There's no such thing as a useless ca-

>first card I ever got, first one I saw when I opened my first pack
>it was alright initially but quickly got shitty
>still put it in every deck I make no matter the theme

But then the effect won't activate.

Step aside, kids. I got this.

Back when those "level up this card every turn, max level card is bullshit powerful" cards were popular, I would occasionally use Wall of illusion to troll the people who played them.

>Whoops, guess you have to start all over again from level 2.

That was basically the only use for it though.

>easily searched due to low stats and being a normal monster
>can tribute summon it using your opponent's monster using monarchs stormforth
>swing, use creature swap, fusion/synchro/xyz summon etc. with it

...

Normal monsters with less than 4 stars had some support at times. Remember Gravity bind? Law of the Normal? Heart of the Underdog? Level Limit Area B?

Eventually having magics and traps support monsters that were useless on their own would never manage to compare to using powerful magics and traps to support monsters with powerful effects and stats. But they could have made it so that only weak monsters were able to swarm the field and there would have been creative decks using these random cards.

I used to have Gravity Bind in my Sea Emperor-based deck not too long ago. You never knew when it could save your arse, though it could also screw you over if you didn't plan properly.

>stat values are multiples of 100
This is how you know it's a shit game.

That doesn't make it useful. None of those are actually uses, they're things you can do with it that a dozen cards can do better. Like half that post applies to Summoned Skull or Panzer Dragon.

Wall of Illusion has 1850 Def, but that still doesn't change the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh is a shit tier game.

Amen brother/sister

So never unless you only played casually?

yugioh is reaching it's logical conclusion

they started weak as fuck when konami created the game, as time went on they introduced better and more exciting cards.

today we have cards that will help you become a lawyer with the amount of information and technicality each card has.

you don't even need luck of the draw, yugioh is played by literally going through your deck and pulling the card you want because of another card effect.

Casual card games are the best way to play. A buddy bought me a booster set for MtG and all I did was take the artifact, red, and blue cards and mash them into a stack. I even won some games with it.

And then he made a blue mill deck just to see if he could win with discard. He couldn't but he did force a tie

I miss when Yugioh was simple before all of this "card effect draw summon synchrofuse swing levelup pendulum synchro to activate card effect to summon synchro then pendulum level up the synchro xyz and swing to pendulum to summon synchro level pendulum okay i attack you for a total of 9800 lifepoints good game round 2?"

I used my old deck that used to kick a lot of ass against a buddy of mine's that was all post-2016 cards. I got defeated on his second turn every time because of all the stupid pendulum, swinging, synchro, whatever bullshit the decks have now.

Everyone's blinded by nostalgia. The shit people remember was like the first few years of the game. Yugioh has had more years with Special Summoning multiple monsters than with Normal summon 1, pass.

I remember being able to beat the shit out of some synchro decks during the 5Ds says using my old Umi/Legendary Ocean deck. Penguin Solider could basically destroy two Syndrho monsters at once. And I heard some people still use Grave Keeper decks. But yeah, I think other than that I'm sure you're right that the power/mechanics creep has fucked up things bad.

Nostalgia definitely drives the game's popularity in the eyes of us nerds who played it back in the day, I totally agree.

Even back then I didn't much think it was the best, and when I started playing MTG I got hooked and ditched Yugioh pretty quick.

I think it's something to do with the depth. Yugioh is incredibly simplistic if you think about it. The most strategy you do is matching up card effects and choosing when to tribute monsters, hoping your opponent doesn't have a free instakill card as a trap.

In Yugioh weaker cards are also totally useless, which isn't something you see often in MTG. Yeah it has plenty of useless cards too, but three weak cards can overwhelm and destroy a very powerful card. In Yugioh, nothing like that happens. Five 500 Atk monsters can't beat a 1000 Atk monster no matter how hard they try, so the combat becomes incredibly simplistic where you only attack if you know your stats are better rather than planning strategic blows on your enemy.

>I only ever saw it summoned once but we all lived in fear of it.
Why? You had raigeki, black hole, and the magic card recover magician.

Well, fitting a game drawn from a manga based around gaming where it was the obvious MTG stand-in that happened to just eat up the whole plot - I feel like YGO started as a CCG which was really intended to play up that almost meta-narrative.

Like, you could buy a starter deck based on one of the big-name characters, but you still had all their shitty shit they carried around because in the story they were just like real world guys who had to go through god knows how many boosters and spend shitloads of money on singles on ebay or whatever. So when you pick it up you're the same way - you have to scrape together random shit to make what you've got work.

So in a sense, the game feels like it plays very close to the show - except now it's still going and has been going long enough there's no reason not to just pick an archetype you think is cool and you can just buy structure decks because it turned out to be popular/make money so it had to get more tools for people to blow more money on getting into.

You know what never stopped being a good card?

Mirror Force.

When in doubt, use more Mirror Force.

This. We were basically Joey Wheelers all over the world.

You bring up another good point, almost all the major characters/antagonists in the original show basically cheat the paradigm.

Kaiba is a millionaire, he can buy as many cards as he needs. Yugi's grandpa owns a game store and plays himself, you know he keeps the primo shit. Pegasus' company PRODUCES the game, and his deck was loaded with cards which didn't make it past playtesting. All the Rare Hunters were part of an international crime ring devoted to obtaining rare cards and would totally be terrorists today - and they were into forgeries.

Except Joey Wheeler.

Oh, and all those mid-tier professional players who are basically what people do now, they played long enough and had enough cash to build archetype or theme decks based on their preferred play style. But because it was an anime they were also part of the theme.

*tips

The Yugi starter deck was filled with all kinds of weak ass cards.

Mammoth Graveyard support when?

>Oh, and all those mid-tier professional players who are basically what people do now, they played long enough and had enough cash to build archetype or theme decks based on their preferred play style. But because it was an anime they were also part of the theme.
Exceot Joey Wheeler, the only character throughout the series that never developed a theme.

His entire deck consisted of mismatched trash from the possibly 3 boosters pack he ever bought because he was just a regular poor kid much like the players in the real world.

Also you are right, the professionals are much like modern yugioh with specialized decks.

Mammoth Graveyard + Living Arrow + Polymerization will ruin your opponent's biggest monster.

>that never developed a theme.
His theme was gambling and luck based with a Warrior/Beast-Warrior aimed arsenal. What are you smoking?

Isn't there a monster that "can't be summoned in attack or defense mode"?

Yeah but I have fond memories of those cards. Celtic Guardian, Silver Fang, Feral Imp and etc feel like classic monsters that are cool despite being useless

Its legitimately number creep.
Magic was singles, pokemon had 10s, yugioh did 100s duel masters had 1000s

I think there are cards that can only be set, but I cant remember any off the top of my head.

More than most games I've ever played, Yu-Gi-Oh is very subject to power creep. Cohesive groups of cards made the game evolve in a good way, but everything had to one-up everything else (which is bad).

Another issue at play here is that booster/trade culture is now a very minor aspect of playing any game with the ability to easily shop online for singles having come into being. If you chill out and play casually, it's still a decent game, but as with other games, it changes as soon as anyone wants to take it seriously.

>implying

Anybody remember when we made all of those Celtic Guardian decks? Good times.

there is an OTK combo around Shapesnatch
your argument is invalid

>Playing cards for strategy or effect
>Not playing the cards with the coolest dudes on them

Good old Blue-Eyes was actually meta last year, because of all the support it got.

You do know that yugioh has evolved passed its first 5 sets right?

>prophecy
Why are Blue Boy and his books still alive, when the Dragon Rulers got completely slaughtered by the banlist?
They even got new support in the latest OCG pack.

I hate how Yugioh has been trying to make a lot of its newer card art and even some of its gameplay strategy like MTG. Anyone who still plays Yugioh obviously does so because of nostalgia or its unique charm, not out of it being a legitimate challenger to MTG in serious card gameplay. YGO should keep its cartoony art and just try to be less broken if it wants to sell the most to the market that actually gives a shit about it (beyond little kids who don't care either way). All too often games and franchises that have an acceptable niche ruin it by trying to be something that they're not.

>Mammoth
>Dinosaur

this card is excellent in arena though

>atk 920
>def 1930

???

This guy was the shit in dungeon dice monsters.
I'd give anything to have that game back and play it with other people.

Have you ever heard of Joshua Schmidt and Billy Brake?

They're well known for being in the final 2 YCSes in Europe in a row. How can Yugioh be so simplistic if the same 2 players verse each other two finals in a row?

Except there's like 4 better variants of it and the fact that the only good traps are things that prevent things from happening in the first place, battle phase traps ain't worth shit anymore.

Konami either sells pure meta stuff or makes special sets to pander to nostalgic morons that think the best era of the game was fucking vanillas smashing into each other, god I hate you people and that's coming from a petdeck shitter that tries to make garbage like Digital Bugs work.

>He doesn't use effect monsters

Storming sees regular play, because if it goes off then your opponent has to blow resources setting up again.

I hate people who talk out their ass about a community they only know from shit posts

He has a theme in a very loose sense, especially in comparison to the other main characters. His 'theme' being as prevalent as the other chars would make him more like the obligatory gambling-themed minor villain that shows up once an arc, whereas his actual luck cards and big monsters rarely have any sort of major synergy.

His gambling style was inherited by his dad from the original series. That guy was always drunk, and in massive gambling debt.

Joey's style of play is Warriors and Beast-Warriors, because he's a fighter. His employment of gambling cards is related to his backstory. You know, it's like his deck is a reflection of who he is as a person, just like the "more themed" characters.

you can summon this as long as you have the dagger out already, right?

I wasn't saying he didn't have a theme, or that it wasn't related to his character, just that it's not as apparent or 'mechanically' relevant compared to a lot of others.

The dagger is banned, that's the joke you retard. Laugh.

You all have autism. He has no fucking theme, stop going Evangelion tiers of 2deep4u over it.

The red eyes black dragon has no synchrony with any of his others cards. It's just a "kek it's my rarest card so I put it in the deck lol"
Time magician is a shit card, and it plus the dice cards are his only gambling cards on the deck.
The rest of his deck is literally fighters and normal monsters with no abilities.
He also has that fusion card from which he can make his 1200ATK monster into a 1600 ATK monster (lmao)

Joey was trash and he had no theme, prove me wrong.

Eh he almost beat the big bad of the second arc; he ain't the best there ever was but he isn't trash. Also he has Jinzo. Everyone loves Jinzo
In terms of theme I'd agree that Joey doesn't have a single overarching one; he has a few smaller themes present (gambling, warriors, ect) but nothing that defines his deck.

However this guy is more or less spot on; there are ideas behind his cards which are supposed to be symbolic.

Prove the symbolism of the Red Eyes and Jinzo then.

Two cards he stole from other people because he is a thief.

Nobody said he has any sense of building a cohesive deck. But there are obviously deliberate choices in how his deck was put together by the series creator, as noted here Red-Eyes is obviously just there to draw a line between him and Kaiba. It also mattered because he was going to need a big monster during the first arc, when tributes didn't matter, but playing something too big for the other person to deal with was a factor.

>are his only gambling cards on the deck
You forgot Roulette Spider and Fairy Box, at least.

>literally fighters and no normal monsters with no abilities
Except that he eventually dug into a few cards that actually have effects, like Panther Warrior. Plus all of the other rares that he snatched up from other people during Battle City (though, what was he gonna do with Legendary Fisherman?)

>He also has that fusion card from which he can make his 1200ATK monster into a 1600 ATK monster
This one's where you really show that you don't know what you're talking about. He errs in trying to summon Giltia the D. Knight during the pre-Battle City arc, and Flame Swordsman was a signature card of his with 1800 points (even if it's not an especially good monster outside of Duelist Kingdom).

I'd say Joey did have a theme - because you can see some continuity in his deck building it's just way more broad than most other decks - he has certain types of cards he has an affinity for, just not to such a focused spec as other people on a specific archetype or type of card.

context pls

Here's one.
NS an Effect Monster, preferably one of the Blue-Eyes tuners. In a pinch, anything can work.
Send Sage from your hand and the Effect Monster you summoned to the graveyard, for instant BEWD.
The archetype didn't quite reach the top, but it was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

How do you protect and constantly revive the legendary blue eyes white dragon after the initial 3000 damage directly to the enemy's life points?

I mean obviously the blue eyes after that surprise attack is as good as dead to any given deck. How do you continue your attack after that point?

special summon 1 shapesnatch
activate inferno reckless summon
now you have 3 shapesnatch
Use delta attack force
equip one wit the star annulet (I don't remember the actual name) or united we stand
remove their limit and attack for game

it is a better deck that it might look

or do this
youtube.com/watch?v=n4g7yARC5rg

In modern Blue-Eyes, you don't usually stop at one dragon. You make as many as you can as fast as you can, and sometimes you even fuse and get the dragons moving back to your hand or field from the Graveyard.

It's probably the most straightforward way to play dragons these days, because the goal is brute power more than anything else.

In this strategy he already used 2 cards out of 5 though, and just to summon one The tuner that died possibly have an ability to summon more or what? Is it a one turn kill strategy? Doesn't look like you would have trap cards or magic cards to assist your monsters with a blue eyes deck

Hey, it can be searched by Mystic Tomato and give you a L5 on the field for whatever reason you might need one.

There are more tuners and tricks. Watch some of this.

youtube.com/watch?v=zm0rDu6qrtU

I too hate things that aren't happening.

Good to see that people post about things that they aren't actually familiar with.

>try to be less broken
That shit ain't happening, we're in too deep.
The only way I could see this happening is if the game had a hard reset. What could possibly justify that? Not much. Not really anything. Maybe one thing.
What if we move to hologram-based card games, and we had to print more durable cards with chips that could be read by patented duel tech? Then you'd have to start the printing process all over, meaning that you'd have a clean slate to balance the game.

Pretty sure that it's because the D R A G O N S by nature have to be killed all at once or never.

The spellbooks get a lot less potent with the loss of Judgment.

Funny thing is, you can't summon monsters in defense mode to begin with.

>joey was trash, prove me wrong
He managed to psyche out a professional lawyer and has high placement in worldwide tournaments that he won legitimately.
Also Thousand Dragon is 2000-something, not 16, which was semi-major for the opening on top of Time Wizard's effect doing whatever the fuck it wanted back then
Plus a decent chunk of his monsters aren't just no abilities, I know he had rocket warrior and a few others.
He won Jinzo through actual tourney rules. Can't remember if Red Eyes was an agreement he made with Rex or not though.

>because he is a thief
He won them
I think rex tried to screw Joey over during their DK duel and upped the stakes mid game.

Yeah Rex wanted Time Wizard so Joey bet that against Rex's Red Eyes.

Rex sees an opportunity to get his hands on Time Wizard, which could be used to defeat Mai, and staked his rarest card.

When his supposed boss monster goes down, he reveals Serpent Knight Dragon, and then when that fails he goes even harder with Red-Eyes Black Dragon. Then he regrets at the end of the game that because Joey saw his Red-Eyes, that he would lose his best card and secret weapon.

Yeah, Rex made a bet part way through the match which was basically the Battle City rules - he wanted Time Wizard and bet the rarest monster in his deck which was Red-Eyes. Because Dinosaur types suck butts and have always sucked butts so he needed Dragons.

That's what I'd thought. And regardless it's decent poetry, Joey being a scrappy underdog with garbage cards having the opposite of yugi's OTHER rival, the rich nigga who can practically print anything that's not a mcguffin

Dinos aren't as bad anymore.

When he had field advantage, Rex was almost a good duelist. His problem is that he's all force and no tactics.

dinos are good you cuck

rex pls

I mean, on paper Rex IS a good duelist. He was runner up at a National tournament and lost to Roba in Battle City (which hardly counts because Roba was cheating).

But yeah, he's stubborn, aggressive and petty - probably because he's still a kid. A lot of the early DM pro players look like they're in high school or lower.

Which is in turn counterpointed by the antagonists who often could literally print what they needed.

At this point, portable dueling wasn't a thing. It only makes sense that a lot a pros of a game are going to be either young or old guys who have been playing it forever. And the old guys like Solomon obviously don't want any spotlight, they just want to chill out in their age.

>couldn't even beat Weevil
is rex the worst player in the series

>chill out in their age
the first thing Solomon did when put in front of a TV was try to shill his game shop

No, Bonz is. He literally needed Bandit Keith's help to upgrade his deck and hold his hand through a duel in order to have a chance at beating Joey, and he still lost.

If not him, then Serenity or Mokuba.

Yeah, but I meant more like staying out of the active roles. He'd rather enjoy games as his life, having been a life-long passion, from a more passive position.