There are more link monsters(424) in the game already than there are pendulums(345). I guess that's what happens when you design one mechanic with too much hesitation and the other with absolute 0 hesitation.
@@pengen_gantinama Performapal (59), Odd-Eyes (27), Magicians/Sorcerer (28), Keep in mind some of them overlap, with cards like Performapal Odd-Eyes Synchron. I legitimately don't know how they ONLY make up a third of the pool.
it also hurts that whenever a pendulum deck becomes a part of the meta it gets banned pretty much right away, tear and snake-eyes are allowed to remain in the meta for months at tier 0, when pepe became tier 0 it only lasted for one event in the tcg, and superheavy samurai also got banned pretty fast. I would be incredibly disappointed if they ban the new melodious support before they even touch snake-eyes.
I've noticed that! Here's hoping. I'd love to see new Pendulum archetypes come and go that are equal in competitive viability with the typical new archetypes that come and go through the meta.
As a day 0 pendulum player, pepe had to go. Now Zefra on the other hand? They murdered my child with a game mechanics change as soon as it hit full power...
one little thing, most of the talk over hitting melodious has been about hitting ostinato or hitting bacha but please i hope not, i play them pure and love my little fairies
@@ashemabahumat4173they could have hit the broken XYZ plus a small consistency hit and the deck will be fine but yugi boomers could tolerate a multicolor card
@@lucasalarcon3230 there's almost no way to issue a consistency hit in a way that matters for pendulums- especially for something as toxic and recursive as Pepe, unless you do what Konomi did and take it out back to put it down
Konami: "Pendulums are OP and must be nerfed" Also Konami: *creates Links and forces everyone to use them by restricting ED monsters to be summoned only to the EMZ or linked zone*
Pendulum didn't sell because they weren't generic and they public enemy number 1 for yugi boomers the solution was clear for konami make a new mandatory generic mechanic that everybody will need to buy to play the game
@@lucasalarcon3230again this is so wrong at so many levels, link master rule literally made yugioh locals in down to 60% in attendances and overall steady decline in profit for konami in 2016 to 2018, those western yugiboomer probably doesnt even play the game and should been ignored all together.
@@r3zaful that beacuse You are including 2016 and 2017 both awfull years with weak products and tier Zero metas thing that literally changed in 2018 with most products we're good this the years we're ge got 2 ash reprints before this ash was imposible to get for casual players
The issue is that ARC-V ironically didn’t put enough focus on them. Most characters didn’t have Pendulums which meant that there were less avenues to really explore the mechanic.
Konami: here we have all mechanics we created, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz and Link "What's inside that vault?" Pendulums: feed me father I am starving Konami: don't worry about it
My personal gripe with Pendulum was how hard Performapals was shafted. I loved their original playstyle of using a field of small monsters that build each other up into being OTK machines, but since then it's borderline impossible to build a dedicated deck around them. They don't exist as a standalone deck anymore, they're simply there to add to the disgusting Pendulum soup pile that is Performapal Magician Odd-Eyes Z-ARC.
I do like performapals and I played mostly pure one before so they have a soft spot on my heart. Hopefully they get more shine and support at some point
They were never meant as a standalone archetype. They were meant to serve as support for Pend Magician and Odd-Eyes. Mixing them together isn't "pend soup" - it's the way the archetypes are intended to be played. Just look at how many cards specifically reference those three archetypes. Supreme King is its own thing... sort of, and it also isn't. Anime lore makes it make sense. Either way, it's also viable to include it with the other three. (Also, Pendulum Dragons are technically an archetype unto their own... also meant to be played in the deck, so you can safely throw them in as well.) I'm usually 100% in favor of playing pure, but for flavor reasons, this is an exception. Once you start adding _other_ stuff outside of those... _then_ there's a problem.
@@gyppygirl2021 They absolutely weren't at first. The support that stitches them together with three other archetypes was a retroactive thing that came in much later on. Performapals had almost nothing to do with Magicians and Odd-Eyes until Unicorn came along. Before that they just happened to share Yuya's deck space with Magicians and Odd-Eyes.
@@felixdaniels37 It's not retroactive if it was planned as a thing from the start. Why do you think the support stitched them together? Performapals were never meant to stand on their own.
Moving the Pedulum zones to the Spell/Trap zones probably didn't help, as it means Pedulum players either have 3 useable spell slots, or can't pedulum until the outer zones are empty.
The only legacy one off pendulum monsters that work are the amazoness pendulums. They are searchable with call and village, have really good scales and atk boosting effects, go to the scales automatically when sent to the grave for a fusion summon, and make playing lava golem in amazoness free because the no normal summon isn't even needed with the pendulum monsters/newest support
Well, now they did the same for the Melodious Pendulums and they're fantastic for many of the reasons you mentioned. The Superheavies were pretty bonkers too.
We must all remember the one good pendulum monster. Ghost Beef, the Ghost of Christmas dinner. Not because it’s any good in the game, but because it’s the ghost of Christmas dinner!
Tbf, pendulums have 5 pot of greed's, a billion rotas, and they're still trash cuz of how fragile the mechanic is. And while having the least number of banned cards out of any mechanic still hailed as the worst thing to happen to the game, even though links have actively ruined the game permanently changing the game board and forever stun locking the game with no way to self balance it like pendulums losing the pendulum zones, having the highest number of cards out of any type banned, there are officially more link cards banned now than o.g. cards from DM era let that sink in.
I wouldn't even mind decks can stray pendulum monsters like the predaplant pendulum support if they fear full on pendulum focused decks. I think Konami doesn't want a pendulum pile deck, in which just add restrictions to make them hard to splash
Yeah but syncro, XYZ, zombie, link, dragón, etc pile decks are good for them, at that time was understandable... Now Konami is just being stupid with that.
*Master Rule 4 change happened.* Once it got "errataed" and other extra deck monsters didn't need arrows it made most link arrows meaningless. The only extra deck mechanic still restricted was Pendulums.
@@burblebineabbletv Agreed! If they’re going to restrict Pendulum and *only restrict Pendulum* under MR5, they need to at least give them something to compensate. As right now, they completely rely on another mechanic just to function, which no other summoning mechanic needs to do.
As powerful as Pendulums were; people severely overestimated how strong they’d actually be. Cause look at the facts; how many Pendulum Decks were consistently dominant during the Arc V Era? 2; Pepe and Qliport. Vrains Era? 2. Pendulum Magician and Endymion. Compared to all the other summoning mechanics Pendulum did not dominate as largely as people would think it would.
Links have proven to be more broken than pendulum and more formats have been ruined by link strategies compaired to pendulum. So many people hate on pendulum for no reason at all other than they faced pepe once in its prime and now hate it but are completely fine with stuff like tear 0 format, fire format, kash and many other non pendulum formats that are more toxic than MR3. It honestly shows how simple minded yugioh players are. Id love to actually be able to pull my pendulum magicians out of the binder go to locals and stand a chance of topping in a competitive environment again.
So Pendulums currently have 1 of 3 uses. Some 1-2 of in an archetype whose general design is not pendulum summoning (I say 2 because of Nouvelles since a pendulum fusion monster is sorta in their archetype... kinda...), being part of the pendulum pile, and not being good enough to be in the pendulum pile. With the way pendulums work there is a lot of interesting ideas you could work with. An Archetype where all the cards have an effect when they're face up in the extra deck, An Archetype like a crane game where you move pendulum monsters from their scales across columns to maybe "grab" a spell/trap or a monster from your opponent, but in the end it all has to be balanced around the Pendulum Summon. Which tbf is a bit of a massive play since in game states it can effectively double the amount of materials you can use for links or anything else really. The anime mostly sold the mechanic as being good in a grind game since the monsters always came back, or as a way to empty your hand easily... but in the modern game the grind game isn't really a thing, and show me a modern archetype where if they didn't brick or draw garnets they couldn't just empty their hand on the spot if they really wanted to. Add in cards like Endymion or Nirvana high paladin and the entire mechanic is a joke thanks to no one liking to read. In terms of fun I think Konami maybe be able to have fun with a Pendulum archetype with the restriction that it essentially forgoes pendulum summoning, or maybe modifies the way pendulum summoning works. Heck maybe have an archetype with a link 1 that scales some pendulum fusion and pendulum synchro monster to pendulum monsters out, and the idea of the archetype is to get the pendulum monsters on the field to xyz into an xyz pendulum with effects gained from it's materials. There is a lot you can do with Pendulums, but they are so divisive that Konami only just gives pendulums a bone here and there. Heck the Storyline archetypes haven't had a pendulum archetype since duel terminal? I mean technically Veda Kalarcanum wasn't THAT long ago and it's another of those 1 pendulum monster in an entire deck that does something that isn't pendulum summoning.
Yeah, they do so little with Pendulum Summons, when people create all sorts of ways to Pendulum in custom cards or Fanfics. They do things like Pendulum Summon from the GY, Pendulum Summoning on the opponent's field, from the deck, changing it so they summon monsters of a higher level than the combined scale, etc. And balancing it so it doesn't end on the Pendulum Pile or used as free material for traditional Extra Deck combos not only is easy, they have been doing it from the beginning. They can do like Qli and restrict them to only Pendulum Summoning inside the Archtype, or like pretty much every Archtype in the game and limiting Extra Deck summons to cards of the Archtype, or at most of the same Type and Attribute. They do it for everyone else, but for some reason they decided to let most Pendulums interact with other Pendulums, and then nerf them all and not give support because they are too genereci?! It baffles me what they do with this poor mechanic...
0:01 I wonder why add two symbols for the scales (one red and one blue) if they were going to have the same scales on both sides. One would think they will make it strategic with some having a left scale 4 but a right one 2 or things like that. Probably the mechanic suffered from its anime using all extra deck methods. Still the mechanic managed to have more characteristics than Synchros and XYZ When they were released, like scale activation treated as an spell activation
I can definitely appreciate the unique aspects of Pendulums. And I too wondered why we never saw differing scales on a Pendulum monster. I think there could've been a lot of interesting uses for something like that.
For all the problems with Pendulums, they don't 'hijack' other decks and their supposed identities like Links still do even after MR5. For example, 'Yubel' is a deck that is currently seeing some meta play in the TCG and OCG, given it revolves around a GX era archetype/charecter, and includes cards which directly support Super Poly and has multiple Fusion monsters of its own, it should be a Fusion themed archetype. Its 'meta' extra deck is 2/3rds generic Link Monsters. I hate generic Links, they rob decks of their identities, especially now post MR4 when decks don't need Link's monsters anymore. Why are Konami still making cards like these (see S:P Little Night and Promethean Princess as very recent examples).
The issue with Pendulums was that if the card was remotely good then it could bust open the entire extra deck. Any Pendulum card that could just search was broken by default because of the potential multi summon and then tons of extra deck shenanigans. Links Knee capped the other summons so hard that they had to make cards to specifically support these summoning methods (Electrumite, Halq and verte anaconda). But even then, Pendulums got the short end due to Electrumite getting banned while the others didn't despite them being broken as heck and it took years and a master rule revision for them to get banned.
The problem with that when Konami designed Pendulum, is that for SOME REASON, they decided to completely ignore how they design every other archtype and mechanic when designing cards for them. Most archtypes nowadays has things like "You can only summon Synchro Monsters from the Extra Deck the turn you use this effect" or "You can only summon ARCHTYPE Monsters from the Extra Deck", etc. You could EASILY have Pendulums with those limitatons, and in fact, they STARTED with those limitations, thanks to Qli, which didn't let you Pendulum non-Qli monsters. And as scary as Qli was, it was still a well balanced archtype in a very varied Metagame, where they didn't even win the Worlds, somehow Tellar won! XD But then they decided to stop giving Pendulums limitations and let them all interact with each other, which is kinda calling for trouble... ...But considering taht today's Metagame is filled with decks that you can simply throw the engines of 5 different archtypes, and let them work together because they restrict each other, is Pendulum Pile EVEN a problem different to what we already have?
@@reikolupus136 my thoughts exactly, theres tons of design space to make cool pendulum decks provided they just have some sort of lock. Abyss actor is a very unique strategy that gets to play a pendulum focused gameplan while not having all the downsides a regular pend soup deck has. A slim engine, with 1 & 2 card combos, good non engine room, and a tight and short combo line that doesn't play into every single handtrap under the sun. Obviously the deck does still have some issues of anti-synergy with itself (why tf does mellow lock you out of your own in archetype links??), but that style of pendulum deck like AA & qli could make for a lot of really cool decks but they just never felt like making more of them. Instead all we get is either SHS being the full combo engine for anything, or borderline unplayable singleton pend cards for archetypes that didn't even want to pendulum summon.
@@frig7014 Abyss Actor is another great example of it! Even with its problems, a problem that as you pointed out, is hilariously bad. Pendulums CAN be good design, but Konami simply fumbled it BADLY. The weird Pendulums given to various decks that didn't need Pendulums is another example. The entire roster of Zefra is NOT played in their respective archtypes, beyong maybe one Yang Zing and a Ritual Beast. And it's not simply because the decks don't wanna Pendulum, it's because the cards are BAD and don't help the decks in any way! Meanwhile, when they were releasing them, I thought they were a cool idea with lots of potential. Rather than be used for Pendulum, they could be like "Modal" Cards, you could have a powerful COntinuous Spell for the deck that you could fetch with a Monster Search, or use them as Monsters liek the rest of the deck. It would have been a really cool way to use the Pendulum Monsters to strenghten older decks, essentially giving 2 pieces of support with a single card. And there are decks that didn't receive one that would have had ABSOLUTELY beneffited of a Pendulum Monster, like Aliens, which, given Gol'Gar's effect, they could be abused in a fun way. But for some reason, Konami neither gave Pendulums to the decks that really wanted one, nor gave GOOD Pendulums to the decks it did give to. They managed the mechanic so badly...
@@reikolupus136 yeah it is frustrating they printed all these zefra monsters that dont make the cut in their archetypes but definitely *could* have been playable if their pend effect wasnt just a restriction, like just slap archfiend eccentricks pend eff on a couple zefras and suddenly you have a playable card in shaddolls or ritual beasts or nekroz
@@frig7014 Damn, I can and will modify their effects right now: Shaddoll Zefranaga Pendulum Effect: You cannot Pendulum Summon Monsters, except "Shaddoll" and "Zefra" monsters. This effect cannot be negated. Once per turn, if a "Zefra" Monster is sent to your Extra Deck face-up by a card effect or "Shaddoll" Flip Monster is sent to your GY by a card effect: You can Special Summon it in face-down Defense Position. Monster Effect: FLIP: Place 1 "Zefra" Pendulum Monster from your Deck in your Pendulum Zone. If this card is Pendulum Summoned or sent to the GY by a card effect: You can target 1 Spell/Trap card in either field; return it to the hand, and cards with the same name can't be activated this turn. You can only use 1 "Shaddoll Zefranaga" effect per turn, and only once that turn. Shaddoll Zefracore Pendulum Effect: You cannot Pendulum Summon Monsters, except "Shaddoll" and "Zefra" monsters. This effect cannot be negated. Once per turn, if a "Zefra" Monster is sent to your Extra Deck face-up by a card effect or "Shaddoll" Fusion Monster is sent to your GY by a card effect: You can target one "Zefra" Monster or "Shaddoll" Flip Monster in your GY; return that "Zefra" Monster to the Deck or Fusion Monster to your Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon the target in face-down Defense Position. Monster Effect: FLIP: Place 1 "Zefra" Pendulum Monster from your Deck in your Pendulum Zone. If this card is Pendulum Summoned or sent to the GY by a card effect, choose one of the following effects: - You can target 1 "Zefra" card in your Pendulum Zone, except "Shaddoll Zefracore"; Special Summon it. - Fusion Summon 1 "Shaddoll" Fusion Monsters, using materials from your Hand or Field. You can only use 1 "Shaddoll Zefracore" effect per turn, and only once that turn. A bit wordy, but at this time of the night I'm not the best at problem solving card text, someone can probably do a better job than me at that XD. And hey, the game has even longer effects than this. Just... Give them effects that actually benefit the Archtype they are thrown into!
Actually, one thing about pendulum makes them vastly different from other summoning mechanics. That is, every mechanic takes material to conjure stronger and stronger monsters, while pendulum is a mechanic that... allows to flood the board with weak monsters. Like, there is no such think like pendulum boss / end monster, that is required to be summon via pendulum mechanic. I think that's why people hate it, good pendulum deck doesnt mean cool boss monster, but rather field flooding with negates ect. I think pendulum summon would be cool if we had like pendulum boss monster (in ED), and as a player you would power up the scale, and the power of your boss would depend on how powerful scale you manage to make. For example, in ED you have your boss with effects : scale 0-2 -draw a card, 0-4 also summon a monster, 0-6 also you can destroy 1 card, 0-8 also you can negate. And your gameplan would be to play cards with effect like "increase scale by 2"
they were supposed to do that with the various pendulum hybrid synchros/xyz/fusions but never bothered to make most of them actually worth summoning, nor have them help advance the pendulum gameplan. The best "pendulum" boss monster still is just odd-eye's vortex, which is just a plain old negate.
The issue is that they haven't printed good pendulum monsters or support for them lately. They limited the best thing they had in Electrumite, and haven't really addressed how every pendulum archetype just gets tossed into the pile eventually. Even with Valmonica, they made the deck not quite up to snuff since it still has a high degree of potential to be broken if they're too generous.
Pendulums dont work with other decks unlike the other summoning mechanics. You can slap xyz synchro and link to any deck and it will work fine. Pendulum only works great with pendulim decks
2:40 Man. Clash of Rebellions also had the biggest support wave for Red-Eyes… just saying. Yeah, ArcV was at its peak, Pendulums are starting to establish themselves, Red-eyes was hyped up as legacy support for this set, Atticus was the original Entertainment Duelist, I was so ready for my badass new Pendulum Cards! …and they gave me Geminis. Why? Whose idea? They don’t even work with their new fusion spell. Ok so now they’ve established Red-eyes has Geminis, there’s nothing I can do about that. But what’s the excuse for no pendulums now? Geminis play on the theme of duality right? half normal monster/half effect monster. Well we should have some half monster/half spells too! Pendulums are gimmicky, don’t work, and when do work they’re broken, they’re perfect for Red-eyes. Being a fan of red-eyes and pendulums probably means Konami hates me the most lol. Someday I’ll make my supreme king red-eyes deck work… that’ll show em.
If all YGO summoning mechanic is at a party: Xyz: getting bullied Fusion: the bully Synchro: the party queen Link: the DJ Flip: forgotten in the corner of the room Tribute: wreaking havoc on the stage Ritual: dancing alone Pendulum: doesn't allowed on the premise of the building
One of the reasons why people hate Pendulums was because of PePe. They hate the mechanic because, in the history of Yugioh, it got 1 Meta Threat. Meanwhile, I don't see them hating on XYZ because of the Dragon Rulers... Pendulum is a Mechanic that could have been used a LOT better. Unironically, I think that Qli is one of the best examples of what you could do with the Mechanic and be successful with it. They aren't the only thing the mechanic has, they also have a style of normal summoning without tributing at the cost of a reduction of ATK that made them combo very well with cards like Skill Drain. They have built-in protections so bringing out the big guns in the more costly way is worth it. They use the Pendulum mechanic to build up materials to Tribute for their Big Boss Monsters, or if needed, most Qli can double up as a Mini Boss with a decent effect when Tribute Summoned. And they got effects when tributed to combo and incentivise tributing them rather than going unga bunga with a full field. And with that all, even if they were a very Meta Relevant deck, they weren't THE Meta Threat of the format. It was a very varied format with many good decks, and to surprise of them all, the one that won the Worlds was Tellarknight. A very good designed archtype that was very good in play but not overpowered. ...But people will hate on the mechanic anyways because PePe became one of the multiple overpowered decks in the history of the game.
There was even an Xyz tier 0 format during MR3! I see people complain about Zoodiac format all the time... and yet this _pure Xyz focused archetype_ has not resulted in Xyz getting any kind of nerf (except in MR4 where everything except links was nigh unplayable, but that's unrelated).
Pendulums were introduced too early in the game. They changed so much with the established rules. The pendulum zones and mechanics that came with it sped up the game exponentially. I'm honestly surprised links weren't the next mechanic after xyz since links built upon the trend with more generic extra deck summoning and made zones (which were always a thing) actually relevant. Even Konami agrees that pendulums sped the game too much with restricting extra deck summoning to the extra zone and link arrows when links first came out. Pendulums are fine where they are now but it does feel like Konami is being really careful with the design of future pendulums archtypes.
Yeah I agree but it still bugs me as a pen enjoyer that they still got shafted with mr5, the contents of the video, and the way konami treats pends compared to links
There is an easy way of solving the issue of Pendulums needing a critical mass of them in your deck: just make a Single in archetype Pendulum Monster with 2 different scales on each end that can set itself and a copy of itself (or a specific named Pendulum) from the deck in your Extra Deck, like how the Vaalmonica monsters do it. Also give them strong Pendulum effects and not just basic stat buffs or battle tricks. Also making Pendulum Monsters that lock u into a type or attribute would be better than just Xeno locking u into their own archetype like Qli, majespecter and D/D/D does. This way you can still play a mix of them but only if they share a type or attribute, and since Pendulums now are reliant on link monsters, they could make a Cyberse Pendulum Link strategy that makes use of the scales as a way to Link Summon and successfully Pendulum Summon easier.
@@nashcifer5666 Oh damn I just checked, you're actually correct That's strange I always thought D/D/Ds can play Fiends but it was just that there wasn't any good enough fiends to use
pendulum get the short end of the stick since it was introduced. the mechanic itself seems super unfair to literally anything else in the game so majority of the people don't like it coz everything else they have is literally obsoleted and they are forced to play pendulum or quit. the public perception of the mechanic hit the bottom since the moment it was announced. imagine you play synchro, xyz and they announce a summon tech that : 1. set two scales, then you can special summon the whole hand 2. if you manage to wipe the board they go to top of extra deck, not even hit the graveyard. it's pretty uninteractable like if you have called by the grave you can get rid of that annoying card, but pendulum monster say no. that bring to point no.3 3. next turn, they can use the same scales to re-summon ALL from top of extra deck back onto the field aka potentially summon 5 every turn. the recursion is insane. you either otk them or you'll lose resource game coz no way anything that early in ygo can keep up with that bs. also before everyone correct me, this is when first introduced (before MR4 or MR5, i dont remember), there is no link arrow restriction to pendulum summon, you can put every face-up pen extra deck monsters onto any slot on the field. 4. ok this one is in the concept of pendulum so i cant really complain, but it doesnt restrict you from utilized other summoning tech. normally something this OP they should say "you can only pendulum summon for the rest of this turn" or some restriction like that. they basically tell you "hey, with pendulum, you can have free 5 materials resummon every turn to do whatever the hell you want, have fun". eww. i remembered the first time i watched that original video that introduced pendulum. i was stunned, not in a good way. the tech is so OP compare to everything else in the game. it's konami sending the message that you either play pendulum or you dont play the game. so i decide not to play the game. ps. found the said video : v=Gs08XuC62LU, imagine watching this while you're still do funny math with synchro or trying to level match with xyz ps2. if they announce this mechanic may be after snake-eyes, people will be more accepting coz snake-eyes is also bs in term of number of special summons and recursion. it still look insane but at least it doesnt pass the bar that is already in the game (aka snake-eyes) ps3. i vow to never play pendulum because how dumb the mechanic is and i still dont play pendulum until this day. (i played nemleria, but that thing is not pendulum)
Pendulums never forced you to play them. Heck, Arc-V went out of its way to feature the other summon mechanics equally, and there were a few characters who didn't use pendulums at all and came out just fine for it. There was more than one tier 0 format in MR3, with one of them being PePe... and that was the only pendulum tier 0, ever. (I believe another one was Zoodiac, which has exactly zero pendulums and is completely xyz focused.) Now, the mechanic is barely playable due to the rules practically gutting it, and you have to have REALLY strong pendulum decks in order to make them at all worthwhile. Endymion and Pend Magician are fairly strong, but still only reach rogue tier at best most of the time. Most strong archetypes do a much better job of getting a lot of monsters on the board than pendulums, and recursion is heavily restricted. Meanwhile MR4 made links *completely mandatory* if you wanted to use the extra deck. You had no choice in the matter. Vrains reflected this as well - other summons were supplementary at best, and everyone primarily used links. If you want to talk about being forced to play a specific kind of card, don't point at pendulums when there's a far worse culprit right in front of you. It's okay to dislike the mechanic (many do), but to claim that you were ever forced to play them is simply wrong.
@@gyppygirl2021 i never talked about hard force people to play it, but it's the same with tier0 format, you either play that deck or lose. you're right that MR4 is literally force people to play link. if we didn't so repel by how disgust pendulum "potential" is at the beginning i think konami will take a leap and make some nasty pendulum decks by now. i think everyone feel the same way that the mechanic is too much and it will get out of hand real quick if not keep in check, which is the thing konami did worst. and the other part you mentioned that "other mechanic/archetype did better at swarming the field/recursion" is correct (in the modern context) and imo it is also a mistake, no archetype should be that good. i know people said junk speeder is not a big deal just negate/imperm/ash him but think about it conceptually, who tf think it's a good idea to have generic synchro lv5 that on summon can special summon up to 5 other monsters "from deck" onto the field. there are many things konami think it's ok but no matter how you look at it, it's not ok and pendulum summon tech is one of it. i wouldnt put it past konami that one day they can print "synchro pendulum monster lv5 that on summon can search 5 pendulum monsters from deck and put them on top of extra deck face up, then that synchro monster move itself to the pendulum scale"
@@bankkunarak The amount of resources pendulums have to spend in order to do half of what other decks do makes them not worth playing at all. Plus, they limit your deck building options - you can't run as many hand traps in a pendulum deck, for example. It would take something as broken as Snake-Eyes for pendulums to be the threat people claim them to be, and at that point, the problem isn't pendulums anyway.
@@gyppygirl2021 i agreed with everything you said. in the modern context all the other summoning techs are also powercrept to infinity to a point that it make pendulum look bad (which is not a good thing). i still believe the reason pendulum got a horrible treatment because its initial introduction it got really bad reception so konami are extra aware to not make it too good. ash blossom was released in 2017 and pendulum was announced in 2014. the concept of handtraps is not a must-have in deck building at that point. link summon does not exist yet so we dont have a comparison how bad link era goes (yeah, the actual force to play link or dont play the game). all i want to say is pendulum is just a bit too much to stomach after synchro (fun elementary school math) and xyz (fun number matching game), then pendulum was like "haha i summon my whole hand and end your life and i'm gonna do the same thing next turn if you're still alive" ofc it was frown upon.
Pendulums weren't even that dominating on release. Outside of Pepe which didn't even last 2 weeks Pendulums never dominated a format. With Qliphort it was contested by BA and Shaddols and Yang Zing Metalfoes wasn't anywhere close to the best deck. D/D/D was supposed to be meta because of Lamia like in the OCG except by the time Lamia came out D/D/D was powercrept into oblivion.
From what I’ve seen, there are 2 things that Konami has to do for pendulums to become viable: 1: it needs some fresh blood, a completely new archetype. The last one we got was in Valiant Smashers last November, and there are only 3 main deck monsters in that one (2/3 are pendulums). It needs one that takes advantage of the new arrangement the field has for them, which means no continuous spells/traps and very few equip cards; or it can use the Column system that put Mekk-Knights on the map (my idea for such a group is call the “Mekitsunes,” fox themed Cyberse monsters that give boosts to all monsters in the same column as them but negative effects to opposing monsters, plus their scale changes depending on which pendulum zone they are in)! It also needs to interact with other mechanics in new/unique ways, like having the pendulum monsters also be Ritual Spells (I don’t have a name for it, but I have been thinking of such a archetype)! 2: generic pendulum cards that you can toss into any deck without fuss. To me, the best way to do this is to bring the “Pendulumstatue” cards out of the anime. Obviously we’d have to add more cards than the ones given in Arc V; I’m thinking 2 cards for each type and attribute, one to boost corresponding type/attribute’s ATK and the other boosts DEF. This way you can mix and match to fit a variety of decks. For example, you could build a Fire Gemeni deck and use “Pendulumstatue Purple Sword” or “Purple Shield” with Pendulumstatues that boost the stats of Fire monsters. Sure some people may compare them to DM Era equip spells, but that should the reason they ARE adapted. They may not be are spam-able as “Power of Guardians” but those small stat boosts can make more of a difference than you think. While we’re at pendulum wishing, why not give some pendulum based support for Phantom Knights and Raidraptors, they could totally use that kind of help!
Soooo since you mentioned Raidraptors, I find it important to mention that Raidraptor pendulum cards actually existed in the Arc-V anime. We just never got to see them because Shay is a purist and refused to use them. So yes, Raidraptor pendulums please
I hate the fact that Pendulums is still affected by the Link Monsters and Extra Monster Zone Rule. 'Oh but you can easily fill an entire board with Pendulum Summon' Yeah, let me summon five monsters and immediately check the conditions for Nibiru.
As pendulum’s biggest fan, I think pendulums are still tied to Links because the less playable they are, the less new players will want to experiment with them, and the less Konami has to hear from people complaining about pendulums. Konami could let me summon 6 from the Ed today and it would do almost nothing.
IMO the biggest issues Pendulum had that made it flop were related to Arc-V's writing and actually the idea that Pendulum DIDN'T hijack the entire era like the other summoning mechanics. As an anniversary series, Arc-V wanted to capture the full series history so the core boosters started to implement every mechanic, but what that meant is that for the majority of the era, the competitive scene didn't actually use Pendulum cards. Shaddoll, Qli, Nekroz, Kozmo, Pepe, Zoodiac - most of the archetypes that are iconic to the period are distinctly non-Pendulum. That wouldn't be as big a deal if the anime implemented the cards correctly - like how GX is remembered for Fusions even though the only archetype that was competitive that used Fusions during the era was Glad Beasts. However, the Arc-V anime specifically had plot points that meant most of the cast couldn't even use Pendulum cards, or at least not as the core of their decks. The only characters who used Pendulum decks in Arc-V were Yuya, Reiji (who barely dueled ever), Dennis (who had the same general aesthetic in his cards as Yuya), and Sawatari who was a joke jobber. Most of the decks from the anime characters have some Pendulum cards, usually as legacy support, but that's too little too late.
ARC-V's greatest sin is the fact that they focused more on Action Spells rather than Pendulums. No Pendulum Monster on its own, being a Pendulum Monster, turned the duel around as much as the activation of a well time Action Spell did.
Was the amount of characters who used Pendulums really that little? I never realized until you pointed it out but that's crazy. It should have been way more
@@Nephalem2002 Does it not? You can just unban it and nothing would change. Decks being linearized around it? Almost every other deck uses the same generic cards for summoning mechanics. Fusion decks get superpoly shenanigans, XYZ's get Zeus and Typhon, Synchros make use of generic ones, links also have generic ones like I:P and S:P. Even rituals make use of generic cards like diviner sending herald of the arclight and then many searchers too
I remember when pendulums came out I was so hyped to play and build them and I even built 3 pendulum decks...thanks for nothing Konami and the fan base
"Pendulum broke the game and Links fixed it" - said everyone not realizing how utter broken the entire Link mechanic was since day 1. Like was it really not obvious Link was a terrible idea? From the whole "very generic materials", to "requiring Link arrows to summon from the Extra Deck", to Link Climbing - a very easy equivalent to Ranking Up and Synchro Climb, to the utterly disgusting of locking your opponent from the Extra Deck with U-Links... Links were absolutely overpowered and meta warping, far more than any other mechanic combined. You technically won't need any kind of mechanic ever other than Links. The only limiting factor back then was the amount and quality of Links we had. It was just a matter of time before we'd get effects and combos that put Qlis and PePe to shame. But no, people feared Qlis and PePe even now and can't see a future without Links. In MR4: "Links was made to slow the game down." - no it doesn't. It just floodgates other mechanics out, but Links can go nuts anytime they want. By the time Knightmares came, it was already very possible to do 1-2 turn U-Links. It was gimmicky, but it was very possible even on non-meta combo decks. Links ruined the game because Konami cannot design a better mechanic than Links. The moment they went for generic materials, that ended the need for any other mechanic to exist. They'd need to rotate Links out in order to sell a new mechanic to the players.
kinda funny how the most broken pendulum archtype is the one that barely uses the mechanic and is therefor mostly unaffected by mr5. qliphorts at best pend summons once then slaps towers and some floodgates on the field. and yet they got a link monster when they really didnt need one.
IMO The moment they got rid of the unfair dedicated field spots for the scales, the whole mechanic became irrelevant and/or burdensome. The only reason people play Links is because is very easy to make them and because Konami literally forced people to play them, unlike Pendulums.
Pendulum only had one deck that killed the mechanic: PePe. Performapal Performage Pendulum Magician broke the game in only one week, and because of that, Komoney needed to kill it before it layed eggs. That is why Pendulum died, and right after it was Zoodiac D/D format until Maximum Crisis was released and Links were on their way.
Meanwhile in ocg, the deck has been constantly topping because electrumite and supreme king starving venom are still here. The last top tier pendulum being supreme king combined with melodious cards Hell there s even a dinomist deck that managed to top taking advantage of pair-a-dice-smasher thanks to disablaster, a new card coming soon in tcg in the set infinite forbidden And don't get me started on vaylant. Every time there s at least one person who find a way to top with this SOMEHOW People say pendulum is trash/dead, but that s only in tcg. In ocg they have always been here
They may top but that doesn't really mean much when you still have people simply playing Voiceless, Yubel, Snake eyes, or any deck that relies on spamming out links. Those pend players are able to top really because pends are so unforeseen people aren't prepared against it, and those pend players know their decks like the back of their heads
it's like the time that plants Rika Sunavalon suddenly started to top events because people who were very experienced with the deck just knew how to push it to the limit despite the deck itself being above average at best
@@zeothesnowwolf2937 Doesn't matter. Up to this day its still played. They may not be the best deck but they re definitly something worth playing against the meta unlike some deck that see little to no play. If anything the fact that they constantly in the OCG tier list of people who make tournament report (even if they tend to be closer to the bottom at time) and the fact that they re constantly at least 1 in a top 8 is more than enough to affirm their presence. Its was here, it is here and it will be here even if people hate it. And mostly, it will keep getting support because the pendulum deck that people play have archetypes used by the main character of yugioh arc v aka it will ALWAYS keep getting support no matter how people hate it especially thanks to the main sets now consistantly printing decent support for anime decks. Hell, freaking Z-arc decks tend to top something because its way easier to access soul of the celestial supreme king in ocg(again, electrum) than in tcg without spending too much ressource and lets not count how recently baronne has been ban in tcg while ocg can still play it.
@@drearydoll6305 That's not a good argument as it's very strawman. People also play stuff like stun and other floodgates and manage to top events. Just because they have a presence doesn't mean they're not still niche and literally only people who play that deck constantly and not deck hopping like meta players have the capability to get Top 64 or 32 results
Most pend decks that top are just 1 single player that dedicates themselves to that deck in the sea of people playing shit like Yubel, Snake eyes, voiceless, etc. Almost anyone can top with any deck if they're determined enough. You can't just pick up most pend decks and get top results, and again it's usually 1 person in top 8 at most and less than like 8 in top 64 and most play entirely separate decks, 1 plays Vaylantz, someone else plays Endymion etc
So for me personally I never had a problem with the mechanic in fact one of my favorite decks are performapal-odd-eyes but I can understand why people aren’t fans of them
Just found your channel tonight. Even though I'm still a dedicated yugioh fan but haven't touched the card game since the Pendulum fiasco back in 2017. I still believe you were right on the money of pendulums being a issue since most of th requirements to activate a scale has to be in your deck and not a side deck compared to most mechanics would be. I also personally think whoever thought that needs to let go at konami. I did give the tech a hard earned shot with the two starter decks back then. But oh boy they were way more confusing to me to contriutube properly compared to how easily the xys and synchro tech were to pull off and were fun to actually do.
Welcome aboard! That first Starter Deck for Pendulums is baffling. It could've been sold as a generic Dragon Summoner archetype Deck and no value would've been lost. I think it could've been made better if the new Power-up pack that came with it, aside from containing useful staples, also contained at least two more Pendulum monsters that could be added into the deck. At least give players a chance to test the mechanic straight out of the box because sure, if you run the typical "Buy 3 and Mash", you have a bit better access to Pendulums, but really not by much.
The problem with pends is that they're only for the pend zones. They would be perfectly balanced if it was one pend summon per pend pair. That way you had to devote resources and set-up to the pend summon. Also card position would actually matter and you could get pends that have meaningful spell effects rather than pend central spell effects. So for example if you had a backrow of the following pend scales from left to right: 0, 4, 8, 3, 6 then you would be able to pend a 1-3, a 5-7, a 7-4, and a 4-5. And ideally it would follow the pendulum motif where you start from one side and then go to the furthest pend pair on the opposite side and repeat until you are out of pairs. And you could add risk-reward where you MUST pend summon the amount of pend pairs you have, so if you only have 2 pend summon targets, but 4 pend pairs, then you wouldn't be able to pend. That would make pends a complex, yet easily understood, and compelling addition to the game. Instead we got summon spam.
"You need a lot of Pendulum cards to make the mechanic works" . Predaplant: *Pendulum summoning consistently while they only have 2 Pend name in the deck.
My bad, I wasn't meaning to imply that it was impossible to use the Pendulum mechanic if you're not running it as your deck's exclusive theme, but looking back, that's absolutely how it comes across 💀
@@martinignacioberro9876 I think most Pend decks also have no reason to Pend summon, besides to summon more monsters on the field. When I check, there are only 57 or fewer cards that can get good effect if you Pend summon a card, and most of them are not good cards.
before i quit the game i was a pendulum player, mostly odd-eyes, but now as i return to the game I'm still a pendulum player, just pendulum magician, which is basically carrying the pendulum mechanic on its back, and i can tell you now pendulum is definitely not what it used to be, but its playable atleast (with great difficulty)
Funnily enough this was the same problem Fusion monsters had in the early days of yugioh - you had to dedicate a lot of your main deck to them for very little payoff
Even though they are trash I love pendulums and I still play them, I've been playing perfomapal, magician, odd-eyes since I was 7, they hold a special place in my heart and I don't think I'll ever abandon them
i hate when someone brings having to make your deck a pendulum pile to benifit from pendulum and then find them complaining about generic cards like sherlok if you wan't to use any mechanic to effecieency you'll have to revolve around it and how is a subcatagory of cards geniric when you barely can put anything else without losing 10% of your playable hands
Pendulum is one of those mechanics I like on paper, but not on execution. And it seems Konami is fine letting pendulums in a mid state, with no real good support since, well, ever.
I really only use Pendulum in like 2 or 3 of my decks. It really was pretty useless, but it's still fun. It just got no real support and honestly was a gimmicky mechanic to begin with. Also, I think the newest set of master rules undoes the Link arm twist.
Short answer: the rule changes to make Link monsters maintain any form of special function gameplay-wise made them utterly worthless. while Fusion/Synchro/Exceed monsters had their Link-requisite limits removed, Pendulums remaining saddled by them not only nerfed them, but made them unplayable. They would be fair and playable again if Link monsters were not required for an extra deck pendulum summon, but as it is now there's no point. I was so disgusted by how Konami handled this that I do not, nor ever will, play any deck that requires link monsters as a mechanic; no matter how powerful.
Pendulums are unironically my favorite mechanic in yugioh and i hate that this type of stuff happens to it, pendulums are rarely good, never top tier for any decent period of time, and got NERFED by those stupid links, even though links already became so prominent in the meta ever since appearing due to the absurd effects and stupid easy requirements to summon
I really want to love Pendulums (I really enjoy Igknights, Dinomist, and Symphonics, regardless of how bad they are 😅), but I think that the mechanics almost entire reliance on archetype is their biggest detriment. You either run the Pendulum Archetype Deck or you just don't play Pendulums. And of course, the boys in blue didn't help that, even for the Pendulums that WERE good
Two things went wrong. Konami decided Pendulums need Links to be playable and people don’t understand how Pendulums work in the first place. Been playing Pendulums since they came out and they’re still as easy as day one. Of course, everything in the game is easy, so naturally I have no complaints.
Or like pendulum's with no scale effects at all. Which means their effects as monsters should be REALLY good like Majespecter. And then there are Solfachords.
I never understood Pendulum monsters that have no Pendulum effect. Seems like somebody made a mistake on the design team and couldn't be bothered to fix it 💀
@@burblebineabbletv i mean, then to compensate you need to create things like Majesty Pegasus which has one of the most broken pendulum effects in the entire game (and btw I think Dracoslayer are a very well designed archetipe from the pendulum perspective, too bad has no boss monsters whatsoever)
Not sure why you are confused on Archfiend Eccentrick, she is just Archfiend Heiress with extra bling on... so there is no question it's a girl. Anyways the designers at Komoney are not very bright, as they seemingly assume the real life card game is played like the anime where you magically will always pull the exact cards you will need in your opening hand... and I don't say that as a joke either, because I seen more then enough evidence across time where at least a part of their team clearly must design cards in that fashion.
The odd-eyes performapal deck was really strong and versatile. Especially the archetypes that were printed in the anime but in real life were generally trash and with the change of master rule 4, it didn't really get a very good deck. And all the support cards it got always had effects like search, but there were enough of them. When we count the other counterparts cards, it was even stronger and had a lot of variety. But as always, its own archetype was left free in a trashy way that would work as seen in the anime and manga. At the points where Pepe once took over the game, this archetype was not just odd-eyes performapal, on the contrary, it became corrupted by mixing many of its decks with other cards. If another deck made such a deck, it would be corrupted in the same way because it was impossible for the archetype to work on its own without the help of other cards. Yuya had a lot of non-turn combos in the anime. But they were all weak. Odd-Eyes Wing Dragon and Starving Venom haveno burning effects. They don't pose a threat at all. They need to undo the bad changes they made to the pendulum deck + the links are broken a lot. To summarize, the odd-eyes performap zarc magician deck will never pose a threat like the anime version. Many trap and magic cards, even anime monsters, were not printed and are missing. pendulum match. Thanks to cards like surprise fusion, we could now use tokens as xyz materials. But Konami is always Konami. The second problem is that for some reason, while Konami aims to balance the balance of power, most of the anime and manga cards they print do not work as their original effects and turn into a custom card. Sometimes they do not make a rule change to make the rule violations we see in the series work in real life. Of course, even if these do not happen in real life, they cannot even be included in game formats where such cards exist since they did not make a rule change this time.
Pendulums are naturally feast or famine, it's hard for them to not combo off. Made even harder with their dependence on Links to recover face-up ED pendulums. An insect/plant/reptile Pendulum might stand a chance of relevance with Ragnaraika's capacity to revive link monsters to oppen up zones.
I would like this for some cards that got errated and then give the original cards the necessary OPT clause. TLDR; Make new Crush Card Viruss Retrain. Removal old errata from Crush Card Virus, except for OPTs, PST, or other game breaking effects
Personally I loved pendulums, It reminded me of the early days of yugioh where'd you see the main characters summon like 500 monsters in a turn and pull out their boss monster and make a speech about how they were gonna defeat yugi till yugi did the same thing and won. I don't even think that pendulum monsters were the problem most of the time except for like pepe, but that's a whole other can of worms. The problem with pendulums is that you can summon a lot of them and they kinda have a built in monster reborn. They can also really take advantage of generic cards a lot of the time. The problem with playing pendulums is they can be a glass cannon "oh no you blew up my all my spells or keep me from playing spells, I guess I dont get to play yugioh" and with the the link monsters its, "well i guess I have to play this card so i can do what I actually wanna do". I think its better now, but for the longest time it made me so annoyed that there wasnt a link that fit in with the cards I liked. it was like I need to play this random dragon link to do anything and I had no choice, I had to play that link and I still do and it irks me cause its If IM playing anything else IM not forced to play a card. It also irks me that there's not like a odd eyes/perfromapal/ DDD or any archetypal link monster, there's just sorta generic ones in like beyond the pendulum and saryuja skull dread. They gave a bunch of other archetypes ones, but not pendulum archetypes. I kinda feel like links do what pendulum monsters are blamed for where links changed the entire game around them and they summon a bunch of generically good link monsters like" oh your summoning some sort of code talker or code dragon... how original" . A lot of people complain about their soupy nature, but i kinda love that cause I get to play multiple archetypes where again it feels like how old yugioh looked where yugi played spellcasters and beasts and machines and etc. I also feel like links made summoning a bunch of tokens an obnoxious thing for a while in yugioh lets summon all the tokens so i can link off like 5 times.( its not like that exactly but still)
also I was kind wrong, DDD have a link monster and beyond/exceed the pendulum are kinda suppose to be the odd eyes pendulum kinda. Though one thing that annoys me now is that there is more link card support then pendulum support. so it feels like konami hates the mechanic to an extent. I also feel like link mosters do what people feared pendulums do, which is be super genric summonable cards ( sometimes en mass).
There’s lots of problems with the mechanic but ultimately, it’s the summon mechanic itself. What ends up happening with the mechanic is: I wasted all my cards trying to get them out or I otk. Adding on to fact that weren’t generic enough like most new card types, it was doomed for failure.
Pendulums bring the other cards out faster, which is the whole point of the mechanic. You get to swarm with tribute monsters and the rest, making some of the oldest cards viable. The ire against them is ludicrous, all from the same people that swarm the field more than a pend summon would. I love it because I get to play at contemporary speed, while I also get great effects in all three rows, reusable tuners and nontuners and link fodder and walls, and they also can become xyz material working with the XMZ and the front row. I have made some hate dino pends and Evil Aether.
In my opinion at first i would agree they were to good, but they were like the one monster type that should have been nurfted like every extra deck monster was, with the zones taking up spell/trap slots and needed extra monster zones to sommon them back from the extra deck then it's balanced better, and i'm saying this as a pendulum user (in duel links at least, i don't play the irl tcg so my thoughts are more inline with that game style) also an extra thing to add on is most pendulum monsters that have a remotely good sacle tend to only work with their acratype, either because they can only summon mosters of that type or they need the other pendulum to be of an acratype to work fully
only tollerate pendulum since im a suker for D/D/D moster , those suker can easy get a pendulum set and have extra effect beside allowing to summon shit ton
It does look like it was invented by a 10 year old kid to be yet diagnosed with ADHD who sucked at the game and wanted to create his own. At a game design standpoint, it is awful! Everything about it seems to have been imagined by someone who loves to create cards and play in the Custom section of DB. Did the kid stop there? No, after starting his treatment, he prematurely thought Links would be a good idea to solve his childish one. That's what teenagers do and always think they are right --'
Could it have been a nice idea? Absolutely! No Spell and Extra-Deck shenanigans. Just give Pendulum arrows to monsters that are placed in the leftmost/rightmost MM zones. Make the strong ones Normal summonable and then grant weak ones this effect: "If you control a Pendulum monster, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand) in a Pendulum Zone". Wanna go beyond? Make many of them able to be Pendulum summoned from the GY, but banished when leaving the field.
Very simple, You can't scale two zones anymore without getting interrupted, thus they can't play. Sad part is in order for pendulums to play you have to have cards like ostinato which are completely toxic for the game
The thing about Yu-Gi-Oh Precons is that they're intentionally designed so that you have to buy 3 copies of each deck in order to build 1 "playable" deck out of the 3.
I personally hate that motif of precons, it takes away from the "playable out the box" slogan Konami attaches to all of them. Granted, I know they're not necessarily 'unplayable' out the box, but you're not about to go into a Locals and perform well. It feels like with precons, Konami is indirectly acknowledging that their cards are valued on the secondary market and because of that, they won't give you duplicates of cards that are very clearly ran at more than one 🤷♂️
I don’t really understand why people have so much problems with pendulum Summoning it really isn’t that bad and is easier to forge strategies with it and they play off Fusion synchro and XYZ play well and easier for new players to learn for strategies than link in my opinion
I understood them almost perfectly after watching one Yuya duel in the anime. It wasn't even an early duel - it was near the start of season 2, so the tutorial gloves were off. While I did need some things explained to me later, they mostly had to do with basic game mechanics (such as Xyz materials not being treated as "on the field") rather than pendulums themselves. Meanwhile it took me around a year to figure out how Link and Xyz worked.
If Unions/Crystal Beasts were good and, had the sense to put their Spell effect in a different box. Redirect works the same as every redirect effect. Macro Cosmos shuts it down like it does them. Anti-Spell Fragrance is their Kryptonite.
Pendulums did change the game for the better. It made Konami realize that the more bull crap summoning mechanics they add, each easier than the last, the more pointless it'll become in the long term. (LINKS may be an exception but still, when it's not the generic boss monster it's either a combo starter, a pawn to a gameplan or just not relevant in newer packs. I'm starting to see that for some reason)
Yes I agree that it showed making it even easier to special summon from hand or extra deck isn't the way to go. Yeah link is not that bad and is a better middle ground. Great comment 👍🏾
It did the contrary is the less generic mechanic his failure pushed konami into creating the most generic ED mechanic in the Game and add a rule that force almost everybody to run the new monster type. They stopped making new mechanic because MR4 links almost killed the game in the OCG
@@Nephalem2002 not really 2017 was mediocre but 2018 did really well if you ignored that like 5 FTK's we're meta we got record breaking events, strong products that sell well amd yugitubers channels growimg like crazy numbers wise one of the best years
The problem with pendulums is that they feel like their own archetype honestly. You can’t really splash them in any deck, they HAVE to be exclusive to a pendulum focused deck. The lack of good pendulum archetypes being released in the past few years is likely due to Konami regretting ever making pendulums in the first place. Most of the player base generally hates the pendulum mechanic as a whole because of how different the play style is, and how much reading and memorizing it requires to master a pendulum deck.
With how the game is today. You could easily free up pendulum monsters. They are easy Nib targets. And with so few one card starters, they can't afford too much room for non engine. So you either have the one starter. Neg 2 for the scale. You might have room for two hand traps. Big might. But. No one wants pendulum. Not even Komoney. As Anti Spell came out during pendulums. And all the "good" pendulum support came out after links gutted everything.
I was always curious why they made Nekroz so dang strong and then we take a step back and look at Zefra...the archetype that was made with an intent to be useful both in its own deck AND the individual decks the members are a part of...and they just dropped the ball. I liked the idea of Zefra, but the execution was kinda garbo.
And pendulum gets countered by so many things. They nerf and got rid of the Scales and treated them as spell cards which makes them unplayable against anti spell effect
If you going to give an archetype a pendulum card you have to give them more than 1 or 2. Might just have made most pendulum cards new archetypes. They mostly did that I think 🤔
The reason why pendulum were made was mostly to make Yu-Gi-Oh easier. I know that sounds very ironic think about it. The effect is if you get two scales, you get to summon out a huge amount of monsters. Not only that, but if they get destroyed, they don’t go to the graveyard. They can still be revive through pendulum summoning so again the whole point is to make Yu-Gi-Oh easier again I understand it’s very, very ironic and what’s my proof of the same thing kind of happens with links links were more or less designed to be easier way of accessing deck
You are right the new game is literally pendulums summon without scales the idea was that people will pend summon thier old unplayable tribute summon monster but that was just bad
Unironically MR4 was a great idea, it nerfed the game in a big way so that you can't make that many extra deck monsters in your field that way the game will be slow paced The idea was great until they started to make good Link monsters, and then it went down fall when Link strategies were the meta with Link Monsters being far worse than all the other mechanics combined ( I never played in that era so all of this is just speculation)
pendums are clunky enough where an excess of suport build ups to make relatively pure pendulum decks not too teribble that the pendulums gets combined together like dragons in dragon link.
There are more link monsters(424) in the game already than there are pendulums(345). I guess that's what happens when you design one mechanic with too much hesitation and the other with absolute 0 hesitation.
Let me guess, 344 of those were Performapals, Magicians, and Odd Eyes cards.
@@pengen_gantinama Performapal (59), Odd-Eyes (27), Magicians/Sorcerer (28), Keep in mind some of them overlap, with cards like Performapal Odd-Eyes Synchron. I legitimately don't know how they ONLY make up a third of the pool.
We need more pendulum monsters. Konami is so annoying.
Archfiend eccentrick is a true japanese patriot blowing up not once but twice
Their sacrifice will not be forgotten 🫡
"For Japan's honor"
NIPPON BANZAII
it also hurts that whenever a pendulum deck becomes a part of the meta it gets banned pretty much right away, tear and snake-eyes are allowed to remain in the meta for months at tier 0, when pepe became tier 0 it only lasted for one event in the tcg, and superheavy samurai also got banned pretty fast. I would be incredibly disappointed if they ban the new melodious support before they even touch snake-eyes.
I've noticed that! Here's hoping. I'd love to see new Pendulum archetypes come and go that are equal in competitive viability with the typical new archetypes that come and go through the meta.
As a day 0 pendulum player, pepe had to go. Now Zefra on the other hand? They murdered my child with a game mechanics change as soon as it hit full power...
one little thing, most of the talk over hitting melodious has been about hitting ostinato or hitting bacha
but please i hope not, i play them pure and love my little fairies
@@ashemabahumat4173they could have hit the broken XYZ plus a small consistency hit and the deck will be fine but yugi boomers could tolerate a multicolor card
@@lucasalarcon3230 there's almost no way to issue a consistency hit in a way that matters for pendulums- especially for something as toxic and recursive as Pepe, unless you do what Konomi did and take it out back to put it down
Konami: "Pendulums are OP and must be nerfed"
Also Konami: *creates Links and forces everyone to use them by restricting ED monsters to be summoned only to the EMZ or linked zone*
Konami definitely makes the decisions of all time 😒
Pendulum didn't sell because they weren't generic and they public enemy number 1 for yugi boomers the solution was clear for konami make a new mandatory generic mechanic that everybody will need to buy to play the game
Does anybody remember how worried we were that Link Monsters would slow the game down too much? 😂
@@lucasalarcon3230again this is so wrong at so many levels, link master rule literally made yugioh locals in down to 60% in attendances and overall steady decline in profit for konami in 2016 to 2018, those western yugiboomer probably doesnt even play the game and should been ignored all together.
@@r3zaful that beacuse You are including 2016 and 2017 both awfull years with weak products and tier Zero metas thing that literally changed in 2018 with most products we're good this the years we're ge got 2 ash reprints before this ash was imposible to get for casual players
Still really odd that the MAIN girl of the Arc-V anime didn't get Pendulum Monsters until THIS year 😅
She literally lost her deck BEFORE the middle of the show and never duel again (and she never duel in the manga either). Like ??? :v
Even stranger that her whole deck gets benefits for SPECIAL SUMMONS!
Even even stranger that Selena got some before her when her speciality is fusion. Even did F&L list time
@aliancadosduelistas3718 Shin Yoshida really doesn’t like female duelists.
Shin yoshida is a wife beater irl.@@GrapeCheckerBoard
The issue is that ARC-V ironically didn’t put enough focus on them.
Most characters didn’t have Pendulums which meant that there were less avenues to really explore the mechanic.
Funny enough, they've been producing support that are actually pendulums.
i Mean the point of arc -V was to giVe all summons a spotlight with pendulum being a mysterius oddball
That was because they ignored most of the standard characters. AND because they wanted to highlight all the other summoning stop.
One of the biggest sins ARC-V did was to focus on Action Spells more than Pendulums.
@@GenesicShinZyraelKai but they didn’t
They didn’t put any focus on Action Spells
Konami: here we have all mechanics we created, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz and Link
"What's inside that vault?"
Pendulums: feed me father I am starving
Konami: don't worry about it
😂😂
Ritual is either a corpse by now, or realized that begging is useless.
@@DPSS927 Drytrons
@@70Lu07 Point taken. So what, Rituals literally broke the door down and said "Father, feed me or else" while pointing space-mecha dragons at Konami?
@DPSS927 it’s still in a better place than tribute summoning.
My personal gripe with Pendulum was how hard Performapals was shafted. I loved their original playstyle of using a field of small monsters that build each other up into being OTK machines, but since then it's borderline impossible to build a dedicated deck around them. They don't exist as a standalone deck anymore, they're simply there to add to the disgusting Pendulum soup pile that is Performapal Magician Odd-Eyes Z-ARC.
I do like performapals and I played mostly pure one before so they have a soft spot on my heart. Hopefully they get more shine and support at some point
They were never meant as a standalone archetype. They were meant to serve as support for Pend Magician and Odd-Eyes. Mixing them together isn't "pend soup" - it's the way the archetypes are intended to be played. Just look at how many cards specifically reference those three archetypes.
Supreme King is its own thing... sort of, and it also isn't. Anime lore makes it make sense. Either way, it's also viable to include it with the other three. (Also, Pendulum Dragons are technically an archetype unto their own... also meant to be played in the deck, so you can safely throw them in as well.)
I'm usually 100% in favor of playing pure, but for flavor reasons, this is an exception. Once you start adding _other_ stuff outside of those... _then_ there's a problem.
@@gyppygirl2021
They absolutely weren't at first. The support that stitches them together with three other archetypes was a retroactive thing that came in much later on. Performapals had almost nothing to do with Magicians and Odd-Eyes until Unicorn came along. Before that they just happened to share Yuya's deck space with Magicians and Odd-Eyes.
@@felixdaniels37 It's not retroactive if it was planned as a thing from the start. Why do you think the support stitched them together? Performapals were never meant to stand on their own.
They needed a reliable back row changer to break the zones out for a better scale or effect.
Moving the Pedulum zones to the Spell/Trap zones probably didn't help, as it means Pedulum players either have 3 useable spell slots, or can't pedulum until the outer zones are empty.
The only legacy one off pendulum monsters that work are the amazoness pendulums. They are searchable with call and village, have really good scales and atk boosting effects, go to the scales automatically when sent to the grave for a fusion summon, and make playing lava golem in amazoness free because the no normal summon isn't even needed with the pendulum monsters/newest support
Well, now they did the same for the Melodious Pendulums and they're fantastic for many of the reasons you mentioned. The Superheavies were pretty bonkers too.
Yeah I notice that with Amazoness even though it seemed random it surprisingly worked
Lunalight
We must all remember the one good pendulum monster. Ghost Beef, the Ghost of Christmas dinner. Not because it’s any good in the game, but because it’s the ghost of Christmas dinner!
That and Mild Turkey! 🍗🍔
Tbf, pendulums have 5 pot of greed's, a billion rotas, and they're still trash cuz of how fragile the mechanic is.
And while having the least number of banned cards out of any mechanic still hailed as the worst thing to happen to the game, even though links have actively ruined the game permanently changing the game board and forever stun locking the game with no way to self balance it like pendulums losing the pendulum zones, having the highest number of cards out of any type banned, there are officially more link cards banned now than o.g. cards from DM era let that sink in.
I wouldn't even mind decks can stray pendulum monsters like the predaplant pendulum support if they fear full on pendulum focused decks. I think Konami doesn't want a pendulum pile deck, in which just add restrictions to make them hard to splash
Yeah but syncro, XYZ, zombie, link, dragón, etc pile decks are good for them, at that time was understandable... Now Konami is just being stupid with that.
*Master Rule 4 change happened.* Once it got "errataed" and other extra deck monsters didn't need arrows it made most link arrows meaningless. The only extra deck mechanic still restricted was Pendulums.
That's where I'm at. And because Pendulums are so heavily neutered by MR5, there's really little incentive to make better Pendulum cards.
@@burblebineabbletv Agreed! If they’re going to restrict Pendulum and *only restrict Pendulum* under MR5, they need to at least give them something to compensate. As right now, they completely rely on another mechanic just to function, which no other summoning mechanic needs to do.
As powerful as Pendulums were; people severely overestimated how strong they’d actually be. Cause look at the facts; how many Pendulum Decks were consistently dominant during the Arc V Era? 2; Pepe and Qliport.
Vrains Era? 2. Pendulum Magician and Endymion.
Compared to all the other summoning mechanics Pendulum did not dominate as largely as people would think it would.
Links have proven to be more broken than pendulum and more formats have been ruined by link strategies compaired to pendulum. So many people hate on pendulum for no reason at all other than they faced pepe once in its prime and now hate it but are completely fine with stuff like tear 0 format, fire format, kash and many other non pendulum formats that are more toxic than MR3. It honestly shows how simple minded yugioh players are. Id love to actually be able to pull my pendulum magicians out of the binder go to locals and stand a chance of topping in a competitive environment again.
So Pendulums currently have 1 of 3 uses. Some 1-2 of in an archetype whose general design is not pendulum summoning (I say 2 because of Nouvelles since a pendulum fusion monster is sorta in their archetype... kinda...), being part of the pendulum pile, and not being good enough to be in the pendulum pile.
With the way pendulums work there is a lot of interesting ideas you could work with. An Archetype where all the cards have an effect when they're face up in the extra deck, An Archetype like a crane game where you move pendulum monsters from their scales across columns to maybe "grab" a spell/trap or a monster from your opponent, but in the end it all has to be balanced around the Pendulum Summon. Which tbf is a bit of a massive play since in game states it can effectively double the amount of materials you can use for links or anything else really.
The anime mostly sold the mechanic as being good in a grind game since the monsters always came back, or as a way to empty your hand easily... but in the modern game the grind game isn't really a thing, and show me a modern archetype where if they didn't brick or draw garnets they couldn't just empty their hand on the spot if they really wanted to. Add in cards like Endymion or Nirvana high paladin and the entire mechanic is a joke thanks to no one liking to read.
In terms of fun I think Konami maybe be able to have fun with a Pendulum archetype with the restriction that it essentially forgoes pendulum summoning, or maybe modifies the way pendulum summoning works. Heck maybe have an archetype with a link 1 that scales some pendulum fusion and pendulum synchro monster to pendulum monsters out, and the idea of the archetype is to get the pendulum monsters on the field to xyz into an xyz pendulum with effects gained from it's materials.
There is a lot you can do with Pendulums, but they are so divisive that Konami only just gives pendulums a bone here and there. Heck the Storyline archetypes haven't had a pendulum archetype since duel terminal? I mean technically Veda Kalarcanum wasn't THAT long ago and it's another of those 1 pendulum monster in an entire deck that does something that isn't pendulum summoning.
Yeah, they do so little with Pendulum Summons, when people create all sorts of ways to Pendulum in custom cards or Fanfics.
They do things like Pendulum Summon from the GY, Pendulum Summoning on the opponent's field, from the deck, changing it so they summon monsters of a higher level than the combined scale, etc.
And balancing it so it doesn't end on the Pendulum Pile or used as free material for traditional Extra Deck combos not only is easy, they have been doing it from the beginning.
They can do like Qli and restrict them to only Pendulum Summoning inside the Archtype, or like pretty much every Archtype in the game and limiting Extra Deck summons to cards of the Archtype, or at most of the same Type and Attribute.
They do it for everyone else, but for some reason they decided to let most Pendulums interact with other Pendulums, and then nerf them all and not give support because they are too genereci?!
It baffles me what they do with this poor mechanic...
0:01 I wonder why add two symbols for the scales (one red and one blue) if they were going to have the same scales on both sides.
One would think they will make it strategic with some having a left scale 4 but a right one 2 or things like that.
Probably the mechanic suffered from its anime using all extra deck methods.
Still the mechanic managed to have more characteristics than Synchros and XYZ When they were released, like scale activation treated as an spell activation
I can definitely appreciate the unique aspects of Pendulums. And I too wondered why we never saw differing scales on a Pendulum monster. I think there could've been a lot of interesting uses for something like that.
We did get Clock Arc, which is neat, but I don't see why an effect is needed for it when there's two scale numbers...
For all the problems with Pendulums, they don't 'hijack' other decks and their supposed identities like Links still do even after MR5. For example, 'Yubel' is a deck that is currently seeing some meta play in the TCG and OCG, given it revolves around a GX era archetype/charecter, and includes cards which directly support Super Poly and has multiple Fusion monsters of its own, it should be a Fusion themed archetype. Its 'meta' extra deck is 2/3rds generic Link Monsters.
I hate generic Links, they rob decks of their identities, especially now post MR4 when decks don't need Link's monsters anymore. Why are Konami still making cards like these (see S:P Little Night and Promethean Princess as very recent examples).
Verte's materials should have been "2 Plant Monsters"
The issue with Pendulums was that if the card was remotely good then it could bust open the entire extra deck.
Any Pendulum card that could just search was broken by default because of the potential multi summon and then tons of extra deck shenanigans.
Links Knee capped the other summons so hard that they had to make cards to specifically support these summoning methods (Electrumite, Halq and verte anaconda).
But even then, Pendulums got the short end due to Electrumite getting banned while the others didn't despite them being broken as heck and it took years and a master rule revision for them to get banned.
The problem with that when Konami designed Pendulum, is that for SOME REASON, they decided to completely ignore how they design every other archtype and mechanic when designing cards for them.
Most archtypes nowadays has things like "You can only summon Synchro Monsters from the Extra Deck the turn you use this effect" or "You can only summon ARCHTYPE Monsters from the Extra Deck", etc.
You could EASILY have Pendulums with those limitatons, and in fact, they STARTED with those limitations, thanks to Qli, which didn't let you Pendulum non-Qli monsters.
And as scary as Qli was, it was still a well balanced archtype in a very varied Metagame, where they didn't even win the Worlds, somehow Tellar won! XD
But then they decided to stop giving Pendulums limitations and let them all interact with each other, which is kinda calling for trouble...
...But considering taht today's Metagame is filled with decks that you can simply throw the engines of 5 different archtypes, and let them work together because they restrict each other, is Pendulum Pile EVEN a problem different to what we already have?
@@reikolupus136 my thoughts exactly, theres tons of design space to make cool pendulum decks provided they just have some sort of lock. Abyss actor is a very unique strategy that gets to play a pendulum focused gameplan while not having all the downsides a regular pend soup deck has. A slim engine, with 1 & 2 card combos, good non engine room, and a tight and short combo line that doesn't play into every single handtrap under the sun. Obviously the deck does still have some issues of anti-synergy with itself (why tf does mellow lock you out of your own in archetype links??), but that style of pendulum deck like AA & qli could make for a lot of really cool decks but they just never felt like making more of them. Instead all we get is either SHS being the full combo engine for anything, or borderline unplayable singleton pend cards for archetypes that didn't even want to pendulum summon.
@@frig7014 Abyss Actor is another great example of it!
Even with its problems, a problem that as you pointed out, is hilariously bad.
Pendulums CAN be good design, but Konami simply fumbled it BADLY.
The weird Pendulums given to various decks that didn't need Pendulums is another example. The entire roster of Zefra is NOT played in their respective archtypes, beyong maybe one Yang Zing and a Ritual Beast. And it's not simply because the decks don't wanna Pendulum, it's because the cards are BAD and don't help the decks in any way!
Meanwhile, when they were releasing them, I thought they were a cool idea with lots of potential.
Rather than be used for Pendulum, they could be like "Modal" Cards, you could have a powerful COntinuous Spell for the deck that you could fetch with a Monster Search, or use them as Monsters liek the rest of the deck.
It would have been a really cool way to use the Pendulum Monsters to strenghten older decks, essentially giving 2 pieces of support with a single card.
And there are decks that didn't receive one that would have had ABSOLUTELY beneffited of a Pendulum Monster, like Aliens, which, given Gol'Gar's effect, they could be abused in a fun way.
But for some reason, Konami neither gave Pendulums to the decks that really wanted one, nor gave GOOD Pendulums to the decks it did give to.
They managed the mechanic so badly...
@@reikolupus136 yeah it is frustrating they printed all these zefra monsters that dont make the cut in their archetypes but definitely *could* have been playable if their pend effect wasnt just a restriction, like just slap archfiend eccentricks pend eff on a couple zefras and suddenly you have a playable card in shaddolls or ritual beasts or nekroz
@@frig7014 Damn, I can and will modify their effects right now:
Shaddoll Zefranaga
Pendulum Effect:
You cannot Pendulum Summon Monsters, except "Shaddoll" and "Zefra" monsters. This effect cannot be negated.
Once per turn, if a "Zefra" Monster is sent to your Extra Deck face-up by a card effect or "Shaddoll" Flip Monster is sent to your GY by a card effect: You can Special Summon it in face-down Defense Position.
Monster Effect:
FLIP: Place 1 "Zefra" Pendulum Monster from your Deck in your Pendulum Zone.
If this card is Pendulum Summoned or sent to the GY by a card effect: You can target 1 Spell/Trap card in either field; return it to the hand, and cards with the same name can't be activated this turn.
You can only use 1 "Shaddoll Zefranaga" effect per turn, and only once that turn.
Shaddoll Zefracore
Pendulum Effect:
You cannot Pendulum Summon Monsters, except "Shaddoll" and "Zefra" monsters. This effect cannot be negated.
Once per turn, if a "Zefra" Monster is sent to your Extra Deck face-up by a card effect or "Shaddoll" Fusion Monster is sent to your GY by a card effect: You can target one "Zefra" Monster or "Shaddoll" Flip Monster in your GY; return that "Zefra" Monster to the Deck or Fusion Monster to your Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon the target in face-down Defense Position.
Monster Effect:
FLIP: Place 1 "Zefra" Pendulum Monster from your Deck in your Pendulum Zone.
If this card is Pendulum Summoned or sent to the GY by a card effect, choose one of the following effects:
- You can target 1 "Zefra" card in your Pendulum Zone, except "Shaddoll Zefracore"; Special Summon it.
- Fusion Summon 1 "Shaddoll" Fusion Monsters, using materials from your Hand or Field.
You can only use 1 "Shaddoll Zefracore" effect per turn, and only once that turn.
A bit wordy, but at this time of the night I'm not the best at problem solving card text, someone can probably do a better job than me at that XD.
And hey, the game has even longer effects than this.
Just... Give them effects that actually benefit the Archtype they are thrown into!
I love pendulums, i really liked the mecanic and being able to re-summon them was so cool
Actually, one thing about pendulum makes them vastly different from other summoning mechanics. That is, every mechanic takes material to conjure stronger and stronger monsters, while pendulum is a mechanic that... allows to flood the board with weak monsters. Like, there is no such think like pendulum boss / end monster, that is required to be summon via pendulum mechanic. I think that's why people hate it, good pendulum deck doesnt mean cool boss monster, but rather field flooding with negates ect.
I think pendulum summon would be cool if we had like pendulum boss monster (in ED), and as a player you would power up the scale, and the power of your boss would depend on how powerful scale you manage to make. For example, in ED you have your boss with effects : scale 0-2 -draw a card, 0-4 also summon a monster, 0-6 also you can destroy 1 card, 0-8 also you can negate. And your gameplan would be to play cards with effect like "increase scale by 2"
they were supposed to do that with the various pendulum hybrid synchros/xyz/fusions but never bothered to make most of them actually worth summoning, nor have them help advance the pendulum gameplan. The best "pendulum" boss monster still is just odd-eye's vortex, which is just a plain old negate.
I love my Dinomist deck in Master Duel. Just wish it had some new support.
The issue is that they haven't printed good pendulum monsters or support for them lately. They limited the best thing they had in Electrumite, and haven't really addressed how every pendulum archetype just gets tossed into the pile eventually. Even with Valmonica, they made the deck not quite up to snuff since it still has a high degree of potential to be broken if they're too generous.
Pendulums dont work with other decks unlike the other summoning mechanics. You can slap xyz synchro and link to any deck and it will work fine. Pendulum only works great with pendulim decks
2:40 Man. Clash of Rebellions also had the biggest support wave for Red-Eyes… just saying.
Yeah, ArcV was at its peak, Pendulums are starting to establish themselves, Red-eyes was hyped up as legacy support for this set, Atticus was the original Entertainment Duelist, I was so ready for my badass new Pendulum Cards! …and they gave me Geminis. Why? Whose idea? They don’t even work with their new fusion spell.
Ok so now they’ve established Red-eyes has Geminis, there’s nothing I can do about that. But what’s the excuse for no pendulums now? Geminis play on the theme of duality right? half normal monster/half effect monster. Well we should have some half monster/half spells too! Pendulums are gimmicky, don’t work, and when do work they’re broken, they’re perfect for Red-eyes.
Being a fan of red-eyes and pendulums probably means Konami hates me the most lol. Someday I’ll make my supreme king red-eyes deck work… that’ll show em.
Buddy's got a goal and is gonna accomplish it 🤙
I love Pendulums and I'm so sad that they got shafted.
I wish they weren't *scaled* down so hard 🥸
It definitely went wrong around MR4 :(
If all YGO summoning mechanic is at a party:
Xyz: getting bullied
Fusion: the bully
Synchro: the party queen
Link: the DJ
Flip: forgotten in the corner of the room
Tribute: wreaking havoc on the stage
Ritual: dancing alone
Pendulum: doesn't allowed on the premise of the building
Pendulum ain't in the guest list 😭
One of the reasons why people hate Pendulums was because of PePe.
They hate the mechanic because, in the history of Yugioh, it got 1 Meta Threat.
Meanwhile, I don't see them hating on XYZ because of the Dragon Rulers...
Pendulum is a Mechanic that could have been used a LOT better.
Unironically, I think that Qli is one of the best examples of what you could do with the Mechanic and be successful with it.
They aren't the only thing the mechanic has, they also have a style of normal summoning without tributing at the cost of a reduction of ATK that made them combo very well with cards like Skill Drain.
They have built-in protections so bringing out the big guns in the more costly way is worth it.
They use the Pendulum mechanic to build up materials to Tribute for their Big Boss Monsters, or if needed, most Qli can double up as a Mini Boss with a decent effect when Tribute Summoned.
And they got effects when tributed to combo and incentivise tributing them rather than going unga bunga with a full field.
And with that all, even if they were a very Meta Relevant deck, they weren't THE Meta Threat of the format. It was a very varied format with many good decks, and to surprise of them all, the one that won the Worlds was Tellarknight.
A very good designed archtype that was very good in play but not overpowered.
...But people will hate on the mechanic anyways because PePe became one of the multiple overpowered decks in the history of the game.
There was even an Xyz tier 0 format during MR3! I see people complain about Zoodiac format all the time... and yet this _pure Xyz focused archetype_ has not resulted in Xyz getting any kind of nerf (except in MR4 where everything except links was nigh unplayable, but that's unrelated).
@@gyppygirl2021 Yep, it's extremely unfair with poor Pendulums.
Pendulums were introduced too early in the game. They changed so much with the established rules. The pendulum zones and mechanics that came with it sped up the game exponentially.
I'm honestly surprised links weren't the next mechanic after xyz since links built upon the trend with more generic extra deck summoning and made zones (which were always a thing) actually relevant.
Even Konami agrees that pendulums sped the game too much with restricting extra deck summoning to the extra zone and link arrows when links first came out.
Pendulums are fine where they are now but it does feel like Konami is being really careful with the design of future pendulums archtypes.
Yeah I agree but it still bugs me as a pen enjoyer that they still got shafted with mr5, the contents of the video, and the way konami treats pends compared to links
Theres nothing wrong with pendulum other than master rule 4.
There is an easy way of solving the issue of Pendulums needing a critical mass of them in your deck: just make a Single in archetype Pendulum Monster with 2 different scales on each end that can set itself and a copy of itself (or a specific named Pendulum) from the deck in your Extra Deck, like how the Vaalmonica monsters do it. Also give them strong Pendulum effects and not just basic stat buffs or battle tricks.
Also making Pendulum Monsters that lock u into a type or attribute would be better than just Xeno locking u into their own archetype like Qli, majespecter and D/D/D does. This way you can still play a mix of them but only if they share a type or attribute, and since Pendulums now are reliant on link monsters, they could make a Cyberse Pendulum Link strategy that makes use of the scales as a way to Link Summon and successfully Pendulum Summon easier.
D/D/Ds only lock you to fiends I believe
@@Ramox900 doesn't Gilgamesh just lock you into D/D monster for the turn?
@@nashcifer5666
Oh damn
I just checked, you're actually correct
That's strange I always thought D/D/Ds can play Fiends but it was just that there wasn't any good enough fiends to use
pendulum get the short end of the stick since it was introduced. the mechanic itself seems super unfair to literally anything else in the game so majority of the people don't like it coz everything else they have is literally obsoleted and they are forced to play pendulum or quit. the public perception of the mechanic hit the bottom since the moment it was announced. imagine you play synchro, xyz and they announce a summon tech that :
1. set two scales, then you can special summon the whole hand
2. if you manage to wipe the board they go to top of extra deck, not even hit the graveyard. it's pretty uninteractable like if you have called by the grave you can get rid of that annoying card, but pendulum monster say no. that bring to point no.3
3. next turn, they can use the same scales to re-summon ALL from top of extra deck back onto the field aka potentially summon 5 every turn. the recursion is insane. you either otk them or you'll lose resource game coz no way anything that early in ygo can keep up with that bs. also before everyone correct me, this is when first introduced (before MR4 or MR5, i dont remember), there is no link arrow restriction to pendulum summon, you can put every face-up pen extra deck monsters onto any slot on the field.
4. ok this one is in the concept of pendulum so i cant really complain, but it doesnt restrict you from utilized other summoning tech. normally something this OP they should say "you can only pendulum summon for the rest of this turn" or some restriction like that. they basically tell you "hey, with pendulum, you can have free 5 materials resummon every turn to do whatever the hell you want, have fun". eww.
i remembered the first time i watched that original video that introduced pendulum. i was stunned, not in a good way. the tech is so OP compare to everything else in the game. it's konami sending the message that you either play pendulum or you dont play the game. so i decide not to play the game.
ps. found the said video : v=Gs08XuC62LU, imagine watching this while you're still do funny math with synchro or trying to level match with xyz
ps2. if they announce this mechanic may be after snake-eyes, people will be more accepting coz snake-eyes is also bs in term of number of special summons and recursion. it still look insane but at least it doesnt pass the bar that is already in the game (aka snake-eyes)
ps3. i vow to never play pendulum because how dumb the mechanic is and i still dont play pendulum until this day. (i played nemleria, but that thing is not pendulum)
Pendulums never forced you to play them. Heck, Arc-V went out of its way to feature the other summon mechanics equally, and there were a few characters who didn't use pendulums at all and came out just fine for it. There was more than one tier 0 format in MR3, with one of them being PePe... and that was the only pendulum tier 0, ever. (I believe another one was Zoodiac, which has exactly zero pendulums and is completely xyz focused.)
Now, the mechanic is barely playable due to the rules practically gutting it, and you have to have REALLY strong pendulum decks in order to make them at all worthwhile. Endymion and Pend Magician are fairly strong, but still only reach rogue tier at best most of the time. Most strong archetypes do a much better job of getting a lot of monsters on the board than pendulums, and recursion is heavily restricted.
Meanwhile MR4 made links *completely mandatory* if you wanted to use the extra deck. You had no choice in the matter. Vrains reflected this as well - other summons were supplementary at best, and everyone primarily used links. If you want to talk about being forced to play a specific kind of card, don't point at pendulums when there's a far worse culprit right in front of you. It's okay to dislike the mechanic (many do), but to claim that you were ever forced to play them is simply wrong.
@@gyppygirl2021 i never talked about hard force people to play it, but it's the same with tier0 format, you either play that deck or lose. you're right that MR4 is literally force people to play link. if we didn't so repel by how disgust pendulum "potential" is at the beginning i think konami will take a leap and make some nasty pendulum decks by now. i think everyone feel the same way that the mechanic is too much and it will get out of hand real quick if not keep in check, which is the thing konami did worst.
and the other part you mentioned that "other mechanic/archetype did better at swarming the field/recursion" is correct (in the modern context) and imo it is also a mistake, no archetype should be that good. i know people said junk speeder is not a big deal just negate/imperm/ash him but think about it conceptually, who tf think it's a good idea to have generic synchro lv5 that on summon can special summon up to 5 other monsters "from deck" onto the field. there are many things konami think it's ok but no matter how you look at it, it's not ok and pendulum summon tech is one of it. i wouldnt put it past konami that one day they can print "synchro pendulum monster lv5 that on summon can search 5 pendulum monsters from deck and put them on top of extra deck face up, then that synchro monster move itself to the pendulum scale"
@@bankkunarak The amount of resources pendulums have to spend in order to do half of what other decks do makes them not worth playing at all. Plus, they limit your deck building options - you can't run as many hand traps in a pendulum deck, for example. It would take something as broken as Snake-Eyes for pendulums to be the threat people claim them to be, and at that point, the problem isn't pendulums anyway.
@@gyppygirl2021 i agreed with everything you said. in the modern context all the other summoning techs are also powercrept to infinity to a point that it make pendulum look bad (which is not a good thing). i still believe the reason pendulum got a horrible treatment because its initial introduction it got really bad reception so konami are extra aware to not make it too good. ash blossom was released in 2017 and pendulum was announced in 2014. the concept of handtraps is not a must-have in deck building at that point. link summon does not exist yet so we dont have a comparison how bad link era goes (yeah, the actual force to play link or dont play the game). all i want to say is pendulum is just a bit too much to stomach after synchro (fun elementary school math) and xyz (fun number matching game), then pendulum was like "haha i summon my whole hand and end your life and i'm gonna do the same thing next turn if you're still alive" ofc it was frown upon.
Pendulums weren't even that dominating on release. Outside of Pepe which didn't even last 2 weeks Pendulums never dominated a format. With Qliphort it was contested by BA and Shaddols and Yang Zing Metalfoes wasn't anywhere close to the best deck. D/D/D was supposed to be meta because of Lamia like in the OCG except by the time Lamia came out D/D/D was powercrept into oblivion.
"What monsters ruined YGO?"
Everyone that voted for Pendulums instead of Links is objectively wrong.
I still think Pendulum Cards are a good mechanic. Maybe a Gravekeeper's addition could help. I would love to see the Millennium Scale in some artwork.
Gravekeepers becoming Pendulums is one of the scariest things ever. It will be as good as full power Endymion or more.
From what I’ve seen, there are 2 things that Konami has to do for pendulums to become viable:
1: it needs some fresh blood, a completely new archetype. The last one we got was in Valiant Smashers last November, and there are only 3 main deck monsters in that one (2/3 are pendulums). It needs one that takes advantage of the new arrangement the field has for them, which means no continuous spells/traps and very few equip cards; or it can use the Column system that put Mekk-Knights on the map (my idea for such a group is call the “Mekitsunes,” fox themed Cyberse monsters that give boosts to all monsters in the same column as them but negative effects to opposing monsters, plus their scale changes depending on which pendulum zone they are in)! It also needs to interact with other mechanics in new/unique ways, like having the pendulum monsters also be Ritual Spells (I don’t have a name for it, but I have been thinking of such a archetype)!
2: generic pendulum cards that you can toss into any deck without fuss. To me, the best way to do this is to bring the “Pendulumstatue” cards out of the anime. Obviously we’d have to add more cards than the ones given in Arc V; I’m thinking 2 cards for each type and attribute, one to boost corresponding type/attribute’s ATK and the other boosts DEF. This way you can mix and match to fit a variety of decks. For example, you could build a Fire Gemeni deck and use “Pendulumstatue Purple Sword” or “Purple Shield” with Pendulumstatues that boost the stats of Fire monsters. Sure some people may compare them to DM Era equip spells, but that should the reason they ARE adapted. They may not be are spam-able as “Power of Guardians” but those small stat boosts can make more of a difference than you think.
While we’re at pendulum wishing, why not give some pendulum based support for Phantom Knights and Raidraptors, they could totally use that kind of help!
Lemme get Guardian Pendulum support that treats themselves as the Equip Cards 😭
Soooo since you mentioned Raidraptors, I find it important to mention that Raidraptor pendulum cards actually existed in the Arc-V anime. We just never got to see them because Shay is a purist and refused to use them.
So yes, Raidraptor pendulums please
I hate the fact that Pendulums is still affected by the Link Monsters and Extra Monster Zone Rule.
'Oh but you can easily fill an entire board with Pendulum Summon'
Yeah, let me summon five monsters and immediately check the conditions for Nibiru.
😂😂
As pendulum’s biggest fan, I think pendulums are still tied to Links because the less playable they are, the less new players will want to experiment with them, and the less Konami has to hear from people complaining about pendulums.
Konami could let me summon 6 from the Ed today and it would do almost nothing.
Hell, summon 6 from the Extra Deck is the minimum requirement 💀
IMO the biggest issues Pendulum had that made it flop were related to Arc-V's writing and actually the idea that Pendulum DIDN'T hijack the entire era like the other summoning mechanics. As an anniversary series, Arc-V wanted to capture the full series history so the core boosters started to implement every mechanic, but what that meant is that for the majority of the era, the competitive scene didn't actually use Pendulum cards. Shaddoll, Qli, Nekroz, Kozmo, Pepe, Zoodiac - most of the archetypes that are iconic to the period are distinctly non-Pendulum.
That wouldn't be as big a deal if the anime implemented the cards correctly - like how GX is remembered for Fusions even though the only archetype that was competitive that used Fusions during the era was Glad Beasts. However, the Arc-V anime specifically had plot points that meant most of the cast couldn't even use Pendulum cards, or at least not as the core of their decks. The only characters who used Pendulum decks in Arc-V were Yuya, Reiji (who barely dueled ever), Dennis (who had the same general aesthetic in his cards as Yuya), and Sawatari who was a joke jobber. Most of the decks from the anime characters have some Pendulum cards, usually as legacy support, but that's too little too late.
ARC-V's greatest sin is the fact that they focused more on Action Spells rather than Pendulums. No Pendulum Monster on its own, being a Pendulum Monster, turned the duel around as much as the activation of a well time Action Spell did.
Was the amount of characters who used Pendulums really that little? I never realized until you pointed it out but that's crazy. It should have been way more
Pendulum card should be a way to reduce brick in this game. You can summon it as a monster or use it as continue spell card.
Pendulum pays for the sins of pend summon for 5 back in the day. Most of the older pendulum archetypes were built around it.
Pend Summon 5 had one tier zero for a couple weeks. meanwhile others have had numerous longer tier zeros without the reputation loss or punishment.
Pendulum are actually fun, for whoever never tried it.
"What happened to Pendulum?"
Electrumite banned. That's what happened.
My brother in Christ, you summed up my video in a single sentence 😭
Electrumite was problematic for future card design. It essentially linearized all Pendulum Decks around it.
@@Nephalem2002and yet despite it being legal in Master Duel it's not doing anything
@@Honest_Mids_Masher Doesn’t matter.
@@Nephalem2002 Does it not? You can just unban it and nothing would change. Decks being linearized around it? Almost every other deck uses the same generic cards for summoning mechanics. Fusion decks get superpoly shenanigans, XYZ's get Zeus and Typhon, Synchros make use of generic ones, links also have generic ones like I:P and S:P. Even rituals make use of generic cards like diviner sending herald of the arclight and then many searchers too
I loved playing Pendulums! Performapals and Performages were so cool to constantly summon back lol
I remember when pendulums came out I was so hyped to play and build them and I even built 3 pendulum decks...thanks for nothing Konami and the fan base
I was definitely keen to try them out because I remember making Monster/Spell and Monster/Trap cards as a kid and playing them with my friends
"Pendulum broke the game and Links fixed it" - said everyone not realizing how utter broken the entire Link mechanic was since day 1. Like was it really not obvious Link was a terrible idea? From the whole "very generic materials", to "requiring Link arrows to summon from the Extra Deck", to Link Climbing - a very easy equivalent to Ranking Up and Synchro Climb, to the utterly disgusting of locking your opponent from the Extra Deck with U-Links... Links were absolutely overpowered and meta warping, far more than any other mechanic combined. You technically won't need any kind of mechanic ever other than Links. The only limiting factor back then was the amount and quality of Links we had. It was just a matter of time before we'd get effects and combos that put Qlis and PePe to shame. But no, people feared Qlis and PePe even now and can't see a future without Links.
In MR4: "Links was made to slow the game down." - no it doesn't. It just floodgates other mechanics out, but Links can go nuts anytime they want. By the time Knightmares came, it was already very possible to do 1-2 turn U-Links. It was gimmicky, but it was very possible even on non-meta combo decks.
Links ruined the game because Konami cannot design a better mechanic than Links. The moment they went for generic materials, that ended the need for any other mechanic to exist. They'd need to rotate Links out in order to sell a new mechanic to the players.
kinda funny how the most broken pendulum archtype is the one that barely uses the mechanic and is therefor mostly unaffected by mr5.
qliphorts at best pend summons once then slaps towers and some floodgates on the field.
and yet they got a link monster when they really didnt need one.
IMO The moment they got rid of the unfair dedicated field spots for the scales, the whole mechanic became irrelevant and/or burdensome.
The only reason people play Links is because is very easy to make them and because Konami literally forced people to play them, unlike Pendulums.
Pendulum only had one deck that killed the mechanic: PePe.
Performapal Performage Pendulum Magician broke the game in only one week, and because of that, Komoney needed to kill it before it layed eggs. That is why Pendulum died, and right after it was Zoodiac D/D format until Maximum Crisis was released and Links were on their way.
Meanwhile in ocg, the deck has been constantly topping because electrumite and supreme king starving venom are still here.
The last top tier pendulum being supreme king combined with melodious cards
Hell there s even a dinomist deck that managed to top taking advantage of pair-a-dice-smasher thanks to disablaster, a new card coming soon in tcg in the set infinite forbidden
And don't get me started on vaylant. Every time there s at least one person who find a way to top with this SOMEHOW
People say pendulum is trash/dead, but that s only in tcg. In ocg they have always been here
They may top but that doesn't really mean much when you still have people simply playing Voiceless, Yubel, Snake eyes, or any deck that relies on spamming out links. Those pend players are able to top really because pends are so unforeseen people aren't prepared against it, and those pend players know their decks like the back of their heads
it's like the time that plants Rika Sunavalon suddenly started to top events because people who were very experienced with the deck just knew how to push it to the limit despite the deck itself being above average at best
@@zeothesnowwolf2937 Doesn't matter.
Up to this day its still played.
They may not be the best deck but they re definitly something worth playing against the meta unlike some deck that see little to no play.
If anything the fact that they constantly in the OCG tier list of people who make tournament report (even if they tend to be closer to the bottom at time) and the fact that they re constantly at least 1 in a top 8 is more than enough to affirm their presence.
Its was here, it is here and it will be here even if people hate it.
And mostly, it will keep getting support because the pendulum deck that people play have archetypes used by the main character of yugioh arc v aka it will ALWAYS keep getting support no matter how people hate it especially thanks to the main sets now consistantly printing decent support for anime decks.
Hell, freaking Z-arc decks tend to top something because its way easier to access soul of the celestial supreme king in ocg(again, electrum) than in tcg without spending too much ressource and lets not count how recently baronne has been ban in tcg while ocg can still play it.
@@drearydoll6305 That's not a good argument as it's very strawman. People also play stuff like stun and other floodgates and manage to top events. Just because they have a presence doesn't mean they're not still niche and literally only people who play that deck constantly and not deck hopping like meta players have the capability to get Top 64 or 32 results
Most pend decks that top are just 1 single player that dedicates themselves to that deck in the sea of people playing shit like Yubel, Snake eyes, voiceless, etc. Almost anyone can top with any deck if they're determined enough. You can't just pick up most pend decks and get top results, and again it's usually 1 person in top 8 at most and less than like 8 in top 64 and most play entirely separate decks, 1 plays Vaylantz, someone else plays Endymion etc
So for me personally I never had a problem with the mechanic in fact one of my favorite decks are performapal-odd-eyes but I can understand why people aren’t fans of them
Just found your channel tonight. Even though I'm still a dedicated yugioh fan but haven't touched the card game since the Pendulum fiasco back in 2017. I still believe you were right on the money of pendulums being a issue since most of th requirements to activate a scale has to be in your deck and not a side deck compared to most mechanics would be. I also personally think whoever thought that needs to let go at konami. I did give the tech a hard earned shot with the two starter decks back then. But oh boy they were way more confusing to me to contriutube properly compared to how easily the xys and synchro tech were to pull off and were fun to actually do.
Welcome aboard! That first Starter Deck for Pendulums is baffling. It could've been sold as a generic Dragon Summoner archetype Deck and no value would've been lost. I think it could've been made better if the new Power-up pack that came with it, aside from containing useful staples, also contained at least two more Pendulum monsters that could be added into the deck. At least give players a chance to test the mechanic straight out of the box because sure, if you run the typical "Buy 3 and Mash", you have a bit better access to Pendulums, but really not by much.
The problem with pends is that they're only for the pend zones. They would be perfectly balanced if it was one pend summon per pend pair. That way you had to devote resources and set-up to the pend summon. Also card position would actually matter and you could get pends that have meaningful spell effects rather than pend central spell effects.
So for example if you had a backrow of the following pend scales from left to right: 0, 4, 8, 3, 6 then you would be able to pend a 1-3, a 5-7, a 7-4, and a 4-5. And ideally it would follow the pendulum motif where you start from one side and then go to the furthest pend pair on the opposite side and repeat until you are out of pairs. And you could add risk-reward where you MUST pend summon the amount of pend pairs you have, so if you only have 2 pend summon targets, but 4 pend pairs, then you wouldn't be able to pend.
That would make pends a complex, yet easily understood, and compelling addition to the game. Instead we got summon spam.
"You need a lot of Pendulum cards to make the mechanic works"
.
Predaplant: *Pendulum summoning consistently while they only have 2 Pend name in the deck.
The fun fact is that predaplant have almost no reason to pend summon with them tho
My bad, I wasn't meaning to imply that it was impossible to use the Pendulum mechanic if you're not running it as your deck's exclusive theme, but looking back, that's absolutely how it comes across 💀
And D/D/D Abyss King Gilgamesh can set the scales from deck.
The deck that searches like 3-4 cards in its main combo can search 2 pendulum monsters.
@@martinignacioberro9876 I think most Pend decks also have no reason to Pend summon, besides to summon more monsters on the field. When I check, there are only 57 or fewer cards that can get good effect if you Pend summon a card, and most of them are not good cards.
before i quit the game i was a pendulum player, mostly odd-eyes, but now as i return to the game I'm still a pendulum player, just pendulum magician, which is basically carrying the pendulum mechanic on its back, and i can tell you now pendulum is definitely not what it used to be, but its playable atleast (with great difficulty)
No wonder the solfachord deck is not full
Funnily enough this was the same problem Fusion monsters had in the early days of yugioh - you had to dedicate a lot of your main deck to them for very little payoff
Even though they are trash I love pendulums and I still play them, I've been playing perfomapal, magician, odd-eyes since I was 7, they hold a special place in my heart and I don't think I'll ever abandon them
Its crazy how scared konami was. Igknight and qliphort have 0 and negative monster effects.
Konami really is a bunch of scawedy cats 😨
If pendulums had the pendulum zones at the S and T zones from the beginning, it would have been better received
I would argue that Archfiends 100% DID desperately require a gender ambiguous level 3 with not one but two kamikaze effects
i hate when someone brings having to make your deck a pendulum pile to benifit from pendulum and then find them complaining about generic cards
like sherlok if you wan't to use any mechanic to effecieency you'll have to revolve around it and how is a subcatagory of cards geniric when you barely can put anything else without losing 10% of your playable hands
Just ignore dragon or fiend or warrior link, all very fun and surely not toxic decks
Pendulum is one of those mechanics I like on paper, but not on execution. And it seems Konami is fine letting pendulums in a mid state, with no real good support since, well, ever.
Absolutely agree!
I really only use Pendulum in like 2 or 3 of my decks. It really was pretty useless, but it's still fun. It just got no real support and honestly was a gimmicky mechanic to begin with.
Also, I think the newest set of master rules undoes the Link arm twist.
Short answer: the rule changes to make Link monsters maintain any form of special function gameplay-wise made them utterly worthless. while Fusion/Synchro/Exceed monsters had their Link-requisite limits removed, Pendulums remaining saddled by them not only nerfed them, but made them unplayable. They would be fair and playable again if Link monsters were not required for an extra deck pendulum summon, but as it is now there's no point. I was so disgusted by how Konami handled this that I do not, nor ever will, play any deck that requires link monsters as a mechanic; no matter how powerful.
...wow, you hate links even more than I do. That's impressive. XD
Pendulums are unironically my favorite mechanic in yugioh and i hate that this type of stuff happens to it, pendulums are rarely good, never top tier for any decent period of time, and got NERFED by those stupid links, even though links already became so prominent in the meta ever since appearing due to the absurd effects and stupid easy requirements to summon
I really want to love Pendulums (I really enjoy Igknights, Dinomist, and Symphonics, regardless of how bad they are 😅), but I think that the mechanics almost entire reliance on archetype is their biggest detriment. You either run the Pendulum Archetype Deck or you just don't play Pendulums. And of course, the boys in blue didn't help that, even for the Pendulums that WERE good
Two things went wrong. Konami decided Pendulums need Links to be playable and people don’t understand how Pendulums work in the first place. Been playing Pendulums since they came out and they’re still as easy as day one. Of course, everything in the game is easy, so naturally I have no complaints.
I've also been playing Pendulums since day one, and I still don't understand 💀
Or like pendulum's with no scale effects at all. Which means their effects as monsters should be REALLY good like Majespecter. And then there are Solfachords.
I never understood Pendulum monsters that have no Pendulum effect. Seems like somebody made a mistake on the design team and couldn't be bothered to fix it 💀
@@burblebineabbletv i mean, then to compensate you need to create things like Majesty Pegasus which has one of the most broken pendulum effects in the entire game (and btw I think Dracoslayer are a very well designed archetipe from the pendulum perspective, too bad has no boss monsters whatsoever)
Not sure why you are confused on Archfiend Eccentrick, she is just Archfiend Heiress with extra bling on... so there is no question it's a girl. Anyways the designers at Komoney are not very bright, as they seemingly assume the real life card game is played like the anime where you magically will always pull the exact cards you will need in your opening hand... and I don't say that as a joke either, because I seen more then enough evidence across time where at least a part of their team clearly must design cards in that fashion.
The odd-eyes performapal deck was really strong and versatile. Especially the archetypes that were printed in the anime but in real life were generally trash and with the change of master rule 4, it didn't really get a very good deck. And all the support cards it got always had effects like search, but there were enough of them. When we count the other counterparts cards, it was even stronger and had a lot of variety. But as always, its own archetype was left free in a trashy way that would work as seen in the anime and manga. At the points where Pepe once took over the game, this archetype was not just odd-eyes performapal, on the contrary, it became corrupted by mixing many of its decks with other cards. If another deck made such a deck, it would be corrupted in the same way because it was impossible for the archetype to work on its own without the help of other cards. Yuya had a lot of non-turn combos in the anime. But they were all weak. Odd-Eyes Wing Dragon and Starving Venom haveno burning effects. They don't pose a threat at all. They need to undo the bad changes they made to the pendulum deck + the links are broken a lot. To summarize, the odd-eyes performap zarc magician deck will never pose a threat like the anime version. Many trap and magic cards, even anime monsters, were not printed and are missing. pendulum match. Thanks to cards like surprise fusion, we could now use tokens as xyz materials. But Konami is always Konami. The second problem is that for some reason, while Konami aims to balance the balance of power, most of the anime and manga cards they print do not work as their original effects and turn into a custom card. Sometimes they do not make a rule change to make the rule violations we see in the series work in real life. Of course, even if these do not happen in real life, they cannot even be included in game formats where such cards exist since they did not make a rule change this time.
Pendulums are naturally feast or famine, it's hard for them to not combo off. Made even harder with their dependence on Links to recover face-up ED pendulums. An insect/plant/reptile Pendulum might stand a chance of relevance with Ragnaraika's capacity to revive link monsters to oppen up zones.
I would like this for some cards that got errated and then give the original cards the necessary OPT clause. TLDR; Make new Crush Card Viruss Retrain. Removal old errata from Crush Card Virus, except for OPTs, PST, or other game breaking effects
Personally I loved pendulums, It reminded me of the early days of yugioh where'd you see the main characters summon like 500 monsters in a turn and pull out their boss monster and make a speech about how they were gonna defeat yugi till yugi did the same thing and won. I don't even think that pendulum monsters were the problem most of the time except for like pepe, but that's a whole other can of worms.
The problem with pendulums is that you can summon a lot of them and they kinda have a built in monster reborn. They can also really take advantage of generic cards a lot of the time. The problem with playing pendulums is they can be a glass cannon "oh no you blew up my all my spells or keep me from playing spells, I guess I dont get to play yugioh" and with the the link monsters its, "well i guess I have to play this card so i can do what I actually wanna do". I think its better now, but for the longest time it made me so annoyed that there wasnt a link that fit in with the cards I liked. it was like I need to play this random dragon link to do anything and I had no choice, I had to play that link and I still do and it irks me cause its If IM playing anything else IM not forced to play a card. It also irks me that there's not like a odd eyes/perfromapal/ DDD or any archetypal link monster, there's just sorta generic ones in like beyond the pendulum and saryuja skull dread. They gave a bunch of other archetypes ones, but not pendulum archetypes.
I kinda feel like links do what pendulum monsters are blamed for where links changed the entire game around them and they summon a bunch of generically good link monsters like" oh your summoning some sort of code talker or code dragon... how original" . A lot of people complain about their soupy nature, but i kinda love that cause I get to play multiple archetypes where again it feels like how old yugioh looked where yugi played spellcasters and beasts and machines and etc. I also feel like links made summoning a bunch of tokens an obnoxious thing for a while in yugioh lets summon all the tokens so i can link off like 5 times.( its not like that exactly but still)
also I was kind wrong, DDD have a link monster and beyond/exceed the pendulum are kinda suppose to be the odd eyes pendulum kinda. Though one thing that annoys me now is that there is more link card support then pendulum support. so it feels like konami hates the mechanic to an extent. I also feel like link mosters do what people feared pendulums do, which is be super genric summonable cards ( sometimes en mass).
There’s lots of problems with the mechanic but ultimately, it’s the summon mechanic itself. What ends up happening with the mechanic is: I wasted all my cards trying to get them out or I otk. Adding on to fact that weren’t generic enough like most new card types, it was doomed for failure.
Pendulums bring the other cards out faster, which is the whole point of the mechanic. You get to swarm with tribute monsters and the rest, making some of the oldest cards viable. The ire against them is ludicrous, all from the same people that swarm the field more than a pend summon would. I love it because I get to play at contemporary speed, while I also get great effects in all three rows, reusable tuners and nontuners and link fodder and walls, and they also can become xyz material working with the XMZ and the front row. I have made some hate dino pends and Evil Aether.
In my opinion at first i would agree they were to good, but they were like the one monster type that should have been nurfted like every extra deck monster was, with the zones taking up spell/trap slots and needed extra monster zones to sommon them back from the extra deck then it's balanced better, and i'm saying this as a pendulum user (in duel links at least, i don't play the irl tcg so my thoughts are more inline with that game style) also an extra thing to add on is most pendulum monsters that have a remotely good sacle tend to only work with their acratype, either because they can only summon mosters of that type or they need the other pendulum to be of an acratype to work fully
master rules did not do them any favors, and now illusions get a card that locks them out and are currently power creeping up.
I haven't look at the new Illusion cards too much, but that doesn't surprise me lol
Pay no attention to the card mechanic behind the current 🤣
I mean, if I take Pendulums behind the shed, who is REALLY gonna notice? 👀
@@burblebineabbletv haha 🤣 💀 now that’s a good one 👍
I'm going to add igknights to my ooguchi deck ❤
Perfectly balanced!
only tollerate pendulum since im a suker for D/D/D moster , those suker can easy get a pendulum set and have extra effect beside allowing to summon shit ton
It does look like it was invented by a 10 year old kid to be yet diagnosed with ADHD who sucked at the game and wanted to create his own.
At a game design standpoint, it is awful! Everything about it seems to have been imagined by someone who loves to create cards and play in the Custom section of DB.
Did the kid stop there? No, after starting his treatment, he prematurely thought Links would be a good idea to solve his childish one. That's what teenagers do and always think they are right --'
Could it have been a nice idea? Absolutely! No Spell and Extra-Deck shenanigans. Just give Pendulum arrows to monsters that are placed in the leftmost/rightmost MM zones.
Make the strong ones Normal summonable and then grant weak ones this effect:
"If you control a Pendulum monster, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand) in a Pendulum Zone".
Wanna go beyond? Make many of them able to be Pendulum summoned from the GY, but banished when leaving the field.
What about Links? Kill the EM zone, and grant effects associated with Link arrows to each one of them.
I don't think I could've summed it up any better myself 😂
Very simple, You can't scale two zones anymore without getting interrupted, thus they can't play.
Sad part is in order for pendulums to play you have to have cards like ostinato which are completely toxic for the game
The thing about Yu-Gi-Oh Precons is that they're intentionally designed so that you have to buy 3 copies of each deck in order to build 1 "playable" deck out of the 3.
I personally hate that motif of precons, it takes away from the "playable out the box" slogan Konami attaches to all of them. Granted, I know they're not necessarily 'unplayable' out the box, but you're not about to go into a Locals and perform well. It feels like with precons, Konami is indirectly acknowledging that their cards are valued on the secondary market and because of that, they won't give you duplicates of cards that are very clearly ran at more than one 🤷♂️
I don’t really understand why people have so much problems with pendulum Summoning it really isn’t that bad and is easier to forge strategies with it and they play off Fusion synchro and XYZ play well and easier for new players to learn for strategies than link in my opinion
I still couldn't tell you how pendulums work. There's just way WAY too convoluted even for this game
😂😂 Same
I understood them almost perfectly after watching one Yuya duel in the anime. It wasn't even an early duel - it was near the start of season 2, so the tutorial gloves were off. While I did need some things explained to me later, they mostly had to do with basic game mechanics (such as Xyz materials not being treated as "on the field") rather than pendulums themselves.
Meanwhile it took me around a year to figure out how Link and Xyz worked.
If Unions/Crystal Beasts were good and, had the sense to put their Spell effect in a different box. Redirect works the same as every redirect effect. Macro Cosmos shuts it down like it does them. Anti-Spell Fragrance is their Kryptonite.
@@wind64a39 Any anti-backrow pretty much shuts down pendulums hard. XD
I personally say they're scared of the pendulum, much like ritual
Bunch of scawedy cats 🐈 😱
Pendulums did change the game for the better. It made Konami realize that the more bull crap summoning mechanics they add, each easier than the last, the more pointless it'll become in the long term. (LINKS may be an exception but still, when it's not the generic boss monster it's either a combo starter, a pawn to a gameplan or just not relevant in newer packs. I'm starting to see that for some reason)
Yes I agree that it showed making it even easier to special summon from hand or extra deck isn't the way to go. Yeah link is not that bad and is a better middle ground. Great comment 👍🏾
It did the contrary is the less generic mechanic his failure pushed konami into creating the most generic ED mechanic in the Game and add a rule that force almost everybody to run the new monster type. They stopped making new mechanic because MR4 links almost killed the game in the OCG
@@lucasalarcon3230More so the TCG than the OCG. 2017-2018 was threatening to kill the game and the game is dying right now.
@@Nephalem2002 not really 2017 was mediocre but 2018 did really well if you ignored that like 5 FTK's we're meta we got record breaking events, strong products that sell well amd yugitubers channels growimg like crazy numbers wise one of the best years
@@lucasalarcon3230 2017 was Tier 0 for pretty much the whole year.
Your really remembering 2018 differently if you thought it was any good.
As a user of a pendulum magician deck, im still depressed on there is no pendulum ojama.
Make Ojama Lime and make him a Pendulum Monster. Do it, you cowards.
The problem with pendulums is that they feel like their own archetype honestly. You can’t really splash them in any deck, they HAVE to be exclusive to a pendulum focused deck. The lack of good pendulum archetypes being released in the past few years is likely due to Konami regretting ever making pendulums in the first place. Most of the player base generally hates the pendulum mechanic as a whole because of how different the play style is, and how much reading and memorizing it requires to master a pendulum deck.
With how the game is today. You could easily free up pendulum monsters. They are easy Nib targets. And with so few one card starters, they can't afford too much room for non engine. So you either have the one starter. Neg 2 for the scale. You might have room for two hand traps. Big might.
But. No one wants pendulum. Not even Komoney. As Anti Spell came out during pendulums. And all the "good" pendulum support came out after links gutted everything.
I was always curious why they made Nekroz so dang strong and then we take a step back and look at Zefra...the archetype that was made with an intent to be useful both in its own deck AND the individual decks the members are a part of...and they just dropped the ball. I liked the idea of Zefra, but the execution was kinda garbo.
pls gib more D/D/D pendulum monsters man
to bad Amorphage hurt them selfs and they have no link support
Feels bad, man 😞
And pendulum gets countered by so many things. They nerf and got rid of the Scales and treated them as spell cards which makes them unplayable against anti spell effect
We all know why people hated pendulums. Your avarage player's worst nightmare. . . CARD TEXT.
You're scaring me 😨
My entire life is a lie (just like yuyas), pendulum machine isn't a pendulum monster.
You're tellin me! Of all things I'd accept for a Pendulum retrain... 🤖
If you going to give an archetype a pendulum card you have to give them more than 1 or 2. Might just have made most pendulum cards new archetypes. They mostly did that I think 🤔
The reason why pendulum were made was mostly to make Yu-Gi-Oh easier. I know that sounds very ironic think about it. The effect is if you get two scales, you get to summon out a huge amount of monsters. Not only that, but if they get destroyed, they don’t go to the graveyard. They can still be revive through pendulum summoning so again the whole point is to make Yu-Gi-Oh easier again I understand it’s very, very ironic and what’s my proof of the same thing kind of happens with links links were more or less designed to be easier way of accessing deck
You are right the new game is literally pendulums summon without scales the idea was that people will pend summon thier old unplayable tribute summon monster but that was just bad
Unironically MR4 was a great idea, it nerfed the game in a big way so that you can't make that many extra deck monsters in your field that way the game will be slow paced
The idea was great until they started to make good Link monsters, and then it went down fall when Link strategies were the meta with Link Monsters being far worse than all the other mechanics combined
( I never played in that era so all of this is just speculation)
pendums are clunky enough where an excess of suport build ups to make relatively pure pendulum decks not too teribble that the pendulums gets combined together like dragons in dragon link.