March 2012 Forbidden and Limited List

February is coming to a close and you know what that means. The sun is shining here in New England. Woodland creatures are awakening from their hibernation. Shamrocks are hanging from businesses even though St. Patrick's day is a ways away. Car Dealerships are practically giving away vehicles for President's Day. And Konami giveth and taketh away our beloved cards. If you have been on any website involving Yugioh, you may have heard some angst amongst your fellow players. You may even have friends who are claiming to take a Yugioh vacation until September! They say this every year; don't worry, you'll see them in May. As a relatively new player, this is my first list that actually spun my head around. Question is, is it a good head-spin or bad head-spin?

http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/limited/

Newly Limited:
Glow-Up Bulb
Spore
Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier - was limited
Trap Dustshoot - was limited

Limited:
The Agent of Mystery - Earth
T.G. Striker

Semi-Limited:
Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner - was limited
Marshmallon - was limited
Reborn Tengu
Emergency Teleport - was limited
Level Limit Area B - was limited
Shien's Smoke Signal - was limited
Torrential Tribute - was limited
Ultimate Offering

Newly Unlimited:
Call of the Haunted


So at first glance, you, I and the rest of the internet think of some very specific things:
1) Why weren't Wind-Ups hit?
2) Why weren't Inzecktor hit?
3) Why is the only world premiere card on the list Reborn Tengu?
4) Why kill the plant archetype completely?
5) Why the hit to Tech Genus?
6) Why limit so many cards last year, then semi-limit them this year?

Some people believe that the this list was designed to cripple generic synchro decks (Plants and T.G.) while making Xyz monsters and theme-specific Synchros the focus of the metagame. Some people believe that the current game state, with secret rare prices at an all-time high and the anticipation of reprints drives the  F&L list. Many people actually say that Konami knows more counters to our meta than we do; and with this list, older decks with some unknown technology can actually beat ZeXal decks.  We have a ton of new product being released this year, as well as new technology being uncovered every day. Perhaps the real answer to this list is that, by June, we will have so many potential tier 1 decks and cards to counter Hunter, Tour guide, and Hornet.

Just looking at YCS Atlanta, it is clear that the most popular decks are Wind-ups and Dino Rabbit.  With the new list, a few more decks get a boost in playability:
Six Samurai
Psychic
Lightsworn

Barring Lightsworn, Six Samurai and Psychic are 2 decks that have the benefit of running great tech without losing important card slots. Lightsworn have luck on their side and enough hand traps to stay in the game. No one wants to lose their whole hand or get Raigeki'd on turn 2, but there are sooooooo many cards now that can increases your chances of surviving:

Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror ***
Maxx "C" ****
Effect Veiler ****
Cyber Dragron **
Chaos Hunter **
Royal Prison ***
Skill Drain ****
Lava Golem **
2 Tragoedia ***
Ninjitsu Art of Super Transformation ***
D.D. Crow ****
Gozen Match ***
Rivalry of Warlords ****
Fiendish Chain ****
Compulsory Evacuation Device ***
Prohibition **
Marshmallon ****
Spirit Reaper ****

And that doesn't even include the biggest threat to Dino Rabbits and Wind-ups: Huge and Indestructible  monsters.

As scary as the format looks, I really think the key is in your own tech and side deck. A lot of people forget that, even though Wind-up, Inzektor, and Rabbit all have very consistent, powerful strategies; the sheer number of participates at YCS Atlanta brings the top 32 down to probability. The F&L list doesn't change TOO much about the game except for removing Tengu Plants(and a few Agent decks at your locals) from the equation. I wouldn't get your hopes up about banning Wind-up Hunter and limiting Inzektor Hornet until June, after we get Hidden Arsenal 6, Galactic Overload, Battle-pack epic dawn, a possible TCG Exclusive starter deck, Shooting Quasar Dragon, Slifer(Osiris), and the ton of other products this year.

What happened Amaryllis?

Well, last week at locals, Amaryllis unfortunately went 1-3 out of all the matches. I believe only one of them I lost 0-2 (Xsabers) but it was still upsetting nonetheless. Most of the losses were all about the opponent exploding before I can stop them or me not drawing into any good cards. So today we'll be talking about strategy and any fixes we can make.

#1. The Side Deck
Lately I've been siding in Cloak and Dagger against many key cards in certain decks. Examples of these are Xsaber Darksoul and Machina Fortress. Turn 1 It is great to get this card out; later in the duel it falls behind in playability. Another issue with C&D is the fact that it is a deterrent, and not prevention. Mind Crush and maybe even trap dustshoot could be better cards in most situations than C&D would be. The rest of the side consists of the normal Gladiator Beast Hate, Infernity Hate, Monarch Hate, 1 Gottoms and 1 Starlight. I will be replacing the 3 cloaks with the 2 firstly named traps and 1 Ceasefire.

#2. Play Style
Amaryllis isn't a deck where I necessarily have a concrete path I can follow and reach the same end. It's not so much as a toolbox, but rather a best-case scenario strategy. Let's take an opening hand as an example.
(1)Mark of the Rose, (2)Miracle Fertilizer, (3)Dandylion, (4)Monster Reborn, (5) Amaryllis, (6)Tytannial.
Albeit a very very lackluster hand, it is not an autoloss. Turn 1 I get to set dandy and then I draw into Amarallyis; pass that turn, opponent sets up more powerful plays and probably destroy my tokens, maybe even deal damage. Turn 3 I draw into card trooper, mill 3 which is worse cards lol. Well, maybe that was a bad example, but what I mean to say is, there are so many options with cards like MotRose, Foolish Burial and Lonefire that it is very difficult to figure out what the best play is. Very often, on the matches that I lose, I do not play Amaryllis. So because of that you would think that my #1 priority should be getting Amrayllis in the grave, even though thinning out those volcanic counters and providing discards for trade-in would be more optimal to prevent dead cards in the hand.

#3 Dead Cards in the deck
Let's list ALL the cards that have the potential of being dead and/or do not work towards the goals of the deck.
1 Miracle Fertilizer
1 Mark of the Rose
1 Spore
1 Return From the Different Dimension
1 Naturia Beans
2 Volcanic Counter
3 Trade-In
1 Sangan
1 Gravirose
As you can see, the utility is there in all the cards, yet the possibility of being dead is the highest with these (barring the obvious tytannial and Amaryllis). In all honesty, there arent too many cards to swap out. Nothing offers the kind of draw power that Trade-In has that doesn't give your opponent an advantage too.

So yeah. We'll be doing a few tweaks to the way we play a deck as a whole. Inbetween playing with Intro to Chaos(which is nearing completion!) and Koakis, I will continue to build and maximize Amaryllis.

Brief Amaryllis talk and "Intro to Chaos"

We've been having a lot of fun with Amaryllis. It hits hard, it burns, it swarms, it does a lot of things using cards I actually like. The win condition is to whittle the opponent's life points in many different ways, while maintaining field presence. Amaryllis itself doesn't add too much to field presence, but after enough hits it becomes a threat to most opponents. Tytannial, ryko, dandylion, lonefire, debris and gravirose are the cards that contribute the most to field presence, probably in decending order of importance. Unfortunately, the deck does run a few monsters that contribute little to nothing to field presence, but still works toward the grand scheme of obtaining a win condition. Those include:
- Volcanic Counter
- Card Trooper
- Spore
- Revival Rose
- Sangan
- Phoenixian Seed
Now, this isn't to say that those cards don't contribute to the win condition in their own way, which they all do. But each one does walk the thin line of "situational use." If we wanted to build Amaryllis away from its combo orientation and into more field presence, Our replacements would probably be things like Naturia Bamboo Shoot, Botanical Lion, plaguespreader zombie, and other similar monsters.

Besides Amaryllis, I wanted to talk a little more about "Intro to Chaos" that was brought up in this post. This chaos deck uses the Chaos End Master "engine" along with many others to synchro with little effort. Often, a synchro can be pulled off by using 1 card per turn, which makes Intro to Chaos very very focused on available resources. With cards like ROTA and Armageddon Knight, it actually "top-decks" very well, by pitching useless cards out of the deck and using them from the graveyard. So how far are we from the current build?

x1 Armageddon Knight x1 Battle Fader x2 Byser Shock x2 Chaos Sorcerer x3 Chaos End Master x1 Cyber Valley x1 DAD x2 Effect Veiler x2 Fabled Raven x1 Gorz x2 Honest x2 Level Eater x1 Sangan x2 Shining Angel x1 Sphere of Chaos x1 Allure x3 Book of Moon x1 Dark Hole x1 Trunade x1 Mind Control x1 Monster Reborn x1 MST x1 One for One x1 ROTA x2 Bottomless x1 CotH x1 Mirror Force x1 Torrential

Out of that we're really only missing the Fabled Ravens and a few extra deck cards like Brionac, Mist Wurm, and Chaos Goddess. With this build we have Level Eater and, in essence, Sphere of Chaos and Byser Shock as our only potentially dead cards. If we wanted to keep End Master and the Chaos theme, then our replacement level 5 or higher monsters would be Destiny Hero Malicious, Elemental Hero Necroshade, Great Maju Garzett, Regenerating Rose, Shadow Ghoul, Total Defense Shogun, and Yubel. None of those cards are really that great except for Necroshade, Rose and Shogun in this deck, so as of right now Byser Shock is the best choice. To fire off End Master's effect, we have 3 books and 2 honest. Some people would say that you also need shrinks but I believe that it will depend on the deck you're up against. Many decks don't necessarily need more outs to battle, the main focus is to ALWAYS pick and choose your battles until you can synchro summon.

My latest obsession - Flowers

Yeah you heard me, Flowers. I've always been a fan of plant decks, but the current quickdraw dandylion deck wasn't really my style. It's good, don't get me wrong. Huge monster supply, a very few amount of unplayable cards, and access to many different synchro summons make it a good deck. The other plants that are popular right now are naturia, which are also powerful in their own right. But the deck I want to talk about takes a little bit from the dandylion deck, splashes in plant support, then has the rest of its own theme going on - and that is the Phoenixian Amaryllis Cluster deck.


Amaryllis is a level 8 plant, 2200ATK 0 DEF, that can only be Special summoned with its own effect. That is, whenever it is in your graveyard during your endphase you can remove 1 plant to special summon it in defense position. Whenever Amaryllis attacks it is destroyed after damage calculation. Whenever Amaryllis is destroyed and sent to the graveyard your opponent takes 800 points of damage. Lots of effects for just a flower, but they're all pretty nice. To most people, 800 burn damage isn't much, and truth be told, its not. That burn damage isn't your win condition, it just applies pressure to your opponent until you win. So what is the win condition? Attacks and effect damage.

Let's talk about the deck itself. DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility for the creation of this deck. I do have cards in it that suit me, but I am in no way the "creator" of using Amaryllis in this fashion. The big stars of the deck are:
3 Phoenixian Cluster Ameryllis
3 Tytannial, Princess of Camellias
3 Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
3 Trade-In
3 Volcanic Counter

All the other plant staples are in, including Lonefires and Miracle Fertilizer. As you can see, the basis of the deck is to put Amaryllis and Volcanic Counters in the graveyard ASAP and start abusing their effects. The graveyard is very important in this deck, so cards like Macro Cosmos are a problem(side deck). This is done using Ryko, Trade-in, Card Trooper, and Koaki Meiru Gravirose. Once we start removing stuff the deck, there is 1 Burial from the DD and 1 Return from the DD to get them back. By then the round should already be over.

This is probably going to be my next deck after Relinquished. It will depend on the ban list. I am using 2 dandylion but the deck is fully capable of running 1. Some people think Ryko may randomly get hit, in which I do not know of a good replacement. Lonefire to 1 can be worked around, otherwise the deck should be fully functional.