Celestia and Wulf should both be banned.

[Dad]

Ah' date=' excellent. We have a worthy opponent this time.

 

Within the Lightlords' date=' however, a single card shines as being a paragon of Luck even when viewed in relation to his brothers. I am, of course, referring to Wulf, who depending on the player's luck is either a useless draw or a 2100 ATK floater that comes out of nowhere without warning. His entire purpose is to create random swings in one direction or the other - the antithesis of a Skill-based game. He can be used outside of Lightlord.dek, but hardly enough to justify his presence. When one considers that an improved format would involve the legalization of at least Monster Gate and possibly (depending on the build) Reasoning, Wulf becomes absurd. He adds nothing but chance to the game; banish him and be done with it.

[/quote']

 

I disagree here. Wulf isn't a 2100 ATK floater that comes out of nowhere without warning all the time. It is only that when it is milled any time after your opponent's Main Phase 2 and before your Main Phase 2. Let's call this the 'danger period'. If it isn't milled during the danger period, it is a 2100 ATK floater that comes with a warning, and your opponent will have a fair chance of finding an answer to it. Like you have stated, this answer can mean advantage for the owner of Wulf, or saving the owner 2100 life points. I do agree that it would be unfair if the owner would get an advantage from simply milling Wulf, but with the easy access to monsters stronger than Wulf, it'll most of the time be the latter, saving life points. I see this kind of advantage completely balanced; it extends gameplay, which gives both players an equal benefit.

 

Even when it appears in the End Phase, a Wulf can have a significant effect, even though the opponent gets a chance to respond before it can attack. If the opponent spends a card to eliminate Wulf, the Wulf has drawn removal and its owner has randomly +1'd. If the opponent does not or will not spend a card to eliminate Wulf, battle is their only chance of stopping it from attacking.

 

I don't quite understand that last comment of yours about Wulf absorbing 2100 Life Points of damage benefiting both players equally because it extends gameplay. That is just balderdash; if I have a Normal Spell whose complete text is "Gain 150000 Life Points", then that doesn't benefit both players equally because it extends gameplay, that benefits me because it makes me harder to kill. Conversely, taking damage doesn't hurt both players equally because it shortens gameplay, it benefits whoever didn't take the damage (unless that person wanted the damage for Trap of Darkness or Air Neos or something, but let's not go off on a tangent). Giving the user a random 2100 Life Point restoration seems like a highly significant effect, especially since it doesn't cost the user any cards.

 

However, note that one cannot rely on the opponent necessarily being able to kill Wulf in battle - or, if he can, then one cannot rely on the opponent being able to do so without letting something else live. Lightlords have decent swarm power with Lumina and Glorious Illusion, which helps them accumulate large fields (not to mention that Wulf himself is a Special Summon); furthermore, their Level 4 monsters tend to have fairly high ATK. The result is that, in order to even reduce Wulf to a 2100-point shield, the opponent must be able to Summon enough monsters to kill all of the Lightlord player's monsters that turn, and those monsters must have enough ATK to succeed. If the opponent cannot Summon enough strong monsters in that turn to match the field of a swarm deck that just received a free bonus monster, they must either let Wulf live or kill Wulf at the expense of letting someone else live. Either way, Wulf has served as far more than a mere Life Point shield. The kicker is that mills in the "safe period" - a period that is increasingly seeming to be in need of a rename - are almost always from the Lightlords already on the field, and that the more Lightlords are out, the more cards are milled, and thus the more likely it is that Wulf will pop out that turn; as such, Wulf is most likely to appear in the larger fields where he will be most effective.

 

Even in the period of time when Wulf is least effective, he still has a powerful effect - in the worst-case scenario, he's a 1/4 LP shield, and in better scenarios (which are more probable than they intuitively seem) he is a free +1. And a free +1 has a tremendous effect in the game we desire when we can't toss around nukes like it's 1962 and we're in Cuba. (And all of this is before we even consider that Wulf can be used as fuel for the Lightlord Counter Trap or whatever else...)

 

Now' date=' it is true that if Wulf is milled during the danger period, it is in fact a 2100 ATK floater that comes out of nowhere without warning. There are a bunch of cards that allow this to happen (examples include Charge of the Light Brigade, Solar Recharge, Reasoning, Card Trooper, etc.), but you need to have one of these cards as well as have Wulf in a place in your deck that allows that card to mill Wulf (where it needs to be, depends on the card itself). If we take those two factors into account, it really doesn't happen that often. In fact, it'll probably happen less often than Wulf being milled during the 'save period' or simply being drawn.

[/quote']

 

Let me just get one thing out of the way here: just because it comes up in the "Extra Danger Period" (which seems a more accurate name to me) less often than it does in the End Phase doesn't mean that its appearances in the EDP aren't a problem. Here's a hypothetical example for illustration: Suppose there is a card that has a good effect less often than it has a sucky effect. Suppose that, two-thirds of the time, that card expends itself to simply make the user mill a small number of cards. Now, suppose this isn't a hypothetical example and that that card's name is Sixth Sense. Just because the random good effect comes up less often than the random bad effect doesn't mean that the card is balanced. But it gets worse from there; being milled in the End Phase isn't a random bad outcome for Wulf but rather a random not-quite-as-awesome-but-still-good outcome. The worst-case scenario - actually drawing Wulf - is much less probable than either of the good outcomes.

 

At any rate, I think you're over-exaggerating the difficulty needed to Summon Wulf in the EDP. At the very least, Charge of the Light Brigade and Solar Recharge will always be maxed out in Lightlord.dek, and a single Charge has a 28% chance of milling at least one Wulf in a three-Wulf deck - better than one-in-four.

 

You seem to be conceding that Wulf popping out in the EDP is a bad thing and are arguing that it is tolerable because it doesn't happen enough. On that front I must disagree; it happens plenty.

 

I have already stated that Wulf being milled during the save period isn't a problem' date='

[/quote']

 

*coughyesitiscough*

 

and if it is being drawn' date=' it isn't completely useless; it can still be used as [s']a bad example[/s] discard fodder. I think we can both agree that using a card as discard fodder isn't a problem.

 

ANTI-RAIGEKI IS BROKED BAN BAN BAN

 

Recap: it is true that Wulf can be a problem' date=' but most of the time, it isn't. As a comparison, Arcane Barrier can replace itself with 4 other cards, but because it doesn't do that most of the time, it's balanced.

[/quote']

 

Last time I checked, Arcane Barrier isn't a Luck-based card. Its effect doesn't say "Roll a die, subtract 2 from your roll and draw that many cards"; instead, the draw is a function of how many Spellcasters died since it was activated. The problem with Wulf isn't that the advantage it grants is impossibly large but rather that it is purely random. A better analogy than Arcane Barrier is Sixth Sense, where chance is the only thing that has an effect.

 

Celestia' date=' not being quite as blatantly forged out of flipped coins as Wulf, may not appear to be quite so straightforward, but in fact she is actually far easier to justify banning. Above, I have said two things: first, Lightlord.dek, even without Judgment Dragoon and perhaps even Wulf, are still competitive in improved formats, and second, that Lightlord.dek is terrible for the game. From these two statements, we can conclude that costlessly damaging Lightlords is a good thing for the game. This is not about maintaining competitive balance or anything of that sort; it is about removing a unilaterally damaging influence from the format.

[/quote']

 

This is basically what you've based your anti-Celestia arguments on. You repeated the second statement (Lightlord.dek is terrible for the game) a lot. However, when looking in your post, the only reason for this statement that I could find was:

(...) but when an entire deck and all its core functions are focused on such randomness' date=' we have a problem.

[/quote']

 

Well, first of all, granted that we prohibit Judgment Dragoon, I don't think that if the archetype is focused on milling, it becomes a problem. Venoms are focused on weakening the opponent's monsters, Crystal Beasts are focused on having Crystal Beasts in the s/t zones, Gladiator Beasts are focused on toolboxing, Gravekeepers are focused on locking the Graveyard, etc. That doesn't make all these decks problems.

 

That's because those decks don't have an unusually high emphasis on Luck. Venoms don't flip a coin to see how many Venom Counters they distribute; Crystal Beasts don't discard cards from the top of the deck when they're destroyed and put any Crystal Beast monsters that show up into the s/t zone; Gladiator Beasts are less chance-based than any other deck under the sun, since even the random opening draw has less impact than usual thanks to the tagging mechanic; and so on. Only two archetypes have their entire theme focus on random chance. One is Lightlords; the other is Arcana Force. The difference is an important one; one is too weak to win bar the most absurd good luck, but the other is not.

 

This focus becomes a problem when cards can be used that are unbalanced when used in interaction. An example of such a card is Judgment Dragoon. It's logical to ban that card' date=' and that's what you seem to agree on, but I don't understand why you want to additionally 'punish' the archetype by randomly banning strong cards that the archetype has. If Judgment Dragoon is banned, the fact that Lightlords are focused on mills isn't a problem anymore, and Celestia, despite being strong, shouldn't be a problem.

[/quote']

 

Even without Judgment Dragoon, Lightlord.dek still has its basis in luck; it's not as blatant and obnoxious as it was when they had a 3000-ATK self-Special Summoning field-nuker, but it is still present when your deck flow depends on whether you mill the cards you want to mill. Even without something like Judgment Dragoon, a high-tier meta deck with such a high emphasis on Luck is still a bad thing. (They also tend to speed up the game quite a bit, which is another thing we'd rather not have.)

 

The whole Lightlord.dek-should-die thing is more the final nail in Celestia's coffin than the only argument against her; I placed the greatest emphasis on that because that, if accepted, makes the case against Celestia absolutely flawless via the whole cost/benefit analysis thing.

 

Without that argument, Celestia is still borderline at best. I gave a brief overview of that angle of the case against her in my original post, but you don't seem to have quoted it here - rather a large oversight.

 

You're getting a fetish out of this aren't you?

[GenzoTheHarpist]

So 60/0 is just banlist theory when the 3 copy limit rule is removed?

[CrabHelmet]

You're getting a fetish out of this aren't you?

 

Fool' date=' my ultimate goal is to have this forum turned into an anime, with myself voiced by Dan Green.

 

[b']NOT SO FAST KAIBA! YOU OVERLOOKED THE NEGATIVE INFLUENCE THAT GENERIC MASS REMOVAL HAS ON THE METAGAME![/b]

 

THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK, YUGI! YOU'VE TRIGGERED MY TRAP! HEAVY STORM AT 1 ADDS A NEW DIMENSION OF SKILL TO THE GAME!

 

THAT CAUSES A SHIFT IN THE BALANCE OF IMPORTANCE TOWARD BEING LUCKY ENOUGH TO DRAW IT!

 

NOT ENOUGH TO AVOID BEING CANCELED OUT BY THE STRATEGY IT ADDS TO SETTING! GO, BLUE-EYES! ATTACK HIS ARGUMENT DIRECTLY!

 

NOOOOOOOOO!

 

So 60/0 is just banlist theory when the 3 copy limit rule is removed?

 

Pretty much. Or at least that particular version is.

[Flame Dragon]

A card's no more imbalanced in 9 copies than in 3 copies. If there were 3 cards with the exact same stats and effect and each was banworthy' date=' they should ALL be banned. If not, they should all be legalized.

[/quote']

For the most part this is true, but that isn't the problem with Sarc. It basicly every card in your deck at once. Only you pick what card you need most. That allows for much to much versatility

 

Also' date=' let's not forget that Sangan and Witch have field presence drawbacks a good amount of the time as their stats can't stand up to too many beatsticks out there..

[/quote']

Is the fact that they can't do much side from die that big a deal? Similar to what Sarc does, both are alomst every monster all at once. Looking though my BW deck I counted 7 cards that be searched by Sangan, meaning Sangan is basicly every one of those card. Now if we look at Witch she is 17 different monsters. Yes I know neither can get you all those cards, but being able to search out that much of a deck at the simple cost of itself is to much.

 

And that's terrible?

Is Stacking bad?

 

You'd ideally have to assess the situation and find which target you would get the most of in that situation. You're forced to think' date=' this's a test of skill.

[/quote']

But often times that isn't hard. Your opponent is swarming, take Lightning Vortex. You can push for game, take a card that will make it easier. You draw it on your first turn when you neither apply, take what ever card is the most helpful in general.

 

If you want to continue this please move this to the Sarc thread.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

Proceeding to "continue in the Sarc thread."

[zombiepromking]

To be honest i never thought wulf was the core issue, i think it's celestia.

 

Celestia @ 1 would be nice. But with wulf getting support out the ass soon with the naturias, i guess we could put him @ 1

[Evil_Hero_Stratosfear]

Nope' date=' wrong. Neither are banworthy, limitworthy, or anything like that.

 

The only thing that could be limit/semi worthy would be honest due to the ease of getting instant wins when you have multiple copies. And that's pretty iffy as well.

[/quote']

 

I reacon Honest should be at 2, because it's too easy to cause severe damage with just one Honest.

[Von Csent]

Your logic fails. If you think that it is too easy to cause severe damage with one, why do you suggest it be at two?

[HORUS]

ITT: "Elite" players explain why the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG should be Magic: The Gathering.

[CrabHelmet]

ITT: "Elite" players explain why the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG should be Magic: The Gathering.

 

ITT: All games that require an ounce of skill are Magic.