Rogue decks are liked unranked teams

It seems that the past two summer formats, the March 2012 and March 2013, were two of the worst formats anyone has ever seen in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! You had two decks to run, and those were really your only options. Dino Rabbit and Wind-Ups plowed through everything until the banlist came around and Mermails had their time to shine. Then the March 2013 banlist saw the ridiculousness that was Dragon Rulers and Prophecy. The 2012 one wasn't that bad because there were still a lot of key staple cards to be hit, so a rogue deck could peep in every now and again, but, 2013 was miserable. You either played Dragon Ruler or Prophecy, or you basically lost. Whatever had the potential to defeat Dragon Rulers or Prophecy was demolished by Evilswarm, which has yet to be hit by the ban hammer.



Luckily, we have seen a heck of a lot more diversity in the September 2013 and now January 2014 format (the latter obviously being the current one). Decks like Fire Fist and Mermail were, you know, decks that could hold their own, but, were not the Tier 1 decks everyone was suspecting.

Now that Dragon Rulers have died and Prophecy players have scattered to be essentially nothing, the format cannot really take shape. There will be decks that dominate, like Fire Fist, Mermail, and now Bujins with all of the support they got (Legacy of the Valiant has made Bujins stupid but also really fun to play).

There are several decks that are now, and will soon be, finding their own name in the Yu-Gi-Oh! community. Everyone already sees the power that Harpies have because nearly everyone picked the deck back up when it first got support in Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy. Sylvans apparently have some OTK (Effect Veiler guys...Effect Veiler for days) that I have yet to see but they are getting some really cool support soon too, apparently. Fire Kings get to use most of the Fire Fist cards (okay, well, pretty much any deck with Beast-Warriors uses Tenki and Bear...) and empower their decks, and they already have a super strong boss monster in Garunix.

The best part is: in Primal Origins, which is going to be released in May (?) will be bringing tons of new support for old archetypes. Count on several rogue decks to be appearing and messing with the meta.

Now, don't think that just because I've listed a whole lot of decks that means that there isn't a meta. Of course there is. Fire Fist and Mermail (now with resurged popularity that I am not looking forward to), along with Bujins, are the Tier 1 decks. Tier 1.5, if you count that like I do, and Tier 2 are really up to your own perception.

This is where the card game is just like college football. Fire Fist can rip apart decks like it's nothing, but, all of a sudden, it just loses. With Chaos Dragons, I destroyed a Fire Fist player. Why? Because not every deck is perfect, every deck can be defeated. Either with a good enough opening hand or by just outsmarting your opponent. The thing about rogue decks is that most of the time, the people who use them are a little more skilled than those that use the meta decks. Most people, sadly, think that they just can just jump into using a good deck and be successful. Unless the deck is an autopilot deck (Dragon Rulers) or, to an extent, Bujins now, then no, it will not be very successful.

Like college football, you can have a powerful, popular, thought-to-be-unbeatable deck be defeated by a deck like Chaos Dragons or Harpies. No way.

Yes way. That is what rogue decks do. They just come along and screw with everything that you think is set up. There's a difference, though, between rogue decks and low-tier decks. Rogue decks are decks that, if in a good enough match-up, can really ruin your day. Low-tier decks are just that, they are just low-tier decks. You won't see something like Ancient Gears standing up to Bujins, and if you do, then something is very much off in that Duel.

Sometimes, rogue decks are those that were popular until the ban-hammer can along and completely jacked them up. Take E-Heroes. They were just about a Tier 2 team but they were still fairly decent and somewhat competitive (outside the Dragon Ruler format). With the banning of Stratos, the deck received it's killing blow and is almost completely useless. Stratos was the only strand of life that deck had left when E-Call got limited. Instead, Hero players got E-Call back...and Stratos banned. Kind of a crappy trade-off. TeleDAD is another example, since so many of its key pieces were hit. Could you imagine if three Dark Armed Dragons were still running around? Yu-Gi-Oh! would not be fun, it would be painful.

I like this diversity, though. It's healthy, it gives players options. No longer are they limited to running two rather expensive decks, for now they can play decks on a budget. Rogue decks have key, pricey cards, yes, but, everything else is relatively simple to pick up. Most of the time. Nowadays, it's pretty simple to make a fun deck that is somewhat competitive. You pick up three copies of a structure deck (the most recent five, starting with the Six-Samurai one) and you have the essentials for all the decks. Sometimes there is one or two extra cards needed, but besides that, you've got it from the structure decks.

That's what I like best about rogue decks. Not only are they fun to play, but fun to build. You should always have fun making your deck and add your own spin on it (net-decking is another post for another day). Making the deck fun means you will have fun playing it, of course. Rogue decks, in my personal opinion, have always been more fun for me to play because, well first, the reaction of players is often kind of funny, and second, I enjoy seeing how unpopular decks function against tougher decks.

Hopefully we don't see another format where we have to suffer through one or two majorly powerful and unbeatable decks for a long time. In that case, we will need all the rogue decks we can get.

See you next time!