New Stuff - A minor Assessment

A lot of new stuff has been going on.

For starters, Six Samurais winning the last YCS was kind of to be expected. The deck is still incredibly powerful. From what I can see from my experiance of playing against the deck is that an out to Shi En are a must if you want to win. The deck really establishes a powerful lockdown with that opening that almost seems to happen every game.

I'll admit that I wasn't impressed with the deck when I first played against it way back when STOR came out. But that was mainly due to my own skepticism and the deck getting bad hands when I went against it (which seems hard to believe right now). I feel like effect monsters have gotten really power since the deck has been doing well (effect monsters as a counter to cards like Shi En).

I love the diversity of the format, but the one thing I dislike is that Six Samurai keep the metagame from being a slower based metagame. The reason I'm saying this is because, despite the banlist addressing some of the more pressing issues, I think Samurais are still too strong. Shi En is just too powerful of a card in my opinion, especially for a turn 1 opening, which can essentially lock-out your opponent in the pre-sideboard game.

I'm not saying Sams are the best deck (although they might be)but I am saying that what they offer is warping a meta-game to the point where a lot of "instant" speed disruption is required, which just seems funky to me especially since Konami restricted two cards because they were able to do this.

Direct from Hand effects are quickly dominating this game, cards like Puppet Plant and Effect Veiler are just simple better than their spell and trap options, especially in a metagame where shutting down spell and traps seems to be the trend. Powerful synchro-based decks are also not helping this. I'm not saying Dragunities are overpowered or that synchro-based is bad, I just feel like it's speeding up the metagame, coupled with from-hand effects and the inclusion of drastic spell and trap disruption (that and counter-traps being really really powerful).

I'm just saying that the game shouldn't be boiled down to having whoever going second having to fight a huge uphill battle, with a decent portion of their deck shut down. (Spell and traps to Shi En, Monsters to Solemn Warnings or Royal Tribute, you get the idea).

Other Stuff

GX Manga is ending in Japan. The storyline was probably the best spin-off to the original series. I know a lot of people playing the game don't care about it that much, but it does mean that the release of Hero related support will probably cease, although they'll probably get some legacy support here and there.

Card prices are also another big issue. I'm not complaining about prices, even if I find the amount that Dualities and Warnings are going for a bit rediculous. I like the fact that certain cards that I've felt like are worth more than what they were at are going up. Cards like Armory Arm for example.

I don't like the idea of generic cards going up in prices or being too unobtainable, but I don't mind price shifts that involve specialty cards like Armory Arm where the cards seem like they should have been worth something in the first place. With that said I think the price market is pretty stable right now aside from all the rediculousness.

With that said, spoiler cards for Extreme Victory are slowly being released. With Gladiators Training and the new Nordic Alfar monster being the first two shown. Pretty exciting stuff.