A guy I played against during the early years of Yugioh used back up soldier to put 3 pieces of Exodia back into his hand after using Painful Choice to put them in his graveyard.

The good ol' days of YuGiOh, when the first 10 turns where just to set up your strategy or combo. Good times

Backup Soldier was on the list *purely* for Exodia. You seem to forget just how important Exodia was to the very early days of YuGiOh. It was a legitimate tournament strategy until the beginning of the chaos era.

Gadgets were semi-limited because at the time, the meta was just using lots of removal (Smashing Ground, Fissure, etc) to attack directly. And Gadgets assured a kind of consistency other decks lacked, assuring they always had enough monsters to attack with.

Injection fairy Lily was the og utopia the lighting

Friend: Emergency Provisions sucks. Why go minus for life points? Me pulling out my copy of Mirage of Nightmare: Wanna duel?

Hard to believe some of these cards where banned for being "too good" and doing "too much" Nowadays you'll do 10 times that in one turn lol

Backup Soldier was only included in Exodia decks, then as now.

I remember, that back in the days absolutely everyone used Injection Fairy Lily, and it was aburdly annoying, because it was a literal "kill whatever bossmonster the enemy has" card. So her inclusion isn't really odd at all.

I’m going to pull the old man yelling get off my lawn moment. Injection Fairy Lily was the one card you never wanted to see on the field during it’s heyday. It was devastating to have your level 6’s on the field and watch as they got crushed the turn Injection was on the field. And, they could activate the effect whenever it participated in battle. Trap hole and bottomless trap hole did nothing. So unless you had monster removal, that card ruined your day.

Gadgets were restricted due to a deck called 5th gadget. It was a 45 card deck that focused on one for one removal and always having a gadget on the field. Pot of avarice would always make sure you had gadgets to play, while removal cards like smashing ground, fissure, and bottomless trap hole would destroy opponents cards. Keep in mind this was a much slower format, and special summoning was extremely rare. You would essentially out tempo your opponent.

I always read this as “oldest banned cards” and now I want a top 10 of the oldest cards that are banned today

That Slifer Slacker Jaden always used Emergency Provisions with Mirage of Nightmare. I knew he was just lucky in all those Duels!!!

Cards that didn’t get good until decades after they were released

HOW DARE YOU SAY DARK SCORPIONS ARENT GOOD!? DON ZALOOG! ATTACK HIM DIRECTLY!

Drop Off (and Mask of Darkness) was restricted due to the Masks of Tsukuyomi deck that could prevent an opponent from drawing any cards. It was unlimited when Tsukuyomi was banned on the next ban list.

Everyone else: Hand of Nephthys Duel Logs: Hand of NEFFFTHYSSSS

7:00 - Backup Solider was limited due to Exodia. Having access to cards like Graceful Charity, Card Destruction and Painful Choice made it extremely easy to get 5 monsters in the grave. 10:10 - Banisher of the Light comboed with it. 12:10 - Drop-off comboed with Tsukuyomi and Mask of Darkness (Which was also limited to 1 in 2006). If you got the combo off, you'd be able to lock your opponent out of drawing cards for the rest of the game. 15:15 - IFL was able to get around Gravity Bind, Trap Hole, Bottomless and Messager of Peace. At the time, those cards were the cards to keep monster heave decks in check. IFL was able to get around all of them (As well as being an absolute powerhouse in it's own right).

Lily also allowed you to duck under Level Limit - Area B as well as Gravity Bind, two cards that were extremely popular during that time.

Backup soldier was banned because of exodia, wasnt odd at all.

For #7: Backup Soldier was semi-limited because the game was slow enough that Exodia was a realistic win condition and they wanted to make it less consistent.

holy hell, most of these cards were meta when i last played, makes me feel old when you mention they years the cards were in play.

Wasnt back up soldier used in exodia decks to be able to get three pieces from the graveyard?

For my money Twin-headed behemoth's "cause the rulings were a pain in the etc." was the oddest reason.

Oh, Gravekeeper's Servant...you will always hold a special place in my heart, along with Manga Ryu Ran and The Reliable Guardian, because you were in my first ever Yu-Gi-Oh! pack, back when Spell Cards still had their proper name of Magic Cards.

Backup soldier was limited not because of the advantage it got you, but because it grabbed up to 3 exodia pieces from the graveyard

“I’m chick the yellow I’m 6foot when I jump” best line in GX

Lily was banned back then because it was really really easy to put heart of clear water. And make her a unkillable beat stick. Buster rancher was a second favorite against Tyrant Dragon decks.

Great video! I haven't followed Yu-Gi-Oh for a while, so I really appreciated the way you slowed down and gave context. A lot of other channels assume you know card effects and their contexts already, which can make them hard to follow.

With Emergency Provisions you could use the effect of Mirage of Nightmare to draw up to 4 cards then send it to the graveyard before you had to discard the following turn to keep all the cards you drew. Fun trivia this combo was first used by Grandpa Muto in classic Yugioh and Jaden used this combo 5 times in the first 30 episodes of GX then it was written out to coincide with Mirage of Nightmare getting banned.

Duel Logs: “Makyura the Destroyer will never come off the ban list” Makyura: “You underestimate my power”

I thought it said oldest for a second. Which I wouldn't mind either.

In regards as to why the Gadgets were semi-limited. A gadget deck in 2007 had excellent syngergy with other cards/decks such as and in no particular order: * Sniper Hunter - Gadgets had the ability to help you get hand presence once they are summoned, making them useful for fodder for sniper hunter during an era where destroying one single card on your opponent side of the field could give you a safe trip to winning. Pot of Avarice was very important to this deck as well * Chimeratech OTK / Limiter Removal swarm - they were machine type and it was a format where using Future Fusion, ultimate offering, Limiter Removal and Overload Fusion were pretty much a factor to conducting a OTK either on there own or combined. GADGETS WERE GREAT DECK THINNERS IN THIS META because it raised your odds in drawing those specific spell/trap cards by having one less of their own existing in the deck. *** GADGET BEATDOWN ------ THE deck only really needed 12-15 monsters or so and the rest comprised of cards that would keep the Gadgets on the field or do a one-for-one field removal such as: Smashing Ground, Shrink (this one very important), Sakuretsu Amor, Fissure, mirror Force, compulsory evacuation device, trap/bottomless trap hole, torrential tribute, dark holw. In This deck having all 9 gadgets along with Sangan, Giant Rats and sometimes a Lily Fairy would be more then enough. The opponent would feel guilty to spend resources in destroying a "puny" monster and they were also immune to bottomless trap holes. You could always recycle your gadgets with pot of avarice too. * field tribute / Monarchs - this was a meta of monarchs and they also saw play in some monarch decks, although destiny heros and treeborn frog did a better job. I have no mention in newer cards after the gadgets got taken off the banlist.

Top 10 BEATSTICKS TOP 10 WORST RITUAL MONSTER

Small history lesson : Backup soldier was limited because you could add 3 pieces of exodia from it GY to hand, And as I remember painful choice wasn't on the banlist yet. So u could activate painful choice and select all 4 normal monsters then add them back with backup soldier

The Gears actually released with a *bit* of support, like the Trap Monster that could Union Equip one of them.

Backup Soldier was semi-limited because of Painful Choice and Exodia Decks...you would pick the 4 vanilla cards of Exodia....your opponent most likely sent them to the graveyard and you would bring them back to the hand with Backup Soldier

Side note: apprentice magician looks like a younger version of dark magician

Thank you for the blast from the past. Lot of old classic cards that I used to play with and use. I forgot all about Gravekeeper's Servant. Fun card!

Backup Soldier was a staple in Exodia decks. It let you use the normal pieces for cards like Graceful Charity so you can get them back after getting Exodia.

i got something to say about emergency provisions other then the jaden mirrage bs people keep spamming the comments section with. Firstly you made a mistake in the video. The sending of cards to the graveyard part is a COST. costs are always paid upon activation. therefore the sending of spell and trap cards happens BEFORE resolution not upon resolution like mentioned in the video or after. With that being said the card is quite useful in a number of ways since it says send rather than destroy and also can be chained with stuff like fairy wind or that solemn judgement scale balence drawpower trap thingy that counts card advantage. its useful at times to chain burn players lol. just chain it after chaining a bunch of other traps since theyre still technically on the field until the chain resolves anyway so its free lp. just dont get chucked by using this the same turn as intending to use chain strike. that emergency army food in those cans is delicious and allows you to potentially be able to eat up an attack to the face without losing the duel. hopefully. also an interesting ruling situation came about at ycs long beach many years back when ceaser gonzalez attempted to use this to get around royal decree since decree negates traps used on the field and doesnt prevent their activation like jinzo does. however unfortunately the situation got ruled in the opponents favor instead due to trap "effects" of those activated cards remaining on the field even though they themselves are psychicly in the grave their affects remain on the place where activated. with monster effects this is ruled differently however like a skill drain not being able to stop a carcar d or rescue rabbit since they remove them self as cost and costs can still be paid. anyone reading feel free to correct my grammer and badly half assed inccorrect ruling at the end of my comment. mainly the flawed comparession of decreee vs traps being compared to skill drain vs monster effects.

Gadgets were pretty op when they came out. They were the top used deck in japan and used 1 for 1 cards like fissure, smashing ground, sakuretsu armor. It was an era of card advantage and they were always a +1. I remember shrink was huge and was the top prized card at shonen jump because it was op with gadgets

On a bit of a nostalgia kick here with Yugioh, and oh boy do I remember my brother having an Exodia deck using 2 or 3 Backup Soldier, 3 Magician of Faith, 3 Graceful Charity and 3 Pot of Greed (we played the 1st few years, loved seeing cards like Injection Fairy Lily, United we Stand, and Call of the Haunted here as well)

Ahh.. "The Interdimensional Prison" known as the Banlist.

Ah, Breaker-- I played avidly in the early years when your deck was just a pile of awesome cards like Breaker.

Backup Soldier was limited because there was no reliable way to banish cards from your opponent's graveyard. Exodia players could dump exodia pieces in the GY with graceful charity or as defense position monsters to stall them pop backup soldier to win the game.

With Injection Fairy Lily people were combining her with Fairy Meteor Crush to inflict piercing damage and comboing very well with Gravity Bind/Messenger of Peace to seal off your opponents attacks and allow her to attack since her effect doesn't go off till the damage step

What about... Top 10 cards in the anime that were never brought to real life

Fifth Gadget was a thing on their release, called that because it was a 45 card deck and one fifth of it was gadgets. This was a dominant deck at the time because these cards immediately replaced themselves and you outgrinded your opponent by playing a ton of 1 for 1 removal (fissure, smashing ground, widespread ruin, sakuretsu, even hammer shot) and it basically felt silly to beat your opponent with a bunch of tiny floaters. I can't be sure but I think Injection Fairy Lily was also on the banlist because Magician's Circle was a battle trap that made both players summon a Spellcaster with 2000 or less ATK in attack position. And CORRECT me if I'm wrong, but if your opponent said they didn't have one, you were allowed to check their deck to verify they couldn't resolve the effect properly while you got a Fairy Lily straight from your deck.

disagree about fairy lily. it was pretty much a staple in every deck when it was limited

its amazing how many good strategies I never knew I discovered from this channel. Definitely gona try some of them mixing it with modern cards.

As someone who predominantly plays Goat, this was an enjoyable watch. Thank you :)

How about top 10 archetypes that nobody know about?

This is just a guess, but wouldn't people use Backup Soldier with Painful Choice in Exodia decks to put three pieces in their hand, hope someone chose to discard those pieces, then activate Backup Soldier to put those pieces right back into their hand? Or would shenanigans like that be more indicative of why Painful Choice will be exiled for all eternity? I can count on one hand the duels against actual humans I've ever had, so I wouldn't know.

As someone who played mainly between 2005-2008, this was a very nostalgic video!

As soon as Apprentice Magician appeared I knew it was the interaction with Breaker that got it semi-limited.

16:11 Oh I remember saying that... until I suffered the rush down of IFL.

Drop off was hit because there was a lock with Tsukuyomi and Mask of Darkness. Emergency Provisions was used in Chain Burn which was actually pretty good at the time, it kept them in the game. Backup Soldier was used with Exodia.

Ah, nice to see my old buddy Vampire Lord pop up at the beginning of the video. The one tim I got super in to playing a bunch was when the Zombie Madness Structure Deck came up and I kitbashed it in to a mean little deck. Then a format or two later half the deck got banned/limited in some way, I quit playing for a while and that deck was in a friend's car when it burnt to a husk. Good times.

I used to love Yu-Gi-Oh when I was in elementary and middle school. Then, it turned into “How do I defeat my opponent in the least number of turns possible” I have no desire to try Yu-Gi-Oh anymore. I don’t find strategies like that interesting. Good thing I still enjoy hearing about it.

You should do a list of top 10 cards people thought we're going to get banned or limited but never did.

The gadgets were actually an amazing deck back in the day. Imagine a deck with 2 of each gadget, some staples and a whole bunch of cards like fissure, smashing ground and soul taker in a deck. That was meta back then.

Gadgets were not too popular here in the tcg But the ocg had a version of the deck called "5th gadget" where theyd play 45 cards, 9 gadgets and few other monsters to be able to consistently go turn after turn drawing spells and traps while keeping monster presence with the gadgets. It was the perfect japanese deck. And since we shared lists at the time, gadgets went to 2 on the banlist

lily used to be my favorite card and had deck around her wich was decent for local tournaments and was decently good , nostalgia hit me strong with this one , thanks

Makyura should come back to make traps relevant again :0

Lily pretty much countered/ greatly devalued 1/4+ of staple cards during her time which is why she saw play. Just to name a few: Mirror Force, Magic Cylinder, Ring of Destruction, Gravity Field, Level Limit - Area A, Reflect Bounder.... You get the idea, control was the name of the game and stall/burn cards saw a ton of play. Lily bypassed a lot of the stall cards and it never felt good having to "waste" a strong burn card such as Ring of Destruction on a mere Lily.

12:52 Emergency provision was mainly used to get of raid of "Mirage of Nightmare" during the stanby phase because at the time they limit Mystical space typhoon.

I remember the day I went to GameStop to buy packs and I got Injection Fairy Lily and Jinzo that same day. I eventually got a second Lily as well. When I got out of the game back in 2005 or so, I made some good money selling those secret rares off.

I remember playing from 2004-2009 good times those were.

9:25 Pot of Avarice has an interesting looking 'stache, there.

Injection fairy lily. that was a favorite of mine back then. ALSO, MORE DARK SCORPION SUPPORT.

The gadgets were really strong with monarchs. Especially in tandem with the other cards you mentioned along side of them.

You fail to realize that in the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh lots of shops still did traditional format days limiting things like chick the yellow was important for those tournaments. They had traditional format days so that people would still buy the banned cards they had in the display case.

I searched up why the gadgets were semi limited, I found that they just swarm the field or just work well with other machine monsters

very interesting pls keep up the good work

In the days of Drop Off, they were still wary of discard effects, due to seeing Yata Garasu in action. Even in unrestricted play though, there was a lot of cheap graveyard summoning. On the topic of spirit monsters, Tsukuyomi and Magician of Faith/Mask of Darkness was fun, until a Nobleman hit the board..

All I've gotta say to explain Injection Fairy Lily: Unstable Evolution. 5400 ATK per 2k LP. It could literally kill a five headed dragon at that point. And Unstable's downside still boosted the attack regardless.

Nice man. Your vidz are so good 'n' definitely should have a lot more views. That's quality there. Sorry for bad english.

Backup Solider + Graceful Charity + Exoida Pieces

Drop off just happened to be near the broken gang when the banlist police arrived

4:10 “Protector of the shrine”

Nice video!!!

As someone who played during these formats, when you were sure about the reasoning, you nailed it. I'm sad that about half of the cards you were uncertain about, which didn't give well off reasoning - like Gadgets. I'd be happy to go over it, if you just want to discuss or do another video.

Man i miss those period when the duels were “slow”

I remember the days when gadgets and shrink deck was tier 1 for one format. I'm pretty sure the semi limits was for that specific format before power creep emerge.

Backup soldiers was a good way to recover Exodia pieces and I used it often to do so along with cards that allowed me to search those pieces to get them either in the grave or on the feild to put them in the grave Gadgets not only allowed you to search for each of them, but dramatically thinned your feck by up to 15 cards quickly allowing you to search less relevant cards and draw more useful cards. It also gave you discard fodder that as you stated, could be recycled over and over again. This made them good in ritual decks as well as with cards that stayed on the field and required you to discard for effects. And if I am not mistaken, there were a few cards that had you discard to summon cards from the grave such as The Creator/ Drop Off was ok, but the best plays it saw was when an opponent stacked their deck to draw a needed card. Th biggest issue I saw with the card was not combos, but card sharks that would yell "JUDGE!" if you drew and added the card straight to your hand. They would purposely do this to try and slow the game down as well as maybe get a DQ on their opponent. This resulted in a format where you literally had to ask your opponent if you could draw and caused a bit of toxicity in the format. I played Dark World for a while and HATED when I played against that card, even though it literally helped me out. Just because of the players that played it. I would draw and add it to my hand and even though they could literally see where I added it to, they would argue to the judge that I switched my cards around when I revealed it to be a DW monster. One time, I had a judge that had had enough when that tactic failed and then they started trying to twist the already confusing text for Snoww to make it seem like I wouldnt get the effect at all if I discarded it. The kid got DQed and eventually kicked out of the card shop when he went on a rant E-Prov is soooooooo good. It was more than just a good combo peace. It interrupted plays your opponent made to target and either destroy or negate your cards. Yes with GG it could be up to a plus 5, but its real strength was in stopping your opponent from stopping you. The card could have literally said "send as many spell\trap cards to the grave as you wish and loose X LP or discard X cards and it still would have seen play. In fact, I am sure decks today still use it as a tech or sideboard card

A small note that might have contributed to the placement of Gravekeeper's Servant on the ban list is while Macro Cosmos wasn't out yet, Banisher of the Light - which has the same effect - came out in the same set, making the combo possible if not consistent.

I gave up on Yugioh when 90% of archetypes started getting graveyard effects. What’s the point if slogging through your opponents board when they get a ton of pluses off of it anyways?

I love when you find a side-channel, clicked on this video having never heard of this channel and immediately thought "I know that voice!".

I don't play and I haven't seen the anime in years, but thank you for the videos!! I've been on binge :]

I remember way back in the day that Emergency Provisions went from a whatever 40 cent card in card stores to 5 dollars over night. This was before it was banned and there was this quiet guy who had been saving up and getting them from random people at tournaments and Books-a-million gatherings. He was would print out a picture of a card he wanted to buy and put it inside the cover of his 3 inch binder he always had. He bought dozens of that card for 1 dollar each. Then sold them all to card shops for $3 each, under balling the card shops we visited. It took 3 week ends to sell them all, even got kicked out of one card shop for 2 weekends because of it, but it was a fun hustle.

Gadgets are used sonetimes for Ancient Gear. Some Ag monsters have effects when you tribute summon them with Gadgets...

Limiting A - Assault Core for one format was so silly and should’ve been on this list

Backup soldiers was for exodia, gadgets were a popular deck called 1/5 gadget where the focus was to build advantage slowly with gadgets and use a bunch of one for one trade off cards like smashing ground and shield crush

For #6 Back in the days Gadgets were a powerful archetype even before Machinas support because it fitted so well with Cyber dragons and Overload fusion. You could play with tons of defensive spells and trap cards until you got enough machines ressources in your graveyard then Giant trunade to ensure your combo, use Overload fusion to summon Chimeratech Overdragon and OTK your opponent with it and/or Limiter Removal if it's not enough. That's probably why they were semi limited at this time. My favorite deck when i used to play Yugioh.

Number 1 : *Pot of Greed* Still banned even people don't know what it does.

They hit Drop Off at the same time as Time Seal because they thought the Tsukuyomi lock would work with Drop Off as well. How wrong they were

7:20 backup soldier was played in exodia decks. You needed it to get exodia arms and legs back to your hand because discards were staples and/or side deck cards (delinquent duo, confiscation, don zaloog, spirit reaper, white magical hat, mind crush, ...). Also playing painful choice together with backup soldier was very good

i played a phoenix deck back then and was happy that the combination of apprentice magician and hand of nephthys was really a thing not only i did use :D

How about top 10 decks that are easy to use for inexperienced players.