I have been hearing a lot of talk about the Crimson Crisis set, and quite a bit of talk about the new tuner, Royal Swamp Eel.

Royal Swamp Eel
Fish/Tuner
Level 4/Water
1700/1200
If this card is used as a synchro-material monster, all the other synchro-material monsters must be the Fish-type.

As a card, this card has some of the greatest synergy with a dedicated theme deck. It can be brought out due to its fish type, it's a level 4 which eases synchros,...

Fish, often a staple in my diet, has always seemed like a monster type that Konami created because they couldn't call them all Aqua or Sea Serpent. Other than 7 Colored Fish, there weren't many fish that were put into duelists deck. Even when A Legendary Ocean came out, decks became focused on water attributed monsters, rather than solely fish based. Tactical Evolution came, and Abyssal Kingshark was released as a secret rare. Although it had an interesting ability and fairly decent attack, it didn't...

When MEV came out there were a couple of decks that managed to get the fourth turn kill against many, if not all of the decks out there. Three of these decks created an infinite loop thanks to Black Box, one of which I am proud to say I created: Bosom Buddies. At the moment the decks were created the text of Black Box read as printed: “Shuffle up to three target cards from a single player’s KO’d pile into his deck. If you control an X-Force character, draw a card.” Thankfully an errata was created...

Why do we love this game?

That is such a tricky question, and one that will have a different answer for everyone who asks it of themselves. It's one that will maybe even elude precision.

That said, it may be the most important question we can ask about this game.

My goal is to win. If I don't consider the question that much I might answer that winning is why I play Magic, but I think...

Why do budget decks tend to fail? Many people would reply “winning costs money.” I think that this is true…to a degree. I cannot tell you how many decks I have seen where a player, with good intention, tries to take a Tier 1 deck, and substitute important cards with the most comparable card in their price range. Probably the most common example of this is when a player replaces Cryptic Command in Faeries with Negate.

Why does this not work?

Obvious to...

The Day in which I speak of is April 25, 2009 or Shonen Jump Championship Anaheim.

The day started with me and my friends leaving for the event. It would take about fourty-five minutes to get there. We arrived to find a huge line for the event. We then waited for about an hour and a half to move two feet. We finally got registered, my friend was number three hundred. We then sat down on the florr and I had to make four side decks for other people and also myself. As we were deciding...

I know it was the "cool" thing to do back in the day when everyone was rolling Summoned Skulls and La Jinns, but seriously this has got to stop.

You guys need to stop opening up the plastic on Shonen Jump magazines and taking the card. It's not funny anymore. The only reason people buy that magazine is for the card, do you know how if feels to buy a Shonen Jump that appears sealed then open it and find out that someone used a fricken' Change of Heart on your promo card? I...

Ladies and gentlemen, as I'm sure you're all aware, YuGiOh, much like every TCG, has an ever-changing factor to it, what we players call the Metagame. And recently, as of March 1st, for the first time in a quite a while, the Metagame has in fact been blown wide open.

As a result of the top dog of the last Advanced format, TeleDAD, getting hit hard, there is no longer a definitive top deck. New and creative deck ideas have been given room to flourish, and with Konami's recent take-over...

This is my second fiddle. I'm actually in the process of writing something much larger and much less focused for this site. Writing is a sloppy word here, “struggling with” probably fits better. This future blog is going to focus on exactly what a person should do when building a deck, start to finish. Big topic. Big blog. Takes time.

So what is this blog about, now that I've finished promoting something that...

5/16/09 – 5/17/09 Ashenvale Realm Championships Report
by Michael Lum

Introduction
After Justin and Ian Toffler and myself qualified in the Vancouver Realm Qualifiers, we decided to make the trip down to Salem, Oregon, for the Realm Championships. After all, it wasn’t too far – a ferry trip and about a five hour drive. My wife, Donna, decided to come with to do some shopping and provide moral support.
After much deliberation, I thought I’d run Varanis Bitterstar....