Duel! - Thing's will never be the same again!

From today, things will never be the same again. Comic book fans have heard this phrase so many times it is meaningless. But we’re not talking about comic books here, we’re talking about Yu-Gi-Oh. And when you hear people saying Crossroads of Chaos is going to change the card game forever, they mean it.







Firstly the promo card – which is possibly the card that made me want to go to the sneak preview, held in Chatsworth a few weeks ago. It’s Rose, Warrior of Revenge, and it’s a level 4 tuner. The first level 4 tuner to be released. Why is it so awesome? Because now level 8 synchros (like Stardust Dragon and Red Dragon Archfiend) can be summoned with only two monsters. Previously you needed at least three monsters – either the tuner and two low level monsters, or the tuner, a high level monster, and a tribute.
Promo Card – Major Victory!

Along with this is the first level 7 synchro monster, Black Rose Dragon, and a variaity of level 6 synchros. Like increasing the tuner’s level, decreasing the syncro’s level makes synchro summoning a lot easier. Again, you only need two monsters – a level 3 tuner, and a level 3 or 4 monster. Black Rose Dragon may be geared towards plant decks (you need plant monsters to activate its second ability) but its still excellent in other decks, with its 2400 attack, and its field-clearing first ability. Its certainly in my deck. Did I mention I was one of only two players who got this card at the sneak preview? I was very happy, to say the least.
Cover Card – Major Victory!

The most obvious game-change that CSOC brings about is to plants. Previously plant decks were in the same boat as aqua, fish and sea serpent decks. They existed, but you couldn’t do anything with them. With one booster set plant decks are catapulted into the realm of warrior and dragon decks. They now have searchers, revivers beatsticks, tuners, synchros, control effects, lockdown effects, swarm effects…pretty much everything. And at the sneak preview, it showed – plant decks were the decks to beat, and they came away top.
Plants – Major Victory!

The other decks I came up against were, of cause, Morphatronic. They are machines with the gimmick of having a different effect depending on if they’re in attack or defense position. Visially they look like robuts that can change into gagets like radios, cellphones and flash drives. Think Soundwave from the Transformers movie. And while its an interesting idea, in practice they don’t really work – their attack and defense are too low.
Morphatronic – Minor Loss.

I played neither. Instead I built an Iron Chain deck, the only person who did. I kind of had to, seeing as how I got two Iron Chain Dragons and an Iron Chain Repairman, and it worked quite well with Black Rose. Somehow I netted a runner-up place and a Black Rose Dragon t-shirt. Granted, we were only playing 20-card decks, and it won’t be easy to make a 40-card Iron Chain deck work, but I still think IC has potential. A 2500 attack / level 6 synchro, and a 1600 def / level 3 tuner searchable with Giant Rat are not to be sniffed at. Now if only I had a deck with lots of level 3 special-summonable monsters in it. Oh, wait. I do.
Iron Chain – Minor Victory.

Despite the fact that only three types of deck were played at the sneak, there are some game-changing cards set to revitalise some other decks. First up – spellcaster. There were only two spellcaster monsters in the set, and both were highly sought after at the sneak. Night’s-End Sorcerer is a level 2 tuner. Tempest Magician is a level 6 synchro. That would be good just in itself, but both cards meld perfectly into general spellcaster strategy. Spellcasters have some of the best special summoning in the game – and if you special summon Night’s-End you can remove two card from your opponent’s graveyard. In this day and age, where people rely on having certain cards in their graveyard, this effect can be a game-winner. Secondly, spellcasters like putting spell counters on stuff. Temepest Magician likes putting even more spell counters on stuff, and it can remove all spell counters from the field to deal 500 damage for each one. There’s your win condition right there.
Spellcasters – Major Victory.

On the flip side, if your opponent has Hanewata, you won’t be throwing a spell tempest at them. Hanewata can be discarded to negate all effect damage for your turn. Bad for burn decks. But what if your opponent doesn’t have a burn deck? Then just summon it for a synchro – it’s a tuner. Although, it’s a level 1 tuner, so I’m not sure what you’re gonna summon with it. It might work in a Valhalla deck if you’re special summoning level 6 or 7 fairies a lot. Then there’s Plaguespreader Zombie. Everyone wanted it at the sneak. No one got it. Why is it so good? It’s a tuner you can bring back from the graveyard by adding a card from your hand to the top of your deck. There are so many ways to use this – but the most promising is in a Lightsworn deck. Lightsworn spends all its time sending cards to the graveyard, so it was hard for them to use tuners. Not anymore. Send that useless wulf in your hand to the top of your deck, special summon Plaguespreader. Then, in your end phase, Wulf goes to the graveyard, and is summoned by his effect. Sweet. Plaguespreader is, of course, Ultra Rare. And lastly there’s the White Stone of Legend. I myself have not heard of the legend about it, but it would seem it’s a pretty good legend. Its only a level 1 tuner again, but that’s hardly necessary. Cause when it is sent to the graveyard you can add Blue-Eyes White Dragon to your hand. It doesn’t specify how its sent to the graveyard, as long as its sent there. I’ll have to check up that it will actually work, but I’m thinking Foolish Burial…
Assorted Tuners – Major Victory!

There's a lot more card I haven't mentioned, but I think I've gone on long enough.

Best Card Name: Tytannial, Princess of Camellias
Best Card Artwork: Iron Chain Snake
Best Card: Black Rose Dragon

Salvo! - The Future is Dragons!

Apologies about the lack of recent updates, things have been pretty hectic lately. I'm going to try to make it to the comic shop tomorrow, but I might not be able to. I've already put up this weeks Togs of War, and continuing the draconian theme, War Correspondence will look at some well known dragons from Yu-Gi-Oh. That'll be sometime later this month, when I've finished the article. But till then, here's some of the upcoming Yu-Gi-Oh releases.

18 November - Crossroads of Chaos
With Black Rose Dragon as the cover card, this pack finally allows you to build plant decks that can actually win. Also features the Morphatronic (read Transformers, but they're not allowed to use the name) the Iron Chain monsters, and synchro/tuners for zombie and spellcaster decks. It offically comes out in a few weeks, but I got to go to the sneak preview last week, where I pulled a Black Rose Dragon and two Iron Chain Dragons. So I don't need any more of these.

November? - Collectible Tins 2008 Wave 2
These are the Black Rose Dragon and Turbo Warrior tins. I can't find out the exact date, but its probably around the 18th too. I already have my Black Rose, so not sure if I'll get a BR tin to mach my Stardust one.

November 21 - Dark Legends
A new reprint set. You buy two packs at once, with a promo card: Gorz, Emissary of Darkness. Everyone's falling over in excitement over Gorz for some reason I can't fathom. Maybe its because I dislike dark monsters, and they don't. Rest of the details are sketchy, but the pack artwork features Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Blizzard Dragon, and Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest. Gellenduo and DH - Malicious will also be in it. I'd like a Gellenduo and a Green Baboon, but they're ultra rare, so I doubt I'll buy this.

8 December - Anniversary Pack
Another reprint…but this one has a twist. To celebrate the card game's 10th anniversary, a special pack is being released in Japan featuring new (and really cool-looking) artwork versions of famous cards like Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Celtic Guardian, Dark Magician Girl, and Jinzo. This appears to be the English version of the pack, though its not entirely certain. Will I get it? Depends on how rare the new Blue-Eyes and Jinzo cards are...and how much money I have left after buying Christmas presents.

9 December - Crossroads of Chaos - Special Edition
One of the Promo Cards is the gemini zombie Il Blud, who I could care less about. The other one, however, is Harvest Angel of Wisdom, which I really would like to get to fill out my Ragnarok deck, which is a bit light on good level 4 monsters.

Salvo! - The War draws nearer...

Marvel's War of Kings hub went up a few days ago. I haven't been able to watch the DnA video cause my internet connection isn't fast enough...grrr....anyone feel like enlightening me on what they said?

Oh, and if you're wondering why the title of my comic reviews changed from From the Trenches to From the Front, its because Front will be reviews of individual books, while Trenches will be a reviews of entire story arcs. I've noticed my opinions of story arcs changing when I read them as a whole, so whenever an arc ends I'll review the whole arc and compare it to previous arcs of the book (if I have them). You can blame Brian Bendis for giving me this idea. I'll also slot any trades I buy into Trenches rather than Front. So you can expect the next Trenches to be on the X-Factor and GoG Secret Invasion tie-ins - if X-Factor #33 ever makes it to South Africa.

After singing the praises of the 5D's Exclusive Tins - I won't be getting one. I bought the Stardust Dragon Collectors Tin and was lucky enough to find Goyo Guardian inside, so I don't need to get the Goyo Guardian tin. Yay. I can spend my money on the Incredible Herc Love and War trade instead.

Duel! - The New Face of YuGiOh

I decided to buy a single pack of the Duelist Genesis - and I got Handcuffs Dragon, so I'm a happy camper. Big Piece Golem would be nice, but I'd rather spend money on comics than on something that might possibly have BPG in it. But I've already spoken about Duelist Genesis - today, we have Exclusive Tins to talk about. These are new - well, actually, they're not. They're exactly the same as Collectors Tins, except instead of having the artwork of the promotional card on them, they have the main character from 5D's on them. His name is Yusei Fudo, and he continues the trend of having wild multicolored hair started by Yugi and Jaden. From what little I know of translation, I think Yusei could be rendered as Jason, but apparently they're no longer Anglicising character names.

There are three tins, a choice of red, white or yellow, and a choice of Nitro Warrior, Goyo Guardian or Montage Dragon. I'm not sure which card matches which colour. The choices for promo cards are interesting - Nitro Warrior is the only one of the three used by Yusei. It would make more sense to me if they had swapped some cards with the Collector's Tins so that the Exclusive Tins had Yusei's best cards (Nitro Warrior, Turbo Warrior and Stardust Dragon) leaving the Collectors with those of his rivals. Then again, Stardust Dragon and Speed Warrior have such high profiles in the anime that they can sell themselves, whereas Goyo Guardian and Montage Dragon have a lower profile and might sell less without a boost from Yusei's face.

But do the cards deserve their promotional status? Definitely. Nitro Warrior can blast through an entire defensive field of monsters in one turn, its power being offset by stringent synchro requirements and the rarity of Nitro Synchron. Goyo Guardian has the same attack points, and its synchro requirements are a lot more relaxed. Plus it can summon defeated enemies to its side - the drawback being they're in defence position till your next turn. Of the three, Goyo is the one I want most. Montage Dragon is interesting - it is special summoned by discarding three monsters from your hand and its power is related to the levels of those monsters. Plus you can still normal summon. Seems easy, but how often do you have five monster cards in your hand?

Oh, right there's other stuff in these too. Six packs: one Phantom Darkness, two Light of Destruction, two Duelist Genesis and a Token Pack. I do not entirely believe that Phantom Darkness and Light of Destruction are the 'best selling packs of the GX era', but they have some really good cards. The token pack consists of cards called tokens, rather than small round things I would regard as tokens. They are also completely unnecessary as you can use anything from a dice to coins to represent tokens, but they can be fun.

Verdict: Major Victory! There are few really good cards in the Duelist Genesis, and these are some of them.

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.