I would like to argue that the real change Shaddoll brought to the fusion mechanic wasn’t “Shaddoll fusion” but rather the fact that it introduced the idea of a monster you would want to use as fusion materials and that can recoup the loss in card advantage by being used as material. We had future fusion after all but before Shaddoll we never really had monsters that gave you advantage when used as materials. The closest thing to that before were Lightpulsar, Darkfluid and Eclipse dragon and maybe white stone, which had GY effects that were usable if sent by future fusion for five head. This always felt more like an unintentional, if powerful synergy. With Shaddolls on the other hand you used the materials based on the situation to gain versatile advantage based on the gamestate. Falco to set up, best to draw, sheq for additional deck thinning and so on.
Yeah, shadoll’s real power want just “free fusion summon” it was that your fusion summons WERE your advantage engine. Previous, and even some more recent, fusion archetypes built advantage TO summon, shadoll made its advantage BY summoning, which is a colossal difference. In the past you could cut off fusion decks as they built their board before the big summon and leave them with a lot of functionally useless material, same as ritual summons, a design echoed from Shadolls in the nekroz later. With shadolls though all the choke points and decision making have to happen much earlier and with far less information on the opponents part, because as soon as they do that first summon, which is very easy for them, the ball is now rolling.
@@l.t.c3847 Yeah the best “fusion” strategies before Shaddoll were Cydra, as a gimmicky OTK tool, and Element Heros that used fusion more as an engine to push advantage, when in an advanced game state. Note that in neither strategy at the time, fusion summoning was part of the dedicated gameplan and more of an option that you might as well go into at times, since you just so happen to run the cards that enable the fusion monsters I guess GaldBeasts might count, since due to the tag out mechanic, they did somewhat Toolbox the materials but due to the entire deck being basically just Bestiari and things to enable Bestiari I don’t really count it
@@OlgaZuccati They definitely standardized it. But somewhat generic material has been a thing in fusion strategies for a while the Omni Hears had been out for a while at that point and even the underwhelming Gem Knight fusions tended to go “name + type” or “gem knight + type” for their fusions already
I think that a big gap in this video is not covering the ARG events. Keep in mind ARG had streaming coverage, while Konami was still mostly written coverage. These events were huge at that time, and help paint a much clearer picture of these formats.
also agreed - many decks mentioned (especially toward the beginning of the video) were actually innovated and popularized within the ARG space so its omission makes a lot of these format jumps or deck transitions really jarring
Im never gonna say modern ygo is perfect but the coping that old ygo was a utopia when it also had multiple tier 0s, oppressive floodgates, sacky staples, expensive decks/cards, and generic toolboxes is wild.
Tier zeros which still have comprehensible gameplay suck for choice but weren't the absolute worst to play. And it's funny you mention tier zeros anyway since most of the tier zero formats in the game's history happened after Duelist Alliance. Chaos, GB, DAD, and Dragon Rulers (technically not tier zero but it was a two deck format with all of the issues of tier zero so it counts) were the ones that happened before DUEA. After that comes Nekroz, PePe, Zoodiac, Spyral, Tear, and Fire King. In nine years (two of which had very limited events) there were more tier zeros than the previous twelve. Floodgates aren't as much of a problem when your game is slow enough that you don't lose the second you can't push advantage. And when everyone is playing traps backrow removal does a lot of heavy lifting which pushes floodgates out. Royal Oppression isn't the best card in Edison even though it reads that way and Vanity's Emptiness is basically not played in HAT because its counterplay renders its major strengths less impactful than the normal traps in the format. Speaking of sacky staples, when you see more of your deck because games last longer than one turn sacking isn't as much of a concept. Seeing Called By in five sucks. Seeing Mirror Force or Heavy Storm after you've drawn your five and an additional five over the course of the game should be expected. The power level of those staples is also not as high. Decks were generally less expensive and the more clustered power level meant playing budget rogue was perfectly doable outside of outlier formats where power creep lurched forward like DAD and Dragon Rulers just like how modern usually is. Generic toolboxing is fun. The synchro and xyz pools are great to explore and having a more centralized number of extra deck cards means you don't have to read what Bumblefuck Deathstar Dragon does and where the semicolon is in its text to denote how you can interact with it on the spot. Old Yugioh was simply better. Not perfect, but better.
@@hightidekraken Almost everything from Crimson Crisis through Breakers of Shadow was better than what the game has been after BOSH. I still enjoy some aspects of the game but it's not nostalgia goggles that make people continue to play Edison and HAT for years on end. The game was simply better, more approachable, more comprehensible, and thus more fun for more people when the card design wasn't so insane. I'm convinced the modern diehards wouldn't actually dislike the game being stripped down to the power level of the late Zexal era as long as that became the new benchmark to design and compete from. People keep playing the modern game because that's all there is.
@@geek593 im not denying there arent fun retro formats tho i do think some are overrated. Im saying a good chunk of old school players I’ve seen are the duelingbook “no link no xyz no pendulum etc etc etc” type. They will have some irrelevant excuse to defend even the most glaring issues with old school ygo and its like talking to a brick wall who just knows normal summon Blue-Eyes.
Fire fist 2015 is one of the best decks I have ever played in my whole life. I've spent 6 fantastic months playing it with my ygo group back than... Such a beautiful summer
I was already contemplating leaving Yu-Gi-Oh early 2014 due to life getting busy, then pendulums came out and knowing that I had to learn new rules, I stopped playing.
Wow ! What a video ! The level of detail and structure is truly wonderful and so delightful to watch. I watched it nonstop ! 2015 truly was an amazing year ! Please make one for 2016 !
@@traplover6357 Now it's Fire King Snake-Eye. Not quite as bad as pre-LODT DAD Return format in '08, more like Glad Beast format pre-TDGS but post-emergency banlist.
Looking at all the formats up until this point, it was crazy how long flip monsters were still teched in and used compared to what I remembered. Excellent recaps.
As a Goat Format player, I was looking forward to this recap. I know Goat and the year 2014 don't have much in common, but I remember watching a lot of content during that time. I especially liked Nihmnym's videos where he would film in various locations and his insight into the formats. Alintheyoh was another channel from back then I enjoyed, the duel logs l, and many others, so any time I think of 2014 I get nostalgic for an era of TH-cam that probably won't happen again.
I feel like here even though there was a huge piwer shift, people playing at the rime were atill able to follow along with adaptations. Also even new not powerful decks could try and edg the big meta players with gameplay knowledge. Case in point: I remember being able in the following year to outplay Nekroz with U.A. of all decks because it was the deck that could commit protection and interaction to the board and keep the hand empty to not get blown by Trishula, while not really playing into extra deck so Unicore also was useless against me.
I actually really loved the format that 2014 ended on. Three deck formats are my favorite and none of the three decks were blatantly better. Besides the floodgates of course
I loved Geargia back then. I found Bujin to be a particularly good match up for them, and it was the most popular deck back then. Skill Prisoner added an extra tool that helped vs Fire Fist too
33:24 the introduction of Pendulum! 35:54 I sure you could make an interesting format based around the "all monsters are considered all card types" rule I might recheck this video again other dAy
You could still use Norito the Moral Leader instead of Magi Magi although in all fairness, Norito was locked to Spellcasters so it was less flexible even then.
You be slandering Duelist Alliance format. It wasn’t the end of back and forth or the game being too fast. It was the start of players not being mega punished by blow out cards. The decks after this era were made to play the grind game. Perhaps BA, Shadolls, and Yang Zings were made to mimic Pendulums, recovery aspect.
You say that like decks weren't already grinding before Duelist Alliance. The difference between pre and post was the cost of generating advantage. Most decks before DUEA were full of +0s that looked for weak turns and board positions to gain advantage. After DUEA card design shifted towards every card adding advantage simply by being played or put into rotation (GY and into the pend summon every turn in pend's case). It became difficult to justify playing goodstuff traps unless they interacted with your engine to create plusses. Obviously this isn't where the game went terminal cancer mode, that was 2016-2018, but the card design clearly showed signs of shifting here.
2 things. 1. I wonder how he'll react when he does 2015 and sees the worse fusion spell for a fan favorite deck (Red-Eyes Fusion). 2. The x in the Yang Zing names are pronounced like "shi".
Joshua Schmidt has entered the chat
Lessss goooooo
Welcome to Duelist Alliance Format!
The time wizard format I want as it’s my childhood 😂
Eh, Clown format where the Performages were introduced and Djinn was banned was better than DUEA format but included the DUEA archetypes in the meta.
I would like to argue that the real change Shaddoll brought to the fusion mechanic wasn’t “Shaddoll fusion” but rather the fact that it introduced the idea of a monster you would want to use as fusion materials and that can recoup the loss in card advantage by being used as material.
We had future fusion after all but before Shaddoll we never really had monsters that gave you advantage when used as materials.
The closest thing to that before were Lightpulsar, Darkfluid and Eclipse dragon and maybe white stone, which had GY effects that were usable if sent by future fusion for five head. This always felt more like an unintentional, if powerful synergy.
With Shaddolls on the other hand you used the materials based on the situation to gain versatile advantage based on the gamestate.
Falco to set up, best to draw, sheq for additional deck thinning and so on.
Yeah, shadoll’s real power want just “free fusion summon” it was that your fusion summons WERE your advantage engine.
Previous, and even some more recent, fusion archetypes built advantage TO summon, shadoll made its advantage BY summoning, which is a colossal difference. In the past you could cut off fusion decks as they built their board before the big summon and leave them with a lot of functionally useless material, same as ritual summons, a design echoed from Shadolls in the nekroz later. With shadolls though all the choke points and decision making have to happen much earlier and with far less information on the opponents part, because as soon as they do that first summon, which is very easy for them, the ball is now rolling.
@@l.t.c3847
Yeah the best “fusion” strategies before Shaddoll were Cydra, as a gimmicky OTK tool, and Element Heros that used fusion more as an engine to push advantage, when in an advanced game state.
Note that in neither strategy at the time, fusion summoning was part of the dedicated gameplan and more of an option that you might as well go into at times, since you just so happen to run the cards that enable the fusion monsters
I guess GaldBeasts might count, since due to the tag out mechanic, they did somewhat Toolbox the materials but due to the entire deck being basically just Bestiari and things to enable Bestiari I don’t really count it
Also REDMD and Red-Eyes Wyvern.
shaddolls also introduced generic fusion materials,
@@OlgaZuccati
They definitely standardized it. But somewhat generic material has been a thing in fusion strategies for a while the Omni Hears had been out for a while at that point and even the underwhelming Gem Knight fusions tended to go “name + type” or “gem knight + type” for their fusions already
I think that a big gap in this video is not covering the ARG events. Keep in mind ARG had streaming coverage, while Konami was still mostly written coverage. These events were huge at that time, and help paint a much clearer picture of these formats.
Couldn’t agree more. You heard about ARG events just as much as, if not more than, sanctioned events.
also agreed - many decks mentioned (especially toward the beginning of the video) were actually innovated and popularized within the ARG space so its omission makes a lot of these format jumps or deck transitions really jarring
Im never gonna say modern ygo is perfect but the coping that old ygo was a utopia when it also had multiple tier 0s, oppressive floodgates, sacky staples, expensive decks/cards, and generic toolboxes is wild.
Tier zeros which still have comprehensible gameplay suck for choice but weren't the absolute worst to play. And it's funny you mention tier zeros anyway since most of the tier zero formats in the game's history happened after Duelist Alliance. Chaos, GB, DAD, and Dragon Rulers (technically not tier zero but it was a two deck format with all of the issues of tier zero so it counts) were the ones that happened before DUEA. After that comes Nekroz, PePe, Zoodiac, Spyral, Tear, and Fire King. In nine years (two of which had very limited events) there were more tier zeros than the previous twelve.
Floodgates aren't as much of a problem when your game is slow enough that you don't lose the second you can't push advantage. And when everyone is playing traps backrow removal does a lot of heavy lifting which pushes floodgates out. Royal Oppression isn't the best card in Edison even though it reads that way and Vanity's Emptiness is basically not played in HAT because its counterplay renders its major strengths less impactful than the normal traps in the format. Speaking of sacky staples, when you see more of your deck because games last longer than one turn sacking isn't as much of a concept. Seeing Called By in five sucks. Seeing Mirror Force or Heavy Storm after you've drawn your five and an additional five over the course of the game should be expected. The power level of those staples is also not as high. Decks were generally less expensive and the more clustered power level meant playing budget rogue was perfectly doable outside of outlier formats where power creep lurched forward like DAD and Dragon Rulers just like how modern usually is. Generic toolboxing is fun. The synchro and xyz pools are great to explore and having a more centralized number of extra deck cards means you don't have to read what Bumblefuck Deathstar Dragon does and where the semicolon is in its text to denote how you can interact with it on the spot.
Old Yugioh was simply better. Not perfect, but better.
@@geek593 problem is so many boomers act like it is perfect with their nostalgia glasses
@@hightidekraken Almost everything from Crimson Crisis through Breakers of Shadow was better than what the game has been after BOSH. I still enjoy some aspects of the game but it's not nostalgia goggles that make people continue to play Edison and HAT for years on end. The game was simply better, more approachable, more comprehensible, and thus more fun for more people when the card design wasn't so insane. I'm convinced the modern diehards wouldn't actually dislike the game being stripped down to the power level of the late Zexal era as long as that became the new benchmark to design and compete from. People keep playing the modern game because that's all there is.
@@geek593 im not denying there arent fun retro formats tho i do think some are overrated. Im saying a good chunk of old school players I’ve seen are the duelingbook “no link no xyz no pendulum etc etc etc” type. They will have some irrelevant excuse to defend even the most glaring issues with old school ygo and its like talking to a brick wall who just knows normal summon Blue-Eyes.
@@hightidekrakenAnd most past format players aren't those children.
Aw shit, here comes Dante!
1:53 YCS Sydney
8:54 YCS Atlanta
12:20 YCS Berlin
12:32 YCS Sao Paulo
12:53 YCS Chicago
16:29 YCS Mexico City
16:53 YCS Las Vegas
20:32 YCS Paris
26:29 YCS Philadelphia
29:21 EUWCQ
30:17 South America WCQ
30:50 Oceania WCQ
31:08 Central America WCQ
31:33 NAWCQ
36:13 World Championship
48:43 YCS Madrid
51:28 YCS Toronto
52:15 YCS Lima
53:33 YCS Dallas
57:17 YCS London
1:06:07 YCS Anaheim
1:06:51 YCS Milan
1:07:09 YCS Sydney II
Thanks
ONE OF THE ALLTIME BEST FORMATS OF YUGIOH HISTORY
Fire fist 2015 is one of the best decks I have ever played in my whole life. I've spent 6 fantastic months playing it with my ygo group back than... Such a beautiful summer
This was such a fun time for me playing yugioh
I was topping various locals with Tellarknights and other random rank 4 engines
And then…. Pepe
Still have my first ed Dantes, 10 years strong
The reign of Shaddolls. Still love and play them to this very day.
My favorite year of Yu-Gi-Oh
It's my favourite year in terms of everything in life
I was already contemplating leaving Yu-Gi-Oh early 2014 due to life getting busy, then pendulums came out and knowing that I had to learn new rules, I stopped playing.
this was truly the golden era of modern yugioh
LIGHTSWORN MENTIONED!!!
Wow ! What a video ! The level of detail and structure is truly wonderful and so delightful to watch. I watched it nonstop ! 2015 truly was an amazing year ! Please make one for 2016 !
woah I can't believe 2014 is finally over
Third. Yay. I love these format updates.
I quit in 2008, so coming and seeing what happened while away is good. Trying again post 2020
You missed a lot. Only thing that hasnt changed are Tier 0 formats coming in and out like Glad Beasts and TeleDAD 😂
@@traplover6357 Now it's Fire King Snake-Eye. Not quite as bad as pre-LODT DAD Return format in '08, more like Glad Beast format pre-TDGS but post-emergency banlist.
Farfa and Doug’s deck in Master Saga
The short time between Dragon Ruler and Necroz was the best era of Yugioh.
Then we entered hypercreep
Looking at all the formats up until this point, it was crazy how long flip monsters were still teched in and used compared to what I remembered. Excellent recaps.
As a Goat Format player, I was looking forward to this recap. I know Goat and the year 2014 don't have much in common, but I remember watching a lot of content during that time. I especially liked Nihmnym's videos where he would film in various locations and his insight into the formats. Alintheyoh was another channel from back then I enjoyed, the duel logs l, and many others, so any time I think of 2014 I get nostalgic for an era of TH-cam that probably won't happen again.
Pre-DUEA was a blast, then a lot of people stopped playing because of pendulum 😢
Always excited for a new recap video.
Now this is nostalgia for me, this was my 1st comeback to the game
I’ve been waiting for this!
2014 was my BABY
Huh. Never knew Cydra Revolution came out on my Birthday that year! Thats awesome!☺️
Best year for the game.
I love these recap videos, make videos talking about specific cards and how they existed in different formats
As much as I like a lot Arc V archetypes, the zexal era was the peak of Yu-gi-oh IMO
I'm going to have to agree
Can’t wait for 2015 recap
I feel like here even though there was a huge piwer shift, people playing at the rime were atill able to follow along with adaptations. Also even new not powerful decks could try and edg the big meta players with gameplay knowledge. Case in point: I remember being able in the following year to outplay Nekroz with U.A. of all decks because it was the deck that could commit protection and interaction to the board and keep the hand empty to not get blown by Trishula, while not really playing into extra deck so Unicore also was useless against me.
Excellent video, keep up the good work !
I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
Nekroz is coming
Beware the evil
The relwaser of Rituals
Djinn
The deck that broke the thing too
Nekroz forshaddowing at the end, I love your content
I actually really loved the format that 2014 ended on. Three deck formats are my favorite and none of the three decks were blatantly better. Besides the floodgates of course
CIR TARGET DANTE, DANTE TARGET CIR
Another great trip down memory lane
Awesome Video as always
Its all uphill from here
I can say I've bought more Duelist Alliance than any other set, just trying to pull my first Dante. Yes, I did. Yes, I still have it
I cannot wait to hear all about Secrets of Eternity in the next years recap
Mythic Rulers was my favourite deck given the sheer number of options, however, I still play Tellars to this day
I loved Geargia back then. I found Bujin to be a particularly good match up for them, and it was the most popular deck back then. Skill Prisoner added an extra tool that helped vs Fire Fist too
Waiting for 2015!!!
I can't believe the Cyber Dragon Structure Deck is 10 years old already
33:24 the introduction of Pendulum!
35:54 I sure you could make an interesting format based around the "all monsters are considered all card types" rule
I might recheck this video again other dAy
This format to needs to be as popularized as Edison IMO
At the time of writing this, this was almost 10 years ago
Wild how the game has changed
Love it, when it will come out the 2015 recap?
Quality content as always
hearing 'a hit to fire king' in 2024 goes hard
Early 2014 was peak IMO
Do we really count Dragon of Legends a OCG import set when it first came out in the TCG? while OCG got it a month later.
PENDULUM!!!
Friendly reminder that Galaxy Soldier was supposed to debut in PRIO in the TCG 😢 us few Galaxy-Eyes players were robbed🎉
I feel like if I ever played back then again I’d play Quiledport or geargeir 😂
KURIBANDITS MENTIONED
You could still use Norito the Moral Leader instead of Magi Magi although in all fairness, Norito was locked to Spellcasters so it was less flexible even then.
DUEA and NECH my beloved ❤
And we all know what set 2015 starts off with.
I can’t believe, ygo is finally good
I start play thanks to hieratics. Too bad I was a bad player and I miss how to play it better
I can't beleive you forgot fire lake of the burning abyss.
My (non-existent sadly) HATs off for another YGO recap, 'cuz I would've played that deck given a choice.
Ooooh its time
Fire Water best format
It's been 10 years
Remember when maxx "c" was a side deck card? And you didn't need 15 handtraps to play
Good old days
Are you planning on continuing through the years? Or how far out are you going to?
The fact about illusion magician is not true. Norito the moral leader is a rank six spell caster that released in 2013
ah shaddoll, my peak
to think that sixth sense was a common.
I found you from duel links history, when are you gonna do those videos again?
I still don’t get why the tcg sets for early Arc-V had different names than the ocg like Duelist Advent became Duelist alliance
you forgot fire lake of b.a.
it was shaddoll beats ba. ba beats qlj and qli beats shaddoll
Ah Trampolynx or as my friend who plays Qlis called it "stupid cat."
peak
Wave hello to Josh everybody. o/
ROTA was unlimited in 2014?
qli was a stun deck
Any chance you’ll do this for Master Duel?
No mention of Gravekeepers support in Legacy Of The Valiant. It was advertised on the booster box itself and made it at least rogue for a short while.
Please cover 2020 since there was little to no events and is easily the most forgettable due to the pandemic !
Most based Yugioh year
You be slandering Duelist Alliance format. It wasn’t the end of back and forth or the game being too fast.
It was the start of players not being mega punished by blow out cards.
The decks after this era were made to play the grind game. Perhaps BA, Shadolls, and Yang Zings were made to mimic Pendulums, recovery aspect.
He isn’t wrong about how this started Modern Yugioh being about Break My Board though.
You say that like decks weren't already grinding before Duelist Alliance. The difference between pre and post was the cost of generating advantage. Most decks before DUEA were full of +0s that looked for weak turns and board positions to gain advantage. After DUEA card design shifted towards every card adding advantage simply by being played or put into rotation (GY and into the pend summon every turn in pend's case). It became difficult to justify playing goodstuff traps unless they interacted with your engine to create plusses. Obviously this isn't where the game went terminal cancer mode, that was 2016-2018, but the card design clearly showed signs of shifting here.
46:42 she requires a monster effect???
2 things. 1. I wonder how he'll react when he does 2015 and sees the worse fusion spell for a fan favorite deck (Red-Eyes Fusion). 2. The x in the Yang Zing names are pronounced like "shi".
Hi Josh
pog
Can't wait for 2015 the age of PePe
This was the year that I quitted yugioh. Shark was the card that make me quit
It's all downhill from here.
Nah, DUEA was a rebirth 🎉
Nah, no Tear yet
Mate, it ain't MR4 yet.
@@cynthiacrescent Tear was a pit at the bottom of a canyon.
Peak of ygo- hat format
Ahh yes, YCS Ebola
First
P r o m o S M
this was the last era i played competitively
shaddoll into dante, and my last deck was necloth
holy shit the thumbnail legit gave me ptsd flashbacks