What... What day is it...? Is it Friday yet...?
JANUARY 14TH?! Man I fucked up... Well, no time to complain about that, I'm already late and it looks like everyone's already brought flowers for a funeral. THE ARTICLE ISN'T DEAD FOLKS! I just got really busy with holiday related stuff and college. I won't bore you with that though, let's jump into the new article. I think I should keep it a bit more brief than usual, it might be a bit easier to keep consistent that way but only God knows.
LET'S start off the third issue in this forsaken issue with a guest and friend of the article, @Jayonnaise6105 ! Now before I get into what Jayo really wanted, which was a specific deck, I have an interview I did with them like... a month ago at this point. Jesus... It legit is I think exactly a month ago... I'm so sorry.
ANYWAY, Jayo said their favourite card is Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon, W Blue-Eyes AND Ritual fan. Here's the interview:
JANUARY 14TH?! Man I fucked up... Well, no time to complain about that, I'm already late and it looks like everyone's already brought flowers for a funeral. THE ARTICLE ISN'T DEAD FOLKS! I just got really busy with holiday related stuff and college. I won't bore you with that though, let's jump into the new article. I think I should keep it a bit more brief than usual, it might be a bit easier to keep consistent that way but only God knows.
LET'S start off the third issue in this forsaken issue with a guest and friend of the article, @Jayonnaise6105 ! Now before I get into what Jayo really wanted, which was a specific deck, I have an interview I did with them like... a month ago at this point. Jesus... It legit is I think exactly a month ago... I'm so sorry.
ANYWAY, Jayo said their favourite card is Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon, W Blue-Eyes AND Ritual fan. Here's the interview:
Jayo: I grew up adoring the Yu-Gi-Oh anime. Kaiba was always my favourite character and I've always loved the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. So there's a hint of nostalgia to it. I also played a lot of the old YGO games growing up, so I enjoy a straightforward beatdown strategy. The double piercing battle damage effect of Chaos MAX can be quite a power fantasy, and it also plays into that "chasing number growth" thing I have from playing RPGs for so many years. Plus, ritual monsters are cool. I had a lot of fun thinking up ways to maximize MAX's damage output.
DD: And have you particularly played the deck? anything you can share about your experience?
Jayo: Blue-Eyes has always been my main deck. I haven't played the physical card game in a while, but I would always use Legacy of the Duelist to play test stuff. My favourite cards to play with MAX were: Advance Ritual Art. MAX is level 8 and Blue-Eyes play best with level 8 dragons, so having ARA in my deck meant I almost always had materials in my deck to summon it. It also gave me an excuse to play Dragon Core Hexer in my deck; a normal level 8 Dragon Tuner that is one of my other favourite cards. Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword. A fusion monster that is treated as an equip spell, and buffs the monster equipped to it based on Dragon monsters in play. It was always my favourite way to buff MAX. Phantasmal Lord Ultimitl Bishbaalkin. A synchro monster that can spawn tokens on both sides of the field. It can combo with MAX for an OTK, as the tokens it summons are in defense position and have 0 defense. *You might be able to tell, but I'm not much of a proper competitive player and just go with what I feel is fun hehe
Jayo: My main experience actually playing the deck against other people came from countless card gaming nights around at my friends place, and a few community board gaming nights.
DD: Why is it that whenever it's a deck like this one Bishbaalkin is always involved...
Jayo: Again, being a big fan of the anime, I love Black Luster Soldier, Magician of Black Chaos & Relinquished. I had a passing interest in Amorphactor Pain, because it's another level 8 Dragon and another summoning option for Advanced Ritual Art. I don't think I ever used it though? I also have wanted to try out a proper ritual archetype, like Cyber Angels, but never got around to it. Ido like rituals, but I don't have that much experience with actually using them.
DD: BLS is awesome honestly, I also always loved Relinquished. Did you know they're giving it new cards? pretty neat. If you could make a new card, or a retrain of Blue Eyes Chaos MAX, what would it be/do?
Jayo: How about a retrain of Dark Magician instead? Like, "Magician with Eyes of Blue" or something. Like, what if he donned the garb of the "Eyes of Blue" spellcasters that support Blue-Eyes as an archetype. He could be a level 1 spellcaster in terms of lore because maybe he devoted all of his time to worshipping Blue-Eyes instead of studying magic? If it's to buff MAX, I might give him an effect of searching or recycling ritual spells/monsters, maybe by discarding a card from your hand? Because discarding certain cards is really beneficial to Blue-Eyes. Otherwise, I'm not sure of an effect for him. A straightforward attack buff would be too simple
DD: I like the idea, in fact it's very common now for cards to search 2 things then discard 1 but those effects are usually relegated to spell cards although it would be a cool idea to see it on a monster toocould search a blue eyes or black luster ritual monster and chaos form specifically, then discard 1 card.
Well, that's all we had for our good friend Jayo! Everyone give it up for Jayo, an actual interview! WOOOOHOOOOOOO! This one was a lot longer than last time and felt like an actual conversation, this is due to a well known fact that I actually HATE Nebulon. Moving on, while we're here with Jayo they actually wanted me to make a Dark Scorpion deck. This is basically like sending someone to the 9th circle of Hell as a prank. SO THANKS JAYO! Nah, I'm just kidding, I do have an interesting deck though. I thought that this would be a neat time to display one of the alternate formats in this game, GOAT! Or Time Wizard as I think its officially called by Konami since I guess that way stores can choose which time period they want specifically. Anyway, GOAT format is set back in the distant past of summer 2005, of course named after Scapegoat arguably the most popular card in that format. Popular decks in this format include Chaos Turbo because of course the game was like that since day one, what you thought your silly little Dark Magician playground deck was what people played? HELL NO! Chaos Sorcerer send this fool to the banished zone. Ahem, anyway, OTHER popular decks include Goat Control, Panda Burn and of course Warrior which has our dastardly friend leader of the Dark Scorpions, Don Zaloog. Yeah back then Don Zaloog was actually a pretty competent card, I mean it was a hand rip OR you could send the top 2 cards of your opponents deck to the GY. This dude is the blueprint for a lot of modern day cards that people still play like Psy-Framelord Omega! Now... Here's the thing, Don Zaloog is good, the other guys...? Ehhhhh... Look, how about we just get into the decks and you see for yourself. And oh yeah, I said decks. I've been gone for a while and while I personally could not come up with anything competent, the community kind of can. Well, as competent as Dark Scorpions can be I guess. Here's 3 decks from over on YGOProDeck. The one I would recommend the most is probably the first one since its just an aggro warrior decks minus the warrior stuff... We're in for a ride aren't we?
Deck number ONE! Its pretty simple, just a bunch of staples and the Scorpions themselves. For some weird reason people seem to love to put 3 of every single one of these guys besides Chick since he's... well, limited to 2 in GOAT. There isn't really any "combo" I could explain, like yeah obviously there was combos in GOAT format and it was very much a similar game to nowadays despite what people would like to tell you besides the first turn where it was just T set, this is one of those decks that takes a bit to get going. I wouldn't really change anything here, just seems to be trying to get Don Zaloog to punch as much as he can and make sure his effect resolves.
Deck number TWOOOOO! THIS one is probably going to be the one most people will gravitate towards. This is Dark Scorpion control. Mirror Wall is... An interesting choice but hey who am I to judge?! I would absolutely take Zombyra out for something better, anything really hell I would just put one of those side deck options in there but I honestly don't play GOAT that much and maybe I'm not seeing the insane applications of Zombyra the Dark in this deck. But yeah I mean generally speaking this is probably a better version of this deck but I feel like it doesn't lean into the Scorpions half as much as the other one and I don't blame the guy for that.
THE FINAL DECK! And the one I REALLY wanted to talk about because good lord what the hell am I even looking at. So this is a deck I've seen pop up here and there on a modern day spin on Dark Scorpions and when I tell you things have gotten bleak for the Dark Scorpion community I mean things have gone completely pitch black dark. OBVIOUSLY this deck is carried by the Regensis cards which are an absolute powerhouse when it comes to generating resources. It was a deck that was somewhat tinkered with and experimented for the meta but never really came to be since the other decks surrounding it were just a hell of a lot more consistent but that's not to say that Regensis is bad. One thing this deck can do is make big dudes with really powerful effects really fast. Now that's kind of the exact opposite of what Dark Scorpion does, you know making really small dudes with virtually no effect in the current game, but hey if you really want to play Don Zaloog and his merry band of mischievous bandit burglars then there's this. Its the standard Regensis combo which ends on a negate, bounce and Book of Moon with the added effect of your Dark Scropions depending on which one you get.
Dang, what a flash round huh? After all that I could really use a small break with a GOOD deck! What's that? We don't do that here? Right... Well, since we're on the topic of decks today I brought something of my own as well. Since we already discussed Rituals and since a fun little Link monster made an appearance in that last deck, I'd love to talk about what's likely my favourite deck after Destiny HERO, VENDREAD!
A little bit of backstory about the archetype as always. Vendread is not only a Zombie Ritual archetype, but the ONLY Zombie Ritual archetype in the entire game as of me writing this article. Being the first and only of its kind it isn't without its flaws but I'll be damned if it isn't creative and fun. Vendread revolves around its main Ritual monster, the Revendread Slayer, which has an absolutely crazy effect that says
If this Ritual Summoned card is sent to the GY: You can add 1 Ritual Spell from your Deck to your hand, and if you do, send 1 "Vendread" monster from your Deck to the GY.
The way this deck works is that all the regular Vendread monsters have a common effect where they give the Rituals that they are used as tributes to summon brand new effects. Essentially, alongside that insane float effect the Slayer will typically gain 2 to 3 other additional effects which I'll get to in a moment. So now suddenly this unassuming 2400 guy on the field can not only float on death, be protected by a spell, gain attack twice once from its own OTHER effect and another time from the Link monster, but it can also potentially banish two of your opponents cards. And hey, depending on the end board it can even be unaffected by effects. After all that hype, here's the deck list!
Deck number TWOOOOO! THIS one is probably going to be the one most people will gravitate towards. This is Dark Scorpion control. Mirror Wall is... An interesting choice but hey who am I to judge?! I would absolutely take Zombyra out for something better, anything really hell I would just put one of those side deck options in there but I honestly don't play GOAT that much and maybe I'm not seeing the insane applications of Zombyra the Dark in this deck. But yeah I mean generally speaking this is probably a better version of this deck but I feel like it doesn't lean into the Scorpions half as much as the other one and I don't blame the guy for that.
THE FINAL DECK! And the one I REALLY wanted to talk about because good lord what the hell am I even looking at. So this is a deck I've seen pop up here and there on a modern day spin on Dark Scorpions and when I tell you things have gotten bleak for the Dark Scorpion community I mean things have gone completely pitch black dark. OBVIOUSLY this deck is carried by the Regensis cards which are an absolute powerhouse when it comes to generating resources. It was a deck that was somewhat tinkered with and experimented for the meta but never really came to be since the other decks surrounding it were just a hell of a lot more consistent but that's not to say that Regensis is bad. One thing this deck can do is make big dudes with really powerful effects really fast. Now that's kind of the exact opposite of what Dark Scorpion does, you know making really small dudes with virtually no effect in the current game, but hey if you really want to play Don Zaloog and his merry band of mischievous bandit burglars then there's this. Its the standard Regensis combo which ends on a negate, bounce and Book of Moon with the added effect of your Dark Scropions depending on which one you get.
Dang, what a flash round huh? After all that I could really use a small break with a GOOD deck! What's that? We don't do that here? Right... Well, since we're on the topic of decks today I brought something of my own as well. Since we already discussed Rituals and since a fun little Link monster made an appearance in that last deck, I'd love to talk about what's likely my favourite deck after Destiny HERO, VENDREAD!
A little bit of backstory about the archetype as always. Vendread is not only a Zombie Ritual archetype, but the ONLY Zombie Ritual archetype in the entire game as of me writing this article. Being the first and only of its kind it isn't without its flaws but I'll be damned if it isn't creative and fun. Vendread revolves around its main Ritual monster, the Revendread Slayer, which has an absolutely crazy effect that says
If this Ritual Summoned card is sent to the GY: You can add 1 Ritual Spell from your Deck to your hand, and if you do, send 1 "Vendread" monster from your Deck to the GY.
The way this deck works is that all the regular Vendread monsters have a common effect where they give the Rituals that they are used as tributes to summon brand new effects. Essentially, alongside that insane float effect the Slayer will typically gain 2 to 3 other additional effects which I'll get to in a moment. So now suddenly this unassuming 2400 guy on the field can not only float on death, be protected by a spell, gain attack twice once from its own OTHER effect and another time from the Link monster, but it can also potentially banish two of your opponents cards. And hey, depending on the end board it can even be unaffected by effects. After all that hype, here's the deck list!
Now, I know, initial thoughts for most people would be where are all the hand traps? Buddy where we're going we don't need hand traps! Seriously though, I guess if you're that worried and adamant about it, you could play 3 more hand traps but I seriously would not advise playing more than 43 cards in this deck since... It can get rough. So, how does this whole thing work? Well, you've got a couple of starters, Uni-Zombie and Dark Necromancer being your one card starters, so by extent making the one Gold Sarc a fourth copy of Dark Necromancer as what Necromancer does is when it's banished, it can summon 1 level 4 or lowers Zombie from the banished zone including itself. Then if its summoned it adds a Ritual spell and sends a monster to the grave and man I don't need to tell you how busted that is. You can send Slayer off of this effect, add Revendread Evolution which is basically a Branded Fusion for this deck, use Evolution to send Scar of the Vendread from the DECK to the Grave and then summon Slayer from the grave. This will trigger Scar to add any Vendread spell or trap, usually Reorigin since its a decent removal trap on your opponents turn and then you can use the Necromancer and the Slayer to Link summon any Link monster usually the Avendread Savior. This will then trigger the Slayer to add a ritual spell, typically your Ravenous Vendread, and then dump a Vendread monster to the grave which will be your Vendread Houndhorde. Now you can use Houndhorde to summon itself by sending a card to the grave, this can even be the spell you JUST added, then you can use Saviour to add back the spell to your hand. Then you use Ravenous to summon a Vendread Revenants from the deck, then ritual summon using both your Revenants and your Houndhorde to summon Slayer, again. So what do we have? A removal trap, a Slayer that can banish spell or trap and banish a special summoned monster as well as an attack boost from your Slayer and from your Savior. Then when Slayer dies it floats and you get to build up next turn again. Yeah I mean what were you expecting? Its honestly quite decent for what it is and I only showed you the simplest one card combo. Having even a Vulcarrion in your hand alongside either Uni-Zombie or Dark Necromancer instantly boosts this combo even further to the ability to either Xyz or Synchro summon. Now I did mention making Slayer unaffected and it is a bit of a more difficult thing to pull off but since I've been playing and iterating on this deck for years I've found a neat little combo that leads to you summoning a Slayer that can banish backrow and a monster, as well as an Executor that has been summoned with Vendread Core and Revenants + Houndhorde. This means that not only do you get TWO backrow and monster banishes, you also get to make a loop where it says that other cards except Executor can't be targeted by effects, but since Executor was summoned using Core, it gains the effect that it can't be targeted by effects. This means every Vendread on your field is safe from targeting effects.
Its a super fun Ritual deck though and I'd highly recommend it to anyone trying to get their toes dipped into that blue card border. Just not the one with arrows. Mostly. Now lets address the elephant in the room, yes this deck is heavily inspired by Resident Evil. From the zombified dogs and birds, to the giant guy with tentacles roaming the streets that mutates into an even more giant guy with tentacles. Obviously, there's other inspirations such as Spawn, a guy that died who lost his wife and was reborn from death not as the zombies that took his wife, but as a mutant full of vengance and rage, hence the Slayer, Executor and Savior storyline. Oh yeah, this is one of those decks with a very clear and easy to read story from the card arts and effects but I won't get too deep into that here. Maybe I can make some sort of blog about it, eh, eh? Haha just pulling your leg! Or am I...? Anyway, here's some neat little images of the cards from this archetype! I love the lore, art and gameplay of this deck so much.
Its a super fun Ritual deck though and I'd highly recommend it to anyone trying to get their toes dipped into that blue card border. Just not the one with arrows. Mostly. Now lets address the elephant in the room, yes this deck is heavily inspired by Resident Evil. From the zombified dogs and birds, to the giant guy with tentacles roaming the streets that mutates into an even more giant guy with tentacles. Obviously, there's other inspirations such as Spawn, a guy that died who lost his wife and was reborn from death not as the zombies that took his wife, but as a mutant full of vengance and rage, hence the Slayer, Executor and Savior storyline. Oh yeah, this is one of those decks with a very clear and easy to read story from the card arts and effects but I won't get too deep into that here. Maybe I can make some sort of blog about it, eh, eh? Haha just pulling your leg! Or am I...? Anyway, here's some neat little images of the cards from this archetype! I love the lore, art and gameplay of this deck so much.
Hoo boy, I don't want to waste even more time so we're just gonna do a flash round of news because trust me... There is a LOT to talk about. I'll focus more on what's exciting for me at the end, but for starters I want to talk about what's probably the most important news recently or I guess what everyone has been talking about the most: The full art cards.
Boy do these look INSANE. They've been steadily showing more and more of these and it looks like a good majority of them are actually brand new cards. There's new support for virutally every main protagonist and rival in the series. I can't wait for the antagonist stuff to be revealed inevitably. Its worth mentioning that not only do these cards LOOK great but their effects (mostly) are also incredibly good. I mean just that new Junk Synchron card alone has had me riled up to play some God damned Yu-Gi-Oh again! I'll probably have to update that Synchron deck soon, huh? Well, maybe that'll be featured on some blog post somewhere, eh, eh? Wink wink.
Other great news is that the set featuring these full arts we'll also likely be getting some pretty great reprints as well. Granted, I don't think all of them will be full art cards but its nice to know that there'll be stuff like Fuwa in there, I mean we're also getting stuff like Primites in the rival collection as well as Infernity cards! That's pretty awesome.
Some other news I'm pretty hyped for is the NEW cards coming to that set. FINALLY! We finally get to see Infernity Doomslinger in actual paper TCG form. Kiryu/Kallin was probably my favourite character after Antinomy in 5D's and I almost even based my entire profile around him. Despite me... You know, not playing Infernity... I would've still been destinyduelist just not with Antinomy pictures plastered all over.
We also get a few more chibi artworks! That Zeus looks really cute and I'm a fan of the Branded stuff too. I uh... Don't really care about Witchcrafter that much... I hope to see some more of my favourites become chibified, I hope we see the return of these in the upcoming Legendary Decks with Chibi versions of famous X-Sabers, Sky Strikers and Mitsurugi cards. Would be really fun to see Gottoms chibified.
Now for the flash round. A NEW ARCHETYPE! I'm really hyped to try out the new Clown Clan I LOVE this aesthetic I absolutely love this kind of style AND it seems like a mostly fully realised archetype having a Ritual, Synchro, Xyz AND a Fusion. Shocker there isn't a Link for these guys... YET. While I love the looks of the cards I guess we'll have to see if I'll like the playstyle of the deck sicne I haven't really made anything yet.
ENNEACRAFT SUPPORT BABEY! Oh boy that deck fell flat on its face. We knew it wasn't gonna be anything to really write home about but man it REALLY got overshadowed. Not that the other decks in Phantom Revengers were any good, but man it feels like everyone's talking about Killer Tune (I refuse to say Kewl Konami) and Hecahands. Killer Tune being somewhat decent and an interesting concept (A deck with ONLY Tuners that has Synchros that take only Tuners to summon) which I can't believe it took this long to think of or implement, and Hecahands is just bad. Seriously Hecahands is downright terrible and I guess it leaves Enneacraft with just being averege and okay. One thing worse than being awful is being averege cause at least if you're bad people will talk about you I guess. Seeing someone say "Oh its BAD" and someone go like "I mean I GUESS its okaaaaaaay... Ehhhh?" are two really wildly different things huh?
And of course the most recent brand new support that will be full arts:
Red Dragon Archfiend’s Chain is a CRAZY card:
You can only activate 1 card with this card’s name per turn. You can activate this card the turn it was Set by revealing 1 “Red Dragon Archfiend” in your Extra Deck.And of course the most recent brand new support that will be full arts:
Red Dragon Archfiend’s Chain is a CRAZY card:
(1) Activate this card by revealing any number of monsters from your hand, then target Effect Monsters your opponent controls equal to the number of Tuners revealed +1; they lose 100 ATK for each card revealed, also their effects are negated. If the last of those monsters is not on the field, destroy this card.
That's pretty damn good. Seriously, this is essentially a searchable Forbidden Droplet. The other cards are also pretty damn good but I feel like this one really takes the cake.
WELL FOLKS, I'll SADLY have to wrap this one up now. What a wild one huh? 4 decks and a bunch of news. Of course there's like 10 times MORE news than what I talked about here, stuff like the Charmers anime, new cards and new sets. I mostly wanted to focus on what's exciting for me since I usually post all the news over on the thread which you should check out and go ahead and discuss YGO with me if you want! Don't be shy, I'd even be willing to duel people! I'm not sure what deck I'll be showing off next week, should I even say next week? God I hope I'm on time I guess. Maybe I can show off Phantom Knights, that's a deck I really love. I'm not sure honestly, I guess we'll all have to wait and see! GOODBYE PEOPLE SCRAM GET OUT OF HERE!
