Welcome to the new generation: "I'm not Yugi, but I can still kick your ass!"

I was requested by a friend to talk about Yu-Gi-Oh! since many of us old-school players are starting to get back into the game, either virtually through the new video games or through buying cards and wasting our paychecks and allowances on children’s card games. Well, here it is, the Duelist Arena has arrived.

For those who currently play and used to play, we long for the old days when La Jinn was the only level 4 worth running, no one used a damn Solemn Judgment every turn to mess up your strategy, and Raigeki and Dark Hole were still legal. Hell, I still long for the times when Exodia was considered a major threat at a tourney. I’ve had my ass handed to me a few times by Exodia, and its a crap feeling. However, we duelist are at at time in the game when the rules of the game are not what they used to be.

First, the introduction of Synchro Monsters/Tuner Monsters brought a new element of speed to the game. Long gone are the days of whoever got out 1900 vanilla beatsticks out fastest wins. Now are the times of how fast you can summon as many monsters as you can in one turn and synchro summoning and keeping your graveyard full and open for enough fodder later in the game. Another tactic of speed that became essential to the growing YGO metagame was the importance of “milling” (or sending cards from the deck to the graveyard directly). Anyone who has played a Lightsworn deck knows how important the graveyard is now, and how important removal from the game has become.

Let’s take for example the nearly dead engine known as “Tele-DAD,” a deck type built specifically around a beastly Dark-attribute Dragon known as Dark Armed Dragon and a bastard spell card called “Emergency Teleport.” Emergency Teleport allowed a player to special summon directly from the deck a “Psychic” type monster level 2 or below. Combined with the speed of Dark attribute based decks, it made Synchro summoning easy first turn and really freaking fast any other turn. Dark Armed Dragon required exactly 3 Dark attribute monsters in the graveyard to special summon, then had the ability to destroy any card on the field by removing one dark monster from the card controller’s graveyard. By combining the dangers of getting dark monsters onto the field first turn (because the Psychic monster most people ran was Dark attribute anyway) and getting them into the graveyard first turn, Tele-DAD decks destroyed almost all its competition. For a while, only Tele-DADs could fight Tele-DADs equally. Lightsworn decks had trouble because they were slightly (and I emphasize slightly) slower than Tele-DAD decks until a certain draw power card was released. Fortunately (or unfortunately for you Tele-DAD fans), the recent two Forbidden/Restricted Card lists help even the game out a little bit more.

So we see the importance the graveyard plays nowadays as well as the importance of graveyard control and game-removal strategies. Even with the fall of the strength of Tele-DAD, the graveyard still is important to almost every competitive deck. Plant decks, which old school players thought would never rise in power, have gotten a huge boost in support in the last few boosters. Most of the best support require that plants are in the graveyard. The Lonefire/Gigaplant swarm engine, for example, requires some massively powerful plants to be in the graveyard at all times. Gigaplant is a Gemini monster (a monster that is a normal monster in your hand, deck, field, and graveyard, but can be “re-summoned” while on the field to become an effect monster with its own unique effect) that has the ability to special summon plants from the graveyard. Lonefine Blossom is a plant monster that can sacrifice itself (or other plants) to special summon any plant from the deck to the field. So the basic strategy was to special summon Gigaplant using Lonefire Blossom, then special summon monsters and go to town.  The speed of this specific plant deck IS the graveyard, because Gigaplant is useless without it.

We have seen the importance of the graveyard in today’s metagame. So how do you counter the metagame? Remove the graveyard completely. Many anti-meta decks focus on countering graveyard effects and/or special summoning altogether. Those old-school duelists, remember a little trap called “Royal Oppression?” Well, that became an essential anti-meta tool that was ran in the anti-meta game as a staple. Even now, with spell/trap removal abundant (especially with the recent unlimited status of Breaker the Magical Warrior), Royal Oppression is still a great anti-meta tool.

There you have it, newly returned duelists and other interested readers, YGO has come a long way from the humble beginnings of Beatdown vs. Beatdown tourneys. Tech has been added to the game, and for the better. Many new and innovative decks are being built since the new Forbidden/Restricted List comes into effect this Tuesday, and I hope this short little reintroduction into the game has inspired you to break out those old classic cards, buy some new cards, and get out there and rekindle your desire to play!

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or even requests for whatever (I also do deck fixes!), leave a comment below or email me.

It’s time to d-d-d-duel!