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FanatikMonk on Yu-Gi-Oh!
Winning
April 11, 2006

First of all, Happy New Ban everyone!  I hope you’ve all gotten the chance to play a few games and shudder in fear as your opponent drops charity a goldd and a broww.  Mmm fear tastes so sweet when mixed with failure (thanks UDE).  Speaking of failure, I got a very interesting e-mail this week and thought it’d be a great time to start my n00b help section.  The letter reads: 

Hello!

My name is Craig. I'm from Warrensburg MO. I have been playing yugioh for 3 years now. I have never gotten an invite to nationals. I am all the time, playing, and reading deck ideas and combinations. I have constructed just about every deck possible from horus to exodia to burn to cyber-stein etc, etc. I have just about every card in yugioh. I still can’t understand why I never win. The person I play with all the time now wins and wins and wins. I am starting to think it’s not the cards that are the problem but, the way I think and play, and use the cards. For someone like me who is almost giving up, what would you give in advice for making a deck and using it wisely and making a final assault to win at least one national invite? 

Craig  

Now, Craig is by no way a n00b to this game but his problem extends from n00bs to veterans alike: winning.  While we may rant and rave about advantage gaining mechanics and new, devastating tech, when it comes down to it, putting it all together and being a “winner” is very difficult and much different from what you’d expect.   

Deck Building 

            I love building decks more than most things in the world and as a result, I’ve experienced the strengths and weaknesses of many decks.  While this comes at the expense of a lot of time and money, I’ve learned one true thing from it: the best decks in the world are incredibly boring.  We all want the duels on the show, where you win with a new, innovative strategy or some situational combo, but that isn’t how it is.  The best deck will open and close the same way every game.  It will win against the same decks and it’ll lose against the same decks.  You may be able to duel independent of other’s deck strategies simply by understanding how your deck runs.  While summoning blue-eyes, activating burst stream, fusing for BEUD then pulling out shining and annihilating your opponent is cool, it won’t happen every time and that’s what you should be going for.

            Last format the popular opening move contained a set flip monster (GK spy, merchant, Dekoichi, etc) and a set piece of monster-removal (sakuretsu, widespread, trap hole, bottomless, etc).  Playing this deck led to slow moves and trickling in damage and then going for the game ending swing.  Cyber Dragon, Mobius, Zaborg, exiled and a premature/call of the haunted was all you needed to close the game off.  I even remember someone writing “After I play Mobius, that’s when I know I’m going to win.”

            So what does all of this mean?  It means that your deck should cycle around ways to open and finish the game.  Each card should bring you closer to your ideal victory and every individual play should point you in a direction to closing the duel.  You’ll start, continue and finish the same way with the deck that you use.  If you don’t believe me, go look at the tournament reports and look at the way winners of tournaments play; the difference between games will only be the name of the opponent defeated.

Consistency

            Furthering upon this theme, the word consistency comes to mind.  Your deck, if built correctly, will win against certain decks a majority of the time and lose against the same decks an equal amount of times.  For example, my strike Ninja deck does well against aggressive decks and I’ll win 80-90% of the time against tomato control or warrior toolbox; however, it falters terribly against burn and mill decks.  It often can’t handle slower tempos until late game because of the rate of monster destruction.  With this knowledge, within the first 2-3 turns of a game I can predict how I will win or lose.  This isn’t an incentive to try more or less so much as it is awareness of how your deck runs in certain situations.  With this in mind we can refute a common n00b belief:           

            Your deck should be able to beat every deck-type all the time. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  That’s just not going to happen sorry.  If you look through any younger duelists deck you’ll see things like single copies of des wombat (“in case they have wave motion cannon”), single copies of soul release (“in case they have miracle fusion”) and an assortment of other random cards validated by situational notions.  Form your decks strategy and solidify your approach to win, then use your side deck to compensate for your decks weaknesses or exploit your opponents.  One of the greatest things I’ve seen was a duelist who knew his deck lost to conservative play and flip flop control and dedicated his entire side deck to changing his deck into Cyber Stein OTK to counteract the opponent’s slow tempo.  This is the understanding of the consistency of your deck necessary to win on the larger scale.

Dueling 

            So, what can you do right now to improve your game?  Well we’ve been talking a lot about consistency so let’s take that a step further.  Whenever I suggest someone change a few cards in their deck and they refuse to make any changes (clearly their deck is perfect, I mean who losses anymore, pshh, punks!) I tell them to record their duels for a week, every move, every card in hand, and then look at their wins and losses and find patterns between victory and defeat.  Like I said earlier, you’ll win the same way and lose the same way and understanding where/when/how/against whom that happens is critical to improving your game.  I have multitudes of saved online duels on my computer for each of my decks and it helps a lot in building and improving my deck and my strategy.

            Losing is another great way in improving your dueling.  Looking at every loss as an isolated case and analyzing how you started, where you peaked and the mistakes you made will teach you your own fallacies as a duelist.  Learn from your mistakes and you won’t make them again.  As President George W. Bush once said, “Fool me once, shame on… shame on you, a fool me can’t be fooled again.”  Wise words, think about it.

Faith 

            Please don’t think about that.  Think about this.  A good friend of mine and an outstanding, innovative duelist, Lily, came to me with a problem last night.  Some n00b online was pestering her, saying she couldn’t duel and calling her a n00b, needless to say, she was frustrated by it.  In the end she refused to duel him, but was still flustered even an hour later by what he said.  It’s very easy to be affected by an opponent’s demeanor and while I could write for years on the correct dueling attitude and environment, I’ll summarize and say, your best dueling will be done when you’re in the best state of mind.  When you feel threatened, challenged or upset, you won’t perform as well; you’ll make small mistakes; you’ll neglect to pay attention to details.  Losing faith in your deck because of environmental conditions  (not weather, but we’ve all been to that comic book store where there’s 98% trash talking and 2% dueling) or a poor win record is very easy to do.  Don’t let a loss get you down.  Don’t be upset by the little things.  If you care enough about your dueling, then you have nothing to prove and no outcome can provide otherwise.  Intimidation is a powerful tool but confidence is another.  There is no heart of the cards (blasphemy!) but the right perspective will make every move seem a little better. 

            So, Craig, I hope this helped.  It may seem discouraging for someone to say keep trying and believe in your self, but I assure you I’m not trying to Disney-ify the solution.  Finding your dueling style and understanding your deck, your playing ability, your strengths and your weaknesses is difficult and time consuming, but with a little effort you’ll go far.  Good luck to all of you and Happy dueling! 

FanatikMonk 

Clayton_Nelson@Brown.edu