Harpies 2013

Okay, my wife can tell you (at least where the fun games are concerned) my Harpies have always been a little nasty. There is just so much you can do with a well played card and even better with a little field lead. Elegant Egotist into Harpie Lady #1, chain Inferno Reckless Summon nab all cards named Harpie Lady in your hand, deck, and graveyard (At the time this was just Lady #1, Cyber, and Queen [in graveyard]. Well #2, and #3 count, but who used them?) Now we add Dancer and Channeler! Oh my!

Hysteric Sign? Gorgeous. Search for Elegant Egotist, or reclaim it from graveyard. That alone is nifty. It would be better if we could errata Egotist to summon other Harpie cards too, a man can dream. (After all they errata-ed away Harpie Brother to Sky Scout. It could have been used another target for Hysteric Sign, more on that to come.) Hysteric Sign has an awesome second effect when sent from the hand or field to the graveyard add up to 3 "Harpie" cards with different names from your deck. What great targets: Either Pet, any Lady (vanilla, #1,2,3 or Cyber), Dancer, Queen, Channeler, Hunting Ground field spell, or Lady Phoenix Formation spell. This can lead to great plays. Destroy it when you summon a Harpie using Hunting Grounds, get more Harpies to swarm your enemies. Other nifty methods of triggering that second effect include: Raigeki Break and Lightning Vortex cost, Magical Hats bait, and even letting your opponent nuke it face down.

Channeler and Dancer are very useful. Dancer is fine return 1 wind monster you control to get a second normal summon of a Wind monster. This can be used to bounce Harpies to get the best effects out at once. Channeler is a little more useful, she summons 1 Harpie monster from your deck by discarding a Harpie card (see targets for Hysteric Sign). Also while you control a Dragon monster she becomes level 7. This means you could summon Channeler discard any Harpie card to summon Pet dragon in def, the exceed into any rank 7 XYZ monster. Both Channeler and Dancer can only be used once a turn and are named Harpie Lady on the field or in the grave.

Now I used to use Aqua Chorus to add 500 attack to each of my Harpies, but there is a new hotness. Credit goes to Hans for showing me this: Phalanx Pike equipped monster gains 900 attack for each card in the graveyard with the same name. Now the maths: 3 Dancers, 3 Channelers, 3 Queens, and 2 Ladies #1 on a Cyber Harpie Lady (1800 attack) is 11,700 attack. Mwa ha ha! Almost any Harpie with 7 in the grave becomes OTK. Two of these bad boys can turn a game on it's head.

I can't walk away without talking about XYZ monsters. There are 3 that really stand out in a Harpie deck. Lightning Chidori requires 2 level 4 Wind monster (nearly every card in our deck) and can return a target to the top of your opponent's deck. Good. Ice Beast Zerofyne requires 2 level 4 Winged Beasts and has a real nasty effect. Detach 1 material to negate all the effects of face up cards on your opponent's side of the field, and gains 300 attack for each face up card on the field other than this one. With 2000 base attack Zerofyne becomes a great beatstick at the drop of a hat. Best of all is Harpie's Pet Phantasmal Dragon which requires 3 level 4 Wind monsters. While Phantasmal Dragon has materials attached it gets awesome effects: It can attack directly, and Harpie monsters can't be targeted by attacks or effects. It detaches 1 monster during your end phase, so you should do some damage and stall out your opponent for a turn or two.

Harpie 2013 Beta
Monsters: 17
Harpie's Pet Dragon
2x Harpie's Pet Baby Dragon
Cyber Harpie Lady
2x Harpie Lady #1
3x Harpie Channeler
3x Harpie Dancer
3x Harpie Queen
Battlestorm
Genex Ally Birdman

Spells: 13
2x Phalanx Pike
2x Inferno Reckless Summon
3x Hysteric Sign
2x Elegant Egotist
3x Harpie's Hunting Ground
Harpie Lady Phoenix Formation

Traps: 10
2x Mirror Force
2x Raigeki Break
Aqua Chorus
2x Icarus Attack
3x Hysteric Party

Extra Deck: 8
2x Lightning Chidori
2x Ice Beast Zerofyne
3x Harpie's Pet Phantasmal Dragon
Black Rose Dragon

That's That.
I'm out.

Where I Stand Today

Tomorrow is one of the local tournament days here in Abilene. While I will most likely not be going I do want to get ready for my splash back into tournament play. Right now I have a few decks that are tournament ready and one in particular almost there. While I doubt I can go from never playing people to winning I do have faith that some of this could be nasty and competitive. Now how do they stand up to my playstyle? And how do I think they would do?

Right now ready to go I have the following decks:
Evolswarm (A Jeff build)
Malefic Skill Drain (A Jeff Build, modified)
Harpies 2013
Blackwings 2013
and My Token Wetlands version 2.3 (missing 3 cards in transit)


Deck "cores" I have but haven't completed:
A Blue-Eyes Ult deck version 1.3 (mostly non-competitive... for now)
A Skeletal Chaos Dragon I'm working on
Bad Inzektor kit (mostly to learn from)
Hieratic Dragon kit
Almost all the Spellbooks (no High Priestess, some ideas though)
Seven Samurai kit

Now what here  would be competitive?
Basically the 4 on top... and maybe the Token madness on the local scene.

What fits my playstyle?
Honestly I miss my old Harpies right now, so I really want to toy with them. The Malefics are just nasty when they are hot and I love that. The Evolsaur deck is so very lukewarm I can't even begin to describe it. I see the potential, but just don't groove it very well. And that brings us to Blackwings.

Do I want to play Blackwings? I have no idea.
I have almost all the Blackwing cards ever. Gram the Shining Star is the exception. Blackwings can be a really effective deck. I do actually know a lot of the plays already, not as much to learn here. Maybe I do.

Can I make them my own?
This is really the crux for me. Anyone can net-deck or buy a deck that should work just fine out the box (Evolsaurs I'm looking at you) but you have to learn the deck in and out and really own the soul of the deck, not just pilot the deck, but run it. Have confidence to change it and  know how your sides and tweaks affect the deck. Guess I'll just have to build it and see.

State of The Duel Then (Around September 2004)

This was (best as I can tell) when I left Yugioh as a semi-competitive player. So where did we stand and what was our mindset? how does this effect me as a player coming back into the game today?

Let's start with the ban list for references:

Forbidden	Limited	Semi-Limited
Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End Dark Hole Delinquent Duo Graceful Charity Harpie's Feather Duster Imperial Order Mirror Force Monster Reborn Raigeki Sangan United We Stand Witch of the Black Forest Yata-Garasu	Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning Breaker the Magical Warrior Butterfly Dagger - Elma Call of the Haunted Card Destruction Ceasefire Change of Heart Confiscation Cyber Jar Dark Magician of Chaos Exchange of the Spirit Exiled Force Exodia the Forbidden One Fiber Jar Heavy Storm Injection Fairy Lily Jinzo Left Arm of the Forbidden One Left Leg of the Forbidden One Mage Power Magic Cylinder Magical Scientist Mirage of Nightmare Morphing Jar Mystical Space Typhoon Painful Choice Pot of Greed Premature Burial Protector of the Sanctuary Reckless Greed Reflect Bounder Right Arm of the Forbidden One Right Leg of the Forbidden One Ring of Destruction Sinister Serpent Snatch Steal Swords of Revealing Light The Forceful Sentry Tribe-Infecting Virus Twin-Headed Behemoth Upstart Goblin Vampire Lord	Creature Swap Last Turn Makyura the Destructor Manticore of Darkness Marauding Captain Morphing Jar #2 Nobleman of Crossout Reinforcement of the Army

Sorry for such an ugly table, but I'm being lazy for now.
Also a quick reminder the latest booster pack was Soul of The Duelist.
Now as to the ban list itself Yata-Lock had came and was nailed shut with this list, and the end of Chaos was in sight with Envoy of the End gone. Lilly was no longer banned and Ring of Destruction was brand new hottness for game ending plays at 3.

From my memory the decks that were tearing up the competition were (in no particular order)
Frog-Narchs (okay maybe this one deserves top spot) 
Remnant of Chaos decks
Warrior Toolboxes especially when tweaked for control or to support a planned endgame (Blue eyes or some other bruiser as a planned "finisher")
and a combination of Burn/Stall that seems to be a mainstay.

Okay Frog-narchs... where to begin.
First off the Monarchs were released very slowly, and were rare and "money" cards. I couldn't really spend the coin to be truly competitive, I couldn't really afford to hold on to these if and when I would get one. Even the Frogs took effort to get your hands on. This deck is called control these days, but I would never call it that. The Monarchs were a disruption deck. The deck revolved around summoning the Monarchs (substantial beat sticks with wonderful disruption effects) and running over anything in your way. This was the beginning of an aggressive style of control that lead to this current era of OTK and 2-3 ends to a duel.

UGH I'm tapped for now. more to come later

Welcome to whatever this grows into.

Well, I'm gonna do this.
Whatever this is...

I'm stepping back into Yugioh TCG after being gone since 2004, more or less. A lot has changed... but not as much as people think, and this old sharp still has some new tricks.

Plans for this blog:
"State of the Duel" comments on how things are now, this will be about the game and the meta as a whole not so much as specifics on decks or tournament reports but the "Heart" of our game.

Monthly Review name to be determined, this should be where I talk about tournaments and top meta decks in general wide brushstrokes. My opinions on meta choices, staples, and counter plays.

Deck Labs tearing apart net decks and archetypes with an eye to budget builds and oddball choices. This is for general deck work.

Deck Spotlight Here is as in-depth a review of meta decks as I can produce, and maybe sometimes a spotlight on decks from the past, when I last played, when Chaos and Frog-narchs ruled the game. Stepping through the reports over the year to get a view on the present.

That's all I'm gonna plan right now, don't want to be over ambitious.