​Most people know that Goat Control is not the only deck in Goat Format, and yet many people act like it is. During Yu-Gi-Oh!’s initial revival of Goat Format in 2012, over 90% of the players used Goat Control; the others played various rogue decks that did not gain much traction. In 2019, Goat Control is still the most popular deck in most of the Goat Format sub-communities that you will run into, but it is usually less than half of the total field. It is certainly possible to go throughout a whole tournament without playing against Goat Control even once. If you want to win tournaments, you simply must have a solid gameplan for the other decks in the format.

You'll notice that in our right-hand bar there's now a link inviting you to join r/Goat_Format. This is part of our on-going effort to use social media to grow the Goat Format community. This will be a great tool for anyone in the Goat Format community to share their deck ideas, advertise their tournaments, or get their questions answered about the format. If you like Reddit, please join so that we can get r/Goat_Format off the ground and build some momentum. And please, start posting!

Note that while we will continue to use discord as a great platform for online discussions, its chat room style often leads to more chaotic discussions than somewhere like Reddit does. In particular, we think that the more organized nature of Reddit will make it much easier to do content like weekly debates in the future, should we choose to bring them back.

A little known fact about me is that I came very close to working as an analyst at an investment bank. While I’m no multi-billion dollar hedge-fund manager, I have a lot of “common sense knowledge” that eludes many retail investors, and certainly most Yu-Gi-Oh! players. A lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! players worry about whether the cards that they purchase will depreciate in value in the near future. This is for good reason; most of them do.

Let’s start this article off with the obligatory, “Trading cards aren’t a good investment, but…” If you were looking to put your money into some speculative pieces of cardboard with a long-term investment horizon, Goat Format cards are clearly superior to virtually all other options available. I will outline why this is the case.

Incorrectly using Dust Tornado against a Snatch Steal is one of the most common and costly mistakes that I see in games of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s Goat Format, and yet it I never see it mentioned in discussions of “most common misplays” or during post-game analysis. (Note: Mystical Space Typhoon can be interchangeably used with Dust Tornado, but I will continue to simply say “Dust Tornado” throughout the remainder of this article, for ease of readability.)

So what is this misplay that I speak of? You might not even know that you’re doing it. Your opponent activates Snatch Steal, targeting your monster. You have a set Dust Tornado. You chain it, targeting Snatch Steal. Yep, that’s the misplay. While this can often be a good play, there are some good reasons to wait until the battle phase to activate your Dust Tornado instead.

You might have seen some messages sprinkled around our website telling you to, "Join the GoatFormat.com Discord server." But just what the heck is a Discord? Discord is a chat app, sort of like Skype. It's available on all major operating systems and also can be accessed through a web browser by going to https://discord.gg.

What separates Discord from the other chat apps out there though is that it's specifically geared towards gamers. A discord "guild" or "server" is a group of people who typically share some of common interest. It's similar to a group on Facebook or a "chatroom" on other messaging platforms. Almost every game that you can think of has its own Discord server. So even if Goat Format isn't your thing, it's probably worth checking out Discord and joining the servers for some of the other games that you enjoy.
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If you're looking to get better at Goat Format, reading our deck guides and strategy articles will definitely help you out. However, there is no substitute for interacting with actual people. GoatFormat.com has the only Discord server that is dedicated to being a community for Goat Format players. There you'll be able to ask questions about the format, get deck advice, and even participate in tournaments and ranked play.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Discord and join the GoatFormat.com server by using this invitation: ​https://discord.gg/Mjgy3fN. It's easy!