Well, here we are at the OG big number! Remember how in elementary school we would wonder how much difference there would be when we either turned 10 or how big a gap of 10 years was? Well as I grew older at least, Calc ruined the impressiveness of the OG big number, but there are some OGs that we can still admire to this day. In the early Link era in Duel Links (Link era refers to the time when a new summoning mechanic– Link summoning– was introduced, and Duel Links is a mobile game that allows players to partake in speed duels; which are duels but with a specific ruleset to make them shorter and not as combo heavy) there was this one archetype that was released that made it stand out from the rest. This one archetype was so good that many wondered if it had reached Tier 0 status (meaning that no other deck can defeat it besides itself in a mirror match). This archetype stood against all others to rightfully be considered the OG archetype to push Duel Links into becoming more combo heavy (but still not as combo heavy as its physical counterpart). The archetype in question is the Live☆ / Evil★ Twins (Live☆Twins and Evil★Twins)! And they will charm you over and steal all your opponent’s life points!

The archetype is pretty simple, after all it focuses on the twins– Ki-sikil & Lil-la. Just your everyday average monsters. Nothing to concern yourselves over… What a minute– THE Ki-sikil and THE Lil-la, the two famous v-tubers in the yugioh-monster world (they are not real figures, I’m just trying to play them up as much as I can)! Yes, Live☆Twin Ki-sikil and Live☆Twin Lil-la from Live☆Twin Channel (actual card)! For anyone late to the party these two are the yugioh-monster world’s biggest v-tubers! Yup, everyone loves v-tubers! There isn’t a single person that I, the author, don’t know that don’t like v-tubers and I totally love them too (I don’t know anyone who actively watches v-tubers, nor do I myself). In typically v-tuber fashion though, they tend to get festive with the seasons! We can see how cute Ki-sikil becomes when she dons her snowman outfit and how spooky Lil-la is when she’s jumping people for sweets! But as you all know v-tubers have their own life. Their real-life bodies aren’t the same as the models they show off to the world which where we introduce– Evil★Twin Ki-sikil and Evil★Twin Lil-la! And these two aren’t going away with accomplishing what they want– stealing as much riches as they can by inserting viruses in everyone’s computers to optimally locate said riches (as depicted by their spell and trap cards)!

Their effects and gameplay also work like how they are depicted as well. When you get either Live☆Twin they will call out the other from the deck. Then you Link them together (using Link summoning) to get out one of the Evil★Twin (you do this to get the effects of the Evil★Twins, which either benefit you the player or harm your opponent) The Evil★Twin will in turn revive the other (Ki-sikil or Lil-la, whichever is NOT on the field) and then will Link itself and the revived Live☆Twin to make the other Evil★Twin (you benefit by gaining both effects by summoning both Twins). The archetype’s spells and traps also help facilitate changing between the Twins so that you can gain advantage while also making your opponent lose advantage in the process (in addition to depicting how the Twins plan and execute their plan to steal riches). This proved to be game changing in Duel Links and soon pushed the meta as far as it could, making them the OGs at their time period. They also provided us with a valuable lesson, if you like v-tubers, don’t. They’ll steal everything you have (just joking)!

Back at it again, everyone excited?! Yes, yes, I do know that not all of you know me and I don’t know everyone, but let’s just try to have fun with each other with our little blogs. These passion blogs, (to me at least) seem to be a way to see into a person and get to know them on a more personal connection and I believe that that is beautiful. Sure, blogging isn’t for everyone but there must be something worth talking about, right? Welcome everybody and this is my blog about Yu-gi-oh!, a game I have a fondness for since my youth. In my blogs I go over how certain archetypes and certain groups of cards work together (either by effect or art) to portray an overarching theme. Now with that out of the way let’s get into the blog!

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Did you guys ever hear about that one nurse who killed babies in her care? In Britain, there was a nurse who would torture and kill babies and claim to do it because she was evil. The story came back to me when Professor Babcock was explaining the Civic Blogs to us in class. Why is this important you might ask? Well in the earlier days of Yu-gi-oh, there was a certain deck that was very popular known as nurse burn which was used very consistently. A woman, who you (as the opponent to the deck or in real life) could seem to trust seems to backstab you… I’m not the only one seeing the parallels, right?

The deck consisted of a lot– and I mean a lot – of healing spell cards and effects in general. Some examples of these are emergency provisions, solemn wishes, and draining shield. In Yu-gi-oh!, these effects are basically garbage and never used, unlike medication and physical therapy in the real world. Your objective is to reduce your opponent’s LP to 0 so these would not really be useful. If you were to slide in a card to heal, you might be taking a spot of a critical combo opener or extender (which is really important in Yu-gi-oh!). If you heal your opponent, you make it harder to win the game. If you heal yourself, you could be constricting yourself of a way to actually win the game with another card. Healing yourself also could have no effect as well, because on your opponent’s next turn, they might make a monster with a high attack total (what we in the business like to call a big beatstick) with an attack higher than what you healed and attack you for the game. They were so bad that the people who made the cards decided to make it so that on average most heal spells will heal for +2000, while all burn spells (inflict LP damage) will cause –500 to –1000. Heal spells are still not played while burn spells are very popular. So how did the supposed nurse find a way to make a useless strategy a game winner? You should be warned this is no regular nurse, this is Darklord Nurse Reficule. Her effect is a simple, but deadly effect. All cards that would make your opponent gain LP will instead make them lose LP. So, in this deck you would summon Darklord Nurse Reficule and play as many opponent-targeting heal spells to inflict an insane amount of damage. One popular card that was played was Gift Card, a trap that would heal your opponent for +3000. You could keep 3 copies of the same card in your deck, and in a game where everyone starts with 8000 LP, just summoning Nurse Reficule and setting 3 traps was game winning. 

As time passed the nurse in Britain and Darklord Nurse Reficule got their just desserts (get it, because “just desserts” is a Yu-gi-oh! card). Britain’s most wanted nurse in now behind bars and the game of Yu-gi-oh! has gotten so fast that Reficule just can’t keep up with the times anymore. Now let’s hope there aren’t any more evil nurses out there. 

It’s finally that time guys. Our final blog post. I’m honestly getting a bit teary-eyed thinking about this moment. I know blogging will continue as we go into ENGL/CAS, 138T but thinking that we won’t all be together is definitely heartbreaking. As a side note to what I will talk about today, I just wanted to share that it has been my utmost pleasure blogging with you all and getting to know each and every one of you through this experience. Since this is a conclusion-type blog, I feel like I should reflect back to the beginning. With my blog being about cards, it’s a little hard to do so, but looking at one archetype, it reminded me of one of the topics I was brainstorming while trying to think of a topic for these blog posts. 

Back at the beginning of the semester, I was totally lost on what I could possibly write for them. I was never really expressive about my own activities out of a work area, so I definitely wondered if I could blog for the entire semester. I wasn’t that big into hobbies either. The two main ones were Yu-Gi-Oh! (of course) and gardening. I shared gardening with my mother. I was actually leaning towards gardening at first because I didn’t have much confidence that anyone would care about a crazy girl and her addiction. And I knew that if I didn’t know something about gardening, I could just ask her. But as more time went on, I realized that to survive college I would need to stand on my own two feet. So, in a leap of faith, I decided to base my blogs around Yu-Gi-Oh!, and despite being rather niche, I’m glad that I was able to communicate with others about my passion. My passion for gardening didn’t fade though, nor did my love and admiration for my mother. So today I want to dedicate this post to the things (and person) I love most. 

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Definitely a little late to actually be talking about cards now (word counts at 343 before the parentheses), but the archetype I want to talk about are Trickstars. The Trickstars are not necessarily an archetype that would give you plant vibes because of their designs as pop stars, but their names and effects actually are based around real world plants. All of the monsters in the archetype are named after a flower, with said flower appearing in the corner of their artwork! One of the things that I should note as well is the amount of detail put into those flowers in their artwork. The flowers vary in many different shapes and sizes in real life, which the illustrators of these cards perfectly encapsulated! Pretty impressive when there are over 20 Trickstar monsters!

Though the girls and flowers might not seem as much on the surface, they pack quite a punch. Once being meta relevant in all formats of the game, the Trickstars specialize in dealing effect damage per action that either player would make. They had synergy with each other to bring out the trickstars with the heaviest hitting damaging effect and watching the firework show start on your opponent’s turn! Sometimes people would even win the game on turn 1 (which is before your opponent would get to move)! I guess being based around poisonous plants does have its perks! Though poisonous (or toxic, pick your poison), I can’t help but to have admiration for these cards. They took something as tame as plants and made them beasts (at least to the meta, they’re still pop stars in their art). They are in a way promoting passions within the Yu-Gi-Oh community. Whether your passion was gardening, burning (which no meta deck was, until that point), or liking the aesthetic of pop stars, they stood strong and encouraged me and others to believe in their passions because one day those passions will make you feel on top of the world. 

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Which these posts have done for me. So with a heavy heart I leave you all, but I hope that your passions will continue to guide you to the top, just like how my passion blog did and will continue to do for me.

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It’s that time again to absorb all the occult this world has to offer! With Halloween approaching everyone’s attention turns to the unknown– creatures, monsters, mayhem! A constant tradition that is kept alive by the masses (especially during this time) is fortune telling; specifically with Tarot Cards! Tarot Cards, though their existence predates that of Halloween, have usually been associated with the spooky day due to the eeriness of knowing whether there is ruin or not in someone’s future. What the future may hold might be a mystery to the general masses, but for some unknown reason these cards know the answer.  You are already a part of their group. Don’t believe me? Try finding out your birth card and see for yourself the similarities between it and you. Take your entire birth date and add every individual number together (using the following date as an example {06/25/2000} you would add 0+6+2+5+2+0+0+0). If you do this and get a number less than or equal to 21 then look up your birth card here (just look at the result you get from this method, as you can see there are multiple methods to figure out someone’s birth card) If you get a number greater than 21 (like for example 56) then you would take the individual numbers in your answer (5 and 6) and add them together for your card (for the example 56, your birth card would be 11). Now go to the above link to see what your birth cards means. See how your life seems to be guided by the cards? No matter what, there is no running from your fate, for your fate is spelled out in the cards. 

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As a brief description, the Tarot Cards (or in the Yu-Gi-Oh universe– “Arcana Force” cards) are a set of cards divided into 21 different groups to describe a person’s future and personality (only future for Yu-gi-oh’s purpose though). They are all marked with roman numerals and all the Tarot card’s names are present on the Arcana Force cards. For example we have the Strength card (VII) whose Yu-gi-oh counterpart is Arcana Force VIII – The Strength. The effects of these cards vary very much on the fate of the duelist. Who will fate favor more, Duelist A or Duelist B? Who can say besides fate herself? All Arcana Force cards have a good effect to benefit the player who played them, or a downside effect to the negative effect of that same player. The effects are also based around that Tarot card’s upright and reverse meaning. Taking our example of the Tarot strength card, its upright meaning is that you will have courage and will power in your future. Its reverse meaning is that your future is riddled with pettiness, unfaithfulness and weakness. In terms of its Arcana Force counterpart the 2 effects described are 1) “Heads: Take control of 1 monster your opponent controls,” and 2) “Tails: Your opponent selects and takes control of one monster you control, except this card.” The result shows what type of leader you are. If you have courage and willpower, enemies will join your side, but if you are weak and petty then allies will leave you for your opponent. 

So now concludes our little discussion about the occult Tarot Cards. Now if fate smiles on you are not, we are not sure, but know that your fate is written in the cards. Happy Halloween for those who might survive their fate until then…

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Alright, alright, I know I have been getting all gushy with all this pet talk from last week’s post, but now it’s time to get back to business. Get back to the drawing board and rework the formulas for these posts. You know speaking of formulas, my roommate is taking Chem this semester and boy would I hate to be in her shoes. I am terrible at Chemistry, always was, always will be. I can’t even describe the formula to combine molecules to make water, much less use an archetype revolving them! Wait– what? Am I reading the script correctly or am I going to hassle myself with an archetype that is based around a field of science that I am not good in?

Link–https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.sTRc_SWA30RFpG1qOoQN1QHaE8?pid=ImgDet&rs=1

Though the archetype in question doesn’t share a singular name or phrase among their cards, people have dubbed the archetype the Chemical archetype. This archetype is a first in these blogs of mine as well; due to the fact that they appeared in the Yu-gi-oh anime as well. This deck was used by Bastion Misawa or Daichi Misawa in the subbed version (if you’re into that), and the deck was meant to represent how he was made to be a very logical person. In the anime, people would tend to just use one deck for the entire series, but Bastion was different. He was seen using 2 decks, the aforementioned Chemical deck and a Magnet/Magnetic deck and was characterized to plan carefully ahead of time to prepare a deck best suited to defeating his opponent. I know the formula for water is somewhat basic, but his deck was one of the first archetypes to be based on something scientific rather than something fictional, truly emphasizing that he was a man of logic in a sea of idiots.

Bastion Misawa from Yu-gi-oh GX Link– https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.a1279e94070ecb7f947622d1d924c478?rik=Bn%2fom4fzZzNA7g&riu=http%3a%2f%2fimages6.fanpop.com%2fimage%2fphotos%2f32900000%2fBastion-Misawa-yu-gi-oh-gx-32931819-1000-751.jpg&ehk=Z4StBCeFIR1cTe9Eo8eeSaOd56MWMNJWKItvRx7c6Hw%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0

Chemicals revolved around both their monsters and spells/traps to get out their big boss monster. The monsters in the archetype were all based around elements. Carboneddon is based around carbon, Oxygeddon is based around oxygen, Hydrogeddon was based around hydrogen, Duoterion is based around Deuterium (or heavy hydrogen) and the boss monsters, Water Dragon and Water Dragon Cluster, are based around water and heavy water respectively. All of their effects work together to get all the main deck monsters out onto the board and “combine” them into either Water Dragons. That’s where the chemical archetype’s spells and trap come in! The spell cards, Bonding – D2O and Bonding – H2O, use the “molecules” on board and bond them to create water! With Bonding – D2O, you would ideally create Water Dragon Cluster (which if you already combine the “molecules” on the card you would get a water cluster) and with Bonding – H2O you would create Water Dragon!  And the trap card, Bonding – DHO, uses “molecules” in your hand and graveyard to create a product of Water Dragon Clusters (but in this case with the “molecules” needed in this card you would create semi-heavy water).

Unfortunately, this archetype never got any support so the latest it saw play was in the early 2000s and has long lost the recess of minds ever since. Huh, another characteristic it shares with Bastion (after season 2 Bastion was written out of the story– and forgotten by the writers– of Yu-gi-oh GX and was only shown 2 more times in the show, despite being a main character up until that point). Does that mean Chem is irrelevant to society? I would hope so because I don’t want to go through that class!

Hydrogeddon

You know, I was watching a video the other day. A very… “interesting” one. It was about a guy who overlapped a camera following his pet fish (in well… its fish tank) with his computer’s tabs. Wherever the fish would swim he would need to click, but the catch is that Tortellini (the fish) had control of his credit card and could buy anything–bad for him because the websites he was permitted to be on were ones that you can purchase stuff off of. He ended up buying thousands of dollars of stuff that he can’t use. Yikes.

Now what does this have to do with Yugioh? Well midway into the video the man was forced to go to TCG Player, and after looking around Magic the Gathering cards and Lorcana (your guess is as good as mine for the latter) for 10 minutes, Tortellini bought the first Yugioh card he saw; Baronne de Fleur. I know, I know, you guys are probably saying that I “popped off” at this moment. And you would be correct in saying that. Yeah, my Yugioh-centric mind just basically exploded with happiness. And it exploded again when the man decided that it could act like a negate to a purchase, especially because Baronne de Fleur’s effect is basically to do just that. 

As much as I would like to write about Baronne de Fleur, there unfortunately isn’t that much to go off of. But reflecting off that video, I felt a sense of sadness. Though Tortellini might have been a hindrance for the man, you could tell that there was a special love they shared. One that could not be broken so easily. A warm love that only a pet owner and their pet could ever have. Back at home, I had my mother, father, brother (sometimes), and my furry family– Rocky the rabbit and Chloe the dog. My human family comes and sees me often, but my fuzzy family aren’t that prone to traveling just yet. I can see you nodding off there. Good! Now that I have your attention might I direct you to Family and Friends Weekend, a weekend dedicated to bringing people back together? Well studies have shown that late Sept and early Oct is when most students feel depressed because of homesickness, so I know you’ve been missing that special someone (or something) close to you! And so, I decided to dedicate this passion post to the part of the family that would have the hardest time coming, our beloved fluffy animals!

Today’s focus will be on the Melffy archetype! They’re an archetype of small little animals (typically can be pets) and child-like innocence! And to those who are saying that the phrase before doesn’t apply to their pet, don’t kid yourself. Most of the monsters are effect monsters, but some of them are normal monsters! This means in place of their effects (normal monsters), these guys get little description about their lore and personalities! Who wouldn’t love these guys?! I mean just look a Melffy Rabby’s card description–

“Rabby’s up on that favorite stump again, looking all around the forest at all the fluffy friends! Do you like exploring, too? Good! Let’s go find more Melffy friends with Rabby!”

Who wouldn’t love such a creature! And for those of us who do have a little critter at home we know that this is the type of play that they love, exploring the world along with their human buddy! We can also see their playful attitudes in their spell and trap cards as well! In the spell Melffy Hide-and-Seek we can see all the Melffy monsters hiding from the person looking at the art! The game of Hide-and-Seek also gets included in the effect as well, by having it so that your beast monsters can “hide” once per turn to prevent destruction! We can also see them running about in Melffy Tag playing all together! This archetype has always had a special place in my heart because it was truly the first “pet” archetype, and I am very happy that I can finally talk about them! Whenever I feel down about not being able to see my own pets, I usually look at my copy of Melffy Wally and feel a little at peace, knowing that both of them are playing about like the Melffys. 

My own fuzzy furballs of sunshine–Rocky and Chloe

     As I dazed off at the night sky over the weekend I heard a peculiar sound. A sound that registers automatically as a source of happiness. Happiness that would spring from my hobby (or addiction) to the game that I loved. A loved game that I wasn’t playing at the moment. As I registered my surroundings I realized where that sound came from. My brother had booted up the game, Yu-gi-oh! Duel Links. 

     I was ecstatic. My brother had given up on the game so long ago. He said that the game had “grown too hard for him” (I mean seriously, all you need to do is remember all the cards in the competitive decks– 20-30 cards per deck, about 5 give or take meta decks at a time. And when you face a deck that is unbeknownst to you, you read all the 10 cards {approximately 100-300 words each} they play turn one {did I mention starting hand consisting of 4 cards per hand?} and try to play the game {if your opponent allows it}). But now was his turn to shine. He had given the easier version of the game one more chance and I was euphoric. So in dedication to his dedication, I will now write about one of my favorite archetypes to play, Mathmech (or Processlayer in the OCG). You thought I was going to dedicate it to his favorite deck, pfff… had you going there didn’t I?

    Okay, Okay, I know the taboo of speaking of the “m” word in an English class. But my heart guides my actions and I can’t ignore its roar (sorry libromancers). Mathmech is an archetype using the gimmick of math terms and translating them into the game. Your main deck monsters revolve around simple and common math terms which translates to their effects. For example, “Mathmech Addition” special summons itself by adding 1000 atk points to a monster on the field, and “Mathmech Subtraction lowers a monster by that amount to special summon itself. You could even see on their art work that their swords even reflect the symbols for those equations! As you can infer “Mathmech Multiplication” doubles the attack of monsters while “Mathmech Division” halves on monster on the field’s attack. There are few more but I’ll be here for an eternity if I went on to explain the Mathmech monster’s effects. 

    The extra deck monsters revolve around more complex and lesser known math terms. Some examples of these are “Mathmech Final Sigma” and Mathmech Laplacian!” Sigma– there is no “final sigma” in math, they added “final” because one of the main deck monsters is “Mathmech Sigma”– is a math symbol used for 2 different task, summation and standard deviation. In the case of “Mathmech Final Sigma,” you can see the symbol (upper case) on his armor near his chest area! Laplacian is the– “operator or Laplacian is a differential operator given by the divergence of the gradient of a scalar function on Euclidean space. It is usually denoted by the symbols ∇^2”– thanks Wikipedia. The laplacian symbol can be seen by the double triangle in its art! Like I said before, it’ll be an eternity before I can explain all the Mathmech’s effects but there were a few madlads who did.

     Every person must always make a choice. There is no life without decisions. No way to advance. No way to go back. Without choices, none of the crossroads of life are open. Within this life we are given the decision– should we dedicate ourselves for others, though might not put ourselves ahead in life or should we dedicate all of our time to building ourselves up, even if it means sacrificing others? No person can ever make this choice for anyone else. We all live lives independent of each other and because of this you can blame no one for the choices that you make. All you can do is live with yourself, even if that means being the nicest angel to all those who approach, or becoming the monster that your inner demons want you to be. A rather old notion everyone knows, but a new concept within the (overly complicated) game of Yu-gi-oh!

     The Valmonica archetype encompasses this idea perfectly. They are a new archetype yet to be released in any format,

Valmonica Angelo

but I thought it might be fun to talk about them so here we are. But before that I should explain that the archetype was introduced in what I like to call the Pendulum renaissance. When the sub category Pendulum was released, people worried that their inclusion might make the game too hard and not fun. For the first time ever you could pendulum summon all the monsters in your hand and do this without much cost. And break the game they did. For the next few years, Pendulums was the highest rated deck. Whether you look at PePe (Performapals and Preformages), Dracoslayers, or Zefras ages, a Pendulum deck was always number one in their reign. Tired, people pleaded for the fall of Pendulums. They constantly made the game hard as well as being the biggest offenders of having long text to describe their effects; in fact the card (today) with the most word count is the Pendulum monster, Endymion the Mighty Master of Magic– above 180 words! But going back to what I was saying, it’s pretty obvious that Pendulums played a lot of cards. And to a player who has never seen them before, they might try to read the first five cards, but after a while you give up and just hope that your opponent isn’t cheating. Which is why Konami decided to introduce master rule 4 and Link monsters. This nerfed Pendulums so hard that they haven’t seen meta play ever since or much support for that matter– enter today’s day and age. (***Keep scrolling there was a problem with the picture***)

Valmonica Demone

     Currently, Konami has been experimenting with pendulums. They would play a certain way back in the day (summoning a lot and swarming the field), but Konami has been changing the gameplay aspect for these new monsters– Valmonicas being one of them! But before I explain how they play, I need to explain the duel field. It consists of two 5-row slots for your cards. The row closer to the player is considered to be the player’s spell and trap zone. But looking carefully, you could see on a paper playmat that the 1st and 5th spell and trap zones are also labeled Pendulum zones. You can place pendulum monsters here and either activate their effects or pendulum summon. The Valmonica monster’s gameplay revolves around these zones, specifically because this is where they go. There are only 2 main deck Valmonica monsters, Angelo Valmonica and Demone Valmonica (translated names, because they have not been brought to the TCG yet, their official names might vary). They are right by your side, like the angel and devil on your shoulders. Angelo’s effect allows you to benefit off of healing yourself, while Demone’s effect gives you benefits on dealing damage to your opponent. Once you heal or deal damage enough times you can summon from your extra deck a fairy representing all the “good” deeds you did (Odd Deity of Valmonica – Guiralume) or a dragon representing all the sins you have done (Divine Oddity of Valmonica – Zebufera). 

Do you know the feeling of despising something; something so hated, annoying, and detrimental to existence as a whole? Filthy little pest roaming the world; sucking dry of all that is good? Unfortunately, none of us can survive this horror–no matter where we turn we can never escape them. Even within an escape to the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! can’t save you. No, no, no; unbeknownst to anyone it crawls within the deepest cracks of the game. It rampages the game in both OCG and TCG (formats). It ravages the OCG format. It tantalizes the TCG for where it might possibly infest the game again (for right now it crawls amongst the dark on the banned list). Not only can they break the real world, but they have broken this game as well. This is how the cockroach fiends infest the game of Yu-Gi-Oh!

It all began with a singular Shiny Black “C” Squadder. Insignificant he may be, (being a normal monster without an effect, anyway) he finds compatriots. Other Shiny Black “C” Sqaudders to join forces with. And soon they start invading. He and his many pesky friends finds their way into the game infesting the formats (and a guy’s house) with other “C” cards:
Confronting the “C”, Contact “C”, Flying “C”, Retaliating “C”, Shiny Black “C”, Sneaky “C”, and the one who infests the nightmares of all Yu-Gi-Oh! players, Maxx “C”.

It all began all on one morning, with a man (or woman) waking up in their house. A peaceful day they thought, unbeknownst to the horrors that await them in just a few minutes. As the person made their way to get some food from their fridge, they saw it. The first of the Shiny Black “C” Squadder in their house (art on Shiny Black “C”). They got startled and fumbled back into their living room and (thinking they would be safe) they looked around for something to swat the little bugger. But as they looked about, they only got filled with fear. There was not only one in their house, there were millions. They had fended off the harsh weather outside to the point where some mutated; some were flying, others were able to master the art of stealth. But they all banded together and were now in this person’s house. The person thought, “I need to do something!” They quickly grabbed a newspaper and rolled it up. Armed with basically a bat against other bugs they prepared their weapon (art on Confronting the “C”). They struck, but the blow was ineffective. They stood in shock to see their attack had fizzled (get it, because fizzled is a Yu-Gi-Oh! term). But the Shiny Black “C” Squadders were not ones to forgive the human. They combined together to make a beast (or well insect) to instill fear in the hearts of all–Super Armored Robot Armed Black Iron “C”.

Talking about them all will take a millennium, but there is an easy way to explain it in a nutshell. The “C” archetype revolves around being pesky to your opponent. When there is something that they are trying to do/want to do, they can activate their effects to make sure that it will be hard for them to pull off their plays. In the case of Maxx “C”, the player who activates the card will be allowed to draw a card every time a monster is special summoned (a joke in modern Yu-Gi-Oh games you need to special summon 20 times on turn one to have a chance of beating your opponent). Continuing with your plays will lead to your opponent getting a lot of advantage, most of the time game winning. It is thought to be the most broken effect in the game. Another example is Contact “C” who will special summon themselves to your opponent’s field, but prevent them from special summoning without using Contact “C”. There are not many cards you can go into with Contact “C”, so slapping this down on the field might just win you the game because your opponent can’t extend their plays.

Now, now, now. I know what you’re thinking, “How the heck is this crazy lady going to sit down every week to talk about cards?” Cards– little shoddy pieces of cardboard that someone decided- “Oh! It could be fun to take this rather useless item and make it a masterpiece or make this cardboard even more worthless!” I can hear the audience’s moans, “Get on with the story, we already know that the first option is just a delusional fever dream.” Many more interesting topics await all of us with these blogs. But what insanity drove me to pick CARDS?!

Remember– if you love what you do, it shows. “Yu-Gi-Oh!” is conceived, shaped, and transformed by people who have an affectionate attachment to card games and story. Thousands unite to make the best cards possible and to weave a sensational story within the archetypes that they create (PS an archetype refers to a group of cards that when played together gets a certain). Even to a newer audience, people are amazed at how much effort is put into a single card! You can be lifted off into the incredible Visas Starfrost lore spanning multiple dimensions to, “Oh, it’s a conscious tree. A consciously evil tree.” (Yes there is a story in “Yu-Gi-Oh!” about an evil tree).

But all of this might not suit the taste of story for everyone. Sure, magic intrigues the minds of many, but there are times where you want to enjoy something down to Earth. Something to soothe nerves and help relax when this crazy world just goes all wack. Something to create fond memories and enjoy the small stuff. Something like– a loving pet.

The story begins with a person walking outside on a sidewalk who notices a creature with pleading eyes directed toward them. The person, feeling sorry for the little one, decides to adopt it. The person wondered, “Such an adorable specimen, what shall I call it?” It’s cat-like features called out to them. And then it all clicked, and the person found the perfect name for such a captivating creature–Purrely.

Over joyous the two spent many a month just getting to create special memories with each other. Where Purrely is the monster in the archetype, its memories, the ones created with its human partner, are the deck’s spell cards. For the deck to work you would need “Purrely” specifically on the field and then be able to activate those spell cards. Just like someone actually creating memories with their pet Purrely gains memories in the game. With these memories Purrely is able to become stronger and protect its loving owner (who in this case would be the player using the Purrely deck). When Purrely is fed with good food it will (like most of us) be a little plump-y guy. When it is exposed to a bath, it figures out that it loves baths (okay maybe not all of us can relate to that, but), it prides itself to be the most beautiful version of itself. And when the owner is able to just enjoy time with Purrely and play catch with it, it becomes happy. When Purrely is able to “experience” all these wonderful memories while on the field it is able to be the best version of itself and be able to protect its owner from anything in their way (aka the other player).

ExPurery Happiness

There are many reasons to love “Yu-Gi-Oh!” You could love it because of its complex gameplay. Many others grew up with the show while it was still airing (including me!), or just appreciate how much work goes into every card. But those of us who do enjoy it, we love it from the bottom of our hearts.