I’m going to ask you to draw your own visual aid for this article. Get a clean sheet of paper and a pencil. Draw a 5-pointed star without lifting your pencil and then draw a circle around it that touches all 5-points. It ought to be about 4 or 5 inches big and very much resemble the red and yellow icon used on monster cards to indicate their level. This is the Star Circle.

The diagram might make you think of Exodia. While we’re not going to be thinking about Exodia right now, you can think of the Star Circle as having a head and right/left arms and legs. Now let’s label them. The left leg should be labeled “Deck”, left arm labeled “Hand”, head labeled “Field”, right arm labeled “Graveyard” and right leg labeled “Removed from Play”.

We frequently focus on attack, effects, chaining and combos when we think of Yu-Gi-Oh strategy. Position if often overlooked. You can have big monsters in your hand, but if you can’t get them on the field then they are useless. Generally (meaning not all the time) it is best to have monsters on the field or on the diagram at the head of the Star Circle. Let’s number that point of the Star Circle 1. The second best place to have monsters is in your hand, just a step away from the field, so let’s number that point 2. The next best place to have monsters is in your graveyard, yes I said graveyard. This is because of a lot of plays get monsters on the field directly from the graveyard, or depend on having monsters in your graveyard like chaos. Number the graveyard 3. The Deck is the 4th best place to have monsters and removed from play is 5. There is a top to bottom pattern to this that favors the left side over the right, but as a general rule being able to move cards to a higher level of the Star Circle is a good thing. The new Zombie Madness deck may or may not be a great deck, but it has plenty of illustrations of positioning in the Star Circle and by studying this briefly, we can see how it is useful to think of the Star Circle when building a deck.

Let’s look at Book of Life which special summons a Zombie from your Graveyard and removes an opponent’s monster that’s in their graveyard from play. You get to move a monster from the right arm to the head and your opponent has a monster moved from the right arm to the right foot. Your Star Circle position is improved and your opponent’s position is weakened. How about Call of the Mummy? Special summoning is a good thing because you get to move a monster to the head and you still get your normal summon. The single normal summon per turn and the single draw in your draw phase act as “bottleneck” of sorts, they restrict the process of enhancing position from Deck to Field. Call of the Mummy helps you get through some of that “bottleneck”. Getting monsters on the field in greater numbers is a good thing. Just in analyzing these 2 cards we can see that this deck has some great positioning possibilities for moving cards to the head of the Star Circle from either arm. Now let’s look at Pyramid Turtle. First you need to draw and summon Pyramid Turtle, which isn’t that hard since it’s a level 4 monster. When your opponent destroys it in battle you get a great effect, improving the position of a monster directly from your deck to the field! While you are losing some position as Pyramid Turtle goes to the graveyard, you are gaining a huge jump in position by also selecting the monster you’re going to special summon. But look at the Star Circle again, your deck has a route designed for getting Pyramid Turtle back on the field, Book of Life. While none of this is rocket science, my point is that the Star Circle is useful because it shows you things you might not otherwise think about, the various paths monsters take through a game in a format that you tailor for your deck. I’m not talking about combo’s, I’m talking about deck composition. Once you start to feel that your deck is having a problem, check out its Star Circle and see were the “bottlenecks” are. Maybe some of the paths you have open are not useful and you should adjust your deck to make other pathways into interstate highways.

I’m going to talk a little about Vampire Genesis, not because it’s great, but because it has an interesting Star Circle pattern and its new and everyone wants to know something about it. You have to remove a Vampire Lord from the field to a lower position, the graveyard. This is particularly tough since you can only have one Vampire Lord in your deck. It’s going to be tough to get Vampire Genesis in your hand since Pyramid Turtle can’t search for it and do you really want to put 3 Vampire Genesis’ in your deck? I don’t think so. The second effect moves monsters around too. Send Pyramid Turtle from your hand to the graveyard and get Spirit Reaper on the field or Soul –Absorbing Bone Tower. You could have also let Pyramid Turtle get destroyed and then summoned Spirit Reaper, etc. from your Deck. Draw this on the Star Circle and suddenly Pyramid Turtle starts to look like you need 3 of them in your deck rather then 3 Vampire Genesis.

I’ve not talked about The right foot of the Star Circle yet, removed from play. Removed from play is not so useful in this deck and therefore, that path ought to be pretty thin. This is good to know, because it’s a part of the Star Circle you don’t want to be wasting resources on. If you weren’t sure, now you have a diagram to show you. Return From a Different Dimension was great for Yugi in the movie, but its useless in your zombie deck. If you play a Chaos deck, draw out the Star Circle and see what it looks like, is Return From a Different Dimension a good card in a Chaos deck? I’m not answering this for you, you need to give it a shot. Draw.

notasperfectasyou
It’s easy to find me on the message board, e-mail is ok, but I like open discussion better.
 

Copyright© 1998-2005 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site.