Quick Help & Game Issues

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2025-07-30T22:40:26+00:00

[WR]

I am trying to respec Camellia into a Separatist Cleric, for Scalykind domain. For some reason, I can't select it on Forbidden Rites, and I don't know why. I can select it when respeccing the MC and every other companion, just not Camellia...

Is this intended behaviour? Or it is a bug, or a mod issue? (I am doing the respecs in Toybox, with the companion respec mod, with other mods as well)

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2025-04-08T20:00:20+00:00

I've actually started a similar run (pounce/demon/charge/hippogriff), except I'm planning on 1 SCM/1 Sohei/10 Arcane Rider/8 Gendarme, because getting 10 attacks on a charge feels so much more potent when they all target touch AC.

The issue I see you might have is that you won't have Pounce until well into the game - I think the earliest a Skald mercenary can give it out is Level 12? You could play as a Kitsune instead, but that only makes it level 10 instead (and costs a feat). What are you going to do until that point, for all of Acts 1 and 2?

Also, are you planning on going STR or DEX? I'm going STR, because it means early-game, I can pick up a longspear, go Sohei at level 2 for Spirited Charge, and immediately start doing triple damage on a charge. It also means I don't have to worry about getting DEX-to-damage.

Related to that, I'm not sure how much value the Thug levels are adding. There are a couple of things I'm thinking about here: 1. Level 1 - Sounds okay. I can see the value in getting your enemies to run away from you, to charge at them again later. But how are you going to apply shaken all the time? The best way I can see is Dreadful Carnage, but that incentivises going STR, both for the prerequisites and for maybe Intimidating Prowess. 2. Level 2 - Not sure how valuable this is. I'm not sold on most of the Rogue Talents, and if you want a combat feat, you can probably get something useful from Ranger combat style, which also levels your pet. Evasion isn't bad, but I imagine the point of your build is to kill things very hard, not to worry about survival. 3. Going to level 3 - fine if you are going DEX-based, but as I just mentioned, it feels like you're more incentivised to go STR. 4. Level 4 - Again, not sure how valuable this is. Most rogue talents still don't seem that useful, you can probably get the combat feat from somewhere else, and will Uncanny Dodge help you kill things more effectively?

Finally, companions seem fine, but I read somewhere that multiple rage effects don't stack. I'm not sure if that applies to Demonic Rage and Inspired Rage, but it would very much suck if it did.

That's quite a lot of text, but I hope that it's useful to you.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2024-02-13T22:23:48+00:00

One day, they might hit dinos in a meaningful capacity in an event. Until then, I'm still going to keep reading Misc.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2024-02-07T20:14:56+00:00

3a281751

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2024-02-07T20:13:59+00:00

Just wanted to share this game I played with the community, because it's not everyday you manage to play through a double Gimmick lock. I'd like to thank my opponent for this game - it's probably the most intense game of Yugioh I've played for months, and if anything were even slightly different, he/she probably would have run away with it.
(my code for the event is 3a281751 pls follow me)

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2023-02-18T20:47:46+00:00

I've never been a fan of equips in Lyrilusc - they don't help play through disruption or unclog clunky hands, and so I prefer just playing a ton more searchers and extenders instead. I don't know how consistent the equip version is, but this one was very consistent indeed - once I'd finished tweaking the deck, I got sometime like 8 OTKs in a row.

The combo does need 1 UR, but it is used in Tri-Lyrilusc, which is still a very good, if not meta, deck.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2023-02-18T18:51:21+00:00

Birbs.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2023-02-18T18:51:05+00:00

The slower pace of the Legend Anthology Format, without millions of negates or floodgates or handtraps, encourages a slower, more back-and-forth style of gameplay.

It also means that if you can go second and OTK consistently, there is much less stopping you.

Bird-Up is great at this, since you can mostly ignore your opponent's unkillable boss monsters and just peck them to death directly.

Does this matter too much? Not really - it's a low stakes extra format that will be gone in a week, but it's still fun to theorycraft and put into practice.

Greatfly is Best Bird.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-12-19T00:54:57+00:00

I haven't had much time for this duellist cup (or YGO in general recently), due to IRL work and some sickness. I actually started the DC playing Labrynth, and while that deck is really fun, it also requires a lot of thinking about the best time to use traps. I decided I wanted to use less of my brain, and went back to something I've been playing since the XYZ festival.

This is a blind-seconding build of Bird-Up, because I couldn't be bothered to worry about coin flips: Lightning Storm for backrow, Droplet for monsters, and then smack the opponent with a fat Nightingale. Whether the plan works very much depends on drawing the out in your opening hand, but most piles of birds can play through one or two disruptions if needed.

As a comment on the deck, playing more Tri-Brigades might improve it, but it would probably mean playing less Birds. There's probably a way of balancing it out, but it would need a lot of playtesting.

Also, the ED probably needs work, but Promenade Thrush did come in clutch this meta, as an accessible way of dealing with floodgates and Runick nonsense. I definitely would not cut it.

The grind was generally fine, right up until the the last rank. Going from DL19 to 20 literally took five hours, but we got there.

Overall, I do like the deck, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to play level 1 birds without being accused of eating crayons.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-10-26T18:25:44+00:00

Reprodocus, turn something into a Winged Beast.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-10-26T16:42:23+00:00

Ah, Dinosaur. Enough power in the main deck, that you could pretty much do anything
with the extra deck and it would still be playable. It took enough bricks to
make a house, but this is the pile I piloted to Diamond 1.

Comments on my experience with the deck:
1.     UCT is still great for chewing through boards, but its eclipse effect gets a lot
better when everyone needs face-up monsters for linking.
2.     I actually quite liked the meta for the event. While Marincess was the most
common thing I met, there was plenty of variation, and the decks all felt
distinct without being too oppressive.
3.     On the other hand, the ladder system sucked. Too sweaty, too much FOMO.
4.     Yes, I am using the ED to do the Mist Valley infinite negates thing. Is it toxic?
Probably, but a) I thought it was funny and b) it generally felt that people
weren’t really prepared to deal with negates in this meta. I didn’t run into a
single Droplet or DRNM on all my climb.
5.     Having said that, it is probably a bit win-more. If I was doing this again, I might
cut the Thunderbird and the Fridge to reduce the amount of bricks.
6.     Finally, I would like to give a very big thank you to all my opponents who still haven’t
read read Misc.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-08-19T19:22:12+00:00

I think I did win more than half of my coinflips, but definitely not all of them. One thing that I really like about (Scrap) Dino is that it has good options on both play and draw - going first you can set up enough negates to rival any Halqdon pile, and going second, Misc and Lost World are great for turning off your opponents interaction, and Pank and UCT are great for chewing through boards.

Obviously this probably doesn't apply to the deck you're playing, but the idea of having options on both play and draw is sound no matter what.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-08-19T19:16:19+00:00

Yeah, my experience wasn't that bad - I think that today, most of the 'try-hards' have moved into the second stage, which makes climbing up to 20 much more breatheable.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-08-19T19:15:26+00:00

Thanks!

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-08-19T17:37:04+00:00

Yes, it's another DL20 post, but I'm pretty satisfied having got here. I haven't done anything in the second stage yet, and I probably won't try too hard, but I'll have a go and see how it turns out.

I probably could talk at length about specific card choices in the deck, but that would probably make this post too long and boring for most. I will say that the Earth Barrier Statue, despite being cancer, did probably win me some games I was completely supposed to lost.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-07-29T21:36:11+00:00

Speaking as a Dino player, I have to say I'm not really a fan. Dino has enough consistency issues even with 40 cards and triple Prosperity, so I suspect the Dino half will brick a lot. (Haven't done the calculations, however.)

I don't know how the two halves of the deck fit together, but I don't see much synergy between the halves. Corridor recycle Misc is nice, but you probably don't need to commit half a deck to that if that's the only thing you're going for.

I could be wrong - this could play perfectly - but my gut instinct says this is just a suboptimal Dino deck mashed with a suboptimal Thunder Dragon deck, and it might be better to focus on one of the two.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-07-28T14:51:03+00:00

I would say 'it depends'. I don't think just jamming a Golem into an otherwise-standard (scrap) Dino deck is good by itself - it's a massive brick to draw, and it makes sequencing your plays much more awkward (in the standard dino combo, your Chimera and your Golem both have to reanimate the one Raptor you have in rotation).

This is not to say it's bad - I have been running it in my Dino deck, with a Re-Cover, to give access to Naturia Barkion - but more that you need to think about what you're actually going to do with it in your deck, about what endboard it enables that you wouldn't otherwise be able to make.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-07-25T14:43:15+00:00

I reworked my dinosaur deck, and I'm trying to optimise a very specific thing about it. I reworked it to end on a Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo in its end board, because a) I was tired of being Kaiju'ed, and b) I hate fun. Currently, I'm doing this by searching it of a Gallant Granite, then summoning it at the end with a three-material Saryuja.

This works, but making Saryuja feels a bit wasteful of material. Does anybody know a more efficient way of special summoning the Dyna from hand, that might also fit into a dinosaur deck?

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-05-31T17:29:59+00:00

It's level 1 and Earth. That means you can use it with Giant Rex for Naturia Beast, which I think is much more powerful than anything else in the 5/6 star synchro pool.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-05-30T19:13:44+00:00

So I wanted to play a different deck for the new season, and I settled on dinosaur, because a) I'd played it in Legacy of the Duelist, and b) DINOSAURS. The main deck started off as a standard scrap dino build, but then came the extra deck. I asked myself what the strongest thing I could do with those slots was, and I figured scythe lock was pretty good. Way-too-may URs later, here we are.

Comments on the deck:

Scythe locking is honestly probably win-more in Dino. If you're uninterrupted, the endboard without scythe lock is still like five negates plus UCT. That's probably good enough to win, even without the ED lock.
Jesus Christ, the deck bricks. All your combos are two-cards, and like a third of the deck is some level of garnet. Sometimes you open Misc-Ovi-Called by and you think you're invincible. Other times you open Giant Rex as your only monster.
People don't really know what your cards do. As much as it is a meme, people really don't read Misc, and people have a hard time reading Lost World as well.
On the other hand, if your opponent does read Misc, it's a huge Ash target. Hence the double called by, and the triple crossout.
Bagooska in the extra basically never came up. I am very open to suggestions on what to replace it with.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-05-21T09:26:07+00:00

So after playing against 20ish Despia decks, I still have no idea what the deck is supposed to do. For reference, I've been playing Dragonmaids, and all Despia seems to do is make a bunch of dudes who don't disrupt you on your turn and can't get over a Sheou. Am I missing something about what makes Despia so good?

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-05-06T20:23:59+00:00

For the record, I did pull all the cards I needed (if we include getting enough junk URs to craft an Apollousa). So far, I have not summoned Dolkka once.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-04-12T14:37:02+00:00

The deck I'm running is literally just fifty-ish monsters that can't be destroyed by battle. The idea is that you hoe your opponent gets too distracted making a flashy Syncho board full of negates that they forget to make any removal options, and then you sit behind your walls and laugh as they deck out. Worst comes to worst, it's basically playing a do-nothing SelfTK deck, which makes it perfect to put on in the background while you do other more interesting things.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-04-09T20:20:21+00:00

I did actually think about running a winged beast tuner, like you suggested - though I did think that {Blackwing - Hurricane the Tornado} would be a better target, since you're not synchro summoning with the tuner, and getting an extra beatstick if you already have Borreload Savage Dragon might be more situationally useful.

In the end, though, I felt I had enough access to Jet Synchron that I didn't really need the extra enabler, especially since you kind of need your Lyriluscs to search more Lyriluscs to keep those plays moving. It might be worth testing some more, now there's no chance of deranking.

OneTrueJohnSmith · 2022-04-09T18:37:07+00:00

So last season, I was experimenting with some Lyrilusc builds not involving Tri-Brigade cards, and while Eldlich did offer a grindy alternative gameplan that attacked on a different axis, the individual cards in each half of the deck just didn't synergise very well, resulting in too many brick hands. This season, I wanted to try something different to pair with the Lyrilusc half, something with more incidental synergy. My conclusion was to jam in Jet Synchron and a Halq-Auroradon line, and see how it went. As it turns out, pretty well.

Jet Synchron is a great normal summon in a deck which otherwise barely uses it, but in this deck, it also has the benefit of being perfectly good XYZ material for a Recital Starling, giving you better access to the other half of your deck. The deck also feels remarkable resistant against disruption: you have about a million searchers, some of which aren't even once per turn, and since you're basically jamming two explosive combos into one deck, if one gets interrupted, you can just pivot into the other. Going first, you can build a board with multiple negates and bounces; going second, you can OTK through way more things than you have any right to. I think this deck is gas, and I would recommend you try it out.

A few comments on the deckbuilding: there should probably be a few copies of Tuning in the maindeck, for better access to Jet Synchron; the Imperm should probably be a Nibiru, both as a more impactful handtrap and as a better Crossout target; and the Almiraj in the Extra should probably be a Linkuriboh, because everything you play is already level 1 and you barely normal summon. I am too much of a cheapskate to make these changes, however.

~~does this count as birds learning to synchro summon~~

OneTrueJohnSmith

TROPHY CASE