The New Black Luster Soldier and other new chaos cards

Once every few months, V-Jump publishes a pack of 5 new cards. Last pack was last December, so it’s time for a new pack! The V-Jump of August (which will contain the new F&L list, btw) will contain the next V-jump promo cards. And they’re all Chaos-related!

The new BLS, it’s BS

The main card everybody was looking forward to, is the new BLS: Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Twilight. And look at it, the art is awesome!

But then look at that effect:

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must be Special Summoned (from your hand) by having an equal number of LIGHT and DARK monsters in your Graveyard and banishing all monsters of 1 of those Attributes from your Graveyard, and cannot be Special Summoned by other ways. While face-up on the field, this card is also LIGHT-Attribute. When this card is Special Summoned: You can activate 1 of these effects, depending on the Attribute of the monster(s) banished for its Special Summon. You cannot conduct your Battle Phase during the turn you activate this effect. ● LIGHT: Banish 1 monster on the field, face-up. ● DARK: Banish 1 random card from your opponent's hand, face-down, until your opponent's End Phase.

This basically means that BLS will ONLY have an effect when it’s summoned by this condition (and only then). If you summon it with (for example) Monster Reborn, it will have no effect (booh!). Not only that, but having an equal number of Light and dark monsters makes it kind of annoying to summon, not to mention the fact that you have to banish all LIGHT or DARK monsters from your grave (booh!). It also has that condition that it’s both LIGHT and DARK (okay, that’s kind of normal, but easy to counter with Gozen Match). Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that you have to skip your battle phase the turn you actually DO use the effect (BOOH!).

Tl;dr? IT SUCKS!

Light and Dark Gaia Knight

Just like BLS, Gaia the Fierce Knight has been re-used in many different cards (Swift Gaia the Fierce Knight (effect), Gaia the Dragon Champion (fusion), Gaia Kight the Force of Earth (synchro), Gaia Drake the Universal Force (synchro fusion), Gaia Dragon the Thunder Charger (XYZ) and now thus the Light and Dark Chaos monsters. Here comes Gaia, Knight of the Dark Nights and Gaia, Knight of the Bright Nights (oooh, look at the word play). (Wikia says Polar Nights and White Nights, but TCG print will determine the TCG name)

Both have similar effects, with opposing attributes. You can use both effects once per turn:

• Tribute one other DARK/LIGHT monster, to add 1 Lv. 4 LIGHT/DARK (resp.) warrior from your deck to your hand and then send 1 card from your hand to the grave.
• Banish 1 LIGHT/DARK monster from your grave to either boost your monster’s attack or lower your opponent’s monster attack.

These monsters are searchers and provide sufficient imagination for chaos warrior decks (though seriously, why the “-1” on their effect?). The first things that come to mind are Destiny HERO’s and Light Beat Warriors or Noble Knights.

New Primal Seed and new Exchange of the Spirit

This whole pack reeks of nostalgia. The provided spell card (Chaotic Seed) is a wink to Primal Seed, while the trap, Exchange of Dawn and Dusk (or First Light and twilight, depending on the translation) is a nod to the long-time forbidden card: Exchange of the Spirit.

The spell goes as follows: If you control a Light and Dark monster (or a monster that has both attributes), you can add 1 banished LIGHT or DARK warrior to your hand. They added the once per turn clause to prevent abuse (yeah, that’s the sole reason why Primal Seed is still limited in the first place).

The trap basically reads: Dump 1 LIGHT/DARK warrior from your hand to the grave to add 1 warrior of the opposing attribute and the same level from your deck to your hand. These two cards bring stability to the Chaos warrior deck. It ensures you have that right DARK/LIGHT warrior (Armageddon Knight, Dark/Light Grepher, etc), and allows you to recycle banished warriors, like D-HERO Malicious.

So how can you use these cards?

Well, its cards like these that give the opportunity to mix, remix and experiment! You can use these cards and…:

• Use them in a D.D. deck. Warrior lady is Light, Survivor is Dark. And these cards smell like pure chaos (hint: Chaos Zone).
• Mix them with Destiny HERO’s and Light Warriors like Neos Alius, Photon Thrasher and Noble Knight Gawayn. Destiny Draw remains a good engine.
• Mix Constellars with Destiny HERO: Pollux is a Light Lv. 4 warrior, Constellar Alrescha is a Lv. 6 LIGHT warrior. Diamond Dude is a Dark Lv. 4; Malicious is Lv. 6.
• Mix Lightrays with Dark Warriors. Lightray Gearfried is hard to get on the field, but once it’s there, it’s a boss!
• Remix Chaos Ninja Dragons. Remember the variant of Chaos Dragons that uses Ninja’s? Time to upgrade them with these cards, to easily search Golden Ninja and Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo. It adds a much-needed consistency to this deck.
• And you can probably think of other combinations I didn’t even think of yet.

Since I love Chaos decks, so I guess it’s time to experiment! Let’s hope the September F&L list isn’t too hard on the Chaos archetype (read as: let’s hope this B(L)S doesn’t cause the good BLS to become forbidden). And then let’s hope these cards (and Collapserpent + Wyburstar) gain a TCG-print soon.

That’s it for now, V out.

PS: Note: these are OCG-names and translated by fans. Names may change upon release in TCG.

PPS: Rest of Battle Pack 2 is now revealed as well. No further surprises noticed.

Merry Christmas

Wait, what?

Yeah, merry Christmas, everybody! And no better card to show this holiday celebration, than by the new card: Token Christmas.

Or, to say it in another way: the new Jump Festa Cards are out and for once, they do NOT suck. Each new card from the Jump festa has its use, even if it's just as a holiday card (lol).

Jump Festa

For those that do not know, Jump Festa is an annual party or exposition in Japan, all about anime and manga, sponsored by Shueisha, creators of the various Jump anthologies [/Shameless copy of Wikipedia].

And since Yu-Gi-Oh! is part of Shueisha, they always release two variants of card packs, with reprints and several new cards.

Why did you never hear of it until this point? Because most new cards in these packs are hardly worth playing. And when they get a print in the TCG, it's as a common in the 09x card pool, because the effects are not good enough.

What makes this year different? Well, all of the new cards are actually kinda good, or have a good use...

The new cards

Bright White Dragon Wyrbuster and Dark-Winged Dragon Collapserpent: You can call these two the younger versions of Lightpulsar Dragon and Darkflare Dragon, because they can only be special summoned by banishing either a LIGHT or DARK monster from your grave (sounds familiar) and they search each other when sent to the graveyard. Biggest use for them: Chaos Dragons!

Komodo Dragon: Also known as: "Thank god Future Fusion is Banned". When this card is sent to the grave, you can special summon a dragon from your hand (and it does NOT miss timing)! Dragon decks will rejoice with this card. Also, it's a Debris Dragon target!

Fishborg Archer: Broken as hell in water decks. Special summons itself from the grave by discarding a water monster (Atlantean Dragoons) when you control no monsters and it's friggin tuner, allowing for easy synchro-ing in water decks.

Fire God Vulcan: A Fire Beast-Warrior? Doesn't remind me of anything..... A level 6 that bounces cards back to the hand? Basically it's a watered-down version of Brionac in Fire form, but severely restricted.

Secret Sanctuary of the Spellcasters: Secret Village of the Spellcasters got its private sanctuary, because the two cards work so well together in locking down your opponent it's not even funny (for the opponent). After Secret Village locks down spells, this card locks down monster attacks AND effects. Combine that with Sorcerer of Dark Magic and your opponent can go straight to the scoop phase.

Fire Dance Longsword: A Fire Beast that works well together with the Fire King archetype and works well with Diawolf. Random destruction gives this card its power.

Nine-Snakes Peacock: A searcher for WIND attributes. This card works amazingly with Icarus Attack and Swallow's Nest, because it triggers when tributed and it DOES NOT miss timing.

Armor Kappa: If you want a replacement for Gachi Gachi Gantetsu, you can try this card instead. Same summoning conditions, can gain attack up to 2400 (unless Veilered) and can (during one battle phase) protect your monsters (all of them) from being destroyed and protects your lifepoints at the same cost (a discard cost).

Token Christmas: That's the intro card of this post. The card tributes 2 tokens (of the same level) to summon monsters from your grave of the same level. This card will work great in the new Phantom Beast Plane Archetype that will be in Lord of the Tachyongalaxy (more on that in a later post, somewhere in 2013).

Afterword

In short, these new cards are good and should not be looked over. I can't tell when they will be printed in the TCG (I expect from Lord of the Tachyongalaxy onward?), but I expect that all these cards (safe a few perhaps) will be played in their respective archetypes. So, if that happens, I think this Jump Festa will be a success.

Next time, I will post more about the fire archetypes, I will...

V out.

New Format - Deck tests

It's been quite a while since I've done deck-experimenting. Last format, it was Chaos Dragons and that's it. Any other deck I made, failed the matchup vs inzektors, so I gave up quicly on them.

Since my Chaos Dragon deck got hit by the September F&L list, I'm doing a lot of deck tests, to see with which one I'm going to play until the next set comes out (at least).

But until that, I'm going to stop buying cards and test the decks first on DN.

Decks I'm testing right now:

• Chaos Dragons post September: My deck choice of last format, with only 1 REDMD, 0 Future Fusion, 1 Chaos Sorcerer and 2 Tour Guides. Also, with Night Assailant and Foolish Burial.
• Photon Lightray: A deck I've started last format, but I noticed it failed hard when facing Inzektors. So with Inzektors gone and a few new cards in the card pool, I'm giving this another try. Lightray Gearfried is still boss.
• Piper Exodia: Yeah, you're hearing that correctly. Ever since Wan chan (or Where arf thou?) came out, I've seen potential in Piper Exodia. The card is an amazing search card for both Piper, Kinka-Byo and each Exodia Limb. And honestly, what is better than inconsistent draw power? Search power!
• Prophecy mash-ups: I love spellcasters as a type, but finding a good build is harder than you think. Since pure Prophecy don't work, I'm trying out mash-ups with other spellcasters, like Lightsworn, Spell Counters and even Gravekeepers. So far, I've tested the results are fine, but the archetype really needs the cards from Abyss Rising to work (especially hanged man of Prophecy).
• Ninja's: Since Tsukuyomi is coming back, I'm looking for a card she can abuse. I found an abuse target in Senior Silver Ninja. Each time he's flipped face-up, I can spam the field with Ninja's. Made a pre-test build, but still need to test this one.
• Status: making a new build for: Chaos Control (curse you Konami) and Hieratic Agents (dunno if this will work, though).

Test results and decklists (when I agree with them) will follow...

Until next time, V out.

How the new Forbidden & Limited list will affect us

Chaos Dragons: close to being extinct

As a Chaos Dragon player, I realize we’ve been hurt. Future Fusion: forbidden (we saw that one coming miles away), REDMD: Limited (hurts a lot), Chaos Sorcerer limited (WHY?), Tour Guide became semi-limited (awh), Brionac Forbidden (although the last 2 are key cards in many decks anyways).

I’m currently testing out new deckbuilds of Chaos Dragons, but more on that later.

Inzektors: Got their wings ripped out

We expected Inzektors to get hit, but they got butchered instead. With two of the 3 key cards becoming limited, the deck got hurt a lot. They can’t run to Tour Guide (as an alternative) either, because she got hit as well.

I warned you to sell your inzektor stuff while it was still worth something.

Wind-up: Sunk your battleship

Konami was smart in this case. They hit Wind-ups where it hurt the most… the mass spamming has ceased. Zenmaighty to 1 will make Hunter much less of a threat. Honestly, I wished Konami would do this, but I never expected they would.

Rabbit decks: An arrow to the knee

This one is the top deck that got hurt the least. The tins may have given it away already. Konami wouldn’t promote their tins with 2 of the boss XYZ, if the bunny would’ve been served for lunch. Rabbit became semi-limited. With Tour Guide to 2, this top tier deck has the highest chance of survival in the new format.

HERO: it’s just a braze

Konami recognized that HERO’s have become stronger, so they semi-limited A Hero Lives (one of the problem cards in my eyes) and E-Emergency Call. In return they gave us the long-desired third Destiny Draw.

Hieratic mash-ups (specific: Gishki Hieratic): Let’s take one foot, your spine and your evil eye.

The Hieratic Loop got hit. REDMD to 1 and Seal of Convocation to 2 reduces the OTK-ability of this deck to 0. With Evigishki Gustkraken, they also pre-emptively hit the mash-up of Hieratics with Gishki’s. At first you might wonder: “Why Gustkraken?”. But I’ve seen the deck in action (thanks to Lithium3200’s uploads). The amount of times a hieratic player summons Gustkraken in one duel, makes Wind-up Hunter look like an amateur.

Offering Gadgets (Offerings no longer allowed)

With Ultimate Offering to 1, this deck is dead. No problem with that, Offering became a problem card ever since XYZ came out.

Stop the brain drain

This is a request from several OCG players I’ve seen. Stopping brainless decks. The argument is that Pot of Duality (and a few other cards) promote unskilled play. They got their wish somewhat, as Pot of Duality got semi-limited, together with Tour Guide. I hope this will promote skilled play & creative deck creation.

The decks that have recovered a little are:

• Plants: Spore Returns & Debris Dragon goes to 2. Hurray!
• Agents: The return of Earth gives the deck a little breather. But honestly, I’d rather have seen T.G. Striker return than this one.
• Blackwing: Kalut returns to 2, giving Blackwings that little extra boost they needed.
• Lightsworn: As predicted by many people, the Lightswornd get another card back. This time, it’s Necro Gardna. Will this boost their popularity?
• Stall/Burn: Marshmallon, Level Limit Area B, Magic Cylinder and Swords of Revealing Light are back at 3. This gives people who like stall decks an extra boost.
• Tele-DAD: Emergency Teleport is back unlimited. Same for Destiny Draw. Though the old Tele-DAD seems impossible to make, with all the new cards that came out ever since, it will be interesting to see new variants.

Decks that will flourish in the new format

Of course, it’s always hard to tell in the beginning of a new banlist (that matters). My first thought would be:

• Dino Rabbit: A little slower than before, but with 3 Leviair, 3 Laggia & 3 Dolkka, this is still a serious threat.
• HERO: With Stratos still in play and with Excalibur & Blade Armor Ninja, this remains a deck to be feared.
• Geargia: Better get used to the return of machine decks. Geargia has topped quite frequently in the OCG, so I kind of expect it to do the same here, even if the deck lacks certain cards from the OCG (like Tinplate goldfish).
• Six Samurai: Honestly, I forgot about these bastards, until I read the post of Lightgrunity. Its worst matchups are gone with this list, so it has a potential to come back with a revenge.
• Dark World: Did not get hurt by banlist. This deck might become a serious threat, but the deck is still its own worst enemy (mirror matches ftw).
• Atlantean mashups: Though this will wait until November (structure deck & Abyss Rising), you better prepare for the rise of water-attribute decks.
• Tele-DAD: Yeah, you ARE reading that correctly. With 3 Emergency Teleports and 3 Destiny Draws at their disposal and no other key card being hurt, I think Tele-DAD (and other Tele-mashups) is a serious contender for the upcoming format. So better fetch your Krebons while they’re cheap dirt, because in a month, he might be a rare find. E-Teleport already is.

September is Tele-Party time!

Banlist RQ analysis Day 4+5: Near done & Beware the fake banlists

After analyzing multiple blogs, youtube channels and forums for possible banlist predictions, I've filled a list with 91 users and their choices/requests/predictions for the upcoming banlist.

Tonight (or tomorrow), I'll round it up at 100 lists and publish the results. Out of those results, I will post the wishlist of the people for the September 2012 format.

Some results may surprise, others will not. I mean, it will hardly surprise anyone to see cards like Future Fusion, Inzektor Dragonfly or Rescue Rabbit getting "top results" on this list.

Beware! The fake lists are coming

Yeah, since a few days, the first fake lists are appearing on the net. Don't let them fool you and take the following tips into account:

• The official V-Jump with the official forbidden & limited list will be in Japanese shelves on August 21. Only in the week before that release, REAL leaked images may appear. So, basically: everything that pops up on the net before August 15 can be considered fake.
• If the hits are too unrealistic, it's fake (cards like Change of Heart will never return).
• If the lay-out/artwork of the page looks old, looks fitting with a previous Yu-Gi-Oh anime or looks too much like one of the previous F&L lists, it's fake.
• If old manga or old cosplay characters appear on the page, it's fake. Only those from Zexal can appear (and even then it's not certain they will appear).
• And never forget. Konami makes the rules, not us. No matter how weird the real list looks like, you'll have to deal with it.
• However, if you do get your hands on that V-Jump early, take a picture of the list, together with the promo card + a picture of the V-Jump cover + the promo card, just to ensure you do have the real deal. FYI: the Promo card is Bahamut Shark, a rank 4 XYZ.

So, don't let some crazy list fool you and be patient. The list only goes into effect on September 1 anyway.

So until next time

V out.

Traditional at locals

I wasn't able to participate in the previous Traditional tourney due to… partying a little too hard the day before (lol) and failing to make time to create a decent enough deck. So that’s why I was a spectator last time.

Last Saturday, though, I was prepared and went to the other locals I usually attend, for a traditional Tourney. I pimped out my chaos dragons with forbidden cards (Painful Choice, Chaos Emperor Dragon, Dimension Fusion and Graceful Charity are all boss in Chaos Dragons).

Round 1: P-H (Six Sam):

• Game 1: I open up badly, but Imperial Order saved my ass, as my opponent opened with 5 spell cards (LOL). He can only advance slowly, while I recuperate from possibly one of the worst opening hands I've ever had. When my lifepoints drop down to 1900 (mostly due to paying the cost of Imperial order) I stopped paying the cost and get my game going. I get Future Fusion in my hand, resulting with a bunch of monsters and Chaos Emperor Dragon on the field, dropping his lifepoints to 2900 and then activating CED’s effect to burn 3200 for game.
• Game 2: I beat his monster with Leviathan Dragon turn 1, but he activates Gateway + SS United. He continues to summon, Searches/draws cards, drops Electric Virus on my dragon and OTK’s me. Yeah, I suddenly remembered why I hate Gateway of the SS.
• Game 3: Back and forth game, with Imperial order backing me again and Painful choice helping me advance. I win in the end.

Result: OXO

Round 2: Newbie (random warriors)

• Game 1: I realized this guy was new to the game and the god of card games wanted me to punish him. I opened up really broken (best hand of the day) and could FTK him.
• Game 2: Even with a quick-made deck that wasn’t prepared for Traditional, he showed quite some resilience. This guy holds some potential. But yeah, when facing Chaos Dragons unprepared in Traditional, you’re bound to lose.

Result: OO

I give him some tips on what he could’ve done to stop my advance, giving him some insight into the game.

Round 3: Vs Damon (Infernity)

• Game 1: The moment I activate Painful choice, he sees where I’m going and asks if I’m going to OTK him. I bluff a little, saying yes (as if! My hand wasn’t that great). He takes my bluff and scoops (his hand sucked, he told me).
• Game 2: I can’t do a thing when he starts looping. He OTK’s me.
• Game 3: I stop his Grepher with Veiler, seal his traps with Royal Decree and go forward from then on.

Result: OXO

Game 4: Carl (Piper Chaos)

• Game 1: Back-and-forth Game. He draws a lot and makes my moves backfire. I have few tricks of my own, but I know his Piper deck takes advantage of big, beefy monsters (like mine). Though moment he activates Crush Card Virus, I’m doomed. My field is swept clean and my hand is gone.
• Game 2: I have Troll & Lock bird ready, but he doesn’t activate a single draw card (once, a single Piper, wow). My  sided Royal Decree gets MST’d early on. Crush Card Virus doesn’t discard lot from my hand (I had Tour Guide, Veiler and the D&L bird that wouldn't fly), but with every good card I draw, being automatically sent to the graveyard, I can’t come back.

Result: XX

His loss over the Droll & Lock birds a few weeks ago clearly left a sore spot, as he didn't pimp his deck out with draw power (he said he’s the only one playing without Pot of Greed). No wonder my birds wouldn’t fly.

By request of the judge, we don't play top-4 (we agreed, result would've been the same, more or less)

End result: Third place (P-H got 2nd due to better tie-breaker)

• Card of the day: Imperial Order
• Fail card of the day: Dark Magician of Chaos (dunno why I bothered using him. Mostly ended up being a dead draw, even in Chaos Dragons).
• Got crushed by: Crush Card Virus. Yeah, that card really does hurt Chaos Dragons

So that's my locals report.

Next to the report, I've decided to do something with all the banlist predictions out there... But as this might take a while, I'll post about that near the end of the week.

Until next time, V out.

How to beat a field full of dragons

Consider one of the following situations:

• Your opponent has a field with 2 Gaia Dragons (overlayed from Atum), an unused Hieratic Dragon King of Atum (or some other dragon) and 2 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragons with 0 attack/defense.
• Your opponent has a field with 2 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragons and a few chaos dragons (while playing with dragons).

Seems pretty hopeless, huh? Yeah, a top decked card like Dark Hole and Black luster Soldier might get you out of this bind. But try thinking outside of the box. Try to look at cards that other players use… For example: HERO players.

Yup, the card I’m talking about is Super Polymerization.

Super Polymerization?

I hear you coming… isn't this a HERO-exclusive card? The answer is… NO. You can fuse ANY fusion monster you want, as long as the necessary fusion material monsters are on (either side of) the field and as long as you discard 1 card. 

You all know how powerful Super Poly is. It’s one of the few cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! that you can NOT counter.

How frequent could you activate it? Well, both Chaos Dragons and Hieratic Dragons have the tendency to spam the field with boss monsters, so more frequent than you think!

The best thing is, when you’re a dragon player yourself, you don’t even need to change that extra deck. The target fusion monster is already in there!

How it works – Vs. Hieratics

Hieratic dragons have the tendency to overextend to OTK you. When they do their loop (Atum - REDMD - Atum - REDMD - any dragon), they leave themselves very vulnerable to Super Poly.

Take that moment, just before your opponent overlays those two REDMD’s into Gustaph Max, to activate Super Polymerization, tribute your opponents 5 dragons and have a gigantic boss monster as a prize.

How it works – Vs. Chaos Dragons

This kind of “bullying” is harder to pull off against Chaos Dragons, but it can work wonders in Chaos Dragon mirror matches. If your opponent has 3 or more Dragons on his side of the field, you can have 1 or 2 (depending on how many your opponent has) dragons enter the field and activate this card. The plus on this is that your opponent’s Lightpulsar Dragon will miss the timing. In this case, make sure you don’t use LPD yourself (unless you’re out of options), because your LPD will miss timing as well.

So, the next time somebody tells you Konami should make Five-Headed dragon forbidden (instead of Future Fusion), tell them they shouldn't, because you can use that very fusion monster against dragon players.

Of course, this is just one possible counter against Chaos/Hieratic Dragons. But this one proves that you should not limit yourself to the generally known counters (like Electric Virus, Victoria, Soul Taker, ...). When you think outside of the box, you might just find an original answer to your problem.

Until next time

V out.