Yugen logged onto the card review websites of both Kaiba Corporation and Industrial Illusions, searching for card packs currently available for direct purchase on the market.
First, any transmigrated card game veteran with an online IQ would undoubtedly look for "that card"—
—Pot of Greed.
Or rather, the super-strong draw engines unique to the original anime world, represented by Pot of Greed.
Pot of Greed, unconditionally allows you to draw two cards from your deck. It's this simple yet brutal effect that has kept this card imprisoned for thousands of years in the real card game environment, a permanent ban list staple almost certainly never to be released in any foreseeable lifetime.
Similar to it is "Graceful Charity," which not only lets you draw three cards from your deck but also choose two cards from your hand to send to the Graveyard. As Yu-Gi-Oh developed into an era where Graveyard and hand resources were almost indistinguishable, this kind of draw-three-plus-dumping-to-Graveyard monster reached a terrifying level that surpassed Pot of Greed.
However, these cards weren't highly valued by duelists in the DM anime. By the GX era, it seemed duelists in the anime world had already started to notice their strengths. After all, in the GX anime, you could already see main characters having at least one Pot of Greed and one Graceful Charity. In the protagonist Asuka's duels, you could even see Pot of Greed leading to another Pot of Greed, a truly brutal scene.
Regarding monster cards, Yugen started to feel a bit of choice paralysis.
Because looking through the entire card pool, he really couldn't find a single one he liked. As a transmigrated card game veteran, he simply couldn't bring himself to use these cards that required him to awkwardly tribute summon them, only for them to turn out to be vanilla monsters with merely over 2000 ATK.
It wasn't that there were no relatively good quality monsters, but many of them were expensive and unobtainable; they simply couldn't be bought.
For instance, the first one he thought of was Jinzo, one of the main character Jonouchi Katsuya's signature monsters. It's a Level 6 monster, only requiring one tribute summon, but it has a decent 2400 ATK and a somewhat overpowered "trap negation ability" in the early environment—as long as it's on the field, Trap Cards cannot be activated.
Yugen remembered that in the real card game environment of this era, this was also a very high-quality single card, a regular in competitive top-tier deck builds.
However, upon searching, it was out of stock.
Jinzo belonged to a highly rare category of cards, in a long-term out-of-stock state, simply unavailable for purchase.
This made Yugen a bit frustrated. He quickly realized that another important factor differentiating the anime environment from the real card game was the difficulty of acquiring cards.
In reality, they could check the entire card pool of the current version at any time and use almost any card to implement any build. But duelists in the Yu-Gi-Oh world didn't have this convenience.
There were also some cards he wanted, but just one glance at the price immediately made him gasp.
Forget it.
Yugen knew that cards in this world almost directly equated to weapons and strength, so he had already prepared to spend heavily to acquire the necessary cards at all costs.
But saying that was one thing, looking at the sky-high prices of some rare cards, he thought he probably couldn't even afford them if he sold himself.
It wasn't an exaggeration; it was literally that kind of price.
Indeed, the price gap between common cards and rare cards in this world was absurd. The prices of common cards and common booster packs were actually not much different from real life in his previous world; everyone could afford them. But the value of some rare cards was literally a house for a single card, which was no exaggeration at all.
And that was for rare cards that could be bought. As for the universally known "Blue-Eyes White Dragon," of which only three exist in the entire world, all in Seto Kaiba's possession, that's another story entirely.
Further investigation revealed that besides car loans and housing loans, there was even such a thing as card loans in this world. As the name suggests, you could take out a loan to buy cards.
"It feels like such a pain without cards," Yugen pouted.
Fortunately, even under such restrictions, he still managed to design a deck-building concept using the cards he could acquire.
The prototype for this build was a deck with landmark significance in the history of real-life Yu-Gi-Oh competitive play, the first ever World Championship winning deck.
"Hand Destruction."
Perhaps every novice duelist who entered the game through the anime would have some unrealistic fantasies about card games, such as high-ATK boss monsters clashing like in the anime, intense offense and defense exchanges, and direct duels, ending with a satisfying GG in a joyful battle.
However, that is fake Yu-Gi-Oh.
True Yu-Gi-Oh is when, in this one table, only one person gets to play Yu-Gi-Oh.
The most stable way to win is always to eliminate all of the opponent's tactical possibilities, leaving them unable to play any cards. This philosophy permeates the game from beginning to end; it's true today, and it was true in the early card game environment as well.
[Hand Destruction] is a deck built on this very idea. As the name suggests, its strategy is to destroy the opponent's hand, leaving them with no cards to play. From the very first turn, they can only watch helplessly, effectively going AFK. It can be considered the progenitor of the "Yin" meta.
Facing this deck, an opponent's dueling perception will be completely shattered. That poor duelist will experience a series of "blood pressure spikes," "am I even playing?", and "summon my fists!" within a few short minutes.
So, if one had to say what the biggest drawback of this deck was, it would probably be that the user's personal safety would be difficult to guarantee.
Of course, Yugen couldn't remember the entire build of such an ancient championship deck, and he couldn't acquire some of the rare cards anyway. So he only used its concept as a reference, creating a new build himself.
As for some empty slots in the deck, for now, he'd just cram in some more decent quality staple cards and traps.
Actually, from Yugen's veteran card game perspective, simply having traps wasn't necessarily a good deal or particularly useful. The main point was that a lot of traps made it easy to break the opponent's mindset.
He wasn't some kind of devil, nor did he have a twisted sense of humor for messing with other people's mindsets. Primarily, psychological warfare is also a part of dueling. Sometimes, breaking the opponent's mindset before depleting their LP can be a very effective strategy.
Yes, that's right.
As he continued to browse the website idly, his eyes suddenly lit up as they swept over a certain page.
Jinzo, stock quantity: 1.
Yugen immediately scrolled the interface back and clicked to check. However, the webpage immediately rejected him.
"No access permission."
"Duel Academy exclusive card."
Yugen was stunned.
Duel Academy? What's that?
It was only after another round of surfing the internet and checking that he realized.
The so-called Duel Academy referred to the Duel Academy. Built single-handedly by Seto Kaiba, it was the largest Duel Academy in the world, personally established by him. He specifically bought an entire island to serve as the academy's headquarters and poured resources into it.
Students on the island had priority access to the latest upcoming card packs, and also had channels to purchase rare cards that were essentially unobtainable to the outside world, all while enjoying extreme discounts.
Even putting aside the academy's hardware and teaching staff, just the rare cards and the intensity of the discounts were enough to make anyone's eyes burn with desire.
Furthermore, for students with excellent academic performance, grades and credits could even be exchanged for cards. In a world where a single card could sell for an exorbitant price, this could save students a considerably large deck budget.
Not to mention that students who graduated from Duel Academy would have the most solid diploma in the dueling world. Whether they wanted to pursue a professional career, join Kaiba Corporation, or Industrial Illusions, they would receive priority opportunities.
Scrolling down further, Yugen even caught a glimpse of Chaos Sorcerer!
Chaos Sorcerer, Level 6, 2300 ATK. It can be Special Summoned directly by banishing a LIGHT and a DARK monster from the Graveyard, and also has a powerful effect of banishing one monster on the opponent's field once per turn.
Because it has similar Summoning conditions and effects to the more famous "Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning," it became a suitable replacement after Black Luster Soldier was listed as a Forbidden card. Card game veterans jokingly called it "Little Envoy" and considered it a top-tier threat in the current version's environment.
In this world, Black Luster Soldier is a super rare card. In the anime, it was known that only the King of Games Yugi Muto had one. In the GX anime, there was also a display card in a replica deck of Yugi Muto's, but aside from that, it was never seen again.
So, getting one was almost impossible. But being able to buy a Chaos Sorcerer would also be excellent.
Besides that, there were other decent rare cards, similarly very difficult to encounter in the outside market, and their prices compared to the market value were indeed heavily discounted.
Seeing this, Yugen took a deep breath.
Decision made.
He'd check out the Duel Academy.
If he failed the entrance exam, it would be World War II.