I just thought I could shed some light on this place lol. These articles I don't claim as my own.
All of my articles are written with a purpose. Perhaps I just did well at an event or I had a conversation that inspired me to write on a less tangible topic. Today’s another instance where I’ll be discussing something less tangible. Like my articles, my decks are built very purposefully. I don’t usually make a choice without weighing the pros and cons, thoroughly testing each of my options and, more recently, mathematically quantifying the value of my card choices.
Sometimes a card might be great in theory, seem okay in practice but when I apply the math to it, I realize what a terrible card choice it is. Take my decision not to use Genex Ally Birdman in Geargia (something I talked about in my YCS Ausitin article), for example. The synergy with Armor, Gearframe and triple Call of the Haunted gave me hope that the card, often a poor draw in already worrisome hands, might actually be playable now. I tested it out. The results were alright but I noticed that I was drawing multiple tuners quite often—something you generally don’t want. That’s when I decided to do the math. I found out that adding a 4
thtuner doubled my odds of drawing multiples in my opening hand. At a difference of 5% or 1-in-20 games, I couldn’t justify the marginal benefits from the card. Especially since, the negative effect on drawing into multiple tuners (after turn 1) was even more disheartening.
After my Top 16 finish in Austin, there was a resurgence of Karakrui Geargia—a deck otherwise left for dead. But I noticed Birdman in almost all of the knock-offs. Why?
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Perhaps it’s my fault. Maybe I should have spent more time detailing my card choices—Birdman, especially—explaining why they shouldn’t be run. If you’re still not convinced, let me give it another attempt:
Adding just one Birdman doubles your odds of drawing multiple tuners. But why is this bad? Remember that you only have six cards to work with in your opening hand. If you have multiple tuners then you only have four cards left. Better hope one of those is Armor. Problem is, you only have a 65% chance of opening Armor or Arsenal! You won’t open with either of them every 1-in-3 games. Multiple tuners and no Armor? Ouch. Even if you do have Armor, one of a couple things needs to happen:
(a) You need Armor, Birdman
and Accel. Odds?
Armor or Arsenal 65%
Birdman 15%
Accel 39%
Odds 04%
(b) You need to be able to protect Armor so that next turn you can flip summon him and attempt to use your tuner
Scenario (a) is a 1-in-25 combo—that can only be pulled off safely if you’re going first. Is it worth running a card that with ruin your hands once in every 20 games? Of course not. Now consider scenario (b). How are you going to keep Armor on the field if you only have three other cards in hand? It’s possible, but it’s going to be an uphill battle because the tuners you have in hand aren’t doing anything to help the cause.
“But he’s searchable!”, proponents of the Genex Ally say. Birdman’s a nice option to have, but remember you can search for Strategist or Watchdog just as easily and the only value lost is having to use your normal summon to make a field of GGX, Burei, Bureido and Watchdog. Who cares? That’s over 8,000 already.
I’ll be honest, it irks me that my build brought Geargias back yet people just ignore some of the fundamental attributes that enabled me to achieve a Top 16 finish in Austin. Call of the Haunted played a major role, but somebody can’t just throw a couple copies into an average Geargia deck, along with other subpar choices, and expect the deck to perform at its best. To be clear, I’m not saying to just copy my build without evaluating card choices and how your own playstyle interacts with the cards, but I
am saying there are key concepts people shouldn’t just be ignoring if they want to maximize their success with Gears (or really any deck).
I wouldn’t want my build to be anymore than a template for others to make their Geargia decklist. But when I see a Geargia thread in the forum’s Deck Discussion or make the cut at a regional, I’m eager to see what tech others have come up with—I am consistently disappointed to see that they are generally just the recipients of good fortunate in spite of their poor card choices.
It’s as if “personal preference” outweighs actual reasoning and performance.
Personal preference is something that’s thrown around all-to-often but there should always a reason. Recently a couple of cards choices in one of my friend’s deck were questioned. My friend gave some half-hearted explanation but his use of “player preference” made my heart sink. Despite being a good duelist, he didn’t have a sufficient grasp of
whyhis card choices were justified. I thought this was especially surprising because, to me, the reasoning was clear! Player preference is just a cop out. Even if it comes from a good player. Either there’s reasoning, and you just need spend some more tie being able to understand it, or there’s not.
I just want to encourage everybody to really think through their card choices. Have sound reasoning for each of your cards. If you can’t provide any, or it doesn’t stand up to the counter-arguments, then you probably shouldn’t be running it.
That goes
especially for forum goers. All too often I see people discussing card choices without actually detailing their reasoning and, like sheep, people follow. Rather, start making decisions for yourself and if you have a disagreement, you’ll both be better on in the long-run by actually discussing the merits of each card rather than dismissing it as preference. (This is where quantifiable value comes in handy, since it can break what might otherwise be a standstill.) Make sure you understand all of the most important factors and how they weight against your alternatives.
· Pros and cons
· Performance in testing
· Quantifiable value
Generally, you’ll theory-oh a list of pros and cons before even testing. Then, through testing, you’ll come across scenarios you hadn’t thought about that add to your list. Each of these items can be quantified in one way or another.
Have you ever reflected on yourself and thought how dumb you were a couple of years ago? You’ve been through so much since then, though. Now you have a much better grasp on life; you’re more intelligent, wiser, less naïve and more prepared to deal with what’s coming. Be proud! But don’t be content—the you from the future thinks you are oblivious to so much right now.The older you become, the less you congratulate yourself for how sage you have become and the more you realize how little you actually know. You come to realize that life is a journey of continuous learning. If you don’t share this sentiment, you’re probably one of the many stubborn and arrogant teenagers playing this game that thinks they’re untouchable—but you’re not and you should start listening to your parents more often.
Bear with me here, your parents didn’t give me a Dark Bribe to write this article and I will actually be talking about Yu-Gi-Oh. The point that I’m trying to make is that, like in life, there’s too much even in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh to truly know and master everything.In order to be the “perfect duelist” you would have to master entire fields of study:
Reading your opponent’s body language can give you clues within a duel. Think of all of the different ways your opponent could be unintentionally saying something: scratching, looking, touching, tapping, body positioning. Did you know that based on where each lobe is located within your brain, that when somebody is trying to visually remember something, they usually look towards the upper right? If they’re looking to the left, there’s a good chance they’re imagining something up and are going to tell you a fabricated story. Of course, your opponent could also be using their body language to try trick you by acting like they’re in a bad position so you fall into their trap! Being able to read through these is also another skill not easily mastered. Separate from these is learning how you can use it as a weapon against your opponent.
- Mathematics and Statistics
Often times people use their “gut” to feel out what the right answer is or base a decision on what amounts to a small sample size. That’s when math comes in handy. An entire playerbase could be making incorrect assumptions about a card based on what seems right to them when, actually, the math says otherwise. That’s an enormous way to get an edge in deckbuilding. But sometimes the calculations are complicated and an advanced understanding of math is the most effective or only way of reaching the right answer. Familiarity with odds and calculating them is also helpful since it means you can use it to aid you in complicated decision making during a game without taking up too much time.
By magic, I mean tricks and techniques, such as slight of hand, which could be used in order to cheat. Understand that I’m not advocating cheating—rather I’m suggesting that if you really want to be able to counter it, then knowing the ways to do it is the most effective way of recognizing when somebody’s doing it to you.
That’s far from a comprehensive list but I feel as though it should get the point across: people commit their entire lives towards studying math, magic and body language. Applying them within a competitive environment is something experts in those fields usually don’t even study.
But even if you were able to master all of these, within the context of Yu-Gi-Oh at least, it’s impossible to completely understand all the different interactions within the meta game because it’s always changing so rapidly. To return to my parallel between life and our children’s card game, even if you could live forever—you would never be able to know everything! It changes too quickly. If you were to study architecture and “master” that, then learn all you could about vehicles, by the time you were finished, architecture would have already advanced beyond what you had previously learned.
Some duelists concede not knowing everything by learning just one deck and mastering it. Others dabble between multiple decks, gaining a more general understanding of them all. There are also duelists that enjoy magic but aren’t strong at math. Even amongst the Yu-Gi-Oh mathematicians, some are better than others. We each have our different strengths. My point is that there’s no way to learn everything in Yu-Gi-Oh. If nobody can know everything, then there’s no way for
anybody to always make the right play based on all of the available factors that can go into making a decision and executing those plays.
The perfect way of playing only exists within Patrick Hoban’s imagination.
Rather, we each take what we know about areas like body language and math, playtest to gain a better understanding of the interactions within the meta, combine it with our own intellect and tendencies and that’s what forms our individual playstyle—at least for the moment. Remember that our playstyles are always evolving, just like us, and as we learn more our outlook on the game and on life changes.
You should notice, though, that even though they might disagree from time to time, most great players do tend to share the same opinion on what’s the best play pretty often. Having a unique perspective or playstyle isn’t enough to justify poor decision making in deck building or dueling. For more on that, I encourage you to read the “Deck Building with Purpose” article on the Yu-Gi-Cast website:
http://yu-gi-cast.blogspot.com/p/deck-building-with-purpose.htmlThanks for reading and as always—play hard, play smart, or go home!
Subject: Article: deck building with a purpose & playstyles 
