Crush Card Virus
Trap Card
Tribute 1 dark monster with 1000 or less ATK. Check all monsters your opponent controls, your opponent's hand, and all cards they draw (until the end of your opponent's 3rd turn after this card's activation), and destroy all monsters with 1500 or more ATK.
I think I'm going to be looking at Crush Card Virus this week, and why it deserves a spot on the Forbidden List.
Crush Card Virus' Main Uses When it was used:
Crush Card was mostly used in things like: Tele DAD, Zombie and Lightsworn after Duelist Genesis launched in August, 2008. It was such a "broken" card because the things used for tributes for this card took no effort to get out onto the field, and you essentially "plus 1'd" off of tributing these monsters. With Lightsworn, you would normally tribute Plaguespreader Zombie. Or Sangan if you were running a Twilight(light and dark) varient.
Plaguespreader's effect allows him to special summon himself from the graveyard by returning one card from your hand to the top of your deck. If you did this he would be removed from play when he left the field. The use of this effect was the synchro capability, and the fact that, if you know Lightsworn, they could put Wulf, Lightsworn Beast on top of the deck. Then proceed to mill it with a different lightsworn on the field which would cause him to be special summoned. With plaguespreader on the field, you got to use him as a "Crush" target and got a 2100 monster off of his effect. The great use of Plaguespreader Zombie was that he could get so much off of his effect, especially with "stacking" the deck so that you would mill your fourth lightsworn so that you could summon Judgment Dragon the following turn. Sangan on the other hand was a great target because of his own effect, whenever he's sent from the field to the graveyard. He allows you to search any monster from your deck with 1500 ATK or less and add it to your hand. In Twilight varients, you could search one of your Lumina's out with this effect. Or you could search something out, like Ryko or something like that. Both of these cards were used in Zombies too, but the only dangerous one was Plaguespreader Zombie. Zombies used Plaguespreader to synchro summon a bunch of monsters in one turn. They didn't mind using Crush Card Virus with Plaguespreader because they could always get Plague back into the graveyard with a card called Burial From A Different Dimension. This card allows you to return up to three of your removed from play monsters back into your graveyard. This would combo with cards like: Mezuki and Card of Safe Return. Mezuki is a 1700 ATK monster that you can remove from your graveyard to special summon any Zombie type monster from your graveyard. Card of Safe Return allows you to draw a card every time you special summoned a monster from your graveyard. In other words, Zombies always had a card in their hand to send to the top whenever they would bring Plaguespreader back into the graveyard. The amount that Zombies would special summon from the grave, they tended to draw the cards they needed because of how much they got to draw. Which is also what caused Mezuki and Plaguespreader Zombie to be limited and Card of Safe Return to be banned.
Causes of Crush Card Virus Being Played:
The problem with facing up against a deck playing Crush Card Virus was that it normally changed the game entirely. It absolutely devastated a deck called "Gladiator Beast" because every monster in the deck, except Gladiator Beast Murmillo had an ATK 1500 or more. Gladiators were knocked out as one of the top metas because of this. Every deck would be hurt by this because of every deck running monsters over 1500 except for a few in select decks. The lower monsters usually being the tuners used with the bigger monsters which caused them to be pretty useless. The only decks that could really come back from this were the three decks I listed previously: Lightsworn, Tele DAD and Zombies. The reason they could come back from this is the fact that all three were running Crush Card Virus and that the one downside to Crush Card is that it only destroys the monsters on the field once. These decks could easily synchro with monsters to come back. Lightsworns could stall the three turns Crush Card was destroying their hand with the three Necro Gardnas that they were allowed to use. Necro Gardna can be removed from your graveyard to negate one attack from your opponent. Zombies got past this because they don't need to summon from the hand to summon anyways since all the effects went together to "swarm" their monsters from the graveyard. They would be able to swarm their synchros and attack for game. Tele DAD would use their annoying loops with Destiny Hero Malicious, Destiny Draw, and Emergency Teleport to swarm their synchros. All these combos using cards that were all under 1500. Destiny Draw allows you to discard one "Destiny Hero" monster from your hand to draw two cards from your deck. Destiny Hero Malicious allows you to remove him from your graveyard to special summon a Malicious from your deck. You could then use Emergency Teleport to special summon Krebons from your deck and synchro for a level eight monster(normally Stardust Dragon). All three of these "Goliath" decks would go head to head for the top deck until the forbidden list finally caught up to these decks and beginning stripping them of their utilities that caused them to be the top decks. Here is the timeline of these three decks
September, 2008 ends the DMOC era and begins the rise of Zombie, Lightsworn and DAD era:
Newly Banned(0):
Dark Magician of Chaos
Destiny Hero Disc Commander
Premature Burial
Newly Limited(1):
Breaker, the Magical Warrior
Cyber Dragon
Monster Gate
Newly Semi-Limited(2):
Card of Safe Return
Judgment Dragon
Dark Armed Dragon
March 2009 sees the fall of Gladiator Beasts, Tele DAD, Zombies
Newly Banned(0):
nothing
Newly Limited(1):
Chaos Sorcerer
Gladiator Beast Bestiari
Goyo Guardian
Mezuki
Dark Armed Dragon
Card of Safe Return
Emergency Teleport
Reinforcement of the Army
Newly Semi-Limited(2):
Goblin Zombie
Destiny Hero - Malicious
Raiza The Storm Monarch
Allure of Darkness
Destiny Draw
___________________________________________________________________
Between the ban lists of 2009, a deck called Synchro Cat rose from nowhere to claim the #1 deck in the meta. It used a new synchro monster that was released in Crimson Crisis called Dark Strike Fighter. He allows you to tribute any monster you control to inflict 200 damage to your opponent times that monsters level. The basic strategy used cards like: Rescue Cat, Summoner Monk, X - Saber Airbellum, and Dark Strike Fighter. Rescue Cat is a level four beast monster that you can tribute to special summon two level three or lower beast monsters from the deck. Summoner Monk is a level four monster that allows you to discard a spell card from your hand to special summon a level four monster from your deck. X - Saber Airbellum is a level three Beast, Tuner monster. The basic strategy was to summon Summoner Monk, use his effect to special summon another Summoner Monk from the deck, use this new Monk to special summon a Rescue Cat from the deck. You would then tribute the Rescue Cat to special summon two X - Saber Airbellum's from your deck. Tune those with the two Summoner Monks for two Dark Strike Fighters. Dark Strike Fighter had 2600 ATK, so if you attacked directly with both of these then tributed them both of their effects. It would total exactly 8000 damage. This strategy was called Dark Strike OTK. Another deck came out of nowhere called Blackwing. It wanted to be one of the top decks also, but hadn't had much support quite yet. It's main plus was the synchro monster that came with it, Blackwing Armor Master: A level seven synchro monster that could only be created with a Blackwing tuner. Blackwings had similarities to Six Samurais, but they swarmed a lot faster and there tuner(Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind) could halve the attack and defense of any monster your opponent controls once per turn. This is what caused the following forbidden list to miss Lightsworn yet again.
___________________________________________________________________
September, 2009 ends Synchro Cat forever and the re-banning of Monster Reborn
Newly Banned(0):
Dark Strike Fighter
Card of Safe Return
Monster Reborn
Crush Card Virus
Newly Limited(1):
Black Rose Dragon
Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind
Rescue Cat
Summoner Monk
Cold Wave
Mind Control
Call of the Haunted
Solemn Judgment
Newly Semi-Limited(2):
Lonefire Blossom
Mezuki
Bottemless Trap Hole
Chaos Sorcerer
New Unlimited(3):
D.D. Warrior Lady
Destiny Draw
Fissure
Breaker, The Magical Warrior
_________________________________________________________________
With Zombies, Synchro Cat and Tele DAD out of the way. Lightsworn was the remaining deck to reign supreme above all others. This deck won four of the next five Shonen Jump tournaments until the next forbidden list. The one deck that wasn't Lightsworn that won a Shonen Jump's was a Dark Skill Drain deck used by Jeff Jones. The next forbidden list causes the inevitable fall of Lightsworn.
___________________________________________________________________
March 2010, the fall of Lightsworn
Newly Banned(0):
nothing
Newly Limited(1):
Brionac, the Dragon of the Ice Barrier
Chaos Sorcerer
Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner
Mezuki
Necro Gardna
Allure of Darkness
Burial From a Different Dimension
Charge of the Light Brigade
Destiny Draw
Foolish Burial
Newly Semi-Limited(2):
Cyber Dragon
Honest
Skill Drain
Royal Oppression
Royal Decree
Dandylion
Newly Unlimited(3):
Mask of Darkness
Smashing Ground
__________________________________________________________________
This brings us to where we are now, the top decks are Quickdraw Dandywarrior and Infernity. There are other top decks, but these are the main two that should be mentioned. Quickdraw is a deck that uses a card called Quickdraw Synchron to synchro summon a bunch of synchro cards that are used by the main character on the anime show Yugioh 5d's. Quickdraw Synchron is a level five tuner monster that can be special summoned by discarding one monster card in your hand. Dandylion is a card that, when sent to the graveyard, summons two Fluff Tokens onto your field. You then tune these together for one of the synchros. This deck also uses a card called Debris Dragon that, when summoned, can special summon one monster with 500 or less attack from your graveyard. Debris Dragon is a level four tuner that can only synchro for dragon synchros. Infernity's, as I have said before in a previous blog, is another OTK deck. It is the most consistent OTK deck that most people have seen which uses the cards: Infernity Archfiend, Infernity Necromancer, Infernity Beetle, and Infernity Launcher to spam a bunch of synchros, clear the opponent's field, and attack for game. I like this format because of all of the top contenders for the tier 1 meta. I'm not going to list them, but I'm pretty sure that most of you know them already.
No comments:
Post a Comment