THIS AM SPARTAWULF (YGO A Knight's Tale Pt. 2)

"I would rather not
use a weapon if I knew another way
to grapple with the dragon and make good my boast
as I did against Grendel in days gone by.
But I shall be meeting molten venom
in the fire he breathes, so I go forth
in mail-shirt and a shield." (2518-2524)
~Beowulf

Welcome back to my three-part article series on the Warriors of Yu-gi-oh.  So where did I leave off, well the article was posted yesterday, but I'm unsure when this post will be finished.  Anyway, we left off with a warrior deck from 8 years ago, way back in 2004.  That was just prior to the GX era.

At this point, there wasn't a ton of space or technology for the warrior decks of old to rely on.  Other than a few cards, and possibly upgrading it's strategy slightly, the warrior decks weren't going to have a paradigm shift until after the start of the GX era.

Hold it there Sparky.

What was so interesting about the Lost Millennium set?  The set was the first set to introduce us to the Elemental Hero Archetype.  But, at the time, those guys were terrible.  They were the heroes that Yu-gi-oh deserved, but not the ones we needed at the time.  They introduced the idea, the concept of using the extra deck as a toolbox (not necessarily true, as morph and goat control decks actually did that, but it was the first time for Warrior decks, and archetype specific decks).

The Incredibles

Back in the day, the main complaint about hero decks was you couldn't summon the fusions without losing a ton of card advantage, the other complaint was that the fusions weren't generic enough.  You had to have two specific hero type monsters.  We all know where the deck went after that though, as the fusions being printed towards the end of the GX era and during the 5Ds era were extremely generic.

The Elemental Hero archetype during the GX era was popular for something else during the time.  While decks using Fusions were underground, the in-thing to play Heroes in was Big City (and Little City).  The Big City decks used cards like Elemental Hero Ocean and Skyscraper 2: Hero City to generate advantage over time.  The deck played like Gadgets did.  Build up incremental advantage over time by making one-for-one trades and build on a field and eventually run your opponent out of cards.

The Little City decks had a similar play style, but used Skyscraper (the original one).  That deck used hero monsters to run over anything the opponent played, while using recursion such as O-Oversoul.  The heroes not affected by Skyscraper on your opponent's turn where protected by the original hand-trap Honest. The Hero monsters used in this build are really similar to the ones used today.

 Both decks played a powerful spell and trap line-up used to defend that advantage.

At the Same Time

At the same period in time, we had the first incarnations of the Six Samurai decks.

Basically Nick Fury.

The Six Samurai decks of this era were focused on incredibly swarm plays.  It was one of the first times in the game where your opponent could end the game in a turn with a field of several powerful monsters. The early decks used cards like Grandmaster, Yaichi, Sprirt of the Six Samurai and Irou.  Each had a utility effect if you controlled a Six Samurai, and Grandmaster made it easy.  Coupled with spells and traps to protect the decks set up like My Body as a Shield, and the deck was able to make massive swings, and take out chunks of the opponent's life points at a time.

Six Samurai decks are still popular today, and have a lot of new cards brought to the table over the past few years. The strategy still feels close to the Six Samurai decks of old, even if the new strategies are more powerful.

Six Samurai decks epitomize the swarm and toolbox style of Warrior decks.  It was also one of the times that a warrior deck was pushed from being a decent deck into a great deck. 

The Bushi Movement

Phantom Darkness demolished the game, breaking the paradigms and status-quo of the card game in half.  A lot of people feel like this was a turning point in how the game was played, and to an extent I agree.

The Immortal Bushi decks came at a time when decks like Lightsworn, Gladiator Beasts, and Dark Armed Return where at their full power.  Basically at the time the deck relied on slowing the games tempo to play at it's own pace.  The deck epitomized the classic battle of Who's the Aggro?.

There can be only one.

The deck was a popular up until Crossroads of Chaos of the 5Ds era.  Perhaps one of the most interesting underground decks to me.

The pre-synchro versions utilized Skill Drain, Zombyra the Dark, The Immortal Bushi, and the equipment utility of Gearfried the Iron Knight and cards like Blast With Chain.  Some variants used Solidarity to pump the beaters even more.  This was coupled with an anti-meta spell and trap line-up using things like Enemy Controller to take advantage of Bushi's revival ability. The deck was able to push its way through some of the insanely powerful decks at the time.

The post-synchro variant revolved around some of the same ideas as the original deck.  Capitalizing on powerful beaters like Jain, Lightsworn Paladin that filled the graveyard, defense like Necro Gardna, and synchro elements like Junk Synchron and Jutte Fighter to take advantage of the free Bushi. These cards caused the deck still had incremental advantage on the mind.

Bushi decks were the most like the old warrior decks.  Utilizing both toolbox effects and swarm but still maintaining the generic aspect of the deck.

The Conclusion

The first two of these decks are still popular today, Heroes and Six Samurai still see play enough to be considered popular.  What happened to Bushi?  It faded into obscurity.  There are still people playing it, but it's not a popular underground deck anymore, and that's a shame.

Next time, I'm going to talk about my deck.  I'll probably pull some decks from Pojo's Warrior strategy thread as well, and see what other people are coming up with for their own variants.  The last article will probably be up on Friday or Saturday, tomorrow if I post anything it will probably be about my locals, might be nice not to have Yu-gi-oh Warriors on my mind for a day.

Until then.

~ E.P.B.