Light Fiend Summon

Over the last month, I have been trying and trying to come up with a new deck. As of right now, the only decks I have that work well for me are:

Nordics
Amaryllis
Lightsworn

I have played Nordics sooooooooo much that I would like to play something else. Amaryllis is a bit too inconsistent for this format. Sometimes I will draw amazingly, other times, I will not have a single Amaryllis I can summon to the field. The Lightsworn, well, let's just say that as much as I like the deck, the deck doesn't like me. So because of having such a low deck count right now, I need to up my game. The last few posts I have made give an idea of the different decks I have been trying to piece together.

Relinquished - With book of moon gone and Tour Guide available, Relink has gotten a major upgrade. However, the era of the boss monster is slowly dissipating. In the past you could just drop the boss monster in your deck and control the game from there. Nowadays, people drop synchros for whatever situation you need. If you think about the game that way, you can see how a Relinquished(not backed with Djinn conditions) is pretty underwhelming.

Spellcasters - A lot of decks rely on 1 for 1 cards that eventually give you an advantage over your opponent. The Spellcaster deck carries 6 "2 for 1" cards that will cause your opponent to lose a lot more than they bargained for. Gemini spark and Magical Dimension, when used after an opponent's card effect, gives you a card to destroy on their field that hasn't been activated. After that, you get either a card draw from spark, or a new monster from dimension. I didn't manage to get all of the cards for the deck, so the idea is slowly slipping away.

Though I don't have much trade-bait left, I've been using as much of it as I can towards my latest obsession - Fableds, codenamed: LFS - Light Fiend Summoning.

Best synchro in the deck

Fabled decks have been a tier 3 deck for a while in America, and that is because of 2 things. 1) Not having Hidden Arsenal 4. 2) The need for players to put bad cards in the deck. When people read Fabled effects, they immediately think of Dark World Monsters and discard effects. These do work with fabled monsters, but they are unnecessary in the deck. The best fabled effect monsters in the game can summon themselves without the need to use Dark World Lightning, Card Destruction, and other similar cards. In fact, like Nordics, you really only want to loop the same cards multiple times until you gain an advantage over your opponent.

I was talking to a guy at locals a few Saturdays ago. He always brings his Fabled deck to the tournament, and I finally looked it over for the first time. Of course it was riddled with Discard effects, Dark World Monsters, and other cards I don't approve of using. Also, he didn't own any more than 1 Krus and 1 Grimro. His main focus was on obtaining several Fabled Raven cards. Once I saw that, I started testing out the Fabled deck online. Of course, the skeleton of the deck is
3 Krus
3 Grimro
2-3 Cerberrul
2-3 Chawa
2-3 Ganashia
1-2 Kushano
All of the other monsters are mostly filler. The above cards are really the core of the deck and will hopefully turn each of your turns into a profitable one. Example: Ganashia, Chawa and Grimro and your hand. Normal Ganashia, then activate Grimro, searching out Krus. Discard Krus to special summon Chawa. Krus activates in the grave, summoning Grimro. You can now synchro for 4, 5, or 8. Depending on your hand, you can Synchro for Unicore and start attacking(usually bad unless you suspect Bottomless.) If you can set the rest of your hand, you can synchro for our buddy Fabled Ragin and draw 2 cards. If your hand has another grimro or Krus in it, you can synchro for Valkyrus, then discard Krus to draw a card and summon a monster from your graveyard. The draw potential in the deck is pretty nice, and is also backed by pot of avarice, as the only monster you really ever "lose" is Ganashia.

I have always liked the Fabled Deck since I first saw it in the YGO WC Nintendo DS games. With a proper pilot, I feel that the deck can do very well.

Playing competitively

Anime Boston last month was pretty cool. We got to see all kinds of fun events and make fun of people's costumes. Typically, when I go(well, used to go) to anime conventions I would buy all kinds of art and little toys. Along with Chelsea, the 2 of us have more fun just being in the environment and joining a few panels. You don't always have to "fully" participate to have fun. Something I COULD have participated in was the gaming area at Anime Boston!

Thanks to AllIsBrawl for the Pic, and no I'm not in it

The place was pretty packed, and there were tournaments all day. The most popular games were, in no particular order:
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Halo Reach
Marvel vs Capcom 3
Mortal Kombat 2011
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

Out of all of those, I can only play 2 of them, and I actually only sat to play one. Of course, that is Marvel vs Capcom. I was a little bummed that none of the consoles had DLC. That means there were no Shuma Garoths and no Jill(my character). When I got the chance to sit down and play, I was up against a guy with a game pad. The best "Arcade Stick and button" game pads will run any player over $100, so it is meant for the serios, competitive gamer. That is also EXACTLY what I played against. The guy was using Wesker, and 2 other characters that I don't even know. Why don't I know the rest of his team you ask? Because he didn't need either of the others! I thought that my team of Viper/Morrigan/Cap was good enough to at least kill 1 competitive player's team members, but I was sadly mistaken. I knew what was happening, but his reaction time was so much more than mine. In my opinion, Cap should have an advantage over Wesker because of America's multiple invulnerability states. This guy knew too much to fall for anything I threw at him. You can tell when people know what they're doing when they can start a combo chain from any point in the level. Even better when they know if they are at the level's limit, because cornering you opponent lets you juggle them even more easily. If you don't know how competitive MVC looks, check out youtube for "Wednesday Night Fight" videos. After that, check out a video of ME playing Marvel vs Capcom online and see if you can tell the difference in skill:

My Viper seems to be getting worse and worse every day

Marvel vs Capcom isn't the only competitive game out there. At Cumberland Farms(a gas station) I have overheard kids talking about how good they are at Call of Duty and Halo. "Dude, you should see my Head Shot count on Halo compared to Black Ops. My headshots are probably, like, 65% of my kills. On Black Ops its more like 40%. But get this. My buddy that has been playing since the game came out only has 500 more kills than me, and I've only been playing since May!" These kids were probably 19 year-olds just hanging out at the gas station. Now, the REAL kids who play Black Ops (and all the other Call of Duty games) are amazing at it. I was lucky enough to watch a few tournaments for Black Ops and I was amazed at what I was seeing. I call them kids because the 2 best players I watched were no more than 15 years old. I'm not a big fan of Call of Duty's multiplayer, as most of it is just team deathmatch. After a while, that just isn't fun to me. But these guys who play in tournaments are NASTY at this game. The kills they land are ridiculous at times to those of us who don't play. In multiplayer, Black Ops had a much smaller Health Pool than MAG, so when I enter a room and die, I figured that someone got a lucky hit on me with my 1 HP. After watching the videos, I can see that each kill they get is well deserved. In fact, I was pretty jealous at how good these guys are at this game.

I like to believe that I am pretty good at video games, but definently not enough to join anyone's tournament (except maybe Smash Bros. Brawl, that's a pretty easy game). My level of gaming aptitude is somewhere between the guy that lives down the street that actually practices at this game, while we button mash and the guy that I allowed to beat a level for me because it was too dificult. In order to take a game to the competitive scene, you have to be able to beat people who play seriously. That involves a lot of pratice for me. I'm not like the best players who know their way around a control better than they're own house. In the MVC video above, I missed a lot of the QCF attacks with Captain America, his shield slash. Every time you see me jump and attack for no reason, that is supposed to be a shield slash. Mirror's Edge is the same way. The top 100 players on the leaderboards of Mirror's Edge can manipulate the controller very naturally. I, on the other hand, play very "digitally" with small corrections here an there on the right stick for my point of view. I sweep the camera in the direction I need to for larger course corrections, another "noob tactic." Fortunately I'm getting closer and closer to that platinum trophy, so I must be doing something right.

Still, it makes you wonder, just how do people get THAT good at a game. After memorization, all of these players must have outstanding hand coordination. Playing something like Sonic, and Mirror's Edge to an extent, aren't too difficult to me because it mostly comes down to timing. Maybe there are some kind of exercises out there to learn how to manipulate the analog sticks better. Perhaps I should just carry my Dual Shock with me at all times. While I'm walking, you can imagine me just fiddling with the control, practicing my Jill Feral Mode change-ups or my Mirror's Edge trigger button combinations. Pretty dumb looking if you ask me. If someone told me that is how they "top 8'd" a Marvel Vs Capcom competition though, I would believe it.

Deck # 64: Spellcasters!

I wanted to post about this last night, but unfortunately, Blogger was down and I couldn't log into my account. However, I spent the day putting together my latest thoughts on paper. Cardboard actually.

The deck is code-named "Boomers" right now, and is actually a lot of fun despite not having a real "build." As you guys can see with the title, the deck is Spellcaster themed. Don't click out of the blog though, as this isn't your kid brother's Spellcaster deck, this deck is designed to punish your opponent for even thinking about touching your cards, just like Warrior's Strike.

Gotta get some Super Rare Versions

As I said, the premise of the deck is to expend your opponent's resources (Again) with the magic of Gemini Spark and Magical Dimension. With those cards, if your opponent wants to do anything to your monsters, you get to remove an additional card of theirs and bring a new one to the table. I am running 3 of each in this deck. Because of this, we need a decent amount of Spellcasters and Gemini monsters. Luckily, Crusader of Endymion(Once again) answers the call and is accompanied by Tuned Magician. Of course you don't want to actually use Tuned Magician as a tuner monster unless it is to your advantage, instead, it is food for Spark and M.Dimension plays.

3 Crusader
3 Tuned Magician
3 Gemini Spark
3 M.Dimension

So that is the basic skeleton. Three sparks to use with 6 Gemini, 4 M.Dimension to use with 6 Spellcaster. This skeleton is NOT the final build, but I really want it to look like the above. At the minute I am testing 1 one gemini (Neos Alius, the only other Gemini Spellcaster is Doom Shaman) to bump it up to 7. Spellcasters on the other hand are plentiful. These are the best level 4 and lower spellcasters in the game that could be used in this deck:

Apprentice Magician
Breaker the Magical Warrior
Crystal Seer
Effect Veiler
Eccentric Boy
Any Gravekeepers
Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress
Magical Exemplar
Summoner Monk
Night's End Sorcerer

So right now, my current build is using Breaker, Exemplar, Veiler and Night's End as the ONLY other level 4 and lower spellcasters in the deck. I did try Gravekeepers, and it seems nice, but isn't quite as deadly without Necrovalley. Kycoo seems like a good side deck choice, but I decided against him in the main. Summoner Monk may be decent to get rid of "dead" Sparks and M.Dimensions in your hand. I'm not a big fan of Monk in any deck except for Stardust Assault decks(and now Red Nova decks), so he didn't make it in Boomers. I also don't think there are any good level 4 spellcasters to use his effect for either. I suppose you can get Lyla out of your deck with Monk. Lyla ALMOST made it into this deck if it wasn't for the fact that she is light. Right now, the deck has only 5-7 darks, which is very little for "Chaos." Lyla would have been far too many lights, bumping my 6 up and my 5 down.

The cards I do like are Exemplar and Night's End. They are a bit weak in theory, but strong in practice. Exemplar's Earth Attribute weakens her even more, but being able to summon a Night End from my grave for using 1 spell card is spectacular. I hate Plaguespreader zombie so Night End works very well. Some people say that Gale would be better, but it is important to keep the spellcaster count as high as possible, or else each of those 3 M.Dimensions may not see play. Night End is also my dark target to use towards the Chaos skeleton. Two Chaos Sorcerers and Dark Armed join the deck to punish the opponent even MORE to putting my cards in the graveyard. I also get to remove them if necessary for Allure. Sometimes, running boss cards makes me want to run Monster Reincarnation, but I haven't decided on that for this deck. Monster Reincarnation is a great way to make dead cards live. It works the best in decks that use the graveyard a lot, or decks that have ridiculous boss monsters like Judgement Dragon.

Scrap Dragon? Pfft. I have a pole.

Spellcasters have access to a couple of boss monsters that don't require anything outrageous to summon it:
Delg the Dark Monarch
Endymion, the Master Magician
Ice Master
Ice Queen
Sorciere de Fleur

Endymion and Ice Master are cool to get out, but their requirements to activate their effects are stupid. Delg is a bit subpar, but it is indeed a boss or sorts. Probably the best part about him is that he gets his effect even when he is special summoned! If your opponent makes a Catastor and tries to attack your Crusader, you can M.Dimension him to summon Delg. Then Delg activates because he is mandatory. Mill 2 then remove whatever you want from the opponent's grave. You don't get to destroy a card though unless you plan to miss the timing on Delg's effect. Ice queen doesn't have any effect when she gets summoned, so you're free to pop any card you want with M.Dimension. When your opponent destroys her with Dark Hole or Mirror Force, you get to put M.Dimension back into your hand or any other spell card in your grave. Monster Reborn anyone? Another card that doesn't miss its timing is Sorciere De Fleur which just got released in the YGO WC11 video game. Her effect is mandatory, so it activates after M.Dimension resolves. That means you can actually summon the monster you destroyed with M.Dimension, then summon it to your field! This is where Exemplar and Night End get cool again. I like to keep exemplar and Night End on the field with M.Dimension set. Tribute Night End with M.D. and summon Sorciere, then destroy a monster. Then summon a monster with Sorciere. Use Exemplar's effect to bring back Night End, then synchro with your opponent's monster for game. Most people believe Sorciere is a bad card, and she is by herself, but with combos like this she rocks.

I'll keep building Boomers as much as I can. Keep a look out for more info. I don't have Night's End Sorcerers in real life so I can't move into Beta testing. Feel free to try the deck on your own though!

Is this cheating?

I was talking to Chelsea on the ride home from locals last night. I ran my latest Koaki Deck and did not get into top 8. I still like the deck a lot, but sometimes you just can't get out of a bad situation (or sometimes you can, but you don't do it very well). So we were talking a bit about what I could run instead.

BURN EVERYTHING

Amaryllis is a very special deck to me. It can beat just about anything and is as original as any of my other decks. With all of the cards going around that eat your own life points away, it seems only natural to play something that helps your opponent eat their own life points even more easily! For those who don't know, the Amaryllis deck has a steady burn element build in. It is not like D.D. Dynamite where you inflict all of the damage in large chunks. In Amaryllis, your goal is to constantly burn your opponent until they lose the will to continue the duel. In fact, I've had many moments where the opponent just realizes "I can't avoid the damage any more, so I scoop." The other thing that Amaryllis can do is utilize the best plant engine in the game. Well, I should say that plant synchro really is only 5-8 cards. Of course when that engine comes out, people think I am playing the traditional Plant Synchro deck, but my goal is not to synchro big monsters and attack for game. Doing that is just a plus.

So what is wrong with Amaryllis? Well, my current build has always been inconsistent. Three Amaryllis, 3 Trade-In, 3 Tytannial, 1 Monster Reincarnation. Just looking at that screams "hand-clogging", and it does happen. The part that is supposed to be nice is that I can draw into many cards that can make those big plants live. When I don't draw into those, I lose. The deck can also be sided against excessively, just like Plant Synchro! Fortunately, the deck has more than 1 win condition, so it is failry easy to lose a card and still have other options.

In this quickee post, I showed a picture of my playset binder, which conveniently showed pieces of the Amaryllis deck. But to you guys that could be pretty lame. Everyone can make a playset binder out of bad cards! So let's take a look at what I COULD make if I really wanted.

In my binder, I have playsets for
Various forms of Chaos
Various forms of Plant Synchro
Lightsworns
Scraps
Rituals (except Herald)
Synchrons
Geminis
Beasts
80% of Hero Beat
90% of Flamvells
Nordics
Koakis

So if I wanted to build something that is a meta deck, I probably could. Like I said in the beginning of the post, we were talking about what decks I should run, and hey, I could run a meta-deck if I liked. Junk Doppel? Got it. Chaos Plant Synchro? Got it. Twilight? Sure. Of course I really don't want you guys to read about how well my Gravekeepers or Hero Beat is doing. It should be much more entertaining to read about how I took Nordics to Regionals on the 30th(Post on that later).

I actually want to restart my Intro to Chaos project. There are many new options out there and monsters are more important than ever, which is something that Intro has great options for. Keep a look out for that as I search for my next original/main deck!

What makes a gaming blog?

The Playstation network is still down and may be for another TWO weeks. My boredom is on the rise and it is difficult to make blog posts because of what my next post would be about (Competitive gaming). I'm having to resort to playing games that I may not necessarily be in the mood to play, but I need to make some progress on it. In between doing that, I spend my time reading a few specific web pages. I mostly jump back and forth from Yugioh to general gaming, and refresh pages after that. Yeah, I'm that bad. However, there are certain gaming sites that I HATE to go to, even though they are such a well established source of information. I love to read about previews for new games, reports on what developers are doing, deals on games, and things like that.
What I DON'T want to see is this:

Or this:

Not that its a bad picture. Thank you Sam Wise @ Cosplay.com

Nor do I want to read a news article about how a kick cracked an xbox controller over his Father's head. I understand that some days are slower than other's for news. I also understand that "luls" on the internet is the greatest experience anyone can ever share with another (it's not). But when I go to a gaming blog to read about gaming, I want exactly that.

Some blog format websites do reflective articles on slower days, which is much better than copying and pasting an article some 13-year-old found funny. The reflective articles are things like asking the audience how THEY feel about something. Since a lot of people read these blogs, they will gladly comment and start up some great conversation. If I was a big-time blog author, I would much rather spark conversation between my readers than get strings of "LOL!" as replies. I was skimming through a few video game blogs just last week to see what sort of content were in these multiple year old blogs. One of them really disappointed me, and I would say that 80% of his posts were worthless to me. That isn't to say that some people don't love internet humor, Chelsea has plenty of friends of read Internet Humor all day, and they are still nice people. I just think that if anyone wanted to see models play Xbox, they would know that google exists to help you find that.

The other ways to "Hero Beat"

The Hero Beat deck, Neos Alius, other 1900 attackers, maybe a cyber dragon or 2 or 3, plus lots of spells and traps is very popular right now. Even with such fast decks on the market, Hero Beat can do what it does very well. The deck is designed to slow the opponent down to your pace. You often always have an answer to what your opponent tries to do, and eventually, they will get frustrated enough at never being able to play out their combos. This war of attrition works very well with how the decks has monsters that can be summoned immediately(so long as its a normal summon). Many versions of the deck use Miracle Fusion, this way, if your normal summon doesn't work as planned, you can pull the moment back in your favor. It is pretty cool, but what is even cooler is that MANY decks can play exactly like Hero Beat! And to be honest, I hate Light Gemini/Little City/Hero Beat/Alius.dek or whatever you want to call it, but there are definitely some fun alternatives out there.

Chaos Stun is equally as responsive as Hero Beat. The "Stun" part means that it focuses on answering what the opponent does, rather than having its own proactive combos. The best Chaos Stun decks use monsters similar to what you would find in Hero Beat: Thunder King Raioh and Doomcaliber Knight. Not everyone has Doomcals (myself included) and T.kings are on the rise in popularity. Once Gold series 4 is released, I know that Stun will make a come-back. As I was saying, it does a lot of the same things that Hero Beat does, it may even have MORE answers to tough situations. The deck has 2 boss monsters that Hero Beat won't/can't have, Chaos Sorcerer and Dark Armed Dragon. Most decks have 3-5 outs to monster cards in Chaos Stun - Bottomless, Warning and Judgment. If they don't use those cards, there is a good chance that the T.king, Doomcal or Chaos Sorc you summon will at least pay for itself. Put Dark Armed behind these cards and your opponent will run out of resources very quickly. Of course, you can expand the deck with synchro abilities. The popular one right now is Dekoichi and Black Salvo. Running these alone takes a bit of the stun away from the deck, but the cards aren't bad at all. It give you the ability to destroy the field with Black Rose Dragon or attack over Stardust Dragon. You just have to be careful because with every extra card you add in, the more you move away from a controlling deck to a combo oriented deck.

Koakis are supposed to be the real anti-monster deck. The deck has Doomcalibur knights in the form of Rock monsters and one can negate traps and the other can negate spells, all by choice. In fact, when you combine the Koaki rocks with other Stun monsters, you can make a Rock Stun deck that is almost as suppressive as Hero Beat. The rock lineup includes Neo Spacian Grand Mole, that can bounce some of the WORST monsters you can pit against the deck - Thought Ruler Archfiend, Scrap Dragon(in scrap decks), Heraklinos(without war chariot). Another rock is Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo, which is a great anti-monster monster. So great that I wish I had 10 of them, but there is still hope with Gold Series 4. If you don't want to go with Rock stun, you can still build pure Koakis. Probably the biggest selling point to the pure version of the deck is that the monsters are even BIGGER than Hero Beat. You still get the koaki rocks and a few tech monsters, but you also get Urnight and Crusader. So long as you have the iron core in your hand, which is easy with gold sarc and pot of duality, you can toolbox ANY rock out of your deck. Excessive backrow? Use Sandman. Gorz in hand? Use Guardian. Opponent has to topdeck to win? Use Wall. Opponent is losing? Use Crusader. You are losing? Use Boulder. The monster lineup is just as skillful as Hero Beat. The other big deal about the koaki deck is the broken spell and trap support. By broken, I mean their effects are VERY good, you just have to have that iron core in your hand to use them. The deck gets a war chariot that is fairly easy to use. There is also Iron Core Luster, that will negate any spell or trap so long as you have the iron core in hand. Perhaps the best card, that has one me many games last format, is Reckoned Power, which will Delta Crow all of their face-down spells and traps. I say it was good in the last format because there are a lot of decks you may face now where Reckoned Power should have been MST. The simple solution is just to side deck Reckoned Power. In fact, Koakis have the best side deck options because they can run any spells and traps after your 2 Iron Cores, 2-3 Gold Sarcs and Pot of Dualities.

Pure Gemini Beat is my new toy. I haven't gotten all of the kinks out of it, but is a lot of fun. It takes a key feature in Hero Beat and expands it across multiple cards, and that is replacing your cards after your opponent gets rid of them. In Hero Beat, you have Gemini Spark, Hero Blast, and Honest. In the pure Gemini deck, you also have Gemini Spark that you can use with ANY card in your deck(and there are plenty of 1900 geminis to choose from). They also have access to Supervise, which is the best Gemini support in the game right after Spark. Supervise does 2 things: 1) It replaces your monsters with other monsters when your opponent responds to you. If they destroy your field, you will get 1 monster back from your grave yard. If you attack into an Honest, you will get a monster back. If you lose your monster to Mirror Force or D.prison, you can summon another and attack again. 2) Supervise gives you access to the gemini monster effects, some better than others. Evocator Chevelier can destroy 1 card by sending Supervise to the grave. After that, you get to summon a gemini from the grave. Blazewing Butterfly can tribute itself with Supervise to get a gemini from your grave, then Supervise will get you another, turning your 2 card investment into 2 monsters. Tuned Magician, equipped with Supervise becomes a level 4 tuner. You can synchro for a level 8 Synchro Monster like Black Brutdrago, then use Supervise to get a gemini back.
The gemini deck can also run a boss monster, the 2800 ATK Phoenix Gearfried. Gearfried's effect is pretty nasty, but shouldn't be used as the primary function of the deck. Each time your opponent activates a spell card, Gearfried activates and summons a gemini from your graveyard. It may not sound like much, but the key idea is that Gearfried grants you "pluses" while it is on the field. With every extra summon you get, that is 1 more resource your opponent has to spend to get rid of it. If you summoned Gearfried without spending a lot of resources (such as Featherizer and Birthright) then you did even better!

There are other decks that play similarly that don't require insane combos to win the duel. I picked these 3 because they are my favorites and because I have seen them do very well. Feel free to leave comments about other decks that work this way. The idea is to have as few dead draws as possible, with a monster-lineup that can still destroy your opponent. Then you need a system that can replace your cards when your opponent responds to them, wasting away their resources.

Gold Series 4: Pyramid Edition

From Konami's product site:

The original Dueling legends are back!
Introducing Gold Series 4: Pyramids Edition, the biggest and best Gold Series ever!
Available only through hobby stores and distributors, each box of Gold Series 4 includes one 25-card pack plus 1 of 3 high-quality rubber Game Mats.

New 50-Card Set

Gold Rare foil cards are only available through Gold Series sets! Since 2008, each Gold Series has collected some of the most exciting cards ever created, and re-forged them with gleaming gold foil technology. Now Gold Series 4 does it again, with high-demand cards from across the years.

No matter what state your collection is in, there’s something for you in Gold Series 4:

* Powerful, hard-to-get cards are easier than ever to find, like Doomcaliber Knight and Tytannial, Princess of Camellias.
* Make your Deck shine with new Gold Rare versions of cards you might already own, like Gravekeeper’s Spy and Royal Oppression.
* Get Gold Rare versions of your favorite monsters from the TV series, like Obelisk the Tormentor and Five-Headed Dragon.

If you look at the other 3 Gold Series, none of them have cards that were released within almost a year of the gold series print. Infernity Archfiend was in the video game from May 2009 and the Gold Series it was reprinted in was from July 2010. Gold Series (May)2009 had cards from Phantom Darkness, which was released in February of 2008. So with this small trend we have to go on, you can expect that cards from these sets won't make an appearance in Gold Series 4:

Duelist Revolution
Starstrike Blast

Now, they did say that this will be the best Gold Series yet, so I'm sure it isn't impossible for a Duelist Revolution card to sneak it, but it seems pretty unlikely.

Gold Series 4 will have 18 Gold Rare cards and 32 common cards. The common cards have been following a couple of themes each year, so we also expect it to do the same this year. Gold series 3 had Amazons, Fairies, Blackwings, Worms, and a couple of Ice Barrier cards. Gold series 2009 had lots of Monarch deck cards, the original Six Samurai, a few Hero cards and their support, Phantom Beast monsters, and a few other miscellaneous cards. The very first Gold series simply had commons of a lot of popular cards. They weren't trying to follow a theme(I'm sure there weren't many themes back then anyway), so the selection looks pretty random.

Here in 2011, there are plenty of themes to make common reprints!
Lightsworn commons - Jain, Ryko(Turbo pack), Garoth(Turbo Pack), Lumina(CP), Gragonith
Psychics! - Krebons(Turbo pack), Snail, Mind Master, Doctor Cranium
Koakis - Crusader, Sandman, Guardian, Power Hand
Morphtronics
Aliens
And lots more.

The teaser on Konami's Website also mentioned old, hard to get cards for collectors. Things like Toon cards and Millennium Shield, cards that may have been short print or come from Jump and Manga promos and weirdo Fast Food promotions. Millennium Shield comes from a McDonald's promo, along with Goddess of the Whim, that was also advertised. Let's take a look at some other weirdo cards that could be commons:
Cosmo Queen - McDonald's pack
Frog the Jam - McDonald's pack
White-Horned Dragon - McDonald's and Manga
Beastking Barbaros - Jump

There are also lots of secret rare cards that get reprints as commons in Gold Series sets. I have a few in mind that I would love to see get rarity DOWNGRADES:
Victoria: SOVR
Core Transport Unit: ABPF
Koa'ki Meiru Bergzak: TSHD
Cactus Bouncer: ABPF
Ice Queen: SOVR
Greed Grado: ANPR
Hardened Armed Dragon: RGBT

Now onto the best part, the Gold Rares! There is always a debate on what should take up a Gold Rare slot and what shouldn't. We already have 6 cards that have been confirmed by Konami to be Gold Rares:
Doomcaliber Knight
Tytannial, Princess of Camellias
Gravekeeper’s Spy
Royal Oppression
Obelisk the Tormentor
Five-Headed Dragon
It really isn't a bad list at all. The other good thing is that a lot of massively reprinted commons like MST have already been reprinted, so we don't have to worry about those. So what kind of cards do I expect to see in this?

Archlord Krystia - Yes I am one of the ones that don't believe Krystia will be in the new structure deck.
Fossil Dyna Pachycephelo - Amazing card that deserves a reprint.
Gemini Spark - Very popular card right now to combine with Neos Alius. The only version of this is in common, so I hope it will get the Gold treatment.
Royal Tribute - Pretty old card that hasn't been reprinted in a while. Tribute found its way on the Semi-limit list, so apparently it is important enough for Gold foil.
Mind Crush - A few people have been asking me to trade them Mind Crushes and, of course, I tell them no. Not very many people main-deck it, but those who don't will use it in their side-deck. That may not give it a Gold slot, but it would be pretty nice.
Chaos Sorcerer - This is one of those mass reprints that everyone will probably hate. It is definitely being used enough to give it a slot.
Morphing Jar - Everyone will hate me for this one too, but Morphing Jar is another old card that should have been a Gold Rare a while ago.
Lyla, Lightsworn Huntress - Rising in price, the only Lylas you can get are from LODT. Granted the ultimate rare would look a lot better than the gold version, I can see this getting a reprint.
Lonefire Blossom - I would like to see at least one more plant in this besides Tytannial. Lonefire is my pick, but a gold Spore is also possible(and a lot less cool).

Of course, there are plenty of cards that people WANT to see in this that probably(hopefully) won't get included. Most of the time, it is because the card is too new to include in this year's Gold Series. Other times, the card just needs to stay rare to make it good. Some of them are even just a waste of a gold slot!
Pot of Duality (Too new)
X-Saber Hyunlei (Possible Gold Print. Highly prized.)
X-Saber Darksoul (TCG Exclusives get get gold prints?)
Solemn Warning (Too new)
Spore (Waste)
Card Trooper (Waste)
Dimensional Prison (Waste)
Pot of Avarice (Maybe. I would play Gold Avarice if it existed.)
Ally of Justice Catastor (Maybe. I guess not everyone has it, even though you can buy HA1 and a new SE is coming out soon.)
Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier (Too good! Just buy the special edition!)
Book of Moon (waste)

I'm really looking forward to the new Gold Series. The price did go up, which is a big turn off, but I will definitely put all store credit from winning towards it. All I really want are Doomcaliburs for Chaos decks, Xsabers for a Beast hybrid, and Fairies for my Cell Spam deck and Fossil Dyna for my Koakis. Everything else will become trade bait unless they release some real killer cards!

No Game, All Pain

As a lot of you already know, the Playstation network has been down for a couple of weeks now. For those who don't know, after the hack attempt that froze up Sony's servers, there was a pretty major "security breach" on Sony's network. There have been warnings all over the internet that account holders should change passwords and keep an eye on their credit card and bank statements. Immediately after the security breach, Sony's servers were shut down for "maintenance" as they attempt to encrypt all of our information again. Also, as always, Sony jumps into legal action, and investigation is taking place in many different federal investigation agencies. Sony went after someone who leaked information to get into the console, and they get DDoS attacks from a community that felt wronged? Makes perfect sense. Whether this helped the real criminals gain access to account information is unknown to me, but it is a bit of a coincidence that all of this is happening in such a short amount of time.

Many of the people who don't have lucrative assets tied to their PSN credit account are worried about the Console itself. Will the breach mess with our trophies? What about cloud saves through Playstation Plus service? Will we get any kind of compensation for the time and money lost because the servers had to be shut down? Of course Sony has only said positive things regarding gameplay careers, but any company in a tight spot like this would only want to tell their customers the best. I wouldn't really be surprised if the sync process for trophies goes haywire, especially with millions of users all doing it at the same time.

I'd hate to lose this.

The games I were playing before the network shutdown were MAG and MvC3. MAG is an online only game. Everthing you do is with other people. MvC isn't strictly online, but I dont really have anyone to play it with at home. Besides, the trophies I need to get for it are online trophies. With the network down, I can't play either of these. Sad, I know. There are some offline games I need to work on though, even if I'm not 100% in the mood to play them.

I don't know about you guys, but I have a huge gaming backlog. I play games whenever I'm in the mood to play it. Believe it or not, there was a time where I WASN'T in the mood to play MAG. At that point, I was playing Fallout New Vegas and Disgaea 3. Once my mood changes, I'll pick up a different game. It isn't always about what is new and hot. Today, I feel like failing more at Mirror's Edge(post on this coming soon), so I'll probably play that and New Vegas in between.

Of course, if I had an Xbox, I could be playing that. But...no lol I'm fine with my PS3 that I can't play online with. Please get everything up and running soon Sony, I'm dyin' over here!