Predictions and Observations:
Trouble For Team 5D's

Episode Aired: April 2, 2011
This Post Posted: April 8, 2011

Okay, so I almost totally misunderstood the format last week... Relay huh? Well, this speeds things up. Same bracket thingy I made earlier, but there's carryover and no pause between them. This is a brand-new duel format-- this is kinda cool! It took me a while to wrap my mind around it, but I do see how it can work.

So, rules for a relay duel, as understood so far:
1. Each team selects the order in which their riders will relay beforehand, and can't change it.
2. It is, however, permitted for a duelist to alter his or her own deck right up until they ride onto the track; otherwise Akiza's adding Stardust to her deck at the last minute like that would've been an illegal move.
3. The duel is begun in a similar fashion to a regular turbo-duel-- 0 speed on both sides, first one to the first curve rule, and so on.
4. Probably only effective after the first so many rounds, if a team's speed counter decreases to 0, they are disqualified.
5. Anytime one team laps another, that team gains one speed counter, or, if at the maximum, causes the other team to lose one speed counter. This applies even (especially) to time the other team spends in relay changeover, broken down, or (probably) in any pit stops.
6. It is illegal, under penalty of disqualification, for one teammate to touch another teammate's duel runner during the course of the relay duel, according to Jack. I'd add, parenthetically, barring pit stops. Or perhaps this says that if we do have any pit stops, Bruno, Crow, and the twins are the only ones allowed to do any repairs and Yusei has to stand back. This probably also carries over *between* teams, such that if any rider touches another rider's runner, regardless of team, it's a disqual.
7. For a relay changeover to occur successfully:
- The first rider must ride to the lap line behind the booths,
- He or she must hand over the team's armband or badge to the next relay rider,
- And the next relay rider must take the first curve before the opposing rider they're joining on the track does so.
- While transferring the badge or armband, a team may optionally transfer cards from the previous rider's duel disk. Optionally because this happened when Akiza transitioned to Yusei, but not when Jack transitioned to Akiza. We have yet to see whether duelists' hands, graveyards, or out-of-play zones are also transferable.
8. When a relay changeover occurs, the new duelist begins with 4000 lifepoints and a fresh starting hand drawn from his or her own deck, and retains the speed count of his or her team. Again, we have yet to see if a relaying duelist has the option of inheriting their teammate's hand, graveyard, or out-of-play zone in addition to or instead of his or her field.

So, why the big deal with the new rider having to take the first curve first in order to make the switchover official? One theory I have-- if Akiza didn't get ahead of Andre, he would have lapped her again and that would've burned up Team 5Ds' last speed counter. The only other idea I have, provided that Yusei also has to beat Andre to the first curve to make his relay pass official even though he has more than one speed counter, is that this is a carryover from the match format. In the anime, they play single duels, but in the TCG it's standard to fight three duels, called a match, and winner is the best two out of three. In match rules, the first duel's turn order is decided with a coin toss, rock-paper-scissors, or similar; but the next two are decided based on who won the first one; loser starts the next duel. With the relay teams, we've been told the rule that the loser of the last duel *has* to earn starting the next duel, or they can't duel. Similar, but slightly different.

So, I'm seeing in these new rules and new style a very 5D's-era brand of interpretation of the game. It places an unprecedented emphasis on a duelist's gear, when touching another rider's runner is an instant disqual and lapping the other rider actually matters. It takes aspects of turbo-dueling that have been speed in name only and raises the bar on the speed they require. Speed counters, for instance, are actually important now regardless of one's use of speed spells. I'm noticing that duelists are no longer getting dinged speed counters for losing one thousand or more lifepoints in a single battle; now what really makes or costs speed counters is lapping, which is a function of their racing, not their dueling. The relay format challenges the duelists as riders, to think on their feet, to make changeovers efficiently, to reach the finish line, to kick off fast enough to make the transfer.

Now, I just have one more question about the new relay format rules-- wow, did we really have to learn the rules of relay dueling this painfully? I mean, poor Jack, was that *really* necessary?

Okay, Jack rocks, he sure can stick it out for his team sometimes. He would rather go through all that than see them disqualified. I'm trying to figure out where we've seen this before, what seeing him do this tells us about Jack, how he relates to his teammates, and what this tournament means to him. For one thing, I'm thinking about what kind of punishment he endured trying to get Carly back from being a Dark Signer; he was going to throw the duel and netherworld himself so she wouldn't go there alone. When Jack gets selfless, he gets pretty darn die-hard about it, like he did here. I'm also thinking of "Will the Real Jack..." and how it was the fake Jack's trying to harm Crow and Yusei that pushed Jack into breaking free of the virtua-chair. Other than that, this season, we've seen Jack take stands against economic exploitation and take us on a tour of Domino's shady underground, such as it is now. I'm not really sure where we're headed with him in this season.

Jean wanted Team 5D's to have a "slow and painful loss", not just a loss. This is about more than just his team getting into the bracket; why does this guy have it in for us? Does the rest of Team Unicorn feel the same way? Breo doesn't seem to be *disagreeing* with Jean, and Andre's been on the track for the whole time we've known these guys, so we're not really sure whether Team Unicorn's going to be humming the same tune once Andre is sitting in the pit booth. I mean, don't get me wrong, Andre was definitely complicit in scouting Team 5Ds' talent to get an unfair advantage and tricking them into setting themselves up in the first round today, but does he just want to beat them, or does he want them to have the "slow and painful loss" Jean does? *Was* Team Unicorn responsible for Jack's 'accident', and if so were all three of them in on it?

Now, I can sort of understand why the rules that kept Yusei from assisting Jack and made Jack limp to the finish line are in place, but combined here they really seemed pretty cruel. I guess the dueling world does sort of have a tradition going of, if the duelist can get up and keep going they're still in until they drop. Battle City had its share of those. But seriously, wouldn't most tournaments call a time-out and an ambulance or something?

So, if it was sabotage, sabotaging Jack in that way wasn't just mischief, it was a disadvantage to Team 5D's. I'd been thinking, yeah, sure, he got banged up, but as long as it doesn't keep him laid up for as long as Crow's going to be (and it might yet), it won't matter in this duel except perhaps split the team's attention between getting Akiza onto the field and taking care of Jack, and possibly give the rest of the team a good scare. However, because Jack only crashed after the end of the duel, I was disinclined to suspect Team Unicorn; their strategy was geared toward beating Team 5D's in *this* duel, and they would've preferred something to happen to him a shade earlier if they had been the ones planning it. The relay format changes that apprehension; Jack's wreck here not only gave us a good scare, not only potentially disqualified us in advance from the next Prelim if Jack doesn't heal up and fast, but also gave Akiza a slow start that was nearly fatal for us as a contending team. It could've been anyone who has it in for Team 5D's, including Team Unicorn, the shady guys we saw hanging out in what we might affectionately call the "Sayer corner" of the bleachers, Iliaster, you name it. And the relay format means that Jack crashed, not at a low-stakes moment, but at a crucial one.

I find the moment when Jack tells Yusei to "look after her" (then faints) rather interesting. We know plenty about the relationship between Yusei and Jack, and between Yusei and Akiza, but here, and elsewhere, we also glimpse the relationship between Akiza and Jack. We've been getting some hints as to that especially lately. For starters, Jack's remark at Martha's-- "Allow me to translate that for you; he wanted to spend more time with Akiza down at the pier!"-- says that Jack definitely knows about Yusei and Akiza, and, knowing that, he still obviously consented to be on a three person team with the two of them. It's bound to have crossed his mind that there's a lot of potential for drama here that sees him sort of caught in the middle, but to me this says that he respects both of them as duelists enough that what happens off the track is incidental. That says plenty about Jack's view of Akiza, as does the fact that he keeps limping toward the finish line even when it looks as though it'll be near-impossible to win. When Crow took that fall, the one thing Jack angrily refused to do was to invest himself (and his dignity) in a losing battle, so Jack wouldn't have tried to reach the finish line if he didn't think Akiza could make that first kickoff, and he placed a lot of faith in her there. That he asks Yusei to "look after her", suggests that he'd like Yusei to do so for them both.

Yep, if you hadn't figured out it was the waitress yet... the free coffee coupon is adorable. I admire her pluck, going for Jack even when Mina and Carly-- both powerful and successful enough at least to have backstage passes at the WRGP-- have already spoken for him and all she's got are free coffee coupons. Jack seems to attract the timid-but-plucky women especially, and I think it's safe to say associating with him has done wonders in terms of just how timid Mina or Carly actually is these days. Wonder if that waitress is also about to get a little bolder?

Yusei probably knows a thing or two about runner injuries; if Jack might need mouth-to-mouth, if it's possible Jack could stop breathing, Yusei would know. Yusei's got Jack over his shoulder, so he can tell how well Jack's breathing. A broken rib or a head injury are among the possible causes for breathing difficulty that might affect Jack after all that. It might also be that Yusei's concerned about Jack's breath stopping because Jack just fainted, which suggests decreased blood flow to the brain. Fainting is also caused by adrenaline levels decreasing, which suddenly decreases blood flow.

Ooh, mouth-to-mouth... Sure hope they get done squabbling over who gets to save Jack's life in time to actually do it. Mina's probably the only one trained for it, being a Security officer and all, and it can be dangerous if not done properly. As long as Jack comes out of all this okay, though, I don't really mind. I sure wouldn't want to be him when he wakes up, though, with those three fighting over him while he's weak and helpless.

Among my first comments: Watch out, Andre-- Cluster Amaryllis is what Akiza plays when she's angry, and you won't like her when she's angry! We saw Amaryllis mostly in The Profiler and Duel of the Dragons, and in Duel of the Dragons it was the last violent thrash of the duel, so to speak; after Yusei has destroyed Black Rose Dragon, Akiza believes that he won't be able to even save himself from Amaryllis after he's wasted his moves trying to save her. But we also saw Amaryllis more recently in a practice duel between Akiza and Yusei, and I think it may be fairly benign now. But when I first saw Amaryllis take the field, I wondered how Akiza felt about her teammate's suspicious 'accident', and if she might call Andre out if she thinks Team Unicorn slipped something into Jack's ventilation system.

So-- Speed Spell - The End of the Storm requires the duelist playing it to have ten speed counters, and it destroys all monsters on the field then inflicts 300 damage to each duelist for each monster of theirs that was destroyed with the effect. Having several monsters on the field is often equated to having friends, to having other people around, and this card is especially devastating for duelists like Yusei, who special-summons as much synchro material as he can get, and, to name another, Crow, whose Blackwings flock best together. When we first saw The End of the Storm, it was at the very, very end of Yusei and Jack's secret illegal duel in the Kaibadome, when they accidentally summoned the Crimson Dragon:
"Jack: Whose dragon is that?! ...I'll teach you to play tricks with *me*! I activate a speed spell-- End of Storm!
Yusei: What're you thinking, we gotta *stop*!!
Jack: No way, Yusei!
Yusei: Alright, fine-- but I think we're gonna regret this! I activate my trap card--" (ep#5)
And it would've been "Meteor Stream", and Yusei would've won, but then the power goes out. So this card first really represented the complicated rivalry between Yusei and Jack. Its effect tallies with Jack's disdain for Yusei's standing by his friends, and Jack's belief during the Fortune Cup era that Yusei's inferior as a duelist because he wasn't willing to trade friendship for ambition. Hunter Pace plays The End of the Storm during the Fortune Cup, and takes it as an opportunity to say that he knows there's some history between Yusei and Jack. In the Fortune Cup Finale, Jack and Yusei draw End of the Storm and Meteor Stream, respectively, in their opening hands; Jack intends to use End of the Storm and win with it this time, Yusei decides against using Meteor Stream too soon because he thinks Jack will be expecting it. Toward the end of the duel, though, the move plays out-- Jack activates End of Storm, Yusei counters with Stardust's ability and Meteor Stream, Jack counters with Crimson Fire, and Yusei counters back with Shining Silver Force, leaving the way open for Yusei to end the duel.
So what does Andre's having End of Storm all ready to use on us here suggest? For starters, he's planning for Yusei, because that card can really hit Yusei hard. For another, think about the meaning of the card name itself: at the end of the storm, every participant of the duel has been blown away except the duelists themselves, they have been made alone and vulnerable, their companions have been taken from them. This duel has followed that pattern, somewhat; Andre has blown Jack and Akiza away, and now the only duelist left of Team 5D's is Yusei himself; if he falls, there will be no next duelist. If Andre plays that card, Stardust is a sitting duck without his special ability, and Stardust *does* symbolize Yusei's teammates right now because their turns on the field embodied sacrifice, taking one for the team, and Akiza threw the last of her lifepoints away to revive Stardust. For yet another, Jack said earlier that Andre reminded him of himself, and we thought Jack and Andre would be using similar decks, well-matched. Turned out not so, but Andre's use of The End of the Storm, a card representative of Yusei and Jack's Fortune Cup rivalry, perhaps does draw us some parallels and state that this one's going to be just as closely-fought and just as fierce. Perhaps this will also show how far Yusei and Jack have come since then.

I was intrigued by how Akiza summoned Black Rose Dragon: "Let the spirit of the earth intertwine with the essence of the sky!" Earth, plants, roses, mother earth, home and hearth; Sky, stars, Dragon Star, Stardust, wind, anything that flies including BRD, freedom and adventure... Very interesting invocation, perhaps even foreshadowing her next play.

Okay, Akiza summoned Stardust! How awesome is that! First, may I note that that was a clever way to switch it up, and Yusei must've had a lot of confidence in Akiza, because I have a feeling we got very, very close to Stardust ending up stuck in Akiza's grave and Yusei not being able to use it at all, which would have been very, very bad.

As soon as Akiza summoned Stardust, it felt familiar to me; then I realized why. She also summoned Stardust in Yusei's stead right at the end of French Twist, because the kidnappers with the soda truck just pushed another truck over the edge of the freeway to crush Sherry at least, possibly all of them; Akiza summoned Stardust with her powers so Stardust could stop the truck and save them all. We seem to be working on a theme here of Akiza summoning Stardust. I don't know where we're going with this just yet, but clearly we're going *somewhere* 'cause it just happened again. Cool.

I'm noticing that Andre's got a real knack for removing Akiza's monsters from play and replacing them with Thunder Unicorn. He does this with Amaryllis, then with Black Rose Dragon herself. What an odd pattern. And note also that Black Rose Dragon was removed from play to keep Stardust from attacking and resurrect Thunder Unicorn. Nothing like *that* better happen *off* the field, if you see what I'm saying.

What is thunder? Seriously, my college geography class is amazing. When we studied winds, I was working on a post for Keeping a Promise II; when we studied midlatitude cyclones, we had the first one this region has seen in a good long time and it flooded the college campus pretty badly; last week we studied thunderstorms and thunder, and I've got *this* post and what might possibly be a thunderstorm outside my window right now. I'm seriously considering dropping out before we get to volcanoes. But anyway, courtesy of my class, I can include in this post an explanation of how thunder works. So, lightning is what happens when a cloud ionizes; when it becomes charged, with negative electrical charges on the bottom and positive on the top, through friction within it, the same way you generate static electricity by rubbing something with a balloon. The charges build up and then try to get balanced again by traveling through air to the positively-charged ground or something on it. Lightning bolts are twenty to a thousand amps; to give some idea, the average household uses only *150-200* amps. Now, thunder happens when the heat energy of the lightning explosively expands the air directly adjacent to it. There's no thunder without lightning. Perhaps Breo or Jean has a Lightning Unicorn; my money would be on Jean. Thunder is the noise, just like Andre talks pretty for Team Unicorn, but Lightning is the power.

By the way, storms much? First Blackwing winds and Bolton's hail, snow, and sleet; then the harsh, rainy night after Crow hurts his shoulder; now we've got more stormy cards with Andre's Thunder Unicorn. Storms mean trouble and strife; rain gets the cards wet.

Man, did you *see* that?! Team Unicorn freaked when Stardust took the field! That made it even better, really. And, they'd rather have Yusei out there with Stardust than Akiza? I guess, Akiza dueling with Stardust is like Yusei's halfway on the field himself and that means they have to fight him but if they beat Akiza they aren't done. Better to just get it over with.

By the way, *what* limit on maximum speed? Wasn't Andre's overboost system supposed to limit his maximum speed? The max is *always* twelve; what gives? Maybe it only limited his maximum speed in the first round against Jack, and when Akiza swapped in the handicap wore off? Or maybe Breo meant *actual* speed as in runner function-- perhaps if it weren't for the overboost system, Andre would've lapped us right out of the tournament. This'll also mean, when Yusei knocks out Andre (which I predict will be soon), Breo will be going much faster.

Of course we still love you, Akiza! You just totally rocked your first pro-league turbo-duel when a few weeks ago you wondered if you would *ever* be dueling at the level you just did! When you took the field you had barely a speed counter to your name and no monsters on the field; you took over from a teammate who limped to the finish line then passed out; and you turned that into a half-decent situation before passing it on to Yusei; he's got five speed counters to Andre's eight (and you just torpedoed those four and made him waste them), Stardust already on the field, and a facedown. And moreover, you were willing to act in the interests of your whole team; you exemplified the way WRGP teamwork is supposed to work. You did not fail; you did the best you could in a bad situation, and made it better.

By taking out Jack, whoever it is has also crippled Team 5Ds' off-the-track strategy; we'll be relying on Akiza, Crow, and Bruno to pick up the ball in the booth, but Jack's the one who's usually most on the same strategic wavelength as Yusei, and when Yusei's out riding, it would've been a comfort to know Jack had taken over the booth in his stead.

If Yusei does pull this off, he's gonna be quite a rock star with the fans going into the WRGP... and of course he'll just *love* that... wonder if he'll be able to hide under a rock and fight giant glowing spiders for a couple weeks or months after the end of *this* tournament until people forget what he looks like, too, like he did last time? Somehow I tend to doubt it.

Slipstream! I bet we're going to see the trap card Slipstream from Yusei in this duel! The main advantage Team Unicorn has had over us this whole time, the main handicap Jack's crashing gave us, was our shortage of speed counters. Actually, though, they've evened up; Andre has eight, after trying to safety-line Akiza, and Yusei's got five. So maybe we won't see Slipstream. But that could be a really useful card in a duel like this.

Akiza left Yusei Stardust, but with its special ability negated. In a way, it's fitting; Yusei is the team's last stand and while Jack and Akiza each exemplified taking one for the team, he can't, even if selflessness is kind of a thing for him. He's been handed this chance with the sacrifices of others, and he has that to live up to; Jack and Akiza were the other side of Stardust Dragon, in this duel.

Who will win? Yusei, of course, even after all this buildup. The question is asked, did we *really* have to cut things that finely, and what are Jack and Akiza, chopped liver, but hey, we've flown closer to the sun than this, and in all fairness we did have just the slight handicap of being *sabotaged* at a crucial moment. Yusei's had this whole time to watch Andre and his strategy and this new deck of his, plus you bet he's kept half an eye on the opposite booth. I wouldn't be too surprised if Yusei's figured out already, better than I could, how Jack's runner broke down in a way we've never seen in about fifty off-the-record illegal duels without pit crews, and if he's looking to call someone out for it. After Jack and Akiza gave it everything they had and more to get him this far, he is not going down. I'm not too worried. I predict Yusei beating all three of them, and I also predict it won't take too long.

So what about Breo's and Jean's decks? Are they continuations of "The Deck"? Do they contain counterparts to Thunder Unicorn? Pyro Unicorn, Ice Unicorn, Rock Unicorn (yes, I now have the B-52's running through my head), Aqua Unicorn... or, like I mentioned earlier, Lightning Unicorn?

One thing I'm noticing about this tournament, it's *my* kind of party. Among my other heavy-duty hobbies is backstage theater and stage management. I have to be planning for what happens next, preparing for it as soon as the last item is ready to go, and managing any situations behind the scenes, and I can see where *I'd* fit into a dueling team, because this requires the kind of preparation and thinking on one's feet that I do backstage. If I were there, I'd be asking whether the team brought its own well-stocked first aid kit, whether we have quick fixes for any common runner breakdowns and options for the less common, whether we packed snacks and when's the last time Yusei ate something, whether everyone brought a water bottle and whether they've been filled, whether we packed Bruno's laptop charger, whether anything that could have assisted Jack there when he broke down could have been stashed in a compartment on his runner (or duct taped to the side of it even) for next time, whether we have some idea or list of how each rider and their runner prepares to take the track and can go through it quickly, and earlier I would've been asking why we didn't have Akiza getting ready to duel as soon as Jack left the starting line (and 'because it'll look like we're scared' does not count as an answer when it'll have us kicking off faster, and if we begin it, subtly, straight off, they'll notice far too late that it's actually because we're smarter than them), why we didn't pull out an ice pack and vacate a chair or two the moment Jack crashed, and why we didn't start checking Akiza's runner for similar trouble spots the moment we *found out* Jack's air intake got plugged, and possibly rig something on Akiza's runner to prevent a recurrence. Stuff like that. That's my arena. Not that I'd blame anyone; all of these guys have enough on their minds, and that's the point. Yusei's running the show, but the only thing I'd blame him for is taking on too much and not managing to cover all the bases; he needs to focus on strategy, morale, and the mechanics of the duels themselves, and I find myself wishing that there were more structure in place to support his doing just that. Yusei, Jack, and Akiza are the ones actually out there on the track, visible and vulnerable-- the actors; their concentration, safety, and readiness is the flame that those of us of the backstage profession guard every bit as heroically, because the more prepared they are, the more we all are. Right now, I'd say Bruno is the closest thing we have to serious backstage crew, since he's their designated mechanic; but that also means he has a specific job and sometimes can't be spared from concentrating entirely on it any more than one of the duelists can. Crow and the twins are doing what they can, but seriously, if any one of the WRGP's 32 teams includes a duelist or groupie who moonlights as a stage manager or similar, it's not their dueling we'll have to worry about, because it's their off-the-track game that'll really give us a run for our money.

My list of people in 5D's who need names, more or less in order of how badly I wish they had names: The Waitress; the blonde girl in Leo and Luna's class; Professor Fudo (who as yet has no first name); Crow's nestlings (all five); the Kaibadome announcer; Akiza's parents; Trudge (we don't even know if that's a first name, last name, nickname, or what), Crow (who has no canon last name yet); Andre, Breo, and Jean (it was really weird that Team 5Ds' full names were announced last episode but not Team Unicorn's); Yusei's mom; West and Niko's dad...

No episode title is available online just yet. Pretty sure we have a new episode tomorrow. That'll be my next post. 'Til then, signing off! Thanks for reading, everybody! -Clio

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF TROUBLE FOR TEAM 5D'S