humble roots all the way until October 2004, the month where the banlist was first given to us. This article will perhaps be the longest in the “Past” series of articles, due to the amazing amount of cards and sets that were released prior to October 2004.

My dueling days begin in the early summer of 2003 – having no cards of my own, my friends let me borrow some of their cards to build myself a deck. After careful consideration, I decided that I should play an Earth-based deck, because…well, I really don’t know why. Perhaps it was because of the multitude of Earth cards that my friends had piled between them, or perhaps it was the fact that I was allowed to use an Injection Fairy Lily that sparked off my interest, or maybe it was just the fact that there was a lot of Special Summoning going on in that deck. Whatever it was, I was pretty hooked, and I played that deck for almost four months – until something amazing happened to me. It was Christmas, and I had asked my mom for a full booster box of Legacy of Darkness so I could pull a Yata-Garasu (a card that I’ve had played against me numerous times up to this point) and get some cool cards in the meantime. Instead, I received in my stocking seven packs from the LOD set, and proceeded to open each one. I remember pulling a Maruading Captain and a Yamata Dragon (a Spirit monster), plus some crap rares, until I got to my final pack. I proceeded to open it up slowly, savoring my last pack, when lo-and-behold, in between some commons: my beloved Yata-Garasu.

From that day forward, I played a weird Warrior/Hand Control hybrid, utilizing Maruading Captain and his band of playful Warriors in conjunction with “The Big 3”: Confiscation, The Forceful Sentry, and Delinquent Duo. This formed the basis of what was known around my town as “Wierdo Control,” because it utilized a fast summoning engine (sound familiar?) to pull strings of Monsters to the field and smash face, while controlling the tempo of the game using my various control cards. The full decklist is lost to the Blue Screen of Death, but I can assure you it was not a typical Tomato Control build (the popular choice for Hand Control at the time). My utilization of fast-tempo cards laid the foundation for the rest of the local dueling community to try their hand at quicker decks, and after Pharonic Guardian was released we began to see the slow transition from Vanilla Beatdown (utilizing “vanilla” monsters to win) to faster, tempo-controlling builds.

If you want to take a quick, chronological peek at the top decks up until Pharonic Guardian was released, here you go:

1)      Vanilla Beatdown

That was the whole kit-and-caboodle when it came to Tier-1 builds. There were some other decktypes, mainly Dragons and Warriors (thanks to LOD), but for the most part Gemini Elf still reigned supreme and her band of 1800 ATK vanilla monsters followed close behind. However, once Yata-Garasu was released in LOD, things began to change. It started, believe it or not, at the local level; no one had heard of the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships and the magazine I had bought had full coverage of it, including the winning decklists and the major cards of the tournament (this was after the 2003 World Championships had concluded), and proceeded to “netdeck” the winning deck: Tomato Control. The champion’s unique build included three copies of Gemini Elf, three copies of Don Zaloog, three copies of Mystic Tomato, and a handful of other high-end cards that helped synergistically advance his deck. It was uniquely built, and I had to give it to the guy; he knew his stuff. So, I copied him…kind of.

What it came down to was the fact that he had a decklist, I had a decklist, and while similar they were also extremely different in many ways. I utilized different cards, different synergy, than my World Championship counterpart, and besides: I play a different playstyle than he did. I’m more of a balls-to-the-wall kind of player, not a sit-back-and-wait-for-your-move kind of player. I’ve always played that way, and it’s hard to change your style to something that conforms a bit more to the metagame. As my confidence in my dueling abilities grew (there were a lot of mirror matches at this point, as my deck had become very, very popular around town) and my reputation grew, I began to run into problems: everyone was playing my deck. So, I did what was natural: I built a new deck. It utilized the same mechanics of my previous Tomato Control deck, but it utilized different cards; instead of Dark monsters being the key, it was Warrior-type monsters. And my deck grew, and I kept winning, and no one could figure out what made my deck tick. But I knew. I knew then, and I know now, what made my deck and all winning decks tick: speed.

My deck was the fastest, it won the race first. While everyone was still Normal Summoning one monster per turn, my deck could Normal Summon a Marauding Captain, Special Summon a Don Zaloog, Premature Burial a Goblin Attack Force, Snatch Steal an Injection Fairy Lily (a much more common move in my deck than you would think), and beat face for a lot of damage. My opponent wouldn’t know what hit them, because my entire hand was played out in one turn. It was an all-or-nothing deck, and I had to make sure that my moves would bring about maximum results. Sound familiar?

This formula worked incredibly well for me. I won tournament after tournament at several different local card shops…I was a regional hero! People would come down from Seattle (I live near Portland, OR) and up from Sacramento just to play me. People were copying my deck all over the place! Life was going well for Anteaus the duelist, and things could not have been better.

And then Invasion of Chaos hit.

Invasion of Chaos brought two of the most devastating cards to American shores: Black Luster Soldier-Envoy of the Beginning, and Chaos Emperor Dragon-Envoy of the End. These two cards signaled my decks demise, because no longer was my deck the fastest; it was slower in comparison to the mighty Chaos deck, and therefore fell by the wayside. I began to lose consistently to Chaos decks; Chaos became the new norm for everyone but me, throwing my deck to the sharks as I placed worse and worse. My deck was old, and Chaos was new, and I needed to find a way to survive or I’d drown.

I was slow to realize why it was that my deck lost so quickly to Chaos, but after the banlist I realized why it did: it was slow. Prior to Chaos, there were no decks that could top the one I ran in terms of speed. My deck was quick, agile, and versatile, able to pull out a card for any situation and pull off amazing combos and massive plays that would leave my opponent reeling. But what my deck did, Chaos did so much better. Using the Light/Dark dichotomy that Chaos is famous for, it was able to Special Summon so much more than my deck could ever think of summoning, and it brought out behemoths that my deck cowered in front of.

Luckily, not long after Chaos was invented, both cards were limited to one-per-deck, but it still managed to sweep the 2004 Yu-Gi-Oh! National Championships prior to its banishment to the trade binder in October 2004 (a day heralded as the second coming of Christ in certain Yu-Gi-Oh! circles). October 1^st, 2004, was a day that half the dueling community dreaded, and the other half loved. It was the end of the dreaded Chaos Emperor Dragon/Sangan/Yata-Garasu combo; it was an end to the Light/Dark aspect of deckbuilding, and it was a whole new beginning.

But that was only a start. Chaos decks may have been fast, but they would pale in comparison to the decks that are being built now. Back then, before the banlist, duelists relied on controlling the tempo of the game. Nowadays, however, duelists are more concerned about controlling the field as opposed to the tempo, and by summoning multiple monsters in one turn makes the field so much easier to control. It’s now about how fast one can play, as opposed to how well; decks are netdecked, mirror matches are played, and while the better duelist may come out on top, it all depends on the monsters you can bring out.

The reason this is now is because prior to October 2004, the field and hand were simple to control. We had Raigeki, Harpies Feather Duster, Dark Hole, Heavy Storm (we still have it, but still), Change of Heart, Pot of Greed, Graceful Charity, Yata-Garasu, Black Luster Soldier-Envoy of the Beginning…these cards were fast, sure, but there was a prime difference in their usage. Prior to October 2004, decks relied on controlling the moves that your opponent could make, by using “The Big 3” and the cards listed above to essentially counter anything that an opponent did. After you established tempo control, you could play the game how you wanted to play; faster decks tended to do better because once the tempo was set by you, your opponent could not come back, counter the tempo and reset it to his/her advantage.

But in todays metagame, this has been abandoned. Tempo control is no longer the key, because we have nothing to control the tempo with. We need to gain field dominance by making fast plays, because slow plays cannot keep up. Before, you were able to play slow if you achieved tempo control; now, there’s noting to control the tempo, so we make it go faster and faster until it shoots off like a top. This is the prime difference between then and now: decks were fast then because they could be; decks are fast now because they need to be.

In my next article, we’ll be focusing on the October 2004 – April 2005 format and seeing what decks made it and what decks didn’t and why. Stay tuned!

As always, you can contact me for any reason at anteaus44@hotmail.com.

-Anteaus