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Cloudstrife 189 on Yugioh
The Secret to Dueling - Champion Edition: Consistency Pillars
May 26, 2011

It seems like forever since I last wrote an article; my apologies. I will try to write a lot more often. I will post a link to all my previous articles at the bottom of this post. I hope all my Secrets to Dueling find a way to positively impact you and your dueling career. For those who don’t know, I’m Traviis (Tray) Massengale and I’m the most recent winner of YCS Orlando 2011. I’m 22 and attend school at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. I attend my Yugioh locals weekly in Kansas City, KS at a card shop called Collector’s Cache. If any of you are ever nearby on a Saturday afternoon, please stop by. I would love to meet and duel against you.

Anyways, this is my first article back after a long hiatus. I hope you enjoy it. After making it to the finals in back to back YCS competitions that I attended with two completely different decks, I believe I finally figured out one of the most important Secrets to Dueling. I had the epiphany of this concept right before the tournament and knew that I had just discovered something big.

Welcome to the Secret to Dueling- Champion Edition: Consistency Pillars!

As I prepare for a competition, I think about all the top tier decks. I think about what makes each deck “tick.” I try hard to understand their main focus, strengths, and weaknesses. I even try to predict favorable matchups for that deck and determine what matchups that deck should “autowin” against. However, it doesn’t stop there. I then assess the consistency of that deck by determining how often that deck can generate strong, effective plays.

A quick example: Legendary Six Samurais (LSS)

This deck has the potential to generate one of the strongest openings in the game: Six Samurai United x3, Gateway of the Six, Kagemusha and Kageki. If the Samurai duelist wins the dice roll and opens with this combo or even a slightly weaker version of this, expect to lose almost immediately. However, what if the samurai duelist didn’t have kageki nor access to another six samurai? What if they didn’t win the dice roll? This strong opening would be drasticlly weaker. All weekend long, even during the top 32, I watched my opponents as they drew very inconsistently. I saw opening hands of Triple Fautrolls with no other X-sabers, lots of continous six samurai spell cards but no samurais, gladiator support cards but no gladiators, monarchs with no treeborn or treeborn with no monarchs, etc. In fact, I started becoming overly confident throughout the tournament because I started discovering that most duelists might be playing a deck with stronger combo potential than my deck but I was playing a more consistant one! During the semi finals, I opened with double ryko and milled my third off of Charge of the Light Brigade. However, I was still extremely happy to have a strong opening and continued to win the duel, the match, and the tournament. My “dead” draws never seemed to be quite as bad as my opponent’s dead draws. My dead draws just made me play my cards a little differently. Some of my opponent’s dead draws completely crippled them, making it hard for them to execute even one effective play.

This is where my concept of consistency pillars comes in. At a tournament of 10+ rounds of Swiss followed by an additional five rounds of top 32 playoffs, you can’t afford to count on a deck that only goes off some of the time. You need a deck that can and will generate effective plays almost each and every game of the entire tournament, REGARDLESS of who wins the dice roll! Yes, I understand, winning the dice roll is huge in this current format. You have an instant edge over you opponent. However, when training for these two events, I anticipated losing the dice roll. I was determined to not lose the match just because I rolled a smaller number on a die. What would I do if my opponent went first and opened LSS Shi’ En and two backrows? What would I do against a Gladiator Beast Laquari and four backrows? Am I suppose to admit defeat and walk back over to my friends with my head down, complaining about how broken my opponent opened? I don’t think so!

If you haven’t already seen my decklist, you can see it here (http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=5997). Look at all the different first turn openings I can open with regardless of going first or second. I have answers for just about everything! If my opponent opens really aggressive, I can hide behind rykos, pyramid turtles, spirit reapers, hampsters, etc while slowly building up my resources to fight back. If I’m really lucky, I can even turn their own aggression against them with a well played Creature Swap. If my opponent opens really defensive, I can breaking through his defenses and start my own aggression with tytanial, zombie master, debris dragons, synchros, etc. Because we open with six cards, my hand almost always contained an aggressive AND defensive play depending on the situation. This created frustration for my opponents because they could rarely capitalize over me.

However, this article isn’t about my deck. Its about YOUR deck. I want to encourage you to add Consistency Pillars to each and every one of your decks. What are Consistency Pillars? Consistency Pillars is what I call cards that add consistency to your deck to help you answer ANY situation. The Consistency Pillars are not the same for every deck. Each deck will require lots of pratice and playtesting to determine the best combination suitable for you. Let me also note that Consistency Pillars are not meant to detract away from your decks main combos, but only to ensure that they go off more reliably. You want to try and find a group of cards that work with your deck in accomplishing this goal creating no conflict of interest. Here’s an example:

You’re playing a gadget deck with Solidarity. You try adding in some of the consistency pillars that my zombie deck played like 3 rykos, super nimble mega hamster, Charge of the Light Brigade, and Nobleman of Extermination. While this may seem good at first glance, lets analyze this. Your deck’s main focus is to summon multiple gadgets and increase their attack with Solidarity. Solidarity requires that you only have one type of monster in your grave. Unfortunately ryko/hamster are different types than your gadgets and this would create a huge conflict of interest. It is true that you could handle a lot more of your opponents plays with the rykos, but you wouldn’t be able to fully capitolize later. Charge of the Light Brigade requires you to send the top 3 cards of your deck to the graveyard. Do you really want to chance milling the wrong gadgets? Nobleman of Extermination may seem like a strong choice as well, but you must ask yourself, do you really care if your gadget gets hit with a spell or trap card? For me, it was definitely game breaking if my Debris Dragon or Lonefire Blossom play got countered. Those cards helped pave the way to some of my strongest combos. Your deck is full of gadgets and you constantly add a new gadget to your hand every turn. Using your gadget to bait out your opponent’s spells and traps until they run out is what they are intended to do. However, maybe adding Dust Tornado may serve as a true Consistency Pillar for your deck if you play Ultimate Offering. You could activate Dust Tornado in the your opponent’s endphase, destroy your opponent’s last s/t card, set Ultimate Offering with Dust Tornado’s second effect, and then activate it during your turn. From there, you could activate Ultimate Offering, summon a plethora of gadgets, activate Solidarity and continue to OTK your opponent. Additionally, Dust Tornado would rarely ever be a dead draw independently. The Ultimate Offering combo would only make it better. This adds consistency. Machina Fortress may also act as a Consistency Pillar since he can generate advantage out of multiple drawn gadgets. Additionally, he can be used as a defensive or aggressive card. Regardless of almost any situation, he seems to be a great card to have access to, perfectly fitting the definition of consistency.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. You want to try and find cards that fit your strategy and move you that much closer to the finish line. For my zombie deck, I really strived hard to find an effective way to put my zombies in the grave so I could resurrect them. Rykos helped me reach this goal while also clearing the path in the process. The plant engine gave me a reliable source of tuners, non tuners, and one big attacker who could take down almost any monster! Card Trooper helped fuel my grave while also transforming into a 1900 beater who could compete with cards like Thunder King Rai-Oh. Pyramid turtles and spirit reapers gave me a perfect line of defense and put pressure on my opponent when summoned in attack mode. With a lot of low attack monsters, I found them often walking on the destructive ability of Solemn Warning. With nothing else to do with them, I decided to maximize their potential by playing Creature Swap and exchanging them for

some of my opponent’s more powerful monsters. It took a long time but eventually I found the right combination of consistency pillars to aid my deck’s focus, creating a very powerful engine.

In short, Consistency Pillars are cards added to your deck to help you handle a lot of different situations so you are never “paralyzed,” ensuring you always have a live play. You can’t expect for your opponent to go down without a fight and must assume that he might be able to counter a few of your plays. You should always hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst. Never offer excuses for losing the duel on things like losing the dice roll or your opponent opening strongly. Always be prepared to counter a strong opening and capitalize on a weak one. When your deck can do this accurately and reliably, you may just have the pillars of consistency you need to win a YCS of your own.

·         Cloudstrife 189 aka Tray Massengale

Over and Out