Background: I'm a Yugioh Daddio, I'm 41.  I collect Yugioh cards; I also buy and sell them on Ebay.  My boys, 9 and 6, are working on being better duelists.  We all love to watch Yugioh TV.  I think that as Yugioh has gotten more and more complex, everyone has worked very hard to keep up.  I feel that this has formed a "hole"; someone still needs to talk "basic" Yugioh for the folks who are just now picking up cards.  In the military they talk of supply chains, long extensive distances that have to be covered to get food to the troops.  If you break the supply chain, your troops fight hungry and become ineffective.  In Yugioh, we have to take care of the beginner just as much as we do the advanced player.  They are the supply of players for tomorrow and if they can't traverse the route from beginner to expert, we ultimately starve our game to death.  I would target my article to beginners.

This last Christmas, several dozen parents e-mailed me wanting to know how to get God cards.  Despite the fact that they are not tournament legal, a lot of beginners want them and the movie only enhanced those desires.  For the record the God cards are: Slifer the Sky Dragon, Winged Dragon of Ra and Obelisk the Tormentor.  A lot of Mom's and Dad's did not know this.  Many seasoned players poke fun at the beginners who want these cards since they are effectively useless in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh.  This begs the question, Why do folks want" useless God cards?  My answer to that is there is a perception that winning the game is about power and that God cards are the most powerful.  While neither of these ideas is true, we should take a moment to explore why.

There are a number of powerful high attack monsters in Yu-gi-oh that are legal to play.  Gate Guardian has an attack of 3,750.  Valkyrion the Magna Warrior has an attack of 3,500.  Both of these monsters are extremely hard to summon.  While it is true that with a deck that is entirely designed around summoning these monsters and attacking with them might win sometimes, they more often lose because the time and energy that goes into summoning the big monster is using your resources that could have been used for other purposes, mainly attacking and defending.  Master of Oz has an attack of 4,200, but in order to get Master of Oz on the field you need to jump through hoops getting the right cards in your hand.  Meanwhile, your opponent is beating you up with cards like Berserk Gorilla and Gemini Elf that require no special conditions to summon.  Berserk Gorilla and Gemini Elf may not have an attack of 4,200, but they are effective and they win games more often than they lose them.  Here's a very common example.  What's wrong with this monster line up?

3x Blue-Eyes White Dragon 3000/2500

3x Summoned Skull 2500/1500

3x Giga Gagagigo 2950/2450

3x Big Koala 2700/2000

3x Buster Blader 2600/2300

3x Red-Eyes B. Dragon 2400/2000

1x Jinzo 2400/1500

1x Witch of the Black Forest 1100/1200

Before you laugh, this sort of monster line up is commonly assembled by beginners.  It has the appearance of being a powerful line up of monsters.  With a monster line up like this you can almost always be certain of having a powerful monster in your hand.  The problem is that you can hardly summon any of them because nearly all of these monsters require tribute from the field and there is only one monster that can get on the field without tribute.  Now don't get me wrong, it's nice to have some powerful monsters, but you cannot disregard the need to have cards in your deck that make it so you can summon them.

Rather than thinking of that powerful knockout punch as your way to win, try to think of the benefit of wearing your opponent down with a lot of little punches.  In football you'll see the quarterback give the ball to the running back 40 or 50 times in a game while he only throws it long maybe 4 or 5 times.  Football games are won by repeatedly hurting your opponent a little bit.  A 4 yard run might not be as much as a 40 yard pass, but you can usually count on getting some yards and making your opponent more tired and bruised by running.  This is why non-tribute monsters like Gemini Elf, Berserk Gorilla, Zombyra the Dark and Goblin Attack Force are so good.  They might not have a 3000+ attack, but they can be summoned easily and they almost always can be counted on to do some damage.  So the first point to get out of this article is that power isn't about monsters with high attack, power is about monsters that will do damage repeatedly, over and over again.