Duel! - 5D’s

Seeing as the first 5D’s booster pack the Duelist Genesis came out today, and I bought the 5D’s Starter Deck today, I thought I’d comment on all things 5D’s.

What on earth is 5D’s you may ask? It’s the newest Yugioh TV series, which is kicking the game into overdrive. Yes, I’m one of those people that play Yugioh. And what does 5D’s mean? It took me a while to figure this out, as I thought that it had something to do with the show’s new way of dueling on motorcycles. Yes, they play a card game whilst riding motorcycles. No, I have no idea why either. And I have no desire to watch the show to find out. 5D’s actually stands for five dragons, because there are five ultimate ‘synchro’ dragon cards that the show centers around. So far only three have been revealed – Stardust Dragon, Red Dragon Archfiend and Black Rose Dragon. I don’t know why they didn’t just call the show The Five Dragons – it sounds better and is a lot less confusing.

5D’s Starter Deck
This is obviously aimed at helping you be just like the show’s main character Yusei Fudo and is filled with ‘junk’monsters – level 1 to 3 monsters with hopeless attack and defense values, some of which are designated as tuners. The aim is to get a tuner monster and a couple of non-tuner monsters onto the field so you can add up their levels and synchro summon a synchro monster equal to the total levels. The deck contains three synchro monsters who are actually pretty good. The main problem is that you need to put a decent number of useless monster onto the field and keep them there long enough to synchro summon. And because they’re useless, well, they’re hard to keep on the field. And if you can’t synchro summon, or your opponent gets rid of your three synchro monsters, you’re screwed. So as a deck in itself its not very good and doesn’t have fun combos, so I don’t see it making lots of people fall in love with the game. And for people who already play the game, you can get a lot of the cards elsewhere. So why did I get it? For two cards. One is is Scrap-Iron Scarecrow, a trap that negates an opponents trap and then resets itself to be used again. It’ll be perfect for my rock deck, which is built around blocking attacks. The other is Gaia Knight, Force of Earth, an earth-warrior synchro card I wanted for my earth-warrior deck. Its level 6 and I have a fair amount of decent level 3 warriors I can use to summon it. It goes in with Tuner Warrior (lvl 3, earth-warrior, decent attack) so I can actually summon it, and Colossal Fighter cause if I have a tuner, I may as well have a second synchro just in case

Best Card Name: It’s a Tuner. It’s a Warrior. Its Tune Warrior!

Verdict: Minor Loss. Four useful out of 43, and only cause my decks are so specilised. Leave it alone unless you can fit one or more of the synchros into your deck without major adjustment.

The Duelist Genesis
Like the Starter Deck this set consists of a lot of Yusei’s cards (all the ones not in the starter deck) and introduces the new tuner and synchro monster sub-types and their support cards. But it also has a lot of cards used by Yusei’s rival, Jack Atlus and Tetso Ushio. It includes two of the synchro dragons – Stardust Dragon and Red Dragon Archfiend. It also introduces a third new type of monster card – psychic. These monsters look like they’re part-fiend part-machine (think Jinzo) and tend to have effects that use up life points to activate. I’m not sure why we need new type when old types like fish, sea serpent and thunder are still seriously lacking in support (in acknowledgement of this they have included a few half-hearted attempts at fish and thunder support cards). Fortunately, there’s some pretty good psychic support cards in this set, and they come with their very own shiny new psychic tuner and psychic synchro monsters. The Six Samurai, Gladiator Beasts, Lightsworn, and Ancient Gears all put in the required cameo - and there’s some surprising support for spirit monsters.

Best Card Name: A draw between the Lightsworn spell Charge of the Light Brigade, and the first card to have an actual Greek letter in its name, Fiendish Engine Ω.

Verdict: Minor Victory. This is a lot better, but it still has a lot of junky monsters.