Dueling Philosophy 101 (Strategy)

(A note, from now on the only replies i want on my lessons are questions, if you want to teach then please make your own lesson, as I make mine with a certain structure.  By the same token, please leave out compliments and unhelpful critisism, as those make it harder for me to see the questions)

Hey there everyone, DDA's Resident Wolf here to teach you guys another thing or two, in this case, it's the philosophy of strategy.  We'll be delving into what makes up a strategy, what "Strategic Skills" are, and eventually learn how to chart out decks by what strategies they use. So let's get started!


   Now, before we can get too deep into the nuts and bolts of strategy, we first need to know what the heck we're talking about.  Now, if anyone reading this has seen Peter Pan by Disney, they'll know the definition i'm about to use, "A plan of attack."  This essentially means, how are you going to win?  There are a few options available to us from brute force, lock down, generating overwhelming forces and then crushing your opponents in one foul swoop, and those are merely a few after which there are several variations upon these themes.  This is why when building a deck from scratch, your win condition is the first thing you wanna map out, and if you're building a deck from an archetype, you'll want to research what that archetype's win conditions are.  Your deck will hardly be effective if you're trying to brute force your way with a traditionally lock down archetype.  So in conclusion, the "strategy" of your deck is going to be your "Win Condition" as well, but there's a bit more to the strategy part.

   

   The win condition is important, but as far as strategy is concerned, that is the end result.  the deck's Strategy is also going to include the steps on how to get there, possible back ups, and all of the ways your win condition as well as other possible win conditions should something go terribly, terribly wrong.  and for this, we'll break Strategy down into the following terms.

Win Condition- the board conditions your deck needs to win.

Alternate Win Condition- the win condition that is sought after only when the first win condition has become an enviable option. (When it's impossible to pull off)

Route- a straight, step-by-step line explaining how your win condition will be achieved

Step- the smallest possible measure of progress along your deck's strategy to the win condition, several Steps=one Route


With these terms we can break down the various strategies of a deck in the following strategic diagram:

Win Condition

 Route 1


   Step 1
   Step 2
   Step 3...


 Route 2

   Step 1
   Step 2
   Step 3...


 Route 3

   Step 1
   Step 2
   Step 3


Alternate win Condition

 Route 1

   Step 1
   Step 2
   Step 3...



   By breaking down any deck into this diagram, we can gauge a few things about it.  One examples could be Weaknesses in the deck construction, another could be just how well the deck is focused to it's Win Condition, and the most important part, it will show you the cards that are helping you and the cards that are not.  This diagram helps you to weed out the duds in your deck by asking one simple question, "Does this card carry me to my goal?"  and if the answer is no, or very little, then yank it out and find a better replacement.  Now, this deck diagram only shows how a Classical, Basic deck is to run and may leave you with questions, I'll be posting more lessons with more advanced material and diagrams at a later date.  Now that we know what a strategy is, and what it's made up of, we can begin discussing the current strategies used today.  For this lesson I'll only outline one, but please understand that this is an introductory course and I"ll go into greater detail in a later lesson.


Strategy one: SPAMITY CALAMITY!!!

Win Condition: Keep populating the field with monsters faster than my opponent can deal with them, eventually wasting their                      resources and leaving them open to attack.


 Route 1: Use special summon effects to spawn extra attack power onto the field.

   Step 1: Special summon photon thrasher, then normal summon photon crusher and then tag on kagetokage to have three
              monsters on the field from the get go.
   
   Step 2: XYZ thrasher and crusher together to summon blade armor ninja and use his first attack to clear the field, the                  
              follow up with his second attack and kagetokage's attack.

   Step 3: kagetojage will bait the opponent into attacking at which point I'll respond with a trap to protect him, or if not I'll                        
              take some damage and populate the field again on my turn.

   Step 4: keep up accelerated summoning until all of my opponent's resources are used up and finish them off.



 Route 2: Use field clearing effects to deminish my opponent's board presence to the point where keeping up with normal          
             summoning speed becomes a struggle.

   Step 1: Place man eater bug (or some other clearer) face down and back it up with traps.

   Step 2: opponent will attack and trigger my traps, either ridding the monster or dealing damage.

   Step 3: play something like Kaiser Colosseum and limit the number of monsters.

   Step 4: opponent will attack again and trigger man eater bug, destroying the only monster my opponent has.

   Step 5: begin using special summon abilities to populate the field once opponent's field is clear and finish them off.



Alternate Win Condition: Hide behind spells and traps to outlast my opponent and mill them down.


 Route 1: throughout the duel play cards like Dark Bribe that force opponent to draw.


   Step 1: play dark bribe a few times to get my opponent's deck count lower than mine.

   Step 2: Hide behind spells and traps until my opponent runs through their deck.


Once more this is a very simplistic strategy, and believe it or not, most decks actually employ a few different strategies and win conditions in something called "Fault Tolerance."  But that's for the next lesson.


Knowing how to plan your deck out like this is part of what are called Strategic Skills
And include both the ability to play the game well and plan ahead, but this stuff is just as important, if not more so. In logic there's an acronym i like to use G.I.G.O. it stands for garbage in, garbage out. Essentially, if your deck is a pile of trash to begin with, then there's little else you can do but take it out to the dumpster.