Free-For0All

 I believe it is, and will always be, one of my favourite non-standard casual formats that my friends and I play: FREE-FOR-ALL *said in a SSB announcer voice*

• You need at least 3 players to play free-for-all
• Every other player is your opponent, you need to defeat all opponents to win, or fulfill a win condition
• Each player must take a turn before anyone can attack (the player that has the opening turn of the duel gets the first chance to attack in his/her second turn)
• Effects that target an opponent card(s) only affects one opponent. Cards that affect "both you and your opponent" affect everyone who is playing"
• Standard Yu-Gi-Oh Rules apply

The biggest problem that free-for-alls have? 1 person will always be teamed up on, unfairly ending the duel early for him. With that in mind, I came up with certain suggestions to fix that problem.

NOTE: Assume that five players are playing for all of my scenarios.

Scenario 1: Attack Right, Defend Left
While the origins of this rule can be found in MtG, my friends and I did not steal this straight from that game. Basically the title explains it all, assuming you are going in a clockwise direction when taking turns, in which it's "Defend Right, Attack Left". You can only attack the person that took his/her turn before you. With this rule, no one will be teamed up on, making free-for alls more fair and fun. you could even eliminate the "everyone must take a turn before attacking" rule when using these rules.

Scenario 2: Fatal-"Five"-Way (replace "Five" with the number of players.)
The name and idea came from the WWE, and the idea of how that wrestling match type works out translates well into free-for-alls as well. Standard free-for-all rules apply here, with one small change in the win condition. If you land the finishing blow and eliminate a player from the game, you win the entire duel. Seems easy enough, wait for the others to make a hole and sweep in for the easy kill on a weakened opponent right? Well, there's also this rule that is added when playing with this rule:

• Every time your opponent declares an attack to another player, you may activate this effect. Select 1 monster on your side of the field and give control of it to one of your opponents. The monster returns to your side of the field at the end of the turn. This effect cannot be negated or chained to.

Not so easy now isn't it xP. 


Scenario 3: Star
This rule can only be played when you are having a free for all with 5 people. When seated in a circle, look at the person on your immediate left and right. Those people are your allies. The other two people are your enemies, and both must be defeated in order to win. The "give monster" rule is also in effect when playing this rule, just in case your ally might be in trouble, and it is fully possible for two players to win at the same time, or even win while being eliminated earlier in the duel, depending on who is eliminated.

Post 14 - I have a giant D*CK

Note: I'm running on 3 hours of sleep over the last 5 days, having worked two 8-hour shifts over the past 3 days at my new job. That is why I haven't been posting lately, and with three days until my next shift, I should be back to posting regularly. In the meantime, this post might be crappier in terms of quality, which actually is probably impossible, but i'll do my best.

Like I mentioned, I recently got a part-time job at my local supermarket, which takes up most of the spare time Ihad dedicated to making up different game formats for YuGiOh. As soon as I got home today, I realized I haven't posted anything lately. So here's is a game format I stole again from Magic:the Gathering. If you play a lot of casual (and by casual I mean, house rules/make up your own card effects/free for all/etc.) you might have tried this already with a bunch of cards laying around your room (or a Cube *shameless plug*). A Live Draft is when players draw from a common central deck, and all cards go to one Graveyard/Banish Zone. In short, the rules are as follows:

• Each player shares a central deck (which contains A LOT of cards), a graveyard zone, and a banish zone
• The contents in the central deck and in the graveyard are shared by all the players, any effect that targets your opponent's graveyard can target the central graveyard
• You do not lose by decking out (While the live drafts played by my MtG folk have a central deck of close to a thousand cards, you could easily shuffle the graveyard and place it in the deck zone if you want)
• Standard Yugioh rules apply.

I remembered this because I needed a way to test out my Yugioh Cube by myself, in preparation for a draft i'm holding at the local...locals. I Live Drafted my Cube, and these were the opening hands:

Player 1:
Pot of Greed
Dark Hole
Torrential Tribute
Card Trooper
Cyber Jar

Player 2:
Skill Drain
Confiscation
Witch of the Black Forest
Blue-Eyes White Dragon
Heavy Storm

I don't know if it's the cube, or the nature of the draft, but I would be happy with either of those hands.

So yes, that is my post on "How to Have Fun in Yugioh by Sharing a Deck"

Post 13 - It's a Double Rainbow!!!

The link to pojo's pegasus league message boards, where people talk about different formats they are attempting to create. It is also my inspiration for the blog in general.

One of the traits that i am envious regarding Magic:the Gathering is how many different rulesets they have to play the same game. This link talks about a format which is called Rainbow Stairwell, which is a format that focuses on building an efficient deck. The rule when building your deck in MtG is that you need to use monsters from every color when making your deck, and each monster in each color must have a different casting cost. After adding the lands, you will have a 61-card deck to use.

Since I love to take these rulesets and yugioh-fy them, here is my revised ruleset

1. Decks will have 60-80 cards in your deck.
2. For each attribute, you will have 8 cards in your deck, one monster for each level between 1-8. This adds up to 48 monsters.
3. You will also run 2 copies of the following cards: Molten Destruction, Mystic Plasma Zone, Gaia Power, Luminous Spark, Umiiruka, Rising Air Current. This is 12 cards, current total is 60
4. (optional) You may add up to 20 spells/traps. The catch is that each of those extra spell/trap cards must have an effect that specifically mentions an attribute in the card effect text.

Post 12 - Cubing With Spike

This link, like usual, has the description of a "Spike"


Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory

Exhibit 1: The Physical Cube
Depending on who creates the cube, the cards would either be amazing or terrible in the eyes of Spike. My personal cube is the standard power cube built for Spike, with the strongest cards in the history of Yugioh. Want an example? I shuffled my cube together and i pulled out a "15-card pack." the contents?





The Creator
Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind
Caius the Shadow Monarch
King Tiger Wanghu
Sangan
Yata-Garasu

Dark Hole
United We Stand
Mystical Space Typhoon
Fissure
Heavy Storm
Scapegoat

Ring of Destruction
Torrential Tribute
Spacegate (lol)

Exhibit 2: The Social Cube
As I quote Herm Edwards, You play. To win. The game. While cubing is fun and different, there's no reason why it can't also be competitive. Having seven other players that are on equal terms as you when it comes to the strength of the deck, that would easily bring out the competitive spirit of Spike.

Exhibit 3: The Mental Cube
This is going to be a personal stereotype, but the description given of Spike makes me feel that he is a netdecker at most. This weakness may be exposed in this format, as making a deck from scratch may not be his best strength


Verdict: Hit or miss, depending on the Spike. Most of the YGO Spike's i met in real life are against this entire idea, while the MtG Spikes think this is a good idea.

Post 11 - Cubing with Johnny

Just like the previous post, this link is where i get this blurb

Johnny likes to win, but he wants to win with style. It’s very important to Johnny that he win on his own terms. As such, it’s important to Johnny that he’s using his own deck. Johnny likes a challenge. Johnny enjoys winning with cards that no one else wants to use. He likes making decks that win in innovative ways. What sets Johnny apart from the other profiles is that Johnny enjoys deckbuilding as much as (or more than) he enjoys playing. Johnny loves the cool interactions of the cards. He loves combo decks. Johnny is happiest when he’s exploring uncharted territory. Like Timmy, Johnny cares more about the quality of his wins than the quantity. For example, let's say Johnny builds a new deck that has a neat but difficult way to win. He plays ten games and manages to get his deck to do its thing… once. Johnny walks away happy.

Exhibit 1: The Physical Cube
While my personal cube is not built for the Johnny's, I would love to see Johnny create his/her own cube. Myself I identify as a Johnny, finding as much interest in how cards interact rather than just building a good deck. Looking at my decks, i have a non-legendary six samurai deck that focuses on burn damage, a level-3-or-lower vanilla beatdown deck, and my Ben-Kei OTK deck. These decks aren't what you call consistent, but there's something awesone that I feel when Ben-Kei pulls offs its 5-attack-2000-power-all-attacks-hit-directly OTK. As for the cube however, he will be the one that finds combos that no one would think of, using cards that others would deem as useless.


Exhibit 2: The Social Cube
The quote that "Johnny is happiest when exploring uncharted territory" explains one simple thing. johnny would LOVE the cube. Think about it, it's different, barely anyone does it, and it puts a focus on deckbuilding from a limited card pool? Count him in.

Exhibit 3: The Mental Cube
See #2. Johnny + Cube = babies

Verdict: The cube was made for Johnnies. Nuff said.

Post 10 - Cubing with Timmy

According to this link, an accurate description of Timmy would be as followed:

Timmy is what we call the "power gamer." Timmy likes to win big. He doesn’t want to eke out a last minute victory. Timmy wants to smash his opponents. He likes his cards to be impressive, and he enjoys playing big creatures and big spells. Timmy is motivated by fun. Timmy is very social. An important part of the game is sitting around with his friends. Timmy cards, as we call them, tend to be big creatures or spells with big effects. In general, Timmy cards are exciting but not too economical. The more efficiently costed ones will catch Spike’s eye.

So how does a cube and a duelist with the mindset of "Timmy" blend together? Here's how.

Exhibit 1: The physical cube
When reading the quoted article, the idea of Timmy being a little kid stood out for me. As such he would not be the one that builds the actual cube, but he would be in full support of it. As for the cards found in the cube, he would be the person that builds up the old fashioned beatdown deck. In my personal cube, he would be the one that eats up cards like Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Mage Power, United We Stand, Goblin Attack Force, etc. The higher the attack stat, the better.

Exhibit 2: The social cube
One of the biggest perks of the cube is how it is a very social object. Up to 12 other people will be handling the cards of your cube, which may be something the average yugioh player might have an argument against. I recommend you only use your cube with friends or at the very least, people you trust. Timmy appears to be a very social and amicable person, and the social-ness that is present when cubing makes it very enjoyable for Timmy. Playing for fun, usually only with friends, a cube is a fun way to have fun with friends, not to mention easier on the wallet.

Exhibit 3: The mental cube
One of the biggest, and possibly the only, weakness that the cube presents to Timmy is how long the preparation takes before you actually starts to play an actual game. Timmy only wants to play with his big monsters, not necessarily taking the time to choose certain cards to fit into his deck. A quick google search will give you variants that take less than 30 seconds to prepare, but in my opinion the cube loses some of its speciality when drafting is taken out of the preparation.

Verdict: While the long preparation times is nothing to ignore, a cube can easily support Timmy. Cards in my cube are definitely what you would call Timmy Cards, and a Timmy-styled deck is a viable deck to win, but most importantly, have fun.

Post 9 - Who are You?

If you are ever in the realm of business, you would know that one of the biggest rules to learn is to “Know Your Consumer”. After reading an article about Magic: the Gathering, it explained the company’s psychographic profiles that they have of their consumers, realizing that there may be some similarities, and of course many differences between the two. The article in which my inspiration comes from contains only 3 profiles, and it is very linear (You are either one or the other). My profiles are more interchangeable, and are more detailed than the ones listed in the Magic: the Gathering link, therefore you may relate to more than one person.

NOTE: The first names I use are the real first names of my friends, used with their permissions.

====

Profile 1: Jann

Jann is the “standard” competitive duelist that you see at your locals. He does his research and knows what is the metagame, and what cards may does and does not work, and he has the group of fellow duelists that help him playtest his deck. He knows all the advanced rulings (Level-1 Judge), and is very willing to enter tournaments. Jann is the typical well-rounded Yugioh player

Profile 2: Danh

DanH is also very competitive at yugioh. However, he prefers to win by skill rather than expensive cards, as he does not spend a lot of money on yugioh cards and uses whatever tech cards he could find in his collection instead. He will not use what necessarily is the top deck, and many may view this at a disadvantage, the fact that he uses cards that no one else may use usually turns out to be an advantage, as no one would expect what he pulls out.

Profile 3: Mark

If DanH wins his duels by skill, Mark wins his duels by the fact that he has access to the priciest of cards. If the deck he runs is hit by the banlist, he has no problem accessing cards from his local card store to build a completely new deck. While his skill level and knowledge of rulings may not be as strong as it should be, he is not a misplay machine in any way. And it may be due to the fact that he has access to the cream of the crop when it comes to cards.

Profile 4: Karl

While the previous three profiles cater to the competitive players, Karl plays yugioh for fun. He has never run any Tier 1 decks, and he prefers to run decks that are fun to use in his opinion. His current list of decks: Rock (Guardian Sphinx, Golem Sentry, etc.), Frog (up to CRMS), Machine (A weird Ancient Gear/Machina Mix), which shows he doesn’t necessarily want the so-called best deck. It is not that he does not want to win, but if he had to choose between winning and fun, he would choose to have fun.

Profile 5: Ruel

Ruel is also very competitive, has the cards to create the top deck, and knows what cards works and doesn’t work. His problem? His knowledge of the game is, subpar, to say the least. He would be what I would call a “misplay machine” making moves that are not necessarily the best moves to make, and his deck construction skills are not that good as well. He has untapped potential, and he is not terrible in any way, but he fails to bring out the total potential of his deck.

Profile 6: Mike

Mike is what you would call a “newbie”. He is not bad at the game, just simply inexperienced, and many mistakes he makes can be caused by having played the game for a full 3 weeks. Given time, he has a lot of potential that could make him a dangerous duelist. Oh, and Lightning Vortex

Profile 7: Jordan

Jordan loves power. Simply put, he is one of those duelists that prefer the old fashioned “strong monsters wins you duels.” His deck, following the saying “it isn’t cheating until you get caught” contains 4 Vorse Raiders and 5 Axe of Despairs. It is obvious he cheats; it is also obvious that he is nostalgic towards the humble beginnings of yugioh

Profile 8: Marc (me)

I am a player of yugioh, but I more interested to game mechanics and everything else besides competition in yugioh. I’m not bad of a player in any means, I just don’t have as much of an interest in dueling as much as others, my interests will be more towards judging and hosting events, finding out weird facts about yugioh etc.

Profile 9: Aaron

He isn’t a duelist, he probably does not even know the rules. He has yu-gi-oh cards because they look cool. If the picture is epic, he probably wants it. He would be those people that buys cards that are rare and hard to get, and has no qualms with getting “ripped off” in terms of playability, but if a card is shiny, he would want it.

Profile 10: Adam

Simply put, he does not like to play yugioh. His sole purpose in life when it comes to yugioh is to make everyone who plays it a living hell.

So now I ask you the question, Who are you?

Post 8 - Glossary (Overview)

Before I go on with my blog, I personally want to go over some slang and key works I used and will use. This  will be updated as I go along.

Constructed: Standard Build-a-Deck format that yu-gi-oh has (in my opinion) gone stale on.
EXAMPLE: Look at your deck (then back at me...) and if you enter a tournament with that deck, you play constructed.

Limited: A format where you build your deck using a limited card pool.
EXAMPLE: Sealed is a format where each player is given the same pool of cards (about 80-100) in which the players must make a deck out of the cards recieved

Draft: Like sports, it's when each player selects cards one at a time from a larger card pool.
EXAMPLE: A booster draft is a format where cards are being selected from sealed packs that are being passed around.

Card Pool: The selection of cards that is available to a player when making a deck
EXAMPLE: Your own collection of cards, your friend's collection, the local card store, my cube




NOTE: Draft is a Limited format. Limited is NOT necessarily a draft format.

Post 7 - A look into my Cube (Sneak Peek)

The reason why i decided to make a yugioh cube, was that I was simply tired of creating a deck based on what cards i have at my house, at my friends, or that was cheap in the local card stores. A few posts ago,  I mentioned how my friends were getting into MtG, which that phase didn't last long. However, the two weeks where the MtG craze lead me to this idea of a cube for yugioh. returning to the present, I noticed that i have enough cards to make a cube, without having to throw crap in as filler.

mtgsalvation.com is my new favorite site to got to when figuring out how i should make my deck. This article by Mark Oberdies is one of my personal favorites, and is something I go back to when making changes to my cube. In the article he poses these questions to fellow cube-builders, and i will decide to answer them in the bold blue as usual

• How big should I make my cube?

A standard cube in Magic has a minimum of 360 cards (45 cards each for an 8 person draft) while the "standard number" is 410 cards (i believe it's 50 cards per 5 colors, 50 lands, 60 gold cards, 50 artifacts).

My cube is build to support a 12-person draft, but I would like to have extra cards just so I don't have the advantage of knowing what is exactly in the draft.

Number of cards in my cube = 40 cards per person X 12 person draft + 20 extra cards = 500 Card Cube

• Should I build a "standard" cube or a themed cube of some kind?

If people do ever start making YGO cubes, i really wish people would make theme cubes (Dark-Only, Beast only, Cards-used-by-Yugi-in-the-anime only). Alas, until i could balance out my attribute deck (DARK is frickin broke)...

My cube is "standard", A.K.A. filled with power cards

• What type of environment am I trying to create?

My group of friends love power, they love seeing the tide of game turn with one card (within reason, my cube does not have Raigeki, Harpie's feather duster, or Chaos Emperor Dragon) so many banned cards are available in my cube. The goal of my cube is for players to win anyway they want to win

• What types of decks and archetypes am I going to support?

My cube does NOT support archetypes, per say. You won't be building a Gladiator Beast deck, A Six Samurai Deck, etc. However, if archetype you mean Aggro, then you have Mage Powers and 1900 beaters at your disposal. You want hand advantage? Pot of Greed says hi. Stall? Level Limit Area B, Gravity Bind, Threatening Roar and Waboku's, among others. Burn? Magic Cylinder, Just desserts, Dimension Wall. Field Control? Dark Hole and Heavy Storm are in my cube. My cube attempts to satisfy any playstyle.

• Am I going to create a "banned" list for the cube for any reason? If so, what are those reasons?

In my honest opinion, a "banned" card would be something that isn't in the cube. It would be too long to type out all the "banned" cards, but you get a picture

• How good do I want to make aggro? Mid-range? Control?

As much as I personally hate aggro, and how people warned me not to put too much beatsticks into the cube, Aggro wins games. The balance is there, however. If aggro wins games, than the lack of control will make you lose it.

• Am I going to include cards for nostalgia's sake?

Remember MtG has that rotation format where only the recent sets are legal. However if you look at the code to where the card came from, a lot of my cards are from the first 3-4 years of yugioh.

So this is my Yugioh cube in a heartbeat. Now People might be asking to see what's exactly in my cube. Maybe i'll release my cube list later...ahah

Post 6 - Cover me, I'm reloading

wooberg.org. My personal inspiration to drafting for yugioh. It is IMO the best site in terms of draft for both YGO and MtG

This link explains the Winchester draft, A quick two-player draft format. As a fan of wooberg, i'm not gonna even bother posting the rules on my blog. I recommend you click the link and look at the other ways to draft. If i find any draft formats that need to be yugioh-fied, ill post my revisions here. Just remember that one MtG Booster = 14 cards, but yugioh boosters work fine as well. Just remember that 6 YGO boosters does not equal 84 cards.

Post 5 - Former British PM Draft

Before i start, i'll admit that i am running out of creative titles

The link of the day leads us to the Winston Draft, a popular draft format for a smaller amount of people. Again i will attempt to yugioh-fy the rules, but i do not think much changes. Changes/comments will be in bold blue

1. Each player supplies 45 cards worth of sealed product (three five booster packs/cards from a cube/structure deck/contents from a tin).
2. Shuffle all 90 cards together in one big deck without looking at them.
3. Choose someone to draft first, then put the top three cards from the deck face down next to it as three new small piles of one card each.
4. The first player looks at the first small pile. He may choose to draft that pile or not.
5. If he drafts it, he replaces that pile with a new face-down card from the deck.
6. If he doesn't draft it, he puts it back, adds a new card from the deck face down, and moves on to the next pile.
7. He looks at that pile and decides to draft it or not, replacing it with a new card if he drafts it, adding a new card to it and moving on if he doesn't.
8. If he doesn't want to draft the third pile, he adds a card to it, then drafts a random card from the top of the deck.
9. Continue until all cards have been drafted. Construct 40-card decks and play.

I kinda feel bad for this post, credit goes completely to the original link, i'll try to put my next few posts more into my own words.

Post 4 - Trollandtoad draft

While the booster draft is the so-called proper way to draft a cube, there are many different ways to draft out your cards to build a deck. Doing a quick Google search, I found many different ways to draft for MtG, and i figured i'll introduce it over here


This link will lead you to the market draft, where you "buy" the cards that go to your deck. Making some changes to yugioh-fy it, I came up with the revised draft format. This format is for any number of players, but i recommend a maximum of 12, depending on time constraints.

• Make sure you have 45 cards for each person. Each person also receives 60 credits.
• Shuffle the total card pool into one pile.
• Deal out 14 cards from the Draw Pile until all 14 slots are filled according to the chart below. This will assign each face up card a value. 

• On your turn you are required to buy one of the 14 cards showing (no passing your turn), of course you are free to grab any of the $0 cards and keep your money.
• Once you have purchased a card (creating an empty space on the table), all of the cards above it will now drop down to fill in the gaps. Finally draw the top card of the Draw Pileand refill the $4 card space. Your turn is done and the next player gets to go to Market. 

Well this is a shorter post, but there aren't many personal comments on my part. It is completely different that anything i have ever seen or tried, so I hope it would interest people to try it.

Post 3 - With the first overall selection, we chose....

The previous two posts talked about creating a meta where you choose what is being used in yugioh. Better known as a "Cube" you are left with 400ish cards for everyone to use. Now you may ask...what now?

Usually with a Cube, you would do a "draft" to decide who gets what cards. A booster draft is the standard way of drafting cards, and this is not new to yugioh, yet many casual players do not know the rules. At the recent  Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Extravaganza, a Retro Draft was one of the events (link) held, and the rules of the draft was similar to the ruleset normally held by MtG draftees. The ruleset copied from the link will be in italics, with my comments in Bold Blue

Retro Draft is an 8-player event, but you can play it with more or less players if you want to. If you play with more, break the players up into as many equal groups of 8 players or fewer that you can. 

Eight is the recommended number for a drafting group, both here and in MtG, but ten or even twelve isn't that bad for one group. It depends on what you are using to draft.

• Sit each group of players down around a table with their 3 Booster Packs.

Booster pack here could be replaced with "A pile of 15 cards taken from the cube" or it could be an actual unopened booster pack. Again, depends on what you are using to draft, in the official tournament they used 3 packs of Retro Pack 2.

• After everyone is seated, everyone opens up one of the Booster Packs, chooses 1 card for their Deck, and passes the rest of them to the player to their left.

Ho hum...

• Repeat until every player has 9 cards for their Deck.

It says 9 cards because there are nine cards in a Retro Pack. You keep passing the remnants of the pack until all the cards are chosen

• Then, open the next pack and repeat the process, except this time, pass the cards that aren’t chosen to the player on your right.

Pretty much, everytime you open a new pack the direction you pass the pack after you choose it switches

• After every player has 18 cards for their Deck, open the final Booster Pack and do the exact same thing as you did with the first one.

Remember two retro packs equals 18. if your own packs have fifteen cards in it, you should have 30 cards at the end of 2 cycles. Rinse and repeat until all the packs have been opened.

• Once all the cards have been chosen, each player needs to use the cards they picked to make a 20-card minimum Deck. Cards that go in your Extra Deck don’t count towards the 20 cards. 

I did a similar draft with a friends a couple of years ago, and i feel that 20 cards is too little (especially with how i built my cube). Rule of thumb is that 60-80% of the cards selected in the draft go to the main deck, and the remaining cards which should be between 5-15, will become your side deck.

I deleted some of the tips they gave (Lol destiny board) but these tips do make sense, especially in my own cube

• There aren’t many cards that can destroy Spells or Traps. Grab every Dust Tornado you see, just in case.
• Don’t neglect monsters! You can grab all the kick-butt Spell and Trap Cards you want, but if you don’t have any monsters you probably won’t win
• There are a lot of cards that can take care of monsters, but also a lot of cards that can revive monsters. Premature Burial and Call of the Haunted are both available.

I hope you would try this format, because i personally had so much fun doing this the couple of times i tried it, and it is a fun alternative to normal yugioh.

Post 2 - Cube Part 2

The previous post, I introduced the concept of "The Cube" a card pool created by a fellow duelist that would be what your deck would compose of. This post will explain how to make your own cube, and what is exactly in my own cube. This link explains well how to start your own cube, but because the site is for Magic: the Gathering, I will attempt to Yugioh-fy it.

Step 1: Theme
Very similar to the above link, you start off construction by choosing the theme of your cube. The theme determines what kind of play style you want the other people to use when playing with your cube, and also what cards will go into your cube. Whether you fill your cube with high ATK monsters and equips, monsters and support for a certain archetype, or cards that no one would want to use in a normal constructed deck, the theme will determine what cards go in.

Myself, I am personally working on 2 cubes of my own. The first one is what M:tG would call a power cube, the best cards throughout the history of Yu-Gi-Oh!. The second one is a tribute to the roots of cube draft. In MtG, you want to select an equal number of cards for each of the five different colors when making a MtG cube. in YuGiOh, we don't have colors persay, but attributes are pretty close. Therefore, a cube based on the six attributes of yugioh isn't that bad of an idea

Step 2: Budget
Now that you have a list of cards that you want in your cube, you should set out a budget for both the cards AND your sleeves for your cards. You don't want your cards to get wrecked by the second playthrough of your cube, especially if they are holos, so sleeves so be almost as important as the actual cards. The second choice you need to make, is whether you are going to buy the shiniest holos for your deck, doing the exact opposite and getting the cheapest commons, or even proxying some or all of the cards. I perfer having a physical copy of the card, but again it's up to what the cube creator wants in his cube.

Step 3: Compile
You have the theme and the budget, now is the to actually put your physical cube together. You should have a  minimum of 40-60 cards multiplied by the number of people you want using your cube. Myself I have 480 cards in both of my cubes, enough to support a 12-person draft.


Step 4: Playtest
You have the cards, sleeved, the cube is built to what you think it should be. The only think left to do is to playtest your cube with whoever else has some interest. When playtesting, watch for cards no one wants, or cards that are too game-breaking. These cards may not belong in your cube and should be replaced. As new cards are released, you may/may not be doing this a lot

Now the question people may be asking right now; How do you play with a cube? Again, it is up to you. The next few posts will explain different ways that I personally use the cube.

Post 1 - Gleaming the (Millenium) Cube

As an avid casual yugioh player, I cannot help but to notice how stale casual yugioh gets. Think about it; you are playing the same cards, following the same rule-sets, building decks following the same ban-list (curse you ban-list for killing my Blackwing deck), playing the same people over and over. I've only been back from my recent hiatus for about a month, and I am already planning to quit at the end of summer.

Rewind two years ago. I was in grade 10, and I was considering quitting yugioh for good (which started my 18-month hiatus ending December 2010). A couple of my friends picked up the card game Magic: The Gathering as a fun alternative to yugioh. Due to the blessing of the internet, I instinctively searched up the rules of MtG on Google to learn more about the rules. That (crappy) article found on Wikipedia led me to this realization:

There was more than one way to play card games.


Rochester. Draft. Sealed. Two-Headed Dragon. Planechase. Winston. Highlander. Magic: the Gathering has different ways to play a card game out of the same set of cards. Heck, I found a game format that combined MtG with Monopoly (I have that page Favorited on my web browser, to this day I still don't understand how to play). Through all these different game formats, there was one word that changed how I wanted to play Yu-Gi-Oh!

Cube.

Tired of using the same old cards over and over again? Like many formats inspired by MtG, every game with the Cube uses different cards. Tired of the ban list dictating the meta? You build your own meta within your cube.

By now you may be asking, "What exactly is a cube?" According to this link, "A cube is a large pool of cards selected for the purposes of limited (A format where you choose cards out of a limited card pool to make your deck). It should should contain at least 360 cards so that you can support a standard eight-player booster draft. The actual selection of the cards will depend on the feel that you want games of your cube to have." The beauty of this format is that the creator of the cube dictates how the duels are going to play out. You want a meta where the strongest monsters win duels? Fill up your cube with Gene Warped Werewolf/Mage Power-esque cards. You want a meta based on the DARK attribute? Fill up your cube with Dark Illusion/Dark Armed Dragon/The Dark Creator-esque cards. You want a meta where people use cards that no one will ever use? Gift Cards/Shapesnatch-esque cards go into your cube. In short, you choose what's going into the cube.

These next posts in this blog will support how different formats in Magic: the Gathering could work in also Yu-Gi-Oh!. Many of these formats are specifically made for the Cube, so hopefully you would have some sort of interest to try this format.