Exciting things in 2012 - Flowcharts!

If you are reading this blog post, then you are probably on the internet. If you are on the internet, reading a yugioh blog, you may have come across this fancy little doo-dad on Konami's Official Yugioh-card website.

I'm not going to waste you guys' time explaining what this flowchart means, if you've made your way to my blog, I'm sure you have skipped over many that try to teach how you use the chart. Many people call it different things: Loss of priority, On summon ignition effects, "the OCG ruling", etc. Semantics are the only thing that is wrong here, as everyone has the same idea; that following nonchainable events (such as a normal summon), only spell speed 2 and higher effects can activate. The post on the Official Strategy Site tells us that these new rules will CHANGE HOW WE PLAY THE GAME. This is 100% true, but just how drastic of a metagame change are we talking about? Try not to get lost in the predictions from internet forums: Solemn Warning useless? Raigeki Break and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast everywhere? Triple Effect Veiler in every deck? The return of Salvo Chaos and anything else that can summon 3 Black Rose Dragons? Limitations removed from certain Ignition Effect Monsters and their support in September, ex. Dark Armed Dragon? Stun to win the next YCS? Trap Stun and Backrow destruction more relevant? The return of Xsabers? The first in a series of price drops on Maxx "C"? While many of these are...more true than others, it is important to not underestimate the strength of current decks. Yugioh is still a card game, and luck is a factor in winning. This Flowchart and Fast effects don't "kill cards." In my opinion, barring anti-monster decks, the new change gives us more outs to the same plays we expect to see every day. Will you draw that out every game? Of course not. Laggia and Dolkka may drop in price by a few dollars, but they are still just as playable against many of the popular decks today. You can imagine that many players will only have 1-2 extra Veiler in their main deck to stop a first turn Laggia. If that player was lucky enough to go first, they may have 4 additional cards, along with Veilers to stop Rescue Rabbit's effect. This 10~% increase in stunning power definitely helps, but Rescue Rabbit is far from obsolete because of this. The same can be said about all of our favorite monsters with Ignition effects, many decks simply have an increased chance in drawing an out to those cards. With luck on their side, this does give lower tier decks a chance to respond to more powerful themes and archetypes. Adding a couple Raigeki Break to something like Fabled will make them a bit more relevant. No deck (outside of stun) will jump into the competitive scene because of this Fast effectchange, but luck is a huge factor here. We are actually in a format where great tech wins YCS competitions, so, if anything, this may add a bit of variety to popular builds. Will anything change in my decks? Probably not, though I may add an extra Effect Veiler into my side. If Maxx "C" is shifted to the side deck in favor of Effect Veiler, I may test Fabled once again. Other than that, I am not willing to resurrect older decks (like Koa'ki) despite the Fast Effect ruling. However, post GAOV and HA06, I will definitely try out some new things.