I didn’t have any ideas for what to talk about this week, so I asked Matt and he said to just talk about general Yugioh stuff and that sounded kind of fun, so here I am. For the most part I wanted to talk about my feelings on the direction Yugioh is taking due to style of Konami’s banlist.
Recently a lot of big name players have been complaining about Yugioh becoming really “broken” and other similar words due the very apparent power creep in cards that Konami has released. Overall, it’s very true and most people will agree that decks have become incredibly good over the past couple years, most duels ending within 5 or 6 turns because 8000 just doesn’t see like enough anymore. The main thing I really have to say to people complaining is to suck it up. I know sometimes the game seems really unfair, but that is the nature of the game and that’s the way it’s always been. But that aside, the reason for this I feel mostly comes down to the banlist and the way Konami limits and forbids cards.
I just want to first say, I don’t think the way they go about limiting and forbidding cards was wrong; it just lacked a foresight for what is happening now, and now knowing what has happened, they should change. They basically only ban a card if it is grossly overpowered (generally unstoppable good), it forms a loop/FTK/OTK (Konami has a thing against loops and nobody likes OTKs) or because it limits Konami’s ability to make new cards. (as in cards like Fishborg which pretty much cut off all possible futures for them making Water monsters) The flaw in this style is that really good cards only get limited to one, which isn’t initially a problem. At the beginning of Yugioh after all the really unfair cards got flushed out, there wasn’t a whole lot of limited to one power cards, but now over the course of many packs, a large number of versatile cards have been limited to one. The problem is that there’s so many cards limited to one now that the chances of you not drawing one or even 2 in an opening hand are actually low. This causes many situations which people like to call “getting sacked” because the opponent played some combo of limited to one cards, but the fact is it’s actually very likely to pull of combos with two limited to one cards because of the nature of their deck.
The perfect example is Plant Synchro or as Konami calls it “Synchro Summon”. The deck has a huge line-up of limited to one cards. The first obvious cards like Dark Hole, Monster Reborn, Torrential, Mirror Force(a lot of plant decks don’t run Mirror Force though), Dustshoot, Solemn Judgement, Book of Moon, Mind Control, Heavy Storm, Gorz, and Sangan then down to the more select cards like Pot of Avarice, BLS, Lonefire Blossom, Debris Dragon, Dandylion, One for One, Foolish Burial and Scapegoats. That’s 20 cards! Half the deck is limited to one cards! Not to mention cards like Spore and Glow-up Bulb that are essentially limited to one by there own effects. I don’t know about you, but I feel that that is a little out of hand having half a deck being limited to one cards. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see this deck absorb more limited to one cards when the next Banlist roles around unless Konami does a large overhaul on Limited to one cards.
Basically this all comes down to me thinking Konami should ban cards just for being really good, or what’s happening is going to continue. Cards that are just plain good are stacking up together, and it’s honestly just getting really silly. Tell me what you think though about all these limited to one cards. What do you think Konami could do to fix this? Does it even need fixing?
I personally don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to ban or limit the cards. Some cards are way over powered especially wen combined with other cards example being the shi en cards… One magic card a turn ok maybe I can get around that… Oh wait but you can negate that one card… Hmmm… On the other hand there are powerful cards like dark hole or torrential that are limited that make sense to limit and not ban because yeah they’re powerful but you can strategize around them and actually come back from a field being wiped out. Other cards are powerful but don’t get much play anymore, example mirror force, it used to be considered a staple but I find less deck need it because of the overpowering force of their offensive capabilities.
One card I don’t agree with being banned is cyber jar! That card was fun! It’s essentially a dark hole or a torrential with an added benefit! This is probably something I can go on all day about but I’ll end with this, I agree with banning cards strategically to change the game and make people think of new decks so the game doesn’t become stale and monotonous. But maybe the should go through cycles like ban now then un-ban and ban something else to keep it fresh.
-Marino
A card that’s like Dark Hole but better seems unfair to me. The problem with Cyber Jar was that it would reward the player who set it immensely for doing pretty much nothing. Not that it wasn’t a fun card to play with though, it’s just really unfair. I honestly think Morphing Jar should be banned for similar reasons, and ’cause nobody wants to have to play empty jar.
Reading this reminded me of Matt’s idea to have a new format. I used to play MTG and when you went to Advance tourney’s you could only use cards from some of the most recent sets. If Konami adopted this idea it might make for a more interesting format with maybe some leveling of the playing field. My biggest issue with the game is that it seems like those who have the $$$ are the ones most likely to win. I know some decks are relatively cheap to get, but the vast majority of the ‘good’ cards are pricey. If they eliminated this with a new format where you can’t use those cards anymore, I think the game would be fairer for those choosing to play in that format.
Ya, I really like the idea of Formats consisting of only certain packs or something similar. On the other hand, this is also an expensive route since you have to buy things to keep playing, but cards would likely be cheaper due to them becoming illegal over time.
I’m only just getting into Yugioh seriously. Back when I was a teenager, Magic was my thing. I never got anywhere in a tournament, but I’ve watched the game evolve over the years.
I’ve never really liked WotC’s solution to the too much power problem (make the older sets illegal in a never-ending fashion), but with the Synchros and then the Xyzs it may eventually be the only way to go.
How else do you *un*-add something from a game?
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Furry cows moo and decompress.
I suppose there’s a massive banlist overhaul where a lot of cards get banned, but not whole sets. But that’s relatively the same thing.