Hard Times

Sorry I haven't updated anything this past week.  It's been really difficult since my classes are picking up.  At the moment, I have to write two-5 page (not that much though) assignments, memorize all of the bones and their characteristics in the upper body, and complete an annotated bibliography for one of my other classes, as well as keeping up on the readings for all of those classes (and prepare for a few exams).

 Figured I'd let people know what's going on. I will be doing another podcast this week, so in case you missed it, here is last weeks:

~Et3rnal13

Podcast Going Live Soon.

Just waiting for people to get on.  Basically, we will be discussing yu-gi-oh stuff.  Put it on a listen to it in the background or something.  There won't be much video, unless I switch over to show my screen if we are talking about some sort of obscure card. Thanks for watching and listening, I want to do this once a week.

Here are the links:

http://www.twitch.tv/et3rnalphoenix13  - to listen to it live

http://www.youtube.com/eternalbuysafish - to listen when I upload it.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: READ THIS.

I've procrastinated long enough.  So I'm going to be spending the next few days working with a new template.  I probably won't change around too much from how it currently looks, but if you notice, there are a few problems.  For starters, the old Dueling Network images are too big.  Meaning I either need to resize the template for the blog layout, or I need to use smaller images.  One of those two things will happen.

I can't guarantee that I won't go back to the old layout by the way.  This is a bit of an experiment.

~ E.P.B.

Back from the grave

So, this blog has had more of a revolving death door than what the yu-gi-oh series. The theme for today is death, as in why haven't I died yet? That's a good question dear readers. I quit yu-gi-oh for a while, and by quit I mean stopped playing. I still showed up at tournaments, traded, dicked around, but I haven't played the game all that much save for the last week.

I figured I would wait until the new banlist. But wow, was I wrong. Basically the new banlist solves the problems in the game about a format ago, but basically what it has done was take most of the decent budget decks out of the equation. The game's expensive, but I don't think this next format will be that bad. Wind-ups, Dino-Rabbits are really strong, but the hype is making them seem like Jesus in Yu-gi-oh form.

Other news! Decks! Decks that I am working. I've got a varient of Bubble Blade that I'll post.



(also extra deck has a Stardust in it now)

Dueling Network makes posting decks so much easier. Anyway, some different stuff going on. I'm trying to figure out why Bubble Blade variants don't use A Hero Lives. Just seems like it can make super-ninja guy a lot easier. Also using more than one copy of Mask Change, since I ride that card's junk a lot. Masked Hero Acid seems too good not too use, especially when followed up with Ninja Guy otk.

I like the one copy of Ocean, in contrast to the people at Dueling Days, because I feel like the deck has enough control elements to get at least one Ocean effect off. With 3 A Hero Lives, the monster count also has to rise a little bit. I'll probably drop the Calls for some stuff. Since those were being used when I ran more than one Ocean. The deck's really a work in progress (plus I built it at 3:00 in the morning last night)

Other Things.

Also, you may notice the new layout. This will probably be the layout for a while. Also, the group of people that I play with are going to be posting content to a new Blog.

YGODynastyINC

Hopefully at least. Again that's another template, probably more changes coming in the future though, basically, consider it under construction. If that flops I'll still stick around here. DynastyInc will mainly be used for competitive content.

This Blog will still do both. Neither will flop. Lets rock this.

~E.B.

Things Since I’ve Been Away

So, the blog has been dead for most of the summer, mainly because I have been working construction all summer. It’s good money but is seriously taking a toll on pretty much everything I’ve been doing. I’ve got a month of it left, so expect more updates as my time working the summer job comes to a close.

For starters the yu-gi-oh world has changed a lot. We’ve been seeing some incredible stuff, and today sort of marks a historic moment in the games history since the Xyz monsters hit the tcg shores today.

So lets start with that.

Xyz, in a name and cardboard.

So the TCG name was revealed some time ago. To be honest, when I saw the box art for the starter with the new logo and everything I thought it was fake. That’s the thing I like least about the new logo is that it reminds me of the old fake cards you would see at Flea Markets (Dark Rabbi lols). It’s not really the thing I like to be reminded of when I see an official product.

But beyond that, the new logo is decent. I like it better than the 5D’s logo because of its simplicity. While the 5D’s logo looked flashy and kind of cool, I don’t think it was how yu-gi-oh should look, and it was a pretty big change from the original logo we had for a long time. This new logo is new, but it has a familiarity that reminds players of the game’s origin. It’s nice to see that while a lot is changing in the game that there is some comfort in the logo being sort of nostalgic .

Next up that brings us to the name Xyz (pronounced ik-seez). A lot of people were mad that it’s not Exceeds, especially when the new starter was spoiled and we didn’t have the way to say it. Does not really matter now though, since they are pretty close phonetically. Xyz is “how the name has always been,” depending on who you listen to.

I think there has been a lot of downturn on people taking fanlations as literal fact, especially since Kevin Tewart on the pojo forums has been giving us some insight on why the tcg names are what they are. The name is fine for me, the only thing I dislike is the confusion on how it is supposed to be said, that and all the idiots making XYZ Dragon Cannon jokes.

The New Starter

Just a brief review sort of deal. The packaging looks nice, pretty solid design, although I wish there was more of a rulebook in it with something discussing Xyz more since they are new to the game. The black cards themselves have a decent look, it’s a little hard to tell where the boarder is around the card though, I don’t know why this bugged me, it just kind of gives the card a really really black look.

Utopia looks cool, but I think the name could have been longer. The original fanlation was Aspiring Emperor Hope, which even though that wouldn’t have been the name if directly translated, it has been sort-of confirmed that the name was trimmed down in the renaming process. It just doesn’t inspire the same feeling when seeing it for the first time, the name just feels mundane, but that’s no big deal I guess.

Otherwise, it is also one of the new products featuring the new rules text. I really liked this as it made the card text much easier to understand (not that I didn’t know what they did, it’s just nice and concise) and I’m looking foreword to seeing how other cards are handled with this.

I picked up 2 of the deck. Mainly for the Utopia and the Mirror Force (which most people have enough copies by now, I never bought the previous structures with it in it =P)

Duality Confirmed in 2011 Tins

Jizzed.

Towel please and moving on.

League of Legends news?

Leona is still not in the LoL store. Since most people have dying to play her, Riot should probably get their act together. Although it was the right move to delay her rather than having the servers down all the time. I’m expecting that with Leona the new skins will come out as well, and hopefully that will be sometime soon.

Now where the fuck is my Monkey King >.<

Last but not Least

The blog will be getting a makeover soon so the d0j0 can become more 1337. I’m taking a class on HTML, and within a few weeks (probably around the updates start picking up) it will be changed around, hopefully it will attract new readers.

For those of you that have been reading, thanks and expect nicer things soon.

E.P.B.

Blogpost Enemy #1

Exams are officially over, which means good things, and also means that I am actually going to be able to write some more. Lucky world. My laptop has died which also makes it difficult for me to be able to do all of this.

Basically some interesting things have happened. For starters, Nunu in League of Legends got an awesome new skin. I think it looks really cool but there have been a lot of complaints about the skins legendary status (which basically means it is worth $20).

It has a voice over and a couple of particle changes, which are comparable to Gentleman Cho, but people are still hating on the skin for some odd reason. Maybe it’s the concept of it? I don’t really know. I thought the skin was good but to each their own I guess.

Extreme Victory has come out in the yu-gi-oh tcg. Which basically means I’ve bought a lot of it since it’s a set that has a ton of things for archetypes I really like. The set overall is not as impressive as the previous few sets, but it is winding things down for the next set (GENF) which is probably one of the least impressive sets (barring the Exceeds) that we’ve had in a while. For now, I’m loaded it all into EXCV.

Which leads me to the next thing I don’t have money for. Which is New Phyrexia. This set has a lot of my favorite things in it as well, but I won’t have money for it for about a month, which is a sad day. I’ll give more updates when I actually experience it, I’ll probably be playing drafts most often, I don’t like staying in standard unless I can borrow decks.

Last but not least: I still haven’t played Portal 2 or have gotten around to playing Starcraft 2. Need to do both, wanted to get my new laptop first.

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.

Quick Update

Just a quick update. The rules for Exceeds are out.

http://www.pojo.biz/board/showthread.php?t=937399

Follow the link.

~E.P.B.

Interesting Exceeds: that I can see being used

This is just a list of the cards that I think are so far the interesting monsters in the Exceed mechanic. These are followed by short explanations, any translations are borrowed from Shriek.

Underwater Warship Aero Shark
Water/ Fish - Exceeds/ Rank 3/ 1900/ 1000
2x Level 3 Monsters
Once per turn, you can activate this effect by removing 1 of this card's Exceeds Material Monster. Inflict 100 Damage to your opponent's Life Points for each of your removed from play monsters

A card like this isn't very good in terms of actually being good. What I mean by that is that this monster will require a very specific deck to work in, but in all honesty I can see this card having an OTK or some interesting combos down the line. So what ends up happening is the Substitoad phenomenom. I doubt it will happen with this card, since the burn is so small, but you never know.

I would say that I'm less interesting in this one.

Spring Armor Mainspring Meister
Earth/Machine - Exceeds/Rank 4/1900/1500
2x Level 4 Monster
This card gains 300 DEF for each of its Exceeds Material Monster. Once per turn, you can remove 1 of this card's Exceeds Material Monster to select 1 face-up monster on the field. The selected monster is changed to face-down Defense Position. During this turn's End Phase, the selected monster is changed to face-up Attack Position.

Probably my most favorite card that has been revealed so far. The card itself reminds me a lot of Archanite Magician. The card just does a lot of nice things, and in my opinion will find it's home competively in Gravekeepers. Re-using Gravekeeper Spy is just a really strong play, and let's the deck make bigger set-ups and stronger power plays.

The only problem that this card has is in order to be of use, you'll have to overextend your field making it's uses limited, but it's a card thats perfect for decks like GK who have extra deck space.

Protector of the Founders, Tyrus
LIGHT/Angel - Exceeds/Rank 5/2600/1700
2x Level 5 Monster
The following effect is not applied, if this card is without Exceeds Material Monster. This card is not destroyed by card effects. At the end of the Battle Phase this card battled, select 1 card your opponent controls and destroy it. During your End Phase, remove 1 of this card's Exceeds Material Monster.

This is the first Exceed monster revealed that has a Rank above 4. Personally it's hard for me to say if this card is worth it or not. It is an incredibly strong card to be honest, and for the two turns that it will dominate the field, but after that its just kind of a big body and in this game, big bodies don't necessarily last long.

What ends up happening, the card maybe sticks around for 2 turns, kills two of your opponents cards, and then becomes a stick. The problem is the difficult Rank. If this was Rank 4 I could see it becoming the poster child for the mechanic, but sadly it does not.

Vairon Disigma
LIGHT/Angel - Exceed - Effekt/Rank 4/2500/2100
3x Level 4 Monster
Once per turn, you can remove 1 of this card's Exceeds Material Monster to select 1 face-up Attack Position Effect Monster your opponen controls, and equip it to this card treated as an Equip Card. If this card battles with a monster with the same Attribute as a monster card equipped by this effect, skip Damage Calculation and destroy that monster immediately.

Much like the last monster, we look at this as the other direction for the mechanic where it uses more materials than just 2 monsters. The monster is a nice size and a beat-em-up style relinquished. The monster is interesting, and has a good ability, but again, I just can't see it as being strong enough for what it requires.

Still it is one of the stronger Exceeds so it is worth mentioning.

These are most of the Exceeds that I think are worth mentioning. Konami seems to be holding back and testing the waters with the new mechanic this time. All I can say, is that if this keeps up I could see Exceeds ending up more like fusion monsters than anything. Thats not to say fusion is dead, but it is to say that it is a more specialized mechanic than what synchro is. With the way Konami is pushing the mechanic, I'm unsure on whether that is a good thing or not.

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.

Teesting: New Formats

Sooooooooooo...been a while. Still playing League of Legends and all of that stuff. Guess I haven't written in a while because of I've been lazy or something. Anyway, lots to talk about with a new format in ygo, lots to talk about with new and interesting MtG products, and lots to talk about with Magma Chamber still. not. existing. for league of legends yet.

I guess I'm going to try and write more on other things at this point. Keeping up with everything and talk different strategies in said games etc.

This week...

Has been pretty rough. I recently gave up smoking, so it has been kind of rough. The good part is that it pretty much gives me twice as much money than I had before, so now I actually get to buy stuff. Anyway turkey day tomorrow, the parents want me to get up early and peel potatoes...we'll see if that happens. =p

Next week I would like to write more about random bad decks, maybe a competitive piece on Gravekeepers after the YCS, and some overlooked tech cards.

~E.P.B.

LoL Play it nao

I've disappeared because League of Legends is sucking my time. The game is completely free to play, so you should check it out.

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/

The game plays a lot like DotA and is comparable to the WoW Battlegrounds.

Find me on it, my screen name is Et3rnal13.

~E.P.B.

Locals and Such

Yesterday was local day, ended up getting 5th with Batteryman. Got my first glimpse at how well Infernities work. The deck is pretty legit.

I've also started playing the video game Demon Souls for anybody who is interested in that sort of thing. My character is a knight, and is currently dead...-.-; It's hard sometimes, since players can leave hints it's hard to figure out what is a good hint/tip and what you shouldn't worry about.

For exampole throughout one of the levels in the game there were hints dropped warning of ambushes with a lot of bloodstains by them. Well the "ambush" turns out to be 1 or 2 guys, with the other players just being horrible. Then I came across the same thing warniong of a tough enemy and thought "it can't be that bad" and then just getting destroyed. Bleh x.x

Sneak Previews

The Shining Darkness Sneak Preview was today. Needless to say it was pretty good. I got everything I needed before the event even began. Apparently I have the worst like with these events, being the second time my only holo in the 5 packs was Boggart Knight.

Infernities were highly sought after by everyone as expected. Nobody was getting rid of the infernity cards and if they were they were overvalued like crazy. Fore example, there was one guy who was valuing the Infernity Launchers at 50 a pop. Talk about ridiculous. Since my main goal wasn’t picking these cards up I just watched the chaos unfold and needless to say it was funny watching everyone scramble for everything.

With that being said the main cool thing I did notice was all of the new players. A lot of people show up for these that don’t ever come to local events and live in the area. That was something pretty cool, and all of the players weren’t bad either. It makes one wonder why the people never show up in the first place.

All in all the event was pretty cool.

~E.P.B.

All of the Old Posts

All of the old articles can be found via this link.

http://www.epb-ygo.blogspot.com/

If any one still wants to read them, they are all on the old site. Now lets do work, after the local I'm going to today lol. Since the title for this blog has 1337 5p34k in it, I am doubtful that my friends will will want to help with this one, since they are kind of against it.

I know the whole thing is "why didn't you just change the name and layout of the old blog?" etc. Well I thought that since it has been forever since I have written anything that I should start fresh and new. I'm also hoping to have better organization with this site, as I have a lot more features on this now.

With that said I also want to do more casual content, since the old site was "hey lets write articles to try and improve the quality of the game," this site is more of "let's write articles to discuss whats fun and cool in games and life right now." Consider the last blog and this new post to symbolize the death of an old idea. Not that this new blog won't have serious ideas but it will have some goofy stuff as well.

~E.P.B.

New Blog

Okay so this is now more like the home page, if you follow me on twitter you'll get linked here. Basically this is a game blog, or more specifically what me and my friends are currently doing in the nerdy world of card games etc. If you're not interested in that sort of thing, then don't bother reading simple as that.

Basically thats the scenario.

I decided to make this more casual, since articles don't just come everday and I can not pump out crazy helpful content everyday. So now it's more casual. Hope people read it and stuff still, would be cool. The posts are more about ygo and LoL, not a lot of mtg at the moment, since I'm not playing that a lot and currently, only playing casual, in the summer me and my mates plan on going to more PTQ's and bigger tournaments so that content will prolly come around then.

Thanks for reading. =D

~E.P.B.