The Phoenix and the Fire Kings, basic stuff.

The truth is, I just haven't felt like writing the past few days.  Been playing a lot of League of Legends, Binding of Isaac and Fallout New Vegas.  Since most of my close friends quit I don't get as much tournament action as I want to.  There's one locals new here, two about an hour away, and one in Detroit.  Generally feel like writing when I'm, ya know, actually playing the game.  I know there's DN and such, but I really don't want to wade through another online game community.

So yeah, Phoenix.dek.  I thought I was going to bored with the fire king stuff.  To be honest, I didn't look into the archetype all that much.  Boy, I didn't know what I was missing.  The fire king monsters are an entire archetype of Sacred Phoenix incarnates.  I mean how badass is that?

If you want to read what these guys actually do, it would be best to go here.  Since that basically explains it.  No offense to the guy who wrote the guide, I really only use them to look over the effects of cards.  Generally things with very small descriptions that tell me how many of a card I should run, just make me want to scream, deck building just isn't as simple as those things make it out to be, so yeah.

So what are we looking at?  Here's a deck.

Note: running two Diawulfs, changed it earlier, too lazy to change pic.

That's a lot of new cards, hence why it is important to read that link.  Anyway, your ace card of the deck is this guy.

Fire King High Avatar Garunix
Attribute: FIRE
Level: ********(8)
Type: Winged Beast/Effect
ATK: 2700
DEF: 1700
Text: During the next Standby Phase after this card was destroyed by a card effect and sent to the Graveyard: Special Summon this card from the Graveyard. When you do: Destroy all other monsters on the field. When this card is destroyed by battle and sent to the Graveyard: Special Summon 1 "Fire King" monster from your Deck, except "Fire King High Avatar Garunix". 

The entire archetype is basically about him.  He's kind of like a reverse Sacred Phoenix, blowing up monsters instead of spell and traps.  All of the other fire king monsters have a similar destruction clause when they're destroyed, during your next Standby Phase, you get a nifty effect.
These effects range from tutoring, destroying a card in your hand (triggering their effects), and a foolish burial for Fire Kings.

Basically, as the guide put it, the deck plays kind of like scraps...if scraps had access to Rekindling.  The other stuff in the deck all revolves around supporting the other cards. Flamvell Firedog and Rekindling work great since all of the Fire King's have 200 DEF. Swift Scarecrow and Gorz protect you while your monsters die. Wolfberk is basically a Wind-up Rat in the deck (okay, it's not as good, Wolfberk is more like a stronger Junk Synchron) letting you have access to Rank 4s or your monsters effects again.

The deck has some of the most amazing tutor cards in it.  Onslaught of the Fireking and Fire Formation - Tenkei make sure you have access to your monsters.  The amount of tutoring is astonishing.  Fire King Ring Cycle, as the name suggests, lets you kill your own fire monster and bring back a fire monster, basically letting you continue your effects (especially if you destroy Garunix).  

Finally, your decks finishing card is Rekindling. The decklist above only has 2, but it's very possible to run 3 (in fact that might be better, I don't know yet). When you play it, you'll probably have a full field, which you can use at that point to do a number of different things.  The deck also has a lot of access to Rank 8s.  My deck above went a little overboard on that aspect, but you should be able to get the basic gist of it.  Diawolf is basically a Scrap Dragon for beast, winged beast, beast warrior monsters, making it a powerful addition to the extra deck.

So yeah, I know that's kind of basic, but I'm still learning about them myself.  The best thing about this deck is it can be built on a pretty low budget, most of the cards will be in the Fire King structure deck.  The downside is a lot of the power is still OCG only.  Meaning their might be a bit of a wait before the deck can hit it's full power.  I might work on a potential TCG list, but it definitely won't play the same.

Anyway, short article.  Next time, gonna do stuff with the Manga's.  Mainly because I really like Kiryu's Infernities in the manga, and Blackship of Corn ain't no joke either, unless you're like me and are going to attempt to build a corn deck, then it is kind of joke.

Later.

~E.P.B.

So I Hear...

Harpies are getting support in Lords of the Tachyon Galaxy set.  Which, is the next set after Cosmo Balzer Blazer in the TCG.  So yeah, that's pretty epic.  I'm not a big harpy fan myself, but I'm glad for the people that are.  After playing Batteryman for a number of years, I know that feel when you don't get support forever.  It's actually very taxing holding out for it, especially if someone loves the archetype.

Without going into too much detail.

That makes me excited.  I'm holding out for maybe a card (if I'm lucky) for the Dragunity archetype, especially since the set seems like it is going to be a wind based set.  Even if there isn't something specific for it, I'm sure there would be at least one card I could throw in the deck hopefully.  With that said, there was also a few other cards spoiled.

Also, if you're a fan of Number Xyz, your mileage may vary on the new numbers.  Numbers now go higher than 100, so it means more collecting. No. 107 is Galaxy Eyes Tachyon Dragon, which is the counterpart to Galaxy Eyes Photon Dragon.

Chaos Xyz are also getting a boost with Rank Up Magic- Barian's Force, which seems like it will make it a lot easier to make decks around chaos Xyz

Fairy Dragon Ancient, Machine Dragon Powertool, and Flashing Karat Dragon Stardust are all getting released as promo cards in Japan.  For those of you unfamiliar with those cards, they are the manga versions of the dragons from 5Ds.  Basically the monster designs are still the same, but they have some slight variations like different markings on them.  Their effects are also slightly different, and a lot of people would argue that their effects are more powerful.

Along with those promos, some of IV's non-xyz Gimmick Puppet cards are getting released.  Can you say FANSERVICE, because I sure can.

~E.P.B.

Exceed Summoning; the new in-thing????

New format means new rules, well not really. But there has been a couple of new developments in the Yu-gi-oh card game, as well as other games. Now Exceeds is coming to the game, which is another new mechanic to the game like synchro summoning.

What exceeds basically does is like an evolution mechanic.



The stars in the upper left side of the card is the Exceed monsters rank.In order to summon an Exceed monster you need to overlay materials on your side of the field equal to the amount required, the overlaid materials have to be the same level as the exceed monsters rank. For example, No. 17 Revise Dragon takes two level 3 material monsters in order to exceed summon it.

When you exceed summon you stack the monsters underneath the Exceed monster. The monsters stacked underneath are more like tokens than anythings else. Most Exceed monsters currently revealed have effects requiring the removal of these materials. When an Exceed monsters materials are removed, they go to the graveyard, strangely enough they apparently don't count as getting sent to the graveyard so effects like sangan don't activate.

Currently, it is unknown what happens to Exceed materials if the exceed monster is flipped face down.

Exceed monsters apparently do not have any level while on the field, meaning they are unaffected by cards like Gravity Bind and LLAB, and can not be used as Synchro materials (at least from what everyone is gathering at the moment).

Also another interesting bit of unconfirmed ruling knowledge is on the Exceed summon being negated. According to once of the video clips floating around pojo, it is fairly useless to negate an exceed summon, because the materials will still be on the field.

Now a lot of the rulings involving these monsters are unknown, but they are an interesting addition to the game. I'm currently divided on whether they are going to be good for the game or whatever. I know a lot of people liked the old school yu-gi-oh, and felt like Synchros were a pretty drastic change, which they were, and they are wary on what Exceeds means for the game.

I think it's good that the game is getting new mechanics that make it unique, and it really feels like the game has come a long way from being considered the simpler version of MtG, but I am worried about what it means for the game in the long run.

I mean, games like Duel Masters (in Japan) apparently get away with introducing a lot of new mechanics, but I don't think yu-gi-oh players are as used to having a constant changing environment. Especially if the change just keeps sneaking up on us every 4 years. I mean I honestly thought synchros would be the last big change, but I was wrong.

Anyway, the mechanic looks interesting, should be fun.

~E.P.B.