kaiba (w/o obelisk) vs doll (marik)

[Fantastische Hure]

if u can & want to say

kaiba iirc seemed to have figured-out osiris' weakness before yugi did, but do u think he can win?

 

[Papasmurf]

Depends purely on the cards he draws and whether or not he has tributes ready to activate Obelisk's Soul Energy MAX effect. Since regular Marik prior to summoning Osiris/Slifer didn't seem like all that (acting like fusing two fodder monsters was some clever strategy), I'd probably say Kaiba would win, although if Osiris gets summoned first Kaiba is screwed since all his lower level monsters are getting bombed the moment they're summoned and Obelisk itself will have its attack power halved as soon as it's brought out.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

i said w/o that means with-out, right?! (i thought so)

 

[Papasmurf]

For what it's worth the official YuGiOh guidebook also has Kaiba's stats at: Deck: 5 Playing/Skill: 4 Guts/Pluck: 4 Luck: 4 Experience: 4

While regular Marik/Doll's stats are instead 4, 4, 3, 3, 4 for the same parameters. So with both wielding Egyptian Gods, Kaiba will most likely have an edge. Even Yami Marik's stats weren't as high as Kaiba's because psycho Marik had basically the same stats as Yami Yugi but with less luck.

 

[Papasmurf]

i said w/o that means with-out, right?! (i thought so)

You didn't specify if Doll still had Osiris, tho

I guess without Obelisk Kaiba might get fucked. Even if he has Ultimate Dragon out he's more than likely going to get Nightmare Steel-Caged and Osiris will soon toast BEUD and go on to roast the rest of his deck, and after BEUD is down I don't know if he'll be able to maintain enough of a supply of life points to brainwash Revival Jam with Enemy Controller for example.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

ye, i guess i could have said that

even-tho i think that's weird that kaiba told yugi something like if he can't win, he isn't qualified to be a rival to him or something but might not be able to defeat osiris by himself if he didn't have the obelisk card

 

[Papasmurf]

It happens. Remember that Jonouchi soundly lost to Rishid/Odion but went on to almost defeat Yami Marik with his strongest Ra deck. People acting in character will tend to make the outcomes of duels a lot more complex than just the ol' shonen A > B > C formula.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

i just thought that maybe that went by some logic, like jounouchi wanting to save mai & friendship helped him become even better

 

[Papasmurf]

His biggest feat before that was beating Bandit Keith though, plus he didn't dare face Pegasus even with the power of friendship 2

There are other examples too. Remember that in Duelist Kingdom Mai got her skank ass whooped by some rapist looking goon who was an ant to Pegasus. She veritably wasn't on the level of final bosses like Pegasus, Marik or Bakura. In Battle City her determination to prove she didn't need friends or whatever proved so strong that she traded blows with Marik to an extent and even managed to steal his God Card, even if he baited her into it. All while Yami Marik was messing with her head with Shadow Game shenanigans in the anime and literally making her feel the pain of being slashed like the Monsters they were playing in the manga. Kazuki Takahashi clearly likes buffing up certain characters to the level he likes to write them in, even if logically they shouldn't have come so far in a couple of months.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

he also managed to defeat marik in the 4-way tho, i'd consider that more impressive even-tho they obviously had to employ different strategies for a duel like that (i think)

 

[Papasmurf]

Jonouchi by nature had the biggest advantage in that 4 way duel. He was fired up to save Mai as you said, Yugi/Atem constantly protected him and Marik honestly didn't care who he had to face first since all he was invested in was torturing Yugi to death (since it appear that regular Marik's hatred for his clan suffering on the Pharaoh's orders was the catalyst for his birth).

If Marik felt like it he could have won that duel with things like Egyptian God Slime, Ra or Lava Golem - he didn't use any of them because all he really cared about was saving face in that duel and going on to kill Yugi. That, and Marik doesn't care who he has to face - as long as he can get some sadistic joy out of torturing his enemy. He clearly didn't care much about the likes of Jonouchi or Kaiba, yet reveled in causing Jonouchi's near-death. Marik is insane. He likes to cause death and destruction, he has no concrete goals even if torturing Yugi seems to be a passion for him

 

[Fantastische Hure]

maybe it's anime-only, but i thought marik said he wanted to face yugi first & didn't care abt the other 2

 

[Papasmurf]

I don't think it was anime-only, but as I said the motivation for Jonouchi and to lesser extent Kaiba was greater. Remember that for Yugi, if he looked in his best interest he had the best shot of beating Kaiba first, then going on to face Marik (or Jonouchi if he won by some miracle) in the finals. But instead, Yugi wanted to leave Kaiba for the finals and go for Marik or Jonouchi instead at first, because he knows facing Marik without a God is too dangerous. In Kaiba's case, facing Marik's Ra with an inferior God was too risky, while taking Yugi's Osiris would be the logical choice (plus, he'd get to flatten his archrival). Jonouchi had the biggest stakes in this because he needed to save his throbbing boner for girlfriend Mai, or her life would be lost to the Shadows within a day.

All in all, Marik may have been itching to kill Yugi, but he honestly didn't care all that much when he lost and had to save Yugi for the finals. If Jonouchi had to face say Kaiba instead of Marik, he'd have been pissed because more than likely, Marik would have slaughtered Yugi's Osiris, killed him, and then gone on to have two Gods before facing whoever he had to duel in the finals. And Jonouchi's odds of beating Kaiba are already very, very slim.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

iirc yugi protected jounouchi because he wanted to face him first so they could fulfil the promise of their duel, but ye u are probably right i think

i do think it was weird tho that kaiba kept calling jounouchi names despite the fact that he also pointed-out that the others had god-cards, i think. wot is it then, skill or op cards l0l? also kaiba literally got the obelisk card handed to him.

also i think that's kewl that in the end it wasn't the god-cards that defeated winged dragon of ra but the black-magicians

 

[Papasmurf]

iirc yugi protected jounouchi because he wanted to face him first so they could fulfil their promise of their duel, but ye u are probably right i think

Yeh Yugi seemed to care more about fulfilling his promise with his best friend to have a duel to determine if Jonouchi had spread his own wings as a true Duelist moreso than anything else (including unlocking his memories), but that's also why he wanted to throw Kaiba to the wolves and face Marik in the finals - even if that meant Marik would get Obelisk. Kaiba obviously seems to care more about flattening Yugi more than the vice versa, but he also had to think pragmatically and relegate their big match to the semi finals since Marik's Ra was way too OP.

i do think it was weird tho that kaiba kept calling jounouchi names despite the fact that he also pointed-out that the others had god-cards, i think. wot is it then, skill or op cards l0l? also kaiba literally got the obelisk card handed to him.

In the Jap dub Ishizu commented that Kaiba had now become a true owner of an Egyptian God after defeating her. So I guess thanks to plot intervention he did earn his God card technically. It's probably true Kaiba earned his God in the least skill-related way since Marik at least had to receive the guidance of his Millennium Rod to learn about Ra's two hidden powers (which regular Marik didn't), and Marik built his whole deck around repeatedly reviving Ra and decimating his opponent's field. All of this is mostly evident only if you watch the Japanese dub though because the English dub likes to change lines a lot like old anime dubs like Teknoman and DBZ (pre-Kai).

also i think that's kewl that in the end it wasn't the god-cards that defeated winged dragon of ra but the black-magicians

I think that's cool too, because Yugi and Kaiba's final duel in the Battle City tournament would have been pretty damn gay if it just turned to a dick swinging contest with God cards rather than boiling down to Dark Paladin vs. BEUD and we already saw Yugi asspull Osiris on his last turn against Bakura. Imagine how stale OP would be if every fight just ended with Luffy just progressively asspulling new Gear forms, much like how Rurouni Kenshin kind of went to shit when EVERY fight after he unlocked Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki had to end in a dickswinging contest with both characters using their ougi.

 

[Pyro]

Which guidebook is this? Sounds like it'd have nice info to look over.

 

[Papasmurf]

I believe it was the Gospel of Truth guidebook from the 2000s, although Kazuki Takahashi and Shueisha also published a second manga guidebook during the Darkside of Dimensions era a few years ago.

 

[Pyro]

Gotta find a cheap way to obtain it. So far I can either find it cheap and pay up the ass for shipping or find it expensive and pay little shipping. Nah, bruh!

As for the actual battle, I assume Kaiba would tap into his l33t skillz and get Enemy Controller or Soul Exchange to replicate how Yugi beat Strings. He figured out how to win quicker than Yugi did, so I think he could win this in the end. He also has a more straightforward beatdown strategy than Yugi, so Strings may not even get the chance to complete his 5-Card-BS-Combo.

 

[Papasmurf]

Does Kaiba have a counter to Nightmare Steel-Cage though? He really showed no real countermeasure to Swords of Revealing Light. That, and Mai appeared to be the only character with a haxed spell/trap card removal card like Harpie's Feather Duster, so Jam Defender might keep Kaiba in the ropes for a bit.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

i don't knw, but when-ever i think of yu-gi-oh! i jst assume, out-side of maybe jounouchi (because he says it out-right a few times, iirc), that characters always can have a counter in their deck as-long as they think of that i think i think. that's weird i kw, but yugi had brain-control in his deck all-along, yet didn't think of the strategy against doll/marik, so if the characters can think of a weak-ness to counter they can draw the kind-of card they need.