Royal Oppression, And Why It Must Return

Afternoon fellow readers. With both of my first two exams done and out of the way, I had hoped to chill on the internet today. My internet appears to have hit an all-time low in terms of speed which isn't very much fun at all. Whatever, hopefully it'll still be able to upload this blog post. If not, well you won't know anyway.

A couple of days ago I was thinking about the fundamental flaws of the March 2012 banlist and how it promoted exceeds, and then obviously in turn, special summons. I also thought about how the current format is essentially focused towards special summons and in some cases, spamming them (Chaos Dragons, Wind-Ups, and to a lesser degree, Rabbits). Then I remembered Royal Oppression. Why I forgot about in the first place I'll never know. But I recall throwing in my samurais just before it was banned and it really made the deck. The ability to setup your field and then keep your opponent off the board while saving the power trap you had for that one card that'd screw you over was amazing. Never mind that Shi En could also protect it from all the hate prepared for it. I don't know why I didn't put it in sooner but that's old news now.

Then I considered how it would impact the current meta if it was taken off the list and put back to one as it should be. It certainly wouldn't make every other banlist decision justifiable, but it would almost certainly help the format to retain some sense of structure. This is primarily because of a few reasons outlined below.

In the days of Teledad, throwing two or three synchros on the field with a DAD was powerful for its day. No massive mental jump there. But I remember when mirror matches suddenly became more and more complex as players decided on more "out-there" techs for their side decks. It wasn't until one player decided to main royal oppression, instead of siding it like the rest, that shit really went down. I can't remember his name, but you can imagine the deck with oppression backing it up. You'd have the above field of monsters. Your opponent somehow survives and tries to comeback with their own flurry of special summons. Upon flipping up Royal Oppression and achieving a simple +1 for a minor cost, you've now managed to keep their powerhouses from ever getting on the board, while also ensuring that any of their defenses can't stay on the board due to DAD being protected by Stardust.

And right there is the big difference between right now, and back then. You used to go all out and then try to keep your opponent out of the game if you didn't manage to OTK them. Now, you can keep putting out 1/2 major special summons every turn to keep applying the pressure on your opponent. Except the only difference is that you HAVE to keep doing this in order to win. Rabbits, Windups and Chaos Dragons need to continuously special summon turn after turn over the course of a duel. Rabbit doesn't come under this bracket as much due to the lockdown provided by Laggia and a few backrows, but it should definitely still be considered as 2/3 turns of "Rabbit => Laggia, Tour Guide => Leviair brings back Rabbit => Laggia", does net easier wins than usual. And it isn't that rare either.

On that note now consider the return of Royal Oppression. Rather than providing ridiculous lockdown with a field of boss monsters, you now instead put them out turn after turn, which Oppression prevents. Wind-ups do go all out in one turn, but with Oppression up along with a little protection, they wouldn't have a chance in hell of winning. So, if you yourself are playing one of these decks or something similar and are maining oppression, you think you'd be on the road to victory too right? Not necessarily. If the game does turn in the tide of your opponent while you still have your own oppression up, you risk locking yourself out of the game which would most certainly spell disaster and eventual loss. This is because, as I mentioned before, the top decks NEED to special summon. The days of the powerful normal summon monsters that hold their own are gone. Honestly though, with players having the option choosing to use 3 MST, 1 Heavy, Dust Tornado, Night Shot, Royal Decree, along with numerous S/T destruction monster cards, Oppression wouldn't be that hard to hit mid-game at all.

And in this simple yet powerful observation lies the essence of why Yu-Gi-Oh was so much fun before. You actually had the mind games concerning whether their deck would run it or not. Do they currently have it facedown and should I go off? And to throw an opponent off, a duelist may even have run it regardless of whether it hurt their main strategy or not. Forcing an opponent into a position where they have to overextend and then you stop them cold mid-way through their combo really does provide wins. Or, conversely, one could force one's opponent into activating it prematurely. Hence, the timing of activation of Royal Oppression was really key and could easily separate good players from the bad. You had to bait your opponent out, give them the idea that it was safe to push. And then from this, there were all the mini-strategies within a deck based around "how am I going to deal with / work around Oppression should it be played?" and "how much would Oppression affect my deck's win condition?". Players often wasted their only MST for an unknown backrow, only to get screwed over by a well-timed Oppression a turn or two later.  Some players didn't even play it themselves because they knew their opponents would be, leaving themselves with more room for other mained techs. They forced them to have to throw it up if they had it and then used it against them, getting the use out of Oppression for free. It ultimately was one of the most skilled cards in terms of considering it in one's gameplan, both when used by you and against you.

Royal Oppression would also prevent sacky top-decks from determining games such as BLS. Now don't get me wrong, drawing BLS doesn't immediately give you the game, but if you're down to the point where each player only has one or two cards, then it WILL make a massive difference as to who is the victor. That much is not debatable.

However, Oppression isn't without its flaws. It proves to be way too powerful in decks that lockdown and protect it very well. One such deck is Six Samurai, with its replacement, Rabbit, doing largely the same thing for the most part. But one could argue that since Laggia only negates once, and can't individually protect itself, that maybe Rabbit wouldn't main it because they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if their opponent managed to get through Laggia and their couple of backrows. Because really, a few vanillas, and with Tour Guides and Rabbits dying instantly, the deck would be as effective as a Magikarp using splash.



Yes MST is at 3 with Heavy Storm also around, but if Konami decide to make a counter-intuitive non-dick move by bringing it back in September, then as much as I'd hate it, MST would have to be hit in some way. Not only for the above reason of nuking your oppression and going off again, but also so that players that blindly throw away their MST's would be punished as the opportunity to use MST's raw power would decrease per duel. Then the players that wisely time their MST's would see the results of their play pay-off over the course of a duel.

Bringing back Royal Oppression while limiting MST (there is Dust Tornado to turn to instead after all), could ultimately prove to be the saving grace of Yu-Gi-Oh's skilled competitive play. Of course these aren't the only changes that should be implemented. There are still various other smaller problems that could be fixed in a variety of ways. That much is up to Konami to decide upon. And it is with great hope, that I wish they do so.

Till next time, this is DEFER signing out.