Time to Give Us a Jump Start (YGO)

     March 29, 2002 was the beginning of the end for children's allowances everywhere. To make it easy for everyone to just buy one thing and play, the Starter Deck: Yugi (SDY) and Starter Deck: Kaiba (SDK) were released. I remember my brother and I were ever so excited. He bought SDY and I SDK in order to prove which of us was cooler.

     

     The two starter decks were also how kids actually got a copy of the rules for which we were grateful. If they hadn't I probably would've just played with 2000 Life Points (LP) and whatever the rules were on the show at the time; the likes were nowhere near the actual rules.

     Each deck also came with its own strategy. For the most part, SDK was just about smashing your opponent with brute force while SDY had a bit more "strategy" involved. I put strategy in quotation marks because this early on in the game there wasn't too much strategy to be had. Of course, each deck even came with its character's signature card: Blue-Eyes White Dragon in SDK and Dark Magician in SDY.

Awesome:

• Blue-Eyes White Dragon (SDK)
• See my previous post
• One of my favorite artworks for BEWD
• La Jinn (SDK)
• Level 4 monster with 1800 ATK = Greatly welcomed!
• Lord of D. and Flute of Summoning Dragon (SDK)
• Not so great with just this deck but were very good since then in Dragon decks.
• Dark Hole (Both)
• Great way to clean up the field although can be a small sacrifice for you
• Dark Magician (SDY)
• See the previous post
• My favorite (and most iconic) artwork for Dark Magician
• Summoned Skull (SDY)
• Level 6 with 2500 ATK almost puts the Dark Magician to shame if not for DEF
• Soul Exchange (SDY)
• A pretty powerful card allowing you to sacrifice your opponent's powerful BEWD so you can summon your Dark Magician (or really any other monster)

Meh:

• Judge Man (SDK)
• Level 6 with 2200 ATK was decent at the time but Summoned Skull was still a better choice
• Mysterious Puppeteer (SDK)
• Great effect, especially if used with Ultimate Offering, but it's low ATK and DEF don't help it survive very well
• Neo the Magic Swordsman (SDY)
• Can compete with Battle Ox but not with SDK's La Jinn without the help of Magic Cards.

Stupid:

• Unknown Warrior of Fiend (SDK)
• Why is there an "of" in his name?
• Only 1000 ATK and no effect do not make him a real viable option, even at this early point in the game's history.
• Ancient Telescope (SDK)
• Why do I care about seeing the cards on top of my opponent's deck if I can't do anything to them?
• Last Will (SDY)
• The fact that it's not a Quick-Play and therefore has to be played during one of your Main Phases does not make this a very viable option since that means either you killed your own monster or somehow your opponent used a trap card to destroy it.
• Remove Trap (Both)
• This early on it's not that useful since there are so few Continuous Trap (CT) Cards.
• Makes less sense in SDY because SDK only has one CT.