Hieroglyph

For some of us, this had been the Dragon Archtype we had been waiting for years. Finally, a Dragon deck that does not need to feature FGD or Dragon Ravine. And finally, an archtype that Red-Eyes can be the support instead of the boss

I've tried building this deck and had a few games (unfortunately, no META decks) on DN, and its really fun. The card effects that doesn't makes sense actually turn out to be very good.

Lets see, what does this deck have :

1. Its own Dark Armed, well, sorta, a 2800 that blows things up by removing a Dragon from grave and special summons itself (AND searchable). Too bad you have to banish 3 Dragon type normal monsters for it, which is a really heavy cost since this deck basically runs around the normal monsters, nevertheless, a great card and a great game ender.

2. Its own E Emergency Call. Theres no level limit on it so you can search your deck for any missing pieces for the OTK and play it. This is the card that made me think the Hieroglyph archtype may be more than just a fun deck, any deck with their own RoTA at 3 means business, I don't see it topping Inzektors anytime soon with only these cards in the pool, but already the deck has a fine structure build in.

3. They have their own, Cyber Dragon and Ancient Rules. Which adds up to their combos.

4. 2 extremely powerful boss monster exceeds. Along with the fact that the deck can run an impressive array of monster exceeds ranging from rank 4 to 8. (except for 7)

5. They get to special summon a normal monster from your deck, grave or hand!! when they are released (tributed). Sounds hard? Not at all, since most of the higher level Hieroglyph dragons can be special summon from hand by releasing one from the field, and you get 2 monsters out instead of 1, and a potential xyz summon. And there's plenty of cards that release your monsters, ie Enemy Controller and Burst Breath.

Hieroglyph Dragon King - Atumus
2400/2100

2 Level 6 Dragon-Type monsters

Once per turn; you can detach 1 xyz material from this card; special summon 1 Dragon-Type monster from your deck, but its ATK and DEF becomes 0. This card cannot declare an attack the turn you activated this effect.

So, you special summon a dragon but now your 2400 beater can't attack AND that dragon obviously can't beat anything. Bad? Far from it!

The card you wanna get out is none other than Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. And you see more pluses  coming in already since its effects aren't negated.

The most interesting part of this archtype is :

You can tribute the Hieroglyph Dragon in hand, yes, like ritual summoning, you CAN tribute those in hand for some of their effects. Meaning potentially you discarded something to blow something and get a normal monster out which could easily be use as an XYZ material.

I might have a Level 5 normal Dragon in here just so I can get to level 5 monster exceeds easier, but that depends on further deck testing. Overall, this deck is good and is really fun to play with.

HERO beat topping again!!

Sorry for not posting for a week, school started for me and CNY is in the corner, lots of things to do and I end up extremely tired everyday after revision and stuffs. Since I have some free time now, might as well make full use of it.

Looks like the TCG had caught up with the OCG in terms of set release, since ORCS has been pre-released last weekend if I’m not mistaken, this only happened once before back in 2006 I think, what ever this means, its not really a concern for both parties I think. I’ve been hearing stuff saying Konami push the release to January because they wanna make sure they can hit Inzektors in the March banned list, that’s a good hypothesis (or any term suitable, hey, I’m a Engineering major, that’s the only term I know). Seeing how Inzektors win almost every tourney since their build stabilized, its no wonder konami want to hit it hard, just to make sure we don’t get another shitty 6 month ahead of us.

Coming back to the OCG, I’ve been seeing more and more HERO beat topping, it definitely replaced Rabbit Lagggia as the 3^rd most popular deck of the format, behind Inzektors and Agents. I say party, this is due to how the deck can main 3 Macro Cosmos (if the duelist wants to) and don’t feel bad about it. Macro is extremely powerful at the moment, being THE best side deck card against most of the current top tier. If you could potentially main it, even better.

The other reason I think HERO beat is gaining popularity is probably due to the ineffectiveness of monster destruction in general. The deck normally run 7 to 8 monsters (that’s not a typo), and almost every one of them are floaters (allius is a floater to me, since Gemini Spark gains you pluses anyway, AND we also have HERO blast). The amount of traps the deck can run and how Decree will almost never stay long enough to hurt it has something to do with its success as well. Super Polymerization is now run in 3’s in the main deck, well, since you generate a lot of advantage anyway, and Laggia is the only other deck that does the same (and will stop your plays effectively), I see no reason not running it.

Sekiha Tenkyoken!!

Maybe Photon Streak Bouncer is the generic rank 6 I've been waiting for!

2700 2000 Rank 6 Light Warrior

Level 6 x2

When a monster your opponent control's effect is activated, you can detach 1 xyz material to actuvate this effect. Negate the activation of that effect and deal 1000 damage to your opponent's life point. This effect can be used once per turn.

Since it has a good effect, and is bigger than most level 6 monsters (which is exactly the point why one exceeds).

And now, Neo Galaxy Eye Photon Dragon

4500 3000 Rank 8 Light Dragon

3x Level 8

When this card is successfully xyz summon with Galaxy Eyes Photon Dragon, negate the effects of all other face up cards. Once per turn, you can activate this effect by detaching 1 xyz material from this card. Remove all xyz material your opponent controls, and during this turn, this card gains 500 atk for each card remove this way. Furthermore, during that turn, this card can attack a number of times equals to the number of xyz material detached by this effect.

Basically, this guy just wanna remove all of Hope's xyz material and attack twice with 5500 attack, and win. How are we gonna get 3 level 8's out again? Maybe the new level 8 Dragon normal monster if it has 0 attack, with Ancient Rules and Inferno Reckless Summon?

...

So, people are playing Bubbleman again (according to Dueling Days), haven't been looking at the HERO beat deck list in a while. 

Bubbleman has always been a good HERO card, and became way more playable in HERO decks since advent of monster exceeds. Fishtank had played a number of him in his deck to go for Hope since the YSD. 

Good update on the current trend as usual. Too bad the card doesn't have a foil OCG version.

March Banned list

Its about 1 month from the reviewing of the banned list. And I want a head start from the others. If someone else has already posted their list, please link me to them in the comments since that means I had not subscribe to their blog yet.

First, let us look at the problems.

Without much difficulty, we can say that Inzektors are a major pain in the ass. The deck is way to autopilot for the format, and sometimes, way too powerful. (Not as powerful as TeleDAD in its prime, but still ... )

Next, we see Agents. These guys had claimed all but the last month of 2011 as their own. If there weren't Inzektors in ORCS, Agents will still be THE top deck. Hitting Inzektors and not hitting them will not be fair at all.

Sadly(or maybe gladly), I see no other deck being a major problem in the competitive scene. Other random 1.5s like Darkworld, Laggia and Dandy generally don't deserve to get hit, but to stop anyone from bitching ...

Banned :

None

Limited :

Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
Inzektor Hornet
Wind-Up Zenmighty or Wind-Up Rat
Rescue Rabbit (if this is hit, it'll most probably just be semi, but I would like to see it here)
Magician of Faith
Royal Oppression

reasonings :

For Gachi, its pretty obvious. The reason why Agents have been successful wasn't Hyperion (alone) but with the help of this rank 2 wall. Venus gain free pluses (almost free), Shine Balls aren't as dead as they were initially thought, and Earth made sure you have 6 copies of Venus in your deck, BUT without Gachi, these knowledge and resources aren't gonna top anything. Of cause, we can't banned Gachi, its not broken. But making multiple Gachi without costing any hand is way too much pluses. Most of the time, you don't mind a Gachi, its the fact that your opponent could make another 1 that bothers you. Gachi at 1 makes sure your opponent plays it right, his 3rd Shine Ball isn't as live anymore and you can concentrate on Hyperion. Problem solved.

Hornet is the center of the Inzektor Engine. Of cause, being a new archtype, we can't just kill it. But Konami should try to move the archtype away from free pluses, or at least thats how I feel. Hornet at 1 means you still can do the loop, since you only need 1 Hornet for it anyway. But this decreases the consistency AND makes DD Crow much more deadly. But Inzektors make Leviair easily. This shouldn't be a problem, and will not kill the deck. Like how the previous Banned List did on Samurai (limiting Gateway), it slows them down to a healthy speed and consistency, but still keeping it at top tier level.

Zenmighty's loop is just stupid, we all know that. While people say that a pure Zenmighty deck dies if the loop is somehow stop, thats not a very good reason in my books. The combo is way too easy to do and it leaves your opponent with nothing to fend itself. Zenmighty and Rat are both the culprits for this deadly loop, but hitting one of them would render the other useless (in this loop). Hitting which one would be anyone's guess, since both of them are healthy cards on their own (like how Dewloren and Symbol are).

Rescue Rabbit proves auto plus ones are broken, even with restrictions on it. While not being THE top deck in OCG, it still is one of the threats you need to side for. The deck is broken with Tourguide, YCS coverage proves that (not sure how it would do if Inzektors get thrown in the mix). While I do agree putting Rabbit at 1 will kill the deck, since unlike Cat, its targets are useless unless being brought out together. BUT, with Tourguide and Gold Sarc, I'm not entirely sure.

Faith can be brought back ages ago. While we do have 3 powerful spells (Reborn, Heavy and Mind Control, not Dark Hole) in the game, it still needs to set itself. Its effect is still powerful but that doesn't change the fact that its slow. It can be a power house in Chaos, and that may cause problems, BUT personally, I don't think so, and I wish for it to come back, it's been banned for way too long, BLS was way better and it got out.

Royal Oppression HAS to come back. The card is too important for non-spam decks all together. I don't think I need to say more for this card.

There may be others, but to me, these are the only ones worth changing. Of cause, we all know Tourguide of the Underworld deserves to get herself limited but we all know thats not happening anytime soon, same as Tengu getting semi-limited.

Semi-limited :

Master Hyperion
Agent of Mystery Earth
Grapha, Dragon God of the Dark World
Mystic Space Typhoon

Hyperion and Earth made Agent deck way too consistent. Putting them at 2 will not kill the deck, but this will drastically lowers its consistency. Together with Gachi at 1. This will force Agent players to either play a different strategy, find ways to work with the consistency issue or just drop the deck all together (although these changes will NOT kill the deck, but definitely not on tier 1 status). Maybe this will force them to run Krystia again, and take the deck to a more control approach. Hyperion is just too good a boss, even if his not generic.

While DW isn't doing much, it did top a few events and Grapha is a little too overpowered. The deck face consistency issues, that I agree. But with the right hands, or should I say, with Grapha in hand, this deck is even deadlier than Agents. Hitting Grapha would be the best choice since this would force DW players (or whats left of them) to play the other DW monsters, and not just rely on Grapha itself.

*Grapha : I shall not be hit by the semi-limited list, as my soldiers of the Dark realm aren't doing as much as they should be. Therefore ... bla bla bla ...

Me : Will some one please shut this overgrown purple dinosaur up ... *

MST at 3 basically made any deck that plays field spell and continuous S/T worthless. And it serve as a spam deck's best buddy against control deck players. While being a one for one, this card isn't as healthy as it seems at 3. Its should be at 1 in my opinion, but I say 2 would be fine.

 

No longer on list :

Emergency Teleport

We want this back, NO, we NEED this back. Mind Master is long gone, this is not TeleDAD format anymore. Emergency Teleport is no longer the broken lightning speed combo piece it used to be. BUT its the one thing Psychic decks need to be playable again. So, it needs to come back in my opinion, or Psychic will remain dead (or maybe thats what Konami wants).

...

These are the cards that are currently on my mind. Maybe I'm hitting Agents too much and maybe not hitting Inzektors hard enough. But I feel this would balance out this deck enough for it too be still competitive, but not autopilot and broken.

I didn't hit any Karakuri cards because I feel like they're not winning big events enough and I can't think of anyway to make the deck slower but not kill the deck entirely.

Of cause, I don't think we'll ever see a banned list update with less than 10 cards on it, but I can't think of anything else at the moment. Some haters may add Inzektor Damsel//Dragonfly somewhere up there and definately BLS, but I think that will kill the decks in question entirely, but who knows.

Tournament Reports ... and stuff

I've been wondering since last night, do you guys (the readers) wanna read tournament reports?

I find myself on the "I'll read it, but I don't think I'll gain anything from it" side.

Unless someone is doing it like coverage from YCS, I don't think it helps you become better at all.

So, would you guys mind telling me should I :

1. Just have brief reports like most others, meaning just type out how the duel ends and stuff.

2. Continue how I'm doing it, although things get really repetitive ...

3. Elaborate things YCS style

4. Brief report + YCS style coverage on Finals (and maybe semi). This is what I want to do from now, if I have the time.

5. Drop the reports all together cause no one is interested and focus on other stuffs

Gatcha!! OOPS! Wrong show ...

So, just tell me how you guys feel in the comments. Thanks.

Wing Blast vs Evacuation Device!!

 Both of these are the best traps for the current format in my opinion. Here I wanna compare these traps.

Wing Blast :

Advantage :

1. Get rid of problem without destroying it.
2. Sends to top deck, making your opponent dead draw sometimes, and give you a turn to prepare for it.

3. Can target spell and trap in case you wanna OTK or something like that.

4. Gets rid of your opponent's boss monsters (any one of them)

Disadvantage :

1. You need to discard a card for it (which may be the reason some decks shy away from it)

Mostly seen in decks that :

Generate advantages easily and doesn't care about a card or 2. This card fits easily into most "aggressive" meta decks.

Inzektor, Doppel, Agents - decks that run medium amount of traps (6~7 copies) would run this card to a better effect because they have more cards in hand to discard and can gain advantage from the discarded card some times.

Compulse :

Advantage :

1. No cost 

2. You can target your own cards, ie, chain to BTH and stuffs.

3. Gets rid of opponent monsters (preferably those from extra deck)

Disadvantage :

1. Only target monsters (not that big a deal actually)

2. Doesn't do much to monsters that can be summon easily again, ie BLS, Hyperion

Mostly seen in decks that :

Need to maintain card advantage to win. Control decks normally play this against powerful Synchro or Exceed monsters since they need 2 or more cards (most of the time) to make and this card gains advantage by sending them back. While not being able to deal with monsters like DAD and Hyperion as well, these decks play this card since its free and serve as cheap removal.

This card is usually only seen in decks that run high trap counts (10+ trap decks), for example HERO Beat. BUT, unlike Wing Blast, which is only seen in main decks (most of the time), Compulse proves itself to be a popular side deck card. 

...

I've been hearing people saying 1 of those is better than the other, but my conclusion after looking at decklist that won tourneys, is the effectiveness of these cards depends on the deck its played in. Or more specifically, the amount of traps the deck runs.

Wing Blast works well in decks that run medium amount (6~7 ) of traps, while Compulse works better in decks that run high (10+) or low (lower than 5) traps. Also, Compulse works better in combo decks that involves special summoning monsters from hand (ie, X-sabers) while Wing Blast serve ONLY as combo breaker and does it very well.

All the above assumptions are made by myself after looking at plays, decklists, the meta and also after test playing. Feel free to give me feedback.

Shi-En Agent Beat

Been offline for a while, need to help my sis move her stuff to KL since she's starting college next week. For the past 3 days, I've been travelling and moving stuffs (beds, tables, and all the other shits), reaching home after dinner.

Finally have time for myself. Since I have Agent and Samurai cards, decided to build them into a single deck. Its a real fun deck to play, and can be good depending on how you play and whats your meta.

monster (25):

3 Master Hyperion
3 Agent of Mystery Earth
3 Agent of Creation Venus
3 Mystic Shine Ball
3 T.G Warwolf
2 T.G Striker
3 Elder of the Six Samurai
2 Kagemusha of the Six Samurai
2 Junk Synchron
1 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning

spell (11):

3 Asceticism of the Six Samurai
1 Reinforcement of the Army
2 Mystic Space Typhoon
1 Heavy Storm
1 Dark Hole
1 Monster Reborn
1 Mind Control
1 Enemy Controller
1 Pot of Avarice

trap (3):

2 Call of the Haunted
1 Trap Dustshoot

I was only playing Elder but found Asceticism, so I put them in, works good. Since turn 2 Shi-En means nothing at all.

Enemy Controller over Book of Moon, because I can do more things with it. And I have free Shine Balls anyway. A second Mind Control isn't bad at all.

I was originally gonna run 3 Decree over the 3 Traps. But Decree isn't really that good now since the meta isn't trap heavy and the decks who run tons of traps have a lot of outs to it. But, I'm not entirely sure how good double Call is, since I don't like playing Solemns in decks that have low trap count. Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute isn't working good as of late.

I was debating either double Call, double Wing Blast or double BTH. Settle on Call since it has more combos, but this is subject to change.

Not really an all powerful deck, and I don't see myself taking this to tourney any time soon. Just posted this since I can't seem to think of anything to discuss.

BLS > Chaos Sorcerer XD