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YS: Minneapolis - Gladiator Beast Bandwagon

Posted On 04/15/2008 11:25:46 by MagicDrafter

Ahoy, time for another blog. I'm not going to do a indepth analysis or anything because it's exam time. Instead, this blog is just for those who have nothing better to do than to read Yugioh literature in their spare time. (Although reading abuot Yugioh sounds bad, writing about Yugiho is much worse.)

Last blog I mentioned about the unusually large number of Six Samurai decks at Toronto regionals. The theory is that although Six Samurai is still an underdog against the Dark Armed Dragon, its ability to randomly lucksack the opponent allows it to occassionally beat Dark Armed Dragon while being a relatively affordable deck type made it a popular deck to run. The sheer number of Six Samurai essentially promised quite a few spots for it at the low number tables. For this reason, I do not believe that Six Samurai is a great deck to play unless a) you stack or b) you believe in your luck.

Fast forward to SJC Minneapolis and there only happens to be 1 Six Samurai deck in top 16. What happened? First, every round in a tournament makes it much harder for the Six Samurai player to top 16 because of the luck sack factor. Second, people were ready for Six Samurai. Pretty much everyone were running Kinetic Soldier in the sidedeck as well as armed with the knowledge on how it works. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Crush Card Virus.

Six Samurai essentially die to a 2 card combo. Now, one of those card in the combo (the less than 1000 ATK Dark monster) is readily accessible. That means when a player running Crush Card Virus draws Crush Card Virus, it's game over for the Six Samurai player barring a Solemn Judgment or the greatest top decks ever.

So Six Samurai are completely screwed by Crush Card Virus, what happened to Oppression Gadgets? They were not even found in top 16. I for one have always disliked Oppression Gadgets because the deck just sometimes blows up from the potential amount of bad hands. Solemn Judgment and Royal Oppression makes for a very LP draining deck. The best guess I have is that because the deck sucked in the first place, it just didn't have the stuff to top 16. My second best guess is that the deck sucked so no one played it.

So what did top 16? A plethora of Dark Armed Dragon decks, 2 Gladiator Beasts, a Dark Return deck, a Six Samurai deck and a Spell Economics combo deck. The oddball is obviously Gladiator Beasts. Like what the hell? Gladiator Beasts? I guess every deck has its days. To find out how on Earth does Gladiator Beasts win games, let's look at one of the featured matches on Metagame.com.

Game 1 had Gladiator Beasts doing nothing when staring down a Dasher and Dark Armed Dragon not doing anything because of defense mode Gladiator Beast Hoplomus. The stalemate was broken after Gold Sarcophagus got out Dimension Fusion. Game 2 had Dark Armed Dragon was destroyed by Crush Card Virus. Game 3 had Dark Armed Dragon doing nothing except getting beaten down by Gladiator Beasts. I'm pretty sure someone out there is agreeingwith me that was a very lucky match for Paul Levitin (I'll assume it's luck unless proven otherwise). Paul Levitin ran Crush Card Virus with 2 eligible tribute material and both materials are not searchable. Game 3 was just one of those games where the Dark Armed Dragon deck blows up by itself.

So after seeing this, I am hesitant to jump on the Gladiator Beasts bandwagon yet. Gladiator Beast Heraklinos is a decently pricey card so making an investment in it not a thing to do on a whim. I do not think Gladiator Beasts can continue to make a strong impact on the game because it's very easy to kill with hate. King Tiger Wanghu comes to mind as it hoses a lot of Gladiator Beasts monsters. Skill Drain also tears the deck apart as Gladiator Beasts are pretty bad without their effects. Begone Knave also screws it over for those willing to try a random card.

So that's all I wanted to talk about regarding SJC Mineapolis. For some reason this SJC didn't seem that big compared to the other ones, as shown from the relatively low amount of coverage on Metagame.com. Perhaps too many players ran Dark Armed Dragon?

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Viewing 1 - 7 out of 7 Comments

From: MagicDrafter

04/17/2008 06:30:12

I have played Six Samurai and have found that Lightning Vortex is not that useful against it, but Kinetic Soldier, although not invincible, is a speed bump to the deck, like not drawing Zanji or just attack through a monster to reduce the Six Samurai's field presence.

Although Crush Card Virus triggers Grandmaster, it also kills the rest of the Six Samurai. When activated correctly, the Six Samurai player still loses a tremendous amount of tempo because they lose their field development, and the Grandmaster replacing itself does not make up for the destruction of the rest of the Six Samurai. Reasoning still relies a bit on chance and a good player should be able to guess to maximize the chances of it failing. Six Samurai's saving grace is Grandmaster, which is far from enough.

Plus, having Kinetic Soldier backed up with Crush Card Virus is bad news for the Six Samurai player.

From: Belgian Blue

04/17/2008 01:20:53

There are a gazillion reasons to be hesitant of jumping the GB bandwagon. Not in the least of which is WHO top 16'ed with them, and the ramifications of that in the bigger picture of things. This is not one of the reasons however.

As for six samurai, the more people say its a luck sack deck, i suppose the better. All the more people who will be underestimating them at nats and Europeans. Truth is, you need to know how to play them to play them well, and very few people do. This is evident by the continued belief that siding vortex and kinetic will somehow stop or slow a good samurai deck. Vortex gives you back your grandmaster meaning they need to take out a three card field just to break even, and kinetic is nothing more than a "i'll pay 1500 LP to kill you" for zanji. Not to mention a lot of people also run things like smashing ground or PWWB in their deck.

And Crush card virus ? You know what a samurai deck says to a CCV ? Thank you. Grandmaster pops right back into your hand after being hit by the virus, whether he is on the field or in your hand ... Since sammie decks run on either reasoning or grandmaster, neither of which is hit by CCV, they don't really care that much.

From: crush_card_virus

04/16/2008 14:28:42 The only reason DAD tops in mass numbers is because ALOT more people play it than GBs or even SS. I do agree it will be harder for those decks to win, but they will find ways to make up for that, it will just be alot harder to than DAD where u can splash almost any card in.

From: MagicDrafter

04/16/2008 05:42:36

I am not saying that Gladiator Beasts, Six Samurai and Gadgets should not top 16. I do not think that the word "should" even applies in such a scenario. Instead, I'm saying that it will be harder for those decks to top 16, especially repeatedly because they are inherently weaker than Dark Armed Dragon. Gladiator Beasts took 3 SJC to win even though it ran essentially the same deck list. This shows that its match win percentage is hardly stellar. Second, now that Gladiator Beasts has won a tournament, people will be more eager to side against it. That further decreases the chance of Gladiator Beast repeating a win.

@LightandDeath
I think you're missing the point of the luck factor. It is not through an individual basis that a deck can lucksack through a tournament. A large numebr of people is needed for such an effect. That means that I alone can not with good probability lucksack a deck through an SJC, but if 100 other people ran the same deck as me, then it is safe to say that at least 1 of these players will top 16 provided the deck doesn't suck too badly.

From: LightandDeath

04/15/2008 20:25:13 Yeah... for me, it's kind of impossible to disagree with crush_card_virus. Since luck is such a ruling factor, MagicDrafter, let's see YOU luck sack your way into the top 16.

From: gmnman

04/15/2008 19:35:03 i agree with u crush card virus

From: crush_card_virus

04/15/2008 19:20:53

So your saying that GB, SS, and Gadgets should not top 16 just because they are different from DAD? Kind of sad of u to say that, if u ask me. BTW, the GB deck didn't only win because it had a CCV and a GS or lucksaked. It won because it was pioleted by a good player and that the deck was made to counter DAD. I hate people who think DADs and CCs are the only decks that can win and then when a unique deck win SJC, they say the deck depends on luck sak. Sorry, but this article was made by another ignorant person.

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