Episode 2

**Episode 2** is the 2nd block of new age Duel Masters and is commonly known as "Year 11".

## World view

— Brief plot

The Episode 2 storyline continues the teenage comic/Japanese online game theme of Episode 1, and also contains the similar "Awful" name trends, but it had no psychic creatures as the Hyperspatial Zone has been locked away, and there is a new type of creatute; Creatures with no civilization, also known as "zero civilization". This devoids the creature of all civilization support but it also allows them to be put into any deck and they often have extreme costs and extremely powerful effects that exceed those of regular creatures. Also the first female creatures with visible eyes are also introduced midway, and male human characters take a more definite human form.

As the block features mostly non-evolution creatures, evolution creatures are few and far between.

## Metagame

The metagame of Episode 2 is the most remarkable of duel Masters history and could be said as its golden metagame for those who like heavyweight, huge creatures. Cost trampling is at its finest and gigantic creatures arranging from Zeniths, Onimaru "Head", Victory Rush and Codeking Wilhelm infest the metagame and are ready to crush any rush deck with their might. Mana acceleration is also at its finest too, so player can easily accelerate mana until they have 10 or 11 mana on the 5th turn and summon a Zenith to declare the outcome of the game. High cost support is also prevalent and in casual dueling, one can reduce the cost of the Zeniths using cards such as Messa Danjiri Dragon to make summoning Zeniths easier. However in practice, it is better off accelerating mana using Zeniths.

However, for monocolored decks and rush deck lovers it is bad news as cards with Gachinko Judge can easily run Rush decks over at extreme precision. This is especially important against Onimaru "Head", Victory Rush and Gachinko Roulette as they usually merit their user a win against Rush.

And due to the high power of Victory Rares in this set, this block is responsible of turning DM into literally a money game that cannot be solved using rush decks, causing criticism by various players as the game is intended for kids.

While Vanilla support exists, it is rarely seen save for fun decks due to obvious reasons.

## Set Explanation

### DMR-05

(DM wiki Article)

This is the first set of Episode 2 and it introduced Zeniths, high cost support and Gachinko Judge (Which are all attack triggers in this set). However, while the Zeniths, especially Radio Roses, Zenith of "Wisdom", are appreciated, the Gachinko Judge cards are considered pretty crap, especially the Victory Rare Ogre Warrior Kaiser "Win" which is considered the worst Junk Victories of all time.

### DMR-06

(DM wiki Article)

This set introduced Attack Chance which allows a spell to be cast when a creature of a condition attacks, as well as more high power Zeniths, with Wedding, Zenith of "Celebration" being a top metagame hit. However, the greatest hit of this set is Onimaru "Head", Victory Rush which is basically a balance breaker who shatters the metagames after it. Other than this the cards are not that notable, so it is basically for experts or people with great luck.

### DMR-07

(DM wiki Article)

This set introduces Vanilla support and more "Size Matters" effects, as well as more powerful Zeniths, with Beethoven, Zenith of "Horror" being top tier and Onimaru "Ouga", Golden Dragon and Zeta-File, Zenith of Mystery being great choices for fun decks. The set also introduced Codeking Wilhelm which would be a lust to all high cost decks later on.

### DMR-08

(DM Wiki Article)

This set introduces Evolution Zeniths with Super Infinite Evolution Omega to compensate their high costs, as well as return of forgotten races such as Dune Gecko and Tree Folk. However, the set is mostly consisted of extreme overkill cards just like the end of each block and is thus considered weak compared to the rest of E2.

### Other Notable Sets

#### DMX-11

(DM Wiki Article)

This set is the first fixed content pack where there are 12 types of sets, each based on a race, and packaged randomly, with one out of 3 boxes having Victory packs in it. The victories are highly powerful as they contained Oni "Champion", Victory Twelve" which is the first card with a loss prevention effect, as well as Codeking Ludwig which is a solid and heavyweight attacker. It also reprints Great Cactus as a rare which is fortunate as Great Cactus really does not deserve to be Super Rare.

### DMX-12

(DM Wiki Article)

The first Black Box Pack, it contains completely shocking content. For more, see the Black Box Pack Article.

### DMX-13

(DM Wiki Article)
This set introduces mostly Zero support and Zero creatures which are not Zeniths, and there are also 3 highly powerful Zeniths, and out of them, Kaiser "Baki", Zenith of "Certain Victory" and VAN Beethoven, Zenith of "Shura" are metagame competitors even in the Revolution Final metagame when most of the Zeniths died out due to the increasing pace of the game. Therefore, this set is often sold in extreme prices now. for more, see the White Zenith Pack article.

## Set Order

* *Previous*: Episode 1
* *Next*: Episode 3