The Next Step - Building a deck - Parental Power

MONEY

You will never buy a very very good card in a pack of 9 from your newsagent ( Unless you spend £30 - 50 to get a card worth £10 -20). This is the "It could be you" lottery approach to duelling. Swap at a club, ebay or websites.

If you buy a job lot of 20 or 50 cards it is highly unlikely to include the super duper rare card in the picture (this is worth £20 - 50 on its own, why would I give you this and 49 others for £10?) It will have a 'rare' card not the ULTRA, ULTIMATE one you are after - probaly + allegedly.

Beware Postal charges

Shop around

Always watch similar items before buying ie is it a buyers market? or a sellers, you can only try not to over bid if you know the current market value of a card such as a cyber-stein or a GOD card.

FAKES

All cards have holo in bottom right corner.

These are Never tournament legal, all the kids will know one when they see it. Tell tale signs are ilegibility, the text at the bottom of the card is poor, hard to comprehend or mispelt. Names are often odd ie  "Swift birdman Joe" Backs of cards are often more orange ish, reals are darker brown on average. Real cards, even embossed shiny, ultra rare ones are never too shiny all over and will not have large gold outlines (only simple gold Text for the name).Most Good dealers accept returns - ie they do not sell fakes.

see how to spot a fake

All god Cards (There are Only THREE- Obelisk, Slifer, Ra) have backs the same colour as them ie Blue (Obelisk), Red (Slifer) and Yellow (Ra) - These rae the only Yu-Gi-Oh cards that do not have the std brown trademarked backs.All gods are wanted by all KIDS. All Gods are illegal in tournaments but cool on the play ground.However the sacred beasts (Hamon, Raviel and Uria (?)) are nearly as cool and come in tins £12-16 rrp and are legit in tournaments.

MONSTERS

Help the duellist - read the text on the card - what conditions must be met to play / use it. i.e. Blue eyes shining Dragon (BESD) requires a sacrifice of blue eyes ultimate dragon (BEUD) which requires 3 blue eyes white dragons(BEWD) and Polymerization(P) which to get any one BEWD you must sacrifice two four star monster(4*) . SOOoooo to get BESD you need 1 x BEUD, 3 x BEWD, 1 x P and 6 x  4 *  or BESD=11 cards or QUARTER of a DECK! And I can kill it with 1 card (man eater bug if you must). Too a more experienced player this is not a good status quo.Whereas DD Warrior is a 4* that kills all, Spirit Reaper is unkillable, Jinzo stops any trap, gravity bind stops 4* or bigger beasties etc

Read the Advanced list form the Official Yu-Gi-Oh web sites. If the pro's say you can only have one version of a card then it must be powerful - So deck it now!

Searchability is the key- ie cards that sit at 39th out of 40 will not help in a duel. Cards that can be found ie " special summon from your deck to the field any X type when this card is destroyed", "from your deck to your hand", "from your graveyard to the field" are always better. Rather a spirit reaper in your hand than two Raviel's  in the bush.

Good / experienced players will happily swap to encourage kids (my son was GIVEN  4 out of 5 Exodia pieces ,he sawpped the head ten mins earlier, at his first tournament!) It never hurts to ask!

try not to let your child / duellist have too many 5, 6 and 7-10 star monsters. Why? because the 5- 6 * need one 4* sacrificed, and all the others need at least two (Raviel and his ilk need 3) My son had over 11 larger monsters and when I explained that too use them all it would require the sacrifice of nearly 20  4* he was horrified (mainly because he had twice as many large to small in his deck) i.e.Too much of a good thing is bad for you.

Therefore try to have only 3 or so 7* or higher (This will need 6x 4's) and is 9/40 of the deck or half of your monsters (20 is about right for a 40 card deck).

A flip monster is a monster with his very own trap / spell card. The effect will often mimic the trap or spell and you can also use the 4* as a monster or a sacrifice.

Spell / Magic

Cards that allow picking up an extra card or stop picking up- Hurray! Graceful Charity, Pot of Greed.Cards that take too long to use, require extreme event to be helpful - BOOO

Heavy storm - removes ALL spell and traps (yours as well)!

Creature Swap - Poacher turned game keeper!

Scapegoat - instant four fluffy shields!

Swords of revealing light - have a coffee for three rounds then duck!

Axe of despair - the biggest equipment card (+1000ATK), there are a few bigger fusion weapon and ritual weapon to name two but they do not work for all monsters. So i recommend the AoD.

Field cards affect all on the field -yours and theirs.May or not be Hurray / Boo

Face down means the card loses equipment, stops effecting others etc so Book of Moon which flips face down is Very handy , both to keep your own cards  or upset opponents.

Trap

Royal Decree - stops any nasty traps!

Sakretsu Armor - Kills any one attacker

Gravity Bind - Stops any 4* or higher beasties

Magic cylinder - returns damage too opponent

Draining shield - absorbs attak and heals you

General

Cards are all literal ie if a card says this card raises its attack for every card on the field " then it includes itself."this card destroys a monster" is a flip that MUST kill even if it kills itself ie there are no other monsters!

Most kids play like it is top Trumps - Fun but you are missing the complexity and fun of the game.

Try not to be too paranoid (always good advice to any parent anywhere on any subject - shame I never follow it myself!)

• Never let your duellist take their full collection out of the house (I recently worked for Upper Deck at a massive exhibition and  one very proud lad had over a thousand cards with him. Trust me when this crock of gold hit the table he was surrounded by players - some in awe, some gawping, others like flys to a flame but unfortunately some watched like vultures over a fillet steak!)
• Prepare a book / deck / folder of cards you want to swap!!! Take this out to club, tournie etc
• Be prepared to come home with a deck of 39 cards. You cannot watch every one.So do not deck a card you cannot afford to lose.
• Anyone too keen to either see your deck pre tournament is your opposition so see theirs also!
• Never let them wander off with your cards
• Keep cards in sleeves - it protects them and identifies your Kuriboh from mine ( if diff!) Use the same sleeves for all cards (at my first tournament my sons friend cost me a fortune as I had too buy two sets of sleeves for all his elemental heroes he had 60+++!! we originally used a set of 50 plus any odds we had until a judge explained we had inadvertently marked our deck!)

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