Tutors, Recruiters, Searchers

[Sleepy]

I'm here yet again opening one of my weird threads.

Discuss this mechanic, basically. It is a thing in all TCGs on different amounts.

There's no contest here when saying it's a necessity to virtually all TCGs.

 

What's the right amount you deem too much or too little in Yugioh?

How powerful and/or interactive is the right amount in your opinion?

 

 

We have all sorts of searchers running around.

Reinforcement of the Army: Simple. Easy. Enough targets to toolbox. Single use and generally is just un-interactive consistency on it's own.

Fire Formation Tenki: It is basically the same as RotA, but with more of a drawback, that at the same time makes it more easy to re-use.

Dragon Rulers: Need to trigger a certain way to work, and it's not too hard in the right build. These don't necessarily HAVE to search to be a thing, but the option is there if you can trigger it and have the targets.

Hieratics: These have to be triggered a certain way too, but their search will only be fodder or a meat-wall, unlike Tenki or RotA's targets.

Then we have the more stupid level of searching: Spellbook of Judgment, Inzektor Dragonfly, etc. It encourages you to just keep doing what the deck does best, and it'll reward you with advantage every time you do it. Dragon Rulers technically could fit here as well, they actually just lack more targets now that they are in the position they are in, but that's no real excuse.

 

 

Anyways, moving on.

 

The general opinion says that the concept is what gives consistency to a deck and actually gives you choices to decide on, since without them you are stuck with what you randomly draw from the top of your deck.

Though, obviously, in the wrong amounts it is part of what causes the "one combo" decks, where you have a certain good play that your whole deck happens to depend on. (i.e. Substitoad FTK).

 

I also had a different experience that I have mixed feelings on. A friend of mine showed me his MTG deck (casual format with 99-card decks of all non-land different cards, IDK how it's called). The starting game was along the lines of:

Cast land, pass. Next turn cast second land and pay 2 mana to bring 3rd land. Next turn cast 4th land do other searching stuff for lands to the field and search for other stuff to the hand for later.

 

I know that specific format practically demands that and that the mana system does regulate what you can do with your searches.

Though what I actually thought when looking at it was along the lines of: ".... Good lord! So far it's all searches. When is the actual decks's theme gonna show up here?". Now, while I understand criticising a 99-card highlander for it IS pretty dumb from me, it's not even MTG's only or even most popular format. I don't even know if it's an official one at that, even though a bunch of people over here were using it. Though that happening did make me think of this discussion.

 

 

 

 

One last question:

Is playing with what you draw actually that bad? I mean, it does not beat the consistency that searchers can bring to your table, but considering Extra Deck monster are essentially 15 slots of toolboxes of their own as built-in mechanics already, and that enough deck-building skills could also create working decks without that feature, by simply examining synergy and play-testing enough.

Yeah, well, it is a pretty dumb idea when considering the archetypes and other cards that already exist in this game and make thoughts like this one fall flat and be practically impossible to try out without huge consistency issues.

Though with the right cardpool, pace, power-levels, etc. in the game, maybe it's not that dumb?

 

 

This is all for the sake of argument. Wanna hear your thoughts.

[Toffee.]

Is playing with what you draw actually that bad? I mean, it does not beat the consistency that searchers can bring to your table, but considering Extra Deck monster are essentially 15 slots of toolboxes of their own as built-in mechanics already, and that enough deck-building skills could also create working decks without that feature, by simply examining synergy and play-testing enough.

Or you could be cool and play Gustos =D
But in all seriousness, though, searchers and what-not have a certain degree of usefulness, before they become redundant. Not saying that's bad or anything, but if [card X] can search [card Y] within [reasonable use Z], then it makes it easier for you to accomplish your goals through a little bit of set-up and what-not.

[Sleepy]

Or you could be cool and play Gustos =D
But in all seriousness, though, searchers and what-not have a certain degree of usefulness, before they become redundant. Not saying that's bad or anything, but if [card X] can search [card Y] within [reasonable use Z], then it makes it easier for you to accomplish your goals through a little bit of set-up and what-not.

Though, what search is something you'd deem "too much search"?

Sometimes search card X can search enough different targets to never be dead. Sometimes the existence of copies of it can make that even more likely to be the case (back when 3 Stratos, and when Toon Index). Dead searchers are not actually dead that often. I've never really seen a Dragonfly or Centipede that doesn't have something to search. I've only really encountered the lack of targets in 2 cases:
-Heraldic Beast Leo with it's limitation of OPT, or because it already searched for everything and only copies of itself remain in the deck. (which doesn't even happen competitively. I either die or win before that).

-When some casual or tight deck mains something like RotA intentionally with only like, 3 targets. This includes drawing that second Tour Guide as well... well, not anymore as often.

[Toffee.]

Depends on the scenario, the card itself, and what it can search for.
Like, lets take Dragon Rulers for example. They can search for Dragons of a matching Attribute when Banished. It's the easiest hoop ever to jump through, since they also gave us that Star Saber Star Sword, and Gold Sarcoph were already cards, so this gave you the ability to utilize that aspect of them to search for various Dragons of the corresponding Attribute. But no, all anyone ever did was search more copies of the same Dragon. This became rather broken BECAUSE they could search other copies of themselves via just Banishing eachother to fuel their own Summons. Stratos was similar this, since from day 1 you could just Stratos -> Stratos -> Stratos -> Search something else or become a double Typhoon.
Keeping those other 2 Stratos out was easy back in the day, shoosh.
So really, when it comes right down to it, searchers shouldn't be able to search for copies of themselves, and also be relatively reasonable with regards to what they can search, and if they have some sort of gimmick/trick/etc tied to them on what enables them to be used.

Like, here's another example- Cyber Repair Plant.
You can search any LIGHT Machine; This is cool.
You can only play 1 copy per turn; This slows it down/prevents you from spamming it.
It can only be activated if you have a Cyber Dragon in the Graveyard; There are now like 4 different Cyber Dragons you could have in that Graveyard, and each of them can be ran in 3s. So it's not so much a gimmick, but rather, requires you to play a deck with a Cyber Dragon motif if you want to use a card that gives you a massive searching pool.
The fact Core can search Plant, as well as fuel it, gives you your own little engine to work with.

Compare this to Reinforcement of the Army.
Requires no set-up.
Has no gimmick/cost/drawback tied to it.
Has a ridiculously large pool of cards it can search from.
Easily splashable.
Result? Limited to 1.