Duelist Diary

Since the "Free-Card Starter Deck" phase is over, now is the perfect time for a retrospective.

Day 1 - Vs Slifer Reds

I played a few games with the starter deck before going to class. The 1200 ATK beaters were far from optimal, but the sub 1100 ATK ones were just egregious. Though it was great to see how most Slifers at the dorm were actually balanced for this kind of Deck.

So the first upgrade was already very satisfying: I got three 1500 ATK beaters from Crowler and bought one pack each from the beginner sets, which netted me two usable Traps. This was already a sizeable improvement and allowed me to duel the rest of the Slifers, winning against most of them.

Day 2 - Vs Ra Yellows

Wednesday is Water Pack day, so I just had to buy one and actually got Treeborn Frog and Mermaid Knight, two cards that turned out to be among the strongest in my deck. The new Spells and Traps were all from Crowler. He even gave me my first proper 1-for-1 removal: Fissure.

Which made me ballsy enough to challenge the Ra Yellows, but winning was more of a coin flip or “draw the out” kind of thing. The difficulty spike was noticeable here, due to them at least playing staple Spells and Traps.

Day 3 and 4 Vs Jank Connoisseur

Since the Ra Yellows were a major step up from the Slifers, I opted to enjoy my time with my boys Jellyfish and Fiend Kraken and Slifer Fusion jank while it still posed a bit of a challenge. Very enjoyable, and it already yielded the first deck recipes.

Also this part made me reflect on how my challenge run made me interact with the game. Since buying any amount of packs makes most of the Slifers trivial, heck, even the free cards already made most of them very manageable

Day 5 Vs Ra Yellows - Round 2

This is the final form of the free cards (+5 booster packs) deck. It plays already so much better than the starter deck and is somewhere between Slifer Red and Ra Yellow depending on the individual duelists. The main pain point now is that their decks have staples and just plain better stat lines, which makes everything an uphill battle.

I got some more Slifer recipes that day. The next day was the first Tag Duel Sunday with Syrus, which is a whole other story. At this point I was looking forward to upgrading my deck with some Fusion goodness of my own in Week 2.

Week 2 Vs Obelisk Blue and Teachers

After the disaster that was Tag Dueling with Syrus, Fusion packs unlocked at the start of Week 2, so I added a little package to my deck and tried my luck against the Obelisk Blues.

Just adding the Thunder Dragons made my neurons activate, because my deck can now go +1 just to later go -2 for a Fusion beatstick. Wonderful.

I won surprisingly many of the duels against them, most notably against Turtle Boy and the Attribute Guardians. I tried the teachers (and Jinzo!) two days later and had a 50% win rate against them.

Mussing

Limiting access to cards, taking screenshots, and writing little BlueSky entries made me slow down and appreciate parts of the game I’d normally steamroll through. I really enjoyed all the thematic decks the Slifers (and some others) had, and it was a delight to see all these barely useful early Fusion and Ritual Boss Monsters, as well as Fushioh Richie mind you.

I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

Project Update / Format Shift

Commentary will continue exclusivly on BlueSky.

On here I want to move more towards composed and longer entries. There is so much to say about this first entry of the Tag Force series on its own, and in relation to the other titles.

I’m looking forward to making Duelist spotlights (of the Attribute Guardians and all the Fusion decks among others), interesting localization stuff, and whatever else I’ll find.

TLDR: Enjoyed Slifer (Fusion) jank while it lasts.

Day 3 and 4 start with a deck upgrade. Especially on Day 3, Crowler gives us some solid cards, most of all Shrink. I won’t be buying packs until next week to see how far this will take me.

Mermaid Knight has proven itself to be one of my best cards. It attacks twice often and its Attack is easy to boost. That one Water pack really paid off.

Since this is about savoring the jank, here are a few pictures of the boys cleaning house. I’ll miss them once I have to properly upgrade my deck. Once again, shoutout to @MakoTsunami for introducing me to these fine specimens. #Jellyfish #FiendKraken #DuelsFromTheDeep

By focusing on the Slifers, I managed to get some of their deck recipes. It’s great to look at those lists, but I want to make separate posts for most of them. I’m delighted to announce I found and dueled the last Ra Yellow: Faty. He keeps the janky fusion spirit alive by copying Sigthor’s deck but swapping the Dragon for a Winged Beast theme and playing actual staples like Pot of Greed and Dark Hole.

Also, KENYoU gives me his favorite card, Mushroom Man, saying it will stand up to the E-HEROs. I fear that’s not the case. Maybe I’m just not skilled enough to tap into its power.

Side Notes

Poor Bastion already thinks I’m better than him. Not yet—but thanks for the vote of confidence. But also, your chances of beating my janky deck aren’t that slim. Where’s your trust in yourself?

Syrus is so wimpy in his word choice, tone, and expression when losing.

Zane wants me to greet his brother. Why not visit him yourself, bro? Also he has zero chill once he’s pissed. Don’t worry, buddy—I’ll challenge you tomorrow at the earliest. Then we’ll see how you fare against the power of the sea, and who’ll end up a #ThirdRateDuelist with a #FourthRateDeck.

Reflections

The fact that I’m restricting my access to cards, combined with the act of taking screenshots, really allows me to slow down and appreciate these early-game duelists before they become fodder. I’d normally rush through this stage trying to get the best cards and get the story moving, so that's really nice. It might even border on mindfulness. #Deep #DuelsFromTheDeep

TLDR: Ran around campus and dueled every Ra Yellow I could find.

Day 2 starts with a Deck upgrade. Crowler gives us some good cards, including our first solid removal. Since it’s Wednesday, we can buy one pack from the Water set (looking forward to more next week). It gets us Treeborn Frog, among others. Lucky. My Deck is starting to approximate proper ratios.

Today I had an entertaining duel against Jaden. In our rematch I barely got the win. I caught Winged Kuriboh LV10 as well as 2 Fusion Summons. His staples are not to be underestimated.

I managed to duel most of Ra Yellow today and win about 60%. They have left the janky fusion decks behind and are now at janky strategies that might actually be threatening. Some of the decks are easy to beat while others are a slog to get through because I don't have proper Spell/ Trap removal yet. Shout out to Swin and Deloge at this point for bullying me with Level Limit - Area B and Gravity Bind respectivly.

While I beat Bastion's Earth Beatdown deck (I hope to see Valkyrion the Magna Warrior), I got stomped by Rune. My deck is not yet ready to face Vampire Lord and Phoenix of Nepthys. Maybe I need to acquire Deloge's gamer mindset

At the end of the day I have reached a crossroads. I kinda need to upgrade my deck to keep up with the Yellows, but then I’d dominate the Slifers. That’s why tomorrow I’ll mainly duel Slifers, to enjoy some more time in jank city and farming those recipies, before having to put on my big boy pants. Also, Treeborn Frog surprisingly established itself as a powerhouse already, with lots of synergies even in my unoptimized pile.

Side Notes

The localization continues to be an intriguing topic. In this entry, the duel lines feel kinda samey for NPCs, but the voices give them way more personality. I wish I could properly understand all the nuances. Thankfully, I’ve barely run into Dr. Crowler gender jokes, Chumley fat jokes or anything of that kind.

On that note: the guy who’s hyperfocused on girls and hangs out near the girls’ dorm naturally plays Charmers. Go figure…

The database yields some interesting entries again: We have great foreshadowing of who Bastion will fall for later in the story, though it feels kinda funny reading "submissive-looking girls" in a Tag Force game. Jaden's entry can be interpreted in a few different ways, especially considering his relationship with Jesse Anderson later in the story.

TLDR: Ran around campus and dueled every Slifer I could find.

I dueled a lot before class. Afterward, I picked up 3 better beatsticks and 2 traps thanks to Dr. Crowler and buying one pack of each beginner series. Those 5 cards already improved my experience noticeably.

Most Slifers ran decks centered around janky vanilla fusion monsters, which are an actual threat at this stage—and the reason I’m doing this challenge.

Heart of the Underdog is a “busted” draw engine here, since decks are mostly running vanillas. Shoutout to Sigthor, who combo’d it with Fusion Gate to summon a bunch of monsters in one turn.

Side Notes

They used the “girly"/ bubbly background for Blair while she’s pretending to be a boy. Not sure if that’s environmental storytelling or just a miss. The database entry is at least strongly hinting at the fact.

Syrus insists on saying grace before dinner. I wonder how they handled that in other localizations. To my understanding, that’s more religious than the itadakimasu it most likely was in the Japanese version.

Have some more pics of random fusion monster:

I’m doing a small challenge run in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force 1. It’s made significantly more enjoyable by the following patches:

Enable Voice Acting: https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-enable-japanese-voice-acting-in-yu-gi-oh-gx-tag-force-usa.572290/

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force 1 HD Remastered: https://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=29487

The details of my challenge run are still a bit fuzzy:

For the first in‑game week, I’ll stick to gifted cards.

Here and there, I might grab a handful of boosters.

Basically, I just want to savor duels where Empress Judge actually makes a difference and stan all those weird, janky decks

We'll see how long I stick with it

Also I'll stick to summaries on tumblr, for the live reaction head over to: https://bsky.app/profile/duelistdiary.bsky.social

Here is a comparison of the "upgraded" starter deck, left side is the HD Remaster and right side the base game