There are 2 central concepts of a good position in Yugioh: card advantage and tempo. Card advantage is the most discussed one because of its effect on the game and it can be easily obtained by counting. Tempo on the other hand, is less discussed because tempo is so easily lost that it hardly guarantees a win in a normal deck and it's also harder to measure because there is no unit of measurement.

But tempo is still crucial to the game. If a player is holding a 5 card all monster hand with nothing on the field staring down nothing but 2 E-Hero Blade Edge, she will be hard pressed to win. S/he surely has advantage, a +3 to be exact, but the fact that s/he can't keep up with the pace of 2 E-Hero Blade Edge spells doom for him/her. Of course, I'm not saying that tempo alone can win. It's usually better for tempo to be mixed with card advantage.

But achieving a fast tempo usually requires a heavy commitment to the field and that's extremely risky in a game where cards like Lightning Vortex, Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute are rampant. So a deck based on tempo must run cards that neutralize these threats. Solemn Judgment excels in this category, but now another problem arises: there's only 3 Solemn Judgments in a deck. Soul Exchange / Brain Control with a Raiza the Wind Monarch or Zaborg the Thunder Monarch is a horrific move no decks want to face, and particularly painful when a player has committed to a field. Solemn Judgment might negate it, but then that player can just now play down Lightning Vortex to clear the field. Having another Solemn Judgment is considerable less likely after using one.

But surely there is a way to make tempo work and the key lies in playing a lot of cards on to the field without emptying the hand. That way, if the field does get cleared, a second wave of assault can be promptly dispatched. Zombies does this through Card of Safe Return with a lot of recursion. Players in the last ban list did this with Card Trooper and Machine Duplication. But Zombies are quite vulnerable to graveyard hate or just random bad hands and Card Trooper is now restricted to one.

Six Samurai does this through another method. Special summoning a a lot of monsters with a built in protective effect in a turn can make it difficult for an opponent to mount a comeback. Grandmaster of the Six Samurai also allows for a second assault if the first on fails. Sadly, Six Samurai are inconsistent in that it is hard to win without Reasoning or Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, and drawing multiple copies of the same Six  Samurai is often lethal, as seen in the Canadian Nationals when Matthew Lai drew 3 copies of Six Samurai - Irou.

Next we have Gadgets. They are able to replace themselves for the second assault, but they also suffer from the occasional random bad hands. 5 Gadgets starting hand? Well, I never got one but I did start with 4 before. They also lack means of special summoning so it's quite slow compared to the other decks, relying on 1 to 1 trades of removal with monsters to speed up the game.

So what deck is fast, has a lot of special summoning ability, doesn't use up cards as it commits to the field and uses high utility cards to minimize bad hands? DDT of course. But wait, doesn't DDT suffer from the occasional horrible hand? Well, yes, but...

2 Jinzo
1 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Destiny Hero - Dreadmaster
1 Destiny Hero - Dasher

3 Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude
1 Card Trooper
1 Destiny Hero - Disk Commander
1 Destiny Hero - Fear Monger
1 Snipe Hunter

3 Destiny Draw
3 Lightning Vortex
3 Monster Gate
3 Reasoning
2 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade
2 Reinforcements of the Army
1 Brain Control
1 Card Destruction
1 Dimension Fusion
1 Heavy Storm
1 Magic Stone of Excavation
1 Premature Burial

1 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Mirror Force
1 Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
1 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Torrential Tribute

Half of the monsters that are actually normal summoned pay for themselves in terms of cards. Diamond Dude does this by flipping a spell card. Although it doesn't always do this, the fact that flipping a Destiny Draw or something similar gives a +2 instead of a +1 in card advantage offsets the times when it doesn't flip a spell. Stratos immediately replaces itself with a search or destroys S/T. The other 2 monsters that are normal summoned, Snipe Hunter and Fear Monger (which is usually set instead), do not replace themselves. However, Snipe Hunter adds utility to the deck and Fear Monger's potential of reviving another Destiny Hero gives it the ability to replace itself as well as setting up a lethal field next turn when no monsters suddenly turn into 5. The rest of the monster line up are just dumped to the graveyard through various discard outlets or special summoned for the kill.

One thing to note is that there is no Destiny Hero - Malicious. I find it leads to very inconsistent draw because it's just so bad without a discard outlet. I opted for the slower yet more utility Disk Commander + Fear Monger combo instead.

The spell line up is rather generic so I'll skip it. For the traps, I chose to run one of Bottomless Trap Hole, Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and Sakuretsu Armor rather than Threatening Roars because both Bottomless Trap Hole and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast stop Zombie Master. The Sakuretsu Armor is there as a random surprise, stopping a Mystic Tomato or something from destroying Diamond Dude.

So where's the utility in the cards? There's not much really in the individual cards, but it's based on the discard outlets. However, there will be randomly bad hands if no discard outlets are drawn. An opening hand of 2 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade, Monster Gate, Destiny Hero - Dreadmaster and Dark Magician of Chaos is nearly auto lose (Destiny Draw or Card Destruction can save you). However, over 1/5 of the deck is a discard outlet so it's not that bad,although Destiny Draw requires a Destiny Hero discard but 1/5 of the deck are Destiny Heroes so it's not that hard to get one.

Everyone who has played against DDT will know that the deck is fast, and goes from slow tempo to extremely fast in a single turn. It's many card advantage engines mean that there will be cards to mount a second attack. It's weakness is probably it succumbs to random bad hands, but this is where bluffing comes in, which I will probably write about in my next blog.

Right now, I'm trying to design a deck using Forced Back. It's a powerful card that can make Perfect Circle cry. But more on that after it's been more developed.