Calwings posted...
That's the whole point though
. It's not about killing decks, it's about decks not having every combo and endboard piece they need
plus
backup plans, toolbox options, and going 2nd options. A smaller extra deck means players will have to more carefully decide what they put in and what they leave out. If you want your deck to always have the emergency option of "make Verte, then summon Dragoon" or "make Moon, then full Fiendsmith combo" then it'll cost valuable extra deck space and you may have to give up part of your endboard for it. Or if you want to have your deck's most powerful endboard possible, you may have to give up on having such backup plans or give up toolbox options like S:P or Typhon. That's the point of all this. That trade-off inherently lowers the power level of the whole game because decks are no longer able to easily handle every situation from the extra deck unless they sacrifice some of their raw power for it.
But it does weaken some decks significantly more than others. For one thing, a lot of decks don't even need that much ED space to do their full thing. So giving them only 12 ED space basically just puts them at the exact same power, while very selective ED spam decks are just made so much worse. You just randomly pick out to kill stuff like Stardust Dragon form spams and I dunno World Legacy link spam. Meanwhile Malice and Ryzeals don't really care whatsoever. They just run 2-3 copies of some of their cards because it can sometimes come clutch in a turn 9+ grind game, not cuz they need options. Malice in particular run 1 copies of all of their key link-3s. They still got 9 extra space for extensions and combos, and that's probably more than enough.
Except you also reduced ED space to 12 for both sides, so what happens is both sides don't have a turn 9 grind game just randomly, so they just like top deck summon and attack or something? Something tells me even at turn 9, you still have something left for Ryzeals to summon in the deck. So this is a pretty big buff for them.
Think about Kashtira, too. Oh, Unicorn splash is basically just game against random decks now I guess, so a big buff to them, which is something I never thought about. I guess if you're down for this type of lifestyle, this would be a cool change.
The thing is, stuff like Verte and Dragoon and stuff you only really need 2 ED space. What makes splashable engines strong is their lack of restrictions, not ED space.
It's a cool little thought experiment for some decks, but in actual practice, it really doesn't accomplish anything.
This sounds more like an alternate format to me. It sounds kind of similar to the Virtual World arc of the DM anime where they dueled with "Deck Masters" by their side that were treated differently from the other monsters in their deck.
All additions of new extra deck monsters are literally exactly like this. There's no real difference to calling it new format or new mechanic, because that's what Master Rule 3/4/5 was, both a new format and a new mechanic. But yes, this is a familiar mechanic that can actually appeal to older audience.
The problem with Links were that the initial intention was to curb the ED monsters, and in practice, it basically did what I laid out earlier on. It fucked over a bunch of random pet decks, and a lot of people quit, and also any decks that were already in a position to Link spam got like t0 levels powerful. You might even say Links were sorta like a way to reduce ED space as a requirement to actually play YGO, and it nearly killed the game