These last two weeks have been eventful. I had made a status about getting sick, and I'm gonna go further in depth on that over here. Went to go get some food from Zaxby's. Pretty alright fast food place, but wanted to try out something new from there. So I ordered a chicken sandwich. This was a mistake, because holy shit was that thing loaded with pickles. It was more of a pickle sandwich than a chicken sandwich. I'm personally not a fan of pickles, so anything more than the bare minimum amount of pickles on a sandwich tends to be too much for me.
But sadly that sandwich wasn't done being mean to me, because the next morning I woke up with food poisoning. At first it wasn't too bad, mostly constant trips to the bathroom and the sick urge to hibernate. I know my sleep schedule is a revolving door of inconsistency and chaos but at least during normal times I would at least have an idea of when I'll be going to bed. Not this time. It was always naptime, and when it wasn't it was time to lay in bed waiting for naptime. And then that night I got a grim reminder of just how much throwing up fucking sucks. I'm pretty sure I hadn't felt worse than I did at that time... maybe ever?
Soon this would all come to pass. I even got myself some chicken patties and some other ingredients to make myself some chicken sandwiches, and it was great. I really shouldn't expect silly corporations to be better than me at making chicken sandwiches. Imbeciles, the lot of them. And I didn't even get sick from these. Get fucked, pickle sandwich.
But I would get sick again. But for a different reason. A few days ago, I was given some food from Wendy's. Nothing fancy, just some chicken nuggets and some fries. I've had this before. They're alright, I guess. Not really worth the fast food price unless you're just really not in the mood to prepare food yourself, and even then it's kinda eeeeh. And that's what caused me to get food poisoning for the second time this month. So ooooh boy, time to go through all of that shit aaaaagaaaaaaaaain. Except this time it was a little worse because I ended up puking on two different occasions. What's weird is that a family member had chicken nuggets from there as well and did not get sick. Not entirely sure what's going on.
Try as they might, chickens will not kill me. I refuse to allow it. Anyway, this blog is about the Tagforce series, not my personal journal of birds that were rude to me, so let's not forget why we're really here.
Tagforce 1 #33: Lily
Lily serves the role of the Obelisk Blue student hanging out in the shop during the mornings. This makes her a great candidate to farm for DP since you don't need to waste in-game time by leaving the shop. I think it's a bit weird that both Dinosaur duelists are farmable in the shop when there are quite a few other Obelisk Blues they could've added instead. After class, she will hang out at the Obelisk Blue Girl's Dorm with her friend Disa.
She also serves as one of those "gameplay tips" NPCs. In her case, she tells you that Fusions can be good because they can be played from the hand, but that seems to be a poor translation. I think she was referring more to the ability to fuse materials from the hand. The poorly worded tip doesn't end there, as she then goes on to warn you that they can be difficult to use if your timing is off. Which, um, what? Fusion summoning is barely involved with missing the timing or whatever, at least in this period of Yugioh. The only thing I can think she meant to say is "Don't Fusion Summon a monster into a BTH, nerd." This would be a great tip if it were actually translated properly. Fusions were GX's big thing, so warning the player about being reckless and losing multiple cards to a single Trap Card such as BTH would be really useful. It would've also been nice if Lily were a duelist who used Fusions.
She also references that Jaden uses Fusions, but forgot his name and thinks that it's "Slacker." This doesn't really work though because all of the Slifers are called Slifer Slackers, not just Jaden.
Lily is someone who has a few lines that are a bit... weird?
They aren't even weird in a way where you could piece together what her character even is with them. She just says things in a strange way. She still has no real personality.
This is Lily's take on Dinosaurs. While Andrea aims for bringing out high-leveled monsters, Lily is more focused on small but still powerful monsters. A lineup of monsters like Sabersaurus and Hyper Hammerhead with other utility dinos like Element Saurus and Mad Sword Beast is pretty decent, especially if backed up with Jurassic World. If that doesn't work out for her, she can mass-banish those dinos and make way for a Tyranno Infinity beefed up by Megamorph. It's a cool deck idea that is especially hampered by bad AI. Not only does Lily refuse to use Solemn Judgment until below 2500 LP, but she also won't use Survival Instinct. As for Soul Release, she only uses it on the opponent's cards and occasionally a spell or trap from her own GY. So the only way that she tends to banish her dinos is with Big Burn.
Black Stego is especially meh without Jurassic World boosting it. With the field spell you can at least take out battle floaters. Its effect allows you to be aggressive and get some damage in with it while still basically being in defense mode. Without a card like Dark Driceratops to use this as tribute fodder for, Black Stego is probably her second worst monster here.
Element Saurus is arguably the best Element monster because of the EARTH effect and the Dinosaur synergy. Lily can easily supply the EARTH herself, and if you duel her with a FIRE deck then it just gets even better. I've had the misfortune of her summoning it and taking out my Command Knight.
Gilasaurus is more often than usual a free Special Summon because of the way that Lily uses Soul Release, but it's not a card that she can utilize very well. At most, it's an extra bit of damage sometimes, but usually it's just a throwaway monster for her.
Hyper Hammerhead gets around walls and bounces anything that kills it. A versatile card that gives Lily plenty of breathing room.
Mad Sword Beast isn't as effective as Hyper Hammerhead, but it gives her some extra damage versus some defense-position monsters like Treeborn Frog or the Scapegoat tokens.
Morphing Jar tosses dinos from her hand into the GY and lets her restock her hand. Card Destruction is in a similar boat, just less risk for less reward.
Jurassic World's +300 boost is not too shabby, to be honest. Most of her utility dinos have statlines that are just a little too low, and this brings them up to speed.
Megamorph is already a versatile card for being able to double or halve the stats of either player's monsters depending on LP, but the real reason it's here is because it also works with the stats gained by Tyranno Infinity. It gains 2000 ATK per banished Dinosaur.
And then there are the three ways to banish Dinosaurs: Soul Release, Big Burn, and Survival Instinct. Soul Release can preemptively take out powerful monsters from your opponent's GY so that they can't be revived with CotH or Premature Burial. Most importantly, it doesn't have a requirement in order to play. Big Burn counters the same cards, but in a reactive fashion, so that means that the opponent will lose their card. It also can banish even more cards than Soul Release later on in the game, allowing you to both wipe your opponent's GY and fuel a ridiculously strong Tyranno at once. It would easily be best card in this situation if it didn't need your opponent to interact with the GY first. And then there's Survival Instinct, which pulls ahead of Soul Release in self-banishing. It lacks the versatility that the other two cards have, however, as it can only banish your dinos. It does come with some healing, which can be nice but it may also mess up Megamorph plays from time to time.
When trying to fiddle around with this deck, I tried a few other options. First was Fusion Gate to make Bracchio-raidus. This seemed neat at first glance because you could power up Tyranno Infinity by 2000 while getting a 2200-ATK monster. This didn't quite work out because this deck is already pressed for space, so cutting utility dinos for Bracchio-raidus's fusion materials hurt your ability to deal with defense-positioned monsters. In addition to not being that great of a payoff. Then I tried Dimensional Fissure, and I think that was the way to go. You have to draw it early and it is subject to removal, but you can just banish all of the monsters. You can even run Macro Cosmos as backup copies, though it's worse because you have to wait a turn to wait it and you don't really care too much about banishing Spells and Traps. I'd still run a Soul Release just in case.
Looking at the monster lineup, the only real issue I have with it is the triple Gilasaurus without any real payoffs for Gilasaurus specifically. You can switch some of them out for extra copies of other cards. Maybe even something like Kabazauls since it has more ATK. I also don't think you need three copies of Mad Sword Beast. Oh, and definitely add a Cyber Jar so you can get more dinos out onto the field faster.
I think that Lily is about a 3.5/10. She's mechanically useful, has a cool deck concept, but that's it. She has no personality. The tip she offers is confusing and doesn't fit her at all. Andrea is easily the better-implemented Dinosaur duelist. Going down the list of generic NPCs, the next one is another teacher, but like with the other teachers I need to see if he has any new dialogue in chapters 2 or 3 before properly reviewing him. Instead, I'll take a look at another Slifer Red with a deck based off of a certain pair of duelists from Yugioh.