The dueling community is rather uncertain about Solemn Judgment being placed on the Limited list. I see a number of posts and threads on the major Yu-Gi-Oh! forums discussing Solemn Judgment. Many of the threads are filled with average players who consider themselves elite.
The next time you post on a forum, remember there is a wonderful secret to Yu-Gi-Oh! You can accurately gauge someone’s skill level based on their appraisal of certain cards. Examples include cards like Heavy Storm and Mind Control . Those who want Heavy Storm banned or adjusted are ignorant of the benefits one Storm brings to the game. They have not reached a level of understanding high enough to appreciate the difference Storm creates. Players who do not appreciate (or vehemently call for) Mind Control’s limit have not developed an understanding of tempo. They remain ignorant of the fact that Mind Control creates about 3000 or more damage in favor of the player using it while creating card advantage and ruining the flip effect mechanic.
Sympathy for Mr. Tewart
Konami’s Kevin Tewart, USA’s most prominent Yu-Gi-Oh! figure, has constantly been savaged on the message boards for his posts, with every statement he makes carefully/hysterically scrutinized. While taking feedback, Kevin has quietly assembled a team of great players to help him make decisions and improve the game. Ironically, as he does this, the community is so skeptical of his approach that even average to terrible players feel entitled to lecture him and others about the “correct” list. I feel Solemn Judgment is a good litmus test for weeding out the experienced and advanced minds from the less aware ones; the current thread about Solemn Judgment on Pojo.com provides a great example of this.
Solemn Judgment has immense depth and generates lots of discussion. To start, Matt Peddle makes a great post about Solemn Judgment on DuelistGroundz. It thoroughly addresses one aspect of Solemn (the ability to protect the spell/trap row). Without even touching upon Solemn’s other uses, I think Matt does a good enough job with that short post of explaining Solemn Judgement’s impact. I will now address the other aspects (and show why players who talk about its balance are completely wrong).
When did Solemn Judgment become so Good?
Solemn Judgment first became amazing in the Chaos Return format. Here, a single Return from the Different Dimension could easily do more than the 4000 life points Solemn cost. In addition, the entire Chaos archetype was anchored by Cyber Dragon and Chaos Sorcerer into Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. Zaborg was a floating 2400 body that would destroy your monster and attack cleanly anyway! I ran three copies of Solemn Judgment in that Cyber-Stein/Ring of Destruction format en route to three consecutive 7-1 records (losing in the 8th or 9th round to finish x-2).
The Zaborg lesson showed me that Solemn Judgment becomes amazingly good when it can block a monster that generates card advantage and deal 2400+ damage anyways. The steep 4000 life point cost becomes much more palatable when a monster is going to deal 3/4th’s of that regardless.
Solemn Judgment transaction sample: Your opponent loses Zaborg, Cyber Dragon. You lose Solemn Judgment and 4000 life points. You gain your set Dekoichi and the 2400 life points you would have taken from Zaborg. If Dekoichi flips for 1400 next turn, you only lose 200 life points.
Solemn Judgment cost 1600 life points at worst but preserved your set monster and gained their monster plus normal summon.
Of course, as Tele-DaD shows us, Solemn becomes even better when it helps the top tier decks enforce their own game pushes. After all, why are Blackwing, Cat Synchro, Tele-DaD, and Gladiator Beast decks all playing three copies of Solemn?
Oftentimes, the card that Solemn negates leads to a huge push with a card like Dark Armed Dragon, GB Secutor, or Summoner Monk. At the end of this chain, you lose 4000 life points but basically win the duel.
Solemn Judgment transaction sample two: You summon Dark Armed Dragon against your opponent’s set monster and two s/ts. You summon Dark Armed Dragon with priority and it is Phoenix Wing Wind Blasted. Use Solemn Judgment for 4000 life points. Now your opponent loses his face-down monster, his other s/t, his discard for Wing Blast, and likely takes game ending damage next turn.
Kevin had a proper response that was largely ignored:
“I hear you saying that you need Solemn Judgment as a defense because your opponent can kill you this turn. Has it also occured to you that people run Solemn Judgment in a fast environment because those lower Life Points won’t be a problem when YOU can kill your opponent on YOUR next turn?
Solemn can promote a fast environment at last as much as it hinders it. Think about it.”
While I agree whole-heartedly with this post, I actually don’t think he went far enough. Solemn Judgment does indeed promote the fast environment but does not hinder it at all. All of the fast cards in the game rely on Solemn Judgment’s incredible versatility to force through game-breaking effects. Managing Solemn use was the entire key to the Tele-DaD format; by then, most of the good answers to it (MST, Breaker) were restricted or gone entirely.
This is the key. Solemn Judgment is not a defensive card. While Solemn’s first widespread usage in the Metagame was for defensive purposes to set-up Burn infrastructures and against Return/Zaborg, the introduction of explosive monsters that destroy both monsters and s/t’s in the game (i.e Gyzarus and Dark Armed Dragon) warped its use.
Solemn Judgment morphed from the best defensive card to the most potent and versatile offensive card in the game. When you play a good player, Solemn will indeed set up the game push. And if your opponent opens with 2 Solemn Judgment versus you, you will be scooping up your cards at the end (unless you draw your own).
There is a very high correlation in GB format, Tele-DaD format, and this format between the amount of Solemn Judgments played perfectly by a player and win percentage. I would venture the amount of perfect Solemn plays has the highest correlation to win percentage out of any other card. Make no mistake, Solemn is a demanding card. It basically requires that you understand the game at a high level, understand the opponent’s deck thoroughly, and play it at the perfect situation. Once you unlock this, it becomes clear without question why Solemn is worthy of a ban.
To all of the players complaining about how they can’t play Solemn Judgment in their Macro Cosmos or Burn deck, you’re not the reason it was banned. Play Magic Drain (a card that average players malign constantly) and extra copies of your continuous traps and spells and you’ll be fine. To all the players complaining about how they can “no longer play control” because of Solemn leaving the game– I highly doubt you realized how good it was and used it before the top players broke it. You’ll be fine.
Solemn had to go.
Related posts:
LOL
The list for Ancient Prophecy has been since April, so who HASN’T seen it?
I’m not so sure how limiting ‘Rescue Cat’ and ‘One for One’ hurts X-sabers. I mean, I know ‘Cat’ is for ‘Airbellum’ (I’m not sure of anything else…), and ’1-4-1′ is for ‘X-Saber Palomlo’ and ‘XX-Saber Ragigura’ (and ‘Axel’ is arguable – he’s not so great, really), but there isn’t too much left to them, since there was no support for the X-Sabers from June ’08 to the Trap found in the ’09 Starter and Ancient Prophecy.
There’s only ‘Palomlo’, ‘Passiul’, ‘Wayne’ the (great) Synchro, ‘Axel’, ‘Urz’, and ‘All-Sword Commander Gattoms’ left. Of them, only ‘Palomlo’ (a Reptile), ‘Wayne’ (a Warrior Synchro) and ‘Gattoms’ (a Beast-Warrior), and maybe ‘Passiul’ are worthwhil, so neither Cat or ’1-4-1′ really impact X-Sabers per se.
And, as stated before, ‘One For One’ is at 1 because of its assistance to making an OTK with ‘Mind Master’, which is why it’s also at 1.
Birdman3790: Have you seen the new set? I am seeing a trend of foresight by konami by this ban. If you look at the new set notice how BW has gained a toned down version of Gale. That may “Hurt” BW but it also balances it. Cat is hurt because of the Ban, there isn’t anything bringing that back. X-Sabers are not hurt XX-Saber Faultroll and XX-Saber Fulhelmknight will make sure you can get your synchro on. Though it is not at all as broken as Cat. But if your arguement is that Cat is better than ok…If you say well the ban hurt more decks than Cat it really depends on your definition of hurt. Hurt as in made it not so broken then yea a lot of things got “hurt”. But this new set really makes up for the “hurt”…put it this way no way in hell I wanna see 3 Solemns with this new set of “Koaku negate yo azz at the low cost of showing 1 card and dumping another I can get back with a monster effect”!
ATEM: I agree with your first post in that BLS,Sorc and Zab were the first REAL instances of monsters that pretty much made there own way to victory. You could solemn your opponents BLS and sill die from the 2nd copy they held or bottomless the Zab/Sorc or BLS only to have then bring out the other big threat i.e. you have one set BTH or even 2 and you take out Zab and sorc well BLS just stomped a mudhole in yo butt!
The other posts you have lead me to believe you use to play at a little place called 8 ball, but I’ll send you a message for that.
The reason solemn was never a really big deal early on in the yugi game was becasue of S/T removal. Its versatility has always been present and it itself has always been a dominant card the issue before Dark Crisis though was S/T removal. After that release and that years Ban the entire game slowed down. For those of us who remember the infamous Emon and his slow ass burn deck that he would force into First blood, you will remember that solemn began to see use in T1 decks. I think what Jae was trying to say is that because the game has sped up so much Solemn is no longer used primarily to stop the “big threat” but nowit was used as let me just screw your entire turn over with one well placed Solemn to yo face. This is where skill comes into place and if you don’t understand what I mean, I can bet that you would activate solemn to stop Allure. Put it this way if you understood the reasoning behind the elimination of Yata/Con/Deliquent and other control cards (Control being the operative word) then you should understand the limit of Solemn…
Shadowqueen: I personally only saw the OCG list for AP. I just saw the actual card list for the TCG. Thats all I meant.
Sorry then, TM
Now that the “bolts” of the Core Chimail cards are out with Ancient Prophecy, we may now see people putting this Anti-Meta archetype to the test, now that they also stand a better chance in the next format.
If there’s any validity to the Solemn makes offense too easy, it’s the existence of Boss monsters like Dad and JD. I agree, using Solemn in tandem with them is powerful. However, using broken cards to ban cards that are only a problem with said broken cards is a ridiculously roundabout way of doing things. Imagine if when the Government started finding out about illicit drugs, their initial response was “Holy shit, we have to ban syringes. Heroine would be so broken with this.”
I could really do without the repeat history lessons, folks. I was there. I remember what went down.
The point is not “Solemn wasn’t a threat, now it is, kill it off.” The point is that “Regardless of whether it’s a threat or not, we need sharper logic to punish something; otherwise we are obligated to sit back and say “It’s a threat, but it’s right for it to be where it is.”
That’s the point I made – that all this lecturing on the history of Solemn really doesn’t justify the Limit any more than it justifies any other poorly-reasoned case. Solemn was a threat and was tapped for being a threat; that much we all understand. The point I raise is not that it is without reason, the point I raise is that it is without good reason, and that there were better things to tap. Jae surrendered as much in his recent post about there being a followup about cards like Gyz.
Sorry aboutt he history lesson I was merely commenting on your statement
“Go back in time. Way back. Back to before I played, Jae. I know you were around then.
Was Solemn a problem, then? If not, let’s identify why, and identify what’s changed.
And then we can have an ACTUAL conversation about whether Solemn actually has to go for the sake of the game, or instead “has to go” because it is old product and other cards are new product.”
I say it has to be tamed for the sake of the game. I do not see its limiting as a result of old product wrather an actually good decision.
K, you see it that way; but since you’re arguing in favor of punishing something, whereas I’m just idling here, I feel you need to make more of a case than what you feel.
I need to make sure I understand your view point here. You simply feel as though Konami limited SJ because it was “time” not because it posed any real threat to the game. But because it was an old product and they wanted to sell something else?
That’s definitely a possibility, but that’s moreso conjecture than anything. The only actual counter I have is that it seems mistaken to go after Solemn in all cases where we don’t play favorites in any direction. The conjecture you mentioned is simply one way to play favorites.
HUh?! Are you just arguing a point of objectivity simply bcus there is one and you can?!
I’m moreso trying to separate my suspicions from my argument. They were kind of interwoven back there. My argument is that Konami is “doing it wrong” – and my suspicions are that they are because of ulterior motives like moving product.
Essentially, my argument prepared in case that that IS what they are doing it for is “you dunderheads, a good game with good marketing sells itself.” Granted, a slightly worse game with the marketing to make up for those faults also sells itself; welcome to why YGO just broke world records in sales some weeks ago.
regardless of the whys,im interested in seeing what is going to replace solemn are we as players going to be creative?what about all the cards we have discarded because they were not as good as solemn?it leaves room to ponder the possibilities.what fun!
Yes… What fun…
I think Magic Drain is a solid option for combating Storm in anti-meta decks; it means you can set two and either bait Heavy advantage-neutrally or discern that they don’t have the Storm at all. It’s also so good against Lightsworn because of Charge, Recharge etc.
I scanned through it because I was curious how you felt on Solemn. Im glad the feelings mutual, especially in this quote,
“Solemn Judgment morphed from the best defensive card to the most potent and versatile offensive card in the game. When you play a good player, Solemn will indeed set up the game push. And if your opponent opens with 2 Solemn Judgment versus you, you will be scooping up your cards at the end (unless you draw your own). ”
That was the only problem Solemn created and it was if your opponent had 2 solemns set ,you pretty much lost the game. Even more so if the opponent had 2 Solemns and your hand was bad, then you lost, regardless of their skill level. There were times I lost because my opponent had 2 Solemns and I had 0, and likewise with me winning because of the Solemn ratio reversed..
Sure, there were many people that activated Solemn poorly, mostly with an answer to the card in thier hand.
But it didn’t matter if your hand was so poor that you couldnt make another move.
John you are totally correct about the limitation on solemn judgment. This card needed to get limited. Too many bad players were using this as a crutch to protect their back rows and themselves when it was at three.
I take note of how you interpreted that.
Yes, bks can use cards to protect themselves.
I find no reason for the impact of a bk to affect how the list is tuned for good players.
You need to identify a problem that doesn’t boil to “bks can use it to not die” – because bks can use anything to not die, insofar as reading comprehension can carry them, kthx. The matter is that bks are bks because they can’t do all that as well as good players, be the defect in detecting possible methods, in building, et cetera.
Solemn’s only crime aside from the lengthy discussion we had earlier was that of being easily blamed – whereas actually INVESTIGATING the matter as deeply as the rabbit hole goes would take work, simply blaming one card and being done with it takes much less work.
I’m sorry, but… “BK” stands for…?
Oh, sorry. The shorthand stuff that some DGZers use is beginning to creep into my own vocab.
Replace it with “bad players”. In their use, it’s short for “bad kid” – a person who isn’t good at the game.