Arbalest's Big Crossbow

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???

I prolly just worded it awkwardly ?

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

So a little over two weeks ago a friend of mine gifted me the game Don't Starve Together so that more people in our friend group could play a co-op game every now and then. It has been a huge learning experience, and I wouldn't consider myself to be remotely good even after I managed to take down a Bearger (scary, quit running at me plz) in my solo world. Still, it's a fun game and I'm looking forward to exploring more of what it has to offer. Tagforce 1 #24: Ivan Ivan can be found hanging out at the Harbor before class. When you talk to him, he will mention taking a night stroll that has him pass by the lighthouse there, showing that he really likes this place. Unfortunately you cannot find him taking this stroll, which would have been really cool if you could have. Instead, he does mention seeing two figures standing near the lighthouse and you can find those people during nighttime. It's Zane and Alexis. It is neat that Ivan will point out that they hang out by the lighthouse, EXCEPPPPPPT... the game tells you this on its own. When you go to the map, the game tells you where all of the "major" characters are, including Zane and Alexis. This ultimately makes Ivan's line of dialogue useless in a mechanical sense. This would've been really good chatter if it weren't for the game spoiling it. If you wanna find Ivan during the afternoon, you will have to check the Duel Field. Due to the vagueness of the game, I'm not entirely sure if Ivan is there to practice dueling or just to spectate. Given the state of his deck, I imagine that it's more of the latter. Either way, he is interested in getting better at Yugioh, he just has a lot of work set out for him. He is always accompanied by his friend Terence. Well, except during 7:00 PM where Terence leaves him for food for an hour, the jerk. That's right, there's another friendship pair that never interacts with one another! At least they team up for tag duels, but I still wanna see them talk to each other and maybe become boyfriends or something. Ivan surprisingly has a bit of character to him. It isn't much but when you've set the bar on the ground even a little bit of character detail will be neat. He wants to become good at Yugioh but he's just so bad at being good that it's a tougher challenge for him than for most. His heart is in the right place but his brain is in the trash can. Ivan's deck of choice is Fairies. Wait, no, sorry, that's incorrect. This is a deck of fairy-like monsters that may or may not actually be Fairies. There are more Plants in his deck than Fairies. He runs all four of the Attribute Spirit monsters that existed at the time (Aqua Spirit, Garuda, Spirit of Flames, and The Rock Spirit) as well as monsters that can fuel their summon requirements. This lets him Tribute Summon monsters more easily as well as giving him some battle position-changing shenanigans (along with Prickle Fairy). And while he can make good use of changing your monsters' battle positions occasionally, his Tribute Summonable monsters are just awful. Fairy King Truesdale is cool as hell and is amazing in Duelist of the Roses, but unfortunately that doesn't carry over to the regular game. The rest range from being equivalent to his Level 4 monsters to being actually worse. The rest of his deck doesn't really do anything of note. He's got Raging Flame Sprite which can be a dangerous card if he can protect it, but he doesn't have any way to actually do so. He can equip his Fairy's Gift with Elf's Light and it'll still be bad. He has not one, but three Spirits of the Pot of Greed so he can draw a card if you play Pot of Greed, which admittedly is a card you should be running in every deck but in no situation does he actually put this monster in Attack Position for its effect to go off. Wait, it gives the person playing Pot of Greed an extra card, and since he doesn't even run it, this means that he runs three copies of a card that actively helps his opponent on the rare occasion that it's ever set up properly. No wonder why he's bad at the game, holy shit. This is one of those decks that I would just start over from scratch on. This idea is too far gone from any semblance of a functional deck. So I just hastily threw together a Fairy deck. Its main focus is to Ritual Summon Shinato, King of a Higher Plane, though it also packs some power via the Majestic Mech cards and Mudora. It also could make good use of Last Will, which is a busted card and can tutor up Mudora, D.D. Warrior Lady, or even an emergency Marshmallon. I haven't really tested out the deck much but even by looking at it it's going to be significantly better than whatever the fuck deck Ivan runs. Like, I'm not too sure about running Agent Venus+Shine Balls at any point before the 2011 Agent Meta where Venus suddenly became incredibly powerful. I'm also not too sure if I should be running Goryu at all. Score: 5/10 So that's it on this Slifer Red whose fatal flaw was to build a deck around an archetype that wasn't officially certified by Konami as being a real archetype. The next entry will be an Obelisk Blue student who doesn't make this mistake. He runs an actual archetype!

God damn mother of fuck it is too fucking hot and it's gonna be too fucking hot for the next 3-4 months. The sun is a fucking bitch and I will see it burn. Tagforce 1 #23: Hiro Bonnie Tyler, come collect your mans. You'll find him at the Slifer Red dorm in the morning or hanging out in the shop during the evening. This makes him an important character to farm in the early game as you can just duel him a bajillion times and buy as many packs as you want in the shop. Unless you wanna farm Giry instead. If you wanna do this in the morning, then Aite is your guy. However, they both stop being useful once you craft a deck that you can confidently defeat Obelisk Blue students with. When conversing with him, he references a minor plot point in the show, talking about rumors of something being buried under the island. I actually don't remember what that thing is, maybe it had to do with the Shadow Riders? Hiro thinks that whatever it is must be worth a fortune. The one thing he definitely did is steal something, I'm sure of it. To headcanon a personality for the guy since he doesn't have one: Ok no, he's not a greedy businessman CEO president executive or whatever. But he is into dueling mostly for the money. Maybe he needs it, maybe he just wants it. Given his deck choice, maybe he leans more towards the latter, since he uses a lot of cards that a certain someone else used in the DM show. First I would like to give a huge shoutout to the Yugioh Wikia for having these duelists' decklists, making it that much more convenient for me to link to every card I talk about. I'm particularly a fan of how on Hiro's page they say that he only runs 1 Gokibore, 3 Korogashi, 2 Steelcages, and no Shallow Grave. This game's been out for about a decade and a half now, get your shit together. Hiro's deck is built around Parasite Paracide and its ability to turn all of your opponent's monsters into Insects. I said it before, but there are a LOT of Insect decks in this game. He can increase the odds of his Parasite making it into your deck using cards like Book of Taiyou, Desert Sunlight, the Steelcage, and Waboku. Then he can force you to draw it using the Jade Insect Whistle. And after all of that, he either gets to prevent you from attacking with Insect Barrier or nuke the board with the Aerosol. Gokipon helps him find his little guy faster. And then he threw in a bunch of pointless bullshit. Giant Flea makes a tiny bit of sense since you get to search it with Gokipon, but it's not that good. The other vanillas do not belong here at all. Even if he resolves both of his Token-making cards, Parasitic Ticky only gets 2000 ATK, and there's a huge chance that the second card is gonna Tribute a Token. And then there's Cockroach Knight, a card designed to make anyone who uses it lose the duel the moment is gets put in the GY. The only good play that this deck has is to get the Parasite onto your opponent's field and then throw down an Insect Barrier so you can't ever attack. Like many other Slifer Red students, Hiro's deck teaches the player a lesson in deckbuilding. For Hiro, there are actually two lessons to learn here. The first is that combos can be difficult to pull off, and if you don't have all the cards you need then those combo pieces can be useless. Hiro tries to circumvent this problem by running a ton of cards to get his Paracide flipped, but Book of Taiyou and Desert Sunlight are almost entirely worthless if he doesn't have that card. On the flip side, if he drew the Paracide but no way to flip or protect it, then it's just gonna die almost as easily as that Korogashi. The second lesson to learn here is that if you are going to build your deck around a certain card or combo, it needs to actually be good enough to win the game with. In order to get Parasite Paracide to do its thing, you need The Paracide itself A card to either flip it or to protect it long enough to Flip Summon Jade Insect Whistle or RNGesus on your side After you have all of this, only then will you get the reward of turning your opponent's monsters into Insects and 1000 damage. You even give them a free monster to use as Tribute fodder. Turning your opponent's monsters into Insects also doesn't do anything unless you have even more cards to interact with them. Instead of jumping through all of those hoops just to do this, you can instead play DNA Surgery. Really, that's it. Just play that and you get the most important benefit of Parasite Paracide. It's that easy. This one card obsoletes Hiro's entire deck. I don't really like this deck. The Paracide is so weak but having only 3 DNA Surgeries is too inconsistent. Cards like Breaker and D.D. Warrior Lady are great because you don't have to run Insects in this deck. I still ran Gokipon and Howling Insect to try to get the Paracide faster, but you could take them all out for a Magical Merchant instead (which is also searchable by Gokipon wtf). I'm working on one myself, but haven't really made a satisfactory build for that either. Insect Princess is an actual win condition for this deck as she is a walking, talking, growing Final Attack Orders. I could have tried to make room for Pinch Hopper, Saber Beetle, and Doom Dozer. All the more reason to have gotten rid of the Aerosol since it would wreck your field too. Probably only run 1 Paracide since I can search it, AS WELL AS searching for its searcher. Score: 3/10 The next character I would review is a teacher, who like the previous teacher I will have to skip as I haven't unlocked his decklist yet. It's a bit hard to find opportunities to duel most of the teachers in the first part of the game. So instead I'm gonna talk about another Slifer Red whose deck is... well, a masterpiece in wtf.

It's about that time that I crawl back to this forum then make exactly one post before I run off and Tagforce 1 #22: Hide Sometimes I feel like a broken record when I say that some of the students spend time at their respective dorms, but guess what this guy does in the morning? Yep. It's something that makes a lot of sense, but it just doesn't really say anything about the students. Fortunately, we do get a good glimpse into Hide's character, as well as how the school functions, by where he is in the afternoons. After school, he volunteers to watch over the classroom alongside Dean and another Obelisk Blue student. A line from Alexis while she's in the classroom suggests that the classroom is used for detention after school lets out, but some students may be there trying to study. This means that Hide also spends a lot of time tutoring Slifer Reds and Ra Yellows, much more than the other Obelisk Blue guy given that dude's personality. Oh, so that's why his name is Hide. Hide is the kind of person who will work his ass off to climb to the top of the ranks, but he has to put in the effort in or else it isn't a real accomplishment. His sandwich refusal line says that he only eats sandwiches that he drawn himself, and I really like how such an unimportant line works to further establish his character. He is one of those people who would hold himself to a higher standard than he holds everyone else, which, honestly, same. Of course, since he isn't the protagonist of a Yugioh show, Hide isn't the best duelist around, which is something he's jealous about. As shown above, he thinks that Bastion is a posh little showoff. If the two dueled, my money would be on Hide. His deck has a better matchup against Bastion, at least against Bastion's EARTH deck. If you're in Hide's way as he climbs to the top, he will take you down. One part of this game that I don't really talk about is that after beating certain duelists 10 times, they will give you a card. I've neglected this because 99% of the time it's just some completely random shit irrelevant card. Also, the Wiki only has info on some of the cards given to you. Hide is the exception here. Instead of a trashy vanilla of some kind, Hide instead gives you RAIGEKI. A card that has been banned for about two years by the time this game came out. I just love the sheer audacity he has in doing this. Nobody else does this, except for Alexis's friend Jasmine who gives you Harpie's Feather Duster. Hide runs an utterly vicious Skill Drain deck. The idea is to pay LP with Skill Drain or Solemn Judgment, then boost your monsters with Megamorph to deal a massive amount of damage quickly. Which his deck's name cleverly alludes to! Speaking of cool synergies, there's also Goblin Elite Attack Force, which has enough DEF so that the opponent has to run into Bottomless Trap Hole if they want to attack it. Fusilier Dragon is an incredibly versatile card, which is something that this game makes heavy use of. This is only the first of three unique ways in which the AI will use that card. Here, Hide uses it with Skill Drain to effectively summon a 2800 beater without Tribute. Now for the downsides. I've brought it up before, but the AI refuses to use Solemn Judgment unless they have less than 2500 LP, which hampers the Megamorph play. He also is too cautious whenever he doesn't have Skill Drain out. Without it, you can play monsters in Defense and the only monsters he will attack with are Chainsaw Insect and Fusilier. He will still go for direct attacks and attacks against monsters in Attack position. Even with Skill Drain out, I've noticed him being a bit too unwilling to attack at times. Despite these AI flaws, he is still one of the tougher Obelisk Blues to go up against. It's just that if the AI knew how to play his deck, he would be the very best. When it comes to editing his deck, I actually think that this build is nearly perfect. The only questionable choice is the Ultimate Obedient Fiend, which he can't play effectively without discarding it with Card Destruction. I would change that out for Book of Moon. Score: 10/10 In conclusion, Hide is best boi. He has a great character for a generic duelist, his deck meshes together impressively, and he is a force to be reckoned with. They really knocked it out of the park with him.

Made myself some sandwiches before starting up this post. Ham, Muenster cheese, with a bunch of spices that may or may not go on sandwiches. Mmm. Tagforce 1 #21: Hayden As you can tell from my previous entry, you can find this guy in the Slifer Red Dorm's cafeteria in the mornings. That's when breakfast is served, right? For normal people? And when class is through for the day, he comes back for whatever meal people eat in the late afternoon. If you thought Chumley was the hungriest person in the school, you would be wrong. Chumley doesn't live in the cafeteria, as much as he may want to, but Hayden spends as much time as he possibly can in this very room. Help the guy out, will you! Give him a sandwi- Of course. You can't give sandwiches to any of the generic duelists in this game, and the eternally hungry guy is no exception. Just day 195 of ABC wishing he was able to bond with these duelists more than not at all. Oh well, future Tagforce games will let me, even if a little bit, To avoid having Hayden be nothing more than a major disappointment whose entire sliver of character mocks the game's inability to let you befriend these generic duelists, it's headcanon time, babey! Hayden has an eating disorder, but is trying to overcome it. He only eats during breakfast and dinner, but tries to control himself. The rest of the time he spends in the cafeteria isn't helping him out though, the smells and the environment just making him hungrier. That's why he doesn't accept your sandwiches. Hayden uses a unique hybrid Ninja-Insect deck that aims to get Ultimate Insect LV5 (or perhaps even 7) into play early by using cards like Insect Imitation or Ninjitsu Art of Transformation. While that is his strongest play, he also can put Fuhma Shuriken on Sasuke (not the guy from Naruto) for a 2500 ATK monster that insta-kills face-up Defense monsters. He can also banish his Scout Planes with Strike Ninja to get them back on the field, but this is a teaching moment from the game. This combo may look cool, but the Scout Plane does nothing for the deck. He could possibly Tribute Summon an Ultimate Insect, but that's it, and he has better ways of getting those monsters into play. You shouldn't run combos just because you can, you gotta make sure you can benefit from them. Lady Ninja Yae is also practically a vanilla here because of how few WIND monsters he runs, and the ones he does run he kinda wants to keep. Then there's the list of Transformation targets to choose from. While I think Ultimate Insect is one of the better LV chains in the game, perhaps the 2nd or 3rd best in Tagforce 1, it's also one that really wants to evolve into LV7 by their own effects. So while cheating LV5 into play and protecting it for a turn is fine, using the Ninjitsu Art on LV7 just gives you a 2600 vanilla. Also, new headcanon: Hayden can't take your sandwiches because he's on a strict sports diet or something. Except for him, it's the "ninja diet." I am pretty sure I just made that up but it could totally exist in anime. Hayden will attack and dethrone Naruto. This was just a quick rebuild of this deck around some better Transformation targets. This deck has two primary targets for it: Green Baboon for the ability to come back if a Beast is destroyed, and Big Koala which not only is a 2700 beater but a Fusion Material for Master of Oz. You can also search up Des Kangaroo with Transformation if you wanna, and you can even do that with the weak little Level 1 Ninjas too! I didn't test this yet, so I don't know if this deck needs more Beasts, and if so, which ones. I could totally see myself swapping out The Warrior Returning Alive and maybe a Crimson Ninja for Nimble Momonga if I had that card. There just aren't that many good Transformation targets in this game, unfortunately. I can't see anything else that I'd really want to go after. Simorgh, Bird of Divinity would have been an interesting choice but it can't be SSed. Score: 2/10 Phew, all this hard work posting is making me hungry. But don't worry, I'm in for a treat with the next character. Maybe you are too, maybe they'll just be yet another generic duelist to you.

Holy shit it's the 20th character. I've talked about 20 of these dorks. Anyways, the legend of Deron lives on, in a lesser form. Tagforce 1 #20: Giry Out of all of the Slifer Reds in the game, there's only three of them who get breakfast in the mornings. And Giry is one of them. Huh. So yeah, he hangs out there in the mornings, then you can find him in the Shop during the afternoons. A neat thing is that Giry will actually return to the cafeteria in the Slifer Red dorm at 7 P.M. for dinner. Dinner lasts for an hour, so he goes back to the Shop just as it closes, which is kinda weird, but Dorothy and Sadie don't seem to care if students hang out after they close up for the day. Good thing that stealing is humanly impossible. A minor plot point in Yugioh is that the school doctor, gym teacher, and head of the Obelisk Blue Girls dorm, Fonda Fontaine, is too hot. Many of the guys there are madly in love with her. It's actually kinda weird, I'm pretty sure she's too old for them, and teacher-student relationships are almost always a huge yikes. The game references this character detail with Giry's dialogue, as well as a few lines from Syrus. Oh yeah well I chain Royal Decree. Get rekt simp. The reason why he acts so weirdly about Fonda is that his time at Duel Academy has left him very tense. The mysterious disappearances, the threat of the Shadow Riders, evil duel spirits, and the most dangerous of all, exams, have all taken their toll on Giry's well-being. This makes him very jumpy when he talks about anything except for that one teacher. I guess you shouldn't underestimate the power of horny, huh. Ooooooooh, look out, the sandwich is gonna get ya! Overall, I think Giry does a decent job at providing environmental storytelling. Not only are Duel Academy's standards high, but the island is host to a trove of dangers that would set many people on edge. And students are a bit weird about the school nurse. I think that if anything, I would want to hear him vent over why he is so tense all the time. I see these generic ass side characters and I want more from them. Remember when I said there was another FEEEMALE deck several entries back? Here it is! Giry runs a FEEEMALE Warrior-themed Heart of the Underdog deck. Given enough time to set up a decent board and/or Cyber Jar, he can have some pretty decent monsters boosted by The A. Forces. His primary weakness is his insistence on his own take of Ladies Looking Left Tribal, preventing him from using cards like Axe Raider or Dark Blade which have better stats than cards like Kanan or Protector of the Throne. He also for some reason doesn't run the extremely good D.D. Warrior Lady at all. If I were to remake this deck, I'd drop the FEEEMALE-only theme because why are you doing this. Buuuut, that makes deckbuilding less fun, so I'll just keep that theme. Plus I kinda already did the generic Warrior deck with Anca. Obviously put in the D.D. Warrior Lady because this dude has no removal aside from the Invaders. I'd also take out a few of the weaker monsters like Vishwar Randi or Protector or the Throne to put in Performance of Sword and her ritual spell to help him swarm the field for a bigger boost. Maybe even add Gaia Power since all of his boss monsters are EARTH. Well, the Succubus Knight is DARK but it's also just really bad. 1650 ATK for a Level 5 monster? Gross. At this point there may not be enough of a vanilla-to-everything-else ratio to warrant running Heart of the Underdog, but at the same time, that card makes it so that if you dead draw you just keep drawing. You could probably take it out to focus more on other support cards at that point? Or keep it in for the drawing? I don't even know. Score: 2/10 Coincidentally, the next student I will be reviewing is another member of the... Breakfast Club? Uh, he's one of the three kids who show up for breakfast like I had mentioned at the start of this post.

Actually, since I believe that person has some dialogue that I cannot get to yet, I will be skipping that person until a later point in the game. Rip Georg. Instead, I'll be writing about a basic bitch. Tagforce 1 #19: Gillian Well since I never draw anything ever, I'm surprised that this isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, I was expecting it to be even worse. When you talk to Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley in the introduction, they mention that you get a dorm room all to yourself, which is a bit weird given that the three of them all share a dorm, but why complain about uneven dorm arrangements when they benefit you? So after the introduction segment is through, you wake up in your room. You step outside, and immediately waiting for you is this guy. Dude's just standing by your door. "Ok," you think to yourself, "This guy must be excited to meet the new student." And that's all fine and dandy until a few days later and you notice that he's still standing there. Morning, afternoon, Gillian spends every moment waiting at your door. Since Gillian is a character who exists purely for gameplay purposes rather than a story prop, he will just stand there forever. He is there so that when you leave your room, he is the very first guy you meet. Gillian will remind you that no matter how advanced of a duelist you may become, that you should never forget the basics. His deck is also built to suit his purpose, as I will get to later on in this post. But some Slifer Reds are just tougher than others, so you gotta have an easy opponent such as Gillian right there camping out in front of your door. He serves an important purpose for new players, but he's taken up the word 'basic' as his entire life philosophy. His sandwich rejections are basic, his lines when he loses a duel are basic, the entire dude is basic. And basic is boring. The most interesting thing about this entire dude is that he spends way too much time at your door forever. If you're wondering why Gillian's deck has a starter deck aura, it's because he has the same exact deck as you when you start the game. This is your deck. Because of that, I'll be commenting on its functionality as a starter deck and how to improve it as such. It has a variety of tricks, but all in a limited amount. You got a little bit of monster removal, backrow removal, bouncing, stat boosts, Tribute Summons, and even protection. You also have a bunch of 1100-1200 ATK vanilla monsters. There's 12 of them, not counting Aqua Madoor as that card is there to serve as a defensive wall. This means that there is definitely a little bit of room to throw in a Fusion. My recommendation would be Huamnoid Worm Drake since Humanoid Slime is already in this deck, but the other fusion material is EARTH and would throw off the WATER theme a bit. If you wanna keep all the monsters WATER, then use Deepsea Shark instead. You could even toss in a Ritual too to introduce the player to Rituals just a little bit earlier. Crab Turtle or Fortress Whale would be great contenders for this role. It would also give the deck some more Special Summoning ability, since at the moment all you really have is the bear. And Special Summoning is a core mechanic of Yugioh! Especially now! Him having your deck is a good choice for a few reasons. Firstly, when you're new he provides you with a fair mirror match in case the other Slifer Reds prove to be too tough for the starter deck. And there are a few out there who would cream this guy. Then when you start getting new cards, you get to use this guy to test if your deck is doing any better or worse than it was before. And finally once you find out how to make a superpowered deck that crushes everybody, you get to look back at this guy and laugh at how pathetic your deck was at the beginning. Score: 3/10 On a side note, I really wanna make a deck based around the Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness card, but that card just consistently underperforms. Maybe I'll figure out how to make it work, maybe it's doomed to only being good in the DM era and nothing more. Either way, the next duelist is a simp who I will be getting to in the next entry. There is no reason to skip him.