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