Unlimited cards are becoming more and more possible with power creep in Yugioh. As new, powerful cards are created, older ones that aren't seeing any play or are easily countered by cards most people use in their main deck can be taken off of the banlist. This is especially true with XYZ monsters, cards that were based on level or less of a threat than ever and most decks will have some sort of toolbox to place good effect monsters on the field.
Judgment Dragon - No matter what anyone says, having 3 Judgment Dragons in Lightsworn does not make the decks that much more consistent. The cards that make JD live on your own turn are Charge of the Light Brigade, Solar Recharge, and Celestia. We do have 3 Solar Recharge which is nice, and most people don't even like running 1 tribute monster alongside 3-6 special summoned bosses. That leaves Charge of the Light Brigade as the best Judgment creating tool in the deck. As far as the rest of the cards go, we have Ryko that has a flip effect(very predictable), Lyla that can bait out spells and traps(a MST at the cost of a normal summon), and a few other normal summoned monsters that don't do anything too serious. Perhaps their best is Lumina, which can fetch other Lightsworns from the graveyard. Of course she is limited to 1 also, which makes 2 of their best cards limited. Combine this with Dark monsters in order to make a Chaos deck and consistency drops even more. Let it be known that Lightsworns, Twilight, and Chaossworns are not bad decks. It is however always based on luck, more so than other decks. In my opinion, the 3rd JD is a threat when you are able to summon more than 1 in 1 turn (because you were lucky enough to draw 2 and win with your other 4 cards).
Spirit Reaper - Has become less of a card that helps you win, to more of a card that stops your opponent from winning too soon. Many decks do not have a very good first turn summon or set outside of Reborn Tengu. Reaper is one of those cards that will keep you from wasting key components in your deck or not committing to the field. The effect to discard cards from your opponent is nice, but isn't something you will see in every deck. We have also lost another Debris Dragon, so a popular combo with Spirit Reaper is gone. Perhaps the only other good thing about Reaper are its stats: A Level 3 DARK Zombie monster. Remove 1 for Allure of Darkness. Revive it with Zombie Master to discard from your opponent's hand. Overlay it with other level 3 monsters. Nothing too game-breaking here.
Megamorph - Another step to help new players with less expensive cards. To most people, equip cards are not much of a threat. Megamorph may seem dangerous with its OTK potential, but until that moment arises, Megamorph is dead in your hand. If you want to play Megamorph the moment you get it, it is essentially a "1 for 1" just like Smashing Ground if you equip it to your opponent's card. If you equip it to your own monster, it will probably last for 2-3 instances of battle, or until you take your opponent's lifepoints too low. Let's not forget that some of our best boss monsters can destroy or banish cards, some of them care not about battle as they can't be destroyed, negate battle, or remove themselves from battle(and any equip card attached to it). Unless Advanced Ritual Art comes back, this probably wont be much of a threat. (Oh yeah, Avarice is down to 1).
Mystical Space Typhoon - Oh no, MORE backrow destruction. Of course, if anyone needed to hit more spells and traps, they could always side in Dust Tornado. MST is better than Dust, though, as you can play it from your hand! Since Konami says you can use 3, most of our fellow players will be using 3 despite the fact that they didn't main deck something like Dust Tornado. This isn't like Heavy Storm or Monster Reborn, that every deck should run no matter what. It also is not like Solemn Warning, where if we could use 3, then we probably would. Mystical Space Typhoon is one of the select few cards in the game that has a very, very comparable replacement. Some people actually do run the replacement in their main deck, and would gladly replace it with MST. People who only ran the 2 MST should not really feel a need to include a 3rd one in the main deck, especially if they never thought to main deck Dust Tornado.
We do need more reason than that to not run 3 MST. In my opinion, only decks with very strong search, draw power, and monster card effects can run 3 MST. If your opening hand has multiple MST in it, or your next card draw will be an MST, your deck has to be strong enough to survive with less and less useful monsters. Some decks can turn 1 monster into powerful field presence, such as summoning Tour Guide and making No. 17 Leviathan Dragon. Other decks do not make field presence so easily, such as summoning Laquari with a high chance of drawing multiple MST or a MST on your next turn. You may have 1-2 cards to protect your normal summon, or simply not summon a monster at all(and we know how risky that is). Heaven forbid if your opponent has a MST or Heavy Storm to blow up your protection.
I'm sure we could all do a little testing to find out who needs and who doesn't need a 3rd MST in their main deck. Just don't assume that every deck can explode onto the field after clearing all of your facedowns, some monsters just AREN'T that strong. Those that are, you should be siding against anyway.
Overload Fusion - For those who don't know, Overload Fusion is used to create 1 of three monsters:
Chimeratech Over Dragon, a monster with Attack limited only to the number of materials x800 and the more cards you use for it, the more monsters it can attack.
Cyberdark Dragon, a monster whose attack is equally to the number of monsters in your graveyard. It can also survive one instance of destruction.
Gatling Dragon: a card that has a coin flips chance to destroy other cards.
Gatling is made from very bad tribute monsters. Cyberdark has a decent deck made out of the dragunity engine, but (as with any dragunity deck) can be shut out with most side decks. Chimeratech however is pretty deadly. Of course it cannot attack your lifepoints multiple times per battle phase, but all it takes is 1 Future Fusion(a card that should have been banned a long time ago) to make Overload a live card. Until that happens, your most powerful cards are Cyber Dragons, Jinzos and probably Machina Fortress. Two of the three aren't overly threatening but Fortress may be an issue for some players. The 3 Overlad Fusions push these Chimeratech decks into a slightly stronger position with their Future Fusions and Limiter Removal(once again, a card that needs to be banned.) If you are having trouble against this deck, consider running Effect Veiler, D.D. Crow, Gorz, Crevice into the Different Dimension, etc.
Gravity Bind - A great card for control duels, but has lost power now more than ever. Not only are XYZ monsters an obvious cause, but many other decks have awesome level 3 monsters that care nothing about Gravity Bind. Some examples are XX-Saber Fulhelmknight, Tanngnjostr of the Nordic Beasts, Fly Fang, Spirit Reaper, Tour Guide of the Underworld, and many more. Gravity Bind also doesn't help you get rid of level 4 and higher monsters either, unlike Level Limit - Area B. The monsters will stay on the field in face up attack position and overlaying into a Leviathan Dragon is probably the only answer.
Icarus Attack - With all of the crazy cards out right now, Icarus seems pretty fair. Winged Beasts as a whole are the most powerful monsters in the game, and one of their best decks, Blackwings, has lost popularity. We also have more MST to take care of it the turn it is set. Then, we have things like Starlight Road and Chain Whirlwind to punish Icarus Attacks while more cards are on the field. You can even play around Icarus by not playing more than 2 cards until after you have cleared your opponent's Winged Beast. Pretty fair card in my opinion for an archetype that needs all the support it can get.
Hindsight - There usually isn't anything that NEEDS to be unlimited. Contrary to popular belief, the banlist isn't half bad right now for cards that aren't powerful any more. Maybe I can post about what some people WANT to see unlimited even though it may do more harm than good:
Mass Driver - A lot of people will say that Mass Driver is a useless card. It is only as good as your engine to destroy your opponent's lifepoints.
Book of Moon - A necessary evil to stop the "extra deck abuse." Of course, this makes decks like Xsabers, Heros and Koakis 10x better.
The Transmigration Prophecy - You can choose any cards you want, which is the problem. For your opponent, we have Crevice which has a similar effect. For yourself...well why would anyone want to -1 themselves to put 2 Tengu back into the deck?
Magical Stone Excavation - A -2 to get Monster Reborn or Dark Hole to your hand? If your opponent has 2 monsters and your play MSE from your hand(-1) discarding 2 cards(-1-2=-3) to get Dark Hole back(-3+1=-2) and then play Dark Hole(-2-1=-3) you get to destroy 2 monsters (-3+2=-1). In the end, you lose 3 cards in your hand to destroy all monsters, summon anything from the graveyard, etc, so long as your have discards ready.
Bottomless Trap Hole - Some decks don't even play ONE Bottomless and we are allowed TWO. The decks that do play 2 would love to play a third. Let's face it, none of us like not being able to put a monster on the field.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Konami Giveth and Konami Taketh Away(!?) Part 3
Semi-Limits aren't the most game changing reductions in Yugioh. There are actually a lot of people who don't think Semi-limits are worth implementing into the game at all. To those players, it extends a needlessly long Banlist into embarrassing numbers of cards and doesn't really punish players that lose 1 of their key pieces to their strategy. I believe that when Semi-Limiting a card from 3 to 2, it is designed to make cards with a powerful level of consistency slightly less consistent, without removing that cards usefulness to the game(i.e., Semi-limiting Debris Dragon or Destiny HERO - Malicious).
The list is different though as most of the cards on the list are formerly limited cards! So now players can enjoy using 2 of them in a deck until they are told otherwise.
Necro Gardna - Warrior Monster, Dark monster, and level 3. Those are some decent stats for Yugioh, if it had 500 ATK and was level 2, we would have a different story. As far as using it, Necro's only real purpose is to negate attacks, which it can only do once from the graveyard. There are many, many cards in the game that react to the opponent's attacks, so Necro Gardna's effect isn't anything new. Besides that, it is really only used in decks that can send cards from the deck to the graveyard, which is mostly Lightsworn Monsters. In lightsworns, I like to believe that Konami doesn't mind cool tricks like this while Lumina and, especially, Charge of the Light Brigade are limited to 1. Pretty balanced card effect, for now.
Summoner Monk - Once again, another card that was at 1. This guy however is slightly more dangerous with the advent of XYZ monsters. Summoner Monk can turn any spell card into an XYZ, so long as your opponent doesn't stop you. If you play Heavy Storm or MST, you are now down by 3 cards to your opponent's -2. Yes even though you put a 2500 or double Thunderking on the field, what exactly did it cost? Many decks don't even run Spell Cards that are Monk fodder except for Pot of Duality and Mystical Space Typhoon, further balancing its play. Want to include Genex Ally Birdman to the fray? It is a great combo that you can pull off a bit more consistently. Of course, all you need is a Monk, a Birdman, a Spell Card you don't mind pitching like Duality, and for your opponent to not Warning, Bottomless or Veiler your Arcanite or Blackrose dragon.
Tragoedia - This is one of the very few cards I disagree with changing. With Pot of Avarice gone(limited to 1), Tragoedia is a little less dangerous in late game Yugioh than in early game. The effect to permanently nab opponent's monsters was SLIGHTLY lessened by the fact that your opponent may Overlay their monsters into something with no level. Its effect to change its own level is slightly better now with XYZ monsters in your extra deck. I believe that these are all slightly fair effects with the amount of powerful monsters that exist. What makes Trag worse than Gorz is that Trag can't turn a duel around by itself. Your opponent could have an awesome field of Stardust Dragon, Steelswarm Roach and Junk Destroyer and lose it all to 1 Gorz.
Dewloren, Tiger King of the Ice Barrier - Once again, (OCG) players found ways to abuse having 3 Dewloren and that was with Fishborg Blaster. With Fishborg gone, we now have Diva and Surface to make our triple Dewlorens. This strategy isn't as powerful, but it can still happen. Better just semi-limit the card now(again) before someone finds a new Dewloren loop.
Destiny Draw - Finally, everyone has been asking for 2 Destiny Draws and Konami is finally ready for you to have it. Why? No real reason I'm sure. It is probably because of new Hero support in GENF and rereleased cards in the Duel Academy Binder in October. Destiny Draw has no other stipulations besides running Destiny HERO monsters. You don't have to skip your battle phase or forgo special summons, you are free to do whatever you like. The only balancing feature of Destiny Draw is the fact that you have to run Destiny HERO monsters in the first place. Of those, the only ones that have good effects are:
Destiny HERO - Diamond Dude
Destiny HERO - Malicious
Destiny HERO - Dasher
Destiny HERO - Defender
Destiny HERO - Plasma
Destiny HERO - Fear Monger
None of those cards have solitary, game changing effects except for Plasma. All of the others require other cards to be useful. There are many low tier decks with draw engines like Boon of the Meklord Emperor and Red Dragon Vase. Decks have to have really good monster cards to limit their drawing options.
Swords of Revealing Light - With Mystical Space Typhoon bumped to 3 and Heavy Storm back AND Giant Trunade gone, Swords is even less of a liability for the opponent. Stall and burn decks can still win against just about anyone, but those high tier decks have to draw pretty poorly to be beaten by a Swords of Revealing Light + Stealth Bird combo. It is a card game however and luck will always be a factor. Perhaps bumping Swords up to 2 helps out our stalling brethren(as well as new players.)
Call of the Haunted - We all wanted Monster Reborn banned in this list. Instead, Konami gave us another Call of the Haunted. Sure, CotH takes a turn to play and it can only get your own cards. Also with as much as 2 additional backrow destroying cards, CotH is even less powerful. What makes CotH pretty cool is that any cards that benefit from being destroyed work very well as revival targets, turning your opponent's MST into a relative loss for them. Sangan and Dandylion don't mind being destroyed after reviving them, and neither do Wisel and Grannel in your hand. CotH also pumps up decks that originally run 1, like my new Wonder Wand deck. It will actually pump up a lot of lower level decks, while keeping High tier decks the same, simply because they never ran CotH in the first place. Just because we have 2 doesn't mean you will see it in every deck. Some people simply don't have room for 1-shot revival on their side of the field.
Mind Crush - Is a good card but will always be down to luck. Hitting the first(and now only!) Smoke Signal with Mind Crush is a great start to a duel. Having 2 in the deck makes these plays a little easier. You can also use it against Agents, Sangan, Nordics, Gravekeepers, and a few other decks, so long as they grab something that you can see. Until that happens, for most players, Mind Crush is a dead card on your field. If you feel like you are lucky, you can call Kagemusha after they special summon Elder. Unfortunately, they may have done Elder so they can Asceticism into Kagemusha instead. Now you lost 1 card and will probably lose the duel because you are down by 2 and they just gained a Shi En.
Hindsight - Not much else is worth semilimiting except for TCG exclusives. Specifically Tour Guide of the Underworld, which is seeing more play in decks than it probably should be. Of course there are plenty of limited cards that I would love to see at 2.
Advanced Ritual Art
Gale the Whirlwind
Necroface
Emergency Teleport
The list is different though as most of the cards on the list are formerly limited cards! So now players can enjoy using 2 of them in a deck until they are told otherwise.
Necro Gardna - Warrior Monster, Dark monster, and level 3. Those are some decent stats for Yugioh, if it had 500 ATK and was level 2, we would have a different story. As far as using it, Necro's only real purpose is to negate attacks, which it can only do once from the graveyard. There are many, many cards in the game that react to the opponent's attacks, so Necro Gardna's effect isn't anything new. Besides that, it is really only used in decks that can send cards from the deck to the graveyard, which is mostly Lightsworn Monsters. In lightsworns, I like to believe that Konami doesn't mind cool tricks like this while Lumina and, especially, Charge of the Light Brigade are limited to 1. Pretty balanced card effect, for now.
Summoner Monk - Once again, another card that was at 1. This guy however is slightly more dangerous with the advent of XYZ monsters. Summoner Monk can turn any spell card into an XYZ, so long as your opponent doesn't stop you. If you play Heavy Storm or MST, you are now down by 3 cards to your opponent's -2. Yes even though you put a 2500 or double Thunderking on the field, what exactly did it cost? Many decks don't even run Spell Cards that are Monk fodder except for Pot of Duality and Mystical Space Typhoon, further balancing its play. Want to include Genex Ally Birdman to the fray? It is a great combo that you can pull off a bit more consistently. Of course, all you need is a Monk, a Birdman, a Spell Card you don't mind pitching like Duality, and for your opponent to not Warning, Bottomless or Veiler your Arcanite or Blackrose dragon.
Tragoedia - This is one of the very few cards I disagree with changing. With Pot of Avarice gone(limited to 1), Tragoedia is a little less dangerous in late game Yugioh than in early game. The effect to permanently nab opponent's monsters was SLIGHTLY lessened by the fact that your opponent may Overlay their monsters into something with no level. Its effect to change its own level is slightly better now with XYZ monsters in your extra deck. I believe that these are all slightly fair effects with the amount of powerful monsters that exist. What makes Trag worse than Gorz is that Trag can't turn a duel around by itself. Your opponent could have an awesome field of Stardust Dragon, Steelswarm Roach and Junk Destroyer and lose it all to 1 Gorz.
Dewloren, Tiger King of the Ice Barrier - Once again, (OCG) players found ways to abuse having 3 Dewloren and that was with Fishborg Blaster. With Fishborg gone, we now have Diva and Surface to make our triple Dewlorens. This strategy isn't as powerful, but it can still happen. Better just semi-limit the card now(again) before someone finds a new Dewloren loop.
Destiny Draw - Finally, everyone has been asking for 2 Destiny Draws and Konami is finally ready for you to have it. Why? No real reason I'm sure. It is probably because of new Hero support in GENF and rereleased cards in the Duel Academy Binder in October. Destiny Draw has no other stipulations besides running Destiny HERO monsters. You don't have to skip your battle phase or forgo special summons, you are free to do whatever you like. The only balancing feature of Destiny Draw is the fact that you have to run Destiny HERO monsters in the first place. Of those, the only ones that have good effects are:
Destiny HERO - Diamond Dude
Destiny HERO - Malicious
Destiny HERO - Dasher
Destiny HERO - Defender
Destiny HERO - Plasma
Destiny HERO - Fear Monger
None of those cards have solitary, game changing effects except for Plasma. All of the others require other cards to be useful. There are many low tier decks with draw engines like Boon of the Meklord Emperor and Red Dragon Vase. Decks have to have really good monster cards to limit their drawing options.
Swords of Revealing Light - With Mystical Space Typhoon bumped to 3 and Heavy Storm back AND Giant Trunade gone, Swords is even less of a liability for the opponent. Stall and burn decks can still win against just about anyone, but those high tier decks have to draw pretty poorly to be beaten by a Swords of Revealing Light + Stealth Bird combo. It is a card game however and luck will always be a factor. Perhaps bumping Swords up to 2 helps out our stalling brethren(as well as new players.)
Call of the Haunted - We all wanted Monster Reborn banned in this list. Instead, Konami gave us another Call of the Haunted. Sure, CotH takes a turn to play and it can only get your own cards. Also with as much as 2 additional backrow destroying cards, CotH is even less powerful. What makes CotH pretty cool is that any cards that benefit from being destroyed work very well as revival targets, turning your opponent's MST into a relative loss for them. Sangan and Dandylion don't mind being destroyed after reviving them, and neither do Wisel and Grannel in your hand. CotH also pumps up decks that originally run 1, like my new Wonder Wand deck. It will actually pump up a lot of lower level decks, while keeping High tier decks the same, simply because they never ran CotH in the first place. Just because we have 2 doesn't mean you will see it in every deck. Some people simply don't have room for 1-shot revival on their side of the field.
Mind Crush - Is a good card but will always be down to luck. Hitting the first(and now only!) Smoke Signal with Mind Crush is a great start to a duel. Having 2 in the deck makes these plays a little easier. You can also use it against Agents, Sangan, Nordics, Gravekeepers, and a few other decks, so long as they grab something that you can see. Until that happens, for most players, Mind Crush is a dead card on your field. If you feel like you are lucky, you can call Kagemusha after they special summon Elder. Unfortunately, they may have done Elder so they can Asceticism into Kagemusha instead. Now you lost 1 card and will probably lose the duel because you are down by 2 and they just gained a Shi En.
Hindsight - Not much else is worth semilimiting except for TCG exclusives. Specifically Tour Guide of the Underworld, which is seeing more play in decks than it probably should be. Of course there are plenty of limited cards that I would love to see at 2.
Advanced Ritual Art
Gale the Whirlwind
Necroface
Emergency Teleport
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Konami Giveth and Konami Taketh Away(!?) Part 2
The limited list for this format is getting a lot of attention. With the loss of Fishborg and Mind Master, 2 key components in a few decks are destroyed. With the loss of Trunade and Oppression, 2 very powerful game winning effects were removed. Usually when this happens, as with every year, a few cards come off the banlist to give players something to experiment with for a few months. In addition to that, cards with strategies that are just too consistent are knocked down to 1 per deck. Though the newly-Limited cards do hit some rather fun cards, I believe we can agree that 90% of this list was necessary.
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning - Our new fun card for the format. Well, last time I said that, it was to Konami unbanning Monster Reborn. Usually when a card is unbanned for fun, it doesn't stay unbanned for an entire year. I guess time will tell just how dangerous EotB is.
BLS-EotB is a boss monster for chaos decks. A lot of players will put 1 in there deck for anything even remotely Chaotic, such as running Effect Veiler in Blackwings or Junk Synchron with Ryko. I'm not a big fan of splashing EotB into anything that runs a dark and light monster, but the first few months of the format will be plagued with this. In Chaos Plants, Chaos Stun, Salvo Chaos, and all the other more pure builds, EotB is the boss monster they never had(no Chaos Sorc is not a boss monster). What makes it a little too good is its awesome effects on a 3000ATK body. Not only can it banish facedown monsters, it can attack twice if you'd rather attack their monster instead. They even made EotB light so that you can drop Honest if your opponent decides to battle with it. The card is insanely good as a boss monster.
Debris Dragon - Noone knows what to do about Debris Dragon. Its main purpose as of late was to get out plant monsters and card trooper in Plant Synchro decks and synchro for Black Rose, Stardust, Scrap Dragon or Trishula. In other decks like Yubel, it becomes an additional Call of the Haunted or Limit Reverse for your deck. Now, with the rise of XYZ-based decks, Debris Dragon turns into a graveyard-based Tour guide. Normal Summon Debris Dragon and you can special summon Destiny Hero - Defender that was sent with D-Draw, it can special summon Cloudian - Acid Cloud in new Cloudian synchro decks(oh yeah, Fishborg got banned), Gemknight Sapphire, Phantom of Chaos, Super Crashbug, Zero Gardna in Final Countdown and a slew of other Normal type monsters in Rabbit Decks this holiday season. Does that make it limit worthy? Probably. If in fact it was limited only because of its interaction with plants and Card Trooper, I would have thought that limiting Lonefire and Trooper would be enough.
Lonefire Blossom - The best plant support in the game. In pure plants it could summon any monster from your deck. In decks that simply use plants as fuel for their synchro plays, it puts any plant you want on the field or graveyard to synchro with on your next turn. Lonefire was actually a World Premiere card when it was first released, which explains why it is so good. There is no doubt that it should have been limited to 1 a long time ago. But rest assured Pure Plant and Gigavise players, there are still plenty of ways to reuse Lonefire's effect.
Legendary Six Samurai Shi En - Most people will say that this card needed to be limited. I am of the persuasion that just because a card is good, doesn't mean it has to take up more space on the banlist. For all we know, Konami may have a soft maximum amount of cards they are allowed on the list. Not only is having a giant list of Forbidden/Limited cards confusing for new players, but it sort of gives off the wrong impression on Konami's R&D team. There is no doubt that Shi En is a very powerful card, but there is a very distinct strategy to beating it: Attack it. I would have rather seen more of their problem cards added to the list while keeping Shi En at 3. If your opponent is able to summon 3 Shi En on you, that first Shi En was not the ENTIRE reason why they could create more.
T.G. Hyper Librarian - With Shooting Quasar Dragon looming over our heads, something had to be done about Librarian's ability to summon it with no cost. Fishborg Blaster being banned was part of it, but you can still use Glow Up Bulb to summon Shooting Star while drawing 4 cards in the process. Of course, Hyper Librarian is about as necessary for the game as Shi En, so it doesn't deserve a ban. Limiting it is exactly what I had hoped for in this post about Librarian. Halberd Cannon and Blade Blaster need it, a few anti-meta decks actually use it, and my latest project "Wonder Magicians" need it too.
Heavy Storm - Ah, the most thrilling piece of information out of this OCG magazine. There are a couple of thoughts behind Heavy Storm:
A) We need Heavy Storm to punish players that set so many cards to control the game. Decks like Gravekeepers, Hero Beat, and even some Gadget decks will set 3 or more cards in hopes that they will control the entire duel. One Solemn Warning, one Dimensional Prison and one Seven Tools of the Bandit, then end their turn. They even thrive on high spell/trap count decks because their monsters are either so easily searchable or replace themselves. Giving us Heavy Storm back will force them to play a little more conservatively.
B) Bring Heavy Storm back will ruin the game! Combine that with 3 Mystical Space Typhoons(we will talk about this later) will make OTKs more prevalent. Even with Starlight Road set, if they get lucky with MST on the starlight, then follow it up with Heavy Storm, they are free to make any play they like. In Fabled, that could be as easy as 1 tuner and 1 instant fusion to make a 2300 attacker and draw 2 cards. In Chaos, that may put their EotB safely on the field. In Lightsworn, that could be multiple Judgment Dragons. If players can not keep a backrow on the field, then games will be a lot shorter and everyone will have to run in-hand chainable cards like Gorz, Fader, Maxx "C" and Effect Veiler.
I for one am leaning more towards the A side with a touch of B sprinkled in. In many situations, Heavy storm is played as an additional MST. In many instances, especially with talks of main-decking Smashing Grounds, Forbidden Chalice and Compulsory, you may only hit 1 card and force the activation of another. What makes this better than Trunade is that you must use it while you control no spells or traps, otherwise you will gain no real advantage besides the cards currently in your hand. Though games may be slightly more dangerous, players in group B need to rethink their side decks for some of the more dangerous plays they will face.
Pot of Avarice - ALMOST as good as Pot of Greed. In some decks it is even better than Pot of Greed because it refills your deck with powerful monsters. The only difference is that Avarice can be stopped by a lucky D.D. Crow or Crevice into the Different Dimension. Otherwise, Avarice is a "relatively costless +1" and is one of the best topdecks in late-game Yugioh. Having one Avarice cuts down strategies that are just too consistent to be fair in a card game. Many will argue that card games based on luck are stupid, but to each his own.
Primal Seed - Multiple Primal seeds can be abused. With Macro Cosmos flipped after summoning BLS, you can play Seed and add the 2 monsters back to your hand, then Seed is banished. After that, your next Primal Seed can add the 1st Seed to your hand, creating a loop that can put every Banished card back into your hand for no cost.
Shien's Smoke Signal - One of the main cards to hit to decrease the consistency in Six Samurai. Now they can only use Reinforcements of the Army, Shien's Dojo, Asceticism of the Six Samurai, and 1 Smoke Signal to get monsters from their deck. I would say that is pretty fair.
Hindsight There aren't too many other cards that are unlimited right now that could be limited. Most of the necessary hits were done. With Avarice down to 1, 3 Formula Synchron don't seem as problematic as before. Then I suppose if we limited Kizan, Six Samurai will no longer be a threat. Everything else seems rpetty reasonable right now.
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning - Our new fun card for the format. Well, last time I said that, it was to Konami unbanning Monster Reborn. Usually when a card is unbanned for fun, it doesn't stay unbanned for an entire year. I guess time will tell just how dangerous EotB is.
BLS-EotB is a boss monster for chaos decks. A lot of players will put 1 in there deck for anything even remotely Chaotic, such as running Effect Veiler in Blackwings or Junk Synchron with Ryko. I'm not a big fan of splashing EotB into anything that runs a dark and light monster, but the first few months of the format will be plagued with this. In Chaos Plants, Chaos Stun, Salvo Chaos, and all the other more pure builds, EotB is the boss monster they never had(no Chaos Sorc is not a boss monster). What makes it a little too good is its awesome effects on a 3000ATK body. Not only can it banish facedown monsters, it can attack twice if you'd rather attack their monster instead. They even made EotB light so that you can drop Honest if your opponent decides to battle with it. The card is insanely good as a boss monster.
Debris Dragon - Noone knows what to do about Debris Dragon. Its main purpose as of late was to get out plant monsters and card trooper in Plant Synchro decks and synchro for Black Rose, Stardust, Scrap Dragon or Trishula. In other decks like Yubel, it becomes an additional Call of the Haunted or Limit Reverse for your deck. Now, with the rise of XYZ-based decks, Debris Dragon turns into a graveyard-based Tour guide. Normal Summon Debris Dragon and you can special summon Destiny Hero - Defender that was sent with D-Draw, it can special summon Cloudian - Acid Cloud in new Cloudian synchro decks(oh yeah, Fishborg got banned), Gemknight Sapphire, Phantom of Chaos, Super Crashbug, Zero Gardna in Final Countdown and a slew of other Normal type monsters in Rabbit Decks this holiday season. Does that make it limit worthy? Probably. If in fact it was limited only because of its interaction with plants and Card Trooper, I would have thought that limiting Lonefire and Trooper would be enough.
Lonefire Blossom - The best plant support in the game. In pure plants it could summon any monster from your deck. In decks that simply use plants as fuel for their synchro plays, it puts any plant you want on the field or graveyard to synchro with on your next turn. Lonefire was actually a World Premiere card when it was first released, which explains why it is so good. There is no doubt that it should have been limited to 1 a long time ago. But rest assured Pure Plant and Gigavise players, there are still plenty of ways to reuse Lonefire's effect.
Legendary Six Samurai Shi En - Most people will say that this card needed to be limited. I am of the persuasion that just because a card is good, doesn't mean it has to take up more space on the banlist. For all we know, Konami may have a soft maximum amount of cards they are allowed on the list. Not only is having a giant list of Forbidden/Limited cards confusing for new players, but it sort of gives off the wrong impression on Konami's R&D team. There is no doubt that Shi En is a very powerful card, but there is a very distinct strategy to beating it: Attack it. I would have rather seen more of their problem cards added to the list while keeping Shi En at 3. If your opponent is able to summon 3 Shi En on you, that first Shi En was not the ENTIRE reason why they could create more.
T.G. Hyper Librarian - With Shooting Quasar Dragon looming over our heads, something had to be done about Librarian's ability to summon it with no cost. Fishborg Blaster being banned was part of it, but you can still use Glow Up Bulb to summon Shooting Star while drawing 4 cards in the process. Of course, Hyper Librarian is about as necessary for the game as Shi En, so it doesn't deserve a ban. Limiting it is exactly what I had hoped for in this post about Librarian. Halberd Cannon and Blade Blaster need it, a few anti-meta decks actually use it, and my latest project "Wonder Magicians" need it too.
Heavy Storm - Ah, the most thrilling piece of information out of this OCG magazine. There are a couple of thoughts behind Heavy Storm:
A) We need Heavy Storm to punish players that set so many cards to control the game. Decks like Gravekeepers, Hero Beat, and even some Gadget decks will set 3 or more cards in hopes that they will control the entire duel. One Solemn Warning, one Dimensional Prison and one Seven Tools of the Bandit, then end their turn. They even thrive on high spell/trap count decks because their monsters are either so easily searchable or replace themselves. Giving us Heavy Storm back will force them to play a little more conservatively.
B) Bring Heavy Storm back will ruin the game! Combine that with 3 Mystical Space Typhoons(we will talk about this later) will make OTKs more prevalent. Even with Starlight Road set, if they get lucky with MST on the starlight, then follow it up with Heavy Storm, they are free to make any play they like. In Fabled, that could be as easy as 1 tuner and 1 instant fusion to make a 2300 attacker and draw 2 cards. In Chaos, that may put their EotB safely on the field. In Lightsworn, that could be multiple Judgment Dragons. If players can not keep a backrow on the field, then games will be a lot shorter and everyone will have to run in-hand chainable cards like Gorz, Fader, Maxx "C" and Effect Veiler.
I for one am leaning more towards the A side with a touch of B sprinkled in. In many situations, Heavy storm is played as an additional MST. In many instances, especially with talks of main-decking Smashing Grounds, Forbidden Chalice and Compulsory, you may only hit 1 card and force the activation of another. What makes this better than Trunade is that you must use it while you control no spells or traps, otherwise you will gain no real advantage besides the cards currently in your hand. Though games may be slightly more dangerous, players in group B need to rethink their side decks for some of the more dangerous plays they will face.
Pot of Avarice - ALMOST as good as Pot of Greed. In some decks it is even better than Pot of Greed because it refills your deck with powerful monsters. The only difference is that Avarice can be stopped by a lucky D.D. Crow or Crevice into the Different Dimension. Otherwise, Avarice is a "relatively costless +1" and is one of the best topdecks in late-game Yugioh. Having one Avarice cuts down strategies that are just too consistent to be fair in a card game. Many will argue that card games based on luck are stupid, but to each his own.
Primal Seed - Multiple Primal seeds can be abused. With Macro Cosmos flipped after summoning BLS, you can play Seed and add the 2 monsters back to your hand, then Seed is banished. After that, your next Primal Seed can add the 1st Seed to your hand, creating a loop that can put every Banished card back into your hand for no cost.
Shien's Smoke Signal - One of the main cards to hit to decrease the consistency in Six Samurai. Now they can only use Reinforcements of the Army, Shien's Dojo, Asceticism of the Six Samurai, and 1 Smoke Signal to get monsters from their deck. I would say that is pretty fair.
Hindsight There aren't too many other cards that are unlimited right now that could be limited. Most of the necessary hits were done. With Avarice down to 1, 3 Formula Synchron don't seem as problematic as before. Then I suppose if we limited Kizan, Six Samurai will no longer be a threat. Everything else seems rpetty reasonable right now.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Get ready to spend some mula
In this Huge post we talked a bit about some cool games releasing in 2011. That was April, so before E3, Gamescon, and so much new information that has been released about your favorite upcoming games. These are just a few of the games I pointed out.
Infamous 2 - Already Released. Owned! (Unopened too.)
LA Noire - Already Released. Owned! (Unplayed!)
Resistance 3 - September 6th
Uncharted 3 - November 1st
Yugioh World Championship 2011: Over the Nexus- Already Released. Owned!
Dark Souls - October 4th
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 - Already Released.
"Sonic 20th Anniversary Project" - November 1st
Disgaea 4 - September 6th
This is merely scratching the surface of all the good games slated for Q3 and Q4. Besides this, there is also a new system, the Playstation Vita to pick up and then buy games for. I tried to count how many games I added to my library last year. Once I hit 10, I gave up, figuring that I had miscounted in some way. So far, I have gained:
Dead Space 2
Marvel VS Capcom 3
Portal 2
YGO WC2011
LA Noire
Infamous 2
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2
DJ Hero 2
That is already 8 games, so it is no surprise that I bought (well) over 10 games last year. This isn't even counting Digital Downloads. Granted, some games are gifts, and there is no way I would be able to pay for every game I have. The next releases for this year are so good that I have no idea how I am going to play them all. Besides actually getting the games, playing them is a challenge in itself. After work, yugioh, and other hobbies, it is hard to find time to play all the games that I have. As said earlier, I have an unopened Infamous 2 sitting on the cable receiver, just waiting to be played. I wan't playing that because Chelsea and I needed to finish up Dead Space 2. As awesome as Dead Space 2 is, I had to stop playing that because I needed to finish Resident Evil 1: Director's Cut before Resident Evil: Code Veronica HD is released. I had planned to play through the first 3 games so that we have a better understanding of the events that take place in the game. Of course, I haven't been playing RE1 faithfully because of all the League of Legends. In fact, LoL takes up far too much of my time, perhaps I need some organization so that I can actually accomplish something.
I won't hold my breath, though. With so many good games I plan to get, the backlog is just going to grow more and more daunting.
Sonic Generations
Dubbed "Sonic 20th Anniversary Project," Sonic Generations is one of the best ideas to hit the Sonic scene in a long time. The game is a tribute to the 20 years of great levels by recreating them from 3 different "eras": The Genesis era, the Dreamcast era, and the Modern Era. So far, we do not have many levels revealed besides Chemical Plant from Sonic 2, City Escape from Sonic Adventure 1, and the classic Green Hill zone. In these levels, you have stages for Modern Sonic to play and stages with Classic Sonic. Classic Sonic is exactly like the original Genesis version, where your only tools Spin Dash and Roll, and Roll cancel. Modern Sonic has his Homing Attack, O Button slides, Boost, Spin Dash, Roll and Roll cancel. People wanting a return to fun stages with less filler in between should be excited to Generation's return to pure platforming. Of course there are some scenes here and there, but so far there is no hint of Adventure zones, npcs to do "quests" for, or objects to hunt down.
Most Sonic fans and Sonic haters will tell you that all they want in a Sonic game are fun levels to play with not much in between. This is probably the answer to most of our wishes and we can only hope that Sonic Team takes their time to make this one the best in years. I personally hope for:
-Better frame rate on the PS3. The frames in Sonic Unleashed were abysmal and there is no excuse to have it that way in Generations.
-Multiple ranks for levels such as in Sonic Adventure 2. In Adventure 2(expanded from Sonic Adventure 1's 3 rank system), every level in the game had 5 ranks, essentially 5 different missions to do in the same level. It went from Beat the level->Beat the level with a certain amount of rings->Beat the level within a certain time limit->Find a Hidden Object in the level-> Beat the level on "hard mode." The player is graded on their performance with a grade of A-E, where A is obviously the best. Getting A ranks on all stages is excellent replay value and is something I would love to see again.
-Downloadable content in Sonic Unleashed was sub par. Players could spend money on new missions for levels they already have. Once completed, there was no reason to ever do them again. I am hoping that Download Content in Generations is in the form of new levels, new characters and other things that players will enjoy buying. Even if they are skins of Sonics friends, I for one would love to play through levels as different characters if I had the choice.
I believe Downpour is the 8th iteration of the Silent Hill Series. In this original game you play as Murphy Pendleton, a convict that has an unfortunate bus accident, stranding him in Silent Hill. As you can see in the video, the settings are still amazing with a great musical score to go with it, just as all the other games. In Downpour you have a number of people you can meet and do things for. Based on the latest videos, the Silent Hill town seems even grander than what we are accustomed to.
Of course, in 2011 gamers are plagued by many refutable feelings. The worst, and one that has dropped the ratings of the more recent Silent Hill games is nostalgia and the idea that "if the latest version of a game isnt as good as the first time I played it when I was 13, then that new version is automatically a bad game. The go-to complaint is that the modernized controls in our more recent Silent Hills are what kills the game. Some even say that the early games are scarier because the controls are so limited that you have no choice in how to react in most situations. The tension of the moment is multiplied by the terrible control scheme and the lack of defense in these older games. Now we have something like Homecoming, where next generation consoles can combine awesome visuals with a spectacular soundtrack. But once your put the camera on the Right Analog Stick and give your character knowledge of how to defend yourself(and no we aren't talking about Rocket Launchers, plasma grenades and rifles that shoot chainsaws), then the game is instantly bad. Let us not forget that some "Action Horror" games like Dead Space are actually good, and our latest Silent Hills are no where near the level of action in Dead Space. But alas, Vatra Games did make a couple of great changes to keep the most fickle of reviewers satisfied.
Murphy can actually fight, but finding a weapon during a frantic chase will often be too stressful. Chairs, bottles, iron bars, book cases, and other environmental elements can be used to slow, inhibit, or even combat the devilish creatures of Silent Hill. The goal is that most players will probably run in fear of most things, but you can actually be brave and take evil on with a little improvisation. Other subtle horror elements return too, like fixed cameras in certain areas and an aim-able flashlight. Honestly, as long as the story and atmosphere is good, you can't really go wrong with this game. People who base their reviews on 10 year old games should probably rethink how they analyze "fun."
I know what you're thinking. "You just got Marvel vs Capcom 3 this year, and Ultimate is releasing this year too? Don't you find that a little ridiculous?" While it does seem bad to support a developer that pushes out games this way, you have to remember that Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom would have been download content released over the course of the last few months. Every character pack of 2 could be anywhere from 8.99 to 14.99 per set, then there are new moves and gameplay balancing that would have been done via multiple large patches. Ultimate MVC also has a new interface, new stages, a spectator mode for online matches, and possibly more additions that we have not been told about. In any case, the characters alone are enough to spend $39.99 on. All shoppers should be trying to get a deal on their games anyway. If you shop at the trade-in place, you can get a discount on your Ultimate MVC that way. If you shop at big name retail place, you probably got a gift card for buying "vanilla" MVC that you can use towards Ultimate MVC...and get another gift card back.
We only have gameplay videos of Strider Hiryu, Firebrand, Ghost Rider, Hawkeye, Doctor Strange, and Nemesis. The remaining characters that need gameplay videos are Phoenix Wright, Rocket Racoon, Iron Fist and Frank West. All of them look really really good and I for one can not wait to try out Nemesis. In the latest videos, Nemesis is shown having awesome bounces, command grabs, and a level 3 Hyper combo that murders low HP characters. He is also one of the tallest characters in the game, giving him outlandish hit boxes(for you and your opponent!). My team of Jill, Trish, and Captain America haven't shown any changes yet in the latest videos. I do hope someone gets new attacks though, or else Nemesis is getting a slot.
Cap Trish Nemesis?
Jill Trish Nemesis?
Jill Cap Nemesis?
How can you not be excited for this?
There are even more games to talk about this year and I simply don't have the space to do it all, or the time for that matter! The 3 listed above are most likely day 1 purchases for myself. You can find me on the leaderboards for Sonic or in lobbies for Ultimate MVC as Ealdnarche(PSN) or maybe some Youtube videos of Downpour under BoogiepopPhantom05. I know Tumblr will love some horric pics of the game on my VeeDotMe Tumblr blog.
EXCITE.
Infamous 2 - Already Released. Owned! (Unopened too.)
LA Noire - Already Released. Owned! (Unplayed!)
Resistance 3 - September 6th
Uncharted 3 - November 1st
Yugioh World Championship 2011: Over the Nexus- Already Released. Owned!
Dark Souls - October 4th
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 - Already Released.
"Sonic 20th Anniversary Project" - November 1st
Disgaea 4 - September 6th
This is merely scratching the surface of all the good games slated for Q3 and Q4. Besides this, there is also a new system, the Playstation Vita to pick up and then buy games for. I tried to count how many games I added to my library last year. Once I hit 10, I gave up, figuring that I had miscounted in some way. So far, I have gained:
Dead Space 2
Marvel VS Capcom 3
Portal 2
YGO WC2011
LA Noire
Infamous 2
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2
DJ Hero 2
That is already 8 games, so it is no surprise that I bought (well) over 10 games last year. This isn't even counting Digital Downloads. Granted, some games are gifts, and there is no way I would be able to pay for every game I have. The next releases for this year are so good that I have no idea how I am going to play them all. Besides actually getting the games, playing them is a challenge in itself. After work, yugioh, and other hobbies, it is hard to find time to play all the games that I have. As said earlier, I have an unopened Infamous 2 sitting on the cable receiver, just waiting to be played. I wan't playing that because Chelsea and I needed to finish up Dead Space 2. As awesome as Dead Space 2 is, I had to stop playing that because I needed to finish Resident Evil 1: Director's Cut before Resident Evil: Code Veronica HD is released. I had planned to play through the first 3 games so that we have a better understanding of the events that take place in the game. Of course, I haven't been playing RE1 faithfully because of all the League of Legends. In fact, LoL takes up far too much of my time, perhaps I need some organization so that I can actually accomplish something.
I won't hold my breath, though. With so many good games I plan to get, the backlog is just going to grow more and more daunting.
Sonic Generations
Dubbed "Sonic 20th Anniversary Project," Sonic Generations is one of the best ideas to hit the Sonic scene in a long time. The game is a tribute to the 20 years of great levels by recreating them from 3 different "eras": The Genesis era, the Dreamcast era, and the Modern Era. So far, we do not have many levels revealed besides Chemical Plant from Sonic 2, City Escape from Sonic Adventure 1, and the classic Green Hill zone. In these levels, you have stages for Modern Sonic to play and stages with Classic Sonic. Classic Sonic is exactly like the original Genesis version, where your only tools Spin Dash and Roll, and Roll cancel. Modern Sonic has his Homing Attack, O Button slides, Boost, Spin Dash, Roll and Roll cancel. People wanting a return to fun stages with less filler in between should be excited to Generation's return to pure platforming. Of course there are some scenes here and there, but so far there is no hint of Adventure zones, npcs to do "quests" for, or objects to hunt down.
Most Sonic fans and Sonic haters will tell you that all they want in a Sonic game are fun levels to play with not much in between. This is probably the answer to most of our wishes and we can only hope that Sonic Team takes their time to make this one the best in years. I personally hope for:
-Better frame rate on the PS3. The frames in Sonic Unleashed were abysmal and there is no excuse to have it that way in Generations.
-Multiple ranks for levels such as in Sonic Adventure 2. In Adventure 2(expanded from Sonic Adventure 1's 3 rank system), every level in the game had 5 ranks, essentially 5 different missions to do in the same level. It went from Beat the level->Beat the level with a certain amount of rings->Beat the level within a certain time limit->Find a Hidden Object in the level-> Beat the level on "hard mode." The player is graded on their performance with a grade of A-E, where A is obviously the best. Getting A ranks on all stages is excellent replay value and is something I would love to see again.
-Downloadable content in Sonic Unleashed was sub par. Players could spend money on new missions for levels they already have. Once completed, there was no reason to ever do them again. I am hoping that Download Content in Generations is in the form of new levels, new characters and other things that players will enjoy buying. Even if they are skins of Sonics friends, I for one would love to play through levels as different characters if I had the choice.
Silent Hill Downpour
I believe Downpour is the 8th iteration of the Silent Hill Series. In this original game you play as Murphy Pendleton, a convict that has an unfortunate bus accident, stranding him in Silent Hill. As you can see in the video, the settings are still amazing with a great musical score to go with it, just as all the other games. In Downpour you have a number of people you can meet and do things for. Based on the latest videos, the Silent Hill town seems even grander than what we are accustomed to.
Of course, in 2011 gamers are plagued by many refutable feelings. The worst, and one that has dropped the ratings of the more recent Silent Hill games is nostalgia and the idea that "if the latest version of a game isnt as good as the first time I played it when I was 13, then that new version is automatically a bad game. The go-to complaint is that the modernized controls in our more recent Silent Hills are what kills the game. Some even say that the early games are scarier because the controls are so limited that you have no choice in how to react in most situations. The tension of the moment is multiplied by the terrible control scheme and the lack of defense in these older games. Now we have something like Homecoming, where next generation consoles can combine awesome visuals with a spectacular soundtrack. But once your put the camera on the Right Analog Stick and give your character knowledge of how to defend yourself(and no we aren't talking about Rocket Launchers, plasma grenades and rifles that shoot chainsaws), then the game is instantly bad. Let us not forget that some "Action Horror" games like Dead Space are actually good, and our latest Silent Hills are no where near the level of action in Dead Space. But alas, Vatra Games did make a couple of great changes to keep the most fickle of reviewers satisfied.
Murphy can actually fight, but finding a weapon during a frantic chase will often be too stressful. Chairs, bottles, iron bars, book cases, and other environmental elements can be used to slow, inhibit, or even combat the devilish creatures of Silent Hill. The goal is that most players will probably run in fear of most things, but you can actually be brave and take evil on with a little improvisation. Other subtle horror elements return too, like fixed cameras in certain areas and an aim-able flashlight. Honestly, as long as the story and atmosphere is good, you can't really go wrong with this game. People who base their reviews on 10 year old games should probably rethink how they analyze "fun."
Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3
I know what you're thinking. "You just got Marvel vs Capcom 3 this year, and Ultimate is releasing this year too? Don't you find that a little ridiculous?" While it does seem bad to support a developer that pushes out games this way, you have to remember that Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom would have been download content released over the course of the last few months. Every character pack of 2 could be anywhere from 8.99 to 14.99 per set, then there are new moves and gameplay balancing that would have been done via multiple large patches. Ultimate MVC also has a new interface, new stages, a spectator mode for online matches, and possibly more additions that we have not been told about. In any case, the characters alone are enough to spend $39.99 on. All shoppers should be trying to get a deal on their games anyway. If you shop at the trade-in place, you can get a discount on your Ultimate MVC that way. If you shop at big name retail place, you probably got a gift card for buying "vanilla" MVC that you can use towards Ultimate MVC...and get another gift card back.
We only have gameplay videos of Strider Hiryu, Firebrand, Ghost Rider, Hawkeye, Doctor Strange, and Nemesis. The remaining characters that need gameplay videos are Phoenix Wright, Rocket Racoon, Iron Fist and Frank West. All of them look really really good and I for one can not wait to try out Nemesis. In the latest videos, Nemesis is shown having awesome bounces, command grabs, and a level 3 Hyper combo that murders low HP characters. He is also one of the tallest characters in the game, giving him outlandish hit boxes(for you and your opponent!). My team of Jill, Trish, and Captain America haven't shown any changes yet in the latest videos. I do hope someone gets new attacks though, or else Nemesis is getting a slot.
Cap Trish Nemesis?
Jill Trish Nemesis?
Jill Cap Nemesis?
How can you not be excited for this?
There are even more games to talk about this year and I simply don't have the space to do it all, or the time for that matter! The 3 listed above are most likely day 1 purchases for myself. You can find me on the leaderboards for Sonic or in lobbies for Ultimate MVC as Ealdnarche(PSN) or maybe some Youtube videos of Downpour under BoogiepopPhantom05. I know Tumblr will love some horric pics of the game on my VeeDotMe Tumblr blog.
EXCITE.
Konami Giveth and Konami Taketh Away(!?)
It is that time of the year already? Holy geez. We just got through Worlds so that really only leaves a couple of months left in August. During our last couple of weeks of freedom we get a new set, Generation Force. There are also the exciting new tins on the 30th. For those who don't remember what the tins include:
No. 17 Leviathan Dragon
-Pot of Duality
-Dark Simorgh
-Beast King Barbaros
-Stygian Street Patrol
Wind up Zenmaister
-Pot of Duality
-Neo-Parshath the Sky Paladin
-Archlord Krystia
-Elemental HERO Gaia
Rounding out the great releases, there is also the new Hidden Arsenal Special Edition that was released not too long ago. For those who need Emmersblade for Xsabers, you now have a reprinted one and a chance to get great synchro monsters. So many back to back releases often shy our attention away from the banlist. Though rapidly approaching, these subsequent releases of awesomeness overshadow the fact that you may not even get to play the cards on September 1st! You guys know how Konami is. YOU REMEMBER SUPER RESCUE CAT. NEVER FORGET 9/1/2010.
Now, this list I am about to show you is about 95% confirmed. The magazine that prints this is almost 100% reliable if not only for that fact that it is an OCG list. It has yet to be different in the TCG, but you can never know what may happen for us and our World Premiere cards. As a forewarning, some viewers may find the card spoiler as slightly disturbing. Some viewers may find the list so good that they want to jump for joy. How do I feel about it? You'll have to wait until the end to find out.
Newly Forbidden
Fishborg Blaster
Mind Master
Giant Trunade
Royal Oppression
Newly Limited
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
Debris Dragon
Lonefire Blossom
Formula Synchron
Legendary Six Samurai Shi En
T.G. Hyper Librarian
Heavy Storm
Pot of Avarice
Primal Seed
Shien's Smoke Signal
Newly Semi-Limited
Necro Gardna
Summoner Monk
Tragoedia
Dewloren, Tiger King of the Ice Barrier
Destiny Draw
Swords of Revealing Light
Call of the Haunted
Mind Crush
Newly Unlimited
Judgement Dragon
Spirit Reaper
Megamorph
Mystical Space Typhoon
Overload Fusion
Gravity Bind
Icarus Attack
STAR plays!
-Twilight, Lightsworn and Chaos in general is BACK. Two Trags, what?? JDs up the whazoo. BLS! Your cards on the field will never be safe again...Unless you Starlight Road them!
-Summoner Monk to two no way! Wonder Magicians get a huge boost from that.
-Fishborg Banned HAH so much for Turbo Pack 6 Fishborgs. Wait how is this good, Fishborg looked good as a Super Rare...
-Icarus Attack to 3 gives us a reason to fear Winged beasts all over again.
Balls dropped
-Banned Mind Master and didn't bump Emergency Teleport up to 2?
-Call of the Haunted to 2? I understand it is very balanced revival and with no Trunade and triple MST it is much more fair. It just seems like that is a huge hit to the themed revival getting released lately.
-Royal Oppression banned is so painful. Yes it is not fair to lock a deck out of playing the game, but with triple MST if they hate it that much makes it balanced. There are other ways to defend yourself from the special summon explosions of many decks, though.
This has been my 2nd banlist since creating this blog, and I must say this one is the most exciting. As with every list, we do hope that the TCG has some minor differences, such as with Tour Guide, but this list is about as close to reasonable as we can get. Some may say that Twilight is far too strong with 2 monks, 3 JD, 2 Trag and BLS, but time will tell as Lightsworn decks are not the most consistent decks on the planet. Plus they have to compete against the anti graveyard tactics of Gravekeepers, the Negate and Destroy of Heralds in Agents/Fairies, the return of side decked Starlight Road thanks to Heavy Storm and Judgment Dragon, and a few other technically choices against the deck. The banlist also neuters a few decks without giving them something to feel happy about. As much as Mind Master is unbalanced, it was one of the few ways for the new Psychic Deck to actually make plays. They do have several other tricks up their sleeve, and they all require a setup. Mind Master required no setup outside of having another psychic to tribute.
Talking about decks is only half of the story, the actual chosen cards can give us a lot of information too. To conclude this blog post, I want to touch up on the banned cards.
Fishborg Blaster - Fishborg is the main cause of many FTK, OTK, and loop setups in the OCG and TCG. It is not a once per turn effect and the synchros that you make for it usually outweigh the discard cost of the monster. There are multiple ways to get Fishborg into your grave on turn 1, whether it be setting Mother Grizzly, Normal Summoning Genex Undine, or using One for One. Fishborg on its own was great sea-life support, but unfortunately it was not used for sea decks. Perhaps if it had another condition, such as synchroing for water monsters, or only being able to activate the effect if your graveyard only has water monsters in it, then it could exist in our game. It had a great run though. I do feel sorry about it getting the rare treatment in Turbo Pack 6. I will say that this is why Spore is a super rare in GENF Special Edition.
Mind Master - As I said earlier, Mind Master is simply a poorly designed card. It is excellent support for the archetype and it cannot be splashed into other decks. Usually that is the definition of balanced, but there are still some strategies that are just too good to leave unchecked, even if the deck isn't winning tournaments. The effect of killing yourself to make any type of field you can imagine is not enough to balance the card out either. If you are successful at paying 6400 lifepoints to make your field, you can easily put a Thought Ruler Archfiend, Psychic Lifetrancer, or even Magical Android onto the field and suddenly have more lifepoints than your opponent. The card had to go. The sad thing is that most competitive players will never try Psychics without Mind Master. The new Psychic Deck has a lot of plays outside of paying lifepoints for Mind Master. They also have a Mind Master in the form of a floater called Serene Psychic Witch. Witch can also search out one of ANY psychic with 2000 or less attack from your deck by achieving the trigger of Destruction Via Anything. This is your new set-up for psychic decks. During your standby phase summon the tuner from your deck, you then normal summon any of the new Banish Psychics and are free to synchro with them. If you opponent stops the synchro, you can get Witch back because most of the nontuner Banish Psychics will put Witch back onto the field once they leave. I know losing Mind Master and not getting another Emergency Teleport sucks, but test the deck out a little before calling it unplayable.
Giant Trunade - Trunade has been out for a long time and a lot of players, myself included, have only just begun to hate it. Having gone through a format with no Heavy Storm, Trunade has been the insurance that you will probably win the game. In most decks, your only out to trunade is Solemn Judgment, paying half your life just to stop your opponents insured win. If you do that, they can still push for game while having LESS lifepoints to get over. The other option that a few players have gone with is Dark Bribe. Bribe can stop Trunade, Monster Reborn, or Solemns at the cost of granting your opponent a card draw. In most cases, that extra draw was worth your life and you just hope that they didn't draw another powerful card from it. But now, Trunade is gone and Heavy is back alongside three Mystical Space Typhoons. MST is balanced 1 for 1 removal and Heavy can be countered by Starlight Road, in turn delicately hitting a few other decks(Debris Plants, Gladiator Beasts, Lightsworns). For most of us, having Trunade gone and Heavy back in the game is a key part of making the game better for everyone.
Royal Oppression - This one I did not see coming. There are multiple trains of thought about how Royal Oppression affects our game:
1) It punishes players for having only 1 win condition, Special Summons. i.e. Fabled.
2) It creates a line where overextension on either side of the field will be punished. i.e. Blackwings.
3) It locks the opponent out of a win condition after you create a great set up. i.e. Xsabers.
4) It locks the opponent out of the duel while not affecting how you play. i.e. Hero Beat.
I like to believe that Konami banned it for reasons 3 and 4, abuse in decks that use the card as part of their win condition. Many would argue that Skill Drain does the same thing and is used in decks where the Skill Drain player gains an advantage for not having effects. The difference here is that Skill Drain themed decks are still a bit inconsistent. Though they can use 3 now, a field of 1900 attackers with some D.Prisons set is no different than any other deck. It is Especially worse when their hand consists of Gadjiltron, Dark Bribes, or other low threat cards(while in the hand). Royal Oppression in certain decks do not compromise their build. If they don't draw Oppression, the deck will play out as normal, but if they do then their power increases 10-fold. I think I will always believe that 1 Oppression is fair, but we will see what happens in a format where Oppression does not exist. (Good thing we have all those side deck choices from this Hyper post.)
In Hindsight
As with every year, there are cards we wish were put onto the list that Konami did not do. So here were my hopes that were effectively slashed in this OCG list:
-Banned One for One.
-Banned Card Destruction.
-Banned Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
No. 17 Leviathan Dragon
-Pot of Duality
-Dark Simorgh
-Beast King Barbaros
-Stygian Street Patrol
Wind up Zenmaister
-Pot of Duality
-Neo-Parshath the Sky Paladin
-Archlord Krystia
-Elemental HERO Gaia
Rounding out the great releases, there is also the new Hidden Arsenal Special Edition that was released not too long ago. For those who need Emmersblade for Xsabers, you now have a reprinted one and a chance to get great synchro monsters. So many back to back releases often shy our attention away from the banlist. Though rapidly approaching, these subsequent releases of awesomeness overshadow the fact that you may not even get to play the cards on September 1st! You guys know how Konami is. YOU REMEMBER SUPER RESCUE CAT. NEVER FORGET 9/1/2010.
Now, this list I am about to show you is about 95% confirmed. The magazine that prints this is almost 100% reliable if not only for that fact that it is an OCG list. It has yet to be different in the TCG, but you can never know what may happen for us and our World Premiere cards. As a forewarning, some viewers may find the card spoiler as slightly disturbing. Some viewers may find the list so good that they want to jump for joy. How do I feel about it? You'll have to wait until the end to find out.
Newly Forbidden
Fishborg Blaster
Mind Master
Giant Trunade
Royal Oppression
Newly Limited
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
Debris Dragon
Lonefire Blossom
Formula Synchron
Legendary Six Samurai Shi En
T.G. Hyper Librarian
Heavy Storm
Pot of Avarice
Primal Seed
Shien's Smoke Signal
Newly Semi-Limited
Necro Gardna
Summoner Monk
Tragoedia
Dewloren, Tiger King of the Ice Barrier
Destiny Draw
Swords of Revealing Light
Call of the Haunted
Mind Crush
Newly Unlimited
Judgement Dragon
Spirit Reaper
Megamorph
Mystical Space Typhoon
Overload Fusion
Gravity Bind
Icarus Attack
STAR plays!
-Twilight, Lightsworn and Chaos in general is BACK. Two Trags, what?? JDs up the whazoo. BLS! Your cards on the field will never be safe again...Unless you Starlight Road them!
-Summoner Monk to two no way! Wonder Magicians get a huge boost from that.
-Fishborg Banned HAH so much for Turbo Pack 6 Fishborgs. Wait how is this good, Fishborg looked good as a Super Rare...
-Icarus Attack to 3 gives us a reason to fear Winged beasts all over again.
Balls dropped
-Banned Mind Master and didn't bump Emergency Teleport up to 2?
-Call of the Haunted to 2? I understand it is very balanced revival and with no Trunade and triple MST it is much more fair. It just seems like that is a huge hit to the themed revival getting released lately.
-Royal Oppression banned is so painful. Yes it is not fair to lock a deck out of playing the game, but with triple MST if they hate it that much makes it balanced. There are other ways to defend yourself from the special summon explosions of many decks, though.
This has been my 2nd banlist since creating this blog, and I must say this one is the most exciting. As with every list, we do hope that the TCG has some minor differences, such as with Tour Guide, but this list is about as close to reasonable as we can get. Some may say that Twilight is far too strong with 2 monks, 3 JD, 2 Trag and BLS, but time will tell as Lightsworn decks are not the most consistent decks on the planet. Plus they have to compete against the anti graveyard tactics of Gravekeepers, the Negate and Destroy of Heralds in Agents/Fairies, the return of side decked Starlight Road thanks to Heavy Storm and Judgment Dragon, and a few other technically choices against the deck. The banlist also neuters a few decks without giving them something to feel happy about. As much as Mind Master is unbalanced, it was one of the few ways for the new Psychic Deck to actually make plays. They do have several other tricks up their sleeve, and they all require a setup. Mind Master required no setup outside of having another psychic to tribute.
Talking about decks is only half of the story, the actual chosen cards can give us a lot of information too. To conclude this blog post, I want to touch up on the banned cards.
Fishborg Blaster - Fishborg is the main cause of many FTK, OTK, and loop setups in the OCG and TCG. It is not a once per turn effect and the synchros that you make for it usually outweigh the discard cost of the monster. There are multiple ways to get Fishborg into your grave on turn 1, whether it be setting Mother Grizzly, Normal Summoning Genex Undine, or using One for One. Fishborg on its own was great sea-life support, but unfortunately it was not used for sea decks. Perhaps if it had another condition, such as synchroing for water monsters, or only being able to activate the effect if your graveyard only has water monsters in it, then it could exist in our game. It had a great run though. I do feel sorry about it getting the rare treatment in Turbo Pack 6. I will say that this is why Spore is a super rare in GENF Special Edition.
Mind Master - As I said earlier, Mind Master is simply a poorly designed card. It is excellent support for the archetype and it cannot be splashed into other decks. Usually that is the definition of balanced, but there are still some strategies that are just too good to leave unchecked, even if the deck isn't winning tournaments. The effect of killing yourself to make any type of field you can imagine is not enough to balance the card out either. If you are successful at paying 6400 lifepoints to make your field, you can easily put a Thought Ruler Archfiend, Psychic Lifetrancer, or even Magical Android onto the field and suddenly have more lifepoints than your opponent. The card had to go. The sad thing is that most competitive players will never try Psychics without Mind Master. The new Psychic Deck has a lot of plays outside of paying lifepoints for Mind Master. They also have a Mind Master in the form of a floater called Serene Psychic Witch. Witch can also search out one of ANY psychic with 2000 or less attack from your deck by achieving the trigger of Destruction Via Anything. This is your new set-up for psychic decks. During your standby phase summon the tuner from your deck, you then normal summon any of the new Banish Psychics and are free to synchro with them. If you opponent stops the synchro, you can get Witch back because most of the nontuner Banish Psychics will put Witch back onto the field once they leave. I know losing Mind Master and not getting another Emergency Teleport sucks, but test the deck out a little before calling it unplayable.
Giant Trunade - Trunade has been out for a long time and a lot of players, myself included, have only just begun to hate it. Having gone through a format with no Heavy Storm, Trunade has been the insurance that you will probably win the game. In most decks, your only out to trunade is Solemn Judgment, paying half your life just to stop your opponents insured win. If you do that, they can still push for game while having LESS lifepoints to get over. The other option that a few players have gone with is Dark Bribe. Bribe can stop Trunade, Monster Reborn, or Solemns at the cost of granting your opponent a card draw. In most cases, that extra draw was worth your life and you just hope that they didn't draw another powerful card from it. But now, Trunade is gone and Heavy is back alongside three Mystical Space Typhoons. MST is balanced 1 for 1 removal and Heavy can be countered by Starlight Road, in turn delicately hitting a few other decks(Debris Plants, Gladiator Beasts, Lightsworns). For most of us, having Trunade gone and Heavy back in the game is a key part of making the game better for everyone.
Royal Oppression - This one I did not see coming. There are multiple trains of thought about how Royal Oppression affects our game:
1) It punishes players for having only 1 win condition, Special Summons. i.e. Fabled.
2) It creates a line where overextension on either side of the field will be punished. i.e. Blackwings.
3) It locks the opponent out of a win condition after you create a great set up. i.e. Xsabers.
4) It locks the opponent out of the duel while not affecting how you play. i.e. Hero Beat.
I like to believe that Konami banned it for reasons 3 and 4, abuse in decks that use the card as part of their win condition. Many would argue that Skill Drain does the same thing and is used in decks where the Skill Drain player gains an advantage for not having effects. The difference here is that Skill Drain themed decks are still a bit inconsistent. Though they can use 3 now, a field of 1900 attackers with some D.Prisons set is no different than any other deck. It is Especially worse when their hand consists of Gadjiltron, Dark Bribes, or other low threat cards(while in the hand). Royal Oppression in certain decks do not compromise their build. If they don't draw Oppression, the deck will play out as normal, but if they do then their power increases 10-fold. I think I will always believe that 1 Oppression is fair, but we will see what happens in a format where Oppression does not exist. (Good thing we have all those side deck choices from this Hyper post.)
In Hindsight
As with every year, there are cards we wish were put onto the list that Konami did not do. So here were my hopes that were effectively slashed in this OCG list:
-Banned One for One.
-Banned Card Destruction.
-Banned Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
Friday, August 12, 2011
Let's talk F!sh
Generation Force is an exciting pack for sea-faring duelists. It introduces a number of Fish, Sea-Serpent and Aqua Monsters that creat an XYZ them as well as tons of spells and traps to support that. Sea decks already have tons of cards and awesome engines to boot. You have a:
Frog engine that puts monsters on your side of the field on each of your turns. With Fishborg Blaster you can make Formula Synchron and draw deeper into your deck than fish normally can. If you use Level Limit or Gravity Bind in your deck, your frogs will probably go untouched for a while.
Deep Sea Diva turns each of your normal summons into 2 monsters, a Diva and another Sea Serpent. You will mainly choose between Air Orca or Lost Blue Breaker, mostly depending on how your hand is and what your opponent has on the field. If you don't need a Diva to become a Smashing Ground or Space Typhoon, you can synchro 5 into Catastor or Gashilnodon. If you don't want to synchro summon, such as with Level Limit on the field, you can make a Gachi Gachi Gantetsu using 2 Divas. If you seem to have dead Divas on the field, you should consider using Genex Ally Birdman. As with any deck that Birdman is in, it recycles your cards and gets useless ones off of the field. Summon Diva, Special Summon LBB, Destroy their only s/t, then get Diva back with Birdman. Birdman can also attack under Level Limit and Gravity Bind.
Fish Stun is a rare treat, but Fish Stun plays similarly to Hero Beat. You have Fish Depth Charge that is a Gemini Spark for Fish monsters, then you just need good non-GENF fish to use it with. A few good examples of these are Fishborg Blaster, Golden Flying Fish, Oyster Meister and Nimble Sunfish. None of those cards are powerhouses on their own, and perhaps the best Fish to tribute for Depth Charges is GENF fish like Fly-Fang. You can use Surface on a lot of these monsters for awesome plays.
It is too early to determine which build is the most powerful, as there is a lot of testing to be had. I took a moment today to build my own version of the deck, known as F!sh for now. It is in the pre-alpha stage, but I think I may have come up with a skeleton:
Monsters: 1x
2-3 Deep Sea Diva
1-2 Big Jaws
2-3 Fly Fang
2-3 Air Orca
1-2 Lost Blue Breaker
1-2 Wing Tortoise
1 Fishborg Blaster
1 Aqua Spirit
1 Sea Lancer
2 Mother Grizzly
Spells: 10+
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole
1 Giant Trunade
1-2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Level Limit Area B
0-1 Fish and Swaps
0-1 Fish and Kicks
2 Surfacing
2-3 Gold Sarcophagus
Traps: 7+
2 Solemn Warning
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
2-3 Oh F!sh!
1-2 Dimensional Prison
F!sh decks are not tier 1, let that be said now. I believe they fall along the lines of Nordics and Agent decks, where the cards themselves aren't the most powerful effects in the game, but they can make for very strong strategies. That strategy element is what I wanted to see out of this deck. The basic idea is that you have a lot of good cards that have fairly easy activation requirements: Oh F!sh, Depth Charge, Airorca and Surfacing. To make those cards live, we have other cards to make them available as soon as possible. Diva can summon Airorca straight out of your deck. This can turn Diva into a walking Smashing ground at the cost of removing 2 cards from your hand for 1 turn. As painful as that sounds, those removed cards will fuel something else, either this turn or next turn. You can perfom an XYZ summon with the Airorca on your next turn, or use it with Oh F!sh. Relying on Airorca to make Oh F!sh live was not enough, so I added in Gold Sarcophagus. Most of the time, I search out Diva with Gold Sarc. in this deck, 1 Gold Sarc makes Oh F!sh into a live card, negating any monster effect simply by shuffling the card back in. It is a bit like Divine Wrath, as you lose Gold Sarc and Oh F!sh to destroy one of your opponent's cards. Once again, doesn't sound game breaking, but when you combine it with everything else, it makes for very interesting gameplay.
Of course, besides playing with F!sh based trap cards, the other strategy of the deck is to perform XYZ summons and Synchro Summons. The easiest way to Overlay into something is to use a GENF monster to banish itself, such as attacking with Fly Fang. On your Following turn, you can put a level 3 monster onto the field to make a level 3 XYZ. F!sh have a number of ways to do this reliably. You can normal summon Diva to put a level 3 monster of your choice onto the field. With Surfacing or Salvage, that would be Lost Blue Breaker. With a level 3 GENF mosnter, your can Diva for LBB, and tribute it to destroy a spell or trap. Afterward, you can use any of your 2-3 Surface cards to bring LBB back and make a level 3 XYZ. If you put another monster into your RFP zone, your first XYZ can be Leviair. Using Leviair's effect, you can summon the banished F!sh monster and synchro with that lone Deep Sea Diva.
With any level 3 F!sh (Fly Fang, Wing Tortoise, etc) and 1 rfp monster: Normal Summon Diva, Special Summon a level 3 Sea-serpent. [If you have a Reborn-esque card in hand, get LBB. Use LBB's effect to destroy a s/t, then Surface to put it back on the field]. Overlay the 2 for Leviair the Sea Dragon. Use Leviair's effect to summon a banish monster from either player's side of the field. Finish by synchroing with Diva for Catastor, Lord Gishilnodon, Brionac or Gaia Knight.
There are so many cards you can use in this deck that it is difficult to choose between what is good and what isn't as good. The deck could even be made to control the duel with Dimensional Fissure and Macro Cosmos, 2 excellent Side Deck choices. In fact, with Gold Sarcophagus, F!sh can side into a very anti-meta side deck utilizing Necroface, Dimensional Fissure, and Fish and Swaps. Gold Sarc can immediately banish Glow-ups, Tengus and Gladiator Beasts from the top of the deck, leaving them with cards they will never be able to access. Fish and Swaps allows you to get banished monsters back to your hand in an even exchange(+/-0). If you do not like the idea of main decking Gravity Bind and Level Limit(there is no reason why you shouldn't), you can side them in against Gravekeepers and Hero Beat. It is especially useful to side out Oh F!sh against the latter and the rise of other beatdown decks(TGs) for generic cards. This would be Dimensional Prison if you don't already run it, or you can even run Zero Force, which will make all of their monsters 0 ATK when you banish cards.
If you haven't gotten a chance to test this deck out, either by proxy or online, give it a try. It does take a fair bit of skill, so don't dismiss it too quickly. Just try to come up with a strategy that is consistent and see how you can capitalize on it.
Here is my test version if you guys need some inspiration:
Monsters: 18
3 Deep Sea Diva (staple)
2 Big Jaws (Level 3 1800 beater.)
2 Fly Fang (Best F!sh in the deck imo)
2 Air Orca
2 Mother Grizzly (gets Fishborg or Sea Lancer)
2 Genex Ally Birdman (recycle Divas)
1 Lost Blue Breaker (easily searched out. 2 has been unnecessary so far)
1 Sea Lancer (Sub-par card. Not great, not bad either. Could be replaced)
1 Aqua Spirit (Utility)
1 Fishborg Blaster (Easy Synchros whenever necessary)
Spells: 12
3 Gold Sarcophagus (easy Divas and makes Oh F!sh live on turn 1)
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Salvage (May up this to 3. Card is too good not to run in non-macro builds)
1 Monster Reborn
1 Giant Trunade
1 Dark Hole
1 Level Limit Area B (Many level 3 attackers in this deck. Also XYZ have no level, so they are unaffected)
1 Salvage (Get Diva or an emergency LBB)
Traps: 10
3 Oh F!sh (Too many game breaking effects in YGO to run less.)
2 Solemn Warning
2 Dimensional Prison
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Gravity Bind
Extra: 15
1 Submersible Carrier Aero Shark
1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
1 Grenosaurus
1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 No. 17 Leviathan Dragon
2 Sea Dragon Lord Gishilnodon
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
1 Gaia Knight, the Force of Earth
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Colossal Fighter
1 Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier (Mother Grizzly + Diva)
Side Deck: 15
3 Dimensional Fissure
2 Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror
2 Light-Imprisoning Mirror
2 Kinetic Soldier
2 System Down
2 Fish and Swaps
1 Maxx "C"
1 Necro Face
Frog engine that puts monsters on your side of the field on each of your turns. With Fishborg Blaster you can make Formula Synchron and draw deeper into your deck than fish normally can. If you use Level Limit or Gravity Bind in your deck, your frogs will probably go untouched for a while.
Deep Sea Diva turns each of your normal summons into 2 monsters, a Diva and another Sea Serpent. You will mainly choose between Air Orca or Lost Blue Breaker, mostly depending on how your hand is and what your opponent has on the field. If you don't need a Diva to become a Smashing Ground or Space Typhoon, you can synchro 5 into Catastor or Gashilnodon. If you don't want to synchro summon, such as with Level Limit on the field, you can make a Gachi Gachi Gantetsu using 2 Divas. If you seem to have dead Divas on the field, you should consider using Genex Ally Birdman. As with any deck that Birdman is in, it recycles your cards and gets useless ones off of the field. Summon Diva, Special Summon LBB, Destroy their only s/t, then get Diva back with Birdman. Birdman can also attack under Level Limit and Gravity Bind.
Fish Stun is a rare treat, but Fish Stun plays similarly to Hero Beat. You have Fish Depth Charge that is a Gemini Spark for Fish monsters, then you just need good non-GENF fish to use it with. A few good examples of these are Fishborg Blaster, Golden Flying Fish, Oyster Meister and Nimble Sunfish. None of those cards are powerhouses on their own, and perhaps the best Fish to tribute for Depth Charges is GENF fish like Fly-Fang. You can use Surface on a lot of these monsters for awesome plays.
Fly Fang - Inflicts Piercing Damage. When it inflicts damage to the opponent, banish it until your next Standby Phase.
It is too early to determine which build is the most powerful, as there is a lot of testing to be had. I took a moment today to build my own version of the deck, known as F!sh for now. It is in the pre-alpha stage, but I think I may have come up with a skeleton:
Monsters: 1x
2-3 Deep Sea Diva
1-2 Big Jaws
2-3 Fly Fang
2-3 Air Orca
1-2 Lost Blue Breaker
1-2 Wing Tortoise
1 Fishborg Blaster
1 Aqua Spirit
1 Sea Lancer
2 Mother Grizzly
Spells: 10+
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole
1 Giant Trunade
1-2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Level Limit Area B
0-1 Fish and Swaps
0-1 Fish and Kicks
2 Surfacing
2-3 Gold Sarcophagus
Traps: 7+
2 Solemn Warning
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
2-3 Oh F!sh!
1-2 Dimensional Prison
F!sh decks are not tier 1, let that be said now. I believe they fall along the lines of Nordics and Agent decks, where the cards themselves aren't the most powerful effects in the game, but they can make for very strong strategies. That strategy element is what I wanted to see out of this deck. The basic idea is that you have a lot of good cards that have fairly easy activation requirements: Oh F!sh, Depth Charge, Airorca and Surfacing. To make those cards live, we have other cards to make them available as soon as possible. Diva can summon Airorca straight out of your deck. This can turn Diva into a walking Smashing ground at the cost of removing 2 cards from your hand for 1 turn. As painful as that sounds, those removed cards will fuel something else, either this turn or next turn. You can perfom an XYZ summon with the Airorca on your next turn, or use it with Oh F!sh. Relying on Airorca to make Oh F!sh live was not enough, so I added in Gold Sarcophagus. Most of the time, I search out Diva with Gold Sarc. in this deck, 1 Gold Sarc makes Oh F!sh into a live card, negating any monster effect simply by shuffling the card back in. It is a bit like Divine Wrath, as you lose Gold Sarc and Oh F!sh to destroy one of your opponent's cards. Once again, doesn't sound game breaking, but when you combine it with everything else, it makes for very interesting gameplay.
Of course, besides playing with F!sh based trap cards, the other strategy of the deck is to perform XYZ summons and Synchro Summons. The easiest way to Overlay into something is to use a GENF monster to banish itself, such as attacking with Fly Fang. On your Following turn, you can put a level 3 monster onto the field to make a level 3 XYZ. F!sh have a number of ways to do this reliably. You can normal summon Diva to put a level 3 monster of your choice onto the field. With Surfacing or Salvage, that would be Lost Blue Breaker. With a level 3 GENF mosnter, your can Diva for LBB, and tribute it to destroy a spell or trap. Afterward, you can use any of your 2-3 Surface cards to bring LBB back and make a level 3 XYZ. If you put another monster into your RFP zone, your first XYZ can be Leviair. Using Leviair's effect, you can summon the banished F!sh monster and synchro with that lone Deep Sea Diva.
With any level 3 F!sh (Fly Fang, Wing Tortoise, etc) and 1 rfp monster: Normal Summon Diva, Special Summon a level 3 Sea-serpent. [If you have a Reborn-esque card in hand, get LBB. Use LBB's effect to destroy a s/t, then Surface to put it back on the field]. Overlay the 2 for Leviair the Sea Dragon. Use Leviair's effect to summon a banish monster from either player's side of the field. Finish by synchroing with Diva for Catastor, Lord Gishilnodon, Brionac or Gaia Knight.
There are so many cards you can use in this deck that it is difficult to choose between what is good and what isn't as good. The deck could even be made to control the duel with Dimensional Fissure and Macro Cosmos, 2 excellent Side Deck choices. In fact, with Gold Sarcophagus, F!sh can side into a very anti-meta side deck utilizing Necroface, Dimensional Fissure, and Fish and Swaps. Gold Sarc can immediately banish Glow-ups, Tengus and Gladiator Beasts from the top of the deck, leaving them with cards they will never be able to access. Fish and Swaps allows you to get banished monsters back to your hand in an even exchange(+/-0). If you do not like the idea of main decking Gravity Bind and Level Limit(there is no reason why you shouldn't), you can side them in against Gravekeepers and Hero Beat. It is especially useful to side out Oh F!sh against the latter and the rise of other beatdown decks(TGs) for generic cards. This would be Dimensional Prison if you don't already run it, or you can even run Zero Force, which will make all of their monsters 0 ATK when you banish cards.
If you haven't gotten a chance to test this deck out, either by proxy or online, give it a try. It does take a fair bit of skill, so don't dismiss it too quickly. Just try to come up with a strategy that is consistent and see how you can capitalize on it.
Here is my test version if you guys need some inspiration:
Monsters: 18
3 Deep Sea Diva (staple)
2 Big Jaws (Level 3 1800 beater.)
2 Fly Fang (Best F!sh in the deck imo)
2 Air Orca
2 Mother Grizzly (gets Fishborg or Sea Lancer)
2 Genex Ally Birdman (recycle Divas)
1 Lost Blue Breaker (easily searched out. 2 has been unnecessary so far)
1 Sea Lancer (Sub-par card. Not great, not bad either. Could be replaced)
1 Aqua Spirit (Utility)
1 Fishborg Blaster (Easy Synchros whenever necessary)
Spells: 12
3 Gold Sarcophagus (easy Divas and makes Oh F!sh live on turn 1)
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
2 Salvage (May up this to 3. Card is too good not to run in non-macro builds)
1 Monster Reborn
1 Giant Trunade
1 Dark Hole
1 Level Limit Area B (Many level 3 attackers in this deck. Also XYZ have no level, so they are unaffected)
1 Salvage (Get Diva or an emergency LBB)
Traps: 10
3 Oh F!sh (Too many game breaking effects in YGO to run less.)
2 Solemn Warning
2 Dimensional Prison
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Gravity Bind
Extra: 15
1 Submersible Carrier Aero Shark
1 Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
1 Grenosaurus
1 Leviair the Sea Dragon
1 No. 17 Leviathan Dragon
2 Sea Dragon Lord Gishilnodon
1 Ally of Justice Catastor
1 Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
1 Gaia Knight, the Force of Earth
1 Black Rose Dragon
1 Stardust Dragon
1 Scrap Dragon
1 Colossal Fighter
1 Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier (Mother Grizzly + Diva)
Side Deck: 15
3 Dimensional Fissure
2 Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror
2 Light-Imprisoning Mirror
2 Kinetic Soldier
2 System Down
2 Fish and Swaps
1 Maxx "C"
1 Necro Face
Friday, August 5, 2011
Turbo Pack 6 - Rise of the Good Cards
Disclaimer POIDH I know. Sorry guys, but until Konami updates the product page, I have no pictures of the new Turbo Pack. It is orange though if that helps. Search it out on youtube if you want to see it.
Been missing out on some random semi-good cards that some of the best decks are using? Playing Quickdraw Plants(Junk Destroyer is a good card!) and you need 2 more shiny cards to bling out your deck for that extra $100 of net worth? Want some 40 dollar Chain Disappearances? Then Turbo Pack 6 is for you!
Turbo Pack 6 has 2 key features: Cards that needed to be reprinted for updated text, and cards that look awesome as a foil.
Ultimate Rare (1)
Dark Armed Dragon
Ultra Rare (1)
Sangan
Super Rare (4)
Masked Dragon
Fishborg Blaster
Quickdraw Synchron
Chain Disappearance
Rare (6)
Alector, Sovereign of Birds
Zombie Master
Black Garden
Stardust Dragon
Red Dragon Archfiend
Armory Arm
Commons (9)
Greenkappa
Kinetic Soldier
Golem Dragon
Transforming Sphere
Creature Swap
Gemini Spark
Fusion Gate
Magical Dimension
Bountiful Artemis
Some of these are a LITTLE hit-or-miss, but there is also some really, really cool cards to get 20 copies of.
UTR Dark Armed Dragon - Some people still want this card banned. It hasn't seen any top tournament play lately, and I can almost safely say that no Top 4 Player in the TCG played this card in any nationals this year. There were some OCG players with DAD in the deck and it may come back with some key picks on the September Banlist(Mind Master to 0, E-teleport to 2!). Needless to say, it does look pretty cool in Ultimate foil. I do wish they picked something that is seeing more play, like Ultimate Brionac, but this card is still technically a good monster. I think that if I pull one, I will make a Blackwing deck just to run it.
UR Sangan - Ehhhhh. I know some people who will love this card, but I do have to say that I don't. To be fair, most of the cards that would have been Ultra in Turbo Pack 6 ended up as Supers, so they are still in the pack. However, Sangan now has six rarities: Gold Rare from GLD2, Parallel from HL2, Super from DLG2(pretty hard to get this), Rare from MRD, or common from the Joey Starter.
SR Masked Dragon - Did you know that Masked Dragon is a good card? Dragons as a whole may not be wrecking the meta, but they have their own Nova Summoner.
SR Fishborg Blaster - Yesssssssss. This card should be limited in September, but the Super Rare is a great pick. Fishborg isn't doing THAT much in America, but in OCG land it is the basis of many new OTKs(along with Future Fusion). The card probably won't be outright banned, but if you get more than 2, I suggest getting rid of the extras before September rolls around.
SR Quickdraw Synchron - Yessssssssss. Oh wait, no one wants to play Quickdraw Plants anymore? Well tough for them because Quickdraw can do amazing things and once that banlist comes around you may have 1 or 2 spots in your Junk Doppel decks that could easily be a Quickdraw.
SR Chain Disappearance - At the moment I have 4 rare Chain D's. I used to have 6 at one point but I guess I traded 2 off. Now that Super Rares are coming out, I will want to collect these babies too. Chain Disappearance is one of the great disruptor cards in the game and everyone knows this. People who couldn't get the Rare versions because the spike in value may have a more difficult time getting these. If you are lucky, your locals are like mine where everyone has 3 Chains or 1 Chain and no one wants to trade theirs.
The rest of the commons and rares are mostly for new players and the new card text. You would be surprised at how many new players can't get those tins for SR Red Dragon or Stardust, so now they have the chance for some staple Synchro Monsters. Greenkappa is also used in the OCG, especially in heavy warrior decks like Six Sams. With Greenkappa, you can side in Rivalry of Warlords and still have a good first turn set and/or a generic monster that can hit almost any deck. Bountiful Artemis and Gemini Spark are other cards that you would be surprised that some players don't own. I would have liked to see Gemini Spark as a Super Rare with all the new Hero support, but I guess they want it more available to new players. Finally, Transforming Sphere is a very weird card that will probably serve 1 purpose. It is a very situational card effect tacked onto a level 3 monster you can summon with Flying Kamakari #1.
Once per turn, you can select 1 face-up Defense Position monster your opponent controls. Discard 1 card and equip the opponent's selected monster to this card (you can only equip 1 monster at a time to this card with this effect). This card gains the ATK of the equipped monster. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase. During the End Phase, the monster equipped with this card by this card's effect is Special Summoned to your opponent's side of the field in face-up Defense Position.
-If you summoned it with Kamakari while your opponent controls a face-up defense monster, you can spend 1 card in your hand and 1 normal summon of a level 3 monster or tuner monster to Xyz or Synchro while removing their monster. In an Xyz deck running Level Limit Area B, you can run a high number of level 3 monsters and remove your opponent's with Sphere's effect.
That is pretty much the only cool play to do with Sphere other than Icarus Attack. If you know any others, feel free to post about it here or on Facebook.
Other than that, the remaining cards have new text. The rulings for the cards shouldn't change, but it is to help us understand them being such problem cards. I for one hope to collect them all! 1 DAD, 1 Sangan, 3 Chains, 1 Fishborg, 1 Armory, and 1 Fusion Gate and I should be good to go!
Been missing out on some random semi-good cards that some of the best decks are using? Playing Quickdraw Plants(Junk Destroyer is a good card!) and you need 2 more shiny cards to bling out your deck for that extra $100 of net worth? Want some 40 dollar Chain Disappearances? Then Turbo Pack 6 is for you!
Turbo Pack 6 has 2 key features: Cards that needed to be reprinted for updated text, and cards that look awesome as a foil.
Ultimate Rare (1)
Dark Armed Dragon
Ultra Rare (1)
Sangan
Super Rare (4)
Masked Dragon
Fishborg Blaster
Quickdraw Synchron
Chain Disappearance
Rare (6)
Alector, Sovereign of Birds
Zombie Master
Black Garden
Stardust Dragon
Red Dragon Archfiend
Armory Arm
Commons (9)
Greenkappa
Kinetic Soldier
Golem Dragon
Transforming Sphere
Creature Swap
Gemini Spark
Fusion Gate
Magical Dimension
Bountiful Artemis
Some of these are a LITTLE hit-or-miss, but there is also some really, really cool cards to get 20 copies of.
UTR Dark Armed Dragon - Some people still want this card banned. It hasn't seen any top tournament play lately, and I can almost safely say that no Top 4 Player in the TCG played this card in any nationals this year. There were some OCG players with DAD in the deck and it may come back with some key picks on the September Banlist(Mind Master to 0, E-teleport to 2!). Needless to say, it does look pretty cool in Ultimate foil. I do wish they picked something that is seeing more play, like Ultimate Brionac, but this card is still technically a good monster. I think that if I pull one, I will make a Blackwing deck just to run it.
UR Sangan - Ehhhhh. I know some people who will love this card, but I do have to say that I don't. To be fair, most of the cards that would have been Ultra in Turbo Pack 6 ended up as Supers, so they are still in the pack. However, Sangan now has six rarities: Gold Rare from GLD2, Parallel from HL2, Super from DLG2(pretty hard to get this), Rare from MRD, or common from the Joey Starter.
SR Masked Dragon - Did you know that Masked Dragon is a good card? Dragons as a whole may not be wrecking the meta, but they have their own Nova Summoner.
SR Fishborg Blaster - Yesssssssss. This card should be limited in September, but the Super Rare is a great pick. Fishborg isn't doing THAT much in America, but in OCG land it is the basis of many new OTKs(along with Future Fusion). The card probably won't be outright banned, but if you get more than 2, I suggest getting rid of the extras before September rolls around.
SR Quickdraw Synchron - Yessssssssss. Oh wait, no one wants to play Quickdraw Plants anymore? Well tough for them because Quickdraw can do amazing things and once that banlist comes around you may have 1 or 2 spots in your Junk Doppel decks that could easily be a Quickdraw.
SR Chain Disappearance - At the moment I have 4 rare Chain D's. I used to have 6 at one point but I guess I traded 2 off. Now that Super Rares are coming out, I will want to collect these babies too. Chain Disappearance is one of the great disruptor cards in the game and everyone knows this. People who couldn't get the Rare versions because the spike in value may have a more difficult time getting these. If you are lucky, your locals are like mine where everyone has 3 Chains or 1 Chain and no one wants to trade theirs.
The rest of the commons and rares are mostly for new players and the new card text. You would be surprised at how many new players can't get those tins for SR Red Dragon or Stardust, so now they have the chance for some staple Synchro Monsters. Greenkappa is also used in the OCG, especially in heavy warrior decks like Six Sams. With Greenkappa, you can side in Rivalry of Warlords and still have a good first turn set and/or a generic monster that can hit almost any deck. Bountiful Artemis and Gemini Spark are other cards that you would be surprised that some players don't own. I would have liked to see Gemini Spark as a Super Rare with all the new Hero support, but I guess they want it more available to new players. Finally, Transforming Sphere is a very weird card that will probably serve 1 purpose. It is a very situational card effect tacked onto a level 3 monster you can summon with Flying Kamakari #1.
Once per turn, you can select 1 face-up Defense Position monster your opponent controls. Discard 1 card and equip the opponent's selected monster to this card (you can only equip 1 monster at a time to this card with this effect). This card gains the ATK of the equipped monster. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase. During the End Phase, the monster equipped with this card by this card's effect is Special Summoned to your opponent's side of the field in face-up Defense Position.
-If you summoned it with Kamakari while your opponent controls a face-up defense monster, you can spend 1 card in your hand and 1 normal summon of a level 3 monster or tuner monster to Xyz or Synchro while removing their monster. In an Xyz deck running Level Limit Area B, you can run a high number of level 3 monsters and remove your opponent's with Sphere's effect.
That is pretty much the only cool play to do with Sphere other than Icarus Attack. If you know any others, feel free to post about it here or on Facebook.
Other than that, the remaining cards have new text. The rulings for the cards shouldn't change, but it is to help us understand them being such problem cards. I for one hope to collect them all! 1 DAD, 1 Sangan, 3 Chains, 1 Fishborg, 1 Armory, and 1 Fusion Gate and I should be good to go!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Dragon Nest. Where Flyff meets Vindictus
Nexon is the gaming portal that has brought us games like Vindictus, Maplestory, and Dungeon Fighter Online. It is a Korean company, but the grinds on the games aren't so bad when you look at the kind of game you're playing. The last game I played on Nexon, the only game actually, was Vindictus. Though fun for a while, it didn't hold my interest for as long as I had hoped. Nexon's new Dragon Nest, however, is actually sort of fun.
My lowest resolution Cleric
Dragon Nest, like the blog post title describes, is really a cross between Flyff and Vindictus. You have cutesy characters, and fun environments, but instead of "farming monsters" in fields outside of monsters you would grind out dungeon quests for experience. This is more like Vindictus. Your starting town is where you collect quests and conduct business. Those quests take place in dungeons, which you reach by entering a portal Hub at the edge of town. Also like Vindictus, the dungeons you enter have increasing difficulty and achievements, which definitely lessens the "grind" if you choose to do them. Over the course of the game, you may enter the same dungeon with the same boss monster 3 times for 3 different quests. Luckily you can change the difficulty to make it more interesting, and you may even have achievements for bonus experience such as:
-Clear the dungeon while taking no damage.
-Obtain a 30+ hit combo.
-Clear the dungeon in a 4-man team
And many more that I only caught a glimpse of.
The next area that sets this game apart from our favorites like Ragnarok Online and Flyff is the battle system. Instead of autoattacking monsters and using skills when available, Dragon Nest uses a more modern system. Your character's movement is done via WASD and your mouse is locked into the camera. Instead of seeing a mouse pointer, you have a Crosshair that is indicative of your mouse location. That means the camera has no boundaries for mouse movement, and you can roll your mouse all over your desk and the camera will keep turning(Ah, the days of slamming my mouse for quick spins in Gunz Online.) Each individual attack your character does is performed with a Left Click. You can link left clicks together to make combo attacks that will hit anything in range. If you're using a weapon with a sweeping attack, you will hit multiple monsters. There are even some bows that fire multiple arrows, so not only can you aim and left click to hit whoever, however you like, it may also it multiple enemies in a multi-hit combo. Right click is called a special attack, and usually costs no Mana/MP/Energy. I like to think of them as combo finishers. While you're moving around punching and slashing enemies, they will be attacking you back, so Dragon Nest has quicksteps in the form of Double Tapping a direction. I hold Shift and press a direction, as my computer is too slow to register a double tap. As all of the newest Action MMORPGs are showing, positioning matters for both you and your opponent; damage mitigation is not just Math in your head, but also hand-eye coordination.
Of course, it wouldn't be a MMO without Classes and unique skills for each. Skills are set to the number keys and can be learned/upgraded via NPC or item drops. Each time you level up, you get skill points that you can spend to build a skillset that you prefer. Just like the Normal Attack system, skills also require aiming, positioning, and timing. Some skills, such as a rain of lightning bolts, light up individual spots on the ground to show where they will it. If you or the enemy aren't standing on one of those spots, then noone will take damage from it. As your level progress and you reach level 15, you can evolve your class up a tier!
-Clerics can choose to become the ever present healing and tanking Paladin, or the equally as popular support Priest. Priests in Dragon Nest also have a small number of damage dealing Skills, helping them fill an additional DD role.
-Warriors can choose to become Swordsmen, which excel in long combo chains. You can specialize your Swordsman for single opponents or taking on multiple enemies at once. The other choice for Warriors is the Mercenary. Mercenaries are also high armor classes to fill the tanking role. I'm not sure if they have options for healing like a Paladin does, but they have many shouting auras.
-The Sorceress, as usual, gets to decide on a full damage dealing character, or the option of crowd control. Elementalist get additional high damage, multiple monster hitting skills whereas the Mystic gets more options for controlling monsters. Not only do they get cool skills like Black Hole that draw groups of enemies to its center, but they also get their own abilities like Teleport and the fast-moving Mirco Hole.
-Archer are always popular and their upgrade choices are no different. You can choose between your long range attacks with no close-range options in the form of the Sharp Shooter. Your other option is to sacrifice some of that damage for close-range abilities and escape options a-la Acrobat. Essentially, you can either continue your high damage, long-range barrages, or you can do great damage at any range and attempt to broaden your versatility.
From the original Korean server.
After finishing what is left to do in your home town, the next step of Dragon Nest is teaming up with your buddies and doing Instanced fights in the many high level dungeons. The game is still a little new, so the choices are slightly limited. But, from what I understand, there is some fairly difficult end game content in Dragon Nest with awesome rewards to show for it. For some players, high level content makes the game what it is. For others, it is the joy of taking a cute girl with a bow throw several quests for estranged NPCs. Perhaps the most important thing to make a note of is that Dragon Nest is free to play, like all other Nexon Games. Of course, you can choose to buy NX for various things from Costumes and Wings with a few stats on them, to experience point boosters. Feel free to give it a try, any computer bought in the last 2 years could play the game and you don't really lose a thing by trying it out.
My lowest resolution Cleric
Dragon Nest, like the blog post title describes, is really a cross between Flyff and Vindictus. You have cutesy characters, and fun environments, but instead of "farming monsters" in fields outside of monsters you would grind out dungeon quests for experience. This is more like Vindictus. Your starting town is where you collect quests and conduct business. Those quests take place in dungeons, which you reach by entering a portal Hub at the edge of town. Also like Vindictus, the dungeons you enter have increasing difficulty and achievements, which definitely lessens the "grind" if you choose to do them. Over the course of the game, you may enter the same dungeon with the same boss monster 3 times for 3 different quests. Luckily you can change the difficulty to make it more interesting, and you may even have achievements for bonus experience such as:
-Clear the dungeon while taking no damage.
-Obtain a 30+ hit combo.
-Clear the dungeon in a 4-man team
And many more that I only caught a glimpse of.
Chelsea's higher resolution Archer
The next area that sets this game apart from our favorites like Ragnarok Online and Flyff is the battle system. Instead of autoattacking monsters and using skills when available, Dragon Nest uses a more modern system. Your character's movement is done via WASD and your mouse is locked into the camera. Instead of seeing a mouse pointer, you have a Crosshair that is indicative of your mouse location. That means the camera has no boundaries for mouse movement, and you can roll your mouse all over your desk and the camera will keep turning(Ah, the days of slamming my mouse for quick spins in Gunz Online.) Each individual attack your character does is performed with a Left Click. You can link left clicks together to make combo attacks that will hit anything in range. If you're using a weapon with a sweeping attack, you will hit multiple monsters. There are even some bows that fire multiple arrows, so not only can you aim and left click to hit whoever, however you like, it may also it multiple enemies in a multi-hit combo. Right click is called a special attack, and usually costs no Mana/MP/Energy. I like to think of them as combo finishers. While you're moving around punching and slashing enemies, they will be attacking you back, so Dragon Nest has quicksteps in the form of Double Tapping a direction. I hold Shift and press a direction, as my computer is too slow to register a double tap. As all of the newest Action MMORPGs are showing, positioning matters for both you and your opponent; damage mitigation is not just Math in your head, but also hand-eye coordination.
Of course, it wouldn't be a MMO without Classes and unique skills for each. Skills are set to the number keys and can be learned/upgraded via NPC or item drops. Each time you level up, you get skill points that you can spend to build a skillset that you prefer. Just like the Normal Attack system, skills also require aiming, positioning, and timing. Some skills, such as a rain of lightning bolts, light up individual spots on the ground to show where they will it. If you or the enemy aren't standing on one of those spots, then noone will take damage from it. As your level progress and you reach level 15, you can evolve your class up a tier!
-Clerics can choose to become the ever present healing and tanking Paladin, or the equally as popular support Priest. Priests in Dragon Nest also have a small number of damage dealing Skills, helping them fill an additional DD role.
-Warriors can choose to become Swordsmen, which excel in long combo chains. You can specialize your Swordsman for single opponents or taking on multiple enemies at once. The other choice for Warriors is the Mercenary. Mercenaries are also high armor classes to fill the tanking role. I'm not sure if they have options for healing like a Paladin does, but they have many shouting auras.
-The Sorceress, as usual, gets to decide on a full damage dealing character, or the option of crowd control. Elementalist get additional high damage, multiple monster hitting skills whereas the Mystic gets more options for controlling monsters. Not only do they get cool skills like Black Hole that draw groups of enemies to its center, but they also get their own abilities like Teleport and the fast-moving Mirco Hole.
-Archer are always popular and their upgrade choices are no different. You can choose between your long range attacks with no close-range options in the form of the Sharp Shooter. Your other option is to sacrifice some of that damage for close-range abilities and escape options a-la Acrobat. Essentially, you can either continue your high damage, long-range barrages, or you can do great damage at any range and attempt to broaden your versatility.
From the original Korean server.
After finishing what is left to do in your home town, the next step of Dragon Nest is teaming up with your buddies and doing Instanced fights in the many high level dungeons. The game is still a little new, so the choices are slightly limited. But, from what I understand, there is some fairly difficult end game content in Dragon Nest with awesome rewards to show for it. For some players, high level content makes the game what it is. For others, it is the joy of taking a cute girl with a bow throw several quests for estranged NPCs. Perhaps the most important thing to make a note of is that Dragon Nest is free to play, like all other Nexon Games. Of course, you can choose to buy NX for various things from Costumes and Wings with a few stats on them, to experience point boosters. Feel free to give it a try, any computer bought in the last 2 years could play the game and you don't really lose a thing by trying it out.
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