Arbalest's Big Crossbow

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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.