Enablers vs. Enabled

[Lonk]

This is a hot-button topic in the game, and for good reasons as well.  There are always two types of cards that are used in self-interactions; the enabler and the enabled.  Enablers function as a trigger and allow for combos to start through the use of enableds.  Enableds are the consequence of enablers that are used for making plays.

 

When it comes to the banlist season, people often go into debates about which cards should be hit; the enabler or the enabled.  People argue that the enabled should be hit because they argue that the enabler is essential in other decks and that it wouldn't see mainstream use if the enabled that caused it to see use is hit. On the other side, people argue that the enabler should get hit because its volatile design can lead to other forms of abuse in the future when more combos involving it are discovered.  Of course, these two forces of people going against each other tend to spark controversy among the playerbase.

 

What is your take on this YCM?  Are you the one who believes that the enabler should get hit or do you believe that the enabled should get hit?

[Progenitor]

Honestly nothing is set in stone for situations like these, and it's all determined by 1 factor, and 1 factor alone: exactly how strong is the enabler?

 

Generic enablers will, theoretically, always make anything not designed with said enabler in mind somewhat stupid or broken.  It's inevitable.  However, that means that the question then becomes exactly how many things DOES this enable, juxtaposed to how powerful said enabled options are.

 

Through such comparison, you can determine which side needs to be nerfed.  For example, it is my personal example that the Lavalval Chain ban was a well thought out, or at least seemingly so, ban.  Why?  Well lets look at it's strength.  It's a generic rank 4 monster than can send anything to the grave, and is NOT governed by a Hard OPT.  With how much the game has shifted towards getting certain cards in the grave as consistently and as easily as possible, Chain drastically became a complete powerhouse that almost every deck in existence could utilize in some way to extend combos, and set up potentially broken interactions, all on its own, and ONLY limited to your ability to barf out a Rank 4, which is probably one of the easiest things to do in this game.  Not only that, but more and more FTK loops were coming about, and nearly ALL of them were centered around Lavalval Chain's ability to consistently send key things to the grave.  It enabled so many things, and those enabled things had such a wide variety of practical power that in this case, it seems obvious that most of this crap is sorted out simply by getting rid of him.

 

That type of comparison has to be thought out thoroughly for each case, to determine the primary enabler, and just how powerful it actually is.  Not only that, you have to foresee what actually happens if the enabler vanishes.  If the combos still remain, if slightly more difficult to pull off, then simply hitting the enabler and calling it quits is never a good option.

 

So TL : DR, this is an argument that physically cannot be graphed to a simple process; there is no definitive "yes it's always the enabler" or vise versa.  It's entirely variable and subject to circumstance, and thus it should be debated as such.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Hit the enabled. The enabler will serve as a radioactive tag to tell when an enabled becomes too powerful. Ie Lavaval Chain and the Mages. Or skill drain and cards that don't need effects to flourish.

 

Exceptions do exist. Shock while an enabler for r4nk to lock out games arguabbaly got too strong same with Ptolo

 

ROTA too became a little too generic for its own good.

 

Bottom line, there is no fine line, but I lean on enabled' fault

[Lonk]

I personally lean on hitting enablers because it's a safer choice to do in the long run of the gamestate.  Usually, hitting the enabled card is very short-sighted and hitting the enabler usually ends up leading to a weaker retrain of the hit card.  Whether it is good or bad is up to what the game says.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

I personally lean on hitting enablers because it's a safer choice to do in the long run of the gamestate.  Usually, hitting the enabled card is very short-sighted and hitting the enabler usually ends up leading to a weaker retrain of the hit card.  Whether it is good or bad is up to what the game says.

Well yes, that's the typical TCG mentality regarding the lists

[Lonk]

Well yes, that's the typical TCG mentality regarding the lists

 

Better to kill the Caro pups young before they grow up to be powerful threats that massacre everything.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Better to kill the Caro pups young before they grow up to be powerful threats that massacre everything.

Wasn't that that was said about Monster Reborn at one point? Or hell Lavalal chain slowly falling in popularity?

 

Anyway what abuses what is rather ambiguous at times

[Lonk]

Wasn't that that was said about Monster Reborn at one point? Or hell Lavalal chain slowly falling in popularity?

 

Anyway what abuses what is rather ambiguous at times

 

What abuses what can be ambiguous.  There are times when an enabled card is hit though because there are too many other enablers for that one card.  It was a reason why Trish was originally banned, since there are way too many ways to go into Trish and its effect is considered too powerful at the time for what enables it.  Heck, I still think Trish should be banned because it is still an easily enabled card to go into for what it can do.