I’ve promised for a while to write about Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning.  Everybody seems to have something to say and I think that somewhere there must be a ruling on this card that requires folks to pontificate about it before they can be taken seriously as a writer.  Just in case you do not know about this card or why folks on the Pojo message boards spend hours arguing about whether it should be banned or not, this is what BLS-EotB is:   

Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
Effect Monster * Warrior/Light * Level 8 * ATK 3000/DEF 2500 

This card can only be Special Summoned by removing 1 Light and 1 Dark monster in your Graveyard from play.  Once during each of your turns, you can select and activate 1 of the following effects:

• Remove 1 monster on the field from play.  If you activate this effect, this card cannot attack during this turn.

• If this card destroyed your opponent's monster as a result of battle, it can attack once again in a row.

Ouch!  It’s a simple summon with a huge ATK and a great effect.  Triple Ouch! 

For this article I originally had a rather ambitious idea.  I figured Max Suffridge’s 2005 U.S. Championship deck would be a great deck to analyze with the idea of comparing every card in the winning deck against every other card in the same deck to see which ones were vulnerable to which other ones.  The idea was to introduce the concept of vulnerability and then score (somehow) the vulnerability of each card.  I got as far as comparing 3 of his cards against all 43.  After reviewing 3 of them, I determined that this was going to take way too long.  So I narrowed down to the one card that I had promised to discuss and I’ll use it as an example of a kind of analysis you can do with your own Deck. 

The idea of vulnerability isn’t something we think about a lot.  Yes, we do think about it when we’re building a stall deck or playing cards like Spirit Reaper, Heart of Clear Water, Raging Flame Sprite or Wave Motion Cannon.  But for the most part we’re focused on things like deck speed and putting together aggressive combos.  We are a lot less interested in how vulnerable Tribe-Infecting Virus is and how many turns we can expect it to last.  Do we stop to consider the odds of our opponent drawing a card that will kill our monsters?  So in this article, you will find ways to take care of your BLS-EotB problem and you’ll find that if you plan around this problem, then it’s not a problem anymore.  Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning is a fairly vulnerable card, but only if you are ready for it. 

A brief digression.  Since my last article I’ve bought a pack of Dark Beginning 2 cards and I wanted to report that I got a Super Rare Holographically Shiney Susa Soldier!  It’s pretty ….. and pretty useless.  If I were in charge of this (see last article), holographic cards would be cards you’d want.  The original Susa Soldier was a silver lettered rare and no one really cared about it then.  So why make it into a holo now?  Similarly, I pulled an Ultimate Rare Super Glossy and Very Reflective Tragedy card from the last RDS pack I opened!  What a Tragedy!  If I were in charge of deciding what cards where going to be made into ultimate rares, I’d make them cards you’d ultimately want. 

Ok, back to vulnerability.  Here’s Max’s deck list, including his side deck: 

Monsters - 16

1x Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
1x Sinister Serpent
1x Airknight Parshath
1x Blade Knight
1x Sangan
1x Breaker the Magical Warrior
1x Tribe-Infecting Virus
1x D. D. Warrior Lady
1x Tsukuyomi
1x Jinzo
1x Morphing Jar
1x Gravekeeper’s Guard
2x Gravekeeper’s Spy
2x Magician of Faith

Spells 17

1x Swords of Revealing Light
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Heavy Storm
1x Graceful Charity
1x Pot of Greed
1x Snatch Steal
1x Premature Burial
1x Delinquent Duo
2x Metamorphosis
2x Book of Moon
2x Nobleman of Crossout
3x Scapegoat

Traps 8

1x Ring of Destruction
1x Mirror Force
1x Torrential Tribute
1x Call of the Haunted
1x Ceasefire
1x Dust Tornado
2x Sakuretsu Armor

Side Deck 15

1x D. D. Assailant
1x Exiled Force
1x Mobius the Frost Monarch
1x Chiron the Mage
1x Giant Trunade
2x Poison of the Old Man
2x Messenger of Peace
2x Mystic Swordsman LV2
2x Bottomless Trap Hole
2x Raigeki Break

Max had a great arsenal that provided him with 4 basic ways to deal with Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning; stall, bounce, kill and take.  Let’s look at stall first.  Of the 55 cards listed above, there are 3 cards that can stall BLS-EotB.  Swords of Revealing Light prevents your opponent from attacking for 3 turns, which is inclusive of BLS-EotB.  The other 2 cards are Messenger of Peace, which were side decked.  A lot of folks like Gravity Bind, but I like MoP because you can get rid of it pretty easily when you want and the 100 LP cost is very low.  While stalling can buy you some time, the weakness in this strategy is that BLS-EotB is still on the field waiting for the stall to end. 

The deck has 1 card that can bounce Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning back to the hand and 2 cards that can combo to help discard BLS-EotB to the graveyard from the hand.  Gravekeeper’s Guard is a FLIP effect monster that returns one of your opponent’s monsters from the field to their hand.  Once BLS-EotB is returned to the opponent’s hand Morphing Jar or Delinquent Duo can be played to get it discarded to the graveyard.  Admittedly, Delinquent Duo is only going to do this with certainty if your opponent has two cards in their hand. 

A better type of combo is one that turns the BLS-EotB face down and then uses a second card to destroy it.  This deck has 7 cards that can work in this type of combo, 2x Book of Moon, 1x Tsukuyomi, 2x Nobleman of Crossout and 2x Mystic Swordsman LV2.  What I really like about these cards is that you can almost always find something useful to do with them when you draw them and with Nobleman you get to remove a targeted Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning from the game. 

While there is a lot of utility in these stall, bounce and combo kill cards, in the world of BLS-EotB what you really want is a clean kill.  There are 14 cards that in this deck that will do this for you, they are 1x Tribe-Infecting Virus, 1x D.D. Warrior Lady, 1x Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning, 1x D.D. Assailant, 1x Exiled Force, 1x Ring of Destruction, 1x Mirror Force, 2x Sakuretsu Armor, 1x Torrrential Tribute, 2x Bottomless Trap Hole and 2x Raigeki Break.  These are the real BLS-EotB killers.  I happen to like Tribe-Infecting Virus a lot because you can use it over and over again.  I also prefer TIV over Lightning Vortex because it can maintain field presence.  D.D. Warrior Lady, D.D. Assailant and Exiled Force are all similar, however, I prefer Exiled Force because battle is not required in order to get the effect.  A lot can happen in battle and Exiled Force reduces the likelihood of being countered.  More than half the cards are traps and this is where we get down to the real nuts and bolts of monster removal.  While traps are slow and traps are useless when Jinzo and Decree are on the field, traps generally form the backbone of the monster removal effort in most decks.  If you’re having problems with monster removal and you don’t have any of these traps in your deck you might want to reconsider your trap line up. 

Finally, if you didn’t have a way to get rid of Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning during your opponent’s turn, then the very best thing you can do is to take it and beat them with their own monster!  This is what Snatch Steal is all about.  Your opponent doesn’t get Snatch Steal’s LP benefit in the first turn when you take it and hopefully you get to beat them up real good for the win after you take it.  The other card that effectively lets you take away your opponent’s Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning is Metamorphosis when paired up with any level one monster, including goat tokens.  Yes, you can use a goat token to make Thousand-Eyes Restrict.  By doing this they lose field presence, you get a monster and they can’t attack.  Triple Ouch!  Now that’s rather cool. 

When you look at the whole deck BLS-EotB is vulnerable to about 30 cards, either alone or in combo.  More than half of them do the job all by themselves.  I’m not so interested in the exact count because the main point is that BLS-EotB is pretty vulnerable and it’s just one card, meaning, if you build your deck with a fair number of these cards, you ought to be ready to deal with BLS-EotB or any other frightening monster when it shows up.  I think the key is being ready.  If you’re at a tournament, then you know you will see this card and therefore you are now forewarned that its coming and you should prepare.  You also might want to think about just how often you draw a monster removal card.  Too often, or not often enough?  You don’t have to use these thoughts on BLS-EotB alone.  You might want to think about how long your opponent’s Jinzo typically lasts on the field too. 

My parting thought is that we don’t need to ban BLS-EotB.  While I don’t like seeing it on my opponent’s side of the field, I think we need cards like this to keep the game from being to bland.  Blandness is not something I feel when I see this card on the field.  I know that someone’s going to say, “Hey napay, I thought you were anti-cookie cutter.”  Well, this is true, but I really don’t think one card makes or breaks the cookie-cutter decks.  Besides, I don’t think we’re going to ban our way to diversity.  I think the best way to achieve diversity is to provide more support to hundreds of existing themes that already exist.  If you want to talk about it, get on the message board and let’s discuss.

notasperfectasyou

It’s easy to find me on the message boards, e-mail is ok, but I like open discussion better.  If you’re looking for deck ideas, see my Deck Theme’s post on the Pojo Message Boards.  Oh, and yes, I am the same notasperfectasyou that auctions Yu-Gi-Oh cards on EBAY.

napay’s prior articles and why you’d want to read them:

“Not As Perfect As Konami – Will Work For Cards” presents a wish list of things I’d like Konami/UpperDeck to do.

“Thoughts and Observations about Winning Decks – Part 5” presents a fifth installment of analysis for the purpose of seeing what can be learned from comparing two proven decks focusing on the issue of the changing landscape of Yu-Gi-Oh.

“Thoughts and Observations about Winning Decks – Part 4” presents a fourth installment of analysis for the purpose of seeing what can be learned from comparing two proven decks focusing on the issue of replacing cards.

“Thoughts and Observations about Winning Decks – Part C” presents a third installment of analysis for the purpose of seeing what can be learned from comparing two proven decks focusing on cards that strengthen your position.

“Thoughts and Observations about Winning Decks – Part B” presents a second installment of analysis for the purpose of seeing what can be learned from comparing two proven decks focusing on cards that weaken your opponent.

“Thoughts and Observations about Winning Decks – Part A” presents a first installment of deck analysis for the purpose of seeing what can be learned from comparing two proven decks.

“Mom and Dad Won’t Let Me Buy Cards On EBAY” presents some thoughts on the good and the bad of buying cards on EBAY and how you might work EBAY for a better experience.

“The Exodia FTK” presents an example of applying calculated mathematical probabilities to Yu-Gi-Oh in demonstration of why a deck 40 cards is a good idea.

“Fake/counterfeit Yu-Gi-Oh cards” presents a summarized version of my own experience buying fake cards and what I learned from it.

“The Star Circle” presents a very visual way to think about the components of your deck and how to think about card flow as a way to improving your deck.

“How Big is your Monster” is about why you need to stop thinking about how to get big ATK monsters in your deck and why you do need to think about how cards work synergistically.

 

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