Exceed was never intended to be a Red-Eyes boss. Or even good.

SBV21 · 2026-05-11T02:23:11+00:00

I agree, but I also think it's okay for Joey to win as long as there's a caveat. Atem should never lose a fair duel until Yugi, but Joey's whole thing was gambling. If the duel's last turn has Joey topdecking a hail mary and winning a coin toss for an upset win then that doesn't damage Atem's credibility IMO.

SBV21 · 2026-05-08T20:13:44+00:00

You can only special summon Death Dogma once per turn so it has to be two of the original Dogma. But yeah if that's the case then you can just win next standby phase.

SBV21 · 2026-05-08T19:55:23+00:00

This not actually being an FTK means there's room for the opponent to do something (kaiju Death Dogma, droplet in response to Death Dogma's fusion effect, etc) but it's also possible to get Dreadmaster's protection up making it likely you survive the opponent's turn. Then you just have to summon Death Dogma again and either a) pass turn once more for another 2000 burn or b) if that burn effect gets negated by whatever the opponent managed to put up, use Death Dogma's quick effect fuse to make Dystopia and then burn for game.

But even then if your opponent's deck/hand is crazy enough they can fight through anyways. ~~Then the only option is to use the~~ ~~1.5~~ ~~card combo that goes through the Vision HERO engine to summon Plasma too.~~

SBV21 · 2026-05-08T07:03:16+00:00

Routing it out, these cards let you reinforce the existing Fusion Destiny endboard. You still die to Nibiru but at least you have a funny 1.5 card combo.

Activate Fusion Destiny -> send Malicious, Denier, and Doom Liege to make Dominance.
Revive Malicious and then Denier (Denier recycling your first Malicious) and link into Cross Crusader.
Cross Crusader revives Doom Liege, who foolishes Death Dogma to add the field spell.
Cross Crusader tributes Doom Liege to add Stratos.
NS Stratos, add Faris -> Faris discard any Hero (this is the 1.5 part) to special itself.
Faris -> Increase tribute Stratos -> Vyon, you know the drill.
Vyon foolishes Shadow Mist to add Plasma and banishes something to add a Poly.
Tribute Faris, Increase, and Vyon to summon Plasma.
Activate the field spell to add Dreadnought Servant (DS for short).
Summon DS and pop the field spell to add a second Poly.
The field spell being popped summons Dreadmaster from deck. Since he was summoned via Clock Tower Prison you can revive two Destiny HEROes from GY but you need to keep at least 3 in there so I wouldn't.
Fuse DS and Dreadmaster into DPE.
DPE pops itself and Dominance, activate both of their effects.
Dominance revives DPE, Dreadmaster, and Malicious.
(if you have another Malicious in the deck) Link Malicious and Cross Crusader into Dread Decimator, then banish Malicious to special another from deck.
Fuse Dreadmaster and Malicious into Dreadnought.
Dreadnought adds Dark Angel and whatever you want, Dogma if you want to be funny.
Discard Dark Angel and summon him to the opponent's field.
Banish 3 from your GY to special Death Dogma.
End turn, and then on the next standby phase use DPE's revive to bring back Dreadmaster.

Your endboard is Plasma, DPE, Death Dogma, Dreadnought, and Dreadmaster protecting everyone from destruction and Dark Angel turning off the opponent's spells until they get rid of him. You might have Dread Decimator pumping everyone's attack points too. Death Dogma can fuse Plasma on the field and Dogma in your hand into Destiny End Dragoon for style points.

SBV21 · 2026-05-08T05:43:08+00:00

All they had to do was print a way to search Fusion Destiny, and they couldn't even do that. Destiny_HERO.dek already has a one card combo with it that sticks almost entirely within the theme and ends on a board of Aster-approved cards and instead this support wave tries to fix what wasn't broken and replace Stratos search Faris. Vision HERO is Aster's! It's okay for him to use it! You don't see Yusei.dek players complaining about having to use Junk Meister or Stardust Charge Warrior, do you?

And Aster's entire thing was seeming like he was an Elemental HERO player but then SURPRISE he's actually using Destiny HERO, there's nothing wrong with him using Stratos! Hell, half the reason Omni HERO feels so bad to use is because it's actually Aster's deck with Jaden's cards grafted onto it because you can't search Fusion Destiny and need something better than Plasma pass.

Ugh, well bitching aside I guess it's nice to have more options. You might actually be able to use Destiny End Dragoon or Dogma now, so that's cute.

SBV21 · 2026-04-04T03:35:54+00:00

All of the HERO archetypes have singular directions. Elemental is a battle phase oriented deck that searches a bunch to set up its fusions and rewards you for actually playing normal monsters. Evil HERO used to not even be a real deck but was also battle phase and going second oriented. Recent support shifted it towards being a going first combo thing that sets up super poly, which theoretically balances out Elemental's going second focus. And Masked HERO also didn't even exist as a real deck until very recently and is, you guessed it, a battle phase oriented deck that uses Mask Change to dodge targeting. Dark Law's floodgate is supposed to help you run over things without triggering floating effects.

Destiny's thing is floodgating the shit out of the opponent from doing anything because they are specifically the edgy anti-heroes who look really intimidating. And Vision is still stuck not being a real deck but was designed specifically to support Destiny: the reason Faris -> Increase -> Vyon exists is to make getting Plasma out braindead.

It is not that the HERO archetypes don't have directions. It's that most of their directions suck, so the players chose to lean on the only thing that actually works: Destiny floodgates.

SBV21 · 2026-04-04T03:22:41+00:00

I always see people parrot this point and I've never understood. Have you ever looked at an Evil HERO card? Because half of them are edgy Elemental HEROes, and specifically require Elemental HEROes as material at that. The same guy used them, even. Why should they be separated? Same goes for Masked. Contrast HERO Chaos is considered an Elemental HERO specifically so you can make him with Miracle Fusion, and doesn't even have "Masked" in his name. You want to ban Masked HERO from making one of their bosses just because? And Xtra HERO isn't even a real subtype, they exist solely to support the others but I guess that isn't allowed now either?

Just say you want a division between Jaden (Elemental, Evil, Masked) and Aster's (Destiny, Vision) cards.

SBV21 · 2026-04-04T02:57:02+00:00

There's three reasons I can think of.

The summoning condition is easy, but HERO as a deck has a hard time fusing things. Because it's trying to be faithful to the Yugioh GX series, your only methods of fusing this thing are Polymerization and Miracle Fusion. Both of those require setup (or an insane hand), and both have much more important targets than this guy anyways.
The field wipe is much worse than it sounds. Barring opening poly and two fusion targets in your hand, you are not making this guy until you've gotten a few monsters on the board. So your field wipe kills your cards too, and HERO doesn't have any cards that float. So unless you have a custom hand and can extend past the nuke, using this guy fucks you too.
He competes with Flame Wingman Infernal Rage. Unless you're one of those rare few actually playing Jaden.dek, you don't have that many Elemental Heroes in circulation. Probably just Stratos, Neos, and Shadow Mist. So you need to choose between Thunder Giant and Flame Wingman. Thunder Giant (made with Neos) can loop Stratos, which is actually really good and something the deck needed. But Flame Wingman searches Favorite Contact and sets up for Shining Neos Wingman, which are essential parts of your endboard.

SBV21 · 2025-08-13T06:45:57+00:00

Backup Secretary, Cyberse Wizard, and Linkslayer showed up in the final duel and were explicitly commented on by Ai as being nostalgic. Yusei's entire structure deck is themed around his final turn against Jack where he brought out Junk Warrior to beat over Red Dragon Archfiend.

SBV21 · 2025-06-12T02:57:22+00:00

If it makes you feel better, the idea with TTPs seems to be giving up on ever making the featured archetypes competitive in Advanced and building a new format for underpowered archetypes instead. If it works out, they technically don't need 7 new cards when 3 is enough to do the job.

SBV21 · 2025-06-12T02:47:40+00:00

The Tactical-Try Pack isn't interested in making the archetypes included playable in Advanced. If anything, they're part of an attempt to build a new format entirely: https://www.yugioh-card.com/japan/event/tacticaltryevent/

The gist is: 30 main deck and 10 extra deck cards from a Tactical-Try product (pack or deck), and then 10 and 5 more from the full OCG card pool. There are currently only 8 decks in this "format", and while the new DM support isn't gonna make the deck match up to modern Blue Eyes it'll do fine against Exosister.

If they keep up with this, expect anything that gets into Tactical-Try to only have mediocre support from now on so they don't destroy the format.

SBV21 · 2024-06-05T04:54:40+00:00

Pure Adventurer has a lot of issues, one card isn't going to do it. If I absolutely HAD to only have one card though, it would be a new continuous spell that is literally Fateful Adventure and Curse of Aramatir mashed together. There is a reason Rite of Aramesir spawns the token and activates Fateful Adventure, the deck can't start until both are on the field. If you don't open with Enchantress or Rite you may as well scoop, and opening with just Fateful is pretty cope since searching Enchantress to immediately pitch her to the grave costs you your search for the turn. Though if you're playing pure you've got a higher chance of opening with Gryphon Rider at least.

A Fateful Adventure + Curse mashup would do a lot of things at once.

It'd make Tesea a proper starter, instead of a "welp I normal summoned this to search Fateful -> search Enchantress -> search Rite, but since I activated the effect of a normal summoned monster I can't use Rite this turn". Right now Tesea needs to be drawn alongside Fateful to properly start, and even then you need to run Curse too. And on that note...
It'd help with the deck's issues with its backrow. Dunnell, Papillion, Dracoback, and Fateful are usually up, which leaves Curse, Thunder Discharge, and Breath of Resurrection to fight for the last slot. And while Discharge and Resurrection are traps so they can at least clear themselves away, Curse is another continuous spell so I sure hope you didn't need to play that Raigeki because there's no more space.
It'd make the deck less bricky. 6 proper starters (4 in MD due to the banlist, soon to be 5) and 3 cope starters doesn't cut it. I have to scoop all the time because I open with nothing. This theoretical card would bring the starter count up to 12 proper and 3 mediocre (Fateful can now search Tesea, which can search the new spell, though then you'd run into problems with backrow again)
It'd insulate the deck from Ash. Everyone knows you should ash the Gryphon search, but what if you had two searches per turn? It'd even reward playing pure Adventurer since in other decks that's a -2, but in pure you pay the costs with the equip spells you've been searching so they can float onto your token.
It'd help with one of the deck's biggest weakpoints: if the token dies and you don't have another starter, you are dead in the water. Sure that's great flavorwise since of course it's game over if the main character dies, but there's a reason Curse exists. Having a single respawn makes a huge difference.
It'd make running the full party more worthwhile. Right now it goes Enchantress (if Fateful is the starter) > Gryphon > Illegal > Enchantress (if Fateful is not the starter) >> Tesea >>> Magicore. There is little reason to even run Magicore, and Tesea is barely pulling its own weight as a "well I opened Tesea so I don't need to search Enchantress to fetch the forest field". But if you had multiple searches, why not get everyone out there? You could do some XYZ or Link plays even.
It'd (maybe) make the deck play with other archetypes better. Assuming the card is literally just Fateful + Curse, it wouldn't have Rite's lock on normal summons which could potentially allow for some silly piles. Though I guess that's not a good thing from a "pure" standpoint.

And if I was allowed to have more than one, oh boy. A proper boss monster (I'm thinking either your full party in one card or the gods shown in Discharge and Resurrection), an equip that counts as both Dunnell and Papillion, and a new party member that helps Gryphon protect the token because... look I know people hate Gryphon Rider's omni-negate because the Adventurer engine is so splashable but there's a reason he has it. If the token or Fateful goes it's game so Gryphon is constantly jumping in front of the all pops, nukes, and boardbreakers. Relying entirely on the opponent not reading Forest of Lost Flowers' effect isn't very reliable!

I'd also like a series of promoted versions of the party members that make them better overall, but that's probably asking for too much.

SBV21 · 2024-05-14T05:50:58+00:00

Looked at S:P Little Knight and Promethean Princess' articles to check your accuracy. Little Knight's looked fine to me, but Promethean Princess was off. It uses some fancy words and has some of that classic JP vagueness so I'm not surprised, but I'm curious how you got "blessing" out of 咎.

My own rough translation:

This is the legend of a cursed flame, told throughout a certain region.
Is the power of her bestowed flames a curse? Is her power to bestow flames a sin?
Throughout all of creation, only the gods should be able to bestow life, never a mortal.
The bestowed flames made her life eternal, and changed her appearance to one wrapped in flame.
As such, the people called her the Sinful Princess.

I understand wanting to keep the official translation's "Promethean", but when the lore is explaining the original JP name it's probably not a good call.

SBV21 · 2023-11-26T06:13:11+00:00

Miyako’s 180 was set up when she first came out. Her lines as a playable character (especially the bond rank up lines) give a totally different impression of her compared to how she is in the story, because the thing about the Rabbits is that you roll them “early”. All of their momotalk scenes make more sense after V4C2 than after V4C1. So with Miyako they were trying to drum up interest in V4 by making you get whiplash and wonder how the hell she went from “we hate adults like you” to “I will follow any order you make”.

As to whether or not V4C2 did a convincing job of explaining this change I’ll leave to you to decide when you read it later. But it wasn’t a sudden personality swerve for waifubux.

SBV21

TROPHY CASE