Droll & Lock Bird

[~British Soul~]

 

If a card(s) is added from the Main Deck to your opponent's hand, except during the Draw Phase (Quick Effect): You can send this card from your hand to the GY; for the rest of this turn, cards cannot be added from either player's Main Deck to the hand.

 

I'm not surprised by this, but Konami has decided to cut this from the TCG version of the Powercode Link Structure Deck due out next week. I've got mixed feelings about said cut because one hand, it probs means Konami are planning to hit it next list, whilst on the other hand it seems counterproductive, by that I mean it pretty much would've been the main incentive to buy the Structure Deck, so by removing it, there's less value and it'll likely sell less units than if it was there like in the OCG version. Discuss?

[ihop]

Looks like it might be getting banned, and I'd be fine with that. It's easily the most obnoxious hand trap because it's often useless but when it does it completely stops someone's turn a la Maxx "C". Hand traps shouldn't also be floodgates, keep it to single use stuff like Ash and Impermanence which require you to be smart and hit the right thing.

 

Also, I place full blame on Droll for the Reincarnation Droll combo. I honestly think Trickstar Reincarnation is a really cool card which works with the theme of the deck and I don't think it should be hit just because of Droll.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Maxx C doesn't stop your turn unless your deck is built so poorly it has no SS offramp. Too much of TCG's plays are based on a self entitled right to not have hinderence.

 

Gouki being the best deck is a prime example of this.

 

It's disheartening, however I agree with hop - banning Droll is right up Tewart's (misguided and asanine) lane

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

I would rather a deck have 6 droll and lock birds than 3 maxx c

 

Edit: The Droll and Reincarnation combo mathematical isn't even worth hitting either card because of it

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

I know, but that's also how you end up with a deck like Gouki

[VCR_CAT]

I know, but that's also how you end up with a deck like Gouki

 

Arguing about what cards do or do not exist is the reason that a certain type of deck happens is inane.

 

Konami designing Goukis is how you end up with a deck like Gouki, and for no other reason.

 

Also, do we really need to go down the "Maxx 'C' as being a healthy card or not" route again? There's basically an entire thread of you being curb-stomped in the regard, and should I just link it or do we need to go over that all over once more?

 

 

Other than this, there's not much for me to say on this card that hasn't been said already. Hand-traps being one-for-one interactions are fine, in my opinion, but having a single card with the capability of shutting down a turn completely for no effort other than to simply exist is just not good at all.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

You have a bad habit of just declaring things, Drew, and then dipping out of the convo, so how about we go over it again? Obviously your offer wasn't in good faith but I'll take you up on it

 

Maxx C has a very negative effect on Extralink focused decks. This is why even a needed sky strike deck has a better gouki match up OCG side than it does in TCG. My earlier pt, there are a number of decks that can end SS at will, Like Thunder Dragon (and ABC if you want a more link focused deck for a better comparison) and still end up with a reasonable board, Gouki isn't one of those.

 

The result, sadly, is an infernity style result where a deck needs to special summon 20 times to be good, but ends up oppressively good when it does.

 

There is no objective measure if this is a good thing, but it is more dicerollish

 

OCG gouki are actually much consistent than their tcg varients due to having 3 major openings, but the shortfall to maxx remains

---

 

None of this is to say OCG is perfect or even healthy. It suffers from different problems. Just wanted to kill the lowganging deflection before you resort to it :)

[VCR_CAT]

You have a bad habit of just declaring things, Drew, and then dipping out of the convo, so how about we go over it again?

 

TIL having the latest post is "dipping out of the convo". I put in the other stuff to keep the post on the card we're talking about, but I guess you'll take any little slice of pepperoni to try and make a petty-pizza out of.

 

 

 

Maxx C has a very negative effect on Extralink focused decks. This is why even a needed sky strike deck has a better gouki match up OCG side than it does in TCG. My earlier pt, there are a number of decks that can end SS at will, Like Thunder Dragon (and ABC if you want a more link focused deck for a better comparison) and still end up with a reasonable board, Gouki isn't one of those.

 

The result, sadly, is an infernity style result where a deck needs to special summon 20 times to be good, but ends up oppressively good when it does.

 

There is no objective measure if this is a good thing, but it is more dicerollish

 

So what you're telling me is "It's a single card that completely dicks over a deck that relies on a lot of special summons and basically ends the turn for itself, while a deck that does not need to special summon much at all is just fine". In other news, "water is wet".

 

Don't act like Gouki is even a sole example or anything. These days, a deck that does not need a good, multiple summons and several-step combos to get rolling is a rarity, and if those decks want to actually be good or mean anything, they have to have cards as oppressive as Superbolt or strategies that just replace their monsters with spells in terms of combo establishment.

 

If you ever want to actually look at the broader picture instead of going blinders on the Road-of-the-King pie-charts, you can look at what kind of effect Link Monsters are going to have on the game, and how older decks that composed their fields with only a couple steps now have to fill in more of those steps with Link combos, which means generally more Special Summons. This isn't a commentary on the health of the game, but simply to state that, on average, decks require more special summons in a turn to establish their turns than they did even year or two ago.

 

And it's not like this is really going to get better, because as we can see with decks like Thunder Dragons or Sky Strikers, you either need special circumstances or a singular monster that's strong enough to dick over a turn on its own to bring the summons down. From a design standpoint, there's really no practical way to reduce the game to 2014 levels of summons without massively hurting the game itself. Decks will need more summons to work, which only goes to strengthen a card like Maxx "C" more.

 

And with how advantage works, the only way you can go past Maxx "C" is if your deck doesn't rely on Special Summons much at all, or the end-game field you produce is so strong and oppressive that it doesn't really matter what your opponent draws into because they won't be able to do anything about it.

 

Your argument only really reinforces this observation, and cements the fact that, yes, Maxx "C" is a card fully capable of basically winning a game purely on its own outside of some exceptional circumstances that are very rare in the general gamestate these days.

 

We're seeing the same with Droll & Lock as well. As the game evolves to further cement the need for searching for a deck to work consistently, as special summons become something a deck needs to work consistently, then cards like Droll & Lock only grow stronger to the point that shutting down this one aspect of play is enough to completely shift the flow of advantage and win the game.

 

That is neither healthy play or interaction, and if you want any sort of observations on your "argument"

 

Having the game be "more dicerollish" is absolutely a fairly objective measure on whether that's a good thing. Having games become far more decided simply just by how lucky you are in turn determination or "Whoops, they happened to open that one card they can't search", then that's bad for competitive play no matter how you look at it.

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

why play droll when you can play relay soul and tking rai-oh

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

TIL having the latest post is "dipping out of the convo". I put in the other stuff to keep the post on the card we're talking about, but I guess you'll take any little slice of pepperoni to try and make a petty-pizza out of.

 

So what you're telling me is "It's a single card that completely dicks over a deck that relies on a lot of special summons and basically ends the turn for itself, while a deck that does not need to special summon much at all is just fine". In other news, "water is wet".

 

Don't act like Gouki is even a sole example or anything. These days, a deck that does not need a good, multiple summons and several-step combos to get rolling is a rarity, and if those decks want to actually be good or mean anything, they have to have cards as oppressive as Superbolt or strategies that just replace their monsters with spells in terms of combo establishment.

 

If you ever want to actually look at the broader picture instead of going blinders on the Road-of-the-King pie-charts, you can look at what kind of effect Link Monsters are going to have on the game, and how older decks that composed their fields with only a couple steps now have to fill in more of those steps with Link combos, which means generally more Special Summons. This isn't a commentary on the health of the game, but simply to state that, on average, decks require more special summons in a turn to establish their turns than they did even year or two ago.

 

And it's not like this is really going to get better, because as we can see with decks like Thunder Dragons or Sky Strikers, you either need special circumstances or a singular monster that's strong enough to dick over a turn on its own to bring the summons down. From a design standpoint, there's really no practical way to reduce the game to 2014 levels of summons without massively hurting the game itself. Decks will need more summons to work, which only goes to strengthen a card like Maxx "C" more.

 

And with how advantage works, the only way you can go past Maxx "C" is if your deck doesn't rely on Special Summons much at all, or the end-game field you produce is so strong and oppressive that it doesn't really matter what your opponent draws into because they won't be able to do anything about it.

 

Your argument only really reinforces this observation, and cements the fact that, yes, Maxx "C" is a card fully capable of basically winning a game purely on its own outside of some exceptional circumstances that are very rare in the general gamestate these days.

 

We're seeing the same with Droll & Lock as well. As the game evolves to further cement the need for searching for a deck to work consistently, as special summons become something a deck needs to work consistently, then cards like Droll & Lock only grow stronger to the point that shutting down this one aspect of play is enough to completely shift the flow of advantage and win the game.

 

That is neither healthy play or interaction, and if you want any sort of observations on your "argument"

 

Having the game be "more dicerollish" is absolutely a fairly objective measure on whether that's a good thing. Having games become far more decided simply just by how lucky you are in turn determination or "Whoops, they happened to open that one card they can't search", then that's bad for competitive play no matter how you look at it.

The Pizza puns seem a bit forced, but to each their own. What I mean is you love to come in with the "I'm right, and let me explain why lowly peasants" 

 

You could cut 90% of the material from your posts and sill get the message through. 

 

(1) No, Maxx hurts a certain play style more than it hurts a certain type of deck (more on this in P4). A good example of a deck that special summons a lot would be something like pendulum magician. They need to special summon to succeed, but if confronted with maxx, they can pretty easily end on Venom Magician + Electrumite + Space Time while giving Maxx only a few if any draws. This set up when combined with the likely Astro (or Chrono I guess in TCG) in hand puts them in a very good spot for the next turn.

 

(2) With Maxx at three, both plays have about a 1/3 chance of drawing it T1, and most decks have pretty effective deck thinning so that odds value goes up pretty significantly. The check exists on both players. The chance of it being in the opponents hand, and not wanting to end with a half finished glass cannon is enough reason to build more conservatively.

 

(3) I said it fucks over Extra Links, and there it does, Maxx hurts decks built to have no good middle equilibrium pt; it hurts the play style to go all or nothing, and an Extra Link focused deck does that. Why is it you work condescension into every post of yours? The only "blinders" I'm seeing is looking at Needlefiber or Isolde and only seeing EXTRA LINK instead of maybe seeing TG Magician + Ghost Oger or Dark Law. 

 

(4) There are decks (that matter still) like Pendulum magicians again that can end on a turn with minimal draws off maxx c and create situations where they're in a good spot to to have +2 removal on notice. Not every deck needs to go full Infernity and special summon 20 times. Even a more temperate Gouki build doesn't need to be built like that. OCG Hero Gouki for example can easily end on #41 or Dark Law if confronted with Maxx, ie, the midpoint equilibrium.

 

(5) None of the top 3 decks in OCG are an extra link focused deck. Thunder as you noted have a built in mistake combined with a very aggressive follow up turn. Is that so different that LADD Rulers? You're making it sound like the dynamic has changed. There have always been the Spellbooks Deck, the Ruler Deck, the Trap Heavy deck, the only thing that is new is explosion of Infernity style decks that attempt to vomit an unbreakable board T1 and fall flat when confronted with obstacles. It clearly can get better, the current OCG format is a perfect example given it really is a modern version of the Ruler-Book-Verz format

 

I think your argument here is kinda a sham, you're saying decks either need to be like Gouki or X, Y, Z, but those last three deck types have been the YGO make up for a long time, it's not something revolutionary and new as you're making it out to be. The game has already been reduced to 2013/2014; at least OCG side. 

 

This is again incorrect, ending on the previous example I noted of Electrumite + Space Time + Venom is a 2 card removal and draw. That field would take minimal special summons to set up and would also hinder most decks enough to net you another turn. Almost every deck has local maxima points if you're willing to look for them.

 

What you're actually seeing in TCG is a butterfly effect. Card interactions are complex, removing vanity from the game creates certain shock waves, removing maxx creates others and so on. TCG is in an unstable state (currently) where they'll have to remove more and more cards from the pool to patch up the old mistakes they've made. They eventually realize they're being dumb and try to undo the initial hits (Solemn J, Reborn, Ravine come to mind), but only after a few formats of self inflicted damage. 

 

Before you seize on the deflection, no OCG is not perfect, far from it. They have a bad habit of hitting the second third and 4th best deck in a stable meta and creating a format of an imbalanced tier 1 or 0. But that is a different problem entirely. TCG has basically destroyed the dam, and is now complaining about uncontrolled floods

 

Seriously though, try being less condescending, it makes life more enjoyable for everyone

 

Why is it you work condescension into every post of yours? The only "blinders" I'm seeing is looking at Needlefiber or Isolde and only seeing EXTRA LINK instead of maybe seeing TG Magician + Ghost Oger or Dark Law.