After the first banlist had hit the west coast, many duelists were scrambling to find out what decks would come out on top now that Chaos was gone. It turns out that Chaos variants were still numero uno, and with a rightful claim to boot: Chaos was easily the best way to run a deck in the new format, not only because of the ease of summoning Black Luster Soldier-Envoy of the Beginning, but also the hideously amazing effect that he hides. In a new, untested field, utilizing what could arguably be called the best monster in the game is a no-brainer.

But now, fast-forward six months, and we have a new format on the rise. Every six months, the banlist changes, ushering in new decks and saying adios to many others. It’s a way to start the game over, so to speak; it gives the format a nice jump-start, thus preventing it from becoming stale and overused, and giving new duelists a chance to thrive in the new atmosphere. But this is one format that can universally be agreed upon by veterans: it was so damn good!

The April 2005 format saw the rise of “The Trinity;” a concoction of Pot of Greed, Graceful Charity, and Delinquent Duo. April 2005 saw the rise of “advantage” in terms of numbers, and everyone scrambled to build a deck that would net them the bigger advantage in the long run. This is why the Trinity was so great: it was a +5 if you pulled it off first-turn, and since Pot of Greed is a +2, Delinquent Duo is a -2, that’s an automatic +4, and many veterans of the game argued that if you pulled off the Trinity first turn, your opponent could not win. And in a way, they were right.

But the rise of the Trinity Format was steeped in the fallen hopes of so many decks. Magical Catapult decks were a thing of the past, now that Magical Scientist was atop the banlist; Gearfried the Iron Knight/Butterfly Dagger-Elma/Magical Marionette decks were destroyed with the banning of Butterfly Dagger, and many other decks began to snake their way into the hearts and minds of a million duelists worldwide. Some notable ones include Manticore Exodia (utilizing the Special Summon tactics of Manticore of Darkness, coupled with Card of Safe Return, to give you a draw loop and pull Exodia), Zombie Madness (it is what it sounds like), and Thousand-Eyes Control. But perhaps the best-known deck out of the format was the final one: Thousand-Eyes Control.

The idea was simple: utilize Scapegoat, Magician of Faith, Tsukuyomi, and Metamorphosis to turn your one-star monsters into Thousand-Eyes Restrict, thus giving you complete control over the game. TER, as it was known in the format, is amazing as a control card because it takes one of your opponent’s monsters and equips it to TER, giving TER its ATK and DEF, and at the same time it prevents all other monsters from attacking. It was amazing, especially coupled with Tsukuyomi because you could just flip it face-down, then flip it face-up (thus destroying the equipped monster) and equip a brand-new monster just like that.

The deck was called several things: TER-Control, Morph Control, Goat Control – but the one that stuck out most was “Goat Control,” because the combo relied on activating Scapegoat, using a Goat Token in tandem with Metamorphosis, and summoning Thousand-Eyes-Restrict. It was quickly considered to be the deck to beat, and it still utilized the Light/Dark dichotomy to make Black Luster Soldier-Envoy of the Beginning viable. The deck was incredibly stable and difficult to play against, because of how many options the deck had to utilize. It could go from using Scapegoat as its main source of ammunition to using Black Luster Soldier in one deft move, and the swings in momentum it generated were enough to send slower decks packing really quick.

It was also during the Trinity format that duelists began seeing advantage as a number as opposed to a concept. Throughout the life of the game, advantage was always viewed as more of an idea than a concrete concept; it was the idea of making the moves that were necessary to put you at a strategic advantage in terms of the monsters on the field, or cards in hand, or whatever. Typically, this meant duelists would pose the following question: “What cards do I need to use to drop my opponent’s hand count to zero?” That was the only question that was ever asked, because Yata-Garasu had become synonymous with the term “control.” Now, with Yata-Garasu based decks out of the picture, duelists had no idea where to turn for control. Luckily, several key theorists came up with the idea of “advantage,” a by-the-numbers strategy of keeping control of the game through manipulating the numbers. Here’s how it worked (and still works):

Any time you draw a card, whether for the turn or by some card effect, you get +1 advantage.

Any time a monster is summoned from the graveyard or the deck (but not the hand), it’s a +1 advantage.

Any time you discard a card, or a card is sent to the graveyard, it’s a -1 advantage.

Advantage is defined as the total number of cards in your hand and on your side of the field. So, if you flip-summon Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive, that’s a +1. If you sacrifice it, that’s a -1, but if you summon a monster in its place that’s a +1 (thus making a Tribute Summon a 0 on the advantage scale). This concept was born in the Trinity format, but believe it or not it wasn’t actually perfected until the next format, which was perhaps the format that cemented play for the next three years.

The numbers don’t lie, and advantage grew in popularity until it took over all aspects of the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! During the Trinity format, however, there were still enough old-school players that never ran the numbers and only thought about what cards would be the best in any given situation, and these players (at least during the Trinity format) still reigned supreme. There’s something to be said for veteran players who have lived through these format changes: they know what they’re talking about. They have the history of the game in their minds, and they know what it means to be a real duelist.

The Trinity format saw some of the best duelists rise, and more of the best fall by the wayside. Household names like Anthony Alvarado, Fili Luna, Matt Laurents, Andrew Long, Jae Kim, Jerry Wang – all these duelists got their breaks here, during the Trinity Format. Some, like Evan Vargas, didn’t venture too far past it, but others still held on until they reached the top in some other format. As we explore further into the depths of the history of this great game, we’ll begin to see duelists who had their fifteen minutes in one format or another, and others who have survived the test of time to cement their place in the annals of Yu-Gi-Oh! history.

As always, if you want to drop me a line, feel free to do so at anteaus44@hotmail.com.

-Anteaus