How did Yami beats the Egyptian God card Slifer?
How do you defeat an Egyptian God? Epically of course.
Easily one of my favorite (and most rewatched) duels. It’s also an instructive way to show viewers how infinite loop combos can be broken.
Let’s talk about the set-up, namely, Marik’s infinite loop combo.
Cards from left to right: (1) Slifer the Sky Dragon; (2) Revival Jam (defense mode); (3) Jam Defender; (4) Card of Safe Return; (5) Infinite Cards.
How Marik’s strategy works by effectively sealing off Yugi’s ability to use monsters to attack his life points.
- Slifer the Sky Dragon’s ATK/DEF stats are 1000 x the number of cards in your hand. Which makes it helluva dangerous if your opponent’s got a full hand. As if it weren’t dangerous enough already, whenever Yugi summons a monster, Slifer’s special ability to automatically reduce 2000 points of damage to the monster kills off weak monsters and leaves the stronger ones barely alive (i.e. Buster Blader’s ATK of 3100 gets cut down to a laughable 1100; where Dark Magician Girl wouldn’t even last on the field after summoning.)
- Of course, if you’re a good duelist like Yugi, you’ll finagle your way and resort to other means to try to get past Slifer. Assuming you either use a Trap card or some other combo to raise your monster’s ATK to a point where it can take down Slifer, your efforts are for naught thanks to Marik’s Revival Jam - Jam Defender combo. Jam Defender, a Continuous Trap, forces you to only attack Revival Jam and Revival Jam has the annoying ability to be revived, that is Special Summoned back to the field every time it gets destroyed in battle and sent to the Graveyard.
- If this weren’t bad enough already, Card of Safe Return allows Marik to draw three new cards every time a monster is Special Summoned to the field. So every time Revival Jam is destroyed, Marik gets to raise Slifer’s ATK/DEF by 3000. And Infinite Cards allows Marik to exceed the 6-card hand limit, so Marik can keep on increasing Slifer’s ATK as high as he pleases (it breaks past 20K at some point in the duel).
So every time Yugi attacks, he loses Life Points while Slifer just keeps on getting ridiculously stronger. So Marik’s got the “perfect defense” and “near perfect attack.”
Or so it would seem…
As per the rule of Yu-Gi-Oh!, new cards and card combos were made to be broken.
Naturally, the way Yugi can break Marik’s combo is completely absurd and brilliant at the same time. There are four ways to win a Duel:
- Reduce your opponent’s Life Points to zero. The most common, traditional and most straightforward way of winning.
- Fulfill conditions for an Automatic Win. Restricted to special cards such as Destiny Board, Exodia, Last Turn, Final Countdown, etc
- Your opponent Surrenders. This happens surprisingly quite often in the anime.
- Your opponent Decks Out, or they run out of cards to draw during their Draw Phase.
Yugi wins the Duel via Option #4: forcing Marik to Deck Out.
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