Improving your Yugiz 1 – Tactics vs. Strategy Part 1

Posted on Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Hello everyone. I’m Jake – I originally cofounded this blog with Jason, but in the following weeks have completely abandoned it. I’ m trying to return to helping out when I can (sorry Jason) and will be writing this Improving your Yugiz section once a week (or trying to). So, enjoy, and hopefully improve your Yugiz!

So, today I’ll be talking about the difference between strategy and tactics. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, here are my definitions:


Playing tactically: When you play tactically, you are playing for the short term. Maybe you’re aiming to gain some card advantage, or maybe your trying to take their lifepoints down a notch. Most of the plays the average player makes in Yu-Gi-Oh are, in my experience, tactical, designed to make their board position as good as it can get in the short term.

Playing strategically: When you play strategically, you are playing for the long term. The plays you make may not be optimal (you could have gained CA or LA by making a different play) but you are trying to set yourself up to have a favorable position later in the game.

The way I look at it is that tactical playing is what all the what do you do in this scenario puzzles (gameboy games, dumb pojo threads)encourage. These puzzles give you a game state, and ask what your move would be – you are disconnected from the game, as you are not really playing it, and try to find the play sequence that puts you in the best position at the end of the puzzle. In other words, big flashy plays that kill your opponent, or elegant plays designed to gain as much advantage as possible, these are tactical plays. Strategic plays are more subtle, designed to win the game in the end. How about an example.

Last format: Blackwings vs Lightsworn. BW player has a reasonable field and hand, BW Armor Master and 2 facedown s/t (Book of Moon and Bottomless Trap Hole) with a Kalut and Whirlwind in hand, while the LS player just has a full hand. The LS player summons Lumina and pitches a Garoth to special summon itself.

Should the BW player activate BTH?

Tactically, the answer is yes. Garoth hitting the field will yield the LS player more mills and possibly more cards, which puts you in a certainly worse situation.

Strategically, in my opinion, the answer is no. After playing the Lightsworn vs Blackwing match-up countless times last format, I realized that without BW having a killer hand, Judgment Dragon hitting the field is inevitable. Bottomless Trap Hole-ing a Judgment Dragon is much more important the Bottomless Trap Hole-ing a Garoth. In fact, in the BW-LS matchup, an unanswered JD is generally a game-ender. So saving the BTH for JD is strategically important.

Obviously, there are exceptions to this idea, depending on what the field and hand states are. If the BW player has a good chance of ending it before JD hits if he BTHs the Garoth, then that is probably the right move. Otherwise, saving it is probably right. (It gets complicated when you consider LS’s other main win condition, Celestia, so I’m leaving her out. The example is clearer this way, but if anyone is playing last format still…know that the existence of Celestia makes this decision harder. FYI, if you have Solemn, its better to Solemn Celestia and BTH JD.)

As I think I hinted at earlier, most yugioh players are more tactical. You will often hear players talking about the ‘best’ play – a concept that is generally tactical. While there is generally one play that is better than others, its much harder to find strategically than it is tactically, and when players talk about it, they generally mean tactically. Let’s face it, tactically, Yu-Gi-Oh is not such a complex game. With enough practice and experience, you can learn all the card interactions and rulings, and start to be able to maximize your resources with every play. This is where most average to good players are. To get better, you need to start realizing when you have to give up the most advantageous (best tactically) play for a play that is better in the long run (strategic plays).

So, how can you get better at strategic playing? Playtest! Play the different matchups (including the mirrors) and when a game ends, figure out what caused one deck to win. Keep playing, and figure out if you see a pattern in the winning game states. I bet you do. Start playing in a way that ensures that you get to that gamestate – that is strategic playing. In the earlier example, a pattern I saw in the BW vs LS matchup was that BW won more when they had answers to JD. Therefore, saving my JD answers benefited me strategically, and I started doing this more in the matchup.

OK, this is getting longish, so I’ll just continue this discussion to next time. What you can expect:

Next time: Exercises and examples!
The time after that: Strategy vs Tactics in deckbuilding

Before I leave, a quick discussion of Lightsworn. Now, Lightsworn have long been called a ‘sack’ or ‘autopilot’ deck. The main argument here is that LS takes very little skill to play.

The people who say this are right. Lightsworn takes very little skill to play.

Very little tactical skill that is.

Strategically, however, Lightsworn is one of the more complex decks out there. One of my friends has had a lot of success with LS over the last few formats, much more than me, even when we play the same build, and I’ve recently discovered why: he is a much more strategic player than I am. Timing is everything in LS: when to Honest, when to JD, when to Garoth, when to Aurkus (last format, the answer to this was simple: always), when to Gardna, and when to Celestia. It’s a little simplistic, but timing issues like this almost always boil down to strategy. The truth is, the answers to these questions are different for each matchup, and understanding your best route to victory for each matchup is critical. So, to sum up: stop calling Lightsworn a no-skill deck. It just takes a different kind of skill.