There may be no good deck, but my grandfather's deck has no pathetic cards.

@solobugg5087

6 ай бұрын

Holy crap! I remember when Yugi said that in the anime!

@jeditwin6582

6 ай бұрын

⁠@@solobugg5087holy crap Lois! This reminds me of when I dueled Seto Kaiba on top of KaibaCorp HQ

@solobugg5087

6 ай бұрын

@@jeditwin6582 Hey Peter! Get your game on

@emilypearl3510

6 ай бұрын

Your grandpa died 50 years ago, you have been talking to a cardboard cutout of a promotional old man advertising the game. Take your meds

@ShunyValdez

6 ай бұрын

Except Kuriboh

I think the biggest issue is people act like there's only a handful of decks with any potential to win. However the reality has always been that the format doesn't last long enough for the outliers to actually get explored in any meaningful way. It's been proven in every fan made format to date.

@Manny_lol

6 ай бұрын

I might be on some sweet nostalgia copium, but this is literally what happened with TOSS format. The 4 big meta decks stayed at the top for so long that rogue options started popping up and getting good results, tops if not trophies. That was why I felt comfortable playing back then and less so now, the time I put into building my deck got me several months worth of mileage. Nowadays it feels like I'd have to rebuild every other week

@sekaihunter9378

6 ай бұрын

​@@Manny_lolThat's why TOSS format is the GOAT format man. The GOAT!!!

@riouxp2787

6 ай бұрын

@@Manny_lol For what its worth from the moment we got the Mermaid banlist Striker Orcust was legal, so Eternal/Toss format was theoretically over at any point during that 6 month period if people actually figured it out.

@dontmisunderstand6041

6 ай бұрын

It's a card game based around a randomized deck order. Unless literally all 40 of the cards in the deck search out other searchers without negatively impacting the end-board, there will ALWAYS be a way for EVERY deck to lose.

@MiyaoMeow588

6 ай бұрын

i maintain that traptrix, abyss actor, and gender raiders were more playable in PHHY format than a lot of people were willing to give them credit for. and two of them are still currently being slept on hell, i don't think anyone ever seriously engaged with 2 of those 3 decks

Hey, magic player here, also the girl who does the scripts for Duel Log's magic videos. I think it's very important to point out the importance of things like MtG Goldfish and other sites in this discussion. Magic has a ton of resources for players to see the metagame percentages and the such to know what to expect. People can and do experiment a lot and play different decks, but the best decks are usually known quantities. This is, of course, all based on popularity though. I think that Nexus of Fate turbo fog is a great example of a time when everyone playing a magic format was just wrong about what the best deck is. Hell, Death's Shadow was available for a few years in modern before people started taking it seriously and figuring out what it could do. The point I'm making here is that I ultimately think that the issue you've highlighted is mostly a resource issue more than anything. Magic players don't always figure out what the best deck is and are also prone to "truman show" phenomena, we just have better resources for evaluating the metagame. Getting into yugioh, I was kind of surprised to see how lacking the equivalent services to things like Goldfish are.

@isnanesavant

6 ай бұрын

absolutely GOATed reply, great highlight

@cuttlefish6839

6 ай бұрын

Just like how scam was available for the longest time and people only started playing it because legacy showed how strong scam was. Or how solitude and kaldra complete was better than lurrus for hammer time

@ethanhopper2467

6 ай бұрын

I do think he has a point about the lack of tournaments, though. MTGGoldfish has way more data to work with because decks that 5-0d Modern Leagues are dumped every few days and there are large MTGO tournaments multiple times a week. YGO doesn't have nearly enough tournaments to give an accurate depiction of the meta (not to mention the fact that decklists aren't posted by Konami)

@ethanhopper2467

6 ай бұрын

Also, I think there's a bit of a difference here. Death's Shadow, Amulet Bloom, and Lantern Control are all examples of decks that were undiscovered, not underrated. That's more of a parallel to Edison format imo - people just hadn't thought to put that combination of cards together yet.

@lamiaprincess6371

6 ай бұрын

What has been interesting for me, as someone who has played both, is that I found finding current results for Magic a lot better (Yugioh has YGOPro now but for a very long time the best you got was fucking Pojo threads), Yugioh actually tended to have slightly better historical access, at least in part because Yugioh players tend to care about historical formats a lot more from what I can tell. It was never perfect, but I generally found getting format information a lot easier in Yugioh. Like, I can sort of now get MTGTop8 to kind of do that lmao.

One of the big issues that makes the Yugioh meta work the way that it does is the way Konami handles banlists. The goal of the banlist isn't to balance the game. You can tell from how Joshua Schmidt talks about it. He'll regularly reference how it "feels" like a time for the banlist to rotate a deck out of the format...and that is absolutely what the banlist does more often than not. It's not trying make Tearlament equal to Branded, or Mannadium equal to Rescue Ace, it's trying to sell new product by making the old product unusable. When you know the game is going to phase out powerful cards and decks through a system that is Rotation in all but name, evaluating the relative power of what is usable becomes an exercise in futility. Anything that is evaluated highly is getting rotated out of the game to sell new product, and this means players will not take the time to evaluate what counters the highly rated cards and strategies...because Konami will counter it with a banlist. Why bother exploring how to beat a powerful deck when you can say "Konami is going to ban this in a few months" and then throw your hands up in defeat? It's an easier and more rational task to just use the obviously powerful cards and wait for the next set rotation than to dig through old cards and try to explore new tech in a format. Yugioh approaches "balance patches" in a manner less similar to what you see in Street Fighter, with careful annual tweaks to maintain a certain level of power across the whole roster, and instead does something more similar to "Ken won the Evo tournament, so we removed his Shoryuken and he now loses HP when he throws a fireball. In 3 months, we will remove Juri's Super Attacks because her usage rate is high". There's no point to labbing things out in such an environment. Learn a strong character assuming you have to learn a new one in a few months. Learn a strong deck assuming that you'll have to buy a new one in a few months. Ironically, if you pioneer a powerful deck or strategy all on your own, you're also encouraged to keep it under wraps as long as possible so that it does not get hit by the rotating set logic of Konami's banlist. The less people are aware of what you know, the more you get to use it. In this way, Konami actively stifles exploration of the metagame because new concepts and strategies with widespread adoption are subject to the introduction of products designed to counter the new strategies, or subject to banlist hits that force players away from it.

@ctusiard9755

6 ай бұрын

What player would discover a powerful combo and not play it just cause of the banlist? You'd be hurting your own chances at topping.

@aureate

6 ай бұрын

I'm amazed that people are just starting to realize this.

I mostly play magic but i like to pretend im adding to the conversation: the best deck for multiple sets in row in modern in the mid-2010's was Amulet Titan. It was a deck where every single card in it had been printed and legal for at least 2 years before anybody even thought about creating that list. I understand that the existence of Archetypes in yugioh makes decks slightly easier to build than the sort of weird lenticular design of Amulet Titan, but I would be fully unsurprised if the best deck in the current yugioh format hasnt been discovere yet.

@KacomGaming

6 ай бұрын

the game design is pretty braindead lately. Cards will play themselves and anyone can win with power. Without really knowing why.

@dontmisunderstand6041

6 ай бұрын

The best deck in every format of every card game is currently one that has never been attempted before. The chance that this statement ISN'T true is basically zero. That's just how math works.

@oliverbobbitt9137

6 ай бұрын

I can't think of anything as weird as amulet titan happening, but "hey, we have a critical mass of this card type, we can make a really scary good stuff deck out of it" has happened with faries in 2010 Edison format and with plants more recently. Heck, its honestly not that uncommon to run 2 seemingly different archetypes that have 1-2 bridges that let you pivot between them depending on what half you draw to get a higher ceiling. Theres like 3 meta decks that do that right now

@kitsunewarlock

6 ай бұрын

Remember when Glimpse of Nature went from $.50 to $30 when ElfBall suddenly got good...3 years after the newest card in Elf Ball was even printed.

@HazeEmry

6 ай бұрын

​@@oliverbobbitt9137also dragon pile deserves a mention I think

I can’t believe this discussion video came from Twitter drama. Ursarctic was talked about more on that day then when the deck came out

I 100% agree with the idea of having multiple formats can push for creativity. Like how has Master Duel not had N/R event and Limit One again.

@abcrx32j

6 ай бұрын

N/R doesn't even look the same as it did during the event. I think people still have tournaments in that format.

@MrSonicDoctor

6 ай бұрын

@@abcrx32j That sounds great. Is there a discord or something for N/R format? It really does remind me of early release Duel Links where people were scrapping for playables. And Master Duel has a bigger card pool. I always wanted to try Gadget/Ancient Gear/Pendulum. Pend summon and tribute for Golem. It's what I was playing back in the first N/R event.

@TheGuyWhoIsSitting

6 ай бұрын

N/R format doesn’t make Konami money. Limited one does, but, I think you’ll find that building a deck for a single format of one offs leaves you with a bunch of cards you’ll basically never use again.

@drewbabe

6 ай бұрын

limit one sucked, probably the worst event besides those loaner-only events. but n/r was great. and we'll never seen it again because it won't sell gems.

@drewbabe

6 ай бұрын

@@MrSonicDoctor there is a server for the n/r format community, but i'm not in it and don't have the link. you can probably find it if you look around.

Your college story reminds me of my last locals. There were 13 people, so not many, but a LOT of them were brand new. Never seen them at locals, and they did confirm that, while they had been playing for a period of time ranging between a few months or a year, they only had been playing between themselves. They were all really nice people and they were playing a variety of different decks. Some were playing HERO (the objectively correct option), some were playing Spright Runick, some were playing Salamangreat and some even Marincess. …aaaaand then they had the misfortune of going against my friend’s Unchained and my Purrely. I honestly felt really bad winning against them because I’m well aware that my strategy is one of the strongest at the moment, but they weren’t mad about it in any way. In fact, they were all kind of in awe as I was explaining them how or why I was able to get my Expurrely Noir to 10 materials and 5000+ defense.

@jorgecarvajal5385

6 ай бұрын

as old gravekeeper player and return as kashtira, now kashtira scareclaw, im most than happy to explain the newbies the disruption point for my deck like and others, for purrleys, imppermance the freaking purpleone and one ash on hand for the magic, even a droll will do the job, for my deck try to disrupt unicor, fenrir or richheeart ot lightheart, for be honest i start to play kash for the art and lore of visas starfrost, and i dont want participated on torunaments i dont like it, im a official judge for yugi and i preffer just do my job as a judge and i can watch a loot of crazy combos and learn about that, my kash deck have 3 variants i use, one for meta, some poeple on local just play meta idk why are just borring XD and toxic(the saturday one guy win a meta deck with a trap deck and the one with the meta was like oohh that not on format doesnt count as win, fuk weird people), one traiditonal, another free format, and my rouge gravekeeper deck, but alomost the toxic people are the minority on my locals they play in another big store courius the big store are just 1km far for my fav local XDD are bigger but full of toxic people

Thank you KZread, this is truly the best Magic: The Gathering video I have ever seen

@dontmisunderstand6041

6 ай бұрын

This is just a solid video about the state of competitive games in general. There is no such thing as a solved metagame in pretty much any game. Chess only has 16 pieces with extremely specific moves and it hasn't been solved in over 1000 years due to the sheer complexity of the game. Now you're trying to say a card game consisting of tens of thousands of potential plays can be solved in a matter of weeks?

@aether6293

6 ай бұрын

@@dontmisunderstand6041 its referring that bellow the description it says "Magic The Gathering-best of PC - Game" i think

social constructs are like everyone agreeing to let shaddoll fusion resolve to summon construct; theres nothing saying you cant ash it, but the collective opinion is to hold the ash for the branded fusion

@bencrandall-malcolm8303

6 ай бұрын

social constructs are what stop you from eating your opponent's copy of shaddoll construct

@Raminator243

6 ай бұрын

One guy at my locals was a big fan of Branded Shaddoll. It was an interesting build for sure.

@kylianos3907

24 күн бұрын

I Summon El Social Construct in Attack position

Just to remind you all, a guy won a YCS with Salamangreat earlier this year, before the new support. It was right after the nuclear list that killed the Tearlament Kashtira format if I am not mistaken.

@geek593

6 ай бұрын

Adventurer Salamangreat. South America is where a lot of hidden spice gets shown off. Runick Plunder was another one of Brazil's exports.

@ashikjaman1940

6 ай бұрын

And then YCS Bologna got won by fuckin Bystial Runick lmao

@YeahTheDuckweed

6 ай бұрын

@@ashikjaman1940 credit to the pilot lmfao joshua schmidt should be a household name in the year of our lord 2023

@lambtoken2708

13 күн бұрын

​@@geek593 Brazilians are good at theory crafting because cards are way too expensive for us. Gotta buy the ones we want and nothing else lol

Sunseed Jess gives me hope for this exact reason. She wins with rikka cause she understands it fundamentally. 037wolf does well with synchron cause he basically is synchron. Playing a deck your opponent does not know the lines and chokepoints of is a massive advantage but these people specifically out preform other people running the same strategies because they understand their own cards and options totally. I think there are many many decks that could bat at similar levels when piloted by people playing them as perfectly. Adamancipator has enough options in the rock toolbox, madolche, pendulum, thunder dragon. Someone could "break" any of them or anything else. Hears hoping someone does.

@callmeriggy

6 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure that Neshy is actually Jesse Anderson.

@ashikjaman1940

6 ай бұрын

As her name implies, Jess is quite literally Sunseed Genus Loci but in real life

This reminds me of when I started playing the game IRL, and i was absolutely convinced that Guru control was the most powerful deck ever created. It was the tail end of TOSS format, i'd never been to locals before, and when i got there 3 of the 4 other people playing were on Guru. Needless to say none of the information i had gathered online translated into any real world success, because i didnt anticipate TCBOO+Judgment+Fiendess every god damn match. Teching in Cydra weirdly didn't help me contact fuse my opponents board away despite that exact play looking super viable online. To this day i have no idea how i kept playing the game when that was my introduction to paper play.

I mean the community is so closed minded that even when a deck WINS people still don't consider it good. Exosister won a YCS and then won a YCS AGAIN and even after the 2nd one it was *still* getting talked down on.

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

This is largely due to how statistics work. More players care about representation over actual wins. It doesn't mean that what those players did weren't impressive, but just because Exosister won a couple of YCS' doesn't mean the deck is good by that measurement. Good as in meta viable, not actually being playable.

@MrPyroguy108

6 ай бұрын

@@AllThingsEntertaining If it is meta viable then how is it not playable? I think it's kind of funny that you're basically doing what the video said and just discounting the deck because it's not good and it's not good because it's not good. Are there better and worse times to bring it to a tourney? Absolutely, and yugioh players inability to recognize things like that is why players like Steven can bring it to a tourney and do incredibly with it while almost no one else was considering the deck. That's part of what this video is talking about too, players only focusing on the top 5 or 6 decks they've deemed "good" and not considering others.

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

​@@MrPyroguy108 I don't recall discounting anything, just pointing out that more people rely on statistics rather than actual wins. Hell, I didn't even give my opinion Exosister at all, just that the majority of players won't see Exosister as viable even if it has a couple of wins under it's belt. Hell, it doesn't even say that Exosister can't do it again.

@Merilirem

6 ай бұрын

@@AllThingsEntertaining Isn't that literally the point though? The deck won and people still decided it wasn't worth mentioning. We should absolutely be collecting up the decks that won to show that perhaps among them are decks that just aren't being played enough to be part of the Meta.

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

@@Merilirem Sure, but for the vast majority of players, it's far easier to form an opinion on statistics. It also works both ways, where sometimes a deck that might have seemed good at the time is just not deserving of that, like with Evilswarm in Dragon Ruler format. People went back and tested Evilswarm during that period and concluded that it didn't really have an actual seat at the table. If we look at the winning deck of a YCS and it's strangely outside the norm of what is conventionally the meta, and we discover that it has chops, then it should be considered a top deck. However, it works both ways.

OCG TCG and master duel all having separate card pools and ban lists also GREATLY reduces the rate of metagame exploration. If every event played digitally or in paper was using the same card pool the amount of data we have on any of those formats would be dramatically larger.

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

I've said for a while that the OCG and TCG could have the same card pool, with releases practically within the same week. Master Duel has no right to be two or so formats behind, and should be a testing ground for retro formats to be played on.

@THE_BASED_GOD

6 ай бұрын

​@@AllThingsEntertainingI mean its clear this will never be happening on MD. We can clearly see the ban lists being completely different and the cardpool being purposefully held back. Theyre prioritizing profit by making a separate 3rd format thats behind physicals. They dont wanna cannibalize TCG/OCG profits. I suspect the only reason we dont have a unified TCG/OCG with simultanious releases is of course they want to keep the banlists separate (Maxx C and others) and we know banning or unbanning certain cards to unify the lists would cause unprecedented shit storms, and theyve been printing meta defining cards at purpoesfully higher rarities in the TCG after seeing them perform well.

I dispise that top players for this game hate diverse formats, complaining that's it's hard to plan for everything with only 15 side cards... when other TCGs like Magic have been doing that for ages, hell, Vanguard doesn't even have a side board, and they still prepare for diverse matches by tweaking the cards in their main deck. I can't stress enough how frustrating it is to see that a wide range of decks are finally playable, allowing for a variety of different people who enjoy a variety of different play styles to finally compete... just for Jessy Cotton to say this is the worst format he's ever played.

I do think you can see decks like Heroes and Rikka fairly consistently with in a year top events and do fairly well are because they do have player bases who are in general willing to adapt but also because they have a card pool that is constantly allowing and encouraging the adaptation. Since you can expect these decks to constantly get a new wave of support even if it isn't good you can expect these playerbases will be adapting and evolving their play. Like them and zombie players are probably the players in yugioh who most understand even the most jank cards in their archytpe because their just waiting for the day Hero Mask is actually busted and they can try that or whatever.

@leeeyles1864

6 ай бұрын

That and most main deck heroes usually add cards, special summons or dumps cards, and they have great main deck monsters and can dodge effects with the mask cards.

@manjackson2772

6 ай бұрын

Hero Mask is a 3 of Foolish Burial that only needs you to have literally any face-up body. It's always been good, the meta has just outpaced that kind of effect by now. Now, the day FAKE HERO is busted...

@ashikjaman1940

6 ай бұрын

Brb reading Hero Mask Hold on that card's not half bad with Shadow Mist existing

Can confirm this. I made the finals of an MTG pro tour last year playing a deck that was completely off the radar (boggles) in large part because people were not fully exploring the metagame. It pays off, just because everyone’s playing a small subset of decks does not mean they’re at all right. I also played a lot of creativity in the 6 months leading up to that event, that deck was actually just tier 0 for 4 months and almost no one played it except for me. It did briefly become a main stream deck, but I think it never got as big as it should have because it had a frustrating play pattern. Basically, in order to win you needed two cards to remain in your deck, if you drew them there were ways to put them back but it was quite difficult and a frustrating reason to lose. The deck had a phenomenal matchup spread, but a lot of players I know who picked it up on my recommendation stopped playing just because they found those loses frustrating, even though they all reported winning a lot with the deck.

@rs07scapeNews

6 ай бұрын

You didnt win though so noone cares

@bentonmadsen8359

6 ай бұрын

Big if true. I was glad for the money tho@@rs07scapeNews

@richardhuang7158

2 ай бұрын

That’s interesting, in legends of runeterra there is a deck called lurk whose gimmick is getting bonuses when the top card of your deck has the keyword “lurk”. The deck is built with mostly lurk cards but has to give up space for important tools, which means you can miss lurk which can be pretty devastating (I’ve seen opponents insta ff when they miss lurk turn 1). The weird thing is that it’s an insanely popular deck; everyone loves lurk even though it can be frustrating to miss. So I find it weird that people will refuse to play a statistically strong deck just because of that.

@bentonmadsen4168

2 ай бұрын

Second place at a pt is worth 30 grand… so I cared.

I really love this style of video. I think it'd be really cool to see this over something like the progression of deckbuilding philosophy. I feel like there's a lot of discussion around "Modern Deckbuilding Philosophy" as a concept, but not a lot of resources that explain what that means, and how it differs from what came before it.

@ee822

6 ай бұрын

There's a lot of those concepts floating around that aren't really explained anywhere in detail, and you just are assumed to need to "pick it up" from watching a lot of stuff. At one point MBT mentioned that you need to learn what makes a card good to become better, but there's really not that many resources out there other than just playing the game a ton through trial and error, or watching tons of hours of content to slowly divine what makes a card good or bad in Yu-Gi-Oh's context. It could just be me, but I've only really noticed that there's a matter of the very basics or the top end, and there's nothing in the middle. Like forget the mindset of deckbuilding philosophy, its kinda annoying to find even a glossary of terms used in deckbuilding for Yu-Gi-Oh.

I'm of the opinion that no format is ever solved. There will always be a deck that does more than the wider player base knows about and so all formats are like Edison. As a result there are more "good decks" in a format, that being decks that can compete within a format, than we will ever know in the moment.

@dontmisunderstand6041

6 ай бұрын

Consider how much simpler a game chess is compared to Yugioh, and the fact that it is a game that is theoretically possible to solve yet has not been due to its complexity. The only way to be confident in a format being solved is if the format has too few possibilities for it not to be. Chess literally only has 16 pieces that move in specific ways, and it's too complex for us to have solved yet, over 1000 years later.

@itsmetristan3671

6 ай бұрын

Edison happened at a time where there were no good ways for everyone to playtest, thus unoptimized metagames were frequent. Since DN's release, that hasn't really been the case. This example is flawed.

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

@@itsmetristan3671 Dueling Network came out in like, 2006, and by the time Edison rolled around, the majority of players on there wouldn't have been up for testing. Not very many pros would have been there to begin with.

@itsmetristan3671

6 ай бұрын

@@AllThingsEntertaining You're 5 years off. DN was launched in 2011.

@dudono1744

6 ай бұрын

I mean a guy made an ameba deck recently in edison like wtf

All the decks I like are good and all the decks I hate are bad, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

Sub-metas are so interesting. League of Legends testing groups for the world championship once had very warped metas within themselves and then got slapped at the event itself because they had a misrepresentation of what was good. I also always bring up Minerva Turbo when people argue "meta" means "good". Minerva Turbo was considered best deck by most top players, but it was obviously extremely underrepresented. And finally, even in a static pool, such as an older generation of Pokemon, the meta is on a rotation. Rock-paper-scissors game plans means there's a continuous cycle of what you should be playing.

People rag on MBT for bringing up MTG all the time but he like literally is the only voice in the community who has ever played a card game that isn't YGO for more than like 2 days. So much of this discourse (not just this particular discussion about the 'metagame', 'good decks' and 'bad decks', just alot of YGO discussions as a whole) is fuelled by people who either have a very narrow experience with the game/genre or are just flat out new and young. Anyone who's been in the FGC for quite a while can see the similarities, I'm sure. We get into these types of talks all the time whenever a new game comes out and fresh blood comes in, and every single time it happens, anyone who has played more than like 2 fighting games lets out a deep sigh and has to sit the new blood down and give them a good talking to. It's absurd how few of these kinds of voices there are in the YGO community.

@HazeEmry

6 ай бұрын

I've said this before but MBT is wasted on us and the ygo community as a whole. Amazing entertainer, well thought out takes, great dedication to what he does and enjoys and he's here having to explain and deconstruct card game drama to people. K seriousness is over, let's get back to memeing on Farfa

@geek593

6 ай бұрын

This is why I like hearing Jeff Jones and Ryan Levine talk about game design on their podcast. People who actually play other games are almost always more interesting to listen to than a one trick. And in my own case playing other games has made me not want to play modern Yugioh at all outside of the social aspect.

It would be neat to see a format/tournament series where individuals sign up with an arch type and have to use it for the full series. Each tournament being aloud to edit the deck a certain amount so it evolves but always holds the same core.

@nellewoodruff6337

6 ай бұрын

I like this idea? What do you think the minimum core number should be? And should there be a second, separate one for the extra deck or no?

@williamxwelch8

6 ай бұрын

I've been thinking about it since I posted, I think you could do 20ish core cards. Must be the arch type or types you sign up with (must be named or works directly with arch type while the other 20 can be whatever. Extra may not matter. If the goal is to play archtype decks, using generic tools is part of what makes a Rouge deck functional sometimes. Putting restrictions on what generics may defeat the purpose of 1 tricking a deck until its powerful by not allowing for extra creativity in deck building

@Mooinator3000

6 ай бұрын

​@@williamxwelch8what about decks that are something of a mixture of archetypes though? Like tear doesn't have 20 cards do it's name so you're not able to really have a tear core to build the deck around. Or mannadium only really plays a handful of cards with mannadium in the name, but the visas boys, scareclaws and kash are always gonna be there despite not being "mannadium"

@williamxwelch8

6 ай бұрын

Maybe a declared core, certain cards that have to be played since every deck core is different. It could be names. So you declare 10 names for instance between main and extra that the duelist deems as the core and has to play at least 1 copy of each of those. So mannadium could name visas, the balls, light heart maybe some spells. This would force the duelist to determine in their own eyes what makes the arch type work. You would have to know your arch type decently well before hand and then you spend the duration figuring out ratios, non-engine, and generic support to take them as far as possible.

I think my concept of a good deck comes from every time I suggest a deck I want to try out, everyone in the yugioh channel of my main discord says its bad and question why I even considered it.

One factor for Yu-Gi-Oh! that shapes it's formats differently than Magic: the Gathering is the banlist cycle. In Modern, you can play the same deck for 10 years because it will still be legal in 10 years (not to mention that it's also much more likely to not be powercrept.) Yu-Gi-Oh! encourages a culture of playing a deck for exactly 6 months until it's hit and is mediocre all of a sudden, then you sell it all for the next big thing. In Magic, strategies are hit much less frequently, so decks have to much more time to develop in their intricacies, which results in a much more fully-grown meta. If Yu-Gi-Oh!'s cycle of releasing and then hitting strategies weren't so breakneck, we would see a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! metas develop similarly, as we see with the popular old formats.

@Asmodean1111

6 ай бұрын

Without the Modern Horizons sets, this has been true for the most part. New decks only showed up on Modern once a new set of standard might have pushed deck idea to the point it has the critical mass cards to be a thing, or such a heavily pushed standard power that happened to have a piece or two that wasn't reprinted into standard, but was lurking in Modern just waiting for the right set of cards to reach a breaking point. Hello eldrazi winter.

@forrestwinstead4471

6 ай бұрын

not only that, the lack of archetypal card support structuring means that one trick decks like merfolk, goblins, tron, etc. get support all the time just at RANDOM. Yugioh prints support in specific batches where you get cards for YOUR deck and thats it, where in EVERY set in magic, you could get a random card that is not only generically good, but also supports your deck. (Looking at you, the one ring, tishana's tidebinder, fable of the mirror breaker, etc.)

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

I think this is ultimately a case-by-case basis and not exactly a symptom of any underlying issues with Yugioh or its formats. People will always have the ability to go explore those formats in retrospect, and you don't need infrequent ban lists to solve this. Personally, I formats lasting six months is actually more than enough to play in that format before it gets stale and people want to move from it. I don't think people would want 10 years of Kashtira being a viable deck.

@larvatar2387

6 ай бұрын

​@@AllThingsEntertainingI'd also like to have my $400+ investment last me the year at the very least. Every other card game's standard formay has exactly that, why is YGO the only game where you have to dump that much money so frequently? Not even Flesh and Blood has that, and it had a hero rotate within 4 months because it was so good. (The deck is now playable in the game's Legacy format, with Official tournament support)

@AllThingsEntertaining

6 ай бұрын

@@larvatar2387 It's strange that you see card games as investments. Seems like it to me that you're more interested in making a return on the cardboard you bought rather than actually playing the card game itself. Also, in the grand scheme of things, Yugioh isn't actually all that expensive if you're smart about your purchases. If you already possess staples, deck cores that filter in and out can be cheap. Konami also does a pretty good job, compared to other card games, at reprinting cards, therefore making the game cheaper. I don't really understand this weird fixation that every card game should be identical to each other in every possible way. Not every deck needs to be viable for a decade. Not every deck should be viable for a decade. If you want to play a game where your "investments" last a decade, then go play that card game.

I also think something to consider is people pushing certain decks as being good might have personal incentive to want people to focus on those decks. If you're a top player, it's too your benefit that people aren't really testing and innovating new decks because it means you have less things to deal with during testing and are more likely to run into matchups you prepared for during future events

@kaisermaximal8123

6 ай бұрын

THIS. I remember when a bunch of people were making fun of pros post tear format. Said pros were complaining that the format was too diverse to effectively plan against, and they were laughed at for not being able to top in a more balanced format

This whole video is basically what I did with Ritual Dogmatika last month. I saw Joseph play against the deck on a TMT, thought it looked cool, looked up the few lists that seemed to be doing well, determined they all looked like garbage, and decided to make a new version myself. I honestly feel pretty clever about what I put together, but also like he talked about, the only meta I play it in is against my twin brother. Sure, the deck functions very well against his Z-ARC and Adventure/Scareclaw lists, but that really has no correlation to what it might look like if I tried to bring this to any sort of event, even just a locals. Love these analysis videos and I'll continue to watch them!

Man this is why I have tried to "break" Scrap since I picked it up on the 5ds Xbox 360 game. The deck has some surprisingly good grind game but has awful bricks. Raptor, Factory, and Wyvern made it so that the whole archetype is more involved and "playable" (looking at you Scrap Mind Reader). Not to mention that it has some insane resource loops with Searcher being a non-Scrap nuke and free extender that stacks with itself. Scrapstorm is literally a Foolish Burial and Upstart for a pop 1. Which for Scraps makes the card go from a 2 for 1 into a 3 or 4 for 1. Moral of the story, all decks can shine given time. Never give up a pet deck or favorite because its "not a good deck".

@pedrovillar4391

6 ай бұрын

I'm also a Scrap Enthusiast. Innovation is the future. 1. No Once-Per-Turn on Scrap Recycler. We can send stuff like Cyber Dragon Core, to SS Cyber Dragon from the Deck. Or Cydra Herz for a search. We can send the Machina stuff like Fortress for a non-OPT Machine extender if we have the discard fodder in Earth Machines. 2. We can play Fossil Dig / Dinosaur Cards since it's another searcher for Scrap Raptor. Stuff like Gilasaurus as a Generic Extender. Or Miscellaneousaurus send itself for Animadorned Archasaur, pop itself to search for Double Evolution Pill for UCT. There's so much stuff we can play in the deck since it has synergies with multiple types there's just nobody testing it as thoroughly as other recently released decks.

@doubl2480

6 ай бұрын

Scrap enthusiasts are so cool. Recently I've played a small tourney in Wave-Motion format (created by RJB0), we were on Duelist Revolution, but I was the only one using Scrap Searcher. I was even on Icarus attack since it's a recurrable winged beast.

@luigifan4585

6 ай бұрын

It's kinda hard to feel that way when it comes to certain archetypes, Fur Hire in my case. Deck has a problem of immediately dying if the normal summon gets disrupted, and all the extenders the archetype wants are limited generics that can't be searched It's an archetype that 'floods' the board but literally everything it does is a HOPT and runs out of gas by itself surpringly fast It has to be paired with far more powerful archetypes, and it sometimes doesn't even feel like I'm playing Fur Hire most of the time then

@four-en-tee

6 ай бұрын

Considering my main hobby with this game (outside of working on a homebrew format) is breaking archetypes, I totally get where you're coming from. Halqdon Burger was so much fun for me to mess around with.

@nellewoodruff6337

6 ай бұрын

There was a 5ds game for 360? I missed out

Anyone who's ever played Madolche knows there is a such thing as a good deck, and it's the deck with the cutest cards that can OTK.

@adriancardona2172

6 ай бұрын

Madolche 🤝 Purrely

@sekaihunter9378

6 ай бұрын

​@@adriancardona2172You are a furry enjoyer, we are cute and delicious dessert connoisseurs. We are not the same!

@ninjabreadman22

6 ай бұрын

@@sekaihunter9378 Hold on, an alliance may be advantageous for both of us. We can both beat the furry allegations if we work together.

@jorgecarvajal5385

6 ай бұрын

@@ninjabreadman22 as gravekeeper, and kashtira-scareclaw player, that alliance will bring ruin to the world

Independent of match-ups, I personally think there’s two major factors to whether a deck can be considered good: -Is it consistent? -How resilient is it to interruptions? From there its just experimentation to max out any given deck on those two factors.

@dontmisunderstand6041

6 ай бұрын

Inconsistency can be made up for with explosivity, interactivity, or endurance. A lack of resilience to interruption can be made up for through sheer card advantage. As you should be able to see there, even those factors you point to aren't the be-all end-all of quality.

@dabbingtoast7743

6 ай бұрын

@@dontmisunderstand6041 They certainly aren’t the end all be all, but imo they’re the most important in regards to playability. Everything else is secondary.

@phiefer3

6 ай бұрын

But those factors say absolutely nothing about what the deck is actually accomplishing with its consistency. Being able to consistently summon a 2k vanilla beatstick doesn't make a deck good. Consistency and resilience are only as valuable as what you are accomplishing.

@hoanganhngo7840

6 ай бұрын

You are right about most current deck in the format. It's all about how many disrupt you can CONSISTENTLY make. And how many disrupt can you push through(vs handtrap and when go 2nd). The ability to board break and deal LP dmg only important if you go 2nd, and even if you can summon enough attacker in theory, you will still have to out enemy handtrap and other disruption first.yes, I'm talking about you, Brick Eyes players. Since the introduction of generic boss monster from extradeck(heatsoul/Accesscode/....) why bother bring 2+ power-play card in main deck anymore when my negate/boardbreak can both be choosen from extra, while the only thing I have to worry about are bring 20+ summons through my one-card "combo".

@AlphaSquadZero

6 ай бұрын

There's a second side to "resilience to interruptions" being "how resilient is it to board breakers?"

This video is quite relevant for MD. A big percentage of the player base was (and some maybe still are) convinced that Kashtira was going to be the best deck. The effects of the cards sound insane, banish cards face down, lock zones, macrocosmos on legs, etc. The thing is, Konami banned Diablosis (thankfully) and the field spell was always going to be at 1, plus pot of prosperity has been limited for over a year. In my experience playing against it, the deck bricks very often, and when it doesn't brick, it loses to almost everything. Book of Moon is often enough. They never play around Nibiru. Zone locking has never been relevant against my decks (I don't have a pendulum deck). Macrocosmos sucks but a lot of decks don't care that much about the graveyard (VS, Floo, etc...). The thing is, none of this has stopped them from playing the deck, for some reason. Well there is a reason, the deck is easily the most expensive new deck in the game's history, people have to justify the money they spent on it.

Posting this the same day scam got hit on the mofern ban list because it was too good is kind of perfection. Anyway I have found it funny over the last few years that a pet deck of mine (various versions of water but normally trying to force in a penguin or two...) Has at times seemed to have a shockingly good matchup into what people say are the best decks. It never made me think the deck was actually top tier but it has made me realize how slim the line between best and bad can be

I've been described in my locals scene as a "great player with terrible decks" because I play "rogue/non meta" decks often, but do well with them. I create and learn my favourite archetypes to the point that a brick is a rare occurrence because I know what my deck does and how it works. And more people should play like that, not follow the dreaded pie charts I say post regional/YCS

the whole "people refuse to engage with Rikka" thing is so stupid even on a local level I show up relatively infrequently (like, come a few times, take a break for a month etc), then win the local or get second place, everyone complains, but the next month they are back to ashing Dryas or imperming Mudan

@luigifan4585

6 ай бұрын

For me, it's a case of 'it fucking sucks being on the receiving end of Rikka/plant pile with 1 or no interruptions' Feels like I'm just sitting on my ass for several minutes when I know I can't do shit about it

@anakinsmith4770

6 ай бұрын

I've heard the take of ban jasmine and konkon. Marincess is another deck the pros refuse to build for but will complain if they lose to it.mystic mine was a great example how many times did you hear the line i don't want to side removal if it's for only one deck. the funny thing is they do it no for purrely

@swisschese1323

6 ай бұрын

​@@anakinsmith4770 but people hated purelly tho? They just side removal for purrely as step 5 of the grieving process is coming to acceptance that Konami would not hit the deck any further. Also I think most yugioh players just hate floodgates. (Me included)

@abdurachmanromzy4778

6 ай бұрын

In the end bigger community really matter in term of manipulating any take,regardless its good or bad

@abdurachmanromzy4778

6 ай бұрын

​@@anakinsmith4770must be from josh community

Honestly, I feel like part of the issue is no one wants to work on a deck that will get banned into the ground if it's found to be good. Yugioh players are way too eager to hit decks for being good when a banlist is meant to balance the format, not shake it up. Since decks pretty much cycle out so often, no one really wants to innovate. Why bother if it's gonna get powercrept out or banned into the ground?

@geek593

6 ай бұрын

The banlist isn't just for balance. It's one of Konami's only levers that can be pulled to make players put down what they're playing and pick up something new. There's an additive and subtractive approach to metagame shifts and the banlist is the only subtractive one they have.

@Sparda51

6 ай бұрын

They definitely ban cards more than just to balance. They ban to push product a lot and to make people stop playing certain strategies. Joker has been on and off the banlist so many times when pushing new pendulum support it’s not even funny.

Love these discussion videos! Please keep making them, I really enjoy seeing the community engage with them and adapt these ideas into the larger conversation about the game. One thing that I think contributes to the perception of so many decks being seen as "bad" or unviable (at least, in the context of 'modern' yugioh) is the OCG. Despite the fact that they are two *very* different formats, the TCG will always be a secondary location of sorts in the context of the larger metagame; we see something consistently top in the OCG and assume it's going to be crazy over here, regardless of the circumstances that help actually MAKE the deck as powerful as it is. Vanquish Soul is the first deck that comes to mind, but I would also like to make a case for Spright being a similar case. Everyone, including this channel, was *certain* that Spright was far and away the best deck of its format, followed by (but significantly better than) Tear. This was based off of the data we had from the OCG, and there didn't seem to be any reason to doubt that this format would be Spright-Dominant until we saw the release of the Ishizus. Even to this day, people will claim that Tear is only 'fine' and balanced without them. However, before the release of Mavens and the Ishizu cards proper, sudden developments and innovations in the TCG revealed that, actually, Gamble Tearlament was significantly stronger that Spright. As it turns out, if you just build a mill deck where every hit is a good one, the reward becomes much higher. (That, and we remembered that Curious existed, lol.) Having the OCG be what is, effectively, seen as a "testing ground" for what's up and coming in the TCG significantly curbs innovation over here as a result, especially because professional players will be (understandably) drawn to what they know is consistent enough to get results. It contributes to the problems of limited testing you mentioned as well; if people act on an assumption that the metagame is predestined to go a certain way, and if they know what decks everyone will play because of that predestination, then testing circles will inherently focus on the matchups they *know* they're going to have to deal with *because* of that issue. TL;DR: The OCG preceding the TCG inherently warps formats into a specific mold for a little while, and innovation ends up massively stunted as a result. It feeds into itself as well because of the metagame's awareness of this fact, so even those who *want* to innovate know that they have to prepare against the decks that everyone else is playing because they assume results will be similar across formats.

What decks are good are DEFINITELY a social construct. Played at a YCS that happened right after JOTL, the set with Bujins, dropped. Dragon Rulers were at their prime, and EVERYONE was so convinced that everyone else was going to be playing dragon rulers that most people actually played Evilswarm, which had a good matchup against Dragon Ruler, but critically, was AWFUL against Bujin. I climbed to essentially the top of the event with a cobbled together Bujin deck on the backs of 7+ Evilswarm players because nobody was actually playing the deck they were trying to beat.

I love discussion videos. If not at least because other content creators will farm the heck out it for a few days. I will get on my soapbox about the cost of the game again here, but I do think that the cost of cards makes it really hard to experiment with a meta. Like, you could have really smart players, but they're restricted by virtue of the card costs. It's a lot harder to drop $200 on a runick package to play generaider runick post-DUNE if you don't have the loose income to do so. You can play sims, but if you can't afford the cards, that's never going to convert into a visible win. But what do we see as soon as the cost of Runick drops to a couple dollars for a core? Immediate win with Runick Generaider. I'd bet money that if diabellstar and horus cards were cheap, you'd see some crazy new builds pop up at the next regionals and YCS. As an aside, I do think it's a bit weird that you bring up the concept of the social construct creating something real from nothing, but also believe that there isn't a "good deck." It seems like you're still implying that there is a "good deck" /because/ its a social construct--it's good because we say it's good.

@ee822

6 ай бұрын

I don't think this is an entirely accurate metric. Looking over several of those modern decklists on the Goldfish site that was mentioned, there are entirely separate 4 card playsets of cards that hit about the same $200 price mark that diverge wildly from deck to deck. And there's also games like Warhammer 40k that has $200 as a laughable price point that have their own evolving metagames, and that requires a ton more work due to needing to pain tall of the models. I especially doubt the price point is a vector limiting experimentation because Yu-Gi-Oh overall has the highest quality free sims floating around. I firmly think that the iteration time between formats compared to the number of tournaments is the biggest issue. Like, a Locals running weekly tournaments would only have had two tournaments between the release of the presumed Strong Meta contender Fire King structure and Valiant Smashers, and before that only four weeks between Age of Overlord and Valiant Smashers. And a couple weeks before that was both the Dueling Heroes tins and the Jack Atlas structure, and a couple weeks before that was Soulburning Volcano and Duelist Nexus... And if that wasn't bad enough, you don't have theory solely focused on them, but people are delving hard into the Japanese releases as well that won't appear for months in the TCG and can easily be useless from banlist shifts leaving the decks that theory was primed against to be useless and needing to shake up those decks. Hell, with a lot of shipping tending to take a week, if you buy a deck the same day a set releases via TCGPlayer or another site...you maybe have a week or two to start to learn of its place in the metagame before entirely new cards come out and there's a shift in the meta as a result.

@DEClimax

6 ай бұрын

it's so strange to me how many TCG players will shit your pants if you suggest that card games cost too much. fur the cost of a meta deck in some furmats you could buy a fucking video game console.

@ee822

6 ай бұрын

@@DEClimax The game can always be more affordable. My argument is that Price can't be the only or even really the main thing holding everything back, because games with significantly higher price points also have larger and more successful exploration of their metagames. Because if it was the biggest thing holding back experimentation, then those games would have less exploration rather than more.

@DEClimax

6 ай бұрын

@@ee822 i mean the real answer is that innovation occurs anyway bc people play in sims or with proxies. cost isn't the main limiting factor due to people understanding that you have to bypass the cost of entry if you want to actually learn how to play the game and build decks.

@spicymemes7458

6 ай бұрын

Because too many content creators in this space do this as a job and sell themselves out to whatever keeps the money machine turning

Rikka sunavalon really lives up to their archetype. They bloom probably 2 to 3 times a year and then disappear the rest of the time.

The timing of this is especially funny given today's modern bannings. That said, doesn't make it any less true. Great points all around.

Here i thought a social construct was a golem you construct using people you socialize with...

This is why I'm always looking for ways to improve dragon maids. Love the deck and playstyle

This video is the exact reason I preferred the CSM to the MCS it gave a time for underrepresented decks in a tournament setting. Bird up wasn’t really taken seriously until after it started topping CSM. CSM helped predict several tournament and top deck outcomes because it had innovators

I call social constructs the "Granfalloon effect"; like the Bokonianism that spawned it from the book Cat's Cradle, these social constructs are basically people agreeing about something to make them feel like they're a part of something greater, when really the thing they're agreeing about is so tenuous, that it's "like examining a toy balloon by peeling the skin off of it", ie. look too much past the surface, and the whole thing just falls apart. On that note, you forgot about the times a deck pops up from being "bad" to being "good" in the meta, not (just) because it got new support that makes it better, but because it's been out of the meta for so long, that people forget about it and are blindsided when they come up against it; my boyfriend experienced that at what we pitifully call a locals when he got some wins against some of the more "meta" decks at the time using updated pure Gladiator Beasts, and got commented on positively for it, as well. People say nowadays "Oh, those old decks can't hack it in today's meta, because it's become to fast, we have more powerful counters to them, etc.", and thus don't realize that for a lot of past decks, there ARE ways you can incorporate that fast pace (or nerf the pace to a speed that is more agreeable for the deck) and/or those same counters into it to make them stronger. This is what frustrates me and my boyfriend about the game, now that you've explained it in a more cohesive way for us, and the almost sheeple-like way duelists follow the social constructs of the meta makes dueling frustrating to the point where we feel like the boomers, the old men that need to bow out of the game because it's not like the Yugioh we used to know. But now, with this new knowledge you've bestowed upon us... I think we never really knew the game, that much, at all, and could learn a LOT about it, from here on in, if we gave the effort.

One of my all time favorite YUGIOH memories was going to a regionals in 2017(or 2016? Whatever was the year right before Zoo came out) and I played Majespecters. Which, looking at the meta had a ton of targeting removal. (metalfoe, ABC, BA) and I was still fairly new to competitive Yugioh, but figured that the entire deck was immune to targetting and destruction, I thought it would be a good counter pick. I ended up leaving early because my buddy wasn’t having a good time but I won all but one duel that day, and that was against blue-eyes Sometimes playing a deck outside the meta range is all you need. You’d be shocked how many people can’t out the Majespecter protection.

@kitsunewarlock

6 ай бұрын

One of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! memories was doing a Gunslinger against a pro at Anime Expo. I hadn't played since Synchros and the event host was playing Zoo. He was winning most of his games and the people in line were stunned to see me win with my Meklord/Geartown/Malefic deck...okay, largely because it ran Skill Drain.

@giantstrawman543

6 ай бұрын

Targeting, battle, and destruction protection have been huge victims of the social contract. All it takes is one deck like Tri-Zoo and suddenly protection is "worthless," nothing targets any more, nothing destroys, and certainly the BATTLE PHASE doesn't matter. Some people will actively write off powerful cards the moment they see that kind of effect on them. But along will come a deck like Spright and suddenly targeting protection is broken because it's on a card like Elf. People joked about Battle Fader for years but guess what, the Bystials came out and suddenly summoning a blocker during the battle phase was really good. Umi has been a card since the first set, you'd have been laughed at if you called it a good effect. Slap it onto Perlereino and suddenly it's one of the most annoying and oppressive effects in the game - you can't even ATTACK over them?! And someone will say "well that was only good because of the context, because it was already a powerful card and X Y and Z and yadda yadda," and yeah, that's how powerful cards work. They are powerful in a context. Attack boosts, protection, and battle faders aren't "fundamentally bad," they're incredibly powerful given the right context. Just like a field spell that adds a card to your hand isn't "fundamentally good" if the context is wrong. A card exists as a whole, and every effect on it will come up in some situation. The card is good if the situations tend to favour its effects, regardless of what those effects actually are.

then there is also the problem that top players don't WANT to have diverse formats. you're not going to prepare for something you don#t want to even happen in the first place unless absolutely necessary. throughout all of yugiohs history there where so little top decks that people just said thats how it should be

RAMBLE NATION RISE UP LET'S GO

I'm gonna be completely honest. If there's 1 thing I've learned playing 12 years at a relatively competent level, it's that the vast majority of players don't want to evaluate the cards themselves.

@carstan62

6 ай бұрын

@@thotslayer9914 Why you assuming? Not that it matters anyway since what I'm saying has more to do with community exposure than being good at the game. But no, I only play digital, so no official tournaments, but when I actually feel like grinding ladders, I get pretty high, and I've done well at a few online tournaments.

@carstan62

6 ай бұрын

@@thotslayer9914 If YGO wasn't so expensive to play in paper, then maybe I would.

I am a big D-link fan, and I often wonder how many other decks have deceptively strong boards like "seal pass". And as a result of the end board looking lackluster, they are disregarded and not fully explored for their potential. Like could Mermail/Sea Serpent/Aqua secretly have an insane match-up into the current top decks, and hold a position at the top should the meta shift as a result of that development? The world may never know.....

@dontmisunderstand6041

6 ай бұрын

Last time I really played Yugioh was when Tearlaments first came to master duel. I'd heard the hype about it being a "tier zero" deck. And then pure dragonmaids stomps it dead with Sheou pass reliably. Match-ups will always be more important than how strong your deck is in a vacuum, which is ironically what makes any talk about how your deck performs in a metagome moot, because there are always decks outside of the current meta that your deck is weak to.

@ducky36F

6 ай бұрын

People make fun of “Seals pass” but the number of games it’s won me is crazy. To the point I really wonder when I watch d link players combo all the way into borrelend turn 1 like they are asking to loose to Imperm or nib for no reason.

@geek593

6 ай бұрын

As someone who tries to break Mermail constantly, nah no it's not great. Atlanteans are too slow and the balls to the wall combos are both too fragile and missing key bridges.

@nial1396

6 ай бұрын

how are you beating tearlament with sheou pass? @@dontmisunderstand6041

@Jaggrias

6 ай бұрын

Zefra. Zefra Path is the most insane floodgate in the game and nobody knows about it. It's searchable, stops all special summoning except from hand or extra so no summoning from deck, graveyard, banished, spell/trap zone, and tokens, and then it has dragoon-like protection with providence in the grave. The only out to it is Zeus and we've been innovating in ways to beat Zeus.

I can relate to this. From Houston Texas sports card shack Back when we had a very competitive local. 1 of my best friends even won a SJC. I bubbled that event for top 8. There was several times we showed up with innovative deck like OG soul control. May I note Evan Vargas was not the creator, it was Brandon crutchfield another local guru of the time that I played with regularly. soul control/ flip flop control destroyed everything until they caught on. On the other side of the coin there were several times at regionals when we would finally play against the “rivalry team” being Chris bowling, Ryan spicer, Philly Luna, they were ahead of our curve sometimes. Granted the internet wasn’t as developed with coverage/ content creators delving into the game 24/8

Well the biggest problem with duelingbook is a lack of a timer. In early 2020 lunalight was really good on duelingbook but failed to consistently perform at tournaments because you didn’t have to worry about losing if you activated zephyros in game 3. Therefore duelingbook doesn’t help you plan for tournaments

The one thing YuGiOh would consider doing to drum up deck exploration is having a league-like system MTG has at some LGS. You get a certain amount of packs and players build a deck based on what they pull and each week get access to more sets outside of the initial few the entire league group started with. I'd probably start off with either 2-3 deck-building sets to give each player options but the packs they choose to get after that is up to them. I think it will encourage exploration into the more recent sets to see what works and what does and at the end of the designated period it would be fun to look back and see how much progression the decks had been throughout the league. Just food for thought as an experiment to force Yugioh players to think with limited resources. I want to see if Yugioh players take a deck made from a sealed pool and see if they can innovate on that concept to higher levels of competition.

Really love this style of content from you! It was insightful and left me with a lot to think about ❤

A lack of resources for whatever isn't considered the "meta" plays a huge factor to this. If you look up any deck that's considered "meta" then there's probably over a dozen dbgrinder replays, combo guides from people actually performing well with the deck, and websites full of decklists that have actually topped regionals/ycs events. Otherwise you're basically stuck with discord servers which can be a total crapshoot.

@rapalborde5211

6 ай бұрын

This

@Waterwish545

6 ай бұрын

I agree, it irritates me when I watch a deck profile of a non-meta deck and the player just says "Yeah this card is broken". I get time is a thing but going more in depth would help me appreciate it more

@aidenharris5296

6 ай бұрын

⁠@@Waterwish545Fr the best info I ever got on learning my farvorite deck was to just watch a vid to understand it’s effects it a understandable manner because I made me realize how to actually play and not just play one combo like with no way of knowing how to do anything else

I really liked hearing your thoughts on this on stream so seeing this is a pleasant surprise.

I walked into my locals, young, but smart, during the Height of Druler/Spellbook format. I ran Six Samurai, a weird mesh of Six Samurai. It was mostly a beatdown using The A. Forces to power boost my field. I knew going 2nd was good for me as well, and I could fairly consistently just dump my hand with a pile of big beaters and OTK my enemy through Dracosack or just attack over Jowgen then set up some XYZ monsters. I also ran random cards in my deck, like a 1 off Quickdraw Synchron to make Junk Destroyer. I also ran the Six Samurai Field Spell while it was considered kinda bad (compared to just having a dojo and a gateway mind you) because I would let it stack counters and start a grind game where my enemy eithers outs the field spell or suffers an attack loss of around 2k per monster making any monster top deck a way to beat over their whole deck. Because I ran Six Samurai with only budget commons, I never had the synchro toolbox for make Legendary Shi En and my deck was almost entirely a few structure decks ducktaped together with a dime a dozen commons sprinkled in, and it worked. It had multiple lines to react to boards, easy OTK access and one of the best deck thins around if you opened a Gateway to dig into those weird tech cards with Stand United. Even to this day I play Six Samurai because of my blind 2nd potential with AOE blow outs and its ability to just crap monsters onto a board. Often times The A. Forces doesnt get negated because my enemy thinks it does nothing then a NS into 4 inherent hand summons walks over their board like its nothing.

I'd say, a big concept that I have never seen put into words is that "In Yugioh a card that is doing nothing is doing less than nothing" by which I mean that (excluding follow-up) a card that is doing nothing is actually doing something, it is hurting your turn, which is obviously true in other card games but not to the extent of yugioh.

Modern player here, fury just got banned yesterday. fury was a key piece of Rackdos Scam so that deck will be powered down and we can go back to complaining about amulet titan deck with its new support from the latest set

I agree wholeheartedly that the system we constructed for yugioh power level does not take into account other possible decks. We look at last 2 formats for possible decks. In master duel people say kashtira is a good deck, yet I am able to beat it with resonator, because that deck has so many on demand board wipes that even with a fenrir and locked zones, it is not hard to break like, shargi arise-heart fenrir. It is annoying but completely doable. Just because a deck is consistently putting up 2+ interruptions doesn’t mean it is a YCS topper. Look at unchained, it is similar to rokket, a deck with dragons that on link target self destruct for interaction. People don’t look at cards in a “it can be used, what is the most value I can get out of it” but more in a “it doesn’t do what I need therefore useless”, that dark world TmT you posted was a great pick. But because it was in tear format everyone turned the other way. Yet looking back if you played slower against tear it probably could have done some good rescues management.

Oh, this gotta be good, MBT cool ramble video

on ladder, i ran accross an Icejade player. never read a single icejade card aside from the synchro 10, and holy shit this deck can lock you out pretty easily. it was a cool experience to learn what that deck can do live and for the first time. something i think is a great experience for players. they kicked my butt, but if i had a better understanding of what they did, i'm sure i could've used my negates and disruptions differently. anyway, counterpoint to your vid, every deck is bad and i too am bad

“Man who makes fun of pet deckers tells people to pick a pet deck” 😆

This is both on and off topic, but i always hear people say “race is a social construct” but is it? People’s definition of the word “race” can be vastly different and have been vastly different throughout history but if we dumb it down to its basics of different people are different colors then that true fact isnt socially constructed. Different people of different color’s literally exist inherently of societal standards or norms. Now the idea of “Race” having a meaning or being a distinction to make IS a social construct but that is just saying that language itself is socially constructed. Yes all words are made up so all of their meanings are social constructs. But what they represent can be an inherent thing that isnt socially constructed. Like different people having different skin colors. Another example i guess would be math. Obviously things are added and subtracted in nature all the times so values and variables literally exist and therefore math exists naturally. We didn’t create adding and subtracting we just named them. But you could say that the name math and what it means are social constructs. But i wouldnt ever say the idea of math itself is socially constructed. No one is probably going to read this but ill say anyway before i get the comments, im not some “race realist contrarian” im a young black man who heard the beginning of the video and started thinking (way too) deeply about what is or isn’t socially constructed.

@1Raroy

6 ай бұрын

The Irish and Italians were not considered white when they first immigrated to America. The idea of "race" did not exist until around the 1600s, Rome did not have an idea of race based on color. It is a construct because it changes, and isn't a law of nature. The idea of race will continue to change, in the future more people will be considered "white" who haven't been categorized as such before.

First off Joshua Schmidt's tier list has like 20 decks, and had sky striker as one of the 6 decks in his team's MD world's line up. I feel like a lot of the best TCG players think about lower tier decks even if they don't always test for them. There's also a meaningful difference in how different card games "count" in their meta that I think you might be missing. MTG looks at non mirror win rate and play tournament representation, but ygo players focus more on tops and what actually won a tournament. There's also the fact limited being part of tournaments means you see strong limited players piloting weak and easy constructed decks trying to sneak their way into top cut (see standard mono red). Most MTG tournament are also not as big as a ycs

Thank you! I have always subscribed to this theory. People dont always know all the things and a meta is a great example of how this works, especially when some "crazy" unlooked at card or deck shows up and does so much work

I really liked this video. Thank you for making it Mister BT

That’s it, I’m taking Nemleria to Worlds

Thank you MBT, this was the motivation I needed to continue my Gimmick Puppet journey!

Love this type of video, great job Joseph.

Very good video and hopefully this will affect the way I build new decks in the future, thanks Joseph

One of your best videos honestly, not to put your other work down ofc. I'm relatively new to yugioh having played only for a bit over a year and have since i got in found a lot of metagame discussion very strange after having come from several other games prior.

Wow, Joseph. Great moves. Keep it up. Proud of you.

Nice editing vlad!

After coming back to Yu-Gi-Oh ive done a significant amount of testing with bujins because it was my favorite deck in 2015 when i stopped playing. In my testing i have found the deck to be a fair bit stronger than popular opinion would suggest. I Supplemented the deck with bystials and the chaos dragons to helps facilitate 1.5 card combos into UDF or 4 material Zeus. The bystials give access to Chaos Angel with both protection effects live. That said i have not found a way to put up a negate before the 5th summon and trying to resolve a rescue rabbit in a format where everyone plays 3 ash and 2 called by leaves a lot to be desired. Still it is definitely worth experimenting with so "bad" decks

Me: Oh boy, I can't wait to start the new MBT video he talked about on stream! MBT like 30 seconds in: Let's talk about social constructs! Quirked up white boys are pretty cool sometimes

To the comparison to magic in tournaments, its a very local issue. Where I was raised there were small locals the town over. But where I'm at now there's a pretty large yugioh scene. There's 2 stores in the area, 4 tournaments a week between the 2.

This reminds me that war rock topped an event one time. It was a couple years ago but I remember it vividly because of how in shock I was

The win condition of Icejade is that nobody knows what the fuck any Icejade card does

Joseph, I love vidoes like this. You're so well spoken. This type of vidoe is the best type of yugioh content

I'm hearing Myutants have a chance! ...please print Myutant support. I like that deck a lot.

More essays please!

An easy way to get the idea of how important the format around decks is to the success of a deck, Imagine a format with a deck where you have the ability to go through your entire deck with any draw, able to avoid all common counters, but the deck dies to Skull servants. That means if the deck gets super popular, Skull servants suddenly becomes amazing. And alternatively, if everyone plays Skull servants that amazing deck is unplayable. Or to put it simply, if a deck can be strong in a vacuum but the format counters the deck, a much weaker deck can be seen as more powerful in the format itself.

Did not think I’d hear about the bidirectional aspect of social constructionism in a yugioh video… I think it’s also the complexity behind yugioh as a game. A new deck can immediately create a lot of variation in the meta but not everyone is going to have the time to test its matchup against war rock or lair of darkness 😂

I built my Alien Deck and don’t care what the meta says about the archetype. I have been tweaking it and improving it for awhile now and have been enjoying being creative with it.

I've recently started going to a very small, but somehow quite competitive locals in my area and damn it's easy to anticipate what will be played. One look at the latest ycs result, take the top 5 decks and you know exactly what you will deal with, down to the exact deck list at times. Now, does that mean i ever managed to pilot my Marincess, traptrix or witchcrafts to a W? No, absolutely i haven't, but everyone always seems surprised that you can actually beat "top meta" simply by spending the time to learn your deck properly, it's crazy.

This guy is really good at stating his case and making a point. He should become a lawyer

I remember destroying on Kash/Purrely pilots with Plunder Patroll and it was a lot of fun adjusting my flex extra deck spots to cover my bases

7:37 Yeah. Many spend so much time trying to make the Anime decks reality Ironically, I think Master Duel, having so many possible decks appearing, might be a good starting point to make you think about how your deck could end up going against everything

@chrisb.2028

6 ай бұрын

So true, people often complain about facing the meta again and again (unironically tho, the dm decks are as prevalent as purrely or lab in gold and diamond), and that's true, but I often find unknown and rarely used decks along the way and I'm genuinely baffled by how many decks I never even heard before, yesterday, I face an igknight deck, still have no idea what it does or what's capable of, mainly because it gave up before I could go to the battle face. but just goes to show that the level of randomness is the perfect ground to testing the limits of your deck, and to some degree, yours.

@ianr.navahuber2195

6 ай бұрын

@@chrisb.2028 i also appreciate duel links and the skills encouraging you to play in different ways and with cards you would have never even heard of. sure it is an entire different way of playing altogether, but an interesting one.

honestly one of the most interesting and insightful videos I've seen from your channel- and from yugitube at large. Good job!

I think "legitimate power" that Ryan Yu refers to is what a lot of other pros call "Real Deck". This deals with 2 criteria in particular since any Real Deck will already have a sufficient ceiling (endboard strategy). The criteria that a real deck must have to be considered real is its ability to toolbox into an option tree of solutions. This means being able to use your engine in a multitude of ways to solve the same or completely different problems every game. Most casual decks or outdated decks can do this, but only do so to the extent of the power creep of that archetype. Newer sets come out with more fluid and abundant engine effects that phase out the older ones. The second criteria, and I think this is the most important, is the decks ability to maintain a % of Non engine that is above 30% (12+ in 40 cards) Any turn left uninterrupted in modern YGO will usually result in a functional ftk. Non engine (Hand Traps/Board Breakers) Are the only way MOST decks can remotely play going second. The larger space you have for these cards while not impacting the consistency of your engine, the better the deck is by default. I say all this and will still argue that Ryan is wrong in saying there aren't many decks that are inherently "real decks". It's meta dependent as MBT said, but it is also just effort dependent. Anyone who can log 100's of hours into any deck can get themselves a Regional top or even a day 2/top 64 of a ycs. It's not unheard of. The results of a rogue deck winning can very well impact its status as rogue and convert it into a meta contender. KZreadrs are infamous for this.

More discussion videos please! :D

We definitely need a better metric other than "There's more of this deck here so it must be good."

Also I want to say, having played Magic since 2012 in a casually competitive way, most Magic content creators talking about Modern will refer to the metagame in 3 ways: 1. Your Local Metagame 2. The Metagame at the “top tables” and 3. The Wider Metagame Which are all wildly different things due to the fact that everyone has different opinions about the Social Construct of the Metagame. 1. Your Local Metagame means what you think it means. This is the collection of decks you expect to play against weekly at your Local Game Store. In my experience this means an over- representation of cheap entry level decks (like Burn) and an over-representation of extremely blinged out older control decks. Because I live in the inner city, so there’s a lot of people new to the format, and a lot of people who’ve played for ages, and make lots of money to spend on pretty cards. People don’t change decks often, so the local metagame mostly only shifts drastically when people start or stop turning up. 2. The metagame “at the top tables” is the usually 4-10 decks considered tier 1-1.5. This is more nebulous, but is usually the first 2 rows of decks on the Modern Mtg Goldfish page, or the decks frequently putting up top 8 results online. This frequently under-counts decks which suck to play online but are very powerful, like Hardened Scales (until recently) 3. The Wider Metagame: this is all the decks someone could defensibly play in the format. Often decks from the wider metagame aren’t actually considered “Good”. They’re tier 2, 3, or rogue. People who play them are usually Really Good at them, or have a good reason to play them (like thinking they have a good matchup against 90% of the top tables, at the expense of a poor matchup against everyone else). When people talk about the wider metagame, they’re usually talking about the need to be prepared to face it. You don’t want to get knocked out of a tournament in round 4 because you didn’t know about Glimpse Cascade.

It's not a tautology; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Loved how the topic was mde for the Farfa Playerbase too

I've been playing and innovating on Ninja since 2013. During VRAINS, I could just auto win if I go first because Ninja got a link monster and Ninjitsu Art of Shadow Sealing banishes a monster my opponent controls and locks the zone it was in, until the card is destroyed. This may seem like a simple out for Twin Twisters, but Ninja also had Hidden Village of the Ninjitsu Arts, Twilight Ninja Nichirin the Chunin, and White Dragon Ninja. All of which protects Ninja and Ninjitsu Arts from destruction. So basically it was a way too early version of Shangri-ira board lock.

I pickup decks cause I like the way they play and/or because i like their style(mostly got a soft spot for machines). never cared about whether it was an innately "strong deck". Part of the game for me is making decks strong by their own merit. Every deck is like a game in it's self. Though i have played a few strong ones like rescue ace, cyber dragons, and that one ritual deck with the giant bear/dragon mecha that occasionally appears in the splash screen of master duel.(server is down atm so i cant check) some of my favorites is machina, kozmo, valance, and artifact.

@333Rich33

6 ай бұрын

This is how I like to play the game as well. My criteria is if I really like the artwork (generally dragons or anime girls). The other aspect is if they’re so darn goofy in concept/artwork I want to play them: Suship, Melffy, Time Thief, etc. Tistina seems to be written off, so I’d like to try them out for myself. Nonetheless, I never cared about “good” decks, just fun ones. Plus what makes a deck “good” is a bunch of meta/floodgate crap that me and my buddies ignore. Also, Vaylantz the pendulum deck right? I’m currently looking into it as well.

That tautology reference is for sure from his law classes

Nice video. I play Super Quantum Kaiju in TCG as a going second strategy since the release of Verte Anaconda in 2020 and the deck performs weirdly well against any meta decks from the past 3 years. As weird as that sounds, kaijuing combo decks are always good when the meta is combo heavy and Kyoto Waterfront searches them basically for free with the amount of counters it gets from super quants "do nothing" combos. And SQ and Kaiju slumber recyclability is a auto win if the game goes another turn, agains decks that go too much all in. Other weird huge win rate deck that i still use to play is IbleeMekkKnights, the deck didnt change a little after girsu got shot (a thousand years ago lol) and Iblee by itself achieves almost the same value as him and the more the time passes least decks are playing link monsters to out her. And going second mekk knights are just good by themselves. Yugioh is too complex to believe that "Stablishes the most amount of negates turn one" are the only relevant variable in deck building.