Go-YGO.com’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Strategy Blog

Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series (YCS Chantilly) Report!

Posted on May 18th, 2010 | 17 comments

I finished my exams on 5/7 and had about five days to prepare for the YCS event. To my dismay, I realized that The Shining Darkness, the new Yu-Gi-Oh! set, was a complete game changer. All of the top players I talked to agreed that Infernities and X-Sabers were immensely powerful compared to the current top tier.

Unfortunately I wasted a lot of time on a Gladiator Beast build, unsure of whether I was going to have access to all of the hot Infernity cards at the time. By the time I had hammered out a perfect Infernity build, I had no time to test a side.

As you all know, Infernities have new problems after both players side. I tested tentative sideboards such as a full conversion to beatdown (with Doomcaliber Knight, Thunder King, and others) and a conversion to a removed from play build (with Return from the Different Dimension and Escape along with Infernity Break).

Arriving at the Event

I was very interested in what other top players were running. Because my laptop was in the shop for repair, I was unable to take pictures and update live information to go-YGO.com on the Saturday. However, the majority of Yu-Gi-Oh! “pros” were using Infernities (at least 50%). Here is a breakdown for those who are interested (this will be on go-YGO.com for the next YCS).

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Yu-Gi-Oh! The Shining Darkness (TSHD) Recap: New TCG Exclusives!

Posted on May 3rd, 2010 | 18 comments

Welcome to go-YGO’s recap on The Shining Darkness (TSHD) Exclusives. This section will detail the exclusive cards to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG that the OCG did not receive.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Shining Darkness (TSHD) Exclusives Overview:
- The cards are listed in order of appearance unless grouped together for theme-purposes.
- I am not entirely familiar with other markets and do not know which of the “new” releases are merely repackaged cards that already existed in the OCG. I will treat each of these exclusives as entirely new cards since I’ve never seen them before.

Rating System: Two Scores, 1-5 scale with 5 being best.
Tournament Worth (T Rating)- Value based on premier tournaments. A “5″ meaning maximize use, a “1″ meaning do not consider.
Design Worth (D Rating)- A rating based on the card’s ability to boost existing themes and the card’s overall design.
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XX-Saber Boggart Knight/00/TSHD/Beast-Warrior/Effect/Earth/4//1900/1000/
When this card is Normal Summoned, you can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower “X-Saber” monster from your hand. This card cannot be used as a Synchro Material Monster, except for the Synchro Summon of a “X-Saber” monster./

When this card is Normal Summoned, you can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower “X-Saber” monster from your hand. This card cannot be used as a Synchro Material Monster, except for the Synchro Summon of a “X-Saber” monster.

The terribly named Boggart Knight has an interesting and powerful effect. I’m not entirely sure what sort of naming convention the X-Sabers are following (the names seem terrible) but the strategy itself is firmly going to entrench itself into the Tier 0/Tier S (cream of the crop) category.

Boggart Knight possesses an optional effect that is very powerful for getting out Faultroll or synching up for a monster such as Urbellum or Hyunlei. The 1900 ATK itself is nothing to sneeze at either. 1900 is the current sweet spot for monsters since it allows for easy pushes over Laquari, Shura, Gearframe, and other threats.

When viewing the scope of TCG-exclusive additions to X-Sabers along with THSD’s original cards, it seems rather short-sighted to me to include so much support so soon. X-Sabers already had a solid field presence booster with Fulhelmknight and Emmersblade/Darksoul. Generally, you simply can’t shore up every weakness of a Yu-Gi-Oh! archetype without turning it into a Tele-DaD level of power.

Design wise, the card also contributes to the possible combinations that involve discarding an opponent’s entire hand on turn one before they get to play a turn. *Obviously* it’s never a wise decision to allow a player to win a game before the opposing player gets a turn (hence Konami banning every FTK under the sun).

ABPF and now TSHD have released four immensely powerful boosts to the X-Saber engine. A recruiter, an amazing Synchro monster (on par with Brionac and Goyo Guardian), an absolute floater, and a 1900 on-theme beatstick have entered the picture.

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T Rating- 4/5 (I expect players to run 2 at bare minimum)
D Rating- 1/5 (Entirely unnecessary and dangerous for competitive balance)
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Yu-Gi-Oh! Tournament Recap: SJC Edison and What We Learned

Posted on April 27th, 2010 | 9 comments

SJC Edison was a huge success for the future of Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards. The attendance figure of 2,000+ duelists was astounding and I have no doubts that the excellent staff at Konami will continue to promote the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! and expand its audience through the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series.

While it’s difficult to exactly quantify the effect that premier events such as the Shonen Jump Championship (now the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series) have on net sales, we are very fortunate that Konami still considers the serious tournament player worthy of tender loving care and attention.

During my brief hiatus from blogging, Konami was just gathering momentum in setting up a proper tournament staff and system. As many of you know, the counterfeiting scandal from UDE occurred about a year before their contract was to expire; Konami was caught off guard and took over the game with no real knowledge of tournament organization and event management. When talking with some of the top level 3 judges at the time, I was told that Julia Hedberg inherited an Organized Play structure that had very little funds and experience. In less than a year, with the help of others, she transformed it into a juggernaut drawing record attendance levels.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Design: The Plight of the Small Monster

Posted on April 14th, 2010 | 10 comments

I want to discuss a curious Yu-Gi-Oh! card design decision today. This decision has made a certain set of cards unplayable at a premier event. Let’s start with a riddle:

What is the main drawback of playing small monsters?

…. ……………………………………….. (take your time).

If you said “low attack scores,” please e-mail me your address and I will FedEx you a scrumptious cookie.

Most players find this drawback perfectly fair. If you have a good effect, you can have a lower attack score. This means your smaller monsters will generally lose in battle frequently and require spell or trap support to remain on the field. This historic balance between strong effect and low ATK score has always been present in Yu-Gi-Oh! strategy and relatively well balanced.

A Very Puzzling Design Decision

It’s not clear whether the card designers for Yu-Gi-Oh! (who presumably work in Japan for Konami) are entirely aware of a lot of the ramifications of the cards they print. I do not mean this in an insulting manner; as many players of TCG’s and even video games (such as World of Warcraft) know, it’s very difficult to introduce new mechanics/abilities to a game and foresee every single interaction on the macro scale.

There are numerous examples of this in Yu-Gi-Oh! lore. From my time at Upper Deck/Metagame, I heard through the grapevine that the Metamorphosis into Thousand Eyes Restrict (through Scapegoat/Sinister Serpent) was never anticipated. Or that Yata-Garasu was made a Spirit because the “drawback” of a Spirit monster would weaken its powerful effect. These types of oversights are understandable when creating thousands of cards.

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go Yu-Gi-Oh! Status Update: April 9th

Posted on April 9th, 2010 | Comments are closed

At the present time, I am getting ready for SJC New Jersey. I am very thankful to both Yugioh.TCGPlayer.com and Pojo.com for being so gracious with me. They are the two biggest strategy sites and have given me the opportunity to write articles again.

My TCGPlayer column will focus on specific cutting-edge analysis of a strategy every week. I tend to get burned out having to make different Yu-Gi-Oh! deck columns frequently. These columns will be more general and hopefully make all of you better SJC players. I would urge you to check them out. As many of you know, I’m not entirely proud of all of the work I’ve done in the past. So in my present state, I will only be linking to articles in this blog that have value in helping your success rate at a premier event or Regional tournament.

Pojo articles will focus more on overall thoughts on the game and premier events. I should also be contributing to the Card of the Day (which has been around for an amazingly long time I might add!).

TCGPlayer: An article on how to better understand Machina Gadgets

Pojo: An article on how to better Develop your Decks and Pacing.

As for Go-YGO.com, the Adsense banner has generated a surprising amount of revenue over the past two months. As many of you know, I’m currently attending law school and supporting my living expenses through card games. Any earnings I may receive through blogging or Youtube will definitely be going straight back to you.

My goal is to return every dollar of ad revenue back to you users. As I travel the SJC circuit, I will collect and save the different prizes I receive so that I can help give back to the visitors of this blog. You can do your part to help this blog by occasionally clicking the ad banners and, more importantly, telling everyone you know to come visit!

While the previous business arrangement I had fell through, we will be resuming the Post of the Month (perhaps in a drawing or raffle format) next month. I will be giving out small prizes like I-Pod shuffles and YGO product. And though I cannot update the blog 2-3 times weekly, my goal is to put out about 5-6 entries a month.

In the not too distant future, once this blog has rebuilt its base, my goal is to hold big online tournaments akin to premier events with legitimate prizes. I will use my connections with most of the YGO elite to make sure you can be dueling with the best of the best both online and in real life.

Lastly, I also want to apologize to those who have left comments/e-mails questioning what happened to the rest of the Volcanic Rocket piece. I am currently testing some variants of Volcanic Rocket with a good friend for SJC New Jersey. It may be unwise for me to post about its synergies and powers until after the event.

I may write a post on my experiences if we decide to use the strategy. Volcanic Rocket is my best friend forever.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series (YCS Chantilly) Report!

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Shining Darkness (TSHD) Recap: New TCG Exclusives!

Yu-Gi-Oh! Tournament Recap: SJC Edison and What We Learned

Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Design: The Plight of the Small Monster

go Yu-Gi-Oh! Status Update: April 9th

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