Black List / Support list April 2009

Background

First off there was a huge span between the last list and this one for 2 reasons.

Either the metagame hasn't changed significantly yet or we're in the one month buffering time that allows for analysis of the new metagame.

Each Black List and Support list released by this site remains valid until the next one. That way if a new one hasn't been released yet it's because the metagame hasn't changed significantly yet or we're waiting a month to examine the next one.

Although it did change significantly back in March, it still takes some time to see which decks will be overplayed and which ones leave little room for innovation.

It seemed unfair to post a black list or a support list without giving the decks at least a month to soak in and give them a fair chance to innovate.

Now that a month has passed and it's April, we'll move onto the new lists.

Month of April Lists

Blacklist:

• 1) Glad Beasts

• 2) Lightsworn

• 3) Twilight (The Popular version with Dad, judgement, and necros)

• 4) Plants

• 5) Zombies

Commentary:


Glads

1) Gladiator Beasts was an obvious choice. Not only was this a less fun, cheap mans version of lightsworn, but it takes very little skill to play.

If you really want to find the players that could care less about yugioh and the game, just ask them if they play Glads in this new format.

If they say yes, bingo, you found one!

To play such a rigid, boring, and cheap deck, in one of the MOST innovative formats yugioh has had in a long time, shows how much creatitivity they lack.

You won't find many adults sinking this low, as they will definitley have the cash for lightsworn; a much more fun deck that deserves it's wins.


Lightsworn

2) Lightsworn is an interesting topic to discuss. For some reason the majority of the yugioh community felt that it would be on top this format. Regardless of how much anyone argued against this point, people were adamant.

Now with a month having gone by we've all come to the realization that lightsworn isn't on top.
Glad beasts are trumping this deck and doing it on a pretty often basis.

As to why the deck is being blacklisted, it's the same as last time. The build is too rigid to foster innovation and any true changes to the deck wouldn't count as a deck variation.


Twilight

3) The popular version of twilight that is continuously surfacing on the internet and being played at a few scattered tournaments also gets blacklisted.

Although twilight itself has a good number of ways to innovate, most people have been keeping this rigid version explained above. I'd go into more detail but I don't want more people playing the deck and if people truly want to see the popular deck build, simply go to pojo and in a few clicks you'll find it.

This popular version of twilight is simply a poor attempt at creativity.
I can imagine someone out there saying "Hey Judgement is great, and so is Dark Armed, lets put them together!!"

The saddest part of this whole story is the above popular version of twilight itself won't win much, even by your above average monarch deck.

So not only are they not winning much but they're making lack luster attempts at creativity.


Plants

4) Plants also have a good number of ways to be innovative but it's hard to spot the really unique decks that don't contain Black Garden.

Plants is very easy to think of and very easy to build. Even if it it's top tier, the average Plants build is very rigid and not many people innovate with it.

It seems that when people don't know what to build, they fall back on plants.
It's too popular an option, it stops people from innovating, and even when given the chance to innovate you continuously see the black garden build of this deck.

It's best if the community stops falling back on plants and starts creating decks that even a 10 year old yugioh player can think of.

It's either that or truly innovate this build and make a true variant of the plant build, preferably one without black garden.


Zombies

5) Zombies are still kicking it seems. Even though the number of players who use this deck have dropped there are the small few who are still running this.

Sadly this deck is as rigid as it ever was and even if there was room for innovation it would in the end kill the deck. For that reason I won't ask people to innovate the deck too much because I don't see many cards that can be traded out for new ones.

In the end Zombies is rigid and a poor excuse for a deck, especially because it will not beat lightsworn and glads consistantly. That's not to say it's not good, because it's still very powerful, but people who don't innovate play to win, and they won't get first place consistantly with zombies. That will make most of them upset and frustrated with this build and have them move onto another one that guarentees them more first place showings.

I don't see why an innovator would want to play this deck, rather than innovate something of their own which will most likely beat the regular zombie build.


Support list:

• 1) Wind decks (with Silpheed and Swift BirdMan Joe)
  

• 2) Gear town decks

• 3) Light decks with honest and possibly Soul of purity and light.
  

• 4) Teleport Variants of different attributes.

• 5) Psychic deck

• 6) Decree, Jinzo, Trap lock-down, beat-down decks
  

• 7) Warrior Toolbox variants

• 8) Monarch variants

• 9) Dark decks with Allure (without malicious, D Draws, or Dark armed.)
  

• 10) Spellcasters (This can be really good, no one really considers it though and I'm hoping the spellcaster structure deck gets more people playing spellcasters.)

• 11) Earth Deck

• 12) Dragon Deck (Not a Hopeless Dragon deck)

• 13) Stardaust Assault mode Deck

• 14) Burn Variants, either by stalling and attacking directly with little guys (like Jinzo #7) or by card burn like Wave Motion Cannon ; or both.

• 15) Frog Decks (Yes they are very much playable, especially with dupe frog, substitoad, wetlands, froggy forcefield, and that Submarine Frog that becomes 2400 atk under wetlands.)

• 16) Crystal Beasts

• 17) Prometheus and Dark Creator mid game OTK decks with Return from the Different Dimension

• 18) Remove from play decks. Decks that use Dimension Fissure and Gravekeeper's Servant to lock an opponents field. Essentially they get rid of the grave and profit from that with cards like D.D. Survivor. It can also use Banisher of the Radiance.

• 19) Gadget Variants

• 20) Morphotronic variants

The purpose of these lists:

Decks that leave little room for creativity/originality are blacklisted.

To use these is to use someone else's ingenuity and to, frankly, be too lazy to create your own competitive build.

You're either an innovator or a follower and these decks are clearly the decks of followers.

As for variations, these decks are too rigid to make variations to, and any few cards replaced have little to no effect on the net power of the deck. People will not change the engines in these decks and the cards they replace will not change the net outcomes of the deck.

An example of changing the engines of a deck would be like taking out D draws, mallicious, and Dark arms. In that case, whatever deck you made, would truly be a variant.


The support lists on the other hand are a guide to get ideas from.
They don't have to be followed and you don't have to build a deck listed in them.

There will be people though that just won't have any ideas as to what to build and the support list functions as a way to develop an original deck theme.

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April Updates

That's all for now, come back to this article to check for any possible updates that may occur.

If any other significant shifts happen because of Raging Battle or Ancient Prophecy, we'll add them to this article. If not the next significant shift will most likely be the next ban list in September.