Tuesday, June 18, 2013

What can we do about Dark World? (pt. 1)

Konami seems hell bent on not touching Dark World - even though the deck is quite strong now and has been for some time, they refuse to touch it and I believe it relates to their disdain for touching strategies unless they are either proven top contenders or pose a serious threat to the health of the game (ex. Gishki Hieratic). In my opinion, it's NOT healthy for Dark World to continue to exist in its current form, and there seem to be a lot of players who share that sentiment. But what can we do?

If there's anything we've learned in the past, it's that Konami actually does care about making the playerbase happy. There are many banlist decisions in the past that have been said to be pushed forward by disdain from the players, and I believe Dark World (and a few other decks) can fall victim to this as well. But Konami will never know that we are discontent until we stand up as a group and let them know how we feel. So to that end, I am going to write a brief letter explaining why I believe Dark World is bad for the game and why they should touch it on the next banlist.

The cards I'm going to argue for hitting will be Grapha, Dragged Down and Card Destruction. If you've played enough against Dark World you should understand why I've chosen these three, but if you're not quite up to speed here's a brief explanation why:

Grapha, Dragon Lord of Dark World: 
It's not fair for any deck to have a 2700/3000 ATK monster able to constantly revive itself while returning Dark World monsters to the hand where their effects can be reused. But the true terror of Grapha is that he makes it extremely easy to wreck several types of decks by making Deck Devastation Virus and Eradicator Epidemic Virus so simple to activate at basically no cost to the user. He also destroys a lot of the cards that can counter him before they can even be used, as well as any nuisance card in general. Reminds you a lot of Blaster, doesn't it?

Dragged Down into the Grave:
This card will never be fair. Even though it hits both players and causes the user a -1, it simply isn't fair because the user always decides when it will be used. They can activate or set cards, wait to draw additional ones, and employ other hand-fixing measures to make sure that they get the best deal out of it while you get wrecked - and your opponent will know all of the cards in your hand. Didn't you guys ban Trap Dustshoot for that?

Card Destruction:
This one is pretty classic, and has been popping up in degenerate strategies for quite a long time. Dragon Rulers also use it on occasion as it allows them to fill their grave with Dragons while drawing into hand traps and upping the counter for Super Rejuvenation.

As far as its use in Dark World, it should be self-explanatory - the most useful Dark World monsters repay you when they're discarded, and that on top of the cards you're already drawing thanks to Card Destruction creates a potentially gigantic advantage well for the user. It also has the same inherently unfair quality as Dragged Down wherein you're able to plan out how your discards will shape up while your opponent is virtually unable to do the same. Oh, and did I mention that it wrecks your opponent's hand, discarding every card that they might have been planning to use against you? After all, good players tend to be conservative and hold their cards until they'll make the biggest impact, so allowing this card to be in the game basically punishes players for being smart, while both allowing and encouraging decks that take less skill or, frankly, care.

You'll see the full letter in Part 2 of this article, and I highly encourage each and every one of you to copy that letter and email it to them yourself if you share my sentiment. Remember, we will only make a difference if we can email in numbers. We must show Konami the truth that most players do not like this deck and cannot tolerate it anymore. Thank you for reading, and I sincerely hope that you will join me on my mission to reform one of the most hated decks in the game!

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