Arbalest's Big Crossbow

This is not true, and you know it. The real truth about this situation is

Meanwhile I'm over here so unacquainted with non-Playstation controllers that I struggled adapting to an Xbox one lol.

Shadow of Mordor: "hey noob press x to not die"

Me: "ok" *presses a*

*dies*

But yeah I only remember the PS1-3 controllers and then the Xbox 360 one. I remembered being weirded out that the PS3 one was so much lighter than the PS2 but I've gotten used to it since then.

On 12/4/2020 at 6:20 PM, Arbalest's Big Crossbow said:

He runs a very interesting deck and when I eventually unlock the Zombie pack, I really wanna remake it myself.

Holy fuck, this was a year and a half ago. Anyways, since this finally happened, I'm going to try a different kind of entry this time around.

Tagforce 1 #5-2: The Return of Bawnji

I may be doing a few of these before getting back to the rest of the characters. I finally beat the game and took the opportunity to unlock a bunch of the endgame packs. I've gotten everything except for the heal and the burn packs, but that's because I need to partner up with Sadie and Dorothy and beat the game with them. I got the Spellcaster, Zombie, Princeton Dragon, a weird pack based off of "hot guys" (thanks a lot Mindy, because of you I had to wait fifty bazillion years just to get Mataza the Zapper)  and the vanilla trashbin pack with 170 Normal Monsters in it. I also got two other packs that are there to help me yoink up any cards I haven't gotten yet, but I never was a fan of these kinds of packs.

Bawnji's deck is a mesh of a Skull Servant deck and a Blasting the Ruins deck held together by Human-Wave Tactics. I liked the concept, but he runs a lot of cards that he really shouldn't, most notably the vanilla Zombies that are too high-level to even use. I don't have all the copies of Blasting the Ruins, so I won't be able to give my own take on this exact deck idea, but I can still make a Skull Servant deck.

Too bad there are only two Skull Servants. It takes a bit of effort to make the King have even 3k+ ATK, and while Foolish Burial helps a ton it's still a lategame boss. There are better choices for early game aggression but you'll need to use a Pyramid Turtle to get that set up. Vampire Lord is incredibly good here because the AI isn't smart enough to understand that it comes back every time it's destroyed by an effect. Baiting Sakuretsu or Torrential with this card is incredibly good. BTH, not so much. Ryu Kokki can probably be replaced with Vampire's Curse, which starts with 400 less ATK but can be raised to 100 more. Plus with the ability to float off of battle destruction, you can try to stall into a comeback. Ryu Kokki's effect is negligible here since there are only a few monsters that it's useful against, plus with as much other removal as I'm running it tends to be redundant.

If neither of those are good enough for establishing an offense, then you can instead hide behind a Spirit Reaper. Immunity to battle destruction is really good during this time period. Even with effect removal being readily available, a lot of people aren't going around running a bunch of Fissures or Smashing Grounds. Cards like BTH and Sakuretsu were better because you could stop threats even faster than with Spell cards, but those cards can't counter Spirit Reaper.

In case you don't draw Pyramid Turtle, Goblin Zombie is halfway decent here. It's not very great (for now) because you can't float into Vampire Lord and you have to spend a Normal Summon on what you search for. I'd like to swap them out for something else but I don't know what for yet. An earlier version of this deck had Mystic Tomato, but that was even worse. Not only were you forced to summon monsters in Attack, which is particularly bad since you have a bunch of weak monsters, it can't even Special Summon the King because its ATK is technically not 1500 or less. Sangan is a Goblin Zombie that can't search King, but it can search Pyramid Turtle which I think is ultimately better.

BTH and Sakuretsu offer a huge safety net against powerful monsters, while the triple Dust Tornadoes are excellent at countering backrow. Creature Swap is an evil card here, letting you swap a Pyramid Turtle, GobZom, or Sangan for an opponent's monster and then killing it to get yourself another card. I could have probably ran a few less copies of some of these cards to make room for Zombie support such as Book of Life but I'm not entirely sure if I want to do that. There's probably too much backrow for Cyber Jar to be good here but I can't stop running it.

My next post will probably be something like this. There were a few characters I wanted to revisit once I got some more cards, and now that I have almost every card in the game I can do that. I'll need to hurry through with the rest of the cast because I did finally beat this game and I want to get onto the next Tagforce. I never played 2-4 or 6, so I'm really interested in that. But I don't wanna skip a bunch of peeps.

4 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

You know after all this time I'm still not sure what the uh...point/plot/goal of this game is

In part one you go around making friends to find someone for the Tag Duel Tournament.

Part 2 is that Tag Duel Tournament.

And then in Part 3 the Shadow Riders invade the school and proceed to be a bunch of dicks because they want to destroy/conquer/cover the world in an ominous fog. I did a bit of part 3 and yes you do have to tag duel the Shadow Riders (or at least the first one).

So I finally, after 84 years or whatever, made it to the second part of this game. The second part is a lot shorter than the first part since you don't have two entire months to make at least one friend. This opened up the Tag Survivor pack which gave me some absolute bangers like United We Stand, every LV monster that existed at the time, Snatch Steal, Ancient Gears. Raigeki Break, a bunch of weird Battle Phase fuckery cards, Final Countdown, and fuckin' Yu-Jo Friendship. So right now I am in the middle of completing part 2 once for each of the main characters. The balancing they did here is... interesting. Like for example, Zane can OTK a bitch from out of nowhere but his deck is built in a way where if you can counter his Fusion, maybe counter a second one, then he's a sitting duck. Duelists with much weaker decks, like Syrus and Alexis with whatever the fuck garbage they got, are supplemented with a ton of goodstuff backrow (as well as occasional hogshit cards like fucking Malfunction which I will complain about Syrus having even though it just won me 5 medals for countering a Solemn Judgment). But with the way I'm tackling the characters, as well as having such a long wait between entries, I may or may not get to that before I die of old age.

Tagforce 1 #38: Matthew

I could've ran with a joke likening this character that we used to know on YCM, but there's like 5 of them. How would I be able to choose the Optimal Matthew? There are simply too many Matthews. Anyway, Matthew is a character who is always with Craig (Cliff in the mornings, Volcano in the afternoon), because, you know, they're friends. That's what friends do, or so I heard.

Matthew will give a tip to players about the importance of deck-thinning, specifically with the card Jar of Greed. He is one of the many duelists who do not follow their own advice, but in Matthew's case it's because he doesn't think that deck-thinning is even that important. It's better than the stock tips that we get from a lot of the other duelists.

Matthew is the foil to Craig's character. Where Craig is a brash, struggling tryhard who can only make it to Ra Yellow, Matthew is relaxed and chill. He's constantly spacing out, not paying attention, and still manages to make it to Obelisk Blue. It isn't explained whether he is in Obelisk Blue because of a rich family or if he's just that good, but it fits the foil better if it's the latter, so you know what, it is the latter. And to better fit the foil to Craig, I don't think he says your name even once. Overall as a character, he's kinda boring, but his strength is in his being a foil to Craig. As adversarial and determined as Craig is, Matthew is RIGHT THERE to one-up him by doing absolutely nothing.

Matthew runs a Final Attack Orders beatdown deck, its simplicity and brain-off playstyle fitting his character very well. Doesn't search the regular Goblins with RotA. He runs a 42-card deck while bashing on the concept of deck-thinning. This deck aims to overwhelm the opponent with high-ATK monsters. Final Attack Orders not only covers his monsters' big weakness by forcing them back into Attack Position, but it also prevents you from blocking him by playing monsters in Defense Position.

Almost all of his monsters are the same exact thing, the only exceptions being Chainsaw Insect and GMG. Chainsaw Insect can attack without Final Attack Orders, but the card draw means that you have to be careful not to turn this into an advantage machine for your opponent. Great Maju Garzett is in a weird position where it's basically two monsters in one card; you could just Normal Summon another monster and get the same damage as Tribute Summoning this. One thing that you can do, but Matthew doesn't, is to make a bad attack with a Goblin, then tribute the Defense-Positioned Goblin for GMG so it doesn't just get killed the next turn. But at the same time, there are only so few monsters like Goblin Attack Force. He is running triple Giant Orc and Toon Goblins, so using GMG as extra copies of his best monsters seems like a decent deal.

Gaia Power is a meh ATK booster here. 2800-ATK Goblins and 2900 Chainsaw Insects are definitely way tougher than the base 2300-2400 ATK ones, but a lot of the time this card is just there.

The neat thing about Mage Power is that it boosts both ATK and DEF. You could use this to boost one of your monster's stats so high that it's totally fine for it to get shifted to Defense Position. The problem is that even with a ton of backrow, this pretty much only works on the Elite Goblins, and Matthew is more than content to throw this card onto whatever monster he has.

Matthew tries to do the thing Hide does where he pays a bit of LP to make a suped up monster with Megamorph, but since he doesn't commit as much to this combo it hardly ever pays off for him. It's great if he's behind though. A 4600-ATK monster you can just Normal Summon is nothing to sneer at, plus them going into Defense after attacking partially counters the drawback of Megamorph. But yeah, this card makes more sense for Hide than it does for Matthew. It's kinda eh here.

Nobleman of Crossout takes out a monster so that he can hit you directly for 2300 damage. It makes it harder for you to simply put a monster down and deter him from attacking if he doesn't draw FAO (that does not stand for Ford Art Online, trust me). Even if he does have it, it still can be used to counter Flip/floaty effects and provide a bit extra damage.

I like Shrink here a lot. It guarantees that he wins most possible combats. If you were planning to make a comeback by somehow getting a stronger monster than him, then this card stops you hard. Sakuretsu also does, but I think Shrink is actually better here for the extra damage.

Cyber Jar is a card that I suggest for a lot of decks, but there is no deck that benefits from it as much as this one. Tossing an entire OTK's worth of ATK onto the board from your deck, drawing into FAO or other backrow, this card is just so incredibly good here that it's worth the symmetrical effect. To make room for this, as well as to try to get to 40 cards, I'd take out the Gaia Powers and either Megamoroh or Mage Power. I'm not too sure which should stay, but I'm leaning more towards Mage Power atm.

There's also the issue of him relying so heavily on FAO that without it he's just kinda there. There are a few extra cards to address this, but I'm not too sure what to take out to make room for them. So instead, I'll make an entirely new deck:

With triple Labyrinth of Nightmare and Zero Gravity, you're much more free to attack if you are unable to pull FAO. With these cards, you could also turn this into a Clown Control deck, which I did. In this game if you attack a face-down Crass Clown with FAO up, it'll switch to Attack Position and use its effect immediately in the middle of the battle. If you bounce the attacking monster, it just straight-up cancels the attack. Also today I learned that the translated name for Crass Clown is Murder Circus. I thought it would be Evil Clown or something but no it's way more metal than that. Dream Clown is even more effective here. If you play Zero Gravity with FAO up (and sometimes you don't even need it), then Dream Clown just kills a bitch pretty much whenever you need it to. With FAO you can even use multiple Zero Gravities so that a single clown can kill multiple monsters. It's wild.

I added D.D. Warrior Lady and Exiled Force because Goblin Attack Force and Dream Clown are already searchable by RotA. With them, the clowns, and strong beaters, monsters are not an issue at all for this deck. Backrow however kinda is. Probably should run some Dust Tornadoes or something, idk.

Matthew gets a 7.5/10 from me. He makes an excellent foil to Craig, his deck fits him like a glove, and he's pretty competent. The only thing keeping him down is that he's a bit boring on the surface.

I'm just gonna put some filler text up here while I write the rest of the post, and if it's still here when I'm done then that means that I forgot. I don't remember the last time I forgot something.

Tagforce 1 #37: Masha

Masha can be found at the Obelisk Blue Girls Dorm during the mornings. Just take a right and she's by the edge of the... dorm's moat? I guess that's what it's called. She just stands there, keeping her distance from the Ra Yellow students who most definitely belong here. She returns to the same location in the afternoons, except this time she's closer to where you are when you enter the area. I feel bad for her since she spends so much time near Deron.

Masha struggles with school. She studies hard on the night before a big exam, but due to her poor memory issues she cannot remember everything. Her memory is such a problem for her that she considers dropping out. This is also taken to a comical level when it takes her a second to remember what a duel is when you challenge her to one, or whether or not she needs a sandwich.

Yes that is Deron spying on us in the background.

After a duel, she says not to forget her. Because she surely will forget you, and it'd be sad if the two of you forgot each other. So someone has to remember.

As a character, Masha is decent, which is great considering that she's just a background character. She's plagued with worry from her forgetfulness. It's not much but it's a lot better than what a lot of other characters have.

Looks like we need to ping @MUTANT MONSTER RAEG-HAPYPbecause this is a Horus deck. The gimmick of Horus is a growing resistance to Spells that eventually results in you being able to negate any Spell you want with the LV8 Horus. You can back this up with Royal Decree, leaving all of your opponent's backrow cards useless. The only effects that the opponent can use, once this is set up, are monster effects. Masha is a challenging duelist who forces you to not rely purely on Spells and Traps as a counter for every threat. Even if you have outs for Horus in the form of monsters, she can still bog you down by making a good portion of your deck useless.

Jinzo is her 4th copy of Royal Decree. Needing to Tribute Summon it kinda sucks but 2400 ATK is very nice. Plus you can just grab it with a Premature or CotH.

Solar Flare Dragon is not a bad card, but it also doesn't really fit in here that well. It benefits from Molten Destruction, can form an attack lock with itself, and can ping the opponent for 500, but I feel like this card should be replaced by a Dragon monster for her Five-Headed Dragon. Despite its name, this is a Pyro monster.

Tenkabito Shien also doesn't help out her FGD, but it fits in more nicely than Solar Flare Dragon. It's a decent monster, much better with Molten Destruction. It's a good opener if you don't have Royal Decree ready since it's immune to your opponent's Traps like BTH or Saku. The idea is to use this, then when you get Royal Decree then you can move over to the Horus line and then negate those Traps.

Dragon's Mirror is great with Horus because you will toss several Dragons into your GY as you evolve your monster, letting you use this more easily. The one problem is that her only Dragons are the Horus line (and other FGDs). She definitely needs more Dragons since she hardly ever gets to use this.

Level Modulation is a card that rewards your opponent too much, and places too many restrictions on your own monster, to be worth it. Well, that would be true in every deck but this one. I feel like summoning Horus LV8 with this while you have a Royal Decree up will curb the opponent's draws enough that using this card would be a good idea. You still have to watch out for monster effects though.

Level Up! is a nice, clean, and easy way for you to level up Horus. Getting Horus LV6 out in the early game means you can almost assuredly evolve it. It is still a bit combo-centric, needing both itself and a Horus monster on the field to use, but the speed tends to pay off.

Molten Destruction is a here to provide an ATK boost for her level 4 lineup. Horus LV4 having 2100 is excellent, so is Tenkabito Shien having 2000 ATK to put it above almost every other easy-to-summon monster. It's also nice for Solar Flare Dragon I guess.

With Spells and Traps covered, Masha's big weakness is monster effects. Nobleman of Crossout helps her get around this by eliminating a face-down monster for her. Bonus points if it's a FLIP monster because then it'll banish all other copies from your deck. I have always hated this card.

Pot of Avarice is a stupidly good card, but I think it conflicts with Dragon's Mirror a bit too much here. This card is great for the extra draws and potentially allowing for you to evolve into Horus 8 an extra time, but if you use this then you're not going into FGD any time soon. This is a big part of why I think she needs more Dragons in her deck in general.

Shrink is amazing with the Horus line. Not only do you get to sidestep BTH with it some of the time, you can use this so that any Horus will kill virtually any other monster in the game, thus ensuring an evolution. Getting that kill when you otherwise wouldn't have provides so much value for this deck.

United We Stand is pretty much here just for Tenkabito Shien, maybe as a temporary boost for a Horus LV4 but that's not nearly as good. I don't really think it's particularly great here.

I do not have access to any of the LV monsters still, so I won't be able to use her deck. This means that I can only theoretically speculate on what changes I think are good instead of actually testing them out. I think that if she wants to continue to use FGD, then she should swap out the Solar Flare Dragons and the United We Stand for Masked Dragon. This lets her block a few attacks, Tribute Summon Horus 6 more easily, and fills her GY with Dragons for FGD. Masked Dragon would only be able to float into itself, so it might be worth adding Twin-Headed Behemoth as a final card to float into. This card has a once-per-duel effect to revive itself after being destroyed, which means that you will have it to Tribute Summon regardless of how many attacks your opponent can make. Another possibility is Gilasaurus. Even if the AI is too cowardly to use it if the opponent could possibly benefit from it whatsoever, this allows you to Tribute Summon Horus 6 very quickly. Just kill the monster your opponent revived or use Level Up! and now you get to bring out Horus 8.

Overall, Masha actually has some character and her deck is pretty good. 7/10. Kinda a bit weird that such a forgetful character who is at danger of dropping out is this good at Yugioh, but aside from that she's a really solid character. Stay tuned for Matthew, who doesn't have any of the problems Masha is having.

Don't really mind what class I get, but I have also arrived.

Sometimes I wonder if I should've just waited to do this series once I had unlocked all the cards, but given that it's the year of our lord 2020 *checks calendar* chapter 3 and I'm still not done, this would have never been posted. This character is one such person, as the healing pack is endgame material (because LP gain is famously OP in Yugioh).

Tagforce 1 #36: Marcel

Not to be confused with Marcel Bonaparte, the weird French kid who was possessed by Yubel because they were sick of how French he was. He isn't in this game. The Marcel from the show didn't make an appearance in the show until A Jewel of a Duel: Part 1, which aired in America after Tagforce 1 came out. Them having the same name is just a coincidence because why would the people dubbing the show care about a video game. The Marcel I am going to talk about is also a Ra Yellow student and is notably less French.

Marcel has a very standard schedule, heading to class early and he heads back to the Ra Yellow Dorm after school. However, what's interesting is that in both cases he is standing right next to the teacher in the area (Crowler in the Classroom, Sartyr at the dorm). From this and his deck choice, I imagine that Marcel is the teacher's pet. Always on his best behavior and excelling at all of his classes.

He gets confused by Jaden and Bastion referring to each other as #1 and #2.

(It means that Jaden is peepee and Bastion is poopoo.)

He also has this line when you beat him in a duel. Thanks, Marcel.

There isn't really much else to say about him. With such little dialogue in the game, it is difficult to discern his entire character. Right now, I'm convinced that his personality is that he goes to class. The main appeal to Marcel isn't his character though, it's his deck (this comes off as weird as the line about how I creamed him).

Marcel runs Agents in the first form, which focused on creating a LP gap between you and your opponent so that you could achieve big numbers on either Mars or Saturn's burn. I think he's one of the best Ra Yellow duelists in the game, even though he has no answer for Marshmallon or Spirit Reaper. He also has the only healing deck in the game that actually tries to win instead of sit around.

He can tutor up his own Marshmallon or a surprise Mars with Shining Angel, which is pretty nice for consistency but as an AI this usually means you get to attack an Attack-Positioned Marshmallon several times if you know that it's coming. He can't float into Kelbek since it's EARTH, but Kelbek is still pretty good at buying him some extra time or clearing up the board for a sudden Mars kill.

Nimble Momonga is here for the reason it's in any other deck: healing and potential Tribute fodder. It's one of the best heals in this game because he can gain up to 3000 LP while blocking up to 3 attacks, then on top of that you're also thinning your deck.

The Agent Mars/Saturn win condition is ok I guess. If he's able to be more aggressive than your opponent or if you manage to find an early heal you can leverage that into a monstrously good Mars. Saturn is less useful until it becomes time to go for the win since you need to Tribute Summon it and it's just a 2400 vanilla until It's Time to Tribute It. But on the other hand, if you are quickly overwhelmed and can't possibly have more LP than your opponent, then you're just fucked. Both Mars and Saturn are dreadful when you're losing.

Zolga has some decent ATK, and the 2k healing when you Tribute it is... there. This is definitely the place for it, but it's just such a meh card.

Celestial Transformation lets him toss a Saturn onto the board, which is really nice. Lets him do a double Saturn burn for game, except his AI isn't smart enough to go for that. He won't ever Tribute Saturn unless the one Saturn can kill you. So this is just a dead card for him even though it's pretty good here.

Cestus of Dalga is a card that seems like it would be great here, but I think it's underwhelming tbh. It only boosts the monster's ATK by 500, which is pretty low for an Equip. The healing is nice but this is usually only by a small amount. It does mean that if the equipped monster manages to score a direct attack then Mars/Saturn becomes very threatening, but he's just not aggressive enough for this to happen very often.

Giant Trunade and Heavy Storm lets him clear up backrow for a game-winning push with Mars or Saturn, though Marcel's AI likes to use these spells much earlier than he needs to.

Another bad thing about the Agent wincon is that Sanctuary in the Sky just sucks. The damage prevention is useful for maintaining your lead over your opponent's LP, but if you are losing monsters to attacks then you're still very much in trouble. The best thing about it is that he can float his Shining Angel into Marshmallon and not have to worry about taking any damage.

Ceasefire and The Spell Absorbing Life are pretty nasty for being able to nullify Flip Effects, not to mention the damage/healing they do helps Marcel out a ton. The AI waits for a threshold of monsters on the field before playing these, which is fair and all, but I've seen times where I would Heavy Storm him and he refuses to chain either of these cards because it just isn't worth gaining 400 LP even when he's about to lose that card.

Draining Shield is annoying. Stopping an attack and gaining 2000+ LP is really good for him.

Marcel needs a win condition that isn't Agent Mars or Saturn, something that helps him out when he is behind. I think that replacing one or two copies of Zolga with Mudora, which can get some respectable ATK once he gets a few Fairies into the GY. He should also run Magic Cylinder since it's a Draining Shield that gets you closer to victory rather than further away from defeat. There are probably some other fixes that could be made to his deck but I would need access to his heals in order to playtest for myself.

Marcel gets a 4/10 from me. As a character he's just there, strangely close to teachers all the time. But his deck is pretty decent and cool.

I'd say I'm excited for this next character but April Fools already passed.

Tagforce 1 #35: Maki

Maki is one of the academy's few female students, and as such you can expect to find her in places that would make sense for an Obelisk Blue girl to be. In Maki's case, you can find her at *squints* *continues squinting* *raises eyebrow slightly* the boys dorm all day long. When you go to ask her "What are you doing at the Obelisk Blue boys dorm? I think this might be slightly illegal?" She dodges the question by talking about someone living in the forest.

As you can see, she's very good at changing the topic abruptly. She goes from talking about Damon to immediately accusing you of being a criminal for reasons that our top scientists are trying to figure out.

As you can tell from that final line, yep, Maki is one of them. A tsundere. In addition to this being such a tired trope, it also means that everything she says is said in multiple dialogue boxes. She talks so damn much.

Wao look at this crybaby

I don't like this character, and unlike Maki my dislike is genuine. Interacting with her in any way leads to her being a tsundere for multiple dialogue boxes. She isn't a baka (entertaining), she's a baka (annoying). Don't be any kind of dere to me, please and thank you.

The one saving grace of this character is that her deck is actually pretty good. She uses Giant Germ, Mystic Tomato, Newdoria, and Sangan for Creature Swap, getting a very good deal much of the time since she still benefits when those cards are destroyed. If you think of trying something similar with your own floaters, then she can counter that with Dark Ruler Ha Des. And if you try to summon a monster stronger than Ha Des, she can counter that as well, not only with the Creature Swaps, but with her traps and with Megamorphing a Slate Warrior/Goblin. Her ability to counter backrow is pretty much the standard, but she does run Giant Trunade which the AI seems to use pretty well. They're not the best with it, but they won't Trunade the first chance they get usually. The only change I can think of would be to replace a Ha Des with Great Maju Garzett because this deck could get a pretty strong power spike with it and Creature Swap.

Maki gets a 3/10. Her deck is really good and her lines can be slightly funny, but I just don't like this trope.

Wow where in the world have I been. It's been over two months since my last entry! Like, I've been here this whole time, just in a permanent state of Not In the Mood to Do Anything Ever Again. Then Master Duel came out and I got carried away with that. It's cool and pretty, but it is severely lacking in good single-player content. It's kinda weird putting single-player content in a multiplayer game like Yugioh but they've kept doing it for all these years and I really appreciate it. So hopefully they do more with the single-player in that game, or else it's back to Duel Links for me. Another thing, this blog has broken 10k views! Sure, most of them are from me or are from bots, but it's still pretty cool that this has happened. So here's the next duelist, a tree.

Tagforce 1 #34: Loggy

I imagine that his parents are named Trent and Camellia. Loggy can be found at the Main Gate during the mornings before class, and afterwards can be found at the Slifer Red dorm. These are generic placements for him but I think it serves his character well. Loggy is new to Duelist Academy, probably even being the newest student to enroll before you came along. He's also new to Yugioh in general, making rookie mistakes such as overloading his deck.

That second image was a waste of a textbox. Could've easily merged 2 and 3 into one textbox but nooooooooooooooo.

This tip seems obvious but it really isn't to people new to card games. I know that I used to make the same mistake when I was a tiny, insufferable child. Even as a medium, still insufferable adult I still have issues convincing myself to trim down on deck size in rougelike card games such as Slay the Spire and Monster Train. (Both of which are incredible games that I cannot possibly recommend enough. Seriously, check them out if you haven't already.)

There is also a sense of camaraderie that he feels towards his fellow Slifer Red students. He's more willing to duel you than someone from another dorm.

Loggy, to me at least, comes off as someone with stars in their eyes. He's excited about this new hobby and is only coming to terms with how difficult and serious Yugioh actually is (at least in this universe where card games save the world). It isn't a particularly deep personality but there's no way we could get anything like that from a generic character.

Loggy runs a deck that is heavily themed around masks and could easily defeat the entire Coronavirus in single combat. Against other Yugioh decks, however, it isn't nearly as good. The goal of this deck is to get out The Masked Beast and own the Battle Phase, but in the meantime he can protect himself with Mask of the Accursed. He can also boost a monster with Mask of Brutality and go on the offensive. The main weakness of this deck is that in addition to there being no additional consistency to his Masked Beast at all due to a lack of Manju/other support, he runs like 30 filler cards. Yeah they're thematic, but they're just pretty bad. Then there's the Man-eating Black Shark, which not only requires three fusion materials for a monster with 2100 ATK, but doesn't fit in mechanically nor thematically.

Mask of Darkness is a great card but Loggy only runs 5 Traps, 2 of which are Continuous and also antisynergistic with his deck's goals.

Masked Sorcerer's stats are too low to really be used as an advantage engine. The best way to use a card like this is to protect it with stat-modifying cards like Mask of Weakness or a coin-flip Fairy Box thing and using the draw to replace the cards you spend. It does seem like a neat idea for a really casual deck, especially with the Toon version.

Mask of Brutality is only here for thematic reasons. It's almost entirely worse than Axe of Despair except for the very niche case of using it against an enemy wall to lower its DEF, except if you put it on your monster you get an equal boost in ATK and it doesn't go away afterwards.

Mask of Dispel puts your opponent on a clock if they run any face-up backrow. It can be threatening at times, but at other times it can be entirely ignored.

Mask of the Accursed is just a worse Nightmare Wheel unless you're willing to search for it with Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu. Ideally you would use this to shut down an early-game threat and then burn them for a couple of turns if you can't immediately counterattack. Otherwise you're better off running actual removal.

Mask of Restrict is a powerful sidecard against Tribute Summons and Rituals. However, the boss of this deck is... a Ritual monster. So this card works against your owl goal.

Mask of Weakness is similar to Rush Recklessly, but trades quick-play speed for the ability to work regardless of what battle position your monster is in. It works here because you can use it with your Defense-position Masked Sorcerer or an Attack-position Grand Tiki Elder. It still isn't a particularly great card, weaker than Shrink.

My take on fixing this deck would be to remove the filler, add Ritual support, and probably go for Chaos Sorcerer since there's a good deal of LIGHT and DARK monsters to use. But since I still don't have Chaos Sorcerer and I also want to make a Chaos Ritual deck on a different entry, I'm going to try something new. I'm going to make a deck based off of one of the anime-only cards (well at least until 2018). See if you can guess what it is before you click the spoiler below!

I've only tested this deck out a few times, but this entry has taken me all day to write (mostly thanks to just how easily distracted I am) and I kinda want to get over it already lol. So, yeah, the answer is Doom Lithmus Swordsman. If you guessed that correctly, you win a lifetime supply of air. Wait, I might actually have to hold up my end of the bargain with that. Uhhhh... let's not get hasty...

While it isn't quite as strong as The Masked Beast, Doom Lithmus Swordsman cannot be destroyed by battle. This is great if you need to put up a barrier while you try to find a Continuous Trap. More importantly, it, like Tenkabito Shien, it completely unaffected by Traps. I could've made this deck when I was reviewing Deloge, but tbh I didn't have Doom Lithmus Swordsman at the time. You have to max out Bastion's friendship meter in order to get it. A monster with 3000 ATK, immunity to battle destruction, and can't die to BTH/Saku is actually pretty good. Gravity Bind and Begone, Knave! are excellent defensive options that you don't need to worry about at all once you get your Doom Lithmus out. Plus, as an added bonus, you can actually bounce your own Ritual searchers to re-use their effect. With this card bouncing your opponent's monsters as well, it should be even easier for you to get a hit in with a Manju.

I'm not entirely sold on running triple Masks of Darkness since there are so few Normal Traps. I'd probably switch one of them out for something else, but I'm not too sure what. I want more monsters (that are at least Level 4), but I can't really think of many good options here. I've found myself using Ritual monsters as fodder and having to recycle them with Avarice if I want to use my other Ritual spells.

I think that I'm going to give Loggy a 7/10. He manages to have a very useful gameplay tip for beginners to card games while still having an actual character. His deck isn't really great, kinda annoying because like Laurence before him, it's really easy to lose out on the no-LP-lost bonus. It's exciting when he does bring out Masked Beast, but when he doesn't he just rolls over and loses, which is kinda disappointing.

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.

By "one of the least memorable duelists in the entire game" apparently I meant that I would forget to post an entry for an entire month.

Tagforce 1 #32: Laurence

The Duel Field is almost entirely populated by Obelisk Blue students in the morning. Out of the nine characters that you can find there, Laurence is the only one among them that is not part of the Obelisk Blue dorm. Being there every day must be disastrous for Laurence's W/L ratio, but not as much as dueling me a billion times because I felt like it. Though maybe he has learned that he is no match for anyone else there and just watches other people duel so that he can take notes and learn from the best that this Academy has to offer. In fact, that may be more likely, since in the afternoons the people hanging out at the Duel Field are considerably weaker.

But wait, it gets better. Nine students in one area is a lot, yes, but why are there so many of them there? Because that's where the Elemental Masters are in the morning. The remaining two are just Jaime and Syun who are chilling in the corner. So the real reason that Laurence is here is because he's a fan of the Elemental Masters. Their only fan, in fact. Sadly for Laurence however the Elemental Masters head back to the Obelisk Blue Boys Dorm after class, so he won't be able to watch them duel until the next day. Instead, Laurence will hang out by his dorm for the rest of the day.

Laurence warns the player about running cards that can return themselves to the top of the deck, pointing out that they also limit the cards you can draw since you are drawing those cards instead. This is a pretty helpful tip, even if there are only a few cards that you can have this problem with (Cockroach Knight, Horn of the Unicorn, and Sword of Deep-Seated). He should have a chat with Hiro!

Wait a minute... return ME to the top of the deck?! YOU DARE?!

Laurence runs a goblin-themed deck. Similarly to Andrea, you can see him incorporating his own dueling tip into his deck. Not only does he not even run any cards that return themselves to the top of his deck, he runs a lot of draw power. Coach Goblin, Goblin Housekeeping, Upstart Goblin, Jar of Greed, he's even one of the three Slifers who run Pot of Greed. This allows him to cycle through his deck very efficiently. The problem is that he doesn't run much worth cycling into. D.D. Trainer is one of his best cards, and Giant Orc would be if the AI were competent enough to equip it with Second Goblin rather than Setting it all the time.

Coach Goblin in theory is a neat card but its stats aren't good enough, plus you'd rather wait on the Trainer than return it. D.D. Crazy Beast is a decent counter card for floaters but it needs help in order to be more than a nuisance. Goblin of Greed counters some very niche cards but in order for it to work well your opponent needs to attack into it with something weak. If they have a monster with 1900 ATK then this card just dies miserably.

Dark Factory of Mass Production isn't a bad card, but when you run only three vanillas it can be quite difficult to use. Nevertheless, D.D. Trainer is one of his best cards here so...

Goblin Thief exists just to make it nearly impossible to get the No Damage bonus against this guy. He almost always draws into it.

Jar Robber counters exactly one card in the entire game, but that card is Pot of Greed, so it isn't that bad. But it's still bad. And I don't think the AI even uses it.

Second Coin Toss exists just for Gamble and nothing else. It will almost always do nothing.

Appropriate is entirely opponent-dependent in this deck as Laurence can't make you draw (outside of Heavy Slump which isn't enough).

Bubble Crash seems like a decent counter to cards that explode in advantage (like Cyber Jar) but the AI never thinks about using it either.

Gamble is a silly card. You can draw 3-5 cards or lose an entire fucking turn. Second Coin Toss makes it a lot more manageable but it's still way too much risk for that reward.

The AI will not use Goblin Out of the Frying Pan unless it disturbs some timing-specific play, which is pretty much the only way to play this card. It is way too situational to be ran at three copies. In fact it's too situational to run one copy.

Good Goblin Housekeeping is a card that I love the design of and I will be forever angry at the decision to put it on the banlist because of some wacky combo with Emergency Provisions.

Heavy Slump can only reliably counter a few cards like Cyber Jar, It's a really brutal card, but it's not worth playing unless you run cards that help your opponent set this card up. This guy is surprisingly good at countering Cyber Jar, huh.

This is another deck that I am just going to remake from scratch. There is an idea similar to what Laurence is trying, but I want to save that deck for someone later down the line. I'll be dropping the goblin theme because they aren't a real archetype. Blindly Loyal Goblin is a decent card in a format with 3 Brain Control and 1 Snatch Steal but it just exists to be immune to those cards. Goblin King has a deck of its own but it's more invested in Fiend monsters. I'll probably make something involving it by the time I reach a Fiend duelist.

This deck makes sense for Laurence if you squint your eyes very hard. Laurence likes to draw cards, or at the very least cycle through his deck, and this deck likes to have a big hand. The idea is that you want to commit minimally to the board, just enough to stay alive, until you get Muka Muka out (enraged or not). It's pretty neat to float a Giant Rat into a beefy Enraged Muka Muka. I also threw in a bunch of other tech options to float into with the rat such as Exiled Force, D.D. Warrior, Hyper Hammerhead, and Mad Sword Beast. The way Muka Muka works, you don't want to put your entire hand on the board, so broad yet effective backrow like Solemn Judgment are great defensive options for this deck. Giant Trunade was picked over Heavy Storm here in case you do have to set too much backrow to boost your monsters effectively, you can use this to bounce them back while clearing away cards from your opponent. Same with CED.

Laurence gets a 5/10. I figured out a lot about this character while typing up this post, and it significantly improved on a character that I thought was just there. I really appreciate it when you can see duelists' dueling tips influencing their deck, and his deck isn't too bad for a Slifer Red, just mostly hampered by a poor AI. Stay tuned for when I review the next duelist, which at the rate I'm going will be sometime next year. Hopefully earlier.

Oh boy it's time to get back to bad Slifer students. I completely understand and sympathize with Dr. Crowler now.

Tagforce 1 #31: Kura

Alright, let the Kura slander begin. This mf'er can be found at the Main Gate in the mornings. A perfect time and place to offer him a sandwich! Only for him to turn you down, saying that he already had three today. So the first thing we learn about him is that he wakes up and immediately devours three whole sandwiches.

Alright, next plan: Talk to him and see why he's at school at 6 in the morning. He brings up Miss Duel Academy, and says that he would like to figure out who that is and meet her. I had to look up what he was even talking about, and it turns out that this was only a thing in the GX manga. Even then, it was only a thing for a few episodes, er, chapters. Seika Kohinata (who appears in chapter 6 and I guess she does fuckall until she finally duels Jaden in chapters 20-21) may have been Miss Duel Academy from 2002-2003, and Alexis in 2004, but I don't know who is Miss Duel Academy in 2006. Maybe it's the game's dialogue being ingrained into my brain but I could've sworn that Miss Duel Academy was more of a thing than this? I really should get to watching GX sometime within the next 8 years, huh.

After school he can be found at the Cliff, but I cannot figure out why he is there. Aside from just wanting to be there. He's still not hungry.

The Wiki defines this as a metallic-themed deck, but it feels more like a "Fusions that I like" deck. His strongest possible play is to use Hidden Soldiers or Relieve Monster (I don't think he actually plays that one though) to get Rare Metal Dragon onto the field. He could've also ran Marauding Captain for this.

Super Roboyarou/Lady is a neat idea but is held back by their stats sucking so much ass that you can get the best of both worlds with Bracchio-raidus instead. It also has better fusion materials. There is definitely a deck you can make where you hide behind Messenger of Peace and poke with your Fusions, and if your opponent summons something too big for your Super Roboyarou then you can swap between the two to burn the opponent with Cyber Summon Blaster and Dark Room of Nightmare. You can also swap between the two to avoid losing them to Limiter Removal, which can be neat I guess.

Ok, onto the rest of the deck. For reasons unbeknownst to anyone in the entire world he runs Fusionist and can even try to fuse it up into Rare Fish. 9/10 of the times he actually does get Rare Fish out it'll be with Enchanting Mermaid and a fusion sub though. Blast Juggler exists just so he can fuse into Cyber Saurus, but Cyber Saurus is in a weird position where you can use one of its fusion materials to make a different, better card instead. At least you can summon it with the Earth Hex card, but that doesn't mean that running Blast Juggler is a good idea.

Kura's deck teaches the player the importance of synergy. He can fusion summon quite a few different monsters, but outside of that his deck doesn't work with itself at all. Hidden Soldiers can't be used unless he has a Rare Metal Dragon. Raregold Armor isn't important here because none of his monsters need to be protected from attacks. Rare Metalmorph is nice and all but not when your win conditions are Dragons and Dinosaurs. Huh, lots of cards with "Rare" in their name.

This part isn't about Kura but Super Roboyarou/Lady and Roboyarou are in this game's advanced fusion pack. Robolady for some reason is not. In fact, I don't think you can get Robolady from any of the packs. The only way I can get this card is by going to the card converter in the Lab to trade in 45 cards and hope that I get Robolady instead of some of the other cards in the 45 slot. It's a dumb design choice. This set of cards isn't even good, so why hide one of them in the card converter?

Anyway, here's my attempt at giving Kura a fusion deck that at least makes more sense than what he has. I went with his fusion theme over his weird shiny metallic theme because I couldn't really figure out what to do with that theme. Except for the Super Roboyarou/Lady deck but I don't have all the cards for that yet, plus it it would be even worse than this deck.

Ok, so this deck isn't great either, but it works surprisingly well against the Slifer Reds. The deck is built around the fact that King of the Swamp can be retrieved with Salvage. These fusions were chosen because at least one of their materials are also Salvage targets, letting you bounce back from the huge card cost of Fusion Summoning. The only exception is Thunder Dragon, but I added that because Thunder Dragon offers some deck thinning as well as an easy boss monster. I was torn over using Fusion Weapon or Umiiruka for an ATK boost but I figured that hitting over strong monsters would be better than Umiiruka offering a little more damage on the board. Fusion Recovery and Salvage let you explode from out of nowhere with a full board of Fusions, though you will most likely need to sit on a Humanoid Slime or behind Swords/Steelcage in order for the deck to work. But oddly enough, it does work. I wanna add Royal Decree since this deck runs no Traps whatsoever but I don't know what to take out for it.

Kura scores a 2.5/10. He has barely any character, references something that is barely touched upon in the one place it is brought up, and his deck makes no sense. Though one thing he does have going for him is that when I think of a generic Slifer Red student, for some reason he is the first one to come to mind. The next entry will be on another Slifer Red who, coincidentally, is one of the least memorable duelists in the entire game. After that, we will finally be returning to Obelisk Blue!

Wow it's coming up on the one-year anniversary of this blog, in barely under a month. And I've only made five real entries-worth of entries!

Tagforce 1 #30: Georg

I'm sure that this guy and the other teachers become more available in later chapters of the game, but right now I can only find him blocking off the Classroom if you don't make it to class on time. The game gives you two hours to get to class, an option to start class early if you don't want to wait that long, and if you leave an area at 7:45 it'll give you a prompt to head to class. You have to either refuse this prompt or skip time in your bed in order to be late. With as generous as the game is with this, you may not ever notice that there are four more teachers you can meet and duel in Chapter 1.

Maybe I should have saved him for later when I do get to speak with him more freely, since at the moment the only dialogue he offers me is just telling me that I'm late for class. I really wanted a break from the congregated group of utterly awful Slifer Red duelists though. I'll talk shit about Kura later, tyvm.

Making it to class on time isn't too big of a deal, if I remember correctly. You only miss out on some character dialogue between the characters from the show and occasionally some bonus cards (these usually drop in like the first few days of the game, so once this stops you shouldn't miss out anymore). Duel Academy doesn't give a shit if you just stop showing up to class forever, which is really funny given just how lavish as they are with making sure you can get to class on time. I did a test run where I skip like a week and a half and nobody bothered emailing me about it. I guess Chancellor Sheppard is just like "Well, ABC doesn't show up to class anymore but his parents already paid for his tuition so oh well." At the same time, there isn't any benefit to skipping class. You have 8 hours to go around and explore the place without anyone else being there, aside from a select few adult NPCs like Sadie and Dorothy. Nobody you can duel, at least in the first chapter. It makes the game feel empty.

Fortunately if you somehow miss the giant 2-hour window and the prompt to go to class, or if you did on purpose just to find these guard teachers, there is still a way to attend class as if you weren't tardy at all. The first is offering one of them a sandwich. That's right, there's finally a generic duelist who will accept your sandwiches! They'll accept any sandwich, effectively allowing you to bribe your way back into class for a mere 50 DP. But that's half the price of most packs! What if you don't wanna pay that price? Well you can also challenge any of these teachers to a duel, and if you win, you'll be automatically let in. And better yet, there is no penalty for losing, so you can keep dueling until you finally get lucky and one of them lets you in.

Also I imagine that the missing 'e' in his name affects how it's pronounced. Say hello to your teacher cop, "Gee-org."

Pretty weird that he has one of the best Insect decks in the game and it's called "Mediocre Insect." It's like Gee-org's like "Eh, it's alright." The Wiki classifies this deck as an "EARTH Toolbox Deck," but I disagree with this assessment. The only tools that this deck offers are Continuous negation via Silent Insect and lots of floating. I'd instead call this... Doom Dozer Aggro? The idea of this deck is to use its oodles of floaters to fill up your GY, then unleash a sudden onslaught of Doom Dozers and/or Gigantes for game. He has a lot of backrow removal in Gigantes and Anteatereatingant, as well as great monster removal with Creature Swap, Snatch, and Man-Eater Bug. He also has some neat tricks like sacrificing Big Bang Shots for Anteatereatingant or ramming a Gigantes (though he never does this correctly, the AI isn't smart enough to equip these to your monsters for the combo) or OTKing you with Doom Dozer, Megamorph, and Chainsaw Insect/Saber Beetle. Gaia Power expands his ability to OTK with anything that's at least as strong as Giant Rat alongside the Megamorphed Dozer, not to mention having a swarm of 1700-1900 ATK floaters can be pretty nice.

As great as Man-Eater Bug is here for being able to trade with an opponent's monster and being Doom Dozer fuel, I really feel like he should run at least one copy of Gokipon so that this card would actually be searchable. Well, it technically is but you wouldn't be able to use its effect if you SS it with Howling Insect or Giant Rat. Another card to consider is Exiled Force, which you can float into with the Rat and still be able to use its effect.

The last card I think I should talk about is the Silent Insect. It's a neat card that he can pull out of his Deck to hose any of your Continuous cards, and chaining CotH to revive it in response to your own CotH is a pretty sneaky counter. The problem here is that for some reason he overestimates Continuous cards and runs three Silent Insects. Trimming this card to one copy is an easy way to bring this deck down to 40 cards.

It's a pretty neat deck and it makes me really wish that cards like Creature Swap and Snatch Steal weren't locked behind a pack that needs you to (almost?) beat the game in order to unlock, especially how much of a drag that this first chapter is.

I don't think I can give Gee-org a proper rating because I don't think I can access all of his dialogue yet, but for now for his deck alone I'm giving him a 4/10. I could do another of these teachers for my next entry but I think I'll keep him on hold until I either get ahold of his dialogue or get stuck in another boring rut.

Hit that rut in the game where I maxed out all the characters' relationship bars except for Chazz, because Chazz still hasn't come back yet. How can we Chazz it up with no Chazz to it up?

Tagforce 1 #29: Khadim

Khadim, like a few other students, hangs out in the classroom before the class actually starts. Interestingly enough, he isn't at a desk studying or anything. For some reason he's standing on the stage that the teachers use. It's such a weird place for him to be. Everyone else makes sense, and then there's Khadim on the stage. My best guess is that he wanted to feel the thrill of being there, but he stands there every single day. Just a really weird flex. After school he hangs out at the Slifer Red dorm with Walter. Insert the usual "They're friends but the game doesn't do anything with it" rant here. Aside from him being in a weird spot in the mornings there's really nothing to talk about here.

When you talk to him, he warns you not to let your guard down when dueling Chazz. A gameplay tip! How neat! Now let me explain how it's all bullshit.

• First of all, the game scales the strength of most duelists by their position in the school. The game takes the concept of the three dorms from the show and uses it very well. Slifers are the weakest, Ra Yellow is intermediate, and Obelisk Blue students are the toughest duelists out there. Chazz Princeton is in Obelisk Blue, so you can figure this out just by looking at his uniform. This makes Khadim's advice obvious.
• You can't even duel Chazz. He outright refuses to talk to you, to take sandwiches from you, he even won't duel you. He won't interact with you until he returns from his hiatus from Duel Academy, which takes place so long into the game that you would have assuredly had enough time to figure out how to construct a deck capable of defeating Obelisk Blue students. So not only is Khadim's line about watching out for Chazz obvious, it doesn't even work because the game won't allow you to make the "mistake" of dueling Chazz anyway.
• Though, there is one exception. You can duel Chazz before he leaves, via Tag Duel Sundays. He will duel you alongside Alexis there. And like the rest of the "main characters" of the game, Chazz has multiple decks that he goes through as the game progresses. The one he uses here is, like the other first decks, actually weaker than your typical Obelisk Blue student. This means that in addition to being obvious, it's also wrong. Khadim's warning serves to make players overestimate Chazz during Tag Duel Sundays when they would face stiffer challenge from the generic Obelisk Blue students there, with maybe the exception of Nova+Simon but that's something I'll get more into when I get to Nova's character. Though for what it's worth, Tag Duel Sundays are still hard because you have to deal with your partner's terrible deck and AI. I've had some duels where I nearly lose to Slifer Reds because Jaden truly is a Slifer Slacker.

Oh, and he laughs at you for thinking about giving him a sandwich. Real considerate of you, buddy. Maybe he's just a troll.

This is Khadim's take on a Huge Revolution deck. The idea is to get all 3 of his vanilla monsters onto the field in order to play Huge Revolution, which will then clear out your opponent's entire hand and field for no further cost. It's a neat concept that I would be willing to mess around with if I had 3 copies of a card I'll mention when I get to that part. In addition to Huge Revolution, he also runs a little bit of stall, burn, and pseudo-burn cards. Both Elephant Statue cards are decent sidedeck cards to counter Card Destruction, pre-errata Crush Card Virus, or Deck Devastation Virus, but running both of them at three copies is absurd. The Ballista is an alright card for countering walls, which this deck has no real answer for outside of actually resolving Huge Revolution, but it is not very synergistic with what attackers he does run. It should ideally be paired with a Piercer like Lancer Dragonute or Exarion Universe and supported with cards like Swords of Concealing Light or the incredibly good Book of Moon. Anyway, Huge Revolution will clear walls anyway so this isn't necessary.

Confiscation is incredible and I honestly underrate the card just because I want that sweet no-damage bonus at the end of duels.

Dark Room of Nightmare performs surprisingly well in a deck with only four burn cards (7 is you include Elephant Statue) but that's more because Nightmare Wheel can proc it multiple times. The burn theme helps him make up for his lack of decent battle damage but I feel that he could be better off by running strong monsters instead.

Khadim never plays Inspection. Even the AI knows that the AI doesn't actually benefit from knowing what your cards are. And even if they did, it's awful and should be cut before anything else.

Nightmare's Steelcage is wonderful here as Huge Revolution needs you to set up multiple weak monsters (and a decent wall). This means you can protect those monsters, or you can use it to buy time so you find other useful cards. He is noticeably not running Swords of Revealing Light for some reason.

I imagine Khadim actually does play Restructor Revolution, but maybe he only does as a finisher move. Anyway, this is not Duel Links, and this card is not good at all.

Toll is Khadim's best source of damage. The AI will actually play multiples of this card, meaning you'll be forced to pay more than 500 LP just to attack. If he can set up a good stall fast enough he can use this card to lock you out of a victory.

Khadim will always misuse United We Stand. He just uses it to make an Elephant Statue threatening, that's it. It can vastly speed up how quickly you can go from resolving Huge Revolution to winning the duel, though, so it's definitely good here.

Begone, Knave! is an annoying card, good for messing with your opponent's tempo so that you are given more time to stabilize after a bad situation. That's pretty good with Toll, but it also clashes with his Oppressed People. With this card up, you can intentionally attack his wall and it'll get bounced into his hand when it does damage to you.

Conscription is entirely dependent on your opponent's deck. The only card it really works with in this game is Convulsion of Nature and even then it heavily depends on your opponent running monsters that are good enough to snatch up with this.

Nightmare Wheel, like Toll, is one of Khadim's primary sources of damage. It only does 500 damage a turn and explodes if the affected monster leaves the field in any manner, but it also shuts a monster out of attacking entirely and he can combine it with Dark Room of Nightmare to do 800 damage per turn instead. It isn't much but it makes the clock for defeating him dwindle.

Rock Bombardment is a card you run because it's a Foolish Burial for Rocks. You don't need to mill your Elephant Statues here, so you could completely replace this with more potent burn cards if you're that desperate for more damage. Here it just takes out some of his lackluster monster lineup for you.

Royal Surrender is a rude card that wipes out your CotH, but it's not good for much more than that as a maindeck card.

Tragedy is a card that looks really good, and I thought it was good when I was a tiny babby ABC. And when you can pull it off, it is, er, tragic, for the opponent. It's just that there are a lot fewer moments when you can actually play this card than you'd think. It's another one of those cards that needs to be supported by other cards in order to work well.

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I think one of the best ways to run this deck would be to use something like the Heart of the Underdog + Ultimate Offering combo to sling your combo pieces onto the board. You can also run Enchanting Fitting Room, Emissary of the Afterlife, and Spirit Caller to help out with consistency and setting up the play. If you manage to pull of Huge Revolution, you can follow up with Time Seal or Drop Off to essentially skip an entire turn.

The problem with Huge Revolution is that it's a very convoluted card that, yes, does something very good, but by setting it up you usually won't have enough damage to win quickly enough. This isn't a problem if your opponent doesn't topdeck something good, but you'd be giving them multiple turns to do so and that is not worth setting up 3 vanillas on the board, two with shit stats and the third being mediocre at best. If you want the same payoff, but with a deck that actually works, then I have an even better solution:

To be fair, this deck is plagued by the fact that the best versions of the Levia-Dragon Daedalus decks don't even bother with the evolved form, but it is still a lot less of a hassle than a Huge Revolution deck. It still needs some hoops to jump through, however. It needs two unsearchable monsters, one completely unusable if you don't have the other. And then you need to Tribute Summon and to have your Field Spell out. And then it nukes your own field as well as the opponent's, but it leaves the evolved Daedalus which has some really good stats. If you can also use Time Seal (and maybe even topdeck more with Feather of the Phoenix but this is honestly wishful thinking and should probably be replaced) you can seal your opponent off from any form of comeback. Another benefit this deck has over the Huge Revolution deck is that you can still perform decently well even without setting up for the Ocean Dragon Lord play, whereas Huge Revolution can't really do anything without resolving Huge Revolution.

I'm giving Khadim a 1/10. His advice is bad and doesn't work, he doesn't have anything interesting going on about him, and he has an annoying deck that isn't worth farming. We are in the middle of a bunch of consecutive Slifer Reds but fortunately I have unlocked the decklist of one of the teachers I had skipped previously. The next entry will give us a reprieve of constant Slifer Slackers by reviewing that teacher instead.

Fire Emblem come to Steam so I can actually play the series, please I don't know what a Nintendo is

Maybe you'll get more than one update a month if you subscribed to my... uh... I actually don't have anything to subscribe to and also I am allergic to getting other peoples' money nvm.

Tagforce 1 #28: KENYoU

Never ask me to crop pictures

Do you remember how the three different classes in Yugioh GX are meant to be separated by skill, but it is hinted that if you're rich you can bribe yourself all the way to Obelisk Blue? Well, headcanon time! Already! KENYoU was one of those people whose family paid their way for him to make it all the way to Obelisk Blue. But unlike the other rich kids, this ended up backfiring majorly for Allcaps McGee over here. This guy is so bad at playing Yugioh that Chancellor Sheppard had to demote him in order to save face. After all, how could Obelisk Blue be prestigious if they had someone as bad as this guy in their ranks? In fact, he was so bad that he ended up getting kicked out of Ra Yellow as well. He is this close to being expelled from the school simply for sucking a colossal amount of ass. Or, he would be close to expulsion if not for something about him.

You see, KENYoU spends all of his time in the shop. He likes shopping, more than his three daily meals. He says that he only eats sandwiches, but despite this he still does not accept any sandwiches that you offer him. He also buys cards! More than he knows how to use, though with the way packs work that tends to be technically true for everyone.

Have you ever wondered why Duel Academy has you earn Duel Points through duels and has you spend those instead of money for cards and sandwiches? The real answer is because this is a video game and making you pay money to play a game you already bought () is a ludicrous level of greed that wouldn't really become a thing for another few years. But the in-game answer is because Duel Academy makes major moolah off of schmucks like KENYoU.

Being the world's least competent duelist gives KENYoU a special role gameplay-wise. Like Gillian, he is designed to be someone you can duel against and beat even with your starter deck. He's even worth only 25 DP for defeating instead of the normal 75, just like Gillian. Plus, since he is always in the shop, you get a source of infinite DP regardless of your skill level without having to spend forever losing to Jewels or Lily.

Before you see his deck, let me remind you that he has access to a lot of cards. He bought more than he knows how to use.

According to the Wiki, he also has Mother Grizzly, Ameba, and House of Adhesive Tape, but not The Emperor's Holiday. Maybe that's the case in the Japanese version or something, but either way those cards would've made him even worse.

So the deck KENYoU runs is a mess. There. End of story. He runs a handful of monsters with decent stats like Earthbound Spirit and Jelly Beans Man (the strongest monster that can avoid Gravity Bind and Level Limit - Area B). The idea is to force you to have to Tribute Summon so that he can hit you with the Blast Held by a Tribute card, which is a Mirror Force that does 1000 damage. Since Mirror Force is currently banned, that sounds like a good deal. Plus, he can give you his Mushroom Man #2 to encourage you to Tribute Summon with it. And if this were the year 2003, it would actually work pretty decently if he actually committed more to having good walls. Except the year is 2006 (uhhhhhhhhh, give or take 15 years) and there are so many more ways to deal with high-stat monsters than Tribute Summoning. Plus even if he manages to resolve Blast Held by a Tribute, he does damage so slowly that you'll easily have time to recover.

That isn't the only wonky combo he tries though. He also runs Dekoichi, which is probably the best "FLIP: Draw a card" card in the game currently just by being DARK and being able to deal some damage in a pinch. But he also runs Bokoichi, which is a garbage vanilla monster that can possibly let Dekoichi draw you multiple cards. Without some extreme plays that make the extra draws ultimately not worth the effort (the best thing I can think of is using Inferno Reckless Summon and something to prevent attacks like Nightmare's Steelcage), it's pretty much impossible to actually get this to work.

The rest of his cards are either mediocre unsynergistic things like Michizure, or garbage that also doesn't fit his deck like Two-Pronged Attack. Mushroom Man is a vanilla that dies to everything and nothing supports it in particular. Togex is one of the worst Normal Monsters ever released, just barely too strong to be summoned by the likes of Giant Rat but also weak enough to be taken out by quite a lot of Level 4 monsters. Anteatereatingant is actually good, but KENYoU doesn't run enough backrow to use it effectively imo. Crimson Ninja is also decent but there is a striking lack of MST or Heavy Storm in his deck. Karate Man is also somewhat decent since you can trade with things that would kill Jerry Beans Man, but you could instead use vanilla monsters with 1900 ATK. Final Flame is a lackluster burn card, one you would use after running 3 copies of several stronger burn spells. And he doesn't use those at all. Mooyan Curry is the weakest healing card in the entire game and for some reason he runs it at THREE.

Michizure is a decent way to kill problem monsters, though it is mostly outclassed by Sakuretsu Armor. But not entirely, since it also works with effect destruction. Penalty Game can either be Time Seal or Cold Wave, which is really good, but the caveat is that your opponent needs exactly 4 cards in their hand and KENYoU runs nothing to help him manipulate your hand size. Rope of Life lets him revive Jerry Beans Man or Togex and give them a permanent +800 ATK, which can make them pretty threatening. It just hurts to lose your entire hand for it though. Shadow of Eyes is an annoying counter to Flip monsters and walls but Nobleman of Crossout is better. Spellbinding Circle is, at the very least, worse than Shadow Spell, though Spellbinding Circle can stay on the field if its target leaves without being destroyed which can be handy for Anteatereatingant. The Emperor's Holiday is honestly not that bad of a card as it shuts down one way his opponent can take out Earthbound Spirit without Tribute Summoning. It's not the greatest, but still decent. And then there's Two-Pronged Attack, which is such a terrible trade especially if you don't have tokens to kill, and he doesn't have tokens to kill.

I can't really think of any way to fix his deck, because what even is this deck supposed to be? Aside from garbage that is. Give whoever came up with this deck a medal and some concrete shoes.

I'm rating KENYoU a 4/10. It's neat that he has a gameplay role and it was fun delving into how inept he truly is, but his only personality trait is that he sucks ass and his deck is driving me insane. Next time I'll be going over someone else who drives me insane, but this time it's because he's a bitch to duel against.

The state of despair

A wizard is never late, nor is he early. I play at least one game that involves wizards, so this quote applies to me. Checkmate, nerds.

Tagforce 1 #27: Joshua

I'll start this entry off with a story when I got back into playing this game. I had remembered that someone hangs out in the Abandoned Dorm for some reason, some silly dweeb with a healing deck. One morning I head there to go find him, and I see this guy... just standing there. "Is that him?" I think to myself. "I don't remember him having green hair." Then I go up to talk to him.

This is perhaps the closest that the entire Yugioh franchise has ever gotten to horror. Just some generic dude chilling out in the abandoned dorm talking about the ante rule.

After class he instead chooses to stay in the Forest, where he casually converses with... Damon of all people. Yes, the Tarzan dude from the show who was obsessed with drawing cards. Who knew he was friends with Joshua? Maybe they bond over their weird speaking patterns. Damon of course uses "me" instead of I and talks like your typical wild man. Joshua on the other hand has lines like what was shown above, and that's not all.

TRANSFORMERS~! FUCKERS IN THE SKY~! TRANSFORMERS~! MEGATRON WILL DIE~!

His usual hangouts and absolute dorkass mannerisms lay out his character to us. In a school based off of a card game, Joshua still manages to be an outcast. People don't want to be his friend, not only because he's a Slifer Red student, but because he's such a weirdo who might try to take peoples' cards via the Ante rule. His ostracization could even give us some more insight into Deloge's character, since the two have opposite views on the Ante rule. Is Deloge the one who's doing this to Joshua? Does Deloge stuff this geek into trash bins because he likes the Ante rule? These two have a HISTORY, I know it.

Joshua running a samurai-themed deck is just icing on the cake. But since there currently is not a functional samurai deck, he instead runs this, which lends itself to the comedic value of him being an edgelord who likes the Ante rule. He can put up a surprisingly decent fight by combining his Mataza the Zapper with the Fusion Sword Murasame Blade. He also can try to Fusion Summon but in most cases he will not get past Flame Swordsman. With only two copies of both Polymerization and King of the Swamp, he has to naturally draw all four of those cards as well as a Masaki in order to make Dark Flare Knight. He could also revive a King of the Swamp with Premature Burial or CotH but that's most likely not going to happen. And all of that for a mere chance to summon Mirage Knight - if Dark Flare Knight is destroyed by a card effect then all of that effort is wasted. There's also a lot of terrible filler in his deck. He runs weak monsters like Kagemusha of the Blue Flame and Zanki just because they are samurai-themed. He has no reason whatsoever to use Shien's Spy. Tenkabito Shien and Darkfire Soldier #2 are both Pyro monsters despite him running a Warrior deck.

Another thing is that he goes through all of this effort in order to make Dark Flare Knight. He even uses a Fusion Substitute. But he substitutes the wrong monster. He could instead run Dark Magician and use the Fusion Substitute so that he doesn't have to make Flame Swordsman at all.

I don't think Mirage Knight is a good enough card to warrant making a deck around, but I can't think of anything else for this guy without giving him a basic warrior deck akin to Anca and Giry. He can use Dark Magic Curtain to bring out Dark Magician faster. And we've already reached the point that he should just run a Dark Magician deck instead of a Mirage Knight deck. That's how much this deck idea sucks. I didn't even get to the part where he could use Dedication through Light and Darkness to get easy access to Dark Magician of Chaos. Pre-errata DMoC, in fact. If anything, Mirage Knight would be a tech option that takes up way too much space in a Dark Magician deck just to be able to punch through strong monsters when you for some reason can't use other cards like Thousand Knives.

Joshua is like Ivan in which he's an interesting character with an incredibly bad deck. But at least for Joshua, his deck makes a smidge more sense and also functions a little bit better just by the virtue of the Mataza+Murasame combo. He's an absolute dork. 6/10

The next character I'll be reviewing has an even worse deck. It's actually amazing. How did this happen.

Vaccine update: I had a mild headache for 2 days and my arm was less sore than the first jab. Clearly I am too powerful and you should be scared.

Tagforce 1 #26: Jewels

You wake up early in this game. 5:45 AM, in fact (5:45 if you are a heretic who uses 24-hour time). If you leave the dorms and head to class, you'll make it by 6. Two hours early! You're sure to be the first one there! Wait, nope, Jewels beat you there. And the rest of the characters that hang out in the classroom in the mornings, but I digress. She sits beside her friend Andrea and the game wants you to think that the two of them converse. But nope, instead they just stand at their desks, staring at each other. It's pretty weird.

After class, the two of them head over to the shop where they act significantly more normal. Andrea stands around shyly while Jewels checks out a bunch of seats.  The two of them serve the role of an expert-level DP farm in the shop during the afternoon. It's nice that there's an option between the two of them, rather than only one of them being available at the time. Jewels and Andrea form a friendship pair where they have opposite personalities. Andrea is shy and timid, whereas Jewels is confident in her dueling ability. She wants to be the top duelist of this academy, a goal shared by nearly every single character in the whole game. After that, she wants to defeat North Academy's champion to further prove herself. Her determination is admirable, but her goal has one fatal flaw. She is not a protagonist so she will not be given this opportunity.

Like with the other friendship pair characters, Jewels' character is hurt by a lack of actual interaction with her friend. Maybe Andrea could slowly gain confidence throughout the game from all of her time spent with Jewels. As for Jewels herself, maybe make her too confident. Make it so she duels a bit too recklessly, and Andrea actually helps to train her to duel more carefully.

Jewels runs an... interesting deck. She uses tribute fodder such as Treeborn Frog and Marshmallon to bring out monsters that revive themselves if you destroy them with card effects. She can pressure you into having to do so by using Mist Body, but her AI is pretty bad about this and she will usually put it on Breaker. A big weakness of her deck is that she goes into highlander mode for so much of her deck. She's got plenty of answers for your cards, but she runs only one copy of so many of those cards. This means that she can typically stall out the match a little bit so that she can bring out her bosses and try to turn the duel around, while making sure that your board isn't so advanced that her Vampires and Mobius become irrelevant.

Despite dueling against her so many times, I don't feel like I truly understand what makes this deck as good as it is. Probably the sheer amount of removal coupled with bosses that could resurrect themselves. I want to take out some cards to make room for Pyramid Turtle, but I don't really know what to remove for it. Maybe Waboku and Offerings to the Doomed for two Pyramid Turtles? As for other changes, maybe swap out some of her removal cards for extra copies of other removal cards. It would take some testing to figure out which ones to increase the number of and which ones to remove, and I can't do that at the moment as I still cannot use several key cards in her deck.

I'm giving Jewels a 3.5. She has an interesting deck, but the rest is rather lackluster. The next five duelists I'll be going over will all be from Slifer Red, so be prepared to see some absolute horseshit decks.

Tomorrow my transformation into a 5G cell tower will be complete. Soon I shall take over the entire planet and there's nothing you can do to stop me. So I wanna get one of these done before that happens because I heard that the second dose hits like a truck.

Tagforce 1 #25: Jaime

Ivan has a friend he hangs out with all the time, and so does Jaime. But Jaime's friendship is clearly stronger because Jaime's friend doesn't leave him for dinner. Get rekt nerd! Actually, jokes on him, Obelisk Blue doesn't have a place to eat at. Slifers may have shitty food but at least they have food. Jaime instead has to make his own sandwiches. His friend Syun doesn't like sandwiches though, so he has to starve to death. Maybe if Jaime didn't make bad sandwiches.

In the mornings, Jaime and his friend hang out at the Duel Field. He isn't shocked to lose to a Slifer Red and may mention that he should reconstruct his deck. This makes it seem like Jaime likes to experiment with many different decks, the weirdo. All the cool people pick one deck and stick with it! Unfortunately, the game doesn't care about that character detail I probably just made up in my mind, and he only has one deck throughout the entire game. It would've been neat if Jaime would at least constantly modify his deck throughout the game as he tests out many different cards, some improving his deck, some not. Maybe the real story behind Jaime is that he's one of those students whose parents paid their way to Obelisk Blue instead of progressing there naturally, which would explain why his deck has more questionable choices than most of the other Obelisk Blues out there.

In the afternoons, you can find them at the Obelisk Blue Boys dorm. Just two dudes being guys.

Jaime's temporary deck that he playtests with forever is 

A neat thing about this deck choice is that it actually makes sense with the dueling tip he gives you if you talk to him, which is basically "If you use monsters with high ATK, watch out for cards like Magic Cylinder or Dimension Wall." In fact, his deck actually counters monsters with high ATK in general. His gameplay tip is to protect you from him. Unfortunately, Aliens in a format this early into Yugioh are not capable of much. The only thing that makes Jaime strong is the loads of monster stealing cards he runs, like Brain Control and Snatch Steal. Yes, Tribute Summoning Gangi'el for one Tribute is nice, but even with that condition met I would rather bring out a Monarch instead. Aside from Gangi'el, Aliens Grey ew british spelling and Warrior are how he gets A-counters onto the field. Honestly, this isn't really enough to make Alien Mother and especially Alien Hunter viable cards. Alien Skull is a bit situational but it's great against Marshmallon, Spirit Reaper, or A Legendary Ocean. Flying Saucer Muusik'i is unplayable without Shining Angel. Gagagigo doesn't make much sense in this deck. He has no synergy with it for being a Reptile, so he could instead run a card like Gemini Elf instead if he really needed a vanilla beater, which he doesn't actually. In fact, it being a Reptile makes it worse for him if you decide to run Tribe-Infecting Virus.

Rush Recklessly is outclassed by Shrink, which could be a neat card to work with Alien Mother or Alien Hunter. Crop Circles is a weird card that you use so you don't have to give your opponent their monster back and can't just Tribute Summon with it. The 2000 damage failcase is pretty steep but it would be better than giving the monster back, unless you're stealing bad cards. Brainwashing Beam is an amazing card like holy shit god damn wow I love it so much. It's definitely the best A-Counter payoff until you get to the Alien Synchro age, and even then it's pretty strong. Orbital Bombardment counters targeting effects and turns them into MSTs, which is nice but I'm pretty sure Dust Tornado is better. Waboku is purely for turning Alien Grey into Alien Mother, whether by Tribute Summoning or via Crop Circles. But since Grey only draws a card if it is destroyed by battle, Waboku isn't really that great. Embodiment of Apophis... isn't bad, but it also doesn't feel necessary here. And finally, Micro Ray. Micro Ray is a garbage card. Why is it here. Go away.

No decklist image available this time because I don't have all the cards I'd put in this deck I think that to fix the deck, you would need to take out the Gagagigos, two of the Alien Hunters, the Muusik'is, Rush Recklessly, Embodiment of Apophis, Micro Ray, Orbital Bombardment, and Waboku. And now that there are 14 open spots, it's time for replacements. First, I wanna add Breaker the Magical Warrior and D.D. Warrior Lady because they're both incredible cards. They also have synergy with Crop Circles; you can counter cards like Bottomless Trap Hole or Sakuretsu by swapping them out for Alien Warrior. I'd also like to add a third copy of Brain Control and Brainwashing Beam. Maybe even add a third Sakuretsu and 1-3 Bottomless Trap Holes for defense, though this isn't too necessary. Add a Call of the Haunted, two Nobleman of Crossout because Aliens despise face-down cards, and that leaves about three empty spots. One option would be to run 3x Nimble Momonga to offset the LP cost of Brain Control and because they sorta work with Crop Circles. Another would be to run Zaborg the Thunder Monarch and/or Mobius the Frost Monarch to give you a strong card to Tribute Summon off of an opponent's monster. If you do this, you can take out a Gangi'el for more space. Option three is remembering that I mentioned Shrink, adding that, and also My Body as a Shield. This is to protect Alien Warrior from effect destruction to force your opponent into having to fight it in battle. Swords of Revealing Light is also stronger than normal here because not only do you buy yourself three turns of protection, you can use it to flip your opponent's monsters up and then steal them.

The strategy of this deck is pretty simple: If an opponent's monster can beat your Alien Warrior, then steal it. Alien Warrior's effect works well with Brainwashing Beam. You can use Alien Grey or Crop Circles to try to get it faster. You can also add Cyber Jar, but I'm not sure if this deck has enough low level monsters to make this a safe bet, but Alien Warrior is important and you do have Sakuretsu to help keep you safe. With seven cards devoted to changing control of your opponent's monsters, you can just steal your opponent's frontrow and beat them over the head with it to win.

I went back and retroactively did this with the previous duelists, but I'm going to start offering a numerical score to these characters. These numbers aren't really strict but they are in the ballpark of what I think of them. As for Jaime, he's a 5/10.

What do y'all mean it isn't the moon???

5 minutes ago, Tormented said:

It's not an any theme issue, the plugin is no longer working so working on resolving that.

If I install the plugin, whenever you post a status it's blank - very odd.

Can you screenshot what you mean on the latter? @A Billion Cheetahs

I prolly just worded it awkwardly

10 hours ago, Blake said:

Other things.

Status Bar seems to not have the ability to like or reply from front page anymore? Might be a Borx issue.

Getting this on Spectrum too. I also can't read replies on the front page.