Adventures With Blue Eyes White Dragon

Adventures With Blue Eyes White Dragon

In the beginning. When I was a kid I can recall spending several hours a week engaged in mortal combat at the dinner table. No, I was not wrestling my younger brothers for the last roll, although a few times that battle has also been a main stay at the Little family table. I was playing Magic the Gathering. At the time it was a hot new collectibles card game that had just hit the scene. I was always an advocate of Dungeons and Dragons and the idea of bringing that fantasy and excitement to the table in the form of a highly attractive card game was just to much for this knight in shining Kiss t shirts to resist. I was hooked.

Of course over the years I kind of grew away from the magical world of card games and lost interest in the world of Magic the Gathering. Sure, I checked in from time to time and even made an appearance or two at what is often called unlimited tournaments. That meant I could play any cards from any set and since my cards were all over a decade old it meant I had cards most of the younger players had not seen before.

Moving On NowRecently the library I run started doing Yu Gi Oh card tournaments. It is a collectable card game not to much unlike magic with a few different rules and a plethora of crazy options to eliminate the opponent. I can't sit here and lie to you and even if I could I would feel some level of guilt so I will just come clean.

I was a huge fan of the Yu Gi Oh TV series and still am an avid watcher today. I usually just set back and watched the games unfold as winners were crowned and losers retreated to the corner to make adjustments to their decks that would surely put them in a winners bracket the next time a duel should commence.

I have seen young and old alike shed hundreds of dollars on this game to secure the right cards to beef their deck up to the point were they had the highest chance of dominating the opponents. It was great fun but than came the day of dread. My girlfriend's son began to play the game.

Put Me In YugiNow I had no choice I had to learn this epic game. It took a few weeks for my old brain to ingest the new rules and try to differentiate this game from the early days of my Magic the gathering playing. I intently started looking for mana cards so I could summon more baddies to the fray just to learn that was not how it worked at all. However will I get this damned dragon on the field to stomp the hell out of that goblin I thought.

Within minutes I was tributing one monster to summon another and within days I had developed the ability that made me so lethal as a Magic player. That ability was the ability to build a deck using cards most people overlooked. I had to see if I could be as effective with this game so I invested 10 bucks into what is referred to as a structure deck.

This is a deck with a theme and a few built in tricks. I had to go all out so I chose the Saga of The Blue Eyes White Dragon deck. The character was such a part of my TV series fandom I could not resist.

I had always been a Blue Eyes fan so it only figures I would grab this deck from the tons of choices.

Playing The DeckI was hooked but I felt this deck had a lot to offer that was just not there with the basic set up. I had to find a few other ways to really pump this deck to where it became a better machine of dominance. Let me first explain a different aspect of Yu Gi Oh not present in Magic. The side deck. This is a series of up to 15 cards that you can call on under special conditions. Some you just tribute certain level cards while others require specific cards to bring into the battle.

For my side deck the deck came with Azure Eyes Silver Dragon. Not a shabby card, especially when it gives you and amazing combo with Maiden With Eyes of Blue to pull out Blue Eyes White Dragon and than syncro summon (one of the cool ways to access the side deck) Azure Eyes.

This is cool but I knew I needed few more cards in the side deck to really make it powerful. I knew I wanted to get Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon so I had to add two more Blue Eyes to my deck. (you can use 3 Blue Eyes to summon ultimate)

Being an avid and curious watcher of the crew who play at the library I noticed they all had one card. Stardust Dragon so I tossed that bad boy into the side deck. I then added the XYZ card (another cool side deck summon) Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis. This little devil allowed me to sacrifice a number of cards on my side of the playing field to eliminate an equal number on the opponent's side. How cool is that?

Last but surely not least I added a 5 Headed Dragon. This card takes 5 dragons to summon which makes it damned near impossible to get out by itself but I have a few tricks to accomplish that

The DeckMy main deck needed a few adjustments as well. I already mentioned I added 2 Blue Eyes White Dragons to bring my total to three. I added a couple of Raigeki Breaks to my trap card arsenal. These allow me to discard a card to the graveyard and destroy a card on the other players side. Sounds rough but when you use cards like silver's cry and call of the haunted to bring them back you really are not losing anything.

I also added a Starlight Road card so I could pull my Stardust Dragon out a little easier. Along with that I used a DNA Surgery which allows me to declare all cards on the field to be a certain type. I simply call dragon ans wham easy fodder for Mr. Five Head. Last I added 2 Dragon's Mirror cards. these are awesome as they allow me to use cards in my hand, on the field or even in the graveyard as fusion material. Basically I can summon 5 headed dragon as long as there are 5 dragon cards among those three places.

Work In Progress

I am still tinkering and adding and taking away cards as I find better ones to use. Right now the deck has won me a great deal of games and only one loss. I saw that the real trick is getting blues eyes out early, using the dragons to pull out 5 head and then using cards like Maiden and call of the haunted to pull Blue back into the game.

I have managed a few serious damage moments that have killed opponents with one hit.

Sadly I have also noticed I come dangerously close to dying myself while trying to run off my heavy hit offense. The deck is still a work in progress and I will most likely build it for months before I am ever really truly happy with it and what it can do. That is the nature of the beast I guess. The moment we think we have perfection in a deck we soon find we are way off.

In ClosingI have become rather fond of this game and truth be told enjoy playing with my girlfriend and her son. He runs a dinosaur deck and she is the queen of the sea emperor deck while I still focus on arranging and rearranging my Blue Eyes deck. Who knows where it will go but I have learned a serious and valuable lesson through my journey with Mr. Yugi. This card game spans generations of ages and races. It brings together young and old and despite the competition and duels for prizes people seem better because of the game, at least for the most part. There are the occasional know it all jerks who swear every game they lost was rigged and profess how they are the best in the land but than fail to show at games to prove it.

The game has it's share of people who are jerks about it but than there are also those colorful characters who really made the game fun to watch. For me I see my friends play and they are all so happy regardless of win or loss. I have met some wonderful people as a result of this game and hope to continue to do so. Hell, I even found a cousin of mine because he came to duel in the tournament we hosted at the library.

I encourage people to test the waters on this game. I will leave a link so you may purchase a deck for yourself and begin a journey I promise you will not forget. Until we meet again, game on!