Post #2: Emergency Deck Fixin'!

So today I WAAAAS going to try to work on a deck idea that I had (Watapon Drain Beat) however an opportunity came up that I just could not pass up.  A redditor by the username of DownExtreme needed some help with his old school deck, and I graciously offered to help.

So this is the deck that we had to start off with.  It's like a fun trip back to 2003, only with out my discovery of the fun side of the internet.

We've all built a deck like this at one time or another

So the very first thing that I did was take out all of the immediately bad cards, and find a theme for the deck.  There's a lot of light and dark monsters, plus he already has BLS so that was what I decided to go with.

Strike Slash would be a great card if it was a quickplay spell.  +700 atk and piercing is something every monster would love, but there's just to many better options out there right now for a slow trap card like that.

Ordeal of a Traveler is a decent card, until you're opponent learns the simple trick.  Most decks run about 50% monsters, 30% spells, 20% traps.  By just guessing monster every time, your opponent gets it right 50% of the time, and gets a free look at your hand.

Burden of the mighty was good before XYZs hit, now it's unfortunately useless as XYZs have ranks, not levels.  This card, gravity bind, and grave of the super giant organism all shed little tears that day

Lighting Vortex seems like a good card on paper, but you need to destroy at least two of your opponents monsters to break even with the cost of playing it.  You lose the one card (-1) from the actual play and another (-1) from the discard.   Plus with all of the destruction negation running around, you would be better off with the deck space.   

I also took out the equips as they don't generate any speed to the deck.  Sure having extra attack is nice, but having out a boss monster even faster is even better, and BLS is one HELL of a boss monster.

Reborn Tengus are a good card, but I took them out to make the deck smaller and follow our new theme of chaos. 

Now that we've trimmed up the deck a bit, and have a theme, we can focus in on the theme more and attempt to make the deck faster.

I took out the vanillas, and added in  a tour guide engine, two photon thrashers, 3 unknown synchrons, an honest for our light monsters, and a chaos sorcerer.

Now you may be wondering why the unknown synchron?  It's a level 1 dark tuner with a cyber dragon effect.  You can special it, normal thunder king, synch a lv 5, then banish for BLS.  You could also use it as tribute fodder for Caius, or what ever else you may need a free summon for.

Now all we need to do is fill up the extra deck

that was easy!

And now we have a semi-decent deck!  There's still a lot of improvements that could be made, but I believe DownExtreme can add his own touch from here and have a deck that he can call his own and have fun playing.

Next time: I have absolutely fallen in LOVE with this deck, but I swear I'm not a furry

Post #1: Why Wind-Ups will never die!

Sup everyone?  Todays topic is one that's near and dear to my heart, namely the best little toys in the world, WIND-UPS :D

Konami thought they killed my little friends with the last ban list, by banning carrier and limiting magician to one.  The problem is though, it's hard to keep the undead down!

Allow me to present the Zombie Wind-Up deck!

This deck utilizes the powerful deck/extra deck tool boxing  ability of wind-ups with the grave tool boxing of zombies.  The deck consists of wind-up core shown here:

Adorable, ain't they?

And The Zombie engine as shown here:

Now right off the bat you're gonna say "Laez, why are you running terraforming? Terraforming is a bad card"

And I will tell you people to shush.  Terraforming allows you to search out zombie world which is a key card of this deck.  Plus, with summoner monk terraforming will never be a dead card.

This deck can still easily use all of the otks that wind-ups are famous for, and M-X Saber Invoker will still be able to do his summons as zombie world effects monsters on the field and grave, but not the deck. 

Most of the spell/ trap line up is all up to user preference, how ever I will cover some of the choices that I like most of all.

Allure of Darkness is a surprisingly good card for this deck, especially if you run the tour guide engine.  Most of the zombies you'll be running are darks, and the draw power is always welcome in combo based decks like this.

The Huge Revolution is Over is a counter trap, and cheaper, version of starlight road.  It let's you keep your field presence when you're opponent has those pesky dark holes, or fire king garuninx.

Now  something very interesting about this deck is that yes, it is a powerful aggro deck, but it also has powerful stun powers.  While zombie world is out, everything is zombies!  

Now this might not seem like to much at first, but wait!  It effectively stops fire formation atk boosts, no monarchs can be tributed, Dragon Rulers can't banish, spellbooks can't target, the list goes on and on!

Zombie World also opens up combos with abusing wind-up rat and pulling your entire grave on to your field in one turn.  By having a zombie wind-up in grave, you can use zombie master/mezuki/blue-blooded oni to summon a wind-up rat, use rats effect, summon another wind-up, and have 3 monsters on the field ready for XYZs.

The Zombie engine helps wind-ups tool boxing power, while slowing down other decks at the same time.  With this powerful combination, your little undead toys will keep up the good fight again, and again, and again to wear your opponents down!

Post #0 Basics of the Basics! A breakdown of my opinions.

So I finally have the time to attempt this little project of mine and I feel like I should get some things out of the way first.  Everything on this blog is going to be my opinion, so it may conflict with some of your ideas/thoughts.  THAT'S OKAY, I want this to be a place were we can all try to toss ideas around and have fun.  Now I'm just going to get this boring stuff out of the way today, and hopefully we can get on the good stuff soon!

Now for the first thing I"m going to say: I believe that everyone has a certain playstyle when it comes to yugioh.  This stems from personal preference, the type of deck they're running, duelist personality, and the actual archtype they chose to play.  

If a duelist tries to play a deck that is counter to their personality then that duel is going to feel incredibly sloppy for that player.  For example, I personally have always played very aggressive decks, from Cyberdarks to Wind-ups.  I've always played a fast paced deck, and as such anytime I attempt a duel using a deck like Gravekeepers, I always fail miserably.  Even with a understanding of how the deck works, and the combos it can churn out, I simply do not feel comfortable with the deck and it shows.

I also want to get one quick thing out of the way:  Through out this blog I may refer to core and engines as part of a deck.  I would consider anything that takes up the majority of a deck, such as around 10-20 cards. A good example would be wind-ups:

You'll notice how there's 12 cards dedicated to just wind-ups right there.  That's just the bare minimum and you could build a deck off of that right there if you so desired.  Please note:  You can fit two cores into a deck, but it is not always wise to do so unless there is good synergy there.

A engine to me would be a group of cards a smaller size then that, usually about 2-6 cards that speed up the deck in some way or form.  A perfect example would be the Lightsworn engine.  The engine typicaly consists of 2-3 Rykos, 1-2 Lylas, 1 Charge of the light brigade, and 0-2 copies of solar recharge.

The purpose of this engine is to dump a lot of cards into your grave, and is the go to engine for any graveyard heavy deck.  It thins your deck and gets rid of problem cards that you may struggle with otherwise.

That's all for tonight folks!  Stay tuned for the next (when we'll get exciting) installment of LaezEBoys Card Corner, where we'll learn why Wind-Ups will never die!