Current Events > Yugioh back in the day was much more enjoyable

(+) Yeah! (+)

im playing the story decks in legacy of the duelist and holy shit how did they ever play these cards. I have a fucking watapon, this card is literally useless. I would rather end my turn than ever play this card lmao

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I think people remember old Yugioh wrong. You rarely ever tributed, and 1 card usually did everything, while most drawn out duels depended on a completely luck based top decking. Ygo 3-4 yrs and even last Link-era Ygo wasn't like that. The game became much more resource and deck awareness dependent with high reward on creative moves and forward thinking.

You didn't have to fucking think further than like 2-3 cards in old ygo lmfao. In modern ygo, you have to think about a whole lot more

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legendarylemur posted...

I think people remember old Yugioh wrong. You rarely ever tributed, and 1 card usually did everything, while most drawn out duels depended on a completely luck based top decking. Ygo 3-4 yrs and even last Link-era Ygo wasn't like that. The game became much more resource and deck awareness dependent with high reward on creative moves and forward thinking.

You didn't have to fucking think further than like 2-3 cards in old ygo lmfao. In modern ygo, you have to think about a whole lot more

This.

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Agreed. Decks run a lot more consistently these days, meaning a lot more of the game is based on making good plays and not on lucky draws. Decks still usually have one or two key cards that win most of their duels, but they have a lot more options to get those key cards out.

In Legacy Of The Duelist, I've been running a Gravekeeper deck that basically can't function without Necrovalley on the field... but on top of running three copies of Necrovalley itself, almost half of my deck is cards that either fetch Necrovalley, protect Necrovalley from being destroyed, bring back Necrovalley after it's destroyed, fetch the cards that do those things, or fetch the cards that can fetch the cards that do those things. If I lose a duel with this deck, it's never because I "got unlucky" and didn't draw Necrovalley. It's because my opponent either had a strategy that could circumvent Necrovalley's benefits to me and detriments to them, or they did a better job at keeping Necrovalley off the field than I did at keeping it on the field

And that's the way it should be. You should win duels because you outplayed your opponent or because your deck was a good matchup against theirs, not because they simply got unlucky and never drew into their better cards. "I would have won if I had drawn ____" excuses aren't a thing anymore like they used to be back in the day. If you lose, it's not due to bad luck. It's either poor deckbuilding, a poor matchup, or poor gameplay
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Akagami_Shanks posted...

im playing the story decks in legacy of the duelist and holy shit how did they ever play these cards. I have a fucking watapon, this card is literally useless. I would rather end my turn than ever play this card lmao

It will protect against an attack at least

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legendarylemur posted...

I think people remember old Yugioh wrong. You rarely ever tributed, and 1 card usually did everything, while most drawn out duels depended on a completely luck based top decking. Ygo 3-4 yrs and even last Link-era Ygo wasn't like that. The game became much more resource and deck awareness dependent with high reward on creative moves and forward thinking.

You didn't have to fucking think further than like 2-3 cards in old ygo lmfao. In modern ygo, you have to think about a whole lot more

Yeah back when it was fun and not super try hard. If I wanted that level of complexity I'd play MTG

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Touch posted...

Even Raigeki was unbanned. And a lot of the times when I look up decklists of people who topped tournaments, Raigeki isn't even on there lol.

Oh, and we also get shit like this now

A Lightning Vortex and Harpie's Feather Duster in one with no crazy drawbacks in this era? New staple card.

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lmao i wonder if harpies feather duster will ever be unbanned

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rideshort posted...

A Lightning Vortex and Harpie's Feather Duster in one with no crazy drawbacks in this era? New staple card.

The really bad activation condition is the drawback though. Having no face-up cards on the field and your opponent having enough cards on their field that this card is worth using usually means you're already in a bad position. Outside of decks that set a lot of monsters face-down (are Ghostricks even viable anymore?) or trap-heavy decks, you'll almost always be activating this card from a disadvantaged state. Most decks would rather minimize the tines that this situation happens in the first place than run this card in the event that situation happens.

Akagami_Shanks posted...

lmao i wonder if harpies feather duster will ever be unbanned

It's actually been back at 1 in the OCG (Japanese) banlist for a few years now, but it's still banned in the TCG (international) banlist.

Ironically, the objectively inferior Heavy Storm, which destroys all S/T cards on the field and not just your opponents' S/T cards, is still banned in both regions due to how some decks actually benefit from and even abuse destroying their own S/T cards (which includes Pendulum monsters active in the Pendulum zones) as well. Qliphorts were the archetype that abused Heavy Storm so badly that it was banned in both the OCG and TCG, then the OCG unbanned Harpie's Feather Duster to compensate for it but the TCG never did.
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inloveanddeath0 posted...

Yeah back when it was fun and not super try hard. If I wanted that level of complexity I'd play MTG

I've played both at several points in my life, not recently, but from experience, YGO has way less downtime and more complexity, whereas MTG is much much heavier on resource management. MTG is definitely not more complex than YGO, and it's not even close. MTG is more halfway between old ygo and "new" ygo (basically post GX ygo)

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Calwings posted...

Agreed. Decks run a lot more consistently these days, meaning a lot more of the game is based on making good plays and not on lucky draws. Decks still usually have one or two key cards that win most of their duels, but they have a lot more options to get those key cards out.

In Legacy Of The Duelist, I've been running a Gravekeeper deck that basically can't function without Necrovalley on the field... but on top of running three copies of Necrovalley itself, almost half of my deck is cards that either fetch Necrovalley, protect Necrovalley from being destroyed, bring back Necrovalley after it's destroyed, fetch the cards that do those things, or fetch the cards that can fetch the cards that do those things. If I lose a duel with this deck, it's never because I "got unlucky" and didn't draw Necrovalley. It's because my opponent either had a strategy that could circumvent Necrovalley's benefits to me and detriments to them, or they did a better job at keeping Necrovalley off the field than I did at keeping it on the field

And that's the way it should be. You should win duels because you outplayed your opponent or because your deck was a good matchup against theirs, not because they simply got unlucky and never drew into their better cards. "I would have won if I had drawn ____" excuses aren't a thing anymore like they used to be back in the day. If you lose, it's not due to bad luck. It's either poor deckbuilding, a poor matchup, or poor gameplay

I see your point but I dont agree.

Old school Yugioh cards were strong independently (relative to the current state of the game) rather than being tied to combos and archetypes. Part of this was because of the more limited card pool, but basically before Invasion of Chaos, decks were collections of strong cards that didnt really interact in a big way. Gemini Elves was one of the best cards in the game at one point and it was a normal monster. Obviously there were things like Cyber-Stein and Yata Lock, but those were nipped in the bud pretty quickly at the time.

Now the pendulum (pun not intended) has swung too far in the other direction. For years and years the best decks have central unifying themes, either archetypes or simply cards with synergistic mechanics. I feel like chaos decks were the prototype of this but it began full-swing with Perfect Circle decks, so Force of the Breaker and Duelist Pack Aster Phoenix.

This isnt inherently a bad thing, in fact Id say peak Yugioh was the Perfect Circle era, but it becomes bad when the average duel lasts 5 turns because of the extreme combos that are possible, and when every duel leads to a full field of special summoned monsters because your entire deck is searchable. Epic moments like that should be rare, not the norm. The lows define the highs.

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kayoticdreamz posted...

you're not wrong. old yugioh was best yugioh even with it's obvious faults. IT was at least fun to play and the game still felt somewhat balanced. Special summons were still *gasp* special. Nowadays you can special summon with 0 consequences 5 things in a turn. Before special summons required consequences. Pay 1500 life, or sacrifice 3 cards to do a fusion summon. A 2000 4 star monster was dark elf and it required a 1000 LP hit to attack with it.

Not saying a game can't evolve, but it clearly evolved into something that is no longer yugioh. Heaven help you if you want to try a deck that isn't OTK anymore.

I think the last era of good yugioh is best represented on the 2011 DS game. That too me is the last hurrah of yugioh still somewhat acting like it's old self. It completely fell apart after that. and don't even get me started on that nonsense that was the crazy ban/restricted list crap.

so you can summon a bunch of monsters in 1 turn?
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Cheese_Crackers posted...

Now the pendulum (pun not intended) has swung too far in the other direction. For years and years the best decks have central unifying themes, either archetypes or simply cards with synergistic mechanics. I feel like chaos decks were the prototype of this but it began full-swing with Perfect Circle decks, so Force of the Breaker and Duelist Pack Aster Phoenix.

This isnt inherently a bad thing, in fact Id say peak Yugioh was the Perfect Circle era, but it becomes bad when the average duel lasts 5 turns because of the extreme combos that are possible, and when every duel leads to a full field of special summoned monsters because your entire deck is searchable. Epic moments like that should be rare, not the norm. The lows define the highs.

I agree that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction in recent years and it's negatively affecting the game. I mentioned earlier in this topic that my favorite era of the metagame was late Zexal and early ARC-V. That's because I felt like that era was when the pacing of the game was perfect. Decks were consistent enough that the number of useless turns and luck-based wins/losses were low, but they weren't so unbelievably fast that duels were constantly ending in like 5 turns with half of each player's deck in the graveyard due to mass summoning like they are now.

Any decks that could pull off mass summonings like that in that era (like Synchro decks built around getting Shooting Quasar Dragon out) were inconsistent at doing so. But now it feels like every deck in the meta can summon a boss monster almost as good as Quasar nearly every game.
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i have a Z-arc deck in LOTD and the amount of bullshit i can do in one turn is kind of sickening lol. It's nearly invincible too because any card effect you use that i feel threatens my monster, i can just negate it with seemingly no cost. Plus once it's on the field it auto destroys all of your cards. But people prefer this over the old meta why?

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My grandpas deck has no pathetic cards Kaiba, but it does contain the unstoppable Exodia

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Honestly, the reason there's basically an essay on effect cards now because the game was poorly designed from the very beginning. Newer cards now has to be VERY specific about how the abilities work in order to prevent them from being exploited (and oh boy is there a lot of that in this game) and making sure the card abilities work specifically how they want it to work which includes things like timing, what exactly is the cost, and how many times you can use the ability per turn, etc. New TCG's now not only has some kind of cost/resource or turn system that makes doing FTK or OTK's much harder to do, but also gives the game some room to counter back at the opponent for every play they do. And finally since Yugioh lacks constructed formats, that plays a huge role why power creeps are so rampant in the game.

Though I'm honestly glad Konami is trying their best to slow down the game and that there is major price control because there's a lot of reprints of expensive cards (something the second hand market hates), and even with all of my complaints it's general still a fun game.

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Bluebomber182 posted...

so you can summon a bunch of monsters in 1 turn?

That's against the rules, isn't it?

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PalmerSensei posted...

That's against the rules, isn't it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJv0YIyIQi8

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Prestoff posted...

Honestly, the reason there's basically an essay on effect cards now because the game was poorly designed from the very beginning. Newer cards now has to be VERY specific about how the abilities work in order to prevent them from being exploited (and oh boy is there a lot of that in this game) and making sure the card abilities work specifically how they want it to work which includes things like timing, what exactly is the cost, and how many times you can use the ability per turn, etc. New TCG's now not only has some kind of cost/resource or turn system that makes doing FTK or OTK's much harder to do, but also gives the game some room to counter back at the opponent for every play they do. And finally since Yugioh lacks constructed formats, that plays a huge role why power creeps are so rampant in the game.

Though I'm honestly glad Konami is trying their best to slow down the game and that there is major price control because there's a lot of reprints of expensive cards (something the second hand market hates), and even with all of my complaints it's general still a fun game.

you can still play solitaire with your deck. Hell I'm using a cyber dragon deck and my turn can take like 2 or 3 minutes sometimes

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Prestoff posted...

New TCG's now not only has some kind of cost/resource or turn system that makes doing FTK or OTK's much harder to do, but also gives the game some room to counter back at the opponent for every play they do.

Yu-Gi-Oh is basically the only major TCG I know out there that doesn't have some sort of progressing resource system. Whether it's an energy resource limiting how much you can do in a single turn (like land/mana in Magic The Gathering or play points in Shadowverse) or the process of slowly growing your main cards for more abilities (like evolution in Pokemon or LRIG growth in WIXOSS) the start of the game is slower by design to keep exactly what's happening in Yu-Gi-Oh from happening. You only see long strings of card activations really late in a long game, not on turn 2 or 3.

Prestoff posted...

And finally since Yugioh lacks constructed formats, that plays a huge role why power creeps are so rampant in the game.

Another problem with not having formats and card rotation is that it's nearly impossible to playtest every possible combination and think about every possible way a card could be used. You never know when a decade-old card that was fairly mediocre upon release might be completely abused for some new combo or gameplay feature. For example, look at Grinder Golem. It went from a mediocre card released in 2008 that gave you two useless tokens and your opponent a 3000 ATK beatstick to a card abused to hell and back in 2018 and then banned because those two tokens you get could be used as easy material for a Link summon. The people who designed that card back in 2008 couldn't have foreseen that.
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I was just thinking of getting Legacy of the Duelist yesterday. I haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh! in like 10-15 years, but I have fond memories of Forbidden Memories and World Championship Tournament 2004. It was a great time coming up with silly gimmick decks in WCT04 like my 'fuck monsters, get life points' Flame Princess deck that would win with like 12,000+ life points. And the deck that got me through the game and proved to be my best was some shit that basically never even attacked, just chewed through the opponents' decks until they didn't have any cards left. Good times. Would LotD force me to play certain ways, or would I be able to come up with more gimmick decks that would actually win?

NotYou posted...

I was just thinking of getting Legacy of the Duelist yesterday. I haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh! in like 10-15 years, but I have fond memories of Forbidden Memories and World Championship Tournament 2004. It was a great time coming up with silly gimmick decks in WCT04 like my 'fuck monsters, get life points' Flame Princess deck that would win with like 12,000+ life points. And the deck that got me through the game and proved to be my best was some shit that basically never even attacked, just chewed through the opponents' decks until they didn't have any cards left. Good times. Would LotD force me to play certain ways, or would I be able to come up with more gimmick decks that would actually win?

Depends how far you're trying to go in the story. The CPU decks always draw exactly what they need in the beginning and fizzle out towards the end. If your deck is strong enough you absolutely could deck them out, but be wary that they do used banned/limited cards. I had one guy in ZEXAL use raigeki and dark hole several times everytime i started to mount an offensive.

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If you just want to have fun, you don't have to worry about the banlist unless you play other people online. But yeah, there's so much potential for gimmicks/decktypes to try out in LotD. Make sure you get the Link Evolution and not the regular as Link Evolution is more updated and you don't have to pay for additional cards

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legendarylemur posted...

I've played both at several points in my life, not recently, but from experience, YGO has way less downtime and more complexity, whereas MTG is much much heavier on resource management. MTG is definitely not more complex than YGO, and it's not even close. MTG is more halfway between old ygo and "new" ygo (basically post GX ygo)

Can you elaborate?

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NotYou posted...

I was just thinking of getting Legacy of the Duelist yesterday. I haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh! in like 10-15 years, but I have fond memories of Forbidden Memories and World Championship Tournament 2004. It was a great time coming up with silly gimmick decks in WCT04 like my 'fuck monsters, get life points' Flame Princess deck that would win with like 12,000+ life points. And the deck that got me through the game and proved to be my best was some shit that basically never even attacked, just chewed through the opponents' decks until they didn't have any cards left. Good times. Would LotD force me to play certain ways, or would I be able to come up with more gimmick decks that would actually win?

For the first few campaigns and the early parts of the later campaigns, you can basically win with anything as long as it's decent and you play well. The later duels in the Zexal/ARC-V/VRAINS stories get pretty tough though, and you might have to build something stronger or stack your deck with limited/banned cards to win those. You can ignore the banlist during the story (your opponents often will too) but you should get used to it along the way because you're forced to use it while playing online, even in casual duels.

I mentioned earlier in this topic that I've been plowing through the story with Gravekeepers, which aren't a tier 0-1 meta deck by any means but they're good enough to wipe the floor with the majority of the story duels. You can build a great GK deck with only cards from the very first booster pack you have unlocked at the beginning, and I've managed to fully beat all six of the story campaigns (still working on the reverse duels) with this deck just by adding a few new cards to the build along the way. If you're trying to build a specific deck or looking for a specific card, use this site to find out what pack to open from and (in some cases) what duels you can win them from: https://thecardhub.net/
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is there any huge disadvantage to running beatdown cards? i mean sure low damage effect monsters are nice but once those are gone/negated you're left with like... nothing

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

is there any huge disadvantage to running beatdown cards? i mean sure low damage effect monsters are nice but once those are gone/negated you're left with like... nothing

Same could be said about those beatsticks. If your opponent summons monsters that those beatsticks can't get over then you're also left with nothing.

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Touch posted...

Same could be said about those beatsticks. If your opponent summons monsters that those beatsticks can't get over then you're also left with nothing.

wouldn't they also need beat sticks?

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

is there any huge disadvantage to running beatdown cards? i mean sure low damage effect monsters are nice but once those are gone/negated you're left with like... nothing

Monster destruction is so rampant in today's game that any card without built-in protection isn't likely to stick around for long.

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

wouldn't they also need beat sticks?

A lot of decks nowadays are easily capable of summoning 2500+ monsters out of thin air, most that also include great effects.

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Touch posted...

A lot of decks nowadays are easily capable of summoning 2500+ monsters out of thin air, most that also include great effects.

and i can summon z-arc in one turn using a bunch of pendulum summoned beatdown monsters. With a vortex dragon saving it from any ill effects too

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

and i can summon z-arc in one turn using a bunch of pendulum summoned beatdown monsters. With a vortex dragon saving it from any ill effects too

Okay but neither of those are no effect beatsticks

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according to the YGO wiki, beatstick is pretty broad. Black Luster Soldier - Soldier of Chaos is a pretty good beatstick since it has like 4 effects it gets from destroying monsters including raising its attack by 1500 and can't be destroyed by effects

the summoning requirement is simple too, just 3 monsters with different names.

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

according to the YGO wiki, beatstick is pretty broad. Black Luster Soldier - Soldier of Chaos is a pretty good beatstick since it has like 4 effects it gets from destroying monsters including raising its attack by 1500 and can't be destroyed by effects

the summoning requirement is simple too, just 3 monsters with different names.

So you're basically asking if it's good to have high attack monsters?

Obviously yes, but generally a balance of strong effects and high attack is the best. Vorse Raider isn't a good card despite its solid attack because it can easily be destroyed by effects. Yata is one of the best monsters in the game and has abysmal attack.

And if a monster has strict summoning requirements then it needs strong effects, including protection, to be worth playing. BLS is a rare example of a very strong attacker with some self-protection and a powerful effect.

"Beatdown" is different from "beatstick". When most people say beatdown they mean a focus on high attack, often at the expense of good effects. This was a very viable strategy in the game's early days but not anymore. A beatstick is a monster with high attack.

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"Early yugioh"
Aka play a 1800 attack point vanilla and stall until you can play your 2500 attack vanilla and try not to attack into a sakuretsu armor or mirror force.

Oh yeah. True big brain yugioh.

Prime YGO for me was 2011-2013. Fun, balanced, and not full of bullshit FTK combo decks.

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The best best down deck is the blue eyes deck. Back in 2017 I think when it was meta and popular for 2 months you could summon 3k to 4k attack dragons with great effects.

My favorite deck It was fun collecting all the cards for it probably my favorite time playing ygo. We all quit before the link format but if we did play we played the old format with no ban list.

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

according to the YGO wiki, beatstick is pretty broad. Black Luster Soldier - Soldier of Chaos is a pretty good beatstick since it has like 4 effects it gets from destroying monsters including raising its attack by 1500 and can't be destroyed by effects

the summoning requirement is simple too, just 3 monsters with different names.

The way you made it sound in your original post made it seem like you were just talking about big attack monsters with no effects as opposed to monsters with big attack in general especially when you added in the low stat monsters with effects part. Of course a big attack monster with a good effect will trump most things but it largely depends on the deck, protections, the monsters effect itself, etc.

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apocalyptic_4 posted...

The best best down deck is the blue eyes deck. Back in 2017 I think when it was meta and popular for 2 months you could summon 3k to 4k attack dragons with great effects.

My favorite deck It was fun collecting all the cards for it probably my favorite time playing ygo. We all quit before the link format but if we did play we played the old format with no ban list.

the blue eyes chaos dragon max? i still use it since my first or 2nd turn i can get one out and pass the impcantation to my opponent for a insta kill

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Chaos max is a different variation than just Blue Eyes. Regular Blue Eyes decks are generally synchro-based, and go into either a Blue Eyes that can prevent multiple special summons, or go into an Xyz monster for the kill.

will dreadscythe make a come back

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Akagami_Shanks posted...

the blue eyes chaos dragon max? i still use it since my first or 2nd turn i can get one out and pass the impcantation to my opponent for a insta kill

No pure the pure blue eyes deck with support cards. Not the chaos max build.

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Having never played competitively and only learning about modern Yugioh from outside sources, effect monsters and (quick play) spell cards dominate the meta. Normal monsters and traps have almost no place in it since they either can't do much or take time to activate.


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