Personally I want a channel that just does a 2+ hour deep dive on each deck. What hands it likes. Matchups guidance. Side deck advice. Etc but god now’s who would be able or willing to do it

As much I appreciate being treated as the Chad Magic player who intuitively understands the nuances of limited play, I can say with good authority that Magic players suck at card evaluation as well. I would argue the reason Magic players are better at talking about it is that it is much easier to do so, as the game has built in guardrails to help facilitate discussions that Yugioh doesn’t. Magic cards have mana costs, power and toughness values, and well defined colors to meaningfully differentiate one card from another. In stark contrast, Yugioh has systematically stripped away the ways players were taught to evaulate cards, as monster cards’ levels and attack and defense points haven’t mattered since the XYZ era. Trying to evaluate Circular in a vacuum is a fool’s errand, because reading the card does not explain the potential end boards you can create with your other cards and extra deck. That requires you to actually play the archetype, and no one has time for that. Thus, it is much easier to rely on whatever youtuber you watch has cooked up, because rote memorization is less time consuming than experimentation and iteration. In Magic, generally what you see on the card is what you get, making it much easier to discuss the roles and relative powers levels of specific cards in a vacuum. Even then, Magic players routinely misidentify which cards are actually strong, from Oko to Astrolabe to Ledger Shredder. It’s not that Magic players are better at card evaluation, it’s just easier to talk about

I remember asking why Big Welcome Labrynth was better than the original since it’s one of those cards that’s effect doesn’t make much sense without the full context of the archetype. I specifically remember the guy responded with “It’s better because it can let you [literally just the first effect of Big Welcome Labrynth verbatim].” And that was it. That was all he said.

Real talk the mathmech primer video is one of my favorite vids on this channel. I want so badly to see more videos in that style that deep dive and analyze each piece and option for a strategy. Yu-Gi-Oh needs more of that

Back when I played the game a lot I would just build whatever deck seemed interesting to me at the time. This lead to me playing a lot of garbage, but also really helped me be able to pick out when stuff was decent. I remember as soon as my friend showed me to new sword soul cards I said “these would work well with Tenyi.” He said that I was stupid and that Tenyi was bad. 5 months later he was telling me about his new “Tenyi Sword Soul” deck.

Competitive YGO content has been honestly pretty baffling to me. If I see an MTG video about a deck, I will find a link to a deck building website and often times if this is a thorough deck builder, they will include a written primer to the deck and both the list as well as the primer will be updated as they go. YGO on the other hand has about a billion deck tech videos where people present their list in real life, which makes it a lot harder to parse to begin with unless you know the cards, and MAYBE add some context to their card picks. 9 times out of 10 there is no link to any deck building website, and even if there were, you would most likely not find a primer, let alone a brief description. In a way this is kinda charming how scuffed this all is, but since I'm used to a way more streamlined kind of competitive card game content, I'm surprised that people even get good at this game. There seems to be an incredibly small amount of knowledge sharing between players. Not that it doesn't exist, but it's incredibly cumbersome to parse or you have to go out of your way to even find it rather than it being the default. At least that's my experience, I'm totally ready to be told I'm just not looking in the right places.

I think the issue is actually twofold: As you alluded to towards the end, there are players who are cognitive of these things and can articulate it, but instead use that knowledge for themselves only. You have even mentioned before how pro players in Yugioh used to just give out patently wrong information on purpose to throw other players off and sure up their own wins. Secondly, even when the format has been "solved" and the best decks are known, it has usually been in those times players running something different from the normal builds of those decks that has made the difference. That is where the meme of "spicy tech" originated from, and in a game with so much hidden information and assumption, having these variances in your deck and your opponent assuming the standard, gives you a significant competitive edge. Honestly, it is a lot more complex than what can be fit into a KZfaq comment, but overall I think those are the main reasons why there is not more of that content. There are thousands of cards in this game that are legal for play. No one is going to be an expert at them all, with every single playstyle and strategy. Heck, retro formats have shown us that many formats where not "solved" in the first place as there is just far too little information and time (and players actually working at it) to solve them. And, much like retro formats in Pokémon video games, they may never truly be solvable, as when a new strategy emerges that was not thought of at the time and the meta adapts around it, then new strategies form to counter those assumptions as well. To not specialize in a particular deck or playstyle is asking a lot from most players, given the nature of Yu-Gi-Oh! and how many cards are legal, let alone asking them to give up their advantage to help others, and so you end up with something you mentioned in another video: groups of people making up what they think the meta will be and playtesting based on those assumptions with each other, with those groups not having any crossover whatsoever.

Cimo published an interview with Johnny Li and I think every competitive yugioh player should watch it. It breaks down card roles beautifully and massively teaches you how to deck build off of those card roles.

Just wanted to say that I think you're spot on in your evaluation about how we talk about Yugioh. At the end of the day I want us to be able to have more quality conversations about the competitive game in our community, and right now those kinds of conversations are so scattered and isolated in pockets. And while there are many things Konami needs to do in order to make the game feel more accessible, I think the lack of quality competitive discussion also contributes to that issue. It feels to me like a lot of the times the community-wide conversations are either memes or gripes and I just want to talk about something else... ANYTHING else for a change. In any case it was a great video MBT, looking forward to the next one as always! :)

Yeah I do think that MBT and other content creators calling decks that aren't meta viable or otherwise bad "completely unplayable" and other hyperbolic terms does contribute to this issue. A lot of the time when seeing reactions to new cards it can seem like a card is either "cracked broken you win the game" or "completely unplayable dogwater" with little to no in-between

The mentality of most players I find tends to be centered around knowing what specific individual cards do, rather than what the deck does in unison, which is, admittedly, probably due to the fact that at any given time there are over 10 thousand cards legal. This itself can often lead to a lack of legitimate and valuable commentary on any given deck, format, or the game as a whole really. In recent memory the two instances that standout to me are the discussions around the Tear mirrors, and the Kashtira zonelocking. Conversations would quickly devolve into posting that one edit of the Tear mirror as a legitimate attempt at a gotcha moment because most players that only have a one way relationship with the competitive side of the game might not know that it was, in fact, an edit. The same happened with the widespread belief that every Kashtira duel would end with a full zonelock every time because it happened a handful of times (not to say that Kashtira is or was healthy for the game, just that there was a lot of misinformation about the consistency of the lock). We try to dumb down an incredibly complicated game into one or two paragraphs and it always just ends in discussions that have no real substance to them.

Deck primers dont have to be complicated. Sajam managed to do 2 minute intro primers on fighting game characters by simplifying it down to "Here's your basic gameplan, Here's your 2-3 options once you establish advantage, here's what your opponents are likely to try when you do your thing." Also, 2 minutes of playing Kashtira taught me more about the deck than two months of people talking about Kashtira.

I feel like I would be so much more into yugioh if some people sat down and put in the same effort into researching and explaining how much engine vs non-engine it makes sense to play and what the specific statistical drawbacks and advantages are to changing that percentage, what the hit to consistency actually is when inserting garnets into your deck, etc. that magic the gathering people did to the mana curve.

Are we gonna see MBT opinion articles anytime soon? I find some of the Master Duel Meta guides grope towards this more calm discussion of cards, but they don't really get all the way there yet. At the very least, they explain the combos.

It will never not be funny to me that the main reason, imo, we get no insight into why Konami makes the banlist the way they do is because they tried doing it once, were mocked ruthlessly because their reasons were bad, and have never done it again. I mean they tried in duel links even if the reasoning was bog standard things like “we feel this card is fine for the power level of the format” and “we have limited this card to reduce the power of this deck”. Like of course your takes we’re going to get slammed. EVERYONES TAKES ARE!! It’s the point. The only difference is that konamis takes are actually enforcable.

Personally I always analyze new cards almost subconsciously, but that may be because I just love making Custom Cards and Custom Archetypes, so a lot of times I analyze them in term of design rather than use and power level. And when I do, is almost always on the lens of "And how can I use this in Zombies?" Like, no joke, my first reaction when Vaalmonica was revealed was "Oh, they discard to complete their scales, can be use to Pend Summon your multiple Level 4s that get stuck on hand and the self damage enables Ghost Fusion"

If I had a cent for each video released today by a yugituber talking about how players need a better vocabulary to talk about the game, I would have two cents (see Hardleg). Which isn't a lot, but is weird that it happened twice.

Because we all got yelled at for saying Fizzle

Well there's also that very often it's impossible to actively look at cards in a vacuum because of how oriented the game became about archetypes and combos. You can't talk about Circular as being good without also talking about what card it dumps, what card it searches, and what card you make with it. I seem to recall when they were first announced that there were at least a few people saying R-ACE was pack filler for instance because in order to actually understand what the deck is you need to conceptualize getting out Turbulence and setting 4 backrow which requires analyzing not just Turbulence (although a free +4 is pretty obviously ridiculous) but also the 4 backrow cards you're going to set and ideally ALSO the in-archetype ways to get out Turbulence.

You mentioned Magic: The Gathering and the Twitch chat in my brain that shows up whenever I watch your videos without the chat on screen was suddenly filled with scatter emotes

Honestly, that's my favorite part of YGO. Analyzing cards and seeing how they fit into decks is one of my favorite things to do, not just in deckbuilding, but in general. It's crazy to me how many people just netdeck and end it there.

After a 10 year hiatus MD got me back into the game. I began reading _every single card_ I opened from booster packs and after a good week I was mentally exhausted. Once I got back into the swing of things my card analysis abilities improved, but I still actively choose to ignore reading certain cards for my own brain capacity and sanity. At this point I netdeck and run some duels to understand ratios and why some cards are excluded before mixing things up. This is all to say a limited format world solve a lot of this... though I'm still partial to "spicy tech".

To your third (and first) point I think because a decks play-style is based around one of a thousand archetypes rather than a few colors, if an archetype is unviable there’s no need to learn what it does; and when you’re favorite archetype becomes obsolete you don’t want to pay several hundred dollars to buy an archetype you may or may not like.

I will say one thing completely unrelated, cuz I know Joseph has been talking about diversifying content over on Twitch, it's this Joseph. This is what I want. I could have listened to another 6 and a half hours of that while sorting through bulk and been utterly content. This is a great video. Thank you for posting this video.

I actually really liked this video for multiple reasons, but I think my favorite part was the explanation at 4:49-5:07. I feel that is completely true and is most assuredly why I'm far better at gauging a magic card's value/viability over a Yugioh card. And to touch on the allergic to non engine part, I think that just comes down to weird archetypal quirks that you have to build AROUND rather than WITH. In magic you're like "I'm in blue that means I get counterspell/card draw/flicker etc". In Yugioh its like playing with all the colors but each game piece limits you on what color you're playing for the turn. Its this weird top down vs bottom up approach to deck building that I just cant seem to wrap my head around. Overall 10/10 video I hope this gets some attention by the competitive players in the community. I'd love to learn how to improve at the game that isnt "slam 3 maxx c , 3 ash , and 3 imperm into every deck"

Honestly a good exercise to learn more about YGO is to pick a boss monster you like, and then just from scratch create a combo to summon it. If you like a level 8 Synchro monster for example, step 1 would be picking a tuner to use. Then you pick a monster to go with that tuner. Then you figure out how to get both of them on the board, etc. It doesn't matter how good the combo is in the end, as long as it gets the monster on the board, because the main purpose is to get an understanding of how YGO actually works. Another good thing to do is playing other games. Creating a deck in YGO, that makes proper use of the game's mechanical interactions, is very similar to what you do in many other build centric games, most notably RPGs. Think about the complex and gimmicky builds people make in games like say Path of Exile. There is a lot of overlap in RPG videogames and YGO that you wouldn't necessarily recognize until you pay attention to it.

The MTG comparison falls flat in my opinion. Yugioh cards are hard to evaluate because you can't evaluate them on a card-by-card basis like MTG where each card does a very limited, but usually powerful effect on its own. For example: A "quick effect omni-negate" is usually a single card from hand for a cost that is often telegraphed in MTG. You evaluated them based on their cost and other attached utility in the context of the format. In yugioh a single omni can take a myriad of forms, from extra deck monsters generic or otherwise, to counter traps and graveyard effects. All of which usually require a branching path of combo lines to get to. All of the combo lines can involve any 1-10+ cards from a selection of 13k+. The different decks having different levels of difficulty making them etc. etc. You can still attempt to make an evaluation, but it's never going to reach the level of objectivity that you can with an MTG card. Why was Hot Red Dragon Archfiend King Calamity only recently banned when the card itself never changed? I feel like yugioh as a game just can't be evaluated like that. You can pretend to and succeed to an extent, but you have to limit the scope of of the evaluation to even make an attempt. It's a similar argument to what many yugitubers made before about the possibility of there being a ton of decks that could be meta contenders, but there is just not enough brain power put towards exploring them.

I think that this is a real problem. I think there are multiple factors that play into what is being said. Firstly, in the past, professional players have been more than willing to intentionally spread misinformation about a format. We've seen this when people thought Mermail was a top strategy, propagated by professional players, only to have Sylvans clean sweep tournaments. While this issue has gotten better, more players are more forthcoming with their information, and most of them have even taken up the mantle of being a competitive voice in the sphere, like Jesse Kotton, Pak, and Joshua, there's still a lot of professional players that do withhold information that could be invaluable to an ever-growing meta game. There's also a lack of discussion on what constitutes the ratios people play, why they even play certain cards, or their thought process of picking up a deck in the first place. Again, the community has gotten a little better at this, but it's far from ever being worth noting in the grand scheme of things. Secondly, there is simply not enough time or events to perpetuate a more flushed out metagame. With ban lists appearing pretty frequently, or the community getting bored with a format a couple of months in, not a lot of testing can be done before players move on, or the format drastically shifts. Also, the amount of new cards being pumped into the card game at any given time also contributes to this issue. The average core set has like, 100 plus cards, side sets like Valiant Smashers, has an additional 40-50 new cards, structure decks can have new cards, reprint sets can have new cards in them, etc. Magic, to my knowledge, is experiencing a similar gripe, with products being more common and less interspersed throughout the year. New products will bog down and rapidly change formats at a moments notice. The lack of events also makes it hard to solve a format, as well. Even if ban lists were more spread out, the lack of events ensures that a format is doomed to be unsolved. The more people that have access to YCS or even Regional level events, the more information that will be readily available. Also, Konami doesn't do a very good job, at least in the western hemisphere, at reporting deck lists, techs, and individual players and why they topped. The EU is definitely better at doing this. Thirdly, the casual and competitive spaces are constantly at odds with each other. On one hand, there's a ton of vitriol from casual players in regards to topping decks, and whether it takes skill to top with a deck that everyone else is playing. Conversely, competitive players can be pretty vitriolic towards lesser experienced players in a similar sense. Why should they take Blue-Eyes seriously when Tearlament blows them out of the water, etc. In the same vain, why should casual players take Fire King seriously when its the same build as the next guy with almost no variation, etc. I think this is less of a problem than the other two, but still worth mentioning. Fourthly, competitive content can be extremely dry. Unless the person has a pretty decent personality, or is generally an entertaining person, most players will tune out competitive discussions and breakdowns. They're also not popular enough to be worth it for the individual making the content. Fifthly, the OCG is a far more accessible card game there than it is here. With engines ranging in the $400 price range, to individual cards being $50-100, it's really hard to test in person since those cards are expensive. They also seem to take cards more seriously, and test with the majority of them, which is why you'll see lists from the OCG play single or double copies of a random card you've never heard of. We actually have a pretty sweet position when it comes to testing individual cards in a one format game, at least here in the TCG. We know when sets and cards come out months in advance. We can, though some choose not to, sift through cards much easier than the OCG or probably any other card game, we just opt to not do so because, it's not relevant to the current format. Not only that, we can have actual tournament results with new cards before they're actually released. We can see several months in advance why Fire King and Rescue-ACE are good decks. Sure, we're separated by different ban lists, but usually, the format there is typically the same one here, with some minor variance.

I know I’ll sound like a massive simp, but I want to emphasize how in this problem, Joshua Schmidt is such a great public face. He’s a massive personality that people listen to, but he’s especially skilled at the game and understands how cards interact well. He also actively does lots to educate the yugioh community. For a good while now he’s been streaming his testing of every new meta deck and sharing his thought process. This gives a much wider perspective on the whole format from a professional competitive angle. There was a time when he dedicated several hours to demonstrating Rikka Sunavalon just to educate his chat and especially the EU players among them so that they would know how to deal with Jessica Robinson

This is why I stay subscribed to you MBT. You’ve inspired me to care about this game again, and I’m just a filthy casual.

This very sentiment was why a while back when Jesse Kotton was soliciting video ideas on Twitter, I suggested breaking down why and how to play format staples well. As a relative outsider who really enjoys content about the game but is intimidated to start playing for real, knowledge of the how to play, why to play, and interactions between the pieces of a format, would really help me dive further into enjoyment of this hobby.

I just wanted to point out I find the dissonance between "Staying by your chosen deck is a virtue" here, and the "Yugioh players swap their deck like underwear so none of them know how it really plays" from (I think) the last of these videos amusing.

"Why is this such a problem??" *continues to contribute to problem*

Some very interesting thoughts, very interesting points. A lot to think about, certainly. Best of luck into the new year, MBT.

I hope people realize how important this video and the discussion it brings up is to the game as whole. I haven't really played the game since 2023 started and have recently quit the game due to the direction it has taken ever since, but I still have some stuff to say about this situation: (and yes, I made a very similar comment on farfa's reaction) I always thought that the fact that you can pick up a deck you like, learn it and not have to know the whole meta in order to have fun is not only a good thing for the game but also a gateway to facilitate the new player experience. When I joined the game back in 2012, I picked up a deck that I thought looked cool and went with it, then, after quitting during 2017, when I came back to the game in 2019 I picked up cyber dragon OTK and Orcust because I thought the decks looked cool and went with it. But I never connected the dots to realize that if you don't eventually move on from that "starter deck" you chose, you're also refusing to educate yourself on what the meta is and how the game functions, and on a game that has been historically built on competitive and semi-competitive play that becomes a huge issue. I always thought that moving on from your initial deck pick was natural move for everyone in all card games, but I guess the overwhelming amount of variety in yugioh paired with the lack of actually good competitive and semi-competive content, especially after the release of Master Duel, makes ygo's case a little different. Personally, I think that content creators are the ones that have the most power to change something like this, and, even though I don't play the game anymore, I'd love to see that change in content happen, and if does happen, it will definitely get a lot of players that have recently quit (and when you look at the numbers, that is a LOT of players) back into the game (myself included), even if it happens slowly. Not only that, but it'll probably make it so that the community is able to build a better relationship with Konami, which would both produce more educated feedback from the community and a Konami that is more willing to communicate and listen to feedback.

I do say that youtubers may be part of the problem. Remember that one guy that said that people can legally cheat? Dkayed. Yeah, dude was a big name in duel links before he switched to master duel and started shitting on the hand that feed him. A lot of shit he said, which was either incorrect, or taken incorrectly, ended up affecting the game. There was this 1 deck that used coin tosses, despacito, which used desperado barrel dragon with the skill "master of destiny", said skill makes the first 3 of *YOUR* coin tosses be heads if requirements are met. Said deck had this 1 continuos trap, headjudging, when the opponent activates a monster effect, *the opponent* calls and tosses a coin, if they are correct, the trap is destroyed, if they are wrong, negate the effect and switch the control of his monster to you. Said trap was added to the game at start of 2020, f2p trap, anyone could use it, but was dubbed a "trash card" and wasnt used at all. Long story short, at tail end of said year he lost once specifically to that trap and made a video -bitching- ranting about coin toss and that trap. After that, everyone and their grandmother started running that trap as some "mystical staple forgotten by time", or as i like to call it: "the format i got many easy wins because people were running this 50/50 card over actual good staples". Turns out that his ranting got that card hit in a ban list, and most of the arguments about "how op" that card was came from the opinions of his fans. Now, before i talk about those opinions, remember the 2 points i made early in bold? How master of destiny works for *your coin tosses* , and the trap makes *the opponent* call and toss a coin... Yeah... Their opinion was that "master of destiny" made the card op because "all the coin tosses were heads". Like... "Master of destiny DOESNT WORK ON THAT TRAP" was something those morons couldnt understand, they couldnt even grasp how: "IF THE SKILL WORKED ON THAT CARD YOU CAN STILL JUST CALL HEADS AND WIN THE COIN TOSS". Like, fr, i know some of the stuff his fans says isnt the fault of that idiot (dkayed), but man, he did nothing to correct them. And the worst is, that was only one of the times where he used his influence to fuck over the game. My favorite skill, what grows in the graveyard (starts with a dark verge in the gy), was hit because he though a rank 3 turbo was op... When we only had wind up zen maity and grenosauros as the best targets for that deck... The deck he used as an example wasnt even popular or tiered, not even rogue! But his word alone got those drones of his speaking about how the skill needed a nerf, and he got what he wanted. Rikka being released also contributed to that, but even with the skill rikka was a super floop in dl.

I think its also a matter of the venue for the discussion itself. How many people communicate on twitter or large discord servers where you have to type your opinion in a limited window, either because of text limit, or due to wanting to post before the discussion moves on. I think in the case of the YGOrg opinion piece its also a matter of the venue doing the opinion piece a disservice. People aren't expecting their opinions from the place where they get news or rulings, and think its more egregious than it is because its not as technical as the things they usually expect from the site itself.

Jason Grabher-Myer’s articles were the peak of discussing cards. Part of me died when he stopped publishing his set reviews. I still go back to his old reviews just because the discussion was robust and enjoyable. Overall I just miss the era of written Yu-Gi-Oh content being so robust thanks to tcgplayer and even ARG

I genuinely love these highly edited discussion videos.

I mean one other factor I will mention is just the complexity of decks and archetypes makes it hard to get a massive depth in knowledge for multiple decks. I can look at a top 16 of magic read the general strategy of the deck (i.e. aggro, combo, mid range, control) and though on a quick glance I may not be able to tell you all the reasons why the player selected X over Y it is clear how X helps accomplish the goal of the deck with a few odd ball cards that stick out. In comparison for yugioh to learn insert top 16 requires a far greater amount of understanding of each archetype to be able to analyze past saying oh this player selected this hand trap for this match up. I also think the notion of believing in your deck is partially due to the complexity of many strategies as well but also it was mentioned in a prior talk that people too readily jump from deck to deck so I am not sure where that balance is.

Me: Man this video has a Tolarian Academy vibe to it. MBT: Starts talking about MTG.

I remember when I was forced to do card evaluation way back while I was playing the tag force series with no one else to talk about it. I guess you can tell how well that went when I built my deck around the Pyramid of Light thinking it was the best thing available in there. And there was no bias involved because I had never watched the movie yet.

This is a very interesting video that that also applies why a card is not included in a deck. My favorite deck is Adamancipator and I have liked it synce its release. I thoughtit was pretty cool that it could use the rock type Otomat cards(gogogo's). After block dragon got banned, the Otomat cards vanished, especially after Prank-Kids meow-meow mew got banned so all of the other rock engines disappeared. I saw deck lists using Revival Golem and Tackle Crusader, cards that suck and don't fit this archtype not even just more koa'ki meru targets. I find it weird that the Gogogo engine for this deck dissappeared with no explanation especially synce theres not many other good rock targets that the deck is not already using.

7:15 The problem with pokemon is also that the message of the marketing and the story-telling with the games themselves is all about using whatever pokemon you like the most and that any pokemon can be great. The meta game and main game of pokemon are diametrically opposed in their ideology.

I don't know if there's a profound difference between someone who is riding Pend or die and someone who is no-lifeing Mono-Blue Tron in Modern but I do get your point there. As much as I love progression, and progression honestly helped me get a lot better at the game, you can really pinpoint the exact moment where it felt like content creators on KZfaq really fell off. The transition from more competitive focused content to endless casual series, series that don't do their topics enough justice, videos that are entirely bad faith shitposts or shitty stream highlights. There's a time and a place for this kind of stuff obviously, but I don't believe that we've really hit any kind of golden era in Yugioh content despite ostensibly better production quality. Joe Giorlando is really one of the only Yugitubers I actively watch anymore. I actually feel like I learn something from his videos most of the time that isn't...present in many other places.

I feel like a lot of it comes from good players not wanting to tell people how to counter them effectively on top of bad players just getting frustrated when their gameplan doesnt work out and not figuring out what would work better/how to play around these outs better. I frequently try to discuss my games at locals afterwards about what i think they could have done better and ask what their thought process was in making certain plays/actions. You will not get better at yugioh and the game will suck if you dont help other people get better.

Yeah, I definitely get the "play your favorites" issue. I started when Master Duel launched, discovered Thunderdragons, and while I have branched out a bit, they are the deck I use every chance I get. Funny enough the recent Wyvern hit now has me looking at the deck scratching my head because it was excellent and proc'ing banish triggers on the dark attribute cards while also putting a body on the field to link away into verte because it's almost 2024 and I'm still running an anemic DPE engine because I like it.

I didn't expect this video to be what reminded me that Pimpnite existed, but here we are I guess. Early 2010s wifi battle culture was WEIRD.

Oh Ryan Davis. I miss you

Oh the net decking problem is on full display in MD regularly the biggest Defenders of cards like Maxx C are the ones who only play "the best deck"

I love these videos. Hope they influence the next wave of youtube Yugioh content. Not to say that the sort of "junk food" content shouldn't exists, but coming over from magic its a bummer that it at times feels like a desert of in depth competitive content to consume alongside it.

8:40 when I played Vanguard (before the 2nd reboot) a friend of mine once said almost the exact same thing and following that philosophy has affected and carried over to yugioh and is honestly such a useful thing to have in the back of your head

One thing I've thought about and wished I had the funds for personally would be merging the "van life" youtube style with a "pro yuigioh player" into 1 channel. A pro player that travels the states going to a new locals or regionals every weekend and discussing the ideas also giving insight to people (like me) who live in really remote areas and dont have a locals to play at that people actually play competitive decks at. My only competitive scene is online and it blows. This new channel idea could fill a void for people in low population areas like me. Could have an hour long podcast type video and smaller videos at the same time. I wish I could do that, I think it would be a ton of fun. Maybe someday :)

Well this is one of the rare times that I agree with an MBT video. Though here is the main reason above all others. Yugioh format solving is super slow because of the vast card pool. A card from 20 years ago can become easily a meta card without having any effects just because it is searchable as a discard tool in a deck that searches it naturally and needs a random +1 to discard for something. This actually happened several times with normal monsters that were searchable or special summonable from the deck with a new card. Hell a card like halq made it so that a lot of tuners were limited or banned. The thing is a yugioh card unlike other card games cards does not exist in a vacuum. The value of a yugioh card depends on what else is playable. A great example is king of the swamp. It saw very little play until tearlements since 2013 yet it instantly became broken with them and in a vacuum it is not even that strong. A game like magic the gathering doesn't have the level of card synergy that yugioh has and thats why it doesn't apply as an experinece.

Yeah, as a relatively new player it's really noticable how evaluating and understanding cards and the wider game environment is a skill that isn't really demanded or rewarded in new players. Just pick the best-looking lists you can afford and mash them together like you're making your dolls kiss, then dive in to some ladder games. I love the resources out there that try to dig into that a bit more - Hardleg's video series is a good example - but with no officially supported limited formats it's just something that you have to do for your own entertainment and hope one day you'll pick up enough critical skill to make a difference.

Absolutely agree. This video was great and I hope you keep doing these! Thanks!

I mean this kind of topic could be applied to any type of online discourse.

This might be my favorite yugioh video in a while. Coming from competitive magic to yugioh, it was baffling to me how hard it was to find solid information on what I should play. Even just as simple as a tier list I could only find random KZfaq videos which had conflicting information sure the first couple decks were usually the same but everything below that just felt kinda arbitrary. Basic strategy on how to play the game (what hand traps existed, when to time your own and how to play around your opponent's, etc) was scarce at best. Everyone's lists (especially for rogue decks) seemed to be completely different and no one would explain why they're playing this variation vs that one or thas supporting engine and not this one. Combos seemed to be completely different from deck to deck with no explanation on what the core combos in the deck are without cross archetype extension. It was grueling and frustrating to sift through and I've always felt like a worse player for it even to this day.

anyone knows what song was used for the last section of the video?

I'm personally a player that tries to play a different deck every format. Usually it's the top deck, but of the top deck is something I don't like I try somthing else And even then, I've noticed that I gravitate towards a particular playstyle: midrange, where it is a "combo" based deck that trades resources with the opponent like a control deck does. Think Vanquish Soul, salamagreat or purrely for example. So while I have more experience evaluating the value of specific cards in case-by-case situations because I play dynamically, I absolutely suck at determining the value of cards in combination with each other or mutiple steps of interaction down the chain. I can't play multi-divergent combo decks because I can't wrap my head around the 50+possible combo lines a given hand can make, let alone decide which route to take (I just can't handle branded or Dragon Link). At most I can handle a linear combo deck with one or two lines at most like matchmech. No joke, it took me almost a month to understand why Jiaolong is so good and Mad Love is not. I was convinced madlove was critical because it searches snow devil, not realizing Jiolong also searches it. If I have such problems with a deck that I play regularly, decks that play nothing like it are hopeless to me. And so, everytime a new card comes out, I can only successfully evaluate it in terms of the midrange decks. I say all of this to say that I think this is another main reason players are so bad at evaluating how good cards are. This game wires your brain to work towards one type of playstyle. It trains a midrange player like me to to evaluate one-for-one trade ability, a combo player to evaluate posible combo lines and end points, a control player to evaluate capability for disruption, etc. And while sometimes there is some overlap with a given card's abilities, players trying to discuss how good a card is in this game is like experts of different scientific fields trying to argue the validity of X research paper. You can't expect a biologist, a mathematician and a theologist to be able to talk in comprehensive terms with each other about the same thing. Each knows most about their field and practically nothing about the other fields. They might as well not talk at all, they won't understand each other anyway.

As an MTG player, YGO is impossibly frustrating to learn. Every single time I want to check out some deck or archetype, there's a days-long struggle of actually learning what the hell the deck is trying to do, you have about twenty builds where no one explains even one line and the one deck that has a primer is an overly complex combo showcase that barely even explains the order of plays, let alone anything else, At some point I figured out Earth Machines and that's my favorite deck purely because I was able to blend archetypes, make what felt like meaningful deck decisions that weren't "but you gotta run these fifteen cards", and find more than one line to win games. It's so bad that I legitimately have more fun trying to make a bastardized Machina Live Twin deck work than I do actually muddling my way through hours and hours of button-clicking because at least then NO ONE knows how that's supposed to work.

MtG has a different culture which (coming from yugioh) I find strange to be honest. Don't know if Joseph is just used to it and that is why he always draws comparisons giving MtG a favourable look. As someone who plays mtg but is relatively new at it, I have to say this as a response to mbt constantly making it sounds like information is easily available and easy to understand in magic: *It isn't*. I'd go further, it is *significantly* harder to get straight answers and beginner help from mtg players than it is from yugioh players and mtg is an awful lot more confusing than people (especially yugioh players) think. Mtg very quickly goes from slow one-two cards a turn gameplay to incomprensible with dozens of cards doing different things covered in seemingly meaningless words that people just expect you to understand without ever explaining. And I am talking in casual environements don't even worry about competative ones. I can't help but think MBT has some kind of rose-tinted glasses or grass is greener (or both) mentality regarding MtG and how it is over there. Because it just ain't as simple and easy to into in comparsion to yugioh as he makes out.

In all honesty I’m happy that you’ve made this kind of video as I know I am an example of basing my deck choices based off of influencers without doing any real research of my own such as going to a Yugioh simulator like dueling book and etc. What is very important is formulating your opinions based on the different builds and avenues from your own creative mind and while it is natural at times to lazily pick up a deck someone tells you is “good” it is without a doubt up to the duelist to play it to its full potential in order to win (depending on how ambitious you are). All in all practice and time into the game will always prevail.

Yea this was an issue for me when I started learning yugioh when master duel came out. I had no clue why certain cards where in a list besides that fact that they shared a name everything else was confusing. A level up moment for me was when I was messing with the chaos creator in live twin with 1,2 and three copies. And learning that oh I only need one copy of it because when I draw it I win but if i have multiples in my opening hand I Brick and lose.

The long and short of the vid: "Alternative format where/when?"

Maybe yugioh works more like a fighting game (in the strategy sense) and i would like to point out the similarities. 1_ highly based on hidden interactions: spell speeds are comparatives to frame data and dodging targeted effects can be seen as a dragon punch move. Both games rely heavy on background knowledge not written in cards/basic tutorials. 2_ the way we learn is the same ( searching combos online and replicate them and learn interactions/frame data with the comunity ) 3_ Same new player complains on meta (literally word for word) like: i lost because this meta deck/character appeared and i could do nothing just watch me getting combo'd. 4_ yugioh decks have a similar strategy to fighting game characters: floodgate/grapplers profit from trying to make the other player not play as much as they can, mid range/shoto are good on grind game and combo but not opressive in both, combo/glass canon are more focused on comboing you to death or dying trying and sky stryker, sometimes runick could zoner type decks since they have control but not through floodgates. Maybe it would work to have them see the game with fighting game eyes rather than a normal card game so they have a better grasp on how it works.

I like learning how to evaluate cards and deck build but with little knowledge of every card in game I frequently netdeck and compare to try to find some assemblance of strategy in each deck. Though whenever trying a new archetype most cards I know about get thrown out the window.

I think we also need more "adult" voices discussing Yu-Gi-Oh. We need more people seriously explaining the meta-game or creating beginner guides speaking as if they were giving a lecture for a classroom (e.g., heavy focus on information and ease of understanding, little to no swearing and sex/bathroom/fandom humor). We need our equivalent of Wolfe Glicke.

When I first started playing competitively ARG was frequently publishing quality strategy articles. (At least I thought of them as quality at the time. It would be interesting to go back and see if they hold up in retrospect) So there's precedent for well produced, informative Yugioh strategy articles. It might be the case that the player base isn't interested in that type of content. Magic strategy articles have been in steep decline since the pandemic, seemingly without hope of recovery.

I think there's a bit of chicken-or-egg issue where the audience doesn't really want to read well-written articles and content creators not really wanting to write them. Also, in journalism in general it is just the modern viewpoint of "bad articles with a lot of engagement earn better than good content with no comments".

God I love Mbt video essays

Could collaboration on more technical articles help? That way, the burden/effort of understanding cards, effects of ban lists, etc. could be spread over more people or “experts” that know more about a specific deck

What’s the music before the end card?

I love this take. As someone who tried to get back in the game and learn creative deck building skills, (only played as a kid ignorant to this skill) I found it quite difficult. I would love an official draft format/limited format that required players to become more acquainted with other cards

I was thinking the other day how I wished Yugioh had a podcast like Hearthstone does with the Vicious Syndicate podcast. One that is less opinion, and much more talking about the statistics and math behind decks. Obviously opinion is always gonna be part of it, and it's way harder to get statistical data to talk about in a physical format than it is a digital one, but even just a Yugioh podcast that weekly goes into one meta deck and discusses the key pieces, the popular out of engine choices, and the whys for those choices and how they interact with the other meta decks.

I picked up yugioh at the age of 6 thanks to some friends of mine, and have played card games ever since. I say card "games" cause it didn't take us very long to branch to ALL of the major card games, at least at the time. It felt natural, fun and easy, but for some reason all of the other friends I've gotten in the past 15 years refuse to learn more then one of them, so I have some friends who play exclusively yugioh, some that only play magic and even a pokemon fanboy. And guess what, they all suck at card evaluation. Yes even the magic players, they are not special in the slightest. And if you try to ask their opinion on a card from another game, you will see why. All of them have their own concept on what a strong card looks like. And I don't mean like "oh this card would be broken in magic cause its free mana AND draws you a million". Sure thats a part of it, but more importantly players who don't branch out into other tcgs won't learn how to evaluate a card objectivly as a card in or despite the game it's in. I could tell most if not all of the broken LoR, HS or Flesh cards as soon as I looked at them, and once I learned the games, I could tell you how the game takes advantage of those qualities. I am not trying to "flex" or whatever, just pointing out how easy card evaluation gets if you both learn and understand the core principle of these games.

whats the background music?

Actually, pendulum decks aren’t all the same, and while they tend to lean towards combo more and more, they can play a lot of non-engine. The only exception currently is Metalfoes.

I didn't understand why Pankratops was good for YEARS! until I realized it Special Summoning itself combined with a Quick Effect that sacs it means Pankratops effectively can't be targeted by Veiler/Imperm or removal before its effect goes off. No source I read or videos I watched ever explained this to me; I only ever saw people say "it's good!" haha.

I think the fact of their being a bazillion cards in the pool of yugioh, that and there being a different way to interpret and interact with a significant portion of the cards, is what makes it really easy for a contradicting opinion to come up, and if the person writing/speaking about how something is the way it is doesn't say or spout exactly what the viewer is thinking/feeling about a certain card or deck, yugioh's community has enough of a vocal community/people who are willing to go to bat so to speak, and they are more than willing to speak up for something or against something. It is a human nature thing, all communities have it definitely not exclusive to any community, as it is a person thing. Likewise it is very easy to get lost in why something is wrong, rather than just making a blanket statement that "X" is wrong, we all want to try to explain our reasoning behind why something is bad/wrong, we humans tend to be pretty good about pointing out when something is wrong or off, but explaining the why, and the nitty gritty and having a majority of people who agree with our statement on the exact why something is bad/wrong is harder than finding the holy grail. (Exaggerating a bit lol) Often times we spew out a sentence/or set of words that will be in combat with feelings or facts, and getting those two to play nice with each other, would be like winning the lottery, nice and awesome in the moment, but the high/benefits of it likely won't last, it would all be fleeting sadly. Perhaps the fact that magic doesn't appeal to a larger pool of potential players is also why they can often find a reasonable conversation about what is and what isn't healthy for the game they love, it is far easier for them to be calm and rational about things, as they are more able to leave emotions at the door/in check compared to yugioh and pokemon players. In other words they are not constantly comparing other aspects of the franchise to what they see in the game they play. Comparison is the thief of happiness, it also doesn't help when so many of us humans (and make no mistake about it magic has these players too) are so inconsistent about both our inferiority complexes and superiority over others. As soon as emotions come into play in any of the games, our rationale/calmer minds take a back seat to things, and it makes it that much harder to not only be a competent player, but also to be able to be objective about what is and what is not healthy/good for "our" game. Yes emotions can be a powerful thing, and we have to hear those out every now and again, though if a fact comes in that contradicts our emotions we have to be able to find a happy medium that works for not only us but everything as a whole, there can and should be a balance for things. They have to live in harmony, as emotions can allow passion to take hold, and once passion takes hold it can lead to a very beautiful outcome on some level or another. There has to be a stopping point a good defined line where things need to cease, as it isn't fair to always allow emotions or facts to rule out in the end, my emotions should not supersede any emotions someone else has just because it is my emotion, and likewise just because something is a fact it doesn't mean it is right or just. - At the end of the day though a lot of it is just plain arbitrary, if others wish to argue/compare something then I say let them, I say my energy is better spent else where, and I wish them the best of luck with things regardless.

I’d agree with this I only really can do this with my pet deck and cards that effect/affect it specifically that’s why I think it’s so much more easy to main one deck and to fully learns the ends and out naturally before looking up stuff and not have your entire perception of a deck be combo lines

I just want to back up MBTs point about how personality based engaging with YGO is. I used to play YGO casually on MD and eventually moved on to MTG commander. I still come back and watch MBT videos regularly because I like HIM and his opinions, I dont even care about the game and I'm here so I really agree that personalities and content are a HUGE part of YGO. To the point that it is 100% the way I engage with YGO

I can certainly attest to not knowing why I play the cards I do in the decks I play when I first pick them up, but as I learn combo lines I usually come to understand what everything does and why they’re good. But that’s more on an individual level rather than something I can do on the fly

I'm surprised the "personality" part didn't cover how more yu-gi-oh players are just the type of people to find it difficult to get their thoughts on a deck/card/format across in a more calm and logical way. This isn't a "yu-gi-tubers of the last 5 years problem". This is a cultural problem. Yu-gi-oh has a reputation for its players to be loud, brash and generally a bit "inner-city-kid-esque". Compared to the average MTG player, who is usually older and tend to be from more middle-class backgrounds. Not saying one is better than the other. But, from my years of interactions with both playerbases, they are fundamentally two different groups of people, and I encountered a lot of yu-gi-oh conversations that boiled down to something like "Yo! Rescue Rabbit got banned? GOOD! F*ck that noise! I hated it!"

Not having to learn other cards is so real. I got back into Yu-Gi-Oh after a few years hiatus and have been playing Labrynth for a few months and I have not learned how any of the new top decks work. All I do is ask people what the best ash/imperm target is for the big decks and then side in catch all cards like nibiru and d-barrier. I still have no clue what any of the new decks do.

i really wish we had comprehensive writing like how hearthstone does for its game vicious syndicate is a good example of that, having information about deck winrates and playrates data while also having nice and neat articles on each deck/class is really helpful to accurately grasp the metagame. Hearthstone is also a memey and silly game when it come to content creation so i don't see how yugioh also cant have this.

I agree a lot with this entire video. I really want to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh, I spend half of 2023 into getting all the cards I need to build a not very competitive but still fun deck (it's Tellar BTW) and searching online I know little to nothing about the actual meta because everyone talks about it as if everyone already knows everything. All I know is: 1) Kashtira is strong 2) Tearlaments is strong 3) Ash was THE handtrap, then something changed and suddenly Droll is THE handtrap now

Is there a video or article or any source that can help players attain and practice the skill of card evaluation? Because if you have a recommendation I’d love to hear it.

Limited in MTG is 100% the reason that the community is as good as it is at card evaluation generally. Before commander it was the most popular way to play the game and the easiest way to get a new player into the game. Almost everyone who played MTG for decades HAD to learn some level of card evaluation and deck building skill. Even if you net decked your list for standard and modern you still needed to put a list together yourself in sealed at a prerelease or on day 2 draft of any major event.

I was not ready for the WeedleTwineedle and PIMPNITE reference. My content creator sphere is all connected

With 10k legal cards with newer sets dropping every Friday, it's easier to just let someone else do the thinking and maybe work over it. I think Master duel, of all places, offers a little space to exercise playing in a different format with monthly events, even the duelist cup makes people look at decks differently.

I've been waiting for this one.

But reading is really hard!!!!

Imo less access to metagaming is always preferrable

The layout took a grand total of one day to adjust to. If anything the new one is slightly easier on me than a big long list and pages in case a surprising news day arrives.

tbh, I just wish the new org page had a way to combine everything into a singular publication ordered collection at least it has a night mode now. that's cool

I think the other part of the problem is thay of all the big card games out right now, yugioh has BY FAR the highest skill floor to get into a new deck. Playing mathmech and playing tear have very few transferable skills combared to playing orzohv humans and rakdos discard

Can i get a 3 hour deep dive on heroes, combos, pivot lines based on opponent interaction, and test hands? I'd watch it. Twice, even. Maybe more if that's what it takes.

the content creators thing is really funny as someone who is interested enough in yugioh to rewatch half of rata's catalogue of videos every single time he uploads and also yours a decent amount of the time, but not interested enough to play the actual game unless it's with friends (not a frequent occurrence)

I would love to see more in depth evaluation of the game. A lot of Yugioh content on KZfaq goes at five thousand miles an hour, deck building videos often skip over cards they presume the audience are already familiar with without explaining specifically why they are good in the current format or deck, and replay videos often play at lightning speeds with commentators simply reading off the plays they can see without really going into why each individual play might be made. I think I understand why this type of content doesn’t exist, more in depth content content like this naturally creates longer content, and I don’t think most Yugioh players have the patience for this type of content, thus it isn’t made. Also as you mention, in a game like Yugioh, where in you can somewhat get away with just trying to play your own game and prevent your opponent from playing, most people are just going to focus on what they like. I do think there’s an audience for more in depth content though. Newer players and older players alike would greatly appreciate more in depth card/deck/duel analysis, as it would actually allow them to fully understand what’s going on, and create a space to discuss pros and cons that doesn’t really exist at the moment imo. Plus, seeing as though this more thorough kind of content doesn’t exist, there’s a space for it that isn’t being filled atm.