Why Some Theme Decks Fail

Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009

Okay to start off, I’ve dabbled in pretty much every game that’s out. Magic was my first game, Pokemon was my second, Yu-gi-oh my third, and so on and so on. Every game has certain deck types that just won’t cut it for competitive play, and I guess for today I’m going to be discussing those decks in yu-gi-oh.

To understand why something fails though, you must first understand why it is good. Lets look at Lightsworn for my first example. Here you have a deck that can play aggressively, thins the deck, benefits immensely from this thinning, has a searcher card, a draw card, multiple monsters that can control the battle phase, and a boss monster that fits in amazingly with the them. The same is said about Gladiator beasts, and blackwings, and X-sabers but for different reasons. Also to a lesser extent, the D-hero engine contains these as well. Right now, those are the theme decks that are good or show promise of being good.

Why Some Theme Decks Are Good

The decks all have synergy between their cards, as well as multiple effects that are singularly powerful within the theme and for what the theme is trying to accomplish (utility). One thing I’ve noticed players saying though for a theme to be good is that they need a set of cards, like a draw card for the theme, an incredibly broken boss monster, revival cards, etc. This isn’t necessarily true. Gladiator beasts for example contain no draw card (except for Respite, but that isn't used in top builds anyway), no mass destruction card (Guyzarus counts sort of, but you can look at the deck before they had that card for an example), the trick is synergy.

SYNERGY, is the key. Synergy is the potency your cards to generate advantage, when used together. Using Blackwings as an example, they have effects that all work together. Sirocco works best when used with other monsters, Black Whirlwind needs other cards to generate advantage, Icarus Attack generates field control for a deck that will probably overextend. The way the cards work together is what makes the deck good.

UTILITY is what makes those cards be worth playing. A card with high utility can be beneficial in multiple situations and have a low cost or requirement to activate them. Judgement Dragon for example, has an easy play requirement and is useful in practically any and every situation, as well as having a huge body even if you don’t activate it’s effect.

So Why Do Some Theme Decks Fail?

Some themes are just terrible. These themes are themes where their general basis and idea is just really bad. Themes coming to mind are Koa’ki Meiru, Spirits and Guardians. These themes are themes that base themselves on decent to bad effects, while eating up card advantage like a fat kid in a twinkie van. Granted, there are some borderline doable and decent themes in yu-gi-oh, for a theme to be this, the general basis and idea of the theme must be solid.

Believe it or not, some themes out there are not terrible by any means, Frogs, Fortune Ladies, plants, X-sabers (Plants and X-sabers are fairly borderline, but coming up will explain why they fall short) and Batteryman, can come to mind at this point. All of these decks have ways to generate advantage, have defined win conditions that are not terribly hard to pull off, and can even have good boss monsters (Industrial Strength comes to mine), so if these themes have all of these what necessarily makes them fail?

Again that answer comes down to synergy and utility. These decks are not top tier because they lack potency and support in areas that they are lacking, and the cards just don’t generally work well together or in stand alone context.

Using Short Circuit as an example. Short Circuit is a very powerful card, it can create OTK scenarios, give you card advantage, and dish out a good size amount of damage to the opponent. The problem is that the card does not have a very high utility. The card can only be played in a situation where there are 3 Batteryman monsters on the field.

When synergy comes to mind, a lot of lower tier decks can have quite a few powerful cards, but none of them work particularly well together. Take for example, Batteryman AA, he just doesn’t really do anything for the theme. Sure he provides it with its win condition but other than that he is a particularly useless monster. Even if you use him with Battery Charger you still just end up with a useless monster on the field that doesn’t generate any kind of advantage within the theme.

An even better example would be Industrial Strength. You have a monster with a very DaD-like effect, the problem is that he completely goes against what the theme is trying to do. Instead of a dump and revive tactic leading to an OTK, he does an dump and RFG…this is bad when most of the cards in the theme revolve around bringing them back from the graveyard. Again it’s a powerful card, but it just has too low of a synergy within the deck.

The Other Reason: Lack of Support

No, this isn’t about how every theme needs their own D-draw or Judgement Dragon, this is more about how some themes are just missing some very key elements.

X Sabers is the main example in this area. Here you have a deck that is based on swarming and discarding your opponent hand, has relatively good synergy and utility, and some powerful card effects, the problem is that there are just not enough cards to make the theme worth while. The deck partially requires loading the graveyard with X-saber monster, but really there are not enough X-sabers with good effects that makes this whole part of the strategy worth while.

This is also where a lot of decks fall flat. Where as Elemental Heroes problem would be synergy and utility, a deck like Frogs and X-sabers would be under lack of support. The decks just are lacking support in a certain area of the theme. Frogs feel like they are lacking good themed spell and trap support (although Froggy Forcefield is relatively badass).

Fewer decks fall into these categories then you think, but I suppose to fix the other two problems the deck would need more support. Granted under supported and GOOD support are two very different things.

So Where Do You Go From Here?

Sadly, a lot of these lower theme decks won’t get you anywhere in the long run in terms of competition. Playing with one can be fun as well as a learning experience, but there are a lot of times where you just think “Wow, if I only had a card like this in the theme, I could probably win!”

Theme decks are not all about broken cards (yes, they do help) because like Batteryman Industrial Strength shows us, even if your theme has its own Dark Armed, doesn’t mean it will be a good theme.

So if you decide to play with one of these themes, it doesn’t mean you can’t play competitively, it just means that your results might not be as great as other decks. When building the deck, try to build onto the decks strengths first and then cover the weaknesses as much as possible.

So to wrap things up, always play to win no matter what deck you use, and in the end you may just find a couple of surprises in certain “trash” themes.

So until next time…

E.P.B.