LogFAQs > #901629808

@FvP posted...

Why is painful choice good? Are that many decks running stuff that benefits a filled graveyard?

For a long time (and especially now), it's been almost universal for Yu-Gi-Oh decks that having a card be in your graveyard is better than than having it in your deck - not only are there a ton of cards nowadays beyond just Monster Reborn/Call of the Haunted/Premature Burial/Magician of Faith/Mask of Darkness that allow you to return cards from your graveyard to the field/your hand, but there's also a shit ton of cards nowadays that activate when they get sent to the graveyard. Just for context, let's take Foolish Burial for an example:

https://imgur.com/pc2bFW7

This card simply sends one monster card from your deck to the graveyard, and it's considered so powerful that you're limited to one per deck in competitive play. Painful Choice allows you to send four cards of your choice - regardless of type - from your deck to the graveyard, and also allows you to add 1 card that you specifically searched for from your deck to your hand. Back when it was printed, the four cards sent to your graveyard were meant as a sacrifice so you could add 1 good card - which your opponent picked - to your hand, so it wasn't really even a particularly good card back then, but now it's basically a +5 and, for many decks, almost a guaranteed instant-win card to draw; there's no way Konami would ever print a card that powerful now, even with (and possibly because of) the game's power creep.

If you want more examples, you can google "Painful Choice OTK", "Painful Choice FTK", etc.