Sometimes I feel like a 5 year old

When something doesn't go my way I instantly rage about it... thinking about my last post now... I'm just a dumbass who forgot that card games always run a major luck factor. Just that this format that Luck Factor is far more prevalent. Top decked Tour Guide can become game changing. Turn 1 Tour Guide can set up so much. But Also all of these kinds of plays are common and easily interrupted if you can draw a single Veiler. So what about just running Anti-Meta traps that Konami makes so often... First and foremost this Meta is all about simple removal through either large monsters with their effects or MST and Storm. Meaning no one is prepared for Traps that stop such things before they can happen. Paying Life Points this format is an extreme gamble and should only be done if you are confident it will stop your opponent cold. Black Horn of Heaven, Starlight Road, Brionac, Stardust Dragon and Effect Veiler will be greatly useful for the rest of the format. Battle Fader is also really useful to stop that push. LaDD control is looking really nice right now. And to summon it is quite easy... Think of it like this... Summoner Monk gets Eclipse Wyvern (Harder in TCG but just as doable) for Lavalval Chain and banished LaDD... put BLS on top of deck... End turn... they have to kill Chain or deal with BLS and another chosen draw (Tour Guide). You also now have a LaDD in your hand that you didn't have to draw into. I'm going to try this idea out and tell you all how it goes tonight. If all goes well I'll be quite happy. Besides I'm not the type to rant and follow through. So thanks for your continued support if it weren't for you all viewing my blog daily I wouldn't have the spirit to make posts. Right now this blog and my judging are all that keeps me playing this game (aside from the fact that I put in 10+ years into it.).

Anyway Wall of Text is now over and I'm ready... "Hametsu no Photon Stream!!!"

True Advantage

Well I have a short theory post here today. Mostly about the existence of advantage. Ya see I've been thinking about why in some duels although you have card advantage and life lead you often are far from actually having the advantage. In Yu-gi-oh though we often say things like "I had card advantage" or "Field Presence" we often don't notice that though you have more overall options than the opponent often your options are sub par to the options the opponent has.

Imagine summoning Stratos who is a floater. Upon summoning you lose 1 in hand advantage but gain 1 in Field Presence but then gain 1 in hand advantage so you plus 1 in total card advantage. but the card you added is often not useful until later and gives your opponent knowledge of 1 card in your hand. So essentially unless that card becomes a plus of it's own it actually is dead weight it's card advantage but not Workable Card Advantage.

Workable Card Advantage could be described as extra cards you happen to obtain through the course of a duel that can upon obtaining be used to generate more Card Advantage over your opponent. A good example of this is Tour Guide of the Underworld. Upon summoning you lose 1 in hand advantage but gain 2 in Field Presence so it's a plus 1. If you searched Sangan its instantly an extra Plus 1 in Workable Card Advantage. You may be wondering how it's an extra plus 1 but if you think about it for a minute what does your opponent have to do in order to nullify sangan? all options aside from Dimensional Prison and battle are a minus (battle is a 1 for 1 trade which isn't good for the opponent when often the card Sangan searches can generate Workable Card Advantage)

Throughout the duel though often times if you focus on gaining the advantage in terms of just cards and not cards that can be effectively used for a plus within a turn of obtaining them. Of course this though isn't quite true either.

Card Advantage and Workable Card Advantage bear no power upon True Advantage. If you have a hand of 6 cards and a field of T.G. Hyper Librarian and Formula Synchron... and your opponent activates Mind Control on T.G Hyper Librarian... you are suddenly forced to Synchro Summon to make your opponents play into a Minus 1 for them but no one said your opponent didn't want you to do that. Now you can no longer Black Rose their field during the end of their Main Phase to destroy their set cards so they set 2 Backrow and Summon Tour Guide of the Underworld to search Sangan and Overlay for Number 17: Leviathan Dragon while one of their sets is Call of the Haunted. they now have a 2500 monster and 2 backrow but only 2 cards in hand. The opponent has a Level 7 Synchro Monster and a full hand. Once you attack that Synchro Monster though your opponent no longer can make that Synchro or Librarian or Formula Synchron until they draw a Pot of Avarice. even though they have card advantage by 1 card and hand advantage by 4 you have the True Advantage.

Keeping with the above scenario the opponent takes their turn and draws to 7  And summons Debris Dragon to revive Dandylion and sync for 7 to get rid of your field... well now you can use Call of the Haunted to bring back your Sangan who will promply die... so they have a 6 card hand and some tokens while you have a 3 card hand and no field. They no longer can Normal Summon so at best they will Monster Reborn or just set a trap or two and end... Suddenly they have 5 cards in hand and you on your draw have 4... But you haven't used any power plays while they have Nuked the field with their 1 Debris, Drew with their one Librarian and one Formula and one Glow-up Bulb/Spore and Dandylion. But you can still make big plays especially in this situation you can just summon Reborn Tengu and now you are automatically in the lead as Tengu replaces itself upon dying...

As you can see just because someone has the Advantage over you in terms of cards or field presence they don't necessarily have the True Advantage in the situation you could easily within a 4 card hand have an out to most dangerous situations while they with their large hand have already used most of their best cards and are less of a threat once those cards are dealt with. But this isn't necessarily a concrete truth it's quite easy for Card Advantage to be True Advantage if the Extra Cards are Workable Card Advantage and can change the flow of the duel. Well that's just something I've been thinking about the most important parts of the post relate to Workable Card Advantage.

Ever Wondered What ESP Feels Like?

I've been thinking about something lately during my duels... something really important. That something is a TIME MACHINE!!! Yes I, the Mad Scientist Hyououin Kyouma have developed a Time Machine! Okay enough with the Stein's:Gate jokes El Psy Congroo...

What I've really been thinking about is something a lot of pro's do that are rare to notice when reading a standard Duel Report due to most of it being mental. That something is Reading... Have you heard the term "A Good Read" in a YGO context? Well first and foremost that term means: A Player has seen all the most common or even uncommon possibilities another Player has as an option be it on the field, in hand, or in grave... in some cases in deck.

What can we do with such a thing? Well obviously you can make better plays when you know your opponent's field and hand. Here's a semi-common situation where a good read is necessary...: It's Late-Game and you have a MST, Spirit Reaper on the field and a set Mind Crush... Your opponent has 2 cards set as backrow and 2 cards in hand... You look at your opponents grave and see, Both Solemn Warning and 1 Effect Veiler and 1 Royal Oppression. You know he hasn't used Solemn Judgment, Mirror Force and assume he runs more than 1 Effect Veiler... There is only 1 good play... and 3 Bad ones but if you don't attempt the educated guess or "read" you will rarely make the good play. First off you know he has 1 Veiler left and this late in the game it's quite likely he has drawn it by now. You also know that he could possibly have by now drawn both Solemn Judgment and Mirror Force. But assuming those are the set's is what would make your Read suddenly useless... Next you want to think of when those cards were set... If the Right one was set last turn and he let the Spirit Reaper through there's a bigger chance that it wasn't a Mirror Force... But that means it could be Solemn Judgment... meaning according to your first thought the other set must be Mirror Force or a similar card now that he no longer has summon negation aside from Solemn Judgment. The correct answer doesn't win you the game but makes everything from now on safe. The answer is: MST the Right One which would be the Mirror Force esque card as no one would let you Spirit Reaper them late game if it was the only attacker when their last defense is in hand. Then you enter the Battle Phase if they Effect Veiler you at the End of the Main Phase then that card is something important. If they don't Effect Veiler then you now have a chance to hit said card.

As you can see in that horrible example you knew about his 2 sets based on when they were set and what has already been used. The in hand card was useless as you figured or else with Spirit Reaper on the field he would have played it just in case. So you knew only 1 card in hand could be a threat and that would have to be Effect Veiler.

The Main Purpose in using this is in cards like Mind Crush or in insuring you have the upper hand and free reign to play around everything your opponent has.

Anyway, I'm going to explore this more as I know the best players often think like this but I didn't originally think of it being so useful until now.

I don't think the few top 32 agent builds at Providence were quite correct

The thing is a few blogs here and there are saying Agents won't be good until Xyz come out and are saying from their experience that they aren't consistent... A standard professional at Yugioh normally has the triple Duality and double Warning and double Kristya and single Trishula.

Does anyone understand that the deck came out just a little over or under a week before providence... Not everyone copies the OCG decklists and nor does anyone know that the OCG decklist isn't built for our Meta... OCG top decks are Six Samurai, Junk Doppel Debris, Blackwing, and Agents. There are other decks that win often but those are the ones that are most prevalent (Though with Xyz I've seen an increase in Gadget based decks on Shriek.) I've created a build that solves most problems and personally main-decks outs to the main side-decked threats against the deck with rather nice synergy. Read More for More Information and the Build.

Something I've noticed recently

The competitive scene is probably going to change rapidly now and there are a couple root causes of the sudden shifts coming up. The Main Cause is the sheer uselessness of Backrow versus Tengu sans Solemn Warning... and the Newest Cause is Agents... A deck that mains 2 Kristya and can do nearly anything with nearly equal consistency of Six Samurai... In July (Late July) we will receive Xyz. Which will cause another shift thanks to the focus on a more useful Extra Deck (Meaning little to no room for much else sans the necessities.) Read More for the Article

Clairvoyance and High Level Play

Many people make the mistake of playing in that robotic "auto-pilot" fashion. In fact some players get so big into that style of play that they condition their decks to a "this makes sense" kind of build rather than consciously examining the game and conditions that surround them. Many of us even make this mistake in side boarding by adding in cards that just seem to meet the needs of the situation regardless of actual synergy. Well today I'm going to speak on some of the things that help me stay on top of the opponent regardless of the strength of my hand or whats on the field. The key is knowledge.

Information and gathering information is key to success in card games and the one thing unique to Yu-Gi-Oh! is that all of the threats and disruption are laid out on board face-down. This immediately gives us information. We know automatically what cards on the board can disrupt us and how much possible negation/removal the opponent may have at his disposal. The key here is finding out what they are in order to remove or play around them correctly. Well luckily we have a few nifty cards that have been seeing both side and mainboard play recently that deserve a second look.

The first of which is my old favorite from the tomato control days Nobleman of extermination.

What makes nobleman really special is the ability to banish all copies of the trap it removed. Anyone who knows the current meta knows that virtually no traps in the average line-up are chainable so this WILL hit if it targets a trap. Secondly you get to check the opponents deck to verify which is all you really needed in the first place.

Just think of it this way your opponent has two sets and your NoE hits solemn warning, not only will you not have to worry about Warning during the rest of the duel you now get to check the deck to find out what set #2 is, along with an outline of the opponents removal suite. Making these mental notes along with observing the game can provide you with information of what cards are also in the hand, making Mind Crush a dangerous card.

The next card seeing some main board play is a particularly dangerous piece of tech.
Chain disappearance has begun to see some main board play. The functionality is similar to NoE but this one disrupts the opponent on their turn and once again lets you peer into the opponents deck to figure out whats on the board or in their hand.

Taking mental notes of these things can help you play around traps with precision as well as discern the proper time to use your precious MSTs.

Also make these checks when making plays gain more information.

Normal Summon Clear?
Synchro Summon Clear?
Direct Attack Clear?
Trap Activation Clear?
Monster Reborn Activation Clear?

If your deck poses any threat these will be occasions when the opponent will activate a trap if available. Keep in mind whats been used as well as whats remaining in the deck to determine whats on the board. I've been known by my friends to be able to call what s/t's were on the back row and now so can you.

An Analysis of YCS Anaheim

The top 16 decks of the players at YCS Anaheim were extremely diverse probably the most diverse ever seen.
here they are for those who didn't see yet: "The Top 16 tally is 4 Gravekeepers, 2 Miracle Fusion / Gemini Decks, 2 Six Samurai, 2 X-Sabers, 1 LIGHT Gemini, 1 Gladiator Beast, 1 Absolute Zero, 1 Chaos Deck, 1 Dragunity Deck, and a ChaosPlantSynchro Deck!" As quoted from (http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=5589)

The most common is Gravekeepers due to obviously how strong the deck is and how cheap it is to build now so many people brought it...  There are other more in depth reasons but that's not what I'm here to discuss. Read More to see what I am discussing.

How to L2P Childrens Card Games

Occasionally while browsing a forum for Yugimonz you will see someone say L2P well this means Learn to Play.  And as a result I will tell you all how to Learn to Play correctly so that you don't suffer a horrid defeat at a evil evil specific ruling or just a horrid mistake.

Listening to Music Theory-Oh

This seems completely random theory-oh but how many people out there do you know listen to music of some kind while dueling? Do you notice that they normally seem a little more composed even when momentum shifts against them? Do you notice that they play a little better? Well here's my theory as to why that happens.

A study on the pro's and con's of opening plays

Alrighty guys, a standard opening play is normally conservative but sometimes opening plays that put out a threat immediately are just as good. Here are my observations on this:

Theory-Oh on Controlling the duel different ways

During the course of a duel your opponent will try to overwhelm you with advantage whether it be a ton of back-row or a field full of beastliness or even a hand of Gorz and Watt C you don't even know about. Now most opponents won't do any of these things if they feel there is too much at risk due to you possibly having access to something game-changing they weren't prepared for (If they are prepared then well you lose).

Theory-Oh on losing and being beaten

In any game losing and being beaten are often confused as being the same thing. In truth though there are many differences between the two. It took one broken PS3 controller and a tantrum over Blazblue: Continuum Shift for me to understand the difference.