This is a crazy world we live in. To be quite frank, I know I haven’t been around lately. I’ve been neglecting my COTD duties, I haven’t posted an article in months, and I haven’t even looked at pojo.com in quite some time; but through all that, I still love this game that we’re playing. I’ve been busy with other things at the moment; attempting (desperately) to get my MLG team off the ground (if you don’t know what MLG is…well, we’ll talk later about that), working my ass off trying to make ends meet, spending more time with my wife and daughter, and neglecting just about everything that Yu-Gi-Oh! has given me.

But through all this, I’ve come to realize that my duties to you all, my faithful readers, have been lacking as of late, and for that I apologize. To be perfectly honest, I probably will drop off the radar for a few more months before I realize that I’m dropping the ball again, but the recent events that have transpired in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world are too difficult to handle without writing about them, so we’re going to tackle them one at a time.

Konami vs. UDE

What a knockout blow. As I’m sure you’re all plenty aware, Konami has forced Upper Deck Entertainment (through the courts, no less) to stop all their Yu-Gi-Oh! affiliated dealings, from the organized play down to the website, ude.com. This is tragic, in my opinion, because Upper Deck has done so much for the community. From hobby leagues to promotional deals, local tournaments and Shonen Jumps; all of them were crucial in building up Yu-Gi-Oh! to the status that it has attained in recent years. It’s difficult to comprehend that websites like metagame.com won’t be able to give us superb coverage of the Shonen Jump Championships anymore, and that Yu-Gi-Oh! has, essentially, been thrown back to the dark ages.

There are a few things that come from this divide between the two companies (not the least of which is the fact that North American players will have a SEVERE disadvantage in Worlds this year); the main aspect from this division is the fact that local card shops are once again back on top. There’s really nowhere else to play the game at this point, and with regional tournaments now out of the picture, it’s even more crucial that people flock to their local card shops.

The Resurgence of Locals?

As many of you know, I’m pretty adamant about supporting local card shops and tournaments, and this could be the first step in getting back to that era. With Shonen Jumps out of the picture and the metagame.com homepage linking to the Upper Deck webpage, the flow of viable information about the top teams and players (and, of course, the cards they’re playing) has essentially been cut off. At this moment in time, we still have the pojo.com forums as well as yugioh.tcgplayer.com, but even then these don’t cover the premier championships like Metagame did, and even then, those championships aren’t being played anymore. This puts a large reliance on local tournaments to receive our information, and information sharing is crucial in today’s game.

The Cost of Information

We are, my friends, in the dark about what decks are going to be huge and what aren’t. This whole mummer’s farce involving Konami and UDE has cast a huge shadow over the North American metagame, and because of this we need to keep ourselves informed as a community. This means posting some tournament reports on pojo.com, or keeping up on the message boards. This means keeping tabs on everything that’s going on, and most importantly, trading information at local tournaments.

Believe it or not, my friends, the cost of information in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world has risen dramatically, and we’ll be seeing more and more people trying to work out insanely complicated decks that, quite frankly, won’t work at all because they’re too complicated. But let’s not give up hope; we have a new list, and now we’re going to break it down.

What’s Out

Chaos Sorcerer is the only card to come off of the forbidden list, and not a single new card went on it. That’s interesting to a lot of people out there, I included, but this is a good thing, in my opinion. I’ve explained this before, and I think that Konami is starting to see the way things need to go; they are leaving the banlist well enough alone and only making small tweaks to the game to make it more competitive. I don’t have Dark Armed Dragon; having him at two or three per deck was a bad idea, but I didn’t hate him. His restriction to one (that’s right, he’s at one now) was a great move, because it keeps him powerful but removes him from the “so powerful it’s broken” list. Chaos Sorcerer is in the same boat; he never should have been banned, because frankly he’s not that great at one-per-deck anyway.

Gladiator Beast Bestiari has been restricted, which could potentially hurt the already flailing Gladiator Beast deck, but his restriction was quite the necessity. The ability to destroy a Spell or Trap card upon his summoning (not to mention the cycle ability that Gladiator Beasts are known for) is simply too great to ignore, and Konami did a phenomenal job making him restricted. However, both Mezuki and Plaguespreader Zombie – staples in the fast-rising Zombie deck – have both been restricted, but for good reason. These cards are great in their own right, but throw Plaguespreader Zombie in an already powerful TeleDAD deck, and it’s a recipe for disaster. These two were by no means staples in the Zombie build at three-per-deck, but they are crucial to the strategy. Luckily, those strategies haven’t been broken too much by their restriction.

Emergency Teleport has finally been put on the one-per-deck list, and not a moment too soon. Its power caused the creation of some of the best decks to ever grace the game – no doubt that today’s TeleDAD builds could stand up to the best of the Chaos-era builds some five years ago, and mostly it’s because of this card. The ability to quickly pull out a two-star Tuner monster, tune it into a bigger, better monster, then swing and beat face with that new Synchro monster was just too much for people to handle. It’s gone and it won’t be coming back. Also, almost as a side-note, Reinforcement of the Army has been re-limited, for some reason. This could be foreshadowing of things to come, so watch the newer sets for more Warrior support; I wouldn’t be surprised at that.

Obviously, Konami did what they could to curtail the onslaught that TeleDAD was bringing down on everyone, and a mighty fine job they did. They focused on the problems, but instead of overcompensating and banning Dark Armed Dragon, Emergency Teleport and Mezuki, they merely restricted them all instead, which was a great move. That way, the card pool stays large and more decks are able to be played.

What’s In

The Destiny Hero Draw Engine (D-Draw Engine) has been curtailed by the limitation of Destiny Hero – Malicious, Allure of Darkness, and Destiny Draw, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Notice that the main problem we had with this format was the speed that the top decks were exhibiting; the limitation of its draw engine, for the most part, and the restriction of its monster lineup, has really shut down the power of the TeleDAD build. Notice, however, that it may be down, but not out; what helps it out is the lifting of Raiza the Storm Monarch from the restriction list. Raiza was put there for a reason, and frankly I don’t think this was a smart move by Konami. Monarchs could very well rule again – but to be fair, Monarchs really never went anywhere in the first place. They’re a powerful deck with powerfully good cards at their disposal, and to add a second turn-wrecker into the build? That’s not a good thing, in my opinion. Gold Sarcophagus was added to the limited list, which is probably a good idea considering its one hell of a recruiting card. Any card you need for your combo, just say the word and its there. Great card, perfect at two, and both Ultimate Offering and Mind Crush have made it to the two-per-deck list. This is probably a good place for them to be, considering that they’re powerful on their own, but they need to be in a combo (and that combo needs to be nothing but three-per-decks) in order to be effective. Don’t expect this to make too much of splash.

What’s Going On

Finally, we get to what’s been pulled off completely. Twin-Headed Behemoth, Book of Moon, and Nobleman of Crossout are the ones that stick out the most; Book of Moon is a great defensive card and can slaughter people on offense if played right. Nobleman of Crossout probably won’t see too much play beyond the two-per-deck that it occasionally sees, mainly because there’s been a major shift away from placing monsters in defense and just going for the all-out assault. However, this list could quite possibly take the paradigm that the game is in and shift it back to a more defensive style of play, now that the major players have been taken down a notch.

Obviously, come game day, the fastest deck will win, so people will always try to one-up their opponent’s deck by playing faster. However, if a deck can effectively slow the tempo down and maintain a steady control of the pace of the game, that deck will reign supreme. I’m expecting some slower decks to make an impact on the tournament scene, but as stated before, it’s all about who can control the tempo of the game better. Zombies will still be powerful (even with the limitation of Goblin Zombie); TeleDAD will try to maintain its status as the top deck; Gladiator Beasts will try their hardest to compete with one of their best cards at one-per-deck; and many more builds will rise and fall by the wayside. So lets keep an open mind, and don’t forget to keep that information flowing. As of now, we’re in the Dark Ages of Yu-Gi-Oh! once again, so keep your eyes open and keep an eye out.

As always, you can contact me via e-mail at anteaus44@hotmail.com. I don’t answer all my mail, but if your piece is interesting, you might hear back from me. Keep playing, my friends, and as always, have fun doing it.

Thanks,

Anteaus