So many combo pile decks are the same "lol how fast can I made my different assortment of barron, appo, savage, and IP" aka new heavy samurai

I still think one of the most overlooked issues with power creep in yu-gi-oh is attack point creep, a 2014 combo board such as infernity consisted of a few 1800 attack monsters and the biggest being no bigger than 2400 usually. It meant half breaking the board usually meant you didn't lose turn 3. Now every boss monster is 3k+ and can be made for essentially free ontop of having removal like chaos angel, baronne and accesscode.

I think the issue is two-fold Generic-boss monsters Insanely good archetype monsters that don’t lock you into said archetypes

Altergeist losing to Nibiru is a cursed sentence LOL

This is exactly why people are starting to get into past formats more.

I think it’s important to look at the identity of the deck and expand upon it. Altegeist was known for Hexstia and Multifaker, so with those two in mind, the perfect support would be a Trap that had an effect that could gain advantage when an “Altergeist monster removes a card from the field”. What cards do that? Hexstia, Silq, Meluseek, Marionetter, and even Primebanshee. let the card do other things of course, but i think Konami forgets to reflect upon the ideologies of the decks that they support sometimes. a card like this would still promote the core belief that the deck had and reward you for it

Traptrix isn’t a good example. It still gets to its end board of sera and raflesia + more trap holes. I get what you mean about not wanting trap decks to become combo piles however for this deck in specific we have the Altergeist cards doing the work and even existing on the end board. And what do they do? They disrupt in very annoying ways which is the identity of Altergeist. Honestly, Superheavy lost its identity much more with the new support because while it’s old playstyle of big walls style was bad the new combo into generic bosses isn’t a good substitute which is why a lot of the actual SHS fans hated the new support, so bringing it up as a counterpoint to Altergeist new support, which still keeps you on the main disrupt with Altergeist game plan feels wrong.

Runick standalone is designed as a deck-out deck. That's why it's not powerful on its own. It's a stun deck.

In regards to speed, to me, Swordsoul was the perfect spot to end mid-range at. And now, the current set equivalent of swoswo, is basically "way too fair"...

Even if you lock every future card to an archetype, not all archetypes are created equal. Some archetypes suck by design, lol

Part of me thinks that the reason some of these archetypes are made the way they are is because they and the sets are designed with the OCG's banlist and format in mind. In particular Maxx "C". Combo Piles are not as common over there because of it vs here where the absence of the bug allows the west to lab out these things. Therefore the root of the problem that needs to be addressed is archetype design and moving away from "it's checked by Maxx "C"" since that only works in Japan and the west suffers as a consequence. EDIT: Josh hit the nail on the head with Sky Striker. I've always said that Striker was Konami's attempt at making a then Modern Control deck adjusted to the speed of the game at that time. This was due to its engine being made up of powerful Spells instead of Monsters and Traps. Striker unlike say Geargia didn't HAVE to win the dieroll as with Engage, Anchor, Afterburners and more it could make an attempt at cracking the board then begin its gameplan. Striker also was a Control deck that played like the Control decks of retro formats (like Edison) where you try to interact, interrupt, out resource and out grind the opponent after making them slow down to your pace. This was a REMARKABLY refreshing change of pace as before Striker most control decks were actually Stun Decks in disguise with some exceptions. Unfortunately as the game went on, got faster and Striker suffered hits from the banlist it had no choice but to turn into that kind of Stun deck through the use of Floodgates and Mystic Mine which is unfortunate. I'd actually like to see Konami be ballsy and move Engage to 2 on the next Banlist. Or even 3. I almost want to think that with 3 Engage Sky Striker is still outgunned in 2023. EDIT #2: A see alot of people in that chat coping on Vanquish Soul and yeah it's doing *okay* in OCG, but it's also not performing nearly as well as Purrely, Superheavy Samurai or a severely nerfed Kashtira. And it's also in a format where Maxx "C" exists which has shown to make the format kinda slower but not really. What the hell kind of chance does it have here in the much faster TCG Format? It'll be a decent rogue deck but by no means Meta.

Spheres pass, the perfect mid range deck 🐉

It feels like many of these piles aren't actually combo piles, they are still around the combo value of a modern midrange deck. Actual combo decks (the kind which have no follow up but your opponent should just scoop) haven't been the top decks of a format in a while. Overall it's just a sign that the pace of the game is only getting faster.

Sky Striker was designed to be a Control deck with a recursive resource loop that could keep up with fast paced decks due to having built in spot removal that's easily searchable. The problem is they gave it an unrestrictive tool for Link climbing vertically that was too easy for other decks to use, and resulted in several of its best cards being stuck on the banlist longer than they needed to(Linkage is usually better than Drones, but using and playing against Bystials mandates running both cards). Not having a secondary option to search from deck in the Main Phase 1(or any to SET from deck) is also holding it back significantly compared to other decks getting more modern in-archetype tools. Better in-archetype graveyard setup tools for its "Mobilize" line, like a card to send a specific archetype card to grave in order to perform another setup action, would also be nice to have and would allow the deck to be playable as more than an engine to run alongside Bystials(which is unironically one of their best options now but still probably not the overall best way to play Bystials). As far as the "replacement" Control decks: Runick relying almost entirely on random card draw for its resource loop feels too incosistent to use standalone, and HOPT spot removal is as low impact as it gets. Runick Striker also feels a bit clunky thanks to both sides competing for the EMZ, hence why it ofteb gets paired with Spright and Synchro Combo tools instead that abuse the fact that its spells double as makeshift Instant Fusions, defeating the deck's initial purpose. Labrynth feels poised to serve as the Trap equivalent to Striker, but the furniture are a little too highroll to use as the setup they were intended for, even Sky Striker always used Deep Draw cards to get around the "neg before you can plus" restrictions that have been keeping Engage on the banlist(when they could just hit more of the FTK enablers instead, not to mention how garbage Deep Draw gets after siding). The fact that it needs to spend the Solemn Strikes it uses for ensuring board wipes go through on Ash Blossom at times is also a bit embarassing. And while I don't know enough about Purrely to give an accurate opinion of them, everything I've seen so far points to it being the less interesting parts of Zoodiac Striker, a build I'm familiar with but almost never play. Still not sure if the OCG is just bad at outing Towers monsters or if the resource loop is just that insane to warrant playing that over more "active" decks.

as battle effects got power crept, now mid range "grindy" decks are being power crept, because every deck has recovery in the archetype from effs in the gy, so being grindy is the normality.

I think that the real issue with control decks is that they haven't gone through the renaissance yet. Only recently are we getting support that searches control cards like traps and spells, or synergize with them aka Labrynth. The extra deck is a massive Toolbox but outside of say a rank 4 like Baromet, what can one run that will help you control? Granite for Lord of heavenly prison at best. So first they need to actually make control tools, in that aspect the Link 4 of altergeist is fine. However it should not have been a link 4, if it was like a link 1 that needed an altergeist link I don't think anyone would say omg Altergeist is now combo, it's the fact that in order to give it the support they had to make 3 other cards to give you the resources for it. Now I don't really hate giving speed to archetypes. Personally being able to play my old archetype in a new unexpected way due to it's generalness simply gives me more things to be happy. But I really hope for more trap card support like hand traps, don't know why bee is rng much less why its a monster. And what Tear and Ishizu brought to the table, I think being able to simply summon a name as a hand trap and do something to move your plan forward or hinder your opponent is exactly what control needs. If you couple those 3 things we could see decks that don't rely on making a big pop off board but rather, resource generation ala eldlich. It's still a speed up, but I'm certain that it would lower the speed down, since they would be strats that are aiming for the grind game, all they really need is a chance while going second.

@18:50 the stronger combos mean you actually have follow up after using going 2nd cards like evenly/imperm to bait negates. like just normal meluseek equals an accesscode going 2nd now(priveded there are 3 spells for selene)

One of my favourite design is the galaxy eyes cards. Cards like photon lord are made generic to summon with a decent effect, but using it in its own deck its a fantastic card. I feel like if konami limited the availability of generic power cards it could limit pile combo decks. For example, assume union carrier only equips unions from deck, or if it need a union to summon. As it stands because of how splashable the card was it made abc lose one of their best combo piece.

I think we kind of crossed the point of no return with Adamancipators. That was *the* wombo combo deck that premiered right as MR5 kicked off after MR4's sins, and where Konami made their stake on vomiting Extra Deck strategies being an expectation. True, we had combo decks in the past and the board breakers made to answer them like Nib and DRNM in 2019, but the geologists really feel like the stake in the coffin, which effectively said, "These kinds of decks are here to stay, and it's going to get worse." And it has. We live in a society where backrow decks like Geist and Traptrix become midrange which is really just "I put out a portion of my ED but not enough to where you can call me combo tee hee," and the more "set and pass" like Lab and Eld are "floodgate or die." Because games end in 3 to 4 turns, and if you're setting a card that can only come online at effectively half the game's lifespan... it better be a *really* good card. And what better card than one which is a proactive boardbreaker? Is there a fix to this? A few, we all know them, but I don't think Konami is interested in them. I think we're in for the long haul, and unless we get a saving grace with MR6... I wouldn't count on miracles.

i can sympathize with the altergeist take as a rokket enthusiast. Since rokkets originally were a control strategy with borreload targeting the rokkets to disrupt the opponent. But then Borrelsword dropped to not really control, but OTK the opponent. The final nail in the coffin is borrelend, with rokkets being able to summon a link-5.

This guy hit the nail with the issue that YGO doesn't have any actual deckbuilding restriction other than the banlist.

I think a good solution is placing more locks onto more powerful cards. So like archetypes locking you in to their name, or how VW / Spright does it where you’re locked to certain levels / ranks

I really wish Labrynth was playable with zero floodgates. You go like +5 when you activate a normal trap (that removes monsters from the field) so that should be enough, but sometimes is not.

Slower decks also have a harder time because of the time rules. Because they need to play more turns and specialy control type of decks need more time to think. Following combo lines is very simple if you are familiar enough with ur deck but finding the perfect spot to interrupt your opponent one a deck the you don’t know blindly can be difficult. In the end you when you run in time you have less plays you can do and it is general harder for slow decks to summon out a random burn monster than for combo.

Control decks are hard to play when every deck can wipe the field and then otk.

I said the exact same sentence to a friend who quit the game some years ago and is now less willing than ever on playing again...

Currently the game as it is now is beyond saving when it comes to curbing the impact of combo decks imo. The game has for the majority of formats been like this ever since the Performage Pendulum pile redefined how it is played in 2015. I used to be against set rotation because I always hated the idea of not being able to play with old cards but at this point I think that an alternative format with a completely new card pool and rotation is the only way to bring back slow, grindy Yugioh unless Konami would be willing to do a hard reset by putting hundreds of cards on the banlist which is probably even more unlikely than actual set rotation or alternative formats. They can keep the game as it is now, some people enjoy combo decks after all (myself included on occasion) but it would be nice if there were alternative sanctioned ways to play the game without having to participate in the constant combofest.

I hate the fact that if your deck doesn't threaten lethal immediately, your deck is unplayable. Not even at a disadvantage, just unplayable because you'll die immediately

Till this day salad format and swordsoul/branded format are my favs cuz of how fair those decks are ino

I feel like something like if you summon a runick you can't summon into the main monster zone for the rest of the turn and fountain negates its effects while a trap is face up on your field would actually allow it to become an enjoyable control deck

a fancy way to fix the game is a deckbuilding restriction like Gwent or Force of Will (with divinity et simila), where every card has a score, and by rules, you cannot put cards whose total score is higher than a total. these games used a very simple way to give scores: if the card is non-archetype related, but has high sinergy with other decks --> higher score if the card is very impactful --> higher score if the card fixes consistency issues --> extremely higher score this way decks tended to self balance a lot (oc, there had been tier0 formats)

The idea that midrange means player 1 gets a second turn is mind blowing to me LOL

I feel like the problem is just that Konami ignores the fact that generic boss monsters exist and just leave them mostly untouched. An example being accesscode.

YGO is in this weird space design wise, there exists no way to curb the infinite upward trend that is a small change that won't send a vocal chunk of players into a frothing at the mouth fit for daring to suggest something like "Universal hard once per turns" and cutting generic cards power. My favorite deck is Ancient Warriors, not because it's top tier or uses a billion engines, but it's got a neat fairly concise set of synergies and really fun theming. I'd love to run the entire archetype at at least 1, but not stuffing a deck with handtraps means going 2nd because battle focus is a near guaranteed loss. Good YGO decks are about making your opponent able to do as little as possible at all times rather than swapping resources in a back and forth in 9/10 games it seems.

Altergeist was not to be sped up to the same pace as the meta, it's supposed to be the deck that forces your opponent to play at your pace, which is why is liked it a lot.

I said the same fuckin thing as soon as I saw the altergeist support. Just another cool and interesting control deck turned into a combo deck where you vomit your hand onto the board and set up enough negates to stop your opponent from being able to play the game. There's no resource management at all in this game anymore, the fusion decks seem to be the only archtypes that are actually interesting and have cool grind games and back and forth. Tear and branded are both really interesting in that they don't really set up any negates (branded expulsion is an exception), and they mostly just out-advantage the opponent in a grind game. The problem is that most other archtypes haven't been built to do that, they just shit their hand onto the field and pass turn and hope it's enough. Sometimes it is, and sometimes the opponent draws dark ruler into evenly matched. So when these other archtypes built around speed and extending to the moon enter a grind game, they have nothing left, so there is no grind game. You either win on turn 1, or you scoop because you're playing against a deck that actually has grind game. I know I noted only the fusion archtypes, but labrynth, runick, even floowandereeze, have really cool ways to grind games and have consistent ways, that all have noteable counterplay options, and none of them set up boards (anymore at least) that really prevent your opponent from playing the game. Maybe some floodgates showing up here and there are exceptions, but that's just because konami, for some god forsaken reason, has been consistently unlimiting all of these ridiculous floodgate cards, like skill drain, also macro and di-fi recently.

Altergeist needs a counter trap omni negate which can negate a card or effect or negate a summon of a monster and ALSO if it is set by a Altergeist monster such as Marionetter it can be activated the turn it was set. Boom, Altergeist is fixed and is now amazing going 1st and 2nd

It's a 3 pronged issue. 1 - There's no set rotation of any kind, so more combos become available and these combos have to constantly be powercrept to keep up, especially legacy support. (kinda 1.5 issues). 2 - It's difficult to design a powerful slow deck in yugioh without floodgates, especially because there's no mana source. Both players play turn 1, so the deck has to be able to play through multiple interrupts going first or second, which pure control can't and likely never will. Only combo can play going 2nd in yugioh now. 3 - People HATED playing against stun decks like Altergeist whenever they are meta. People would rather lose quickly to a combo deck, than slowly to a stun deck.

Three card combo for a deck with no RotAs and playing like a combo deck means running minimal traps so if you don’t open the 2-3 card combo you are not opening the traps to play either. Spoofing is still unsearchable as well so yeah… Deck can put some absolutely busted boards but _at what cost._

Regarding Labrynth, my sinking suspicion is that the two monsters in Big Welcome will be sort of like handtraps; Quick Effect monsters which allow you to activate specific (read: in archetype) Normal Traps from hand with a certain cost. If the furniture sets, they activate and bypass needing to wait a turn for trap cards. This will of course require Konami to print Labrynth trap cards which are actually good that aren't Ash-able summons, but it feels like a possible course of action, especially as Konami is experimenting with the next generation of handtrap design.

I think, while it is a slight change for Altergeist's playstyle, it is a good change. Its a short combo that ends with the starter being recycles and having a few interactions. This is FAR healthier than Normal Summon set floodgate playstyle it had before. So I have to disagree with Joshua here. Making older decks use modern principles of having small combos is fine. However, I will agree with Joshua, as a Tellarknight player myself, that Tellarknight turning into a wombo combo deck is boring and not a good direction. It should have retained its playstyle of using a starter every turn to pump out a rank 4, but become modernized (maybe 2 rank 4s every turn instead, or just more protection and resilience). I still think Tellarknight can become this with 1 more card, but without a core grind piece its just better to go balls to the wall.

When I saw the new Altergeist cards I was really disappointed as I think that the decks identity is not really to be a combo deck, but to slowly and methodically dismantle your opponent and draining them off advantage. That is also why I hoped to see 2-3 new traps, cards that give the deck more resilience against boardwipes as well as more consistency. Basically I wanted their own in-house Impermanence that can also be a search card to get you to faker, but locks you into Geist for 2 turns to guarantee that it gets used in that deck only. Now the deck has become a pseudo-combo trap deck, making it a worse version of Traptrix or IKEA Labrynth, which will only lead to it being forgotten as it doesn't stand out anymore.

super late to this vid but love the talk of runic (with out floodgates) being an actual cool and interactive deck. My hopieum for the decks future is they make it work more with generaider with a card that could make all the bad generaider cards that make your opponet draw a card banish one instead, and an xyz that could swap their field spells around when needed

I like how different decks can be synergistic with each other. I think if the drawbacks were more extreme then you can’t be as flexible in how you can conduct your turn with another engine. If Kashtira fenrir had the drawback of being locked into xyz summoning after using either of the effects than it would force the player to do other actions first before they use fenrir’s boardbreaking effects.

I mean there’s stuff like purely or however it’s spelt. But those just get splashed into bigger engines. I feel like mid range is just harder to balance now with stuff like spright which can just combo through anything

bro all i wanted was a way to search spoofing and or a link 1 (which could even be a vanilla just have altergeist in its name) but we got 8 more bricks in the main to lose to 1 handtrap

im playing mathmech and i cant complete the "destroy 5 cards" daily quest because every game i either make an unbeatable board turn 1 and my opponent quits are my opponent makes an unbeatable board turn 1 and i cant play the game so i quit. i never have duels that go to turn 3

It's probably because the developers probably don't play test their cards when designing. That's how power creep got so crazy that they've dug themselves into a hole in terms of card design. As long as their card design team doesn't change, nothing short of a rule overhaul will change this issue. Ban list is just a band aid that's too late and basically used to move product more than balance the game

Rescue-Ace is a midrange deck. It's not great but it's something. Pure Dogmatika is also a pretty strong control deck.

This is why I've been saying for the longest when it came to something like the start of Halq being in around, the end boards were 99.9% the same for a generic standpoint when it able to play it. The higher the generic pool, the harder it is to go about the "unique" aspect because "everything" has to be good and to me that it becomes tiresome. Now some of the decks with new support can end off on the same thing only in different images. Not every deck is like that, but I'll say this... if it isn't ending off on boards with things that say "NO", then this isn't the deck, sadly.

Lab went through a similar change in a smaller amount of time but I genuinely believe it was a much better change of pace than the slower trap oriented system it was supposed to be, like-wise I think if altergiests had the ability to play like lab most people would choose that version over what it was supposed to be too. Altergiests was a deck that won me top16 in my first regionals back then but I accept that the time for that style of play has passed. Does the new support fundamentally change the deck? Maybe but this was the blueprint for modern trap and there’s an exciting potential for that deck to change even more if they take the lessons they learned from all the other support’s they’ve made before

Its pretty much down to this hard reset by banning all the most used generic monsters in the past year or 2. A design principle I think that should be followed is making generic cards semi-generic so that only 1 meta deck can really make good use of it rather than all meta decks be running it. An example could be the "Sunavalon" engine which carries plant strategies on its shoulders these days, or Vernusylph which boosts earth based strategies like Naturia.

they have to keep making card to be used once per turn, super heavy is broken because they can activate multiple effects of the same card in the same turn

This is my whole vibe rn 😂. Every build i have is 25-28 cards, then 12 hand traps and defenses. All my decks are mid range. Best part of the game right now is deck building.

How to Solve Modern Control: "Make (Counter) Trap Monster as strong as 1 Dragoon or unaffected" 🐧 Then we can see combo-ing 15 minutes are pointless when we can just set 1 counter trap and pass, even for going second -> More mid-range/control... I hope

Not sure if this would slow the speed of the game. But one idea would have a banlist similar to how duel links and speed duels but just directly targeted at the extra deck it might not solve all the issues, but it's a start, I believe. Just an example would be like Baronne and titanic galaxy at 1 so we don't have these "different" decks building the same end board over and over.

Videos like this are proof that Joshua Schmidt doesnt simply understand the decks he and his opponents are playing. He truely understands yugioh as a whole. Amazing video.

The real issue with power creep is the power level of generic boss monster Why we have things like borreload savage and baron being completely generic is beyond me

People may dislike this, but I think unless konami actually makes massive changes to the game and/or banlist, the best way to create control decks without turning them into combo decks are to make more havnis cards. Like imagine if we got an altergeist trap that is like an imperm, where it can be used on turn 1, by revealing an altergeist monster, or a monster that triggers on an opponent's effect of some kind where you get to interact with the opponent going second. I think we either do that, or konami will keep printing more combo support. OR master rule 6 lets plays place any number of spell/traps on the field face-down before the game actually starts, and they're activatable. Yes traps get a lot better, we might have to ban solemn judgment and a lot of floodgates, but at the end of the day the format would probably be a lot more interactive and less combo-oriented.

11:00 Oh yea? And Superheavy Samurai doesn't betray its identity of Synchro Summoning a big monster in defence position to attack for game whit the new cards then??? 22:00 Ah yes. Sky striker ,Engage into Engage into Engage was ,,so beautiful " 🤠

My question is what would you do to make Altergeists good. While in the video Pak shows off combos, I see them as more proof of concept on what the cards can do than the standard lines for the deck now. It's an alternative line of play you can have. Altergeists, in my experience, had the issue of you were reliant on seeing Faker + Trap in some capacity turn 1 to do anything and you can't always guarantee that. Sure, you could open up Traps to help until you see the cards but that's not the Altergeist cards doing the heavy lifting. The issue with the game is that we want consistency to do our plays and unfortunately the more consistent you get, the faster thing become. From my admittedly limited experience of older formats, games have back and forth due to it taking time to find pieces which in some respects is good but can just be a case of oh I guess I found my win con first

Konami could very well make a control archetype with busted cards, as long as they put restrictions on them so they aren’t abused outside their intended use. But for some reason, they’re stuck on trying to make every deck generic omni-negate turbo

I love the grind game of altergiest. I think all it needed was a link 1 to help with melluseek multifaker line and a decent link 3 that assists with controlling meta decks

3:23 especially since they are still producing cards that need to be destroyed by battle when most decks have board wipes turn 1 or dont even let you play on your turn

So I when I came back I liked playing combo, but went to control and am now craving mid range decks because I feel they are more fun. Ninja is currently my favorite mid range to play. I feel like some of the new decks releasing have been mid range focused like vanquish soul, it almost feels like konami is drip feeding mid range to the masses to see if it is liked or not

Really like Lab its slower, and it is fun to trade with your traps, stopping you oponent on their turn 1 and and win by gaining advatage with lady, if decks slow down it will be busted

I'm not surprised this is happening to Yugioh. Power creep is how most licensed card games sell new sets, Yugioh has survived for so long that we get to see the event horizon of that design philosophy.

They say a deck dies 2. Once than it loses relevancy, and a second time than it gets turned into a combo pile.

I do agree with most of the topic. I don't really like the idea of a rotation, but I do agree with the concept of a huge banlist, banning/limiting also decks that would be strong again if everything else is banned. Just an example, don't take that personal as I'm also playing the deck so I'd hate that as well, a card that in my personal opinion is busted and if everything else is getting touched might be quick launch, I mean it's not once per turn and can bring out tracer which is a one card combo tho. Cards like that should be at one, as rota is. Just for the mere example remember plz 😅

to be fair ...(i do love Altergeists) i have seen recent videos of Altergeists against current decks and it can hold its own ! im not saying it will win YCS but its actually still a strong deck .......but also i guess in the hands of a good pilot .

the same thing happened to my favorite deck, Naturia. sure the deck was ass but I loved how it played regardless. The new cards are just a run of the mill engine. Not the deck I grew up with. Would love to play cards like pineapple, Cherries, and even mantis in the modern day.

@29:00 about beta-testing cards, imagine if they had a game with a lot of players where they could playtest the next set and even reward (with a lot of gems that are free to them, or even cards) the ones that submit problematic interactions. Of course, using player+konami ID in order to prevent spam. It would cost them nothing to have the entire community working for them FOR FREE while we would feel more engaged (i couldn't resist) with card design.

Why in the world would you say that pure runick being a deck out sort of deck is "fun" ? All that is doing is not allowing your opponent to play in the slowest burn possible

one way to to fix combo everything would probably to print cards like evenly but instead of being no drawback, they get some extreme drawbacks like you can only special summon trice afterwards. give us tools that destroy combo decks but also cannot be played in combo decks. or maybe make it that cards like ultimate slayer have their normal effect but also a modal effect of you can sent as many monsters from the extradeck as you want but you cannot special summon that turn. that would make them playable in any deck but only busted in fair decks imagin somwthing like swordsoul playing evenly 2. you activate it maby chain droplet to prevent it's negation, your opponent keeps a baron on board you normal mo ye reveal longyan the opponent baron negate to put you on better have it and now you either A: activate that longyuan make your baron and don't have more special summons over but can pop the opponent baron and the only reason they lose of that is not because 1 negate is broken but because their deck has no ability of playing after losing everything or B: you don't have it pass turn and your opponent still can't do anything so all they do is attack with baron pass

What do you think Give a free mulligan for go second ?

It doesnt matter how much ppl talk about what can be done to balance the game unless at least 25% of customers stop buying anything ygo related for like a year, only then Konami will look into the problem wondering why are they losing money

I think the more close playstyle slow gases right now is runick and maybe exorsister and naturia runick

Weighting and archetype ratio modifiers could probably be used to balance the meta

2:30 I was having a longer duel against another casual player (Opponent played some slower deck with skill drain, My deck of choice was a brickier Synchro Stardust Assault Mode casual build with some handtraps and negates from 2009 thrown in) my opponent flipped Skill Drain and basically created a stalemate by interrupting us both so I was drawing for my Mystical Space Typhoon and put down some traps like Imperm and Magic Jammer to not loose to Raigeki etc --- fast forward some turn and I am able to resolve the MST and block his attempts to negate it and stop his follow up by the earlier placed Imperms using it on his monsters and hitting the zones.

How about an altergeist link 1 that sets up to 4 traps from the deck that is unnaffected by the effects of trap cards and monsters whose level on the field or graveyard is less than or equal to 4. Your opponent cannot target, destroy, or banish, your face up trap cards and your set cards in the spell and trap card zone.

2028: Me explaining to my kids we had trap cards in Yugioh.

They are making us play a certain way on purpose. It's causing a sort of "block" format. I think its 1 uear then they kill a strategy with power creep and/or ban list.

they could increase the LP and decrease ATT damage of monsters so we dont die turn 3 from there first turn boards

I think the new combo style gameplay doesnt do anything meaningful for altergeist besides making it lose to every handtrap, however malwisp is a very nice addition to the former version of the deck that just improves the grind game by a lot.

Want a solution? Import Rush Duel to the TCG. It's legit the reason the format was created in the first place. There's no OTKs, no "real" floodgates, no +5 negate boards, none of that. Shit is fun and looks cool and refreshing

I really agree with you Joshua. Konami fails to make control decks competitive. How is it possible?

I played for years only control decks, but now im on branded. No control deck player loves to use floodgates, its boring. But the problem is traps didn't the same improvement like monsters or spells. The solution is easy, we need first of all better traps, we need gy eff of traps and the deck should be able to recover from gy, like eldlich. This pared with a theme to tribute monsters from oppenent (like kaijus but on your site and effects to mill traps from deck) would allow us to play in a fast meta control decks. People would get punished for glass canon decks and we would defintily see way more midrange decks.

In my opinion, the problem lies in that we're seeing new support cards for an Archetype as """bad""", because why would you play this Link-4 if Accesscode Talker exists? Or why play this end board when you can have Baronne/Appolousa/Zeus instead? The problem lies on all archetypes needing these generic Extra Deck monsters to be relevant, because meta contending decks can utilize these generics. Popular generic ED monsters need to be errata'd to their types or archetypes only.

Man i'm honestly just happy my old deck like tellar and altergeist now can compete again though not meta. But yeah i do fucking agree they're losing their identity, that magical control playstyle.

I loved Altergist for being the only trap deck that doesn't play oppressive floodgates for being midrange yet still able to perform combos. I like these cards, but I DON'T like how it feels they just made the deck like 2019 Salamangreat.

Time to just lock arc extra deck monsters to need at least one the actual monsters.

Inb4 the next salad support just makes it into another hyperconsistent wombo combo deck

Pure Rikka is the best midrange deck I can think of. Definitely can’t win til turn 3 and there’s so many layers of interaction that it’s hard to get your bored fully broken

2 main issues with the way the ban list works nowadays. 1 now more than ever, the list is used to move new product, not "balance" the game. They are showing more and more they care about selling new shit. 2. The lists arent proactive enough. They are reactive and by the time they hit things, people either dont play that anymore OR they hit minor things that don't do enough. I know that people hate on the idea of Master Duel monthly updates, but would be nice to be have be more frequent. That said, i am still the guy who thinks that if Konami plays their cards right, (no pun intended) the physical game will cease to exist and will only exist in digital form

I actually think the new altergeist cards do a very good job at helping the deck while fitting within its playstyle if you can believe it (ironically by adding garnets to the deck like the new lvl 3 and the trap), the deck really doesnt change much except for the new cards which not only make it possible to make arc light turn 1 off of just a seek it lets you more consistently summon hextia on turn 1, it prevents the non games of your opponent opening evenly/storm/duster which geist always struggled with, and even if you get nibed in those combos they let you access your engine and have follow up with all your link climbing effects, if you really think about it truthfully, all the new support actually does is let you do the things you were doing on turn 3 happen on turn 1 which was always geists problem, so I don't think they did a bad job in that reguard, and while I don't think it made geist lose their identity I can understand the real issue in that people want control decks to be good in their own right and not rely on floodgates or just being worse combo decks I totally agree with the striker thing as well, it actually was a super based deck and I don't get why people hated it so much, the deck forced a slower playstyle that didnt (always) require floodgates and allowed a lot of player skill expression that is sometimes missing from decks these days, it's not like the deck was unbeatable anyway, it had it's weaknesses and imo very rarely ever felt unfair (and this is coming from someone who never played the deck before engage got banned) As for what they should do to fix the game.. it's very hard to imagine a world where they fix it by card design anymore, it would require huge and daring changes that would probably leave a lot of people unhappy, ultimately it isn't about how balanced the game is in general but how fun and skillful the game is, which is something that while not every format can do right, we've seen it be possible for some time now (toss, the mid 2021 format and tear mirrors after mine got banned comes to mind)

Honestly that combo is not worth it. You can also play "combo subterror" but the deck will stilll be better as a control deck, just like altergeist here. I play that deck since its release and honestly its not worth to go for the combo like pak did.

I think one solution is to just powercreep control decks. Design new control archtypes that are just as or even stronger than the combo decks, and the meta would naturally get a bit slower in turn

As long as engines exist, and komoney keeps making new decks with these types of ceilings this will continue. I’m here for it I just play goat when I wanna slow down, I’ve been playing this game way to long not to expect these types of things. Same thing happened with Luna lights and various other decks evolution is inevitable.

Tellarknights was never a slow deck inherently imo. I think that's just how ppl chose to play the deck as just a control deck with things like bottomless traphole, Traptrix Traphole nightmare, Solemn warning, Stellarnova Alpha etc and then a bunch of revival traps. I always played it as just a rank 4 toolbox spam deck very offensively oriented. Floating with Triverr and Deltaros and resource management/grind.

I honestly don't think there is a deck that is not a combo deck.