Why We Play Yu-Gi-Oh

[Snatch Steal]

This is gonna be sappy.

 

Oftentimes, I find myself wondering why I play yugioh, what with the metagame being decent at best.The art for the cards is also quite small, and there's not much flavor behind the game.

 

Then it occurs to me.

 

The reason we play Yugioh is because it's a unique game. No other game has the same kind of speed, strategies, or feel that Yugioh does. Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, Vanguard, Buddyfight to an extent, and Adventure Time all lack a swarm mechanic. Magic is probably closest to Yugioh, since it has "trap cards," but I think we all know by now how slow Magic starts out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no "Special Summon" in Magic. 

 

Yugioh allows you a lot of freedom in your deck choices, too. You're not locked into any particular cards: You don't need mana, or energies, or a flag for your world, or being limited to one clan or a few landscape types. In Yugioh, aside from archetypes, you have total freedom with your deck. That's the beauty of it, and probably the reason why this site is a bit more popular than the other two cardmakers. 

 

This is just me, though.

[Blake]

Actually, you can easily swarm in cardfight.

 

It's just not really going to result in an OTK/near OTK, barring maybe AqF or Messiah.

 

It's also probably faster than YGO, but in a different way.

 

Just to fix points.

 

EDIT: Forgot Novas, too.

 

And RP.

 

Sqarm is getting more real.

[Spinny]

Actually, you can easily swarm in cardfight.

 

It's just not really going to result in an OTK, barring maybe AqF or Messiah.

 

It's also probably faster than YGO, but in a different way.

 

Just to fix points.

Kinda off-topic but i feel like the introduction of G-guards also makes it seem faster since both players can start using the G-zone earlier.

[.Rai]

Yugioh allows you a lot of freedom in your deck choices, too. You're not locked into any particular cards: You don't need mana, or energies, or a flag for your world, or being limited to one clan or a few landscape types. In Yugioh, aside from archetypes, you have total freedom with your deck. That's the beauty of it, and probably the reason why this site is a bit more popular than the other two cardmakers.

Compared to the other "big two" paper TCGs, Pokémon and Magic, YGO is easily the most restrictive in deck building.

 

Also, I think the cardmaker comparison is kinda worthless. YCM's more popular than the other two sites by virtue of age, and it being the first. There's far superior Magic card makers out there.

[ENMaker]

They tricked me into thinking the cards would come to life when I was very young.

[Snatch Steal]

Compared to the other "big two" paper TCGs, Pokémon and Magic, YGO is easily the most restrictive in deck building.

 

Um, how?

 

In pokemon and magic, you have to have cards of certain types or colors. You can't play a red card with islands, and you can't use an attack that requires water energy with fire energy. In Yugioh, you can put any cards into any deck, regardless of what they are (not implying it would be good).

 

If you're saying it's restrictive because there are good cards, then everything is restrictive. You obviously would want to use the best cards, it's just that Yugioh's rules are lenient enough to allow up to the unbanned number of 40-60 cards to be used in one main deck, not to mention the extra deck (which now only CFV has) and the side deck.

[Trebuchet MS]

Um, how?

 

In pokemon and magic, you have to have cards of certain types or colors. You can't play a red card with islands, and you can't use an attack that requires water energy with fire energy. In Yugioh, you can put any cards into any deck, regardless of what they are (not implying it would be good).

 

If you're saying it's restrictive because there are good cards, then everything is restrictive. You obviously would want to use the best cards, it's just that Yugioh's rules are lenient enough to allow up to the unbanned number of 40-60 cards to be used in one main deck, not to mention the extra deck (which now only CFV has) and the side deck.

Indeed, you can't play red cards with blue mana, but MtG has more generalized card design, rather than Yugioh's archetype shenanigans. This means there are a lot more ways for you to vary your build of a certain strategy. Yugioh has a lot of cards that don't even function properly outside their designed strategy.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

You can't play a red card with islands

But nothing stops a blue deck from also having red

[Sixty]

magic can get pretty doofy, but its system allows for more interesting game types like limited and edh

 

ygo is also wild in its own right, from what i remember, but the lack of rotation kinda turned me off though.

[Just Crouton]

Magic doesn't need Special Summons because it doesn't restrict you to 1 summon per turn.

 

On one hand, I get the issue with how CFV restricts deckbuilding by clan, but to be fair, there's like 24 clans with multiple builds for each clan.

 

Buddyfight's kind of boring, but I don't see the problem with flag thing. It's supposed to represent the player, which adds to immersing the player into the game.

 

Mana, perfectly understandable. I like Buddyfight's version of the system for not completely slowing the game early on so you can drop some cards like CFV/YGO while balancing other cards with costs.

 

On restrictive deckbuilding, hasn't YGO just been archetypes since Zexal? You get a small pile of cards, throw in 3 each of the best choices, then fill it out with staples? I mean, they've been supporting old cards like BEWD by making them into archetypes. It seems to be sort of a standard with Japanese games more than western ones.

 

 

 

 

Compared to the other "big two" paper TCGs, Pokémon and Magic, YGO is easily the most restrictive in deck building.

Also, I think the cardmaker comparison is kinda worthless. YCM's more popular than the other two sites by virtue of age, and it being the first. There's far superior Magic card makers out there.

 

Magic Set Editor is master race, and it's a better YGO card maker than YCM's.

[Blake]

On restrictive deckbuilding, hasn't YGO just been archetypes since Zexal? You get a small pile of cards, throw in 3 each of the best choices, then fill it out with staples? I mean, they've been supporting old cards like BEWD by making them into archetypes. It seems to be sort of a standard with Japanese games more than western ones.

Lemme think...

 

Shaddoll was much the opposite. It was an archetype, yes, but it greatly encouraged finding out what ELSE makes the deck work better/matchups/etc. Could be played as goodstuffs, trap.dek, etc.

 

Even the archetypal decks (from the OCG) either encourage or don't punish trying to find out what else works in the deck. Kozmo are racist seeming, as are BA, but even the latter has insanely strogn hybridizing potential. Like the "speedroid" engine, which is basically more TGU.

[Snatch Steal]

Magic doesn't need Special Summons because it doesn't restrict you to 1 summon per turn.

 

On one hand, I get the issue with how CFV restricts deckbuilding by clan, but to be fair, there's like 24 clans with multiple builds for each clan.

 

Buddyfight's kind of boring, but I don't see the problem with flag thing. It's supposed to represent the player, which adds to immersing the player into the game.

 

Mana, perfectly understandable. I like Buddyfight's version of the system for not completely slowing the game early on so you can drop some cards like CFV/YGO while balancing other cards with costs.

 

On restrictive deckbuilding, hasn't YGO just been archetypes since Zexal? You get a small pile of cards, throw in 3 each of the best choices, then fill it out with staples? I mean, they've been supporting old cards like BEWD by making them into archetypes. It seems to be sort of a standard with Japanese games more than western ones.

 

 

 

 

 

Magic Set Editor is master race, and it's a better YGO card maker than YCM's.

 

magic can get pretty doofy, but its system allows for more interesting game types like limited and edh

 

ygo is also wild in its own right, from what i remember, but the lack of rotation kinda turned me off though.

 

Indeed, you can't play red cards with blue mana, but MtG has more generalized card design, rather than Yugioh's archetype shenanigans. This means there are a lot more ways for you to vary your build of a certain strategy. Yugioh has a lot of cards that don't even function properly outside their designed strategy.

 

This is all from a metagame standpoint. I mean that, even though it wouldn't be very good, you're not bound to a single lump of cards based on what resources you have. You don't need to center your play style around a certain type, you can mix things up and play unpredictable cards.

 

Yugioh lets you play Giant Growth in a Red/Blue deck, so to speak. Maybe you wouldn't do it, but it still lets you do it.

 

With this variety, we get a lot of interesting concepts outside of what the metagame throws at us. 

 

I guess it's just me, but there's something rewarding about not having to just look at my cards and see that they're all the same color. 

[.Rai]

I'm not sure I understand the comparison. You could put red cards in your deck with Islands. I'm not implying it's good, but you can. Equally, you're not exactly going to play Tramid Hunter in your Monarch deck (I don't even know whether this makes sense, YGO kek, kill me), even if you could.

 

The technical comparison makes no sense really. From a sheerly practical point of view, the number of generic cards in Magic form a far larger part of the game than archetypes in YGO do. The statistics of freedom of choice are probably not worth doing, but seems pretty clear that Magic wins that one by a landslide. Even the whole '40-60 card' thing doesn't really work. There's no upper limit to MtG decks. Hell, a particular 200+ card deck has seen play sporadically in tournaments.

 

Edit: If you want to play Giant Growth in your Red/Blue deck, you splash green. That's how it works.

 

Lemme think...

 

Shaddoll was much the opposite. It was an archetype, yes, but it greatly encouraged finding out what ELSE makes the deck work better/matchups/etc. Could be played as goodstuffs, trap.dek, etc.

 

Even the archetypal decks (from the OCG) either encourage or don't punish trying to find out what else works in the deck. Kozmo are racist seeming, as are BA, but even the latter has insanely strogn hybridizing potential. Like the "speedroid" engine, which is basically more TGU.

There's definitely more flexibility in YGO than people give credit for, but I think YGO is fundamentally more an engine-based game, where cards come in little packages, whereas Magic relies on giving you modular choice for particular individual slots.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

This is all from a metagame standpoint. I mean that, even though it wouldn't be very good, you're not bound to a single lump of cards based on what resources you have. You don't need to center your play style around a certain type, you can mix things up and play unpredictable cards.

First off, nothing prevents you from just adding said resource. A blue red deck can also have green. Why the hell not. This is like saying YGO is bad because you can't summon titanic galaxy without having access to level 8. If you are specifically preventing yourself from doing something, of course you can't do it, but that can't be used as an argument against.

 

(I'm not even going to go into why separating the cards into colors is a very good thing from a game design standpoint)

[Blake]

There's definitely more flexibility in YGO than people give credit for, but I think YGO is fundamentally more an engine-based game, where cards come in little packages, whereas Magic relies on giving you modular choice for particular individual slots.

Oh no, I certainly don't think it's some paragon of deckbuilding.

 

I just want people to acknowledge the flexibility that IS there, as you did.

 

There are lots of small engines that are usable: Brilliant Fusion and Speedroid being major ones. They've somewhat shifted fro mthe consistency boostign engines of the past to more power based engines, but it's still a game where engines, be they pre-built or discovered, make or break a deck.

[.Rai]

At no-one in particular, just a general note, I'm totally happy to debate the design, because there's lots of interesting differences between the TCGs.

 

Obviously, this doesn't mean it's a bad thing to like YGO. Far from it.

 

@Black: I have no clue what the reputation of the deck was, but I was big fan of the Hat deck in YGO. Decks that feel like inventions don't feel super common in YGO, so I thought it looked clever. I mean, it was probably like some degenerate wallop, I don't actually know :P

[Blake]

@Black: I have no clue what the reputation of the deck was, but I was big fan of the Hat deck in YGO. Decks that feel like inventions don't feel super common in YGO, so I thought it looked clever. I mean, it was probably like some degenerate wallop, I don't actually know :P

uuuuh 50/50

 

H.A.T. was Hands Artifacts Traptrix.

 

It used three different engines in order to play the grind game, i nthat you had good floaters (the hands) bait/power backrow (the artifacts), and the ability to search Bottomless/other trap Holes on Lv. 4 bodies (the traptrix)

 

Some people adored the grind format, despite it being super backrow heavy, while others hated how slow the format was, overall.

 

It was very neat, and I still like it, but I understand not liking a deck that revolves around soft versions of "you can't play YGO".

 

Then we got qli, which was a xenophobic floodgate/OTK.dek, and no one liked that.

[Aix]

I liked Yugioh for the speed and stupid sheet I could do. Also because it's like the only card game I bothered getting into.

 

Magic takes too long.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Cause Trishula is Waifu

[Toffee.]

This is like G Gundam all over again.

Doesn't matter how good you are at the game. Doesn't matter how bad you are at the game.

You play Ygo to discover friendly rivalries with other players and you imprint on oneanother's means of playing. Even if it's just a very small/near-unnoticeable change, it's still enough to prove that Ygo is a means of drawing people together that share a common goal; To play a motherfucking card game.

The collective ideas, playstyle, and overall differences of everyone together is what makes Ygo what it is- A game of a shared love of dueling.

[Trebuchet MS]

When it comes to deck design, the greater number of possible generic interactions and variants in MtG usually means that when you put the deck together, the strategy and variant of the deck feel like something you picked on your own, as opposed to Yugioh's archetype cards outright telling you how they want to be played and what they must be played with.

 

But enough of that line of discussion. That's not why we're here.

 

I continue to play Yugioh IRL mainly to test how far my old Decks can function in the face of a very volatile game state. So far, Chain Burn is eternal.

 

That, and I can't seem to abandon it entirely because it's the game that was my gateway to other trading card games. I may shake my head at how out-of-control its power creep is becoming, and how self-building its archetypes become, but I can't ignore the few times it puts out well-designed strategies or at least tries to crack its self-building tendencies. Even its bad eggs serve as reminders to how not to design well.

[Mutant Monster RAEG-HAPYP]

When it comes to deck design, the greater number of possible generic interactions and variants in MtG usually means that when you put the deck together, the strategy and variant of the deck feel like something you picked on your own, as opposed to Yugioh's archetype cards outright telling you how they want to be played and what they must be played with.

 

But enough of that line of discussion. That's not why we're here.

 

I continue to play Yugioh IRL mainly to test how far my old Decks can function in the face of a very volatile game state. So far, Chain Burn is eternal.

 

That, and I can't seem to abandon it entirely because it's the game that was my gateway to other trading card games. I may shake my head at how out-of-control its power creep is becoming, and how self-building its archetypes become, but I can't ignore the few times it puts out well-designed strategies or at least tries to crack its self-building tendencies. Even its bad eggs serve as reminders to how not to design well.

I'd imagine a lot of people shake their head at the power creep, tbh.

 

On a side note, even though I feel like I find more joy in diecast replicas of cars these days, I still can't shake YGO or any card game these days, whether it's my IRL collecting or the few times I do play. I don't really know why.

 

I have actually cut down on buying them, though. Collecting cards is fine and all, but, I just find more bang for my buck in other stuff.

[Fusion X. Denver]

I haven't played Yugioh in ages. My friend forces me to play every now and then with my old scrub deck; he plays competitively and our duels are very one-sided since my deck's from DM era. I liked the more casual pace from back then compared to how fast it seems to be nowadays.

I got into it after reading the manga. My friends and I even fooled around with different formats like Kaiba's 1st Duel Disk format or even the original Magic & Wizards set-up.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

I mean in MtG I can make an Ox deck which have no actual support within each other and there's hardly any good Ox cards, and still sometimes win.

Can't do the same in YGO as much. At least in my experience.

Though I enjoy both.

Because damn do I enjoy playing cards.

 

Why I enjoy YGO is simply for the joy of being like "Woo look at the thing I pumped out, rawr I used these cards and now my monster is strong, grrr"

...So basically I enjoy YGO because it let's me mess around and pop out some cool things.

[ÆƵ–]

I play this game because I'm not a big fan of mana-pool-esque mechanics. Tempoing is great and all, but when you have to draw into/ search the things that set the tempo, it makes me sad.

Hearthstone is a nice example of my ideal tempoing mechanics thing. You don't have to draw into cards that produce mana; You just have to be patient and play the early game to make sure your tempo game is tight. 

 

 

Also another beef I have with magic is that you have to declare all your attacks at once. I've played yugioh longer than any other card game, I'm used to going one at a time.