The Game Within the Game - Defining a Format

While many other Yu-Gi-Oh writers in the dueling community right now are busy reviewing new sets and cards, and speculating about the new March 1st 2010 banlist, I'm going to be going over something completely different that still relates to the topic everyone is raging about - the new format. First off, no, this isn't the umpteeth article about the new list you've read this week. I'm not going to go and reiterate how "Tsukuyomi" and "Magician of Faith" aren't broken anymore, how "Dark Hole" will be a balanced equalizer with "Starlight Road" on the horizon, or how "Plaguespreader Zombie", "Burial from the Different Dimension", and "Judgment Dragon" are broken and need to get hit. No, I'm here today to talk about formats themselves - what defines them, how you can classify them, and what kinds of decks benefit from those different kinds of formats.

To me, there are three major factors that affect a format - the number of Top Tier decks, the speed of the format, and how OTK-heavy the format is. Depending on these three factors, certain decks may succeed or fail competitively. It's not really about what specific cards are legal, it's about how the legal cards change the game state as a whole. If you still don't get it, I'll explain each of the three factors in way that anyone can understand.

The number of Top Tier decks affects three things - what people tech, what people side, and how viable Anti-Meta decks are competitively. The September '09 format for example, is one where people can tech and side deck anything that involves Graveyard distruption, like "Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer" and "D.D. Crow". Because the top decks of that format rely on the Graveyard and Monster effects so much, Anti-Meta is fairly viable. To make things short and sweet, the larger the number of top decks there are in a format, the harder it is to tech and side against the meta, and the less effective Anti-Meta decks are. If we look back to the days of Chaos Return and Goat Control, teching, siding and running Anti-Meta were all very easy things to do, since everyone and their brother was playing the meta cookie-cutter deck.

 

Who ya gonna call?

The speed of the format largely determines what decks succeed and what ones don't. I'll use this current format, September '09, as an example again. To put it simply, it's a fast format. Not as fast as the days of Tele-DAD and the like, but still fast. As such, decks that are very powerful, like, Monarchs, Samurai and even Spellcasters, lose out to the top decks simply because they are too slow to set up against them. Right now, the speed at which Lightsworn, Blackwings and Zombie variants can set up and OTK is crazy. Most decks, while effective normally, can't fight that kind of speed. In a slower format, such as September of '07, when Apprentice Monarchs were one of the top decks, a lot of decks were viable competitive simply because of the slower speed of the format. Picture the metagame like a race. If there are three or four sports cars that can hit 300+ kmph, then the average 180-220 kmph cars just won't be able to keep up. However, without those sports cars, the average car would have a better chance to win the race.

No, not that kind of fast.

The last factor is OTK presence. The reason is this important is simple - the larger the presence of OTK decks, the more every deck needs to tech/side against them, even if they only play against them once in a 8-9 round tourney. This is because not being prepared against an OTK deck can give them an easy win. Think back to the days of Demise OTK. For those of you who weren't playing back then, it was a time when decks running "Advanced Ritual Art" used "Demise, King of Armageddon", "Megamorph" and "Doom Dozer" to easily end games in one turn. Back then, if you didn't main deck or side deck anything against this deck, you could forget going undefeated for a few rounds of swiss, no matter how good of a player you were. It was nothign strange for decks to run multiple copies of "Waboku" or "Threatening Roar" in their side, with some people going as far as to run copies of "Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell" to prevent the use of "Advanced Ritual Art". To make matters even worse, that deck had nothing on the infamous "Cyber-Stein OTK", which used "Cyber-Stein" to summon a monster like "Cyber End Dragon", double it's attack score with "Megamorph" or "Limiter Removal" and attack for game. Overall, OTK really affect a format in a negative way, since they take little skill  to pull off correctly (unless you're talking about decks like Diamond Dude Turbo, but that's a different story), which is why Konami tends to cripple them as soon as possible.

Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell - Showing you just how far people will go to win against rogue OTKs.

Overall, formats can be classified by their speed, and the number of top tier decks, with OTK presence being more of a lingering threat. The current format is a fast one with only three or four top decks. The previous one (March '09) was faster still, but had more top decks. Back when "Chaos Sorcerer" was the single most powerful card running around, the format had only one top deck, and was fairly slow. As you can see, every format is easily classifiable.

Now, the question remains - "What will the next format be like?" Well, since I'm not part of the team at Konami who can sit down and work on the new list, I can't tell you (and even if I was, I'd likely be on a contract that prevented me from telling you anyway :P ). What I can answer though, is "What should we expect from the next format?". Personally, I'm expecting a slower format with a wider variety of top decks. Lightsworn, Blackwing and Zombie variants will still be something to watch out for, but if the new list does at it should and brings these beasts down a notch in terms of explosive power and speed, then decks like Gladiators, Samurai, Monarchs, Spellcasters, Gravekeeper's, Fortune Ladies and many more should be at least a little closer to that ever-elusive Top 16 Decklist position that they've all been craving to see more of.

March 1st is still about three weeks away, but hopefully we'll start seeing some hints about the banlist within the next two. Once that time comes, I'll share my thoughts and opinions on the new list, but until then, be patient, and enjoy the last of this format while you can. Change is coming, and it's going to be big.

-Dave on the Rock