Preview Card: My Favorite Card in Absolute Powerforc
Posted on Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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With Absolute Powerforce coming up, we have an interesting amount of new cards coming to the game. While not all of them as game breaking as we would all like them to be, most of the cards do something for their decktype that they haven't already have done before, or adding playability to the deck in general.
Today I am going to look at the ritual monster Garandolph, Devil King of Destruction.
Garandolph, Devil King of Destruction
Dark/ Fiend- Ritual/7/2700/1400
This card can only be ritual summoned by the spell card Ritual of Destruction. When this card is special summoned successfully, destroy all other face-up monsters with lower ATK than this card, and this card gains 100 ATK for each monster destroyed.
What this guy is looking to do is be a miniature Demise. While not doing anything particularly special he can get to decent attack values as well as providing a lightning vortex type effect.
The real reason to use this guy, or any ritual monster to be specific (Relinquished being the most competitive) would be because of the ritual djinns. Those cards can be used for ritual fodder from the graveyard and give the monster a couple of nice bonuses with their effects.
The ritual card for this monster is Ritual of Destruction.
Ritual of Destruction
Ritual Spell Card
This card is used to ritual summon Garandolph, Devil King of Destruction. You must also release monsters whose total level equals 7 or more from your hand or field. You can remove from play this card in your graveyard to have any monsters destroyed by battle with a ritual monster you control during this turn returned to the top of their owners deck instead of the graveyard.
The nice thing about these new ritual spells is that they actually function outside of just summoning the ritual monster. This spell has little synergy with the monster though, so it is a little disappointing. The next time you destroy an opponents monster with Garandolph by battle, you get to timeseal the opponent for a turn, which is pretty nice.
If you combo Garandolphs ritual effect with the Djinn that lets you draw a card when your ritual monster kills something, you can generate a nice plus over the opponent. The way I ended up constructing my decklist was using a Necro Guardna control style deck, with Garandolph as a finisher.
Thanks for reading, I'm hoping to have some more actual competitive articles up later this week.
~E.P.B.
The Guide to Writing Guides...Pojo Edition
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010
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Hi you all my know me as ***** ***** or if you follow my blog you would also know my username is EternalPhoenix13 or E.P.B. for short. What I am here to talk about today is a little something I would like to call the Guide to Guides. To tell you the truth this is a wee bit of a spoof, but it must be done because Pojo strategy section has essentially devolved itself into a place where it is all just guides. To start out let us look at how to start your guide.
First of all, pick a theme. You can pick any theme, or even a decktype! Hell you could even make one up! The reason why you do this is to poster child a theme. What I mean by this is that you are essentially slapping your name on the theme, so if the theme ever does well in an actual tournament not filled with four year olds then you can be the first jackass to raise his hand and go "I thought of that first."
Also you want your name to be forever associated with that theme, and be the authority on the theme. This entitles never ever never never ever being wrong about the theme never ever. See everyone is wrong, after all, you are supposed to be the authority to the theme and have your name attached to it, so how can you be wrong? The answer is you isn't!
The next thing to do is to start writing your guide. You have to begin your guide with something eye catchy and completely irrelevant to the actual because you need all of the sheeple to follow your every word. The way to start this is to include the lore and history of the cards, even if it is something as ridiculous as Batteryman. You in turn make up mythical stories that is something akin to a third grader writing a fairy tale, with terrible punctuation and all. Nothing is wrong with this though since technically you're not even wrong. Remember you are teh authority.
The next thing to do after you have finished writing the thesis/fairy tale is to find all of the cards for the theme. By all of the cards I mean all of the cards. Even if the theme has cards that no player in their right mind would ever run you still need to cover those cards because the cards are so irrelevant that they become relevant. So by golly gee, if your theme has a Thousand Eyes Idol, then you go on right ahead and include it.
The next bit is tricky. You have to write descriptions for all of the cards. The reason why this is so tricky is because you have to reword the cards original effect in such a way that you provide NO useful or relevant information, but still making it look like you did because you posted something in YOUR OWN WORDS. This is the most important concept. Being relevant is bad.
Don't forget to tell your ready how many copies he or she must include. Remember, when you are doing your best to promote originality, you must make everyone play the same original deck as you straight down to the very last original card. Originality is only original if everybody else is doing it the same way as you. Besides, it is not like decks in yu-gi-oh can have multiple variants.
Now we are starting to get close to the end of the guide. We still have a few more things we have to cover though. The next thing is including deck lists. You must now include deck lists to every variant the theme has. Make sure you only use the authorities on the theme. Which really should be you. This is the point where you use your most intelligent peons to make different deck lists according to variation. Don't worry if the variants of the decks contradict what you posted in your guide. Why? Because you are never wrong. You can't be. Also no one really notices these contradictions anyway. After all your peons wrote those deck lists, and they are sure as hell not as right as you.
Finally to give your guide credibility you should post some win loss records against relevant deck types. This is also an important step, you need to remember to make your test results as small as possible. For example if you have played a Blackwings only 3 times and have beaten them twice then you need to make sure everyone knows that you have a good match-up versus Blackwings. With a sample size that small and someone as right as you how could be wrong? Don't forget to make sure everyone knows how good at the game you are.
The last step is the final one. If anyone comes in telling you you ideas don't work then you must defend yourself. For example if someone says you are wrong (you know you can not be) than you must post some random insult to the credibility of that poster, even if your insult is not true. Or defend yourself with zero-logic. Zero-logic is the idea that if you sound logical, then your ideas will be presented as such and the masses will believe you. Make sure you get your peons to join in and tell you how right you are, and then you can agree that "Yes I am right, thank you!" Even if you look completely stupid doing so.
Writing guides is a difficult job, if you follow this guide than you will be ready to write your very own guide. All you have to do is follow these simple steps.
E.P.B.
On Competitive Originality
Posted on Thursday, January 7, 2010
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For the purposes of this article, when I say original I mean deck types that do not see a lot of play. I do not mean that the deck has never been done before.
I think one of the main things in this game that other games don’t have is the concept of being original. Competitive originality is a hard concept. The two words go together almost as much as mayonnaise and peanut butter. The idea for some people is to play lower tier decks because they think it somehow makes them better (at deck building) than a person who plays the higher tier deck or even the copied idea. The truth in this game is that originality is meaningless to how competitive games are played.
As other articles before me have said, you get no points for being original, playing different decks, or making huge unnecessary plays. The point of originality is not to take the moral high ground but to have fun or if you like me, you enjoy a sort of self-fulfillment or pride when you are able to do well with decks that other people have stated to be trash. The trick is to not let the mindset make you believe that you are better by playing original decks.
I do not think that the right attitude at all is to feel like a player is taking the moral high ground by playing something original. Rather, in order to be truly good at originality I think a player must first be willing to accept the fact that the higher tier decks are actually really good, and I also think that people also have to get off of the moral high ground.
The point of doing this is self-discovery and will also help to build better original decks without having a negative view on the people who do play the game with tier 1 decks or netdecks. With that said, I think that in order to be good at originality you also have to know how the top tier decks work and have a better understanding of them than the average player. What that entails is also playing with the top tier decks and not necessarily restricting yourself to one decktype.
The next step is actually building the deck. When building with competitive originality in mind you have to first ask yourself what your deck’s goal is. This is where I feel like a lot of players get the wrong idea. What usually ends up happening is a person will build the original deck but hinder on its true goal or ideal by mixing it with something else, not focusing on the goal entirely, or being just plain wrong on the goal of the deck. This is much different than building a deck with an engine in it (like a D-hero engine in the Codalas deck).
I feel like some examples of this would be the Harpy Anti-Meta deck that did well at one of the nationals competitions or Gravekeeper decks revolving around swarm and beat down. The main thing to realize when deciding on the goal of your deck is to ask yourself if there is another deck that can accomplish that goal a lot better than your deck. For example, the Harpy Lady Anti-Meta deck did accomplish what a lot of originality players set out to do, but then a person could ask themselves “does this deck accomplish anti-meta better than Gadgets or Little City?” When judging how to build an original deck you should build around what theme or idea excels at the most.
The next thing is play testing. Play testing with an original deck has two different steps rather than the usual one. When play testing with a deck known to do well (more than likely a better tier deck) you play test to play the deck better and analyze what the best plays are in certain match ups. The difference with an original deck is that play testing in the earlier stages ends up focusing more on what works in the deck and what doesn’t more than what to do in the specific match-ups. What ends up happening is testing with an original deck or idea takes more time than play testing with a solidified idea.
What it comes down to is that competitive originality is innovation. The idea is to take an idea or a lower level deck, and try to turn it into the best deck possible. Doing this can lead to some great new ideas, or some great new failures, the trick is doing it right.
~E.P.B.
Coming to a Blog Near You.
Posted on Monday, January 4, 2010
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It has been a busy past few weeks. It has been pretty much the tournament season/ playtest session / holiday session part of the year for me, so it has meant that I have not put in a lot of time into the blog. With the next few weeks I am hoping to have new articles with original content, and hopefully get some videos on here as well.
Until then
~E.P.B.
