Yu-Gi-Oh 2011 Part 3

There are more things to hit the game this year than last year. We have a lot of awesome reprints that many, many decks can use. There are new cards and a brand new monster type that give decks more options than ever before to how they want create field presence and obtain resources. New information has been dropped to distributors by Konami for a new Product scheduled in October 2011. Remember how I said 2011 will be major? Yeah, Konami isn't done yet.

The hottest news in Yugioh today is the new Legendary Collection 2, that focuses on the GX era. If you bought the first Legendary Collection binder like I did(mostly for the binder), then you are familiar with the contents. In LC-EN, we got 3 unplayable versions of the Egyptian God cards. After that we got 3 Ultra Rare Alternate Art cards for Blue-Eyes, Red-Eyes, and Dark Magician. Finally, it included the first 6 packs, all from the original Yugioh series. It was a fun little piece of history that was mostly intended for the casual player. LC-EN02 would change that, as it has enough content for any sort of player. Well, that is according of the poorly leaked set of information. In fact, I was tempted not to post this at all until there is a product page on Konami's Product Site. In the interest of time and all things hype, I included it in this post.

Only Available as a Secret Rare from Tactical Evolution

Legendary Collection 2: the Duel Academy Years (LC02-EN) has only these confirmed cards: Uria, Lord of Searing Flames; Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder; and Raviel, Lord of Phantasms. Those aren't too game-impacting, but the other contents are. According to the info leak, there is 5 9-card packs or a hand selected 266 card set. Each pack will have 1 Secret, 1 Super, 1 Ultra, 1 Rare and 5 common cards. The cards to be included are supposed to be "some of the top cards of the GX era (2005-2008)." I for one neither played or watched Yugioh GX, so I am unsure of what kind of cards to expect. Obviously there are lots of HERO cards(already confirmed Elemental HERO Tempest) and a few popular cards like (confirmed)Ultra Rare Instant Fusion. A lot of people around the internet are expecting Venomiga, Neos Wiseman, Dark Armed Dragon, Crystal Beasts, and other cards at assorted rarities. The impact this has on the game is that a lot of these cards are brand new for new players. They also finish off a number of deck types that got support recently, so your friends who wanted to make Hero Beat or a Six Sam hybrid, may now have the chance to do so. Expect this product to sell very well once more of the cards are confirmed.

Yugioh 2011 Part 3.5
The name of the game right now is consistency and the more consistent your deck is, the easier time you will have. Consistency isn't just running multiple draw cards and multiple search cards, it also has to do with
-The number of each copy of a card in your deck.
-The number of cards in your deck with similar effects.
-The number of cards in the deck that cannot be used until certain conditions are met.
Back in the day, the only real consistency you got was from running 3 of each 1800 ATK normal monster. Some man-eater bugs, and assorted spells and traps. If you look at a lot of winning decks nowadays, the same holds true. Glads for example use a very, very small monster pool and spells and traps that do mostly the same thing. The deck could easily run more monsters if the owner wanted, but that will decrease the deck's ability to perform the same actions every duel. Some people think that that ability can be too strong. I read an interesting point the other day from Jason Grabher-Meyer's posts on TCGplayer.com that talked about certain really, really good cards that are out right now. The article eventually points back to how this relates to our banlist. A very, very good strategy right now is running a low monster count in Legendary Six Samurai decks. With 3 Smoke Signal, 1 Reinforcement of the Army, and 3 Six Samurai United, it is pretty easy to get to the cards you want the most in your deck. A lot of decks have(or once had)this ability to go deep into their deck and pull out extremely consistent strategies. Another example that Jason gave was Nordics, which have 3 Fetters, 3 Mega-Hamster, and Sangan for most people, all for a very consistent way to get Tanngjostr. This is another sound strategy that gives you extremely high chances of doing what your deck is meant to do.

Not the worst part of the deck, but 3 is a little excessive

So how does this relate to the banlist and ultimately Yugioh in 2011? Well, in a couple of ways. Consistency isn't bad for the game at all, but sometimes it goes a little too far. Here's a list of examples of how bad it can go:
1) Nordics can flip Fetters anytime to get any Nordic out of the deck. The best nordic is summoned during your opponent's battle phase, and/or requires protection for 1 full turn. The 2nd best nordic is a 3-way tie between 3 of them that do mostly the same thing. You normal summon them, then synchro. Either way, nothing that is actually "ridiculous."
2) Frog Monarchs have Multiple Swap Frogs, Dupe Frog, and One for One. If you get even 1 of those in your opening hand, your frog engine becomes alive. The engine itself doesn't do anything. When you combine it with other cards, you create a system that is almost self-sustaining. For now, it can't win the game on it's own, but it will be able to once we get a few more legalized cards.
3) Psychics had 2 extremely consistent cards that could fetch almost ANYTHING from your deck. If you had either one, you can play any card your heart desired. Even if you don't draw into Mind Master, there used to be multiple Emergency Teleports that could Fetch Mind Master out. Teleport provides the deck great consistency, but when combined with Mind Master, it becomes a game winning play, only really needing Mind Master.
4) Six Sams have FIVE spell cards to get monsters from the deck. Perhaps the least powerful is Shien's Dojo, then Asceticism, then Shien's Smoke Signal, then Reinforcement of the Army, then Gateway of the Six Samurai. Only 2 of those are limited to 1. Dojo is considered weak because it can only really pull Shien's Squire from the deck with ease. However, Squire+Kizan makes Shi En. Not the most consistent strategy in the game, but pretty balanced. Asceticism is a step up, and can pull better monsters from your deck in almost the same way Dojo does. Smoke signal has a limitation of being for level 3 monsters so that does in fact weaken it. It doesn't become a serious problem until you realized that there are 3 of them, 1 ROTA and 3 Six Samurai United that turns those searches into even more of an issue.

On the Flipside of consistent strategies that are still legal, there are ones that are not (as)legal anymore.
1) Blackwings had multiple whirlwinds and multiple Kaluts. Unlike Gateway, Black Whirlwind requires normal summons to work, meaning that it will most likely only activate once per turn. Almost similar to Six Sams, Blackwings could search out cards that could be summoned easily. From there, they are rewarded with either 2 Monsters on the field, or 1 new Synchro Monster. Kalut is also searchable by Whirlwind which provides competitive support for the deck. The deck itself has a lot of support, but none of it is so dangerous or consistent that it can turn a 5 card hand into a completely committed field. On top of that, the 2nd support card, Icarus Attack was limited to 2. So here we have a deck with a less consistent strategy that was tamed.
2) Rescue Cat is cute and fun. Hey, you may as well call it Rescute Cat. In Flamvell Cat Synchro, you could use Summoner Monk to get Cat out of your deck. Then you could synchro an Airbellum and Monk together to make Arcanite Magician. From there you could attack for 2400+1600(or whatever other card you summon with Cat) or blow up 2 cards on your opponent's field for the price of 1 Normal summon and 1 spell card. Seems pretty solid if you ask me. In X-sabers, you could pull Darksoul out of the deck with Airbellum. That makes Hyunlei, the best level 6 monster Rescue Cat can make in my opinion, which destroys your opponent's spells and traps. If you lose Hyunlei to Bottomless Trap hole, its okay because Darksoul will get you another X-saber monster. Cat was banned before pure beasts could make a debut. With Rescue cat you could pull our Elephun and Mine Mole and make Naturia Beast, Mole activates letting you draw a card! You could search out Cat with Giant Germ, use the effect on your turn, then Gold Sarco for Dark Desertapir and do it again. This combo never worked because Cat was banned before Duelist Genesis was released. Also, compared to more consistent strategies, Rescue Cat was a boss monster for your deck. That means your strategy can revolve around it yes, just as much as preparing your graveyard for Judgment Dragon. The difference here is that there are stronger cards that are Limited, Semi-Limited, and even unlimited.


I believe that the real way to decide what will be changed on a banlist is to figure out what strategies are just too consistent for their own good. It isn't the boss monsters or "power crept" effects(like Fullhelmknight) that make things bad, it is the potency of their consistency. Believe it or not, Konami probably actually likes cool combos that can secure you the game. But the power cards don't become an issue until the strategy is just too easy to perfom. Cards like Stratos(which can search for more copies of itself.) are limited to 1, Dandylion was too easy to mill at 2, and so on. What is scary is that a few cards we have now are pretty consistent and there is no real way to say how dangerous they are to the game. A great example is Pot of Duality, which provides a way for decks to attempt to grab cards out of their deck. It may not go as deep into the deck as RotA, or provide you with additional resources like Charge of the Light Brigade, but it does accelerate your strategy at least a turn or 2 in advance. If you look around the internet, some players think that Duality will be part of the September banlist, ESPECIALLY after the reprint. If anything, I could imagine it going to 2, but the card isn't as dangerous as some of the consistent strategies I listed above. I'm sure we will get at least one format where everyone can use that Super Rare Duality until Konami tells us that it is too much at 3.

In any case, if overly-accessible strategies is the problem to fix, then I expect to see something happen to Smoke Signal, Six Sam United, Miracle Fusion, Mind Master, Formula Synchron and Monster Reborn. In all honesty, most of our other cards are okay. Try to remember that having awesome cards isn't a bad thing, even in 2011 when we get a LOT of awesome stuff. We're all supposed to be exciting about powerful cards, right?