Classic fun - Koa'kis

I have been waiting for this format and certain key reprints for a while. Pot of Duality, Heavy Storm, emphasis on monster cards and their effects; all of these are good reasons to run beatdown decks and anti-meta. Of course, this is me we are talking about. I had to give Koakis their long-awaited retry.

The last time I played Koakis at locals was in 2010, back when Six Samurai were the prevalent deck. At that time, I only had my 1 Duality, so getting off Urnight plays were heavily dependent on my opening hand. Some builds resorting to using Morphing Jar, others used 3 Gold Sarcophagus. If I was lucky enough to get Shi En off the field and survive Trishula, I could usually win. A lot of the matches weren't in my favor, so that is what we call an inconsistent deck. My current build seems to respond fairly well to other decks, so here is hoping we can improve upon it.

Monsters: 19
3 Koa'ki Meiru Urnight
3 Koa'ki Meiru Crusader
2 Koa'ki Meiru Boulder
2 Koa'ki Meiru Guardian
2 Genex Ally Birdman
1 Summoner Monk
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole
1 Koa'ki Meiru Maximus
1 Koa'ki Meiru Sandman
1 Koa'ki Meiru Wall
1 Koa'ki Meiru Tornado
1 Maxx "C"

Spells: 12
3 Pot of Duality
2 Gold Sarcophagus
2 Iron Core of Koa'ki Meiru
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Dark Hole
1 Heavy Storm
1 Monster Reborn

Traps: 9
2 Call of the Haunted
2 Solemn Warning
2 Compulsory Evacuation Device
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Bottomless Trap Hole

Extra: 15
Your choice of Synchros
1 Arcanite Magician
1 No. 39: Utopia

Side Deck: 15
3 Leeching the Light
2 Soul Release
2 Light Imprisoning Mirror
2 Shadow Imprisoning Mirror
2 Koa'ki Meiru Drago
2 Cyber Dragon
1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
1 Mystical Space Typhoon

Cards that work well:
Call of the Haunted is probably the best answer to Solemn Warning this format. Even with all the Mystical Space and Heavy Storm, Call can bait out their spells, help you survive the turn, or even allow you to win the game. Koakis aren't built to mill monsters, or to needlessly expend resources because you have survival tools (there is a Koaki build that can do that!). Call is always meant to be an answer to your opponent's destruction effects.

Summoner Monk creates amazing combos if you have 1 Iron Core and 1 of any other spell card in your hand. I am only running 1 in the deck, or perhaps I should say that I only own one. The typical play for Monk is to discard a spell card and summon Urnight. You can then use Urnight's effect to summon another Koaki from your deck. If your opponent has no response, you will have 3 monsters on the field for the cost of 2 cards in your hand. Monk and Urnight cannot attack, so you can overlay them into a Utopia if necessary. A lot of the time, I will keep them both of the field. It really depends on the matchup, as some decks will resort to effects to clear your monsters rather than attacking. Most people say that Summoner Monk is not good because of the spells you have to pitch. I like to believe that the Koaki Deck solves this problem with Iron Core, Duality, and Gold Sarc. Anyone can easily discard a Pot of Duality to summon an Urnight. The most fun however is using Boulder, Duality, or Gold Sarc a turn prior to the Monk play in order to get 2 Iron Core into your hand. Two Iron Core, 1 Monk, and any card to protect your invest (such as Compulsory) is a very powerful play. If your opponent cannot rid you of the Summoner Monk, you can add the discarded Iron Core to your hand during your next draw phase and have 5 monsters on the field without normal summoning.

Koa'ki Meiru Guardian was ran in 3's in the VERY beginning, and then it was bumped down to 2. When I remade the deck a week ago, I originally had 1 Guardian and 2 Sandman (which makes no sense at all). It is obvious that Effect Monsters are very important in this format. Some people run 3 Effect Veiler, some run Fiendish Chains, and so it is only natural to play Guardian in 2's or 3's. It may be ideal to Run 2 in the main deck and side in a 3rd when playing against low trap-count decks. Like Doomcalibur, Guardian forces plays out of your opponent. Be it wasting powerful spells and traps to destroy 1 monster or forcing you to use the effect prematurely. Many of the top decks rely on key effects to "get their ball rolling" and to keep them from using them is very important.

Perhaps the best part about the Koaki deck is the ability to side against any other deck. If you look at my side, I appear to have a major grudge against Light decks. You may opt for a more universal side. In my opinion, the main decks to beat are Chaos Synchro, Agents, Hero Beat, and TG variants. The first 2 are handled by the heavy amount of anti-light cards and soul release. The latter 2 are handled by Cyber Dragons and an additional Space Typhoon.

Now this isn't the end-all beat-all version of a Koaki deck. There are many routes to choose from if you want to give it a try. You can add a Synchro element using TG Striker and TG Warwolf. You can put in a miniature Miracle Fusion in the form of Gaia Plate. Some people also want to run Effect Veiler in the deck, alongside Guardian; it locks out many effects without the need to play Skill Drain. There are many Koaki themed cards to choose from too. Just be very careful as many of them have lost power in this format (Reckoned Power). There more you try to fit in, the less consistent the deck will be, so if anyone wants to try out Negaton or Overclock, I suggest not running too many other themed spells and traps.

Happy Beating!

Video Dump 2

Tokyo Game Show gave us a lot of new videos to say about our favorite upcoming games. These are a few of my favorites, some of which you may have seen on my Facebook page.

Resident Evil: Revelations TGS Trailer - Nintendo3DStv


Dead or Alive 5 - Pre-Alpha Trailer - MyKOEItv


Asura's Wrath - TGS Trailer - CAPCOMUnityVideos


Marvel Vs Capcom 3 Vergil Trailer CAPCOMUnityVideos


Gundam Extreme Versus - Extended Preview Snarfx0r


Tales of Innocence R - PSVita - AbyssmalC


Sonic Generations - TGS Trailer - Gamespot

"What do?"

I am officially done with Marvel. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is listed as a November 13th release on Amazon.com. So in the meantime, I need something else to play. For those who don't have me on Facebook, I recently had a birthday, and added more games to my ever-growing library(read: "backlog").

All of these games except Infamous 2 are largely unplayed. Yes the Dead Island is unopened. Yes the tag on Infamous 2 says 49.99. The most recent additions are the games with arrows, Disgaea, Dead Island, and Resistance 3. However, I can't play them until I finish Infamous 2. I don't have a lot of time each day to play Infamous 2, especially with online games like League of Legends and Dragon Nest about. When you have people that watch you play games, it is difficult to play things behind their back. If your friend bought a single player game and you want to watch the campaign (rather than spend 60 bucks to play it on your own!) you would want them to wait for you before progressing through the story, right? Now that I am finished with Marvel, I need a game that I can play that doesn't require spectators.

Making a comeback!

I was talking to a co-worker the other day about PC games. My laptop got a little bit of attention during Hurricane Irene. It only has a 30 minute battery life at best because it is so old, but I was able to play 1 particular game on it: RPG Maker XP. At work, my fellow associate and I talked a little bit about RPG Maker. During that conversation, I realized that 99% of anything I could have made on RPG Maker, I could be making in Little Big Planet 2. I popped it back into the Playstation 3 for the first time in months earlier this week.

I am not quite sure what made me stop playing LBP2. It is still one of my favorite games and has infinite "replayability." I do not have the Platinum Trophy for it either; as I am still missing many community trophies. My one level that I published is also mediocre in my opinion. It isn't the worst level I have ever seen, but it doesn't draw in people to play it. In fact, many of the levels with 500+ plays aren't even worth the energy my PS3 uses to load them! Outweighing these is the plethora of amazing levels that I WISH I had the skill to create.

Creator: X-NOBODY-X

For those who don't know, LBP at its core is a 2.5D platform game. You move left and right across the screen. You avoid obstacles and battle enemies as well. You can change the layers of 2D you run in, making the game 2.5 Dimensions instead of being a full on 3d platformer. There are also objects to interact with, usually by grabbing. LBP2 expands on this almost indefinitely. By manipulating the camera, you can create top-down 3D games. Obstacles are customizable via logic switches to do just about anything you can think of. Objects to interact with have gone from sponges with wings you can grab hold of to actual vehicles you can fly around the level in. It is difficult to list the many things you can do in LBP2 because that would be near-impossible. I believe it to be easier to imagine core concepts in the game and extrapolate from them.

So that brings me to one of the main reasons to get back into the game: creating levels. As I talked about in this ye olden post, I showed how much of an upgrade my LBP1 level needed. I did publish it again, but after months of not playing, it seems that the bar for level design has gone up. The new standards of excellence include many things, but the most important are:

Creator: X-NOBODY-X

Level Design: this is a no brainer. We all know that good looking levels get played. However, the real professional designers have finally agreed upon the use of the "Extra Layer Glitch" for LBP2 levels. Previously frowned upon, this glitch allows you to extend the unplayable depth of your level, giving it great detail and atmosphere. You can create great chasms, a cityscape, stalactites, or anything other immobile object and bump up the beauty of your level. The amount of strain of your level's thermometer is pretty harsh, so more people have started using Level Links. This isn't so bad though as the 3d Glitch creates some nifty transitions between your levels. It is possible to combine the 3d glitch, let’s say a road that appears to lead into a forest with any sort of transition(Teleporter, level link, etc). This eliminates the need of elevators, stairs, or other primitive level transitions.

Hardcore Logic: The bar has also risen for complexity. In the past, you could just toss a box on wheels, give it a gun, target a player, and call it a tank. To make something amazing, most creators combine Holographic Materials with their Logic. Holo material is the ultimate problem solver. It is your source for custom animations, HUD displays, Hit boxes, targeting, and many other awesome things. Remember my bird from Sacknight Part 1?

It flew left and right across the screen, stopping at certain intervals to drop eggs(cardboard ovals with bombs inside) on the floor. It got a small LBP2 upgrade by removing a "wheel-based timing mechanism"(I made that up) and replacing it with a simple sequencer. The floor had spotlights could fire at any sackboy that enters its field of vision. This was replaced by the holographic squares you see on the floor. These act as alarms. When a sackboy touches the material, the spotlight will fire, eliminating the inconsistency of the spotlight's default detection. I left my miniboss this way, but after returning to the game, it could use even MORE upgrades.
1)Flying left and right is far too plane. Using the advanced mover, I can make it fly in circles. I could even randomize its flight patter using Direction splitters and a randomizer.
2) Cardboard ovals with timed bombs inside? How about actual eggs with a microchip?

Most games also use Sackbots rather than real Sack boys and girls. You can load a player into a bot at the start of the game to change what they can and cannot do. I am unsure if I want to take this route, but many of the popular levels on the Community Page are action platformers and menu based games. Instead of picking up a paintenator off of the floor and coloring spiders until they die, your Sackbot could have a fireball spell. Every time you press Triangle(the read chat bubble icon) as a Sackbot, you shoot fireballs. Give the fireball an awesome animation I could be swimming in level plays. You can also give it sword slashes, double jump, dash, anything you can think of really. The levels with the most plays have extremely complex Sackbots.

While I toy around with LBP2, trying to get better at level creation, I will try to upload some pictures or videos of my ideas. The ultimate goal is to get a Platinum trophy of course, but I want to do it and feel like I deserved it. For those who want to see my (mediocre) Sacknight Level, you can search for it by name or search for my moon. PSN: Ealdnarche

Want an example of what looks awesome and what..isn't as awesome?

Secret Technology

The format we are in is a lot different than the past few formats. Our last format was overrun with cycling through most of a player's hand and replenishing it with almost no effort. While doing that, we can drop a boss monster (Synchro summon) as early as turn 1. I believe that this format is a bit more conservative barring Twilight decks. We have:
1) Agents decks that draw cards easily at the cost of not attacking. Most variants run 2 normal summon monsters: Agent of Creations - Venus to make Gachi Gachi Gantetsu and Agent of Mystery - Earth to search Venus out of the deck. Once they get either of these into play, their boss monster Master Hyperion gets the green light. With a little more planning, Archlord Krystia becomes playable too. Using this style, the Agent deck is a powerful force simply because of how easy it is to drop boss monsters and how expendable are the Agents themselves.
2) Gravekeeper decks have not changed even with 3 MST and 1 Heavy Storm. A good pilot can still control the duel with 6 monster searches, 2-3 cards to replenish your hand, and plenty of spells and traps to stop bigger threats. Even if you go after Necrovalley on each of your turns, there is a high chance they can play another on their next turn.
3) Hero decks are even more responsive with Mask Change and the new Parallel World Fusion from Legendary Collection 2. Alongside Miracle Fusions, Super Polymerizations, Gemini Sparks and Honest, Hero decks seem to have an answer for any situation.
4) Twilight decks are possibly the scariest deck to face. If you don't keep an eye on your opponent's graveyard, you may lose the duel to MST or Heavy Storm. Because they don't play a lot of spells and traps, they will often have many monsters in their hand. This means, if you stop the first monster with something like Solemn Warning, they may remove it for Chaos Sorcerer. If you stop Chaos Sorc with Veiler, they could follow up with Judgment Dragon. If you somehow survive that and clear their field, they could easily have Gorz and/or Tragoedia in their hand along with 4 other cards. The deck does have some consistency issues, but the longer you leave it unchecked, the more likely you will see a boss drop!
5) Zombies could ALMOST be called a replacement for Plant Synchro decks (not in popularity of course). The premise is pretty much the same: Get zombies out of your deck and onto the field or in the grave. Synchro with them and get more zombies in return. If your opponent stops your Synchro summon, do another one using the zombies' effects. Really, the only thing that is lost is the ability to put synchros back into the deck with 2-3 copies of Pot of Avarice. Other than that, Zombies don't really need Avarice to win the game.

So what do all of these decks have in common?
Cannon Fodder.

Just about every deck has monsters that bait out spells, traps, and monster effects, then follow it up with a boss drop. Did you pay 2000 life points to stop a Normal Summon and search? Now they have a light in the grave for Hyperion or Krystia. Black Rose Dragon? Mask Change into Masked HERO Vapor. A lot of people have taken the time to reevaluate the spells and traps that can truly punish these plays. It may not be enough to run 2 Solemn Warning in the deck, 1 Mirror Force, 1 Torrential Tribute and 1-2 Dimensional Prison; that is a little predictable. What else is there to tech into your deck to punish powerful monster combinations?

Creature Swap - Sometimes, Creature Swap can be your only out to a ridiculous monster situation. It also always ends in an even exchange: you lose your monster and the creature swap spell card; they lose their monster and whatever card they use to rectify the situation. In decks where your monsters can replace themselves (Gadgets, T.G., Zombies, etc) your Creature Swap will let you set up your hand, field or graveyard for future plays. Sometimes, your opponent even has to spend their best card to get rid of the monster you had stolen: Honest, Dark Hole, or summoning a bigger monster they had planned to hold. In round 2, your opponent may think twice before they summon anything they themselves can't deal with.

Threatening Roar - I am not a big fan of T.Roar, but some decks don't have the luxury of losing certain monster cards. Threatening Roar does 2 things this format: Not only does it protect monsters you need on your turn, but it also prevents you from losing to Heavy storm or MST. Non-chainable cards like Dimensional Prison simply do not work against every deck. You can lose it to Lyla, Hyperion, Judgment Dragon, Gravekeeper's Descendant, Brionac, Caius, and many, many more monsters. Threatening Roar will ensure that your investment sees light. The issue on T.Roar of course is how you follow it up on your turn. If your monster has an ignition or trigger effect that you can only use on your turn (such as with Tanngnjostr of the Nordic Beasts) that may have been worth protecting. If you can Overlay into a Leviathan Dragon or Synchro into Brionac, you can swing the duel in your favor. It may not seem like the ultimate answer to destructive effects, but it can really benefit many decks.

Scapegoat - Like Threatening Roar, Scapegoat is a chainable card that can allow you to live in many situations where you normally would not. On your turn, Sheep tokens can be used to Synchro with or can be traded for an opponent's card using Creature Swap. You can also destroy your own goat tokens with little remorse. In this way, you can think of Scapegoat as a Nightmare Steel Cage. Your opponent can either overextend to destroy them all (if they didn't overextend already) or they can allow you to survive for even longer. A well timed Dark Hole or Torrential Tribute can really punish the opponent, while you have only lost 2 cards (your scapegoat and your destroying card). Be warned though, as Xsabers are still a force to be reckoned with. If you want to try Scapegoat in your main deck, side it out against Xsabers and their Fulhelmknights.

Compulsory Evacuation Device - Compulsory is another card that a lot of people want to use, but it may not be as great against Agents as one may think. If Hyperion uses his effect to destroy a card and you chain Compulsory to that, Hyperion will go back to the hand to be reused. It will cost your opponent 2 agent monsters and 2 other fairies to play Hyperion twice in 1 turn. At best, you may have 1 turn you can survive while they are drawing cards. If your deck is full of hard hitting monsters, then Compulsory may still work for you. Bouncing a face-down Gravekeeper spy or forcing their Seven Tools isn't so bad if you can attack directly with a Thunderking. Based on the decks listed above, Compulsory really won't stop any of their monster plays unless they choose not to summon again.

Maxx "C" - I have been using 1 Max "C" in Nordics for a few weeks now and it ALWAYS pays off. It is effective against 3 of the 5 decks listed above and gives you an advantage off of your opponent's deck choice. Against Agents, you can net 3 cards off of Venus. In Lightsworn you can stun their boss swarm lest they allow you to draw into Gorz or Effect Veiler. In zombies, their hand advantage is nullified when you draw 2 cards from their Plaguespreader+Goblin Zombie combo. Leaving cards on the field after committing to an effect is never a good idea, even when your opponent is getting rewarded for it. Most players will bite the bullet and finish their Special Summon push, rather than wasting their turn and giving you free cards to attack over. You will have to take out Maxx "C" against HEROs and Gravekeepers though.

Neo-spacian Grand Mole - Grand Mole is probably the ultimate card in generic boss monster hate besides Smashing Ground. It will usually stall the game for you, but in decks that can special summon small monsters to attack with, such as Cyber Dragon or Ghost Ship, you can follow up your Mole with a direct attack. Similar to Compulsory, Grand Mole will force Agents to remove additional Fairies or set up their grave again for Archlord Krystia. Against Gravekeepers, you can keep key monsters off the field while you attack their life points. In the early part of a Lightsworn matchup you can eliminate the use of cards in their hand because they can't put key cards into the grave. Be warned though, as a late game Mole does nothing to Twilight boss monsters.

Smashing Ground - In the past, the only deck that could run Smashing ground was Machine decks. Their monsters were decent, but nothing that will lock an opponent out of the duel. The typical 6 traps for monster hate weren't enough either, they needed more options for getting big attackers off of the field. In this format, we have follow-ups that can turn a good Solemn Warning play into a hopeless situation. Worse yet is if your traps were cleared by Heavy Storm. Smashing Ground almost seems like a necessity in this situation. Smashing Ground is always protected from field clearing effects and is rarely predictable. You don't really get an advantage from using Smashing Ground, but Solemn Warning and Bottomless Trap Hole are "1 for 1" cards too. In fact, I believe that the only reason to not using Smashing Ground is deck space. How many times has your opponent baited out or destroyed your set cards, then summoned Hyperion (you will see me talking about Agents a lot because they are too popular) directly afterward. Your in-hand Mirror Force, Torrential, D.prison, etc are all useless now unless you play Ryko or Grave Squirmier. That would be a great time to use Smashing ground. No lost cards, no stalling for better cards. We can just play Smashing Ground from the hand and move on. I for one will probably main at least 1 Smashing ground to complement Dark Hole. Just like many of you, I too have a grudge against smashing ground. I hate using generic "1 for 1" cards in any deck. You have to admit though; this seems like the format to bring it back.

If you know any other awesome tech cards, feel free to let me know. If you don't have a blogger or Google account, you can post on my Facebook page or Twitter @VeeDotMe.

Too Tough for you?

Hurricane Irene put us on a mandatory gaming vacation after hitting the last week of April. During that time, I only had access to my PSPGo (for a couple of hours) and my Nintendo DS (for slightly longer). Out of those, the only game I was interested in playing was Patapon 2 on the PSP, which is a very fun game in its own right. I wasn't quite sure why I had stopped playing the game until I failed twice on the mission I was on. Patapon 2 isn't the hardest game I've ever played, but there is definitely a lot of death when playing it. I'm all for difficult games, but I did not really have the energy to decide on which team build to take into missions for Patapon 2. It reminded me of an interview from the Designer Director of Silent Hill Downpour. It was mostly about how games have changed so much since the NES-era, the 90's, and even this decade. Believe it or not, a huge portion of the consensus will tell you that our latest games have taken a turn for the worse in many aspects of gameplay. One that will always be up for debate is difficulty.

There are MANY defining attributes to what makes a game difficult. I like to think that it is made up of the following:
Controls : Controls will always make a game seem better or worse than it actually is. Overly tight controls will make every "miss click" a ticket to your own death. Panicking may send you off of a ledge in 1 button press or launch you into an obstacle because you have committed to that single controller tap. Shallow controls can cause you to underestimate gaps, because you to take damage when you THOUGHT you would dodge the attack, or even miss that ever important menu option because the scroll bar doesn't scroll fast enough!
Pattern Memorization: some games count on the player to make mistakes and learn from them in the form of memorization. The simplest form of this is from prediction. "Hey, this level has spikes that fall from the ceiling. There are no enemies in the room. There will probably be spikes on the ceiling." Of course, when prediction is not fun enough, we can bump it up(or down depending on who you ask) to trial and error memorization. So now, instead of guessing that there are spikes in the next room, it becomes "Oh yeah, the spikes aren't on the ceiling after the 1st room. Instead, they shoot from behind you when you turn the corner too fast." This can be extended to boss monsters that will kill you unless you exploit their patterns or puzzles that involve a specific sequence to events.
Randomization: Most events in games are scripted, but when you think of difficulty, randomization becomes the probability you will die when X occurs. Sounds like something I just made up, hunh? Well, in my search for bosses people considered to be difficult, one choice that popped up was Ruby Weapon in FFVII. Ruby Weapon, as well as most RPG bosses deemed difficult are only as difficult as their random number generator allows them to be. If a boss is difficult because it has a CHANCE to one-shot your max level character with a particular attack, then it is only as difficult as the dice roll for that to happen. The more unlucky you are, the more times the boss will use that attack and the more it will hit for maximum damage. The luckier you are, the attack will do minimal damage or may not be performed at all! Same goes for basic monsters in action games and CPU opponents in fighting games. Platform games can be random too, as the timing on a certain jump or obstacle may be slightly changed based on how fast you go through a level. If certain parts of the game aren't synchronized, you may have times where you could die when you normally wouldn't. Imagine running through a level to beat a time and the best path comes from jumping on a flying bee. The bee's flight path is random; sometimes you can hit it just right, other times you miss and are forced to take the harder path.

Those 3 attributes are the broadest features of a hard game. There are plenty more than those such as the amount of actions the player can perform, camera angles, etc. Of course, the most difficult games have a little bit of each of these to make fun(and not so fun) games. If you look around for a list of the best of the best in hair pulling gameplay, you will often see the same retro games popping up:
Battletoads
Megaman
The Legend of Zelda 2
Super Mario: The Lost Levels
Ghouls and Ghosts
Contra
Castlevania
If you look at the comments on a lot of these lists, you will actually see people who believe that this era of gaming is much more entertaining than our current generation. Why? Well, let's not forget that half of us who are making these articles and posting comments about these games, played them when we were children. For a large amount of people who try these for the first time without any prior knowledge of what they were getting into, they would probably toss the game in the garbage. In this age, we expect a lot from our games and calling the current generation of games bad is a little insulting. A lot of the challenge from Retro games comes from hardware limitations.

Author: KamilDowonna

Did you die because you couldn’t see the bat hiding on the pillar thanks to 8bit graphics? Did you die because the bone that was thrown at you was in the process to disappearing and you thought it would have before it hits you? Did an enemy jump through a platform that you couldn't and cost you your life? People who can't do this can be deemed "casuals", "bad players", and what-have-you but there is no denying that hardware limitation is "part of the challenge." You may think that we are spoiled by free moving cameras and instant dodge/block/counter, but I like to believe that most developers from the late 80's and early 90's would implement these too if it were possible.

Once we get past the retro games, there are some late 90's and early 00's video games that make a few lists. In the age of 3D, we have larger screens to implement more obstacles, powerful hardware that can complicate anything, and a couple more buttons on our controllers!
Metal Gear Solid
Ninja Gaiden Black
Fzero GX
Devil May Cry 3
Viewtiful Joe
Ikaruga
Shinobi
At this point in history, skill is rewarded for all players, and not just those who are obsessed with beating games. Limitations are still present in terms of physics and edges. Once you overcome these, you are free to try to beat the game using your own skill. Some games still require some memorization, but because the games are bigger, we got checkpoints! A lot of players forget that retro games can be beaten in 1-2 hours, and not having checkpoints or many lives is reasonable. When your game lasts 8+ hours and has a warning to not play over prolonged periods of time, one should expect the ability to save our process.

Pink Kitty Rose

And now we get to the most important part of the discussion, current generation games. How can you make a game remotely difficult when controllers have 8+ buttons, gameplay is highly responsive, and gamers want more options than ever?
1) Put more enemies on the screen than ever before?
2) Make the game MORE difficult the longer you take to overcome an obstacle?
3) Defy physics in a way that makes players think?
Some of our newest games actually do some of these and are on the many lists you can find on the internet for challenging gameplay:
Demon's Souls
Wipeout HD
Dante's Inferno
Bayonetta

What's great is that most games nowadays have multiple difficulties, challenge levels, and trophies to make them "difficult." A lot of us forget that if a game is too easy, you could easily just put the game on Expert, Professional, Demon Hunter, Killer, Elite, etc difficulty. If you beat the game too quickly, you can do trophies that usually present some sort of a challenge. Even the FPS games that are often used as an example for spoiling this generation of player, have ways to bump up the challenge. Unlike the retro games, a lot of challenging games for Xbox/PS3 generation are all about mastering the controls. As easy as everyone thinks FPS games are and how it has spoiled everyone, I wonder how many have actually tried to challenge themselves?

Author: Futuramaforlife

So in the end, people will never stop complaining about our current generation of games sucks compared to 10+ year-old titles. I highly doubt that most posters on the internet are THAT dissatisfied with games. If that was true, things like Call of Duty and Madden wouldn't be doing so well. Our games aren't bad just they don't kill players for not dodging a little white speck on their screen. Dying because you can't hear the aliens behind you WHILE they attack you(design flaw), you can't run effectively thanks to stilted controls, and poor physics making any platform a deathtrap just isn't fun to me.

And playing "Masochist games" isn't very fun either. It's okay for Google searches every now and then; playing a game that kills you every 5 seconds while you restart a billion times. If that is what people want in real games, perhaps we all need to think for a moment on how much time we are willing to put into something like this:


How much money would you pay for this, really?

Crash into Success!

Generation Force has been out on the scene for a little while now. Despite the plethora of brand new cards and support, GENF actually has mixed reviews. The most "hyped" card before the set release, Steelswarm Roach, has dropped in popularity. With the TCg ruling change on Overlay units now being the same as the OCG ruling, a few game winning rank 3 Xyz monsters have been slowed down(at least until Photon Shockwave). On top of that, Generation Fish/F!sh decks, the cover theme on the set, are too slow for the format they are in.

But even after all this; we still have some fun cards that have come out of GENF and 4 new monsters that may very well have snuck under the radar.

Crashbugs at their core are a Xyz archetype. They even have X, Y, and Z in their names! Let's use the term archetype loosely though, as it is only 4 monsters. That doesn't mean they don’t have support. Level 3, Dark, Fiend, 0 attack; you can combo these with many, many excellent cards.
Allure of Darkness
Escape from the Dark Dimension
Dark Necrofear
Darkness Neosphere
Dark Armed Dragon
Limit Reverse
Mystic Tomato
Sangan
Tour Guide of the Underworld
Debris Dragon
Pot of Avarice
Stygian Sergeants
And the list goes on.
In fact, it may be a bit better to say that Crashbugs are a capable engine in many dark-themed or fiend decks. In pure fiends with bosses, we had to resort to Giant Germs, Dark Grepher, Armageddon Knight, and other cards that may only have synergy with 1 spell or trap card in the deck. Like some of our favorite engines in the grave, Crashbugs have a simple effect that can eventually fuel many other cards in the deck. When this card is normal summoned: You can Special Summon a Crashbug (X, Y, or Z, depending on the one you normal summoned) from your deck. You must control a Crashbug (X, Y, or Z, depending on the one you normal summoned) to use this effect."

It may sound a little slow, and yes it is not a strategy you can rely on turn 1, but like Nordics, it is one that you can consistently pull off on turn 2 (depending on how many boss monsters you want to run). Here are some of the simple ways to "Crash" on turn 2:
1) Set or Summon Mystic Tomato on your first turn. Have it destroyed by battle and summon the correct bug to the field, depending on which is in your hand. On your following turn, Normal summon your bug to special the final piece from your deck.
2) Summon Armageddon Knight or Dark Grepher and use their effects to place a Crashbug in your graveyard. On your following turn, activate Call of the Haunted, Limit Reverse, or Monster Reborn to set up your "Crash". Similarly, activate Allure of Darkness to remove a particular Crashbug. You can then use Escape from the Dark Dimension to perform the same play.
3) Use a monster like Tour Guide or Debris Dragon to summon a Crashbug when you otherwise couldn't. If you do no Overlay them on that turn, you can use protective traps to ensure a proper "Crash" on your next turn.

There are many other ways to set up a "Crash", placing all 3 Crashbugs on the field at once. No matter what route you choose to summon these little guys, you will usually end with DARK Fiend monsters in your graveyard. Apparently, this is the best place to be when you are a DARK Fiend as it becomes fuel for some of the best boss monsters in the game.
Dark Necrofear - Necrofear is nowhere near as frightening as she used to be with so many high attack monsters that are ALMOST as free to summon as she is. What she excels in is how free she is to summon and her effect. If your opponent uses Torrential on your Crash, or if you tried to summon No. 34 Terror-Byte and had it eat a Solemn Warning or Raigeki Break, you can now summon Dark Necrofear from your hand. 2200 ATK is still a REALLY good attack rating after something like Torrential Tribute. 2800 DEF is also good if you really need to stall. Combine it with Super Crashbug(we'll talk about this later), your attack position Necrofear will have 2800 ATK. When Necrofear eventually gets destroyed, her effect activates and she gets a new doll, your opponent's monster(the doll is edited out of our TCG card image). Torrential, Mirror Force, suicide, even Solemn Warning will trigger Necrofear's effect to equip itself to an opponent's monster. Your opponent will practically have to spend 2 cards to cancel out the pressure Necrofear emits.(If you didn't notice, Necrofear is my favorite card in YGO).

Darkness Neosphere - Is a HIGHLY rewarding boss monster. Yes it will be dead in your hand in some duels, but in a turn 1 hand it is much better. To summon Neosphere, you have to invest 2 monster cards for her summon: one on the field and one in your hand and only when the opponent declares an attack. After all of that, you cannot special summon Neosphere from the graveyard(or summon it any other way for that matter). What Neosphere does do is sets up your graveyard for Call of the Haunted, Limit Reverse, Escape from, Dark Armed Dragon, and even Dark Necrofear. If any of your cards are TRULY dead(in Crashbugs, Neosphere is usually the only dead card), then you can dump them with Neosphere to put them to better use (Avarice, Necrofear, or Dark Armed). If you simply want to play her because of the 4000ATK, then that is cool too. In this age of Solemn and Heavy Storm, 4000ATK is nothing to scoff at from anyone.

Dark Armed Dragon - Summon Armageddon Knight, ditch Crashbug Z= 1 dark in grave, 1 on the field that will get destroyed.
Summon Tour Guide, Summon Z, Overlay for No. 17 Leviathan Dragon, Pitch an Xyz material Leviathan's effect = 1 Dark in grave, 1 on the field.
Have your Mystic tomato get destroyed = dump as many dark monsters as applicable.
Dark Armed Dragon is probably the most game changing boss in the deck, as it can turn a bad situation into a 2800 monster that can destroy 3 cards. Dark Armed in Crashbugs is like Dark Armed in Blackwings. Instead of dumping darks with Dark Armed as a backup, you will be controlling your graveyard with proper monster plays.


Super Crashbug - Yet another boss to drop for no reason. It is fairly simple to fuel him too with Sangan, Tour Guide, and Mystic Tomato. You can even run Grepher in the deck if you want for the most extreme builds; pitch an X to send a Y or Z from the deck to the grave. He will first hit the field in defense position, which is a way to balance the card I suppose. Luckily he has 3000 defense so your opponent probably can't swing over it. If they let it live, you get a 3000 beat stick that can swing over any attack position monster save Aesirs, Ancient Fairy Dragon, and Shooting Quasar. Because it banishes the bugmen from the grave, it can set up Dark Armed plays, especially since you cannot Bottomless his initial summon. Once it dies, you can SS it from the grave or the banish zone in ATK position and apply more pressure. Combine it with an already face-up No. 34 Terror-Byte and you will have some nice offensive power. You can even summon it with Debris Dragon after it hits the field and Overlay for Utopia.

No. 34 Terror-Byte we all know that Leviathan Dragon and Leviair make for good 2-monster XYZ, but we do have a THREE-monster XYZ in the form of Terror-byte. Perhaps the true boss of the Crash strategy, you can summon it by successfully "Crashing" the field (summoning all 3 Crashbugs). Overlay each one for this 0/2900 Brain Control on legs. Of course, it can only take level 4 and lower monsters, so your opponent will probably stop summoning monsters unless they know they wont control a low level monster in their end phase(or have gotten rid of Terror-byte). If they do try to make something like Brionac or Scrap Dragon, a well timed Bottomless, Solemn Warning, or Effect Veiler can stun their play and give you their monster. Terror-Byte itself is a Dark monster, so losing it to Warning or Raigeki Break will put 4 Darks in your graveyard. Remove 1 for Chaos Sorc or BLS and you can summon Dark Armed. Remove all 3 bugmen for Necrofear or Super Crashbug.

I haven't been able to test a real-life version of the deck, but I have some pre-Alpha ideas in mind. Once I figure out which strategies are most consistent, that is probably the build I will go with. Most classic builds consist of 2 of each Crashbug, 3 Tour Guide, and 2 Mystic Tomato. The means to reuse them can vary and the number of boss monsters to feed off of their plays can vary too. It is difficult to imagine which decks would be best because consistency has been reduced in many of the most popular decks this year. Crashbugs don't have many ways to search out individual copies from the deck and add them to your hand, especially now that the TCG ruling for XYZ materials is the same as the OCG ruling. The only way to choose the most powerful and consistent deck is to test them all:

Pure Fiends - There is a LOT more fiend support cards in YGO than people think. Crashbugs themselves can be thought of as fiend support; perhaps enough to give pure fiends another try. They have MANY high level bosses(some more playable than others) that usually put in their worth if you can summon them. Caius is probably the easiest to use and can capitalize on a 1st turn defensive play. Dark Ruler Hades was probably more powerful in the last format, but Reborn Tengu is still alive and well and Hades will stop all annoying effects of destroyed monsters. Smaller monsters are fun to play too. Giant Germ and Stygian Security still make for excellent fuel. Doomcalibur Knight is MUCH easier to get now and creates as much pressure as a Thunderking nowadays. Not only is 1900 ATK very nice against Venus and Lyla, but your opponent will PROBABLY waste an additional card to get rid of it. Phantom of Chaos will also do dangerous things once you put silly cards in the graveyard. Perhaps the most hilarious is dropping a Hate Buster when they attack your Crashbug X. Hate Buster destroys an attacking monster but also damages the opponent by the opponent's original attack. Just don't add too many for-fun cards, as your consistency will drop dramatically.

Genius style: It is worth noting however that once you get a crashbug, it is fairly easy to reuse it. With that in mind, it may be possible to make a deck using 1 of each crashbug. Call of the Haunted, Monster Reborn and Limit Reverse allow easy access to graveyard bound Crashbugs, and you can run 6 of these. Escape from the Dark Dimension and Burial from the D.D. can get a Banished Crashbug to the field too. Three Tour Guide and 1-2 Tomatoes are a method to get them out of the deck, but there are even MORE cards that can search them in the form of Damage Condenser and Damage Gate. With a lower monster count, you are free to run better spells and traps and have a much easier time maintaining a graveyard count for Dark Armed Dragon. Of course, this sounds very difficult on paper and only the best strategists could probably pull it off!

Sept 2011 style: Why not run Chaos too. With so many dark monsters, it is already half way there. You can replace Necrofear or Super Crash for Chaos Sorcerers(or don't remove either, just be wary of dead draws). For lights, you can go with Effect Veilers or my favorite choice, Dimensional Alchemist. Dimensional Alch can get back Tour Guides to reuse their effects, boss monsters like Necrofear and Dark Armed after Allure of Darkness, and is excellent bait for drawing out cards. Other popular lights are Thunderking Raioh, Ryko the Lightsworn Hunter, Cyber Dragon, and Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress. Then, with our 2011 format, you can run Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning and REALLY destroy people. Leading the duel with a light monster like Raioh will make Chaos Sorc and BLS live instantly.

If you can get the Tour Guides, or if you already have Tour Guide of the Underworld, do us all a favor and try this deck out. YCS Toronto is right around the corner and we need more decks to compete than Gravekeepers, Agents, Vision Heroes and Twilight. There is a lot of potential with card combinations in Crashbugs, and I do not think that anyone has created an end-all-beat-all version of the deck. I know I want to; maybe I should buyout all the EXVC I see and chase Tour Guides around New England.