Playing Conservatively

The most common advice I hear veteran players give to new players is that you need to play conservatively. While I agree this is great advice, I think it's given so often that it begins to lose its meaning. Playing conservatively in an Agent deck is different than playing conservatively in an Infernity deck. The concept itself is very focused on situation and style as well, but the goal today is to try to help new, returning, and existing players who never quite understood the concept to grasp the meaning and improve their games.

Card Counting
A lot of what you'll see online is people talking about +1ing and +2ing and how good/broken a card is because of the advantage it gives you. The general idea is that when you play a card you want to end up with more cards combined on your hand and field than you had before. For example, when you play The Agent of Mystery - Earth you immediately gain a +1 advantage, since through her effect you were able to add one card to your hand and lost nothing in the process. Inversely, if you played Monster Reincarnation to add a monster from your graveyard to your hand, you suffer a -1. Although you did gain a card previously unavailable to you, you had to discard another card in the process, creating a two for one trade off. While this is not always a bad play, many players prefer not to use cards like this because it can lead to easy over extending.

As a general rule of thumb, you want most of your plays to give you a +0 or +1, while it's not always possible, you want to maximize it when you can. For this same reason, you don't generally want to use a card like Mirror Force to stop only one monster. While its not necessarily a bad play to trade off one trap for one monster, that same trap could have been used to take out anywhere from two to five monsters, giving you huge advantages over your opponent.

Save Your Monsters
Just because you CAN summon every turn, doesn't mean you MUST summon every turn. Also, just because you CAN summon your boss monsters, doesn't mean you SHOULD. It's generally safe play to keep at most two monsters in play (if your opponent will allow you to) or possibly three or more if your next battle phase will give you the win. In a game where your monsters are the answers to any problem your opponent puts in front of you, its best to leave some of your cards where they're safe until you need them. Summoning three or four monsters is begging your opponent to Dark Hole or Torrential Tribute you generating massive pluses for your opponent and setting you back several turns. Conversely, if you minimize the effectiveness of your opponents spells and traps by keeping only one or two monsters in play at a time, when they finally decide to play them you have pretty much fully recovered by your next turn.

This same holds true for your boss monsters. If you have four lights and four darks in your graveyard and a handful of Chaose Sorcerers and Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginnings it does not mean you should summon them all (unless of course your opponents field is clear for a direct attack from all of them.) In general if you have one of your most powerful monsters available to you, and you don't NEED to play it to either win the game or take out your opponents threat, you shouldn't play it. There are of course exceptions to this rule, if your monster can lock down your opponent, like Archlord Kristya and Light and Darkness Dragon, but these are few and far between, and should still be played only when you feel you have the win within the next turn or two.

Making Power Plays
A power play is a play made after some how managing to eliminate one part of your opponents field. Either after clearing their monsters or their back row or their hand. You get to extend and play more aggressively than before because you now have the peace of mind of knowing their field is clear. Heavy Storm is a great way to start a power play when you have no back rows and your opponent has three, but you need to make sure you have a follow up. There's nothing more painful to watch than a player playing Heavy Storm then setting a monster in defense mode and ending their turn. If they put that same monster in defense mode without the storm, he or she could have saved it for the next turn when they drew a bigger monster who could take advantage of an opponent with no defenses, but instead they allow the opponent to set more backrows and continue on the offensive.

Power plays are essential to winning games. If you're not going to follow through on one, don't start one. There are of course exceptions to this, sometimes you need to Dark Hole to protect your life points against a three monster onslaught, or Torrential Tribute your own Sangan to try and turn things around. These are always desperation plays though, and you are likely to lose in the end. Always make efforts to play cards to minimize your losses and maximize your opponents, and be prepared to steal the flow of the game, or lose.

Before making any power play, it's key to keep in mind your opponents resources. The cards in hand, the cards in play, and the cards in their graveyard can tell you exactly what it will take for your opponent to come back. It's best to weigh pros and cons before blindly rushing in. It's not all cold math, sometimes it just take a gut feeling to know your opponent isn't holding their boss monster, or isn't hiding a trap that will thwart your move, but knowing what your opponents resources are will be more reliable than your gut every time.

Tribute, Fusion, Synchro, and XYZ
Each of these forms of special summoning are in one way or another the bread and butter of every deck. It's important, however, to remember that just because you can doesn't mean you should. Every time you use one of these forms of special summoning it means you take at least a -1. This does not mean that these types of summons should be avoided, it simply means that you should not use these mechanics unless you need to to solve a problem your opponent has presented for you (example: fusion summoning Elemental HERO The Shining with Super Polymerization eliminating their Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning), you are able to eliminate an opponents card to start a power play (example: tribute summoning for Caius the Shadow Monarch to banish an opponents defense or backrow), to generate massive advantages for yourself (example: synchro summoning T.G. Hyper Librarian to draw extra cards for more synchro summons), or you were able to do it thanks to an advantage you created for yourself (example: xyz summoning a Gachi Gachi Gantetsu with the Mystical Shine Balls special summoned by The Agent of Creation - Venus.)

Exceptions
If you are ahead of your opponent, playing conservatively is not always necessary. If your opponent has no cards in hand, a defense position monster, and a back row card, it's okay to use Dark Hole or Heavy Storm if it means getting a clear shot at their life points. At this point in the game, your opponent is simply drawing one card then playing one card, or holding it in their hand. They're not going to magically sprout a back row of Dimensional Prisons and Solemn Judgments. At this point, every card you play is a power play if you have at least a +3 or +4 over your opponent, so it's best proverbial step on his throat and inflict game winning damage.


Thank you all for reading and your continued support, I hope this article was helpful, please comment below if you have anything to add or any critiques on this post, or if you just want to say hello!