Who asked him to play Yu-Gi-Oh!

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You Xuan logged onto the card query websites of both Kaiba Corporation and Industrial Illusions to search for the card pool that could be directly purchased on the market.
First, there was likely "that card," which any card player who transmigrated here with a modicum of intelligence would undoubtedly search for—

——Pot of Greed.
Or rather, the overpowered draw engine unique to the early anime world, represented by Pot of Greed.
Pot of Greed allowed you to draw two cards from your deck unconditionally. This simple and brutal effect made this card a permanent banned card rotting in the card prison [laodi zuochuan de wannian jinka - literally "a ten-thousand-year banned card sitting through jail time"] in the real card environment, a representative of indefinite sentences that would almost certainly never be released in his foreseeable lifetime.

Its kindred spirit was Graceful Charity, which not only allowed you to draw three cards from your deck but also allowed you to choose two cards from your hand to send to the graveyard. As Yu-Gi-Oh! evolved to an era where graveyard and hand resources were almost indistinguishable, this draw-3 card with self-milling was even more terrifying than Pot of Greed.
However, these cards weren't yet highly valued by Duelists in the DM anime. By the GX era, it seemed that the Duelists in the anime world had also begun to notice their power. After all, in the GX anime, you could see the protagonists having at least one Pot of Greed and one Graceful Charity each. In Asuka Tenjoin's duels, you could even see a Pot of Greed drawing into another Pot of Greed, a truly brutal scene.
Regarding monster cards, You Xuan began to have a bit of a selection dilemma.

Because, scanning the entire card pool, he couldn't find a single card that he could really settle on. As a transmigrated card player, he really couldn't use those things that required him to obediently gather tributes for high-level summons, and then summoned a monster with only a bit over 2000 attack points...
It wasn't that there weren't any relatively high-quality monsters, but many of them were hard to find even if you had the money, and couldn't be bought at all.
For example, the first one he thought of was Jinzo, one of Joey Wheeler's signature monsters from the previous protagonist's group. It was a Level 6 monster that only required one tribute summon but had a decent 2400 attack points, as well as a "trap lock ability" that was quite overpowered in the early environment—trap cards couldn't be used as long as it was on the field.

You Xuan remembered that this was also a very high-quality single card in the real card environment of this era, a frequent guest in the deck construction of top-ranking tournament decks.
However, after searching for it, it was out of stock.
Jinzo was a highly rare card and was in a long-term out-of-stock state, making it impossible to buy.

This made You Xuan a bit depressed. He quickly realized that another important factor in the difference between the anime environment and the real card environment was the different difficulty in obtaining cards.
In reality, they could check the current version of the entire card pool at any time, and use almost any card to achieve any construction. But Duelists in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world didn't have this convenience.
There were also some cards that he wanted, but after only glancing at the price, he immediately gasped in a cold breath.

Farewell.
You Xuan clearly knew that cards in this world were almost directly equivalent to weapons and strength, so he had long prepared to bleed [dachuxue - idiom meaning to spend a lot of money] to acquire the necessary cards at any cost.
But saying that was one thing, looking at the sky-high prices of certain rare cards, he figured that even if he sold himself, he probably couldn't afford them...
This wasn't an exaggeration, but a literal one.

Sure enough, the price difference between ordinary cards and rare cards in this world was ridiculously high. The prices of ordinary cards and ordinary card packs were about the same as in his previous real world, so everyone could afford them. But the value of certain rare cards, to say one card for one apartment, was completely not an exaggeration.
And that was for ordinary rare cards that could be bought. As for the "Blue-Eyes White Dragon," which was known to have only three copies in the entire world, and all of them were in the hands of Seto Kaiba, there was even less to talk about.
Continuing to learn, he discovered that in this world, in addition to car loans and mortgages, there was even something called a card loan. As the name suggested, you could take out a loan to buy cards...

"So, the feeling of not having cards is this painful..." You Xuan pouted.
Fortunately, even under these limitations, he was barely able to design a deck-building strategy using the cards he could acquire.
The prototype of this deck was a milestone in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh! real card competition: the first World Championship winning deck in history.

Hand Destruction.
Perhaps every new Duelist who got into card games through the anime had some unrealistic fantasies about dueling, such as the clash of high-attack big monsters like in the anime, the fierce exchange of offense and defense, and facing off head-on, saying GG [GG - Good Game] in a hearty battle...
But that was the false Yu-Gi-Oh!.

The real Yu-Gi-Oh! was that only one person at this table could play Yu-Gi-Oh!.
The safest way to win was always to erase the possibility of the opponent's tactics, so that the opponent couldn't play any cards at all. This concept ran through the entire history of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and it was still true today. It was the same in the early card game environment.
【Hand Destruction】 was a deck constructed along this line of thought. As the name suggested, its tactic was to destroy the opponent's hand so that they had no cards to play. From the moment they sat down at the table, they could only stare blankly and idle there. It could be said to be the ancestor of the underworld [yinjian] world.

The opponent facing this deck would have their perception of dueling completely overturned. That poor person would experience a series of three basic actions: "blood pressure rising," "I'm going to beat you," to "summon my fist in attack position" in just ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) a few minutes.
So, if you had to say what the biggest flaw of this type of deck was, it would probably be that the user's personal safety was difficult to guarantee...
Of course, You Xuan couldn't remember the entire construction of this ancient championship deck, and he couldn't get his hands on some rare cards. So, he only borrowed its ideas and made a new construction himself.

As for some of the empty positions in the deck, he would just fill them with more Trap Cards with decent single-card quality for the time being.
Actually, some Trap Cards, from You Xuan's perspective as a card player, couldn't be considered profitable [zhuan] and might not be very useful. The main thing was that more traps made it easier to break the opponent's mentality.
He wasn't some kind of devil, and didn't go out of his way to mess with other people's minds. The main thing was that psychological warfare was also a part of dueling. It was sometimes a very effective tactic to break the opponent's mentality before emptying their LP [Life Points].

Yes, that's how it was.
Continuing to unintentionally browse the webpage, his eyes suddenly lit up when his gaze swept across a certain page.
Jinzo, quantity in stock 1.

You Xuan immediately slid the page back and clicked to query. However, he was immediately denied by the webpage.
"No access permission."
"Academy Department Exclusive Card."

You Xuan was stunned.
Academy Department? What was that again?
After another round of surfing the internet, he finally understood.

The so-called Academy Department referred to the Duel Academy, the largest Duel Academy in the world, personally established and managed by Seto Kaiba. He specifically bought an entire island as the academy headquarters and filled the academy with resources.
Students on the island had priority access to the latest released card packs, and had channels to purchase rare cards that were completely unobtainable outside, and could also enjoy heavily discounted prices when purchasing.
Even if you put aside the academy's hardware facilities and teaching staff, just the rare cards and discount level were enough to make people jealous.

Even students with good enough grades could exchange their grades and credits for cards. For a world where a card could be sold for a sky-high price, this could save students a considerable amount of deck-building budget.
Not to mention that graduates from Duel Academy would have the most recognized diploma in the dueling world, and would receive priority internal recommendations whether they wanted to enter the professional world or work at Kaiba Corporation or Industrial Illusions.
Scrolling down further, You Xuan even caught a glimpse of Chaos Sorcerer!

Chaos Sorcerer, Level 6 with 2300 attack points. It could be special summoned by banishing light and dark attribute monsters from the graveyard and had the powerful effect of banishing one monster on the opponent's field from the game once per turn.
Because it had similar summoning conditions and effects to the more famous "Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning," it became its inferior substitute after Black Luster Soldier was listed as a forbidden card, and was jokingly called "Little Envoy" by card players. It was a frontline combatant in the current version environment.
In this world, Black Luster Soldier was an ultra-rare card. It was known in the anime that only the King of Games Yugi Muto had one, and there was also a display card in a Yugi Muto replica deck in the GX anime. Other than that, it had never been seen again.

So, it was almost impossible to get an Envoy of the Beginning. But if he could buy a Chaos Sorcerer, it would be excellent.
In addition to this, there were also some other good rare cards, which were also difficult to see on the outside market, and their prices were indeed heavily discounted compared to market prices.
Seeing this, You Xuan took a deep breath.

He had decided.
He would take the Duel Academy entrance exam first.
If he didn't get in, he would try again.

 
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