Deck Profile: Masked Heroes

Ok, I lied. The deck profile AFTER this will be about Malefics.

Credit goes to Youtuber Chroahcresta, Hero user and duelist extraordinaire whose deck ideas helped greatly with the construction of this particular deck.

Elemental Heroes are one of the longest-running archtypes in Yu-gi-oh, making their debut as the cards used by protagonist Jaden Yuki in the second anime series, Yu-gi-oh GX. Heroes have managed to stick arpund in various forms ever since then, with Destiny Heroes and Evil Heroes being introduced throughout GX's run, and with new monsters being introduced in the GX manga. This Hero deck utilizes a unique subset of Heroes introduced in the manga, one that doesn't see a lot of play; the Masked Heroes. Like Batman, these masked avengers are here to win your duels. That is to say, if Batman was a Yugioh player. And he dueled for you. Umm...

Unlike their counterparts, the Masked Heroes don't have enough cards to support an entire deck on their own- counting their key Spell card, Mask Change, there are only five of them available in the Trading Card Game. Still, utilizing these cards in an Elemental Hero deck adds a surprising amount of versatility to the deck.

Peter's Dragon Deck

So, I just finished my new Yugioh deck. And, I've got to say, I'm kind of proud of this one. No, it's not the type of deck that you could take to a tournament, but it's my deck, and it's one of the better ones I've had for use against my friends.

After a brief turn to a pretty basic Synchro deck, I decided to return to my more traditional focus on Dragon-types, with the release of the Dragons Collide structure deck serving as the basis. The idea is pretty simple- use Red-eyes Darkness Metal and other cards to summon a lot of powerful dragons and clear away threats from my opponent with powerful Spells and Traps- a fairly basic, if effective, strategy.

I'll put the deck list below, but before that I'm going to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of this deck, along with some of the better cards in it. Consider this the beginning of a semi-regular column on Yugioh decks. I'm not the best player out there, but I've enjoyed this game for a while, and with the advent of www.duelingnetwork.com, it's easier than ever to try out new decks and see what can be done with them.

The Fire Still Burns: My Philosophy of Life

 This is the final paper we wrote for our English 12 class this semester. It's not perfect, but I thought I'd share it here. It's nice to get a piece of writing out every so often, and this one is a little different from my usual fare. So, here we go.

Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength~ Drizzt Do'Urden, The Silent Blade.

            On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent~ Scout Oath and Law.

           

           When I was asked to concoct a Philosophy of Life, two questions immediately sprang to mind. The first was, “How am I going to do that?” The second was, “Do I even have a Philosophy of Life?” The first question was easily answered, as I write papers all the time and have proven to be at least semi-capable of farting out something legible in the span of a half hour or so. The answer to the second question proves to be more difficult, because I certainly do not want to just crap this paper out without putting any thought into it, and it provides an interesting point of introspection. Of course, everyone should have some sort of philosophy by which they guide their actions, even if that philosophy is not immediately apparent. So what moral code do I, then, live by?

Yu-gi-oh! ZeXal dub.

I've been into Yu-gi-oh! for a long time. That is to say, I really enjoy playing the card game- it's a lot of fun. I do watch the anime, but only the Japanese versions with english subs. 4kids, the company that dubs the series, has a history of censoring their shows, and the Yu-gi-oh! franchise has been completely mangled by this- crappy voices, card name changes, thematic censorship, and more have made a cheesy if fun anime into an unbearably kiddish slogfest. They never even finished the second series, GX, cut entire episodes of 5'ds because they were too dark, and generally ruined whatever they got their hands on.
The recent anime, Yu-gi-oh! ZeXal marks where I stopped watching the Yu-gi-oh! cartoons. Even in the Japanese version, the franchise reeks of jumped shark with this series. Somehow, despite being in the middle of a massive lawsuit with TV Tokyo and Konami, 4kids is somehow able to dub Yu-gi-oh! ZeXal. So how did they do? Well, it seems like they made one small improvement, and several steps backwards from their earlier schlock.
First of all, the backs of the cards FINALLY look like their real-world selves, the one improvement ZeXal made as a whole to the franchise. The life point and ATK counters remain unchanged, which is rare for 4crap. These are the only positive changes, though. ZeXal was stupid enough in it's native language, and the dialogue and characters appear to have only gotten more annoying. And what's with the monsters saying their names? What is this, Pokemon? Doesn't help that the new card types (once called Exceeds, now called Xyz for some inane reason) are retarded. Yuma is still the worst protagonist the series has ever had (he makes Judai look compelling). The Augmented Reality Duels don't make any real sense (at least Riding Duels, while silly, added new rules to the game. ARDs aen't any different from normal duels, so what's the point?).
I used to be a fan of this series, and while I'll continue to use my own deck for dueling (Dragon/Synchro FTW!), I'm going to continue to pass on ZeXal. This series, for all intents and purposes, just killed itself.