Joshua Schmidt is the biggest problem of Modern Yu-Gi-Oh (from his opponents point of view)

One thing I recently noticed is that more and more spell/trap searchers are printed with effects that set those cards from the deck (sometimes even face-up) instead of adding them to the hand to avoid Ash Blossom

I got into advanced after getting into goat / edison as a returning player. I built a fairly budget deck (ninja) and kept playing it at locals for a bit. I thought I would probably hate it, but it's more enjoyable than I expected. But overall I feel that edison or even HAT are the most enjoyable. What I've noticed about modern yugioh is that your deck has to have many "one card combos" to really compete. You cram your deck full of hand traps and going second cards to make it so you don't auto lose going second, but in a weird way that effectively means you start with a 2-4 card hand, the rest of your hand being hand traps and going second cards. Those cards have to be capable of building a powerful board all on their own. My Ninja deck can do that, and I've actually done fairly well at locals after playing for a bit, but the main problem with my deck that I've noticed is that there are just too many cards that can't pop off on their own, so I often open hands with a bunch of hand traps and 2 "extenders" that can't create a powerful board on their own. My deck has plenty of powerful cards, even 1 card OTKs, but there's just too many "bad but you have to play it" cards in the deck. Even budget and rogue decks can do insane things, but the top meta decks are the ones that brick the least. I've noticed that that means that in some sense, all their cards have to be almost the same card to be reliable. Look at a deck like Kashtira. Fenrir and Unicorn both special summon themselves, search an extender, etc. They can search each other. Both can be searched by the field spell and Theosis. So you have a bunch of cards that are *almost* the same card + a bunch of hand traps and going second cards. I think this leads to boring designs for achetypes. What I love about my ninja deck is all the cards feel unique, but that's kind of what makes it bad, lol. It's more fun than I thought it would be, but just not quite as fun as those older formats. But there's a part of me that misses getting new archetypes and cards, and that's what ultimately drew me to it. Wish they could start over and be more strict about maintaining a certain power level. It feels like a shame, because there are so many cool decks that people could be having fun playing that get left by the wayside. I hope as time goes on that yugioh players begin to act more like Magic commander players and just have conversations about power level and casual play.

I agree with this so much, and it's the reason I prefer 2008 - 2015 Yu-Gi-Oh. I still enjoy the modern game, but it was better when the game didn't end on turn 1 effectively. This also makes your opening hand and who wins the die roll much more important, which just makes the game more RNG.

Personally, I believe the biggest issue with modern yu gi oh is the artificial prices of cards. It would be so easy for Konami to just print multiple rarities of cards in the same set

They can get the game back to full circle in terms of power creep. The 1st stage of yugioh was about big beaters and economical cards that took away cards from your opp or gained card advantage. The 2nd stage of yugioh had more toolbox removal effects specifically destruction. So to equalize the amount of destruction cards we had back in 2008-2010s we had more cards that floated to offset that power creep. Then 3rd stage of the game's evolution was about making more interruptions/negates and the card design to offset that power creep was cards like dark ruler/droplets/ talents, board breakers, kaijus, Now I think Konami still hasn't matured their offsetting for this 3rd wave of power creep. They need to create more cards that float or have additional utility effects that allow someone to skillfully maneuver around negate/interrupt boards so that decks that can grind and rebuild their board are the decks that have the advantage. Tears are a great example of this. Tears are a heavily interactive deck, only problem is it outclasses every other deck, but if every deck rose up to the level of Tears, we would have interaction that can still play through many disruptions and it would give more opportunities for the better player to make better decisions to affect the longer the game continues. The game of yugioh is just like a quickdraw gun fight instead of a sword wielding duel. It's all about who draws 1st blood, and despite any player skill differences you can still lose more often than not than a meta where you have more turns and opportunities to outplay your opponent.

I still think it's kinda incredible that ishizu tear was THE perfect deck, where its only big weakness was shifter and bystials, but anything else it could manage to survive and workaround. Just the fact that it had so much access to its engine on the opponent's first turn, could probably be a sign of what's to come for future archetypes. Personally I'm glad ishizu tear doesn't exist anymore at full power, because I didn't like how it restricted deck building so much, but I hope konami takes notes from ishizu tear on how to implement ways for deck to grind, play through floodgates and have interesting ways to fight back going second, that don't rely just on drawing blowouts or multiple handtraps

Both this and the side channel have been such critical aspects of my work day. I adore listening to your insight while I work on office stuff. Thank you so much!

Generic extra deck monsters and power creep are the two biggest problems in Yugioh. Decks have no only lost their identity due to generic ED monsters making a lot of end boards similar, but it's also had a big impact on power creep, since new cards have to compete with the busted generics in the ED. Power creep is definitely a huge issue. It's one thing for a 2001 deck to be unable to compete with a 2023 deck, but we've gotten to the point where meta relevant decks from 2020 can't compete with 2023 decks.

I think the problem with modern Yu-Gi-Oh is you get way too much value off of in archetype starter cards. If your hand is Aluber + 4 random cards you have full combo. If you have spright starter + 4 cards that's full combo. Every good deck nowadays has a 1 or 2 card combo that also has a searcher and a searcher for the searcher which means you need less in engine cards to make a powerful board which means you have more room for generic hand traps and board breakers making your deck even more powerful. "Back in the day" if you wanted to play an otk strategy you would have to play few to no trap cards because you needed almost your whole hand to break your opponents board and push through your otk. If you played a control strategy your offensive power was low because you were running so many traps and one for one removal. Modern decks don't have to choose if they want to be otk or control oriented they can be it all.

I recently got back into the game after a decade+ of being away. I embraced all the new cards and changes that I experienced. Pendulum, links, xyz, I've played with and tested all I could get my hands on. What I find throughout it all though is that there are just some types/setups that allow for so much recursion, you basically have to play them to have a chance at anything. Which if those are your favorite cards, is great, because you can play them often and win condition on top of it. But if that isn't the case for you, your favorite cards or type of cards just get chewed up on the field. And there is only so much deck-building one can do against an objectively more powercrept deck. The factor of fun and cool is taking more of a backseat to the stun/lock/negate meta styles of today. Even card destruction effects are starting to lose It's oomph because protections prevent it from happening or the card will just return to the field momentarily. The ability to even set up a board or be able to do much against an established one is getting harder and harder.

Because modern Yugioh's turn 1 threats nearly always come from the easy access Extra and turn 2 answers mostly come more randomly from the Main; going 2nd is significantly harder. Carefully designed answers from the Extra could help, partly because they'd be easier to access, but also as their inclusion means less space for threats, and less necessity on hand traps and board-breakers in the main.

I'm not sure when it started but once the game went from"big guys go boom" and have a lot of damage on the board where battle phase actually matters to this devolved "how do I make my opponent not be able to play the game" that's when this game became less interactive and less fun. There is a reason why a lot of people are clamoring for legacy formats because it's a time in which Yu-Gi-Oh was a five to six turn game, and not a one to three to turn game. if you ask me, that basically happened when dragon ruler format happened, if not when necroz format happened. Because it became less about I have big guys that you have to beat over or destroy and it turned into non-targeting, destruction immune, negates that are just obnoxious. 5 maybe 10 years ago, nobody would have ever guessed that solemn judgment, raigek,i or change of heart would ever get unbanned or unlimited. now they are known as bad cards, well two of them are bad cards, and that speaks a lot of volumes to what this game is turned into

I think ishizuTear is the indication of where the game is going which is worrying. A deck with endless resources, powerful starters, able to go first or second and with very few weaknesses or areas where it can be blown out. It obviously needed the Ishizu cards to reach that level but eventually it'll be an in-archtype version which is terrifying. It's interesting when talking about hand traps being the first attempt to combat power creep, maybe that is the reason why I enjoy Dino Rabbit format so much (once they dealt with the hunter hand loop). I feel like that was a format where you could go first or second and still be in the game. Everyone played MaxxC, Effect Veiler, Dark Hole, Heavy Storm and Monster Reborn. All cards that were realistically great going second but the turn 1 boards weren't unbeatable. You also had such an array of tier 1 and tier 2 decks that made the format diverse enough that deck building was interesting since you had Dino Rabbit, Inzektor, Wind Ups, Chaos Dragon, Hero Beat, Hieratics, etc. You almost had a perfect balance of going first powerful starters, resource management and going second tools.

Konami has basically the player base in some sort of arms race that doesn't stop. They first print handtraps that let you interact when going second, then they release call by the grave, to nullify that interaction. When it was at three I'm sure everyone who played decks that were hurt by handtraps, and I think most are, had three call by the grave in their decks.

Tbh my biggest issue is the way that cards nowadays don't just have good effects, they have 2-3 good effects. It makes it so that the effect of one-off negates don't cut it anymore. So then they just escalate the offense then escalate the defense to deal with that. There needs to be some way to push things back towards multiple turn games that doesn't involve floodgates. There needs to be some way to bounce back on turn 3 and continue playing when your resources are spent.

honestly, this is the best video I've ever seen that discuss this topic with such clarity and impartiality, you analyzed the history of the meta game and the problems that went with it with a very interesting way, I'm definitely want more of these videos

Aside from everything you just said, which I mostly agree with, another big one would be that the game is not beginner friendly and the community has to be more welcoming and friendly to new players in order to keep the game alive.

Most of the topics you touch on certainly hit home. Dang near spot on with some of my views. Some of it does rely on the players too though. The whole meta vs unmeta. I feel like meta players in general do have the options to break boards, have outs and in return also have those same unfun and un-interactive gameplay mechanics. And then you have me, who plays Ojamas, Crystal Beasts and Giant Ballpark on Master Duel. And somehow I consistently rank in Diamond, but I think that's because I'm forced to run Maxx C and Ash Blossom. To me, the fun in Yu-Gi-Oh is to find all of these weird and amazing strategies and make them work, but when you actually play the game, you only see maybe 150 cards? Like, my matches in Master Duel is really only 3 decks and with Tear, it's only 2 decks now. I can play a game with over 10,000 cards and only see 1 deck for 5 hours. The entire meta game is completely stale and the only time you see someone not running meta, it's because they're trying to counter the meta with other unfun cards. That's not to say I don't like modern Yu-Gi-Oh, far from it. I like Sky Strikers, I love Sprights, I don't even mind playing against Branded, but these top tier decks don't actually feel that dominant. My Ojama-ABC deck can consistently take wins against these guys. And that's fun. When the top tier meta isn't built around negate boards and are instead all about value generation, it becomes incredibly fun to play and play against. These are the meta decks that allow me to get addicted to this game for 12-14 hours on my day offs.

The mystical deck you are wondering about that beats all the handtraps and all the boardbreakers is called tearlaments. It puts up multiple bosses and multiple backrow interruptions. It answers everything. Thats what a deck that answers every going second card looks like. It has strength in 3 areas after setting up. Hand, monsters, set spells and traps.

I've been playing this game for 8 years now, and since then every year when a broken archetype or card is released, in the first few years I thought it couldn't get any worse, they wouldn't release a stronger archetype or card, and they always do, they don't know how much is enough. In my personal opinion, if the power ceiling of yu gi oh cards stayed the same as the toss format with decks like orcust without mermaid, salamangreat and sky striker, where there is a grind game and resource management matters, that would be great.

For me the biggest issues are just the way cards are designed leading to going first becoming OVERWHELMINGLY strong. This has trickled down to a million "necessary evils" that act like poor band-aid fixes for deeply systemic issues with the way Konami makes cards. Handtrap, floodgates, unresponsive board breakers, and etc have to exist because of the massive advantage turn 1 player has, but since there's nothing stopping the turn 1 player from using these things to their full potential as well, it just makes the problem worse. Another problem that's separate from balancing issue (but still goes back to poor card design), is that no one at Konami cares about how it actually FEELS to have to play against certain strategies and they are way more concerned about whether the cards will sell packs or not. A modern example is of Course Kash. That deck is not enjoyable to have to play against whatsoever. Its designed in a way that leads to most games being decided by a coinflip and whether or not the opponent had something like sphere mode in thier hand. Its a deck that guarantees (lose or win) that you WILL NOT have an interesting game of Yugioh and decks like it are becoming more and more common(scythe, floo, runick) . Both of these problems lead right into something else. IT FEELS BAD TO LOSE IN THIS GAME. Nearly every time you lose its because your opponent either set up so much interaction that you cant feasibly play through it or they flip a funny purple card that just locks you out of playing that game. this entire game feels like its designed around the idea that "only the person winning should be allowed to interact with or enjoy that game" and more often than not its whoever is allowed to go first.

Thanks man I really enjoy these kinds of videos really help someone who is relatively new to the game to get a closer look at everything

Hope you are enjoying your holiday Josh and Id love for more conversation videos like this

I think using "fair" and "unfair" is also something that constantly changes for each card because it depends on the format. Like if my opponent is playing a goat deck then tenki-bear-pop would be extremely unfair, but then from 2015 that just didn't do anything.

Thankyou for the Joshua schmidt plus. I like being able to view your thoughts but i dont always have time to watch your streams.

I'm someone who came back into the game at late 2015, after a 10 year hiatus, and observing deck building mentality and card design from that time until today, I noticed that a lot of powerful cards no longer have an adequate cost of drawback in comparison to the power they have. The first negation on an extra deck boss monster, Quazar, required a synchro tuner and 2 non-tuner synchro monsters, now you have a synchros like Borreload Savage Dragon or Baronne that simply require a generic tuner and a generic non-tuner to make, and they are omni negates to boot where a card like Crystal Wing was monster negate only. Mechaba is a boss monster I see as good card design as it is 1 normal summon = 1 negate and it is a negate that requires a specific discard, which makes it break even and not generate advantage to the boss monsters that negate and destroy. That is another design choice I have my gripe with, monster summoned from the extra deck that negates should not remove the monsters they negate. Then you have cards like Apollousa that needlessly increase the ceiling of decks or insulate decks against interaction. Another problem is the critical mass of generic powerful turn 1 monsters in the extra deck. The first time this actually became a problem was with PePe, a deck that was able to summon those monsters from the extra deck during the first turn and make an unbreakable board. Unfortunately the problem was laid primarily at the feet of PePe's main deck and not the monsters in the extra deck it summoned and Konami continued printing powerful turn 1 boss monsters, and making them generic. If these monsters were not generic, but locked within their archetype then this would not have been a problem. The monsters that you want to have as generic are the toolbox monsters, not the boss monsters. When it comes to the extra deck, Konami needs to be much more pro-active with the banlist and ban cards like Apollousa, Baronne, Borreload Savage Dragon, Accesscode Talker and Zeus to lower the ceiling of this game, instead of having them linger around, and stop making more cards like them. It doesn't matter if your deck can go +10 on turn 1 and play through 4 hand traps, if what your deck can end on is limited by what you can make from the extra deck. The less generic boss monsters in the extra deck, the lower the ceiling of that deck will become. If Konami wants to continue selling generic turn 1 boss monsters, then they should not have proactive quick effects effects like Baronne but reactive effects like Stardust Dragon or the new Gate Guardian boss monster, effects that respond to your opponent interacting with your board.

Really good video. I think the hardest problem YGO has to deal with right now is that its speed and power creep choices are almost unanswerable without making a huge and massive change - no matter what you do, things will make someone mad. I come from other games where I feel like the only thing that can really allow for a massive power level decrease is something like a major rules change or a rotation, but even then I have to admit that when games rotate their power levels to be way lower a lot of people get frustrated even if there remains an "eternal" format where people can still play all their old cards. Konami seems more interested in constantly inventing new alternate formats that start from 0 like Duel Links, Speed Duels, and even Rush Duels, and I think so long as they do that they're probably gonna run on the idea of just power creeping "real yugioh" until it stops working finally, without much of a plan for what they're gonna do when that happens. I think that Tear Ishizu was a sign that we're gonna hit a new era where every deck is like that and the entire game becomes the first turn with both players able to play, and then after that, who knows what's going to happen. Very curious to see what happens next.

My biggest hope for yugioh is that someday Konami starts to print every card as a common in the set and then we would have rarities and alt arts in the same set of some of those cards instead of how we currently have to hunt for the high rarity cards to even play the new archtypes. it would be amazing to be able to own 3,4,5 or even 6 decks and switch up every week at locals if you feel like it.

Back in the days when Pot of P was over 100 buckets, lol, since that i always build only rogue decks, cheap and fun sometimes. Fun fact: TCG Accesscode is minimum 40 buckets when in ocg u can buy it for 4 buckets or low sometimes

it used to be difficult to bring out boss monsters pre 5ds era but now you get multiple turn 1, the problem with yu-gi-oh is way to many things going on and not enough counters to go around making the game horribly unstable

I think at this point, it's very hard to go back in design philosophy. We are at a point where every single engine card in your hand will do a lot for you, and it's very hard to formulate rules that would restrict your access to the cards in your hands. And the core problem is, in the end, simply that too much revolves around turn 1. This is definitely a big issue that's very hard to tackle, but I have a few hot takes that I would at least consider. Least hot take: Going second player starts with 6 cards in hand and also doesn't draw for turn. That way, you will more consistently see handtraps that stop your opponent; you are more likely to see e.g. Nib + Imperm, you also don't draw Nib for turn anymore. Mid hot take: The above, but combine with Mulligan only for the second player. However, I can totally see that what would happen here is that we simply move the power of the first turn from the going first player to the going second player, i.e. games are still decided on turn 1/2, we just move the weight more towards going second instead of going first. Therefore: Hot take: Reduce starting hand sizes to 3 or 4 (potentially combined with my least hot take, i.e. going second player gets the extra card). This would hugely offset the balance of the game, as you are less likely to see e.g. certain starter cards, but it also means that hands are more likely to run out of gas against fewer interactions since you draw fewer extenders, and this goes for both sides (i.e. the going second player will also lose steam more quickly against fewer interactions). This would (probably) force the game to be far slower. Other side effects: decks with 1 card combos would be better, especially in a top decking situation. I think this might actually be worth a shot. Take I personally don't really like: Make every new deck like Tear. The result is that turn 1 and 2 are super interactive, however, I really think this would overload the interactions in this game. Going to chain link 5 or higher on a regular basis is, to me, not fun to play or watch and makes the game even more inaccessible to new players.

i usually watch your vods since i'm out of your streaming time zone. Pretty entertaining. I remember you explained this in MBT's video on floodgate and going second card

I've been saying since 2020 that powercreep in yugioh has accelerated to a point where new archetypes are so fast and so resourceful that they're close to the breaking point. There's virtually no cost anymore and every deck can do everything. If Konami (or the community) doesn't rein the game in a little bit, soon everyone will be making combos without even using the field or GY or banished zone. And then what?

I had a match with a friend a few days ago he was on Dinos and I was using Dark World…after 3 games I felt sick at how disgusting dark worlds are also my friend wasn’t having fun (I also did the hand loop) so I went to Labyrinth x Dinomorphia…after putting up skill drain(the card and the boss monster) 3 games in a row I swapped to Exosisters…he actually had a good time which I was glad

Thank for this discussion Josh! What I find interesting is that there are a lot of videos and articles popping up about issues of modern yugioh. Moist Critical had an interesting reaction video up a few days ago. I think that whatever opinion you have, it’s quite objectively true that the state of yugioh and possible problems of the tcg is a topic that is gaining attention as more people talk about that topic.

Thank you Josh for every content that you creat! And especially thanks for those kinda videos because ist is always a pleasure to hear your thoughts about yugioh in general!

Ok I'm gonna spit out my thoughts before listening to your takes so I can compare and maybe hear something I didn't think about. -Going 1st is generally too powerful, being able to set up something your opponent needs a specific out in order to play makes little sense and makes the game "not fair" -In order to fix the first issue you have to go even worse with the "unfair" state of the game printing cards that are able to address the board your opponent can set up, so the gamestate becomes "Ok I draw my out I win because if I Evenly/Duster/Dark Ruler my opponent he is gonna have a really hard time to come back into the game or I just instascoop" -Broken cards for going 1st are even a bigger problem because once I know my matchup after siding I can just instawin with stuff like Anti-Spell or Skill Drain -Enablers are fuckin crazy, every time a card like Isolde, Fiber, Chaos Ruler, Kitkallos, Auroradon, Linkross, Mermaid or Elpy is prevalent in the meta you know that some crazy bullshit is right around the corner -Tools are just too generic and flexible, look at how many decks could fit the Brave engine or Runick, or how control decks can just play almost every Floodgate because the strategy usually revolves around turboing out a boss Monster that does 90% of the work for the Archetype, or even Extra Deck stuff, like why Accescode Talker or Borrelsword can give a guaranteed win con to every deck? -Card design is very lazy in general. Every deck, even the ones with cool gimmick in paper like Floo (the migration of birds that return to your hand) or Dinomorphia are kinda flat because they just put a giant Skill Drain boss monster on field that like 95% of archetypes got as lecacy support or payoff for their combo -We have too many counter to the counter kind of effects. Really why stuff like Called By The Grave or Crossout is even allowed to exist in the first place? -The game is hard. For a returning/new player learn the rules, the interactions, the combos, the activation conditions of some cards and all the other shananigans is just very difficult and you kinda need some preparation to get into the game, I don't think it's possible to just go to a local and straight up play the game for the first time and not get a million warnings or look at your opponent and going like "what the hell is happening here?"

Biggest problems are omninegate bossmonsters that every deck can summon, preventing your enemy from using their field zones and that there’s no real back and forth anymore. You either win on your first turn or you scoop

I completely agree that there being so much emphasis on the first turn is a core issue with the game. I myself have wondered if a lot of that could be rectified by increasing the total life points to say 10,000, maybe even 12,000. If you can survive being attacked by 3x 3000 attack monsters (which I'd say feels like an average amount of damage a good deck can put out) then you will need to consider your follow up plays more. Of course we'd need to ban cards like Ancient Leaf, but that's quite easy. Bumping up the starting life points just seems like a nice straight forward fix that wouldn't require a huge, sudden shift in game design or an acpocalypic ban list. I'd say a good example of this would be the gimmick puppet lock in Branded. That play would be far less devastating when it succeeds if Branded didn't immedaitely OTK you on the next turn.

Haven't watched the video yet. But the new/returning player experience is so hard. I topped regional and a ycs back in the day and I have been working to come back for 6 months. It's still impossible to understand all the interactions. The game has so many game actions and little interactions. The game isn't that much different then summon laggia set 4 pass and you just lose... but it takes 10 minutes of tiny interactions to get to a comparable board.

I love your second channel. I never have time to watch your streams, because of university, but im very interested in competetive yugioh. Your content gives me so much knowledge about the game thanks for that. In German: Bildungsauftrag Erfüllt

Amazing video, i see a lot of people being angry at combo decks and board it makes. However, every time i play sky strikers, deck without floodgates and plan to outresource opponent; they still complain about how it is worst deck ever to play against. People will complain whatever the current state of Yu-Gi-Oh is.

YES! Finally someone seems to understand. The go second cards don’t fix the issue of going first being busted

I think what YGO really need is different formats just like MTG. You could have something like: Standard: The most popular format where only cards printed/reprinted in the last 4 box releases are permitted. Modern: The current YGO format. Legacy: YGO with no ban list. All formats would also have their own ban lists (except legacy in my example). That way, you could pick your favorite format, a faster or a slower one. Also, that solves the power creep problem, since the standard would only be the last 4 releases, Konami wouldn't have to power creep all collections before to make players buy the new set. That also solves players' burnout: when you get tired of seeing Kash every single match, you just hop into a different format. Anyways, those formats I've listed are just an example, I'm sure people in chat can come up with smarter ideas, but I do believe this would make yugioh a better game.

Let's start prefacing with the statement that game design and game balance are not easy things to get right, so anyone that thinks there's a easy fix to those problems, think harder. With that said, I see 2 main problems with Yugioh: 1. Yugioh is too reliant on specific outs. That's a problem that is not exclusive to Yugioh, if I'm playing Hearthstone I may make a board where my opponent has to draw a specific removal spell to survive, but since most minions don't have a lot of protection and are reliant on their health, you can counter boards in a variety of ways, you can make a board of your own to contest the opponent's board, you can use single-target removal, AoE spells or more expensive mass removal, you can use minions with efficient Battlecries or with Rush, etc. With the exception of combo decks, usually there's a pletora of ways to deal with what your opponent throws at you, and the best players know how to get creative and best use their resources. The luck of the draw still plays a role in the game, but you're usually not reliant on drawing a single out. Yugioh on the other hand, is somewhat problematic, in that you're reliant on drawing specific outs. Cards like Lava Golem exist because you usually cannot out a board with engine alone, and because you have so few of those cards in your deck they have to be so powerful to be worth it, but having your chances of playing rely solely on if you draw the out or not is not fun or skillful gameplay. If you could contest whatever your opponent is doing with your own engine, then handtraps and going second cards becomes way less of a necessity, which is why Runick decks can get away with very few non-engine, as a lot of their engine can be used as removal. Having the extra deck as a toolbox is a potential way to minimize that problem, but when you're opponent is able to set up properly, chance are that they're going to interrupt you before you can get to your ED. 2. Decks are unidimensional. Now, this doesn't apply to all decks, but most archetypes have a set combo they go for that you always do. In other card games, is usual that you adapt your play and strategy to best counter whatever the opponent is playing, whatever cards you drew and maybe play around some outs, but in a lot of Yugioh decks that's not possible, you either play the standard combo or you make a objective weaker board, so most decks don't have a option to adapt, they either work or they don't, you either brick or you don't, your opponent either has the out or he doesn't, there's no in-between. Even Kashtira, that currently has the whole dilemma of playing around Nibiru or not, usually feels like is just sheer luck what the best way to play is, as you can't really know what outs your opponent has, but a lot of decks can't even do that much.

I think that the focus on decks doing so much turn 1 just makes a feedback loop. Because both player's decks do so much in 1 turn, getting stunned for even just 1 turn means that the opponent can usually just kill you or build their own unbreakable board. Its part of why its hard to hold back resources for next turn because if you don't have enough to stop them they can just steamroll you.

Forbidden memories XD I didn't remember that we had a draw phase when going first.

Did you play forbidden memories before? I know that the editor probably picks the music but I was still curious if you tried the game

4 am will watch fully in morning, just some off the top of my head. Banlists often times miss key elements, banlists often times have cards that, 1 or 3 (beatrice, infernity archfiend, miragestallio etc *yes stallio is free now*) change nothing, or cards that are still locked up in the tcg, despite having a decade of freedom in the other region (Zenmaity is banned in a world Gigantic Spright exists) the "whenever we want" is also insane that they can get away with that. Product availability in certain regions, Australia still doesn't have the most recent ots, which is nearing 2 months of age. Card availability, cards are all rarity bumped to hell and back for the consuuumers instead of for the players, perhaps while we have the 25th secrets, they may actually be *somewhat* alleviating compared to the ocg, who frankly speaking have higher end cards than we do, but then also have 5 aud baronnes.

Ayo, Josh, can we maybe get a Tear equivalent of that Spright video you made for MD? I really enjoyed seeing you think about the bo1 format and the different banlist, and also loved seeing you notice the Maxx C bounce with frog. Enjoy your vacation, king

Heyo! where did you get that huge card artwork from? i want one too for my room!

Pretty good video, any opinions about Vanquish Soul? Seems to be doing pretty well in the OCG and I’m actually surprised at how it is such a balanced midrange deck with consistent soft interaction and just massive value game.

I agree with your points. They definitely need to slow the game down a bit and add a way to sandbag players from comboing all the way similar to how other cards games have resources such as mana to do so. The change in card design with a lot of cards being able to be used only once per turn was a step in the right direction imo. Sometimes I wonder if the speed counters in the anime duels could be the solution as that could be a form of resource that limit too much cards being played and if they design it right, there should be a balance of counter generation and cards that use said counters so that they can be played...

Only halfway of video and this is very good take from u as usual. Those blowout cards and oppresive floodgates are necessary to the game now more than ever before coz game speed is being too fast right now, adn those card helps slow down a game a bit to some extent, and punish turn 1 players. At this point too late to slow game down, maybe need new master rule that limits what players can do on few first turns. Limit special summons / effect activated, that maybe a start. If not, well just keep making bandaids like floodgates and blowout cards also can i guess, like they have done for years now

I know you are talking about Yu-Gi-Oh in a whole with all the cards released but right now the feeling of tear coming out in master duel has shifted so much. I feel like you either have to play it or play a complete counter to it. Maybe bc I'm not as good as the game but it just feels oppressive

i think seeing more in-archetype handtraps that play on your opponent's first turn could REALLY help with this, like rescue-ace impulse or tearlaments havnis. this way, decks could inherently be designed to go second a little easier, i think? it's one of the things people liked most about tear format, that really the only deciding factor between going first or second was who made abyss dweller

I was like omg More joshua Content but than i saw im already following the plus Channel

I love these discussion vids keep it up

Hi Josh, long time no see! I think the problem is that there is such a big focus on negates, be it in the form lf boss monsters or floodgates. Compare that to back and forth formats that people love to this day like goats, tele dad or dragon rulers, where you had a war of attrition because it was more about generating advantage. In rulers you made a strong board with maybe 2 dracossacks, but the second players could break it because he also had access to his resources. It would be nice if more boss monsters would focus on generating advantages, especially setting up following turns (search in end phase for example) and not locking opponents out. Not sure how to get there from this point though 😅

The last fair and strong deck they made was swordsoul after that they kept release stupidly broken cards that for some reason are generic.

My current issue with modern Yugioh is having to sit down and just watch somebody play by themselves for 5 minutes on turn one and then flood the board. I’m sure I sound like a boomer but this new style of yugioh just isn’t fun to me. I don’t mind losing but I gotta be able to participate in the actual duel.

i just love hearing josh talk about ygo

Amazing video and approach to the meta 💯

(Please forgive me, the spacing of this post is a little wonky and I'm working on editing it.) This turned way longer than I intended, but I just wanted to say, I love the fact you are bringing this topic to light in a constructed and educated way. You give fair points to both sides and are not biased in your constructed criticism. I am personally of the opinion that I find the game not to be fun anymore, given the importance of the first turn, and that's okay, we can disagree on certain aspects of the game but so long as we can understand one another that is what truly matters. My hopes for the game personally are (and yes this might be a hot take) to really dial back what decks are able to do on their first turn, targeting the end result of what you go up against. And exactly like you said when you deal with the main issues the side issues or band-aids that were created to deal with that main issue can be addressed as well. Without writing a full essay I think what is most difficult for players is identifying what the real problem is. And that in order to really fix these issues you cannot take just one single action but multiple things have to be changed to get the result you wish for. (I will touch on this at the end) My personal wish for the game is that we could return to a speed and level of interaction during the first half of the Arc V Era, the area of time from Duelist Alliance to till the end of the Nekroz format. This was a point and time when decks were fast, but not too fast, they were able to float into other cards or gain back resources rather well or even have effects that activated in the grave to give you more options to a card after it was destroyed, but all of this did not happen in the first turn of the game but over the course of several turns going back and forth with the opponent. But hand traps were powerful but they could not truly shut off a deck's ability to play, it might have been greatly hindered, but you were most likely not going to lose if you got Vielered, or dare we say it (Maxx C ed). (Personal take here) This was a time before kaijus, Ash and Imperm, Dark Ruler and Nibiru, or omni negating extra deck monsters such as Borreload Savage or Apoulsa and personally, I find the exclusion of such cards to be much more enjoyable.(and Yes I understand that there were still extra deck negating monsters and I'm not saying those were fine back then, they were not, but they were much less prevalent in that era of the game, not every deck made a Herald or a Hope Harbinger, this could happen but it was not the gameplan of every deck to outright negate the opponent's board and kill them next turn) But I will not lie, compared to what decks do nowadays, this is child's play, the idea of playing Dante and setting some cards is unthinkable when you can just play your entire hand on your first turn. Players have gotten used to doing more and more with their decks and simply because their cards do more because they HAVE to do more because the game realistically will not last as long as it once did. To be frank, if the options are there the players will use them. I'm not saying it's useless to talk about these issues, far from it, but Konami and their design team really are in charge of this issue. And to be fair their band aid fixes only go so far. The introduction of hand traps and board breakers are these band aids in order to handle the unchanged might that is made from decks establishing multiple negates on their first turn or flipping floodgates to gain an advantage in their favor. But in order for this discussion to happen fans need to listen to one another and not dismiss another's opinion on the matter. There is a big divide between the casual and competitive players in this game and it's pretty sad. Players will just jump to conclusions about the opponent's viewpoints and joke about it and that gets us nowhere. Causal players want to interact in the game they enjoy, if they are left sitting there for 5 minutes, either facing down a board of negates, getting their zones locked, having an opponent play on their turn and chain locking them out of their own card's effects, can you blame them for not "enjoying" this? I don't think so. Their only option is to change their deck into something that is better equipped to handle these decks and have to auto-include 9+ hand traps or multiple going second cards just to have a chance on their first turn. This cuts them out of playing their favorite decks and strategies because they simply are not good enough. And there is no place for these lower-powered decks, there is no real format where you can play decks that are not the top ends of the meta and not get stomped. I personally love coming up with fan-made formats to help fill a need I see in the game. But if we as players cannot come together and listen to each other constructively and give honest critiques of the problems the game faces at hand, then the game may just continue down the same road its been going down and the gap between the two fan bases will grow wider and wider. Simply put, I'm a casual fan that just wants to have a few back-and-forth turns with the opponent, (actually having the game go beyond the third turn, or the game not decided by sometimes the first turn). To have each deck have its own identity and have our boss monsters be the focal point of our deck's strategy. Not to have every single card we play negated and have different and interesting game states and a multitude of possible answers at our disposal TLDR: Loved your video! While I may have some disagreements I agree with you 95%! We need to get yugioh fans talking about this and actually have constructive conversations! Not just slinging insults at one another or not being open to the other's viewpoints! Have a great day everyone and go enjoy yugioh, in your own way!

6:36 I agree 100%. With such a weak format as we are in right now, for the middle pack decks to be able to keep up, they have to rely on lots of handtraps and floods. Good examples of decks like that are the one card cyberse decks(Mathmech and Marincess). If Mathmech didn't have the ability to play 15 handtraps and rivalry, the deck would be utterly unplayable. If Marincess wasn't able to play 15 handtraps and gozen match, it would be garbage tier unplayable.

I think there heading in a really good direction with the structure decks, the recent ones have been really good. I do think they need to support older formats though, some people don’t want to deal with the complexity of the modern game and they never will it’s that simple.

The question is, how to you reduce the weight of goong first? How do you make it so going first doesn't matter as much?

This is why I always go to bat for stun or control decks. Combo decks have far and away taken off as the most popular ones, and I wouldn’t mind it so much if players of those decks didn’t turn around and vilify decks that don’t match up well with theirs. I play Snake Eyes too, but I also love to play Runick because I don’t always want to set up a big stupid board of beatsticks.

Im an old school gen 1 yugioh fan and i went into a card shop one time trying to get back into it, i like the syncro, xyz and link (pendulum is weird but thats my opinion). I got one turned and inwas like the hell is this? The only way to fix it is to limit special summon to one monster a turn cause there was special summon even in the old yugioh but its just to much now, RIP yugioh

Your Themes are always cool and your Voice is nice to hear

Not drawing an out means you need 2 make a stronger deck right?

So either you have more decks like Tear going forward, where the dice role meant very little due to Havnis and Kelbek allowing both to play in turn 1; Or we get rule changes that limit turn 1 even more - already no battle phase of course, and only 5 cards - another option would be to have board breakers in the extra deck so that deck building for going second may be less cringe... rumors are that konami is working on adding a new zone and extra deck type - so maybe they go there -> like Maser Rule 4 where you were limited with the "amount" of extra deck plays you could potentially do; If you can generally do less in a single turn, then that will also affect turn 1 boards...

At this point, I just assume that future boss monsters will have the text "This card cant be tributed" to play around Kaijus/Golem/Sphere Mode

My biggest problem with modern yugioh is the Auto-win cards. Over the past recent years konami has both unlimited/printed a lot of ridiculously powerful board breakers, and also unlimited some of the older floodgates like dimensional fissure, macro, skill drain, etc. All of these can create non-games and remove the healthy back and forth. I honestly think that if they banned lightning storm, evenly, duster, and even raigeki (and probably a couple others im not remembering), the game would be much better. Same goes for either banning or re-limiting the floodgates that they unlimited for no good reason. None of these cards are particularly meta defining, aside from maybe evenly matched and duster, but none of them create healthy gamestates when they resolve. I also really despise the design of the positive feedback loop cards. Mo Ye is always my go to since that card is a plus 3 when not interacted with, but is just as easy to stop as any other generic normal summon. Card design like that forces you to play cards that "negate" on your turn 0, where your opponent can generate a second full hand of cards just because you didn't draw a hand trap. And if you did, they get none/less of those resources.

11:19 THIS. Combo going first be like this. You never know what opponent has on their hands so you have to summon negates as much as you can COPE that some will survive from Kaiju, LarvaG, or Ra ball.

just one thing, you play Duel Monster and watch Yugioh. How cant you know the cards game name?

Always love these videos

Pot of greed: "ban, it's too OP" Summoning 76 Monsters in 1 turn: "nah that's fine" Konami 👌

Honest question, do you believe some of these problems could be solved by upping the life points? For example 20k. The game would have to go on for more turns at this point but at the same time maybe blowing out your opponent once is still enough and they couldn't come back anyway

the worst is a lot of boards are actually breakable, even without the blow-out going 2nd cards. the problem is when with a full board, you also have to face 2-3 hand traps; see superheavy samurai: it makes a huge board off 1 card, and other than that, you also have to play through a lot of HTs, making it impossible to beat, going 2nd. and shs is even unaffected by your own HTs, since it can make a Baronne de Fleur, unaffected by your cards, even before starting its real combo.

Not a big fan of erratas, but they need to errata certain cards that are crazy good going first so that they can't be used on the first turn, to make going second more viable as an actual choice.

To be honest, I think Mathmech post Cyberstorm Acess has really high potential to play around almost everything. Just like tear back in the day, putting up layered interruptions is so strong and Mathmech (thanks to the new cyberse support) can now use every recourse available in the game. Interruptions in hand/field/gy and backrow. :D

YGO needs a new Master Rule that introduces limits on special summoning. My initial thought is that you have a mana counter system where you accrue 1 counter each turn. Your number of special summons per turn is limited to the number of counters you have during that turn. That way players can't build massive boards on the first or second turns. There would be a ramp up. Of course, Konami could ruin the idea by making effects that allow you to violate the counter limit.

12:50 they already do that in the OCG. Many top tier decks simply just vomit 6-8 interruptions. The "best" 2 decks are Purely (which if you Kaiju the towers monster they recover 3 and SS 1. That guy also draws them 3 on your stand by) and Super Heavy FTK (Lock with Artifact Deathscythe and the actual 8000 dmg true ftk) that often vomits Baronne and other 3 more negators. Your realistic only outs to those boards is to either draw Dark Ruler or a Lava Golem and somehow OTK through a deadscythe.... or use Forbidden Dropplet and play the game with 1 card in hand.

I feel like Yugioh's card pool has reached a critical mass which means if they made newer, slower archetypes the game would probably find an older strategy that was just better. It's also a reason I think most archetypes are too reliant on archetype specific cards or are now centered around smaller card pools, like spright being level 2, Kashtira being psychic, or swordsoul being wyrms

Make loads more of these! Please

Loved this

Lets also talk about cards that provides like a plus five if they resolve and basically u autolose if u didnt have a response (branded fusion just as an example)

Really enjoy this content

I think an interesting suggestion is to ban accesscode and borrelsword, and perhaps increase the lifepoints to 12k or 16k. Doing so removes the ability of just any random deck to OTK and forces the game to go into turns 4-5, making the idea of follow-up more valuable and freeing up design space

Speaking of board breakers, what do you think about super poly? Is it ok for a card like this to exist?

How exactly do you slow down the game without either rotating it or banning like 50% of the legal cards.

Honestly, some of my most enjoyable games have been when I’ve gotten evenly matched after creating an unbreakable board pretty much. I don’t have any more resources and he can’t do a whole lot and this kind of brinks brings it back to old-school Yugi.

I have a question: Doesn't eliminating battle phase from turn 2 and 3 fixes the game?

As a “Yugi boomer”, my biggest problem is how “slowly speedy” the current game is. I want a genuinely slower game but not in the way the current game is played where we sit around and wait for our opponent to take 5 minutes comboing out a full board and it’s still only their first turn. I want that 5 minutes to consist of a lot more back and forth. Maybe it’s my ignorance to how the current game is played and I’m sure my skill level plays a part but it’s just nowhere near as fun as it used to be because of this shift.

Personally, for me, a big problem with modern YGO is the amount of luck needed to play a game is too high sometimes. Regardless of whether you and your opponent is playing combo or floodgate, You always need to open both engine and interation, or lack of better term "the nuts" in the first 2 turns in order to have good interactive games. Otherwise you could end up having a one-sided game, and the same is applied to your opponent. I've always enjoyed games where me and my opponent were going off in my locals, but never enjoyed either opening no handtraps or opening no engine.

A year on and the problem is worse the condensation of all decks into a mono turn 1 spam style is pretty much complete and rogue or casual players are tired and leaving for less oppressive games. Out of the 5 card shops in my city 4 are gone no one plays anything but casual friend vs friends or something like that no one is interested as far as I can see in my local scene which is concerning to see.

I think the problems with yugioh started when the graveyard was seen as a resource. Then to up that the deck is seen as your 2nd hand. So many cards search now. Take Kashtira. 4 of the cards just add another Kashtira card to your hand. 1 of them just summons one from the deck. I play Branded Blue-Eyes. I have 12 cards in my deck that give me access to my combo. All 12 use the deck as a resource. With 1 of my 12 starter cards I can build a board that has Mirrorjade, Dragostepelia, A Blue-Eyes Jet Dragon and a Blue-Eyes White Dragon on board. With a branded fusion in hand for next turn. All because that first card and every card after uses the deck instead of my hand for resources.

Its also that effects that in a older format would have been an actual drawback for a good effect aka "activate x but now you got to drop y cards from your hand or destroy Z cards on your field" is with most Archetypes now just worked into the playstyle and becomes an advantage because those cards then usualy just activate more effects allowing you to either just summon them rigth back, draw a card, search etc. Aka you dont just get a card with 1 good effect rigth out ,you can even trigger 3-4 more good effects. Giving you a easy + in card advantage. With a single move. While if your opponent doesnt have a handtrap out is basicly guranteed. And dont even get me started on the "But then you can only play cards of x archetype" Its an Archetype. There wont be many non Archetype cards in that deck. Thats not a drawback thats an excuseto make it look like one.