man watching Kes agonize over what to pick for Max C was so heartbreaking. We yugioh players know it's banned in the US of A and totally street legal in the land of the rising sun. It's like watching someone agonize over disarming a soda bottle set to spray all over the new clean kitchen.

The "C" archetype in Japanese is called "G" (for Gokiburi - Japanese for Cockroach). The archetype is a reference to how in a lot of Japanese media (manga, anime, games, TV shows), they will "censor" or blur out cockroaches because everyone finds them disgusting, and you'll usually get a character exaggeratedly freaking out about it. The things are so gross that they even "censor" the name to just be "G," or in the English case "C".

If anything I think you undersold Maxx "C"'s impact to him. Not only is the roach in 97% of decks (insane just on its face) it necessitates running a package of 5-6 other deck slots dedicated to countering it. In any format where Maxx "C" is legal, a full ONE QUARTER of the average deck is dedicated to enabling and/or countering Maxx "C".

"not banned because your opponent can always just not play into it" YEAH THATS WHAT MAKES IT GOOD

"-Response? -Thinking" might just be strongest weapon in the YuGiOh arsenal 😂

Fun fact about yugioh: If you count out loud on your opponents turn, you can get a warning. Thanks nibiru.

"You've beat Soldier of Godrick. Now go fight Margit the Fell Omen"

I think the best way to evaluate Maxx C for a Magic Player was is there is an Instant that say "Draw 1 card for each spell your opponent play this turn. Those cards will cost 0". And even that is not similar enough.

I think his guess for Maxx "C" was more correct than not, considering that it's legal (3x) in OCG and MD

22:00 "This is for parity, do you think he wins or loses?" *shows Maxx C, video length is 44 minutes* Oh boy, things are about to get interesting

Droll and Lock Bird is an extremely interesting card in that it's essentially a canary in a coal mine for the format. The longer that card is good, the worse the format is, in general. If it gets main decked for a long period of time, it's not exactly a good time.

The best way to describe the difference between Magic and yugioh is: If you remember the 1 human year is 7 dog years. One Yu-Gi-Oh! turn is equal to 5 turns in magic. In that sense a floodgate like ‘Maxx “C”’ would convey the right meaning on why it is so strong.

I think an important and missed part of the evaluation of Evenly Matched is that it is itself on the board when it resolves. They still get to keep something. Also, because of how chains work, you can "float around it".

Maxx C honestly prob most tricky when you think about it when 2/3 out of the main YGO formats has the card not only legal but at 3

The fact that forceful sentry was a 1-for-1 AND you get to see your opponent's whole hand was busted. When this card was legal it was wild.

37:17 God, I wish I could show KessWylie last year's YuGiOh Master Duel World Championships. The first duel between team To The Future and team Sindang Pros, the VERY FIRST DUEL of the entire Master Duel competition, was won by motherfucking Kobanwa "Tiaraments strongest" Tasuku by decking out his opponent through the Maxx "C" challenge.

Honestly, you should just show MTG players yugioh shorts of common turn one combos so they can understand how relevant drawing and summoning is

He gets a pass to say "just don't play" because he doesn't play Yugioh

Ah, Maxx “C” The schism of philosophy between the T and O Full gas combo vs overwhelming control The other example of this extreme I know is Runick: 8 instant fusions with draw power vs slow stun mill

When he asked if you could interact with Maxx C, you should've said Droll & Lock Bird can stop it.

Do remember that Maxx "C" is also unbanned in the OCG format which is also paper Yu-Gi-Oh.

My favorite way to explain yugioh interaction, especially to returning players, is that yugioh is just as or more interactive than it used to be, but that interaction is condensed into 1 or 2 turns instead of 10. So for example instead of having 10 turns with 1 interaction eatch you have 2 turns with 5 interactions eatch.

Bro is in a crusade to use all the terms that judges don't authorize 😂

"There's a lot of back and forth in yugioh" with the earth insect on screen is just another level of irony.

The annoying part about Maxx C is that technically either answer is correct. This card is banned in one of the 3 major formats (sorry duel links/rush duel) and unbanned in 2 of them, even though almost everyone hates it

Really good reading! I think a difference between him and some other MtG guests is that he's very good at actually parsing what the classic Yugioh wall of text is saying. No shade to anyone else, obviously, but most of the guests are struggling to parse where one line of text starts or ends or what it's actually trying to do while Kess is mostly asking clarifying format questions. I think the two key points of misunderstanding Maxx "C" were that at worst it's like a 1 for 1, and that simply not playing into Maxx "C" often means you're just dead. So borderline zero downside instant win the game unless countered. Seems pretty bannable when phrased like that. xD

Normal summoning is like paying its mana cost. Special summoning is like cheating a creature out.

Maxx "C" is literally FORMAT WARPIING. The TCG doens't have it and the OCG does. And the two games are COMPLETELY different because of this 1 damn card.

Vanity's Emptiness wasn't banned because you could just respond with it to turn off the game for the opponent. It was banned because the drawback of destroying itself is actually a positive. It just means you can turn on Emptiness on your opponent's turn and then play something as simple as an upstart goblin on your follow up turn to destroy your own emptiness and make the game ending plays.

Kes' explanation for mental mistep is extremely similar to how it feels to play with maxx "c"; both players play the maxx "c" mini-game of revealing how many maxx "c", ash blossom, called by, belle, crossout, gamma, triple each player drew for turn before anything starts.

Master Duel is widely seen as the more accessible version of YuGiOh for your average player, but in terms of really high-level tournament play, Paper YuGiOh is divided into OCG and TCG. (Very important distinction; as the majority of cards on the banlist is largely dictated by the roach being around or not) Extremely so to the point that the mentality of a lot of OCG players have shifted to prefer decks with lower power levels purely because of the roach being present there. TCG players love big fuck-off combo decks because they're not constantly being threatened by a roach hiding in their opponent's hand.

Maxx "C" the only card in Yu-Gi-Oh! that allows you to accidentally deck yourself before you've even have had your own turn... man the days when I still played yugioh and you preemptively maxx C, on the opponent's turn 1. And then they proceed to special summon a billion times... decking you...

40:00 In yugioh it's not just lying that is banned, revealing private information is. Telling your opponent, implied or otherwise that you have no reaponse is revealing that private information. And it doesn't matter whether it is true or not, just that you revealed private information. And there are rules around what is public and private information, and when stuff goes from public to private information. So if my opponent were to ask whether I had a e.g. droll and lock so they can adjust their search accordingly, I would have to tell them that that is private information that I cannot reveal... well in a tournament setting at least, between friends no one cares

The Chain in Yugioh works basically the same as the Batch in MTG. I think this every time I hear it explained . If you understand that sentence I hope your back is doing well.

The thing about Droll & lock is that it doesn't block the first tutor. It also doesn't block deck to graveyard, deck to field, graveyard to field, or graveyard to hand. So a deck like zombies that mils itself and uses the graveyard as a second hand is largely unaffected by it. In terms of MtG it would be the equivalent of trying to prevent a dredge deck from drawing.

kinda not fair because there are plenty of cards that have crossed the line that aren't banned. lol

Last one is a trick question since in TCG its banned but in OCG it is legal at 3 and both formats are paper. Then there’s Master Duel which it’s also legal at 3.

a similar idea that could be cool is "playable or broken" where you guess if it sees play in a couple of decks or a lot of decks.

To add on to Maxx C, there’s the meta-meta game where decks are warped around that card and counters to it up to the point where it hurts deck variety because everyone’s siding in or main-decking “C” or specific counters to it .

I actually like the over-analyzation of these cards that I don't put that much thought into anymore. Then it's also nice hearing old MTG cards from my time of playing MTG.

Did you ask him about Dandylion? That's a fun card because it's very broken but most people look at it and think "Nah, this is perfectly fine. It's not that good."

That situation being explained with Mental Misstep DOES happen in Yugioh. I play Maxx C, I use Ash Blossom, I use Called by the Grave, I use Ghost Belle. Granted most people aren't running Ghost Belle but still possible.

Watching a lot of videos like this, i notice people struggle to explain their cards/games well. I really enjoyed how you explained the cards and could easily seeing this explanation working with someone else with the same background.

Maxx C was a trick question! It is actually unbanned in both the OCG AND Master Duel! Yu-Gi-Oh isn't just the TCG...

Question I should have asked “What percentage of a decks summons is special on average” lol

I saw a video of someone winning the Maxx C challenge with a junk synchro deck, and it was a fun watch. They drew played and recycled so many synchros and happened to have a card destruction in hand. Watching them drop the Card Destruction and seeing the opponent drop more than 25 cards and then evaporate to deck out was funny as hell. Also, I think Master Duel goes off of OCG ban list as opposed to our (U.S.) TCG ban list.

Frequency of play a magic player would easily understand: Normal summon is your land drop, you get 1 on your turn by default. Tribute summon is using your land drop on a fetch land, then crack it immediately. Special summon is a storm player who got to pop off.

The thing that makes Evenly Matched not banned is that it's not a counter trap card and it's activation requires you to be at the end of the battle phase. It can be stopped. Sometimes one card is all the other guy needs to win. Sometimes you don't get to have that luxury and need to set it and just go with however many cards are on your side of the field. And then there's the activation requirement itself. Sometimes you skipped your battle phase and that can cost you the duel. Sometime you didn't survive to activate it in the first place.

Shout out to my babies Madolche being one of the few decks that can search and buy back Max C somewhat easily.

The other issue with Vanity's Emptiness that wasn't mentioned - it's hard for your opponent to get rid of unless they have removal that doesn't require special summons. But because it gets destroyed whenever a card goes from the field to your GY, you can just play a spell card, which then goes to the GY and gets rid of your floodgate.

Looking forward to listening to this on the drive back!

Loved this format.. Make it more tougher by banned vs limited to 1..

More of these please! I love seeing players from other card games guess how good/if a card in yugioh is banned. In the future (if you havent already), you could also have them guess the price of the (highest rarity) :)

It may have been relevant information to evaluating Droll and Lockbird to know that in many situations Droll does counter a search, for instance if a search spell discards a card which has an effect to search a card when discarded. Or something like Snake Eye Ash tutor Poplar. Turn player chooses to activate poplar, you choose to activate droll. Poplar's search happens on a new chain and is prevented.

The biggest thing I see with "Evenly Matched" is that using it to full wipe the board going second means you don't get your first turn battle phase which is basically making it as though you went first but your opponent has no hand or at least fewer card in hand because they presumably used those cards to build a massive board that this one card deleted forever. It reminds me of Karn's restart the game except you keep Karn in play ultimate a little bit.

38:59 Brain malfunction. he had so many thoughts in his mind. It just wouldn't come out lol

Loving the content your really putting in that work broski

Great video, i like that you can explain to them the card effects in mtg terms so that the guest can understand the card better and not be lost. Overall good experience!

Always great to see this stuff! Hah, that last card was cruel! I don't know how much time it would take to talk about them, but it just occurred to me that it might be interesting to ask people about old normal monsters that saw some play long ago. Like, were Mechanicalchaser or Summoned Skull ever good? Maybe as a bit of a "warm up" conversation, since I doubt there'd be as much to say about them as about something like Maxx C!

One thing I thought was hilarious was how the MTG player immediately thought about angle shooting not lying.

You should have told this man that you start with 5 cards in your hand and you get to play about 30 cards a turn to understand how important searching your deck is in Yu-gi-oh.

Another thing about evenly is the fact that sp just exists. You can yeet your board to the banishment until the end phase, then they come back.

An interesting way to take this concept further could be to make them guess if a card is the previously banned version or its errata'd version (for cards that apply, like Makyura the Destructor, Dark Strike Fighter, Brain Control and whatnot).

yugioh have several banlists: TCG, OCG, Master Duel, Duel Links regarding lying in yugioh: you cannot resolve the effect of a card without valid targets or "failed to find" in MTG

watching you talk about Droll and Lock reminded me of the first time i tried using it and thought that it just stopped the initial search and the nekroz guy i was playing against realized i didn't know what i was doing and just searched like a dozen cards after and otkd me

These are not glowing roaches, it's them glaring at you with menacingly

as Magic player describing yugioh: turn 1: player 1 builds a board turn 2: player 2 breaks the board and wins, or turn 3: player 1 wins end of game and having a "last card" as player 2 on turn 1, will guarantee turn 2 win. (either by stopping turn 1 (easy to break), or accelerate into a giant turn 2 hand (overwhelming force to break board))

9:45 not only can you attack for game. its also trivially easy to get rid of this card on your own turn by just activating any spell for example. so even after activating it you dont have the same problems as your opponent.

I don't know why I like these videos so much hahah

I thought maxx c was supposed to be a gimme, was very funny to watch him guess whether it's banned when it's kind of both.

The thing with searching Maxx C is that you don't need to because for some reason it's ALWAYS in the starting hand. I played a deck that didn't even have Maxx C in it and I still opened with it

Maxx C is also not banned in OCG as well as Master Duel. So it's only TCG that has it banned. And it can also keep several other decks in check, to an extent.

How to explain.... *Special Summons:* "Normal Summoning is a once-per-turn action where you put a monster from your hand into play without using any card effects. Special Summoning is every other time you put a monster into play, including by card effects as well as from your Extra Deck." *Lying:* It is illegal to ask for *or* provide private information without a card effect telling you to do so.

I’ve watched all of your shows, and I personally think this new style is the best! But it’s probably a good idea to mix things up to keep it fresh for everyone

The "C" archetype, for clarification, is literally just some guy's home that's infested with roaches and is struggling to try and get rid of them, but he just can't, poor guy. Maxx "C" is a plague to this game, literally, even OCG players hate it, noone wants this card to exist. What was the peak usage rate it had in Master Duel? I think it was in 98% of decks, just let that sink in. The game constantly peaks between 30-40k concurrent players everyday and across all ranks, both in casual and ranked, in 98% of all decks, this card is used. It's crazy.

i think that bringing up the concept of lying on tcgs reminded me of a ruling change we had that made mind crush go from being a really good card to a really bad card bc you can't look at your opponent's hand with it too verify they don't have the card you named even if you name something they just searched so you can just lie and say you don't have it and the mind crush player can't do anything about it. i don't know if that ruling got reversed ever but i remember thinking it was really silly when it happened years ago.

I like taking the Maxx C challenge. I play synchrons, so long as I can Crystal Wing or Shooting Majestic negate the Nibiru, I can deck you out. I actually fell short by one once, but Red Hot Lock still stopped them from winning. Passed turn, deck out.

I've definitely won games off Maxx "C"'s 500 ATK. It happens VERY rarely, but if both boards blow up, neither players have cards left in hand and I topdeck Maxx "C": Insect Beatdown, let's go! It's a very very small upside, but you can't do that with Ash, where topdeck->face-down defense is a lot better though.

There's something else about Vanity's Emptiness: it says YOUR graveyard so on your own turn it's trivially easy to get rid of it by playing a spell card. It's a stasis but you pay the cost before untap so you still get an untap phase the turn you get rid of it Something a MtG player may not notice with Evenly Matched: despite being the equivalent of a instant/sorcery, it's on the field when it's resolving so it counts as 1 card you control 26:44 I object! In some games, luke Uno and many others, drawing cards is bad. If my opponent asks me if I have Maxx "C" I'm calling a judge

Lies of Omission are not lies. YuGiOh also has a lot of Honor System rules that MTG doesn't involving facedown cards on board. You have to trust that when your opponent plays shit face-down they aren't cheating. Hence, YGO has rules against lying.

Wonderful vid, Kess is a fantastic guest

"How do you not lie?" You just say "fuck around and find out"

What a nice guy. He really went full Jesse Kotton with that meta-gaming.

41:12 I can't see asking if your opponent has a card when their hand is an unknown state and being lied to as a DQ or even a warning for the player lying. Now if you added Maxx C to hand then your opponent activated "Mind Crush" and declared Maxx C and THEN you lied about having it in hand, that would be a DQ, because it's known you have it in hand. You can't get a DQ in Yu-Gi-Oh for being dishonest about unknown things as long as you aren't actively using that to your advantage. So like the counting out loud your opponents summons could get you a warning because that could impact the game state, but if I ask you if you have a card in hand and you lie to me, it wouldn't get the person lying a warning or DQ because that would be silly. Then you'd just sit there and ask your opponent if they have every meta card in the game and they would have to tell you their hand or be DQed.

What he said at around 43:00 was spot on

The Roach isn't banned in Master Duel or the OCG, so you could say that he wasn't really wrong.

yugioh is super interactive - gets calamity locked - wait hold up

I love these types of videos.

One day i'd like to see some pro magic players rate some of the most used Extra Deck monsters. Honestly, just seeing how /if they could parse Barrone, S:P Little Knight, Zeus, etc, would be really funny.

When people say "This is a 2-3 turn format" to a Magic player, you gotta specify you legitimately mean the third turn taken this game. Turn 3 in Magic means that this is the third turn you've taken yourself. I think that would SIGNIFICANTLY change how they rate some of these cards.

I really like this "Banned or Broken, but Legal" format over "Broken or Useless"; I feel like the evaluated cards get put into a context where their power levels are similar enough that there's some good insight to be gained. I like how another commentator @antman7673 described a key difference in how fast Magic and Yugioh play in how a single Yugioh turn can have 5+ Magic turns of interaction. To get a better picture of Maxx C, maybe it'd be something like for every land drop you do, your opponent also gets a free land, and every spell you cast, your opponent draws a card, and this goes on until Maxx C expires in 5+ turns. On another note, I think another way to describe hand traps like Ash Blossom, Veiler, Imperm, etc. is that they're Mental Misstep that also works against activated abilities in a game full of 1 drops. From what I understand, counterspells in Magic also send the countered card to the grave, which might be a relevant difference since the hand traps I mentioned don't destroy the card in cases like monsters on field/continuous/field spells.

You can recycle Maxx “C” back to your hand every turn in Madolche with Madolche Teacher Glassoufle while Madolche Chateau is on the field (only in master duel and ocg ofc)

Man, whenever people talk about Maxx C it's probably some of the most heated debate around whether it's more beneficial to have it legal or have it banned It is, one of the best cards ever printed if not the best for sure though, because even in a no banlist format, where even pot of greed wouldn't be good enough to be played, you'd still play 3 copies of Maxx C, that's just how it is.

kesswylie's analysis is so good

I can't believe Maxx C is unbanned in some formats. Pot of greed is banned, "Opponent can't special summon" is also banned, but making your opponent choose one of those two effects isn't?

I think it would be interesting for the MTG guy to watch the dB grinder so he could see the game spell

so I am at min 21... and he just said okay now its 2 2 lets see if he wins - there are still 20min left... Iam like , yeah bonus rounds - but then the roach popps up and I know we are going to get 20min of madness.

Honestly you could have just told Kes "No matter what you answer you're correct, it just depends on which side of the International Date Line you're asking." To really mess him up. TCG (US, Europe, South America I think?) has it banned while OCG (Japan, Korea, China, SouthEastAsia) runs the maxX (huehue) copies in almost all decks. Master Duel Is supposed to be a compromise of both banlists, but leans more on the OCG banlist, because Konami is Japanese. And yes, the mind games of "does my opponent have something that can counter my board" is part of the charm of YGO. You think you have an unbreakable board when all of a sudden three of your best monsters get caught in a giant gold pokeball while the other two get eaten by Lava Golem. :P

Very entertaining video thank you

As a OCG player i would say it is more weird that maxxC is banned the difficulty to play in second is immediately be so high. I do not play TCG (as that is not played in Asia region, so i do not have much chance to do so) but just from the past event on MD which they have the TCG ban list, (with maxxC is banned) I feel like TCG list is a joke. Everyone who go second would just surround when they saw the first card played.