as i have mentioned in my older post, the most lethal ability in xx-saber does not lie in the ability to swarm, but the ability to drop the whole of your opponent's hand. the very same factory why spamming 5 trishulas in one turn is pure ownage.

and as i am hoping TCG will release more xx-saber supports in the shining darkness, my wish just cam true when i checked shriek and am truely awed by xx-saber boggart knight! one word: COOL~

cards that trade a one-for-one advantage may not be what it seems on the surface. in fact, it often brings more than 1 card advantage for you.

how so?

let us take a look at fissure, it doesnt sound as simple as what it does, and not just letting you destroy one monster with the lowest attack so simple.

think about it, if it is a jinzo that you are destorying, you rip your opponent off his normal summon for the jinzo, and the monster that is used to tribute for it. it is not a plus one in this case, or rather theoretically it is a plus THREE!

one for wasting his normal summon, which is precious since it is only once per turn; two for "destroying" the monster that use to tribute for jinzo; lastly the jinzo itself.

what about traps/magic?

using cyclone as an example, and you destroy 1 magic/trap during end phase that your opponent had just set. now, on your turn, your opponent had no backrow that can protect him and you can rest assure to swarm your field safely and seal the game.

in this instance, you are destroying some unknown magic/trap, which is a one-for-one trade. however, what benefits you on top of that is that you have no worries about your opponent's backrow anymore, which leads to your eventual victory. who says cards like these is a one-for-one trade?

for those of you who reads slam dunk, remember what the coach says when shohoku is losing? if they are able to defend the opponent's offense, getting the rebound and score, it is equivalent to 4 points scored.

get the idea?

rescue cat works well with mine mole, allows you to draw 1 card at such a little cost.

just a pity that currently there is no great beast synchro monsters.

more rulings that i found interesting.

1. goyo vs machina fortress:
chain link 1: machina fortress, since it is mandatory.
chain link 2: goyo, since it is optional.
goyo whack machina fortress, or machina fortress suicide with goyo, you still get to snatch machina fortress.

2. blackfeather dragon doesnt work with against the wind:
since you are not taking any damage due to blackfeather dragon's effect, you do not add the targeted monster to hand.

3. multiple gladiator beast fighting each other:
example: player A has 2 gladiator beast, player B has 1, after fighting, battling, gladiatoring(LOL...), all of turn player's gladiator beast gets to tag first, followed by his opponent. gladiator beasts do not chain to each other, they form their own chain and are resolved separately.

4. dark bribe has no cost:
1.letting your opponent draw a card is not a cost, but part of the effect.
2.you cannot activate dark bribe if your opponent has no card in his deck.

doing a ruling update this time since machine deck is on the rise at my locals recently.


Rulings taken from yugioh wikia and the link is here, i will just mention those important ones:

When "machina fortress" is destroyed by battle, its effect acticates and targets one card on your opponent's side of the field.



When "machina fortress" is targeted by an opponent's monster's effect, its effect which discards a card from your opponent's hand does not start a chain link.

doesnt start a chain, meaning no chariot or divine wrath.

If "machina fortress" is targeted by an opponent's Effect Monster's effect, then you check your opponent's hand and discard one card when the opponent's Effect Monster's effect resolves, before doing anything else.

Suppose "machina fortress" is targeted by an opponent's Effect Monster's effect and then "enemy controller" is Chained. After resolving the effect of "enemy controller", "machina fortress" is under your opponent's control, so when resolving the opponent's Effect Monster's effect "machina fortress" is no longer treated as "being targeted by an opponent's Effect Monster's effect". Thus, you do not apply the effect of "machina fortress" which discards one card from the opponent's hand.

cool...LOL.

The effect which Special Summons "machina fortress" by discarding monster(s) from the hand does not start a chain link.

Effects like "solemn judgement" and the effect of "thunder king rai-oh" may be activated if "machina fortress" is Special Summoning itself by its effect, to negate the Special Summon of "machina fortress".


When special summoning "machina fortress", discarding from your hand is a cost.

If "macro cosmos" is active, then you cannot discard "machina fortress" and other machine-type monsters to Special Summon that "machina fortress", since after being discarded "machina fortress" will be removed from play.


anyway, hope everyone gets a clearer picture after this and understand how this guy works. be clear of his strength and weakness and you will find a way to counter it. some examples:
1. a.o.j catastor.
2. icarus attack, even if he has gearframe equipped to it, he will die also.
3. rai-oh for obvious reasons stated above.
4. soul release etc, remove it from play before your opponent can special summon him out.
5. smashing ground!

recently saw an increasing trend in the use of mornach decks, so wanted to try it out myself as well and decided to make this deck. Crazy mornach!




One point i notice about mornach deck is that they are too vulnerable to M/T destructions. So what if you successfully removed from play their colossal fighter and damage your opponent by 1000LP, when your caius gets bottomless-ed and you waste that one precious normal summon?

In the era whereby the pace of the game is so fast, that monsters just keep on special summoning themselves, once per turn normal summons definitely cannot outrun them. not only that you leave your field exposed to your opponent and he can easily give you a hard time on his turn.

taking these points into consideration, i had added in 3 dust tornadoes for M/T removal purpose and protect your once per turn normal summon mornach. destroying those M/T during end phase is fun!

spy and descendant make a good combination in this deck because, when spy flips you search out descendant, and using descendant's effect, you can easily get rid of anything that is annoying by tributing spy. at the same time leaving descendant for the arrival of your mornach.

putting it simply, removing M/T is the main priority in this deck, so that your opponent's backrow is free from worries. and mornach will brainlessly kick and beat. hence the name crazy mornach.

ally genex birdman and mornachs also make a good pair. bounce bounce mornachs, reuse reuse  their effects and let the mornachs do the rest of the job.

looking at the recent tourneys held in japan, mornachs seem to be coming back, sweeping a few of the tourneys.

looks like mornach is coming back strong and powerful.

this year's world championship will definitely see a tough battle among the various themes.

remember that i said a picture tells a thousand words in YuGiOh? here is another example.



Effect: This card cannot be special summoned from your extra deck except by fusion summon. This card cannot be destroyed by card effects. If this card attacks a defense position monster, and this card's ATK is higher than that monster's DEF, inflict the difference as battle damage to your opponent's life points. Also, when this card destroys a monster by battle and sends it to the graveyard, gain life points equal to the ATK of the destroyed monster.

the concept of accel synchro is cool. in fact, after so many years, the introduction of synchro into the game is revolutionary. it is basically "fusion" of two monsters with the use of fusion. and i am really excited to see how accel synchro will change the game and how it affects the game play as well.

synchro summon on your opponent's turn is cool, but in order to be "cooler" the effect must be good. anyway, can throw away emergency tuning when accel synchro comes out, or we have already done that?LOL...

what comes to mind is perhaps when konami runs out of idea, they may be introducing accel fusion next. accel fusion allows you to synchro 1 tuner-fusion monster with a non-tuner. i believe the time has not come to this stage yet. because konami will save these concepts and slowly publish them one by one to earn more money. it doesnt make sense to them by introducing both accel synchro and accel fusion at the same time, does it?

it is about a decade before we see the arrival of synchro monster, maybe it takes about another decade for accel fusion? who knows...?

Note: before i wrote this post, i have not seen the latest update on shriek about ultimate psychicker, who is a fusion of a psychic synchro monster and a psychic monster. looks like accel fusion is not too far away.

since allure of darkness gets limited, black feather players had no choice but to find a less capable substitute of it, and it is none other than black feather treasure. though with the high restrictions of the card and its inflexibily and demanding cost, not many players like it. however, we do see a likely good complement card  to it.

Final countdown deck will be receiving another support from the new set: the duelist revolution. after battle fader, zero guardna etc, we have another monster to helps the deck to stall time!

what caught my attention when the new banlist was released was that power of unity, or united we stand becomes semi-limited now. and i thought that was kinda BOOMZ.

long long time ago, when gemini elf and blood volrus was still owning, power of unity is a staple card in most of the decks. because it boosts up the attack of the monster, and sometimes finish your opponent. bear in mind OTK was seldom in those days, and the only form of OTK was through the brute strength of the monsters.

as the game slowly progress and more cards are made, it loses its power slowly and you rarely see people playing it now.

i was looking through my dimension gladiator beast deck a few days ago and something caught my attention and i thought, they make a pretty good partner.



Guardian Eatos allows you to special summon him when you have no monsters in grave, and then you can normal summon another monster. equip power of unity to him and its attack immediately becomes 4100. allows you to destroy any monsters with ease.

whats more, it has a build-in miniature size soul release for you. after you have fun destroying the opposing monster, you can send power of unity to grave and remove from play them in main phase 2. and with burial from different dimension becomes limited now, getting those monster back just becomes more difficult. and the game will be to your advantage in an instant.

any graveyard-related decks, such as whirlwind-blackfeather, infernity etc definitely will get a huge blow by this card.

things get funnier when you survived a turn. send  power of unity, pump up its attack, remove monster that you hate to see in the grave and this card becomes a 3000ATK monster. and smile at your opponent if you have another copy of power of unity.

power of unity alone is devastating as well as it helps your monster to look " bigger". remember the fun times that you had with scapegoat tokens and power of unity? now having a 6400ATK token is no longer a fairy tale!

as time passes, YuGiOh has evolved from very basic monster fighting kind of duel to very complex gameplays that involves one-turn-kill or first-turn-kill.

As such, that very first turn becomes so important that more often than not, the first player has the upper hand and most of the time proceed to win the match.

finish your opponent within 1 turn or even the first turn seals the match quickly, its saves time, it saves the trouble. hence recently we saw many decks that resolves around OTK and FTK merge. that very first turn becomes so important that every player wishes to turn the game to their advantage, so that even if the combo fails, it leaves the opponent with nasty situations that he cant deal with.

that is why we saw the infinite hand-dropping xx-saber loop, infinite DDB-bombing xx-saber loop, magical explosion OTK, trishula remove everything loop/combo.

they have one thing in common, maximise that one turn you have, and finish off your opponent.

since trishula is from Duel Terminal, we wouldnt have a chance to see it in action in the coming world championship.

and right now, there is one deck that is still capable of executing that: xx-sabers.

this is the beginning of a new era and new format since the official march 2010 banlist starts to take place. infernity is really the new "in" thing now and everyone is trying to get that highly sought after trishula and infernity archfiend. however, is it really worth the price?

it is still worth its price in terms of official tournament, how so? the reason why infernity deck is so strong and powerful lies in the fact that the synchro monster that it is able to bring out pawns the game. yes, that is trishula. which, sadly is unable to use in official tournament.

think again, how would infernity deck fare without trishula? the second best replacement would be mist wurm, again, it is not tournament legal. at least in the official tournament.

without these two, at least for now, what other monsters help you to win game? what other monsters can help to do the same devastating effect? does that means that it will not top the tournament? no, there is always hope!

lets recap the loop again, send infernity gun, revive necromancer and bettle, necromancer special summon infernity archfiend, archfiend take infernity gun from deck...

the situation puts you in a situation whereby you have 1 necromancer, 1 bettle, 1 archfiend on field and you have 1 gun in hand. things you can do now:

1. tribute bettle, special summon 2 more beetle from deck.
2. sychro beetle with archfiend for any level 6 monster that you prefer.
3. sychro 2nd beetle with the 6 star monster for stardust, it is there for protection.
4. field now: stardust + necromancer. send infernity gun, revive necromancer and beetle, necromancer effect special summon archfiend, and then add one more gun to hand.
5. synchro 2 necromancer and beetle for red demon(for maximum damage), send gun again, revived beetle and archfiend, archfiend effect take mirage, so that you can do the loop again if you have things like pot of benevolence, tranmigration prophecy. synchro for goyo guardian.
6. your field now, goyo guardian, stardust, red demon, infernity archfiend.

still too powerful, you have stardust to protect you, defender-breaker like red demon, stealer like goyo guardian, instant OTK as well. however, things may not turn turn out the way you want it to be. one thing that must be noted is the handsize of your opponent, which may turn over the table in his turn should he survive with cards like threatening roar, waboku.

if you have realize, infernity deck's combo basically exhaust all the cards within one turn. and it is either you die or your opponent die kind of situation.