_I'm always one card short, always one day late!_ _For once I'd like an ending I can celebrate._ 🎶

Konami has created a self fulfilling prophecy. They've made combos so ridiculous that you need hand traps to stand any chance, and now that half of everyone's deck is hand traps and people are bricking, they're making sure players can do everything by drawing just 1 card and going full combo.

The biggest problem of modern Yu-Gi-Oh is how consistent modern decks are, and 1 card combos (along with plentiful searchers) are paramount to this consistency. You can put so many resources to breaking a board, and then one of their cards will float to a 1 card combo card and they can do it all over again next turn. Just nonsensical game design. It does not punish over extending at all, there is no real decision making to do.

One of things I hate about the one card combos is that I play the same game, every game. There is no variation in my plays. I search card combo, then I do my combo.

Competitive Yugioh is just trash now, it's in such a boring, toxic state.

It pisses me off when i wipe out my opponent's board but he manages to turn things around with just the 2 cards left in his hand

Was waiting for Paul to say this video was gonna be "a little different", but then he hit us w the "Hater Ass Video" 😂 Love it 🙌

It’s honestly getting pretty ridiculous. Decks today have either •Way too much room for non-engine •Too many ways to get to their 1 card overtuned starter that goes +7 and nets you followup •No critical weaknesses for overextension •Way too generic options that everyone can end on instead of playing your deck’s intentional boss •Combos that leave you safely insulted from interaction or turn skip your opponent so you can kill them the next turn. IMO, they need to dial back to 2-3 card combos, make more meaningful restrictions to these new engines, not give everyone a “Poplar”, and likely ban over a dozen cards to even begin to curb the absurd powercreep. But somehow I highly doubt that’s gonna happen

I fear for the day when they finally introduce a zero card combo

This is a new era of yugioh with 1 card combos,15 handtraps, tier zero formats

I'm loving the "time travel 2010" on masterduel. I can set a card for a turn and let my hand build up.

This is why cards should not have more than 2 effects including summoning condition

I was playing HEROs in MD the other day and set up my board with only an Imperm as interruption against me. I pass turn, and my opponent proceeds to Duster, Lava Golem D Law and DPE, Ash my Maxx C, Tactics to take Shining Neos Wingman, and go full combo with either the last card in their hand, or the one they drew for turn. Feels incredibly bad when you're deck doesn't have the luxury to play 40% handtraps or breakers

1 card combos also make the game harder to learn. You can't just read a card and analyze if it's good because it's often in the context of "it searches this, which sends this from deck to GY, which searches this, which summons this, which searches this..."

You see I don't have a particular dislike for one card combos. Decks like exosister have one card combos with exosister martha, however exosister's one card combo has restrictions and doesn't have a super high ceiling for the end board, thus making it not problematic. What makes 1 card combos problematic is when they have little to no restrictions, and allow access to generic tools in the extra deck like the snake eye and the fiendsmith cards do

It's actually the biggest reason that I've left the competitive Yu-Gi-Oh scene about two years ago and will never return. I don't have the money to shell out for these powerful decks or even just powerful and obscenely expensive staple cards, so it leaves me at a significant disadvantage. I'm also just more of a fan of the back-and-forth type duels anyway.

Every powerful "starter" card now all have a variation of these effects: - An effect to Special Summon itself -An effect that adds a card to the hand when Summoned - An effect that triggers when it leaves the field. -And, of course, for some reason, a Quick Effect. WHYYYY???

The 2005 & 2010 formats they've done in Master Duel have been the most fun I've had playing Yu-Gi-Oh for the simple reason that the duel is not over if i draw a bad starting hand. Like i said in a previous video, one card combo decks are the reason why i don't have that big of a problem with floodgates. Yeah, they're annoying cards to deal with, but at least it's fast. It's not 10 minutes of searching & special summoning to create a board that does pretty much the exact same function of stopping you from playing.

Konami: Got it, make more 1 card combos

It's crazy to me that 'discard for cost' actually means "special summon from Gy for cost"

I think something important to note when it comes to extenders is that they used to have a clearly delineated role from starters. An extender helped you play through disruption, but did nothing on its own unless you could already get your engine going to some extent. Starters could not double as extenders because they usually require your normal summon, so opening multiple starters can clog your hand. I think a great example is rescue-ace before bonfire. Air lifter and poplar are starters, but opening both doesn't help because you need to normal summon them to use them. Fire engine, preventer, and the field spell are extenders, helping you make a bigger board or play through disruption, but they are useless without any starters. Emergency can double as a starter or extender, but only if you already have another r-ace monster in your hand. Thus, you need to carefully balance the ratios of starters and extenders to ensure you don't draw too many of either. Bonfire and diabellstar have really blurred the lines between starter and extender. You don't need to have gotten your engine going to use them, and they aren't limited by your normal summon either. They majorly contribute to the reason that SE doesn't have a clear choke point. There's no reason not to play as many copies of those cards as you can because you aren't really punished for drawing multiple copies.

One card combos is a long term side effect from YGO's specific flavor of power creep. Now that normal summons matter so little in the game compared to the past, the game basically has no resource system, so now it's at the point where the meta deck is one where you basically Pot of Greed every 2 or 3 plays, and the game has proven to have no intention of slowing down. Incidently, every time it tried to slow down (Pendulums and Links), they never commit to it and somehow make the problem worse.

I think that the marketing strategy is clear Make a clearly OP deck that is also easy to play (Fireking, Snake-eye) Undersell some combo cards After some time reprint them Reprint them till they become worthless Ban the cards that enable the OP deck to function

The only good think about one card combos is that you know where exactly when to surrender.

One card combos can exist if there is a hard lock for the combo. Like the one card to do the combo should immediately lock you in one way. Like Snake-Eye ash should’ve locked you into FIREs.

I remember when each card had a purpose to remain on the field. Now, half the cards in a deck are just fodder.

I’m honestly sick of what one card combos have done to people’s attention span. It goes back to that video of yours that you made a couple weeks ago that a lot of people hated on, the “don’t give up too early one”. It’s teaching horrible habits to young, newer, and casual players. An example is in the 2010 OCG Trial event on MD right now, half of the duels I have played if I mirror force or dark hole someone they automatically quit! I played a 30 turn game where I was out advantaged the whole game and I came back! Obviously a majority of MD players didn’t play in 2010 but the one card combos taught them horrible habits to quit

The game is at the point your opening hand wants to be 4-5 handtraps and a hearts of the cards draw if your going 2nd if youve any hope of winning Going first is a near win as your chances of being interrupted are both lower and fewer in number Player 2 gets a maze

I think this is the first time I’ve got nothing constructive to add. We feel the exact same way on this lmao Great vid and topic. These are definitely my favorite Yugitube videos to listen to, and watching is great since you’re so animated

Make Yu-Gi-Oh great again konami.. these one card combos are ridiculous! How is it fun to not even have a turn? 2-3 card combos need to come back, but with how many cards within themselves are one card combos these days they would be hard pressed to even do anything about it tbh. We need offical multiple legacy formats the games been put for a quarter century the game has changed so much it's almost like playing a whole different game entirely.

Also 2 cards combo deck have less free spots, usually around 6 to 12 cards max, whereas 1 card combo can go up to 20 and that's kinda crazy

Swordsoul seemed like the height of what a deck could be. It's so absurd to have powercrept so far past Swordsoul.

I’m glad to see the audience of this channel can actually be honest about one card combos and not pathetically avoid it and pretend it doesn’t exist and suggest we ban every other card from decks that try to compete with it. It’s just getting tiring. It makes the game un fun and unplayable for everyone who isn’t a hardcore competitive player, which is the majority of YuGiOh players.

I'm sad for Yugioh fans. 😢 I'd be very unhappy if my favorite game was in this kind of state.

Those are the cards that “do everything for me without any work”

*Rips up all copies of snake-eye ash on earth. So they can never be used against me. In all seriousness though, we do need to reform yugioh to where you at least need 2-3 cards combos to get to a unbreakable board.

solving the one card combo is essentially asking konami to solve power creep, which is ultimately against their interests. They need to sell product, and to do so people have to need to buy more cards, and the best way to make that happen is to make the new cards more powerful than the last (perfect example - multchummy is a secret in the new pack - who would have thought?). My guess is they're gonna go in the other direction - more one card starters (like how basically ALL of the tenpai cards are 1 card starters) or even zero card starters (random extra deck monster that you can make with cards in deck that is full combo.

This is exactly why I won’t even participate in my locals anymore I really want to play yugioh but at this point I find myself asking what’s the point I have to use the hand trap copy of everything else and not able to use my own personal decks

You're absolutely right. I'd might be able to tolerate it if we had more hand traps that weren't monsters. Infinite Impermanence alone isn't enough and including three of Ash AND Effect Veiler on top of that? That's, like, half your monsters right there! That's not customization, that's a non-choice. Then you have to run flood gates just so you can play and then your opponent gets all whiney about it because he can't play (but if he couldn't account for floodgates in his deck, you could might argue his deck was poorly designed). It's very frustrating.

In the past you needed to make your deck work, now is "i need three of thir structure, buying all this staples, and this single card of 200 bucks or i cant play this deck".

I like with Cyberdarkness Dragon, you have to go through a series of resources and fodder to even summon it. Unfortunately it requires your entire hand, is easily outed by disruption, and even after it's field bound, all it takes is a kaiju or some easy destruction effect to render that 1 monster useless. Luckily it has a bunch of useful recources that can search each other until it's needed late game. Meanwhile, other archetypes just dance over the other opponent's gameplay with little to no effort and players call this difference in card effects a skill issue. Edit: I'm open to what the game has, but it has become very polarized over the past 3-5 years particularly. Great Video.

I think my biggest gripe with '1 card combos' is none other than link monsters, especially Mathmech Talker and Snake-Eyes. Mathmech Circular is definitely a 1 card combo (thank goodness it's banned in TCG, but MD still allows it) since it basically allows you to end your board with a link-5 and maybe a Heatsoul to get two extra draws, and you better hope they're not handtraps or extra extenders. I didn't even include the other cyberse extender spells that help you get more materials in your hand/GY so you can still easily end with a Accesscode talker on your next turn with just two materials on the board. Snake-Eyes is also atrocious because all the monsters themselves are basically 1 card combos. Yeah sure, Snake-Eye Ash is limited (in MD) but Bonfire's still at 3 lol. Gotta still milk the players' wallet after all. Now look, we do have a lot of 1 card combos these days for many decks and archetypes: examples being Branded, Exosister, and Heroes etc. But the two I focused on are the worst of the bunch and one way to fix/limit 1 card combos is to impose restrictions to the 'cost' monsters' effects.

The problem isn't just with the one-card starters, it is one-card starters that even if you negate on field they then usually have a graveyard effect that gets the job done anyway so you need more than one negate for the card (except effect veiler obviously.) Often with a distinct lack of hard once per turn clauses. I am primarily a galaxy-eyes player and while I guess that technically has 1-card starters if I get Galaxy hundred or foolish to dump Photon Jumper, in reality to go full combo I really need a few other names in hand to extend with if I hope to build my full end board. I can have a hand full of in-archetype cards and still brick because half of them need specific on-field conditions to be special summoned.

I played the 2010 format in Masterduel and had a duel go 46 turns. You'd think it be a boring duel but it was so fun, i could have an empty field and not have to worry about the opponent drawing 1 card that turns into a combo ending on 4 boss monsters to beat me in one battle phase.

Here are my thoughts on this whole discussion: - One card combos are not the problem, the amount of said one card combo cards in the deck are the REAL problem, if you take snake-eyes for example and you break it down you get - 3x ash + 3x witch + 3 Wanted + 3 Bonfire + 2 Original + 1 Fieldspell (that can technically allow you to combo during your opponents turn) That's 15 cards out of 40 that lead to a Full combo

One card combos were one of the things that drove me out, even though I played Earth Machine. I feel like there's no real downside to having a one card combo in decks anymore, back then you needed to risk playing bricks which could absolutely slaughter you if you drew them, but these days, nope! You get your combo absolutely free!

They haven’t listened then, they definitely won’t now 😂

U know the game is bad current day when your forced to run 15-18 hand traps

1 card “combo” lmao

If Konami hadn't gone in the direction of lesser/no resource cost for powerful effects, we never would've needed hand traps. Nothing more annoying than having to play around cards that you have no idea are actually in the opponents hand.

The one thing I miss about YuGiOh! is that I miss playing the deck that *I* want to play. Having to build a theme around staples like Ash, Imperm, etc. ruins the flow of the deck and takes the creativity out of deckbuilding. :/ It also makes locals a pain in the ass when all of the decks feel the exact same due to staples and 1 card combos...

This reminds me of how one of my favorite decks, Fortune Lady, functions. It has a couple of searches, but they're all conditional, and ultimately Fortune Lady doesn't build some massive board. At the most, you're getting the Synchro boss monster, Every, out on the field, and a lot of times she's alone, because the deck isn't built to assemble a board. The searches are also conditional in that one lets you grab a card that mentions "Fortune Lady," but some of the cards in the archetype don't, so you're limited, and the other search special summons a Fortune Lady, but it's only if you already have one on the field (this is basically how you're getting Every out). Maybe if these searches are more conditional like that, and don't build to as much, they wouldn't be such a massive problem?

Pretty much true. (OCGplayer here) People complain about Maxx C in MD and OCG, which is a fair point, it is a floodgate. But MaxxC has always been the band-aid fix for OCG. Maxx C dictates how the game works. Many powerful TCG decks are weak in OCG, vice-versa because the decks has to consider MaxxC's existance or lack there of. Best example is that Floowandereeze gained popularity in OCG because it bypasses and makes many hand traps rot in hand. And Adamancipator has never got huge popularity in OCG because it has no space and consistency to counter MaxxC's activation, and if MaxxC resolves, it just can't stop at a good mid point without letting opponent draw +3. TCG is fortunate to not have to play with MaxxC, but then when konami start to design cards around the source of the problem, the one card combo, now TCG becomes a tier 0 format with pure snake-eyes. TCG resort to playing triple Skill Drain, another annoying floodgate, just to play around this problem. I have always say the Maxx C problem is a misdirection. The core of yu-gi-oh's problem has always been long winded combo that can be started with one cards. We have been saying this long time in OCG: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel of the Hand-traps

There's nothing cool or unique about getting the same endboard at the start of games if gone uninterrupted. You didnt earn it and the deck did the playing for you.

As long as new "Poplars" continue to come out, the 1 card combos are probably staying.

6:47 it is exactly BECAUSE of Hand Traps that the one-card combo is so prevalent: - First turn becomes too powerful, So Hand Traps are creates for going second to have a chance - Second turn doesn’t draw into Hand Traps, so engines are made smaller and more streamlined, only requiring a few cards (thus making them even more powerful) - Engines are so powerful that more Hand Traps are needed, but adding too many to main Deck causes bricking. - Engines for going second are so streamlined, only one card is needed to go full combos, and any extra engine pieces can easily be used as extension or recursion. - Thus, only one card is needed for engine in opening hand, the rest are hand traps. We keep saying it because it's the truth: The game is too damn power-crept. At this point, a hard rule change, or purging of current decks by banning/errata with a change in future card creation is the only thing that can bring this game to a balanced level of play. Also, I think it's about time we had some kind of Mulligan implemented so opening hands are not such a hindrance on game outcomes.

Konami: "No."

The OG power plays of YGO used to be special summoning ONE extra monster Into play and maybe drawing one card. Now the norm is to do 10+ cards off of a single card that begins said power play. 😅

IMO 1 card combos are fine if they give the player a heavy restriction(s), like locking into type, archetype and or attribute. So their deck can do the thing it's supposed to do, but you can't throw a bunch of extras on top of it. The problem is that's not how the cards are being made.

I mean, it's pretty hard to not bring power creep into this discussion. The main issue I see is that single turns are too explosive, which leads to a lot of shorter games or non-games

I agree, one card combos take the fun out of dueling. It makes the game more automated rather than strategic, and motivates me to surrender on Master Duel more because the game is flooded with the same 2-3 decks. So we know how it's gonna play out 93% of the time, I just wanna have fun instead of always being "competitive" and predictable

yugioh at this point is **coinflip** "gg i lost"

As a casual I also don't enjoy when combos have the same end. That one link monster that goes 5300, it's so boring

one card combo that restricts you to one particular archetype is fine.

Having to play through that same thing over and over makes a deck boring to play really fast. And it is annoying for both the user of the deck and the opponent. There is no more RNG, save draws and no more hard work to build a powerful board. Not to mention skill. You just memorize a pattern and go with it every duel because the newer decks all have a pre determined set of combos with no skill expression. These are really big problems at once for only one game.

To me it isn't necessarily that 1 card combos are a thing, but what that 1 card combo can do. If 1 card leads to 1 or 2 points of interaction with your opponent, then its fine. Adding a second card for a 2 card combo to add another point of interaction and so on. Right now the ceiling of what a 1 card combo can do is simply too high, especially with Snake-Eyes. 1 card combos can stay, but they need to be rebalanced so that you need extenders in your hand to build an optimal board and have less room for non-engine in your deck, and be balanced in such a way that when it gets hit with a hand trap, it actually results in a proportionally weaker end board.

I think the big issue is twofold. The firat problem is that many of the key starters in modern decks have multiple effects. The other issue is that decks have extenders that play around most everything.

Konami totally lost their minds since Tearlaments. 2 tier 0 formats + Kash since. 1 one card combo or a card like circular would be fine for bad (anime) decks to get them at comp level atleast, but for already crazy good decks its absolute insanity. Tear had 1 card combo alongside being able to fusion summon as monster effect, while also getting resources back into the deck.

Cali effects had talked about this the other day love hearing more about this with other content creators

I think 1 card combos have their place. @ignisters is a 1 card combo archetype that plays a relatively lean engine and 15 hand traps. The catch is that their combo lines are all very fragile and that means you often get stopped and have to rely on the handtraps you have in hand to help you survive. It leads to a very consistent midrange playstyle that can OTK through certain boards as well. The problem is that nowadays the 1 card combos are also very robust on top of being consistent and that so many decks play the same way. It's not just a powercreep problem but also a lack of variety problem. Especially in tier 0 formats where the problem is exacerbated 10 fold because everyone plays the same deck.

I don't think one card combos are the problem atm. It's the fact that extenders nowadays are still the combo. Snake-eye was a mistake only because the combo can basically be done by every starter and extender. There is no true choke point for most handrtaps if they have the extender and that's where my main issue is. Everything does the same thing so it's hyper consistent

YES! HARD AGREE! MAKE YUGIOH HONEST AGAIN! The standard should be 2 card combos, some 3 card heavy hitters, 4 card boards, etc. 1 card combos should be extremely limited and easy to break. PREACH MAN PREACH!

I think one of the most frustrating things in modern yugioh is if you're playing some kind of grindier deck that beats down your opponent's resources like sky striker or something, and then your opponent top decks a card that lets them rebuild their entire board from scratch. Losing to the opponent drawing a good card is fine, that's always been a part of the game, but it's much worse when it's one card that does EVERYTHING for them. You played through their interruption, you broke through their board, now you better have your own interruption or they'll do it all again next turn. It's a really frustrating concept considering how many decks play more fairly and don't get to do something like that, or at least require a large amount of setup to get there

To defend the term one-card combo a little here as a non-yugioh player. Combos are always combinations of multiple cards, however, the combos aren't named after the total cards used in the combo, but rather the amount of cards you need to get in hand to do the combo. The Commander format in Magic has a lot of one card combos because you have essentially an extra card in your hand that's guaranteed every game in your commander, technically it's in the command zone but it's played as if it's in your hand. The point being, if you have any singular card that combos with your commander, it's a one card combo because you only have to worry about drawing one card to do it. This might make more sense if you compare it to some two card combos. In magic, there's a notoriously banned two card combo in our most broken formats, which uses a card called Flash alongside a card called Protean Hulk. Flash plays the Hulk for two mana (at instant speed) and then kills it if you can't pay for it. It's designed to let you go down a card and pay two extra mana to play a creature on your opponent's turn, however, Hulk has a really good death trigger that searches your deck and summons a bunch of creatures to field when it dies, essentially allowing you to abuse the downside of the card in unintended ways. Usually the death effect gets creatures to go infinite with themselves and win you the game on the spot. Technically this combo uses 5, 6, 7 cards sometimes but it's still a two card combo because the other cards just sit in the deck and are played from the deck so you don't actually have to worry about drawing them. The viability of a combo is determined by what's required in your hand to do the combo, not the total number of cards involved in it.

A realization I came to is that we're not playing combo decks. A "combo" deck implies that you're using a combination of cards to make your plays. What we're playing are control decks with extra steps. Really, the difference between Snake-eyes Ash and Inspector Boarder is that snash has extra steps to it's "I normal summon this and you can't play yugioh" effect.

We just need decks like snake eyes to having choke points so just having one hand trap can deal with the opponent

The Fiendsmith cards pretty much became the new "full Orcust combo" that was in every deck due to any 2 different monsters making a Knightare. Only now you just need to get to a Light Fiend for a more powerful combo.

Konami: no it makes us lots of money

Maybe there could be a design where these 1-card starters and extenders have an innate restriction to them like "cannot be moved from GY/banish for two turns/until the end of your next turn" or something to limit their cycling through the zones, or they are sent face-down in those zones until then or something

But how am i supposed to fit 30 handtraps if the other 10 arent 1 card combos lmao

I think it's annoying how 1 card starters tend to have a recursion/recovery effect built it, especially when they are able to activate it during the same turn.

My issue is when they start playing on your turn. Thats what took it for me. 😭😭

This has been on my mind for awhile now. The recent 2010 event made me realize just how much we took the old formats for granted. At least it felt like you had a real chance to win vs dealing with tier 0 meta board breaking abomination decks almost every match. I miss the old Yu-Gi-Oh

3 years from now Paul: Konami needs to stop making these cards that facilitate one card combos that can't be negated and end on an unbreakable board by just drawing the card in your opening hand. I remember back in Danger format you at least needed to successfully normal summon Armageddon Knight.

it seems like they want to force people to stop playing decks from before 2021 or there about. They might want anywhere from five to eight decks that each have a one card combo and remove any chance of any other deck being playable at all. Forcing a meta between decks that are made to play against each other in a way where skill has to be the deciding factor, yet the problem of someone going first and someone going second would still remain unless one deck was designed for going second. if created correctly it could open up a very fun way of playing where game after game between two decks could be a back and forth down to the last extra deck monster contest of resource management. If created really well the final two duelist at the world championship would each be playing a different deck and the video of each game would be talked about for weeks and debated over due to so many different lines of play being able to decide the game one way or the other. This would also cause a demand for additional formats to be added due to every deck in the game currently to no longer be playable in the meta with the exception of snake-eyes if they get support that causes them to be more entertaining to play/play against. Somewhere on youtube there a video of the most beautiful chess game ever played (the evergreen game), but no such video exsists for a yugioh duel. Konomi might be trying to change that by making several hyper consistent decks that can play into one another at a very high skill level. if they can make money off of the top 8 duels they will, this I think is there aim. To milk every cent from as many duels as they can to more than cover the cost of events.

the thing is if they don't, than the power creep can't function and they can't continue to sell

I love watching your videos, because I can relate to you and with those megaboxes on the background

the link 1 that searches the field spell that searches the extender that searches the archetypes monster reborn 😴

They’re ruining the game. Even when you negate them, they have additional effects they activate in grave. Aside from 1 card combos, I think multiple effects on cards are equally as problematic. A card doesn’t need 3 effects.

As someone who just started playing heroes(not sure if any of their cards count as one card combos but Stratos and Fusion Destiny both feel like it) I like one card combos. I think the problem arises when those one card combos snowball into a bunch of generic nonsense instead of locking you. Edit: can we not all see how stupid it is that ROTA is at 1 but Bonfire and other ROTA cards are at 3? Lol that is so annoying.

I don't mind 1 card combos. I don't like UNBREAKABLE BOARDS. I deserve a chance to fight back

The earliest example of the 1-card combo, that I can think of, was zoo. Any way to Ratpier was full combo bs. 3-axis engines got there via Invoker, or their own card in Barrage. I think that archetype set a baseline and template for how a lot of modern yugioh has played out.

Im sick of you people thinking a hand trap is "interaction"

At this point of the game, the title should be - *Can Yu-Gi-Oh! please stop making cards?*

Now it's not only "one card combos", it's come to "one card combos" that play around certain handtraps. For instance, I love to play "Scrap" (I know, cool guy over here! 😎) And even though I have 6 ways of searching "Scrap Raptor", who can start my whole combo by itself, If you so much as cough during it's effect, it fizzles and I'm boned with practically no real extenders and an engine that takes up 4/5 of the deck...It's the combination of "one card combos" that can play through anything and leaves room for 15+ handtraps in the deck that are becoming a problem.

I love how a cost went from discard something to make an effect happen to banish/destroy your opponents cards to summon 5 boss monsters that degate everything and foat every main phase and battle phase

I kind of hate Ash Blossom for this reason. Hear me out - Ash Blossom sucked to play against when it came out, 'cuz amongst other things, it was like $30 a copy. That being said, it was "fair" in the sense that it cut down the consistency of decks that ran it, because aside from Zoodiac (which eventually got Ratpier hit), you gained Ash Blossom in exchange for one less card in your hand being able to start your combo, not to mention the risk of accidentally starting with dupes. The problem is that, on a macro level, the existence of Ash Blossom means that, assuming everyone who wants a playset can afford it, Yugioh became a lower ceiling and more fair game. Archetypes that got released after Ash Blossom suddenly felt like they didn't compare with like, peak Zoodiac or peak Dragon Rulers at the time because there existed an uninterruptible card that could guarantee that lowered the ceiling on the meta as a whole. And ever since then, decks have been slowly creeping towards lower and lower card combos. It feels like the existence of Ash Blossom isn't a check for modern card design, but a *challenge* that card designers decide to take. Is a card too powerful? Well, it can be Ash Blossomed, so clearly it's not too strong /s. But we need to give more and more new decks one card combos, 'cuz doesn't it feel bad if you don't get to play a game where your opponent can interact with you?

I would like to quote Chipp vs Potemkin (Guilty Gear) matchup summary here. One Card Combo (Chipp) vs Boardbreaker (Potemkin) is like solving an equation, except 1-CC requires you to solve hundred addition and subtraction math problem, meanwhile Boardbreaker has to solve a long division once.

Title sounds like an “Impossible Challenge” video

Even Drytron required 2 cards to go off.