I've noticed that whenever decks come out that aren't Link based but fusion, synchro or xyz based they are designed to get around their own summoning rules so they can keep up with Link monsters.
....The recent eldlich fusion does it but at least its other condition is kept in check by its board presence dependency that is in-line with the whole archetype.
@@casually_lurking Pretty much hit the nail on the head, they were supposed to fix the game by nerfing the Extra Deck only to have its own bosses the rest had to compete with.
I´d argue that 2023/2024 was probably as bad if not worse than 2017/18. Except for the rarity collections, there was not much pro-player-orientated decision made by Konami. And all the drama around competitive yugioh just made it even more of a burning pot. I hope we will find balance in the future. Not expecting much from Konami though.
@ eh, modern yugioh is very much established at that recent point. We’re already accustomed to the break my board style of gameplay and 5 minute cutscene combos. 2017-2018 was a tumultuous time of change and if you weren’t on board with it you quit. 2023 onwards is just that acceptance phase of the 5 stages of grief.
@ The concept was a good idea as he pointed out early in the video, but in practice we had a period of tier 0/FTK competitive formats. And it was the Great Leap Forward into the sort of turn 1 hyper combo nonsense that is the present day game, although sure the environment is in a better state than it was in those years.
@@connermorgan9223 no it was not 😂😂. Dude if i broke a board after they spammed the field the game would pretty much always slow down and be in favor of me after punishing them. Now they got 1 card resets.
To me, Link monsters are essentially dumbed down synchro monsters. My issue with the Link mechanic as a whole is not only did it fail in setting out what it was meant to do (slowing down the game), but the loose restrictions combined with their powerful effects turned a gradual extra deck power creep into a massive spike.
I have always compared Link monsters to lazy contact fusions. Doesn't need any other card requirement besides the monsters themselves. The only difference is the contact fusion monsters are a little more specific when it comes to materials. Besides that, they both are essentially just send two monsters on the field for an extra deck monster.
And a chunk of contact fusions shuffled the materials back into the deck rather than them ending up in graveyard so the GY wouldn't just instantly flood with tons of monsters. Maybe if some Links did that they wouldn't be the near universal "send on field monsters to the GY to activate their GY effects for a net positive" card pool that they are
I wish pendulum summoning didn’t require links seriously if every deck nowadays can flood the field might as well remove the nerf from pendulums bring them back to their glory also a odd eyes link card would be nice
Honestly that would be the best move look at what happened to Dark Steel a link 4 that has heavy restrictions on the cards it special summons ie you cannot link summon the turn you use its effect but is useless when linked summoned outside of the extra monster zone
I dislike them because they took the best of older extra deck mechanics with almost none of the downsides(ex. Synchros are explosive but they need tuners and they can use tokens as materials, xyz are easier to summon but they're not usually as explosive and can't use tokens as materials, links are easier to summon, more explosive than the other two and can even use tokens, dude are you like that little kid who claims he's immortal in the playground so he can win all the time?), making links objectively the best mechanic overall, plus their horrible introduction made more people quit than Chaos format + DAD format combined I would argue.
@TheMightyBattleSquid Exactly, even TCG went out of their way to make that interaction happen for a while because of how inferior Xyz were compared to synchros at the beginning, so they would sell better, eventually they adopted OCG ruling in that matter once xyz monsters got better names.
@launcherx2044 for about a year or so, when the first starter deck xyz was introduced here in tcg, we all knew the xyz rules from ocg which stated that monsters used as xyz material ain't treated as being on the field anymore, but Konami TCG made an exception so cards used as xyz materials were indeed treated as if they're on the field, in that period cards like Sangan and Reborn tengu which triggered from being sent from field to GY were clear to trigger their effects when detached, that rule exception made cards like Tour Guide sky rocket in price all of the sudden, as they can effectively turn Sangan into a generic Stratos like searcher when summoning leviair or leviathan dragon which in that period was broken asf, eventually Konami reverted this rule and I think it was accompanied with the priority on ignition effects no longer being possible, because back then cards like BLS, JD, Lonefire, etc abused said priority rule to dodge removal and interaction.
Have you never heard of Branded Despia, Swordsouls or Kashtira? Theyve made modern fusions/synchros/xyz that can keep up with links. Its just an all around power creep and everyone just blames it on Links
I mean I would agree but I use a Labyrinth deck so I am part of the problem. It is like people that become bullies because they were bullied. It happened to me so I am going to make it everyone else's problem. I feel bad about it but also winning ranked in master duel is the best way to get free gems.
When Synchros were introduced... if you didn't want to run them, no problem.... as unless you had more than 15 cards in your (back then) Fusion deck, you wouldn't need to have made any changes to your deck for it to function. When Xyz was introduced... if you didn't want to run them, no problem... the only changes you would have to make were the cards that had to be put in or out depending on your opponent... no core element of your deck would need to change. When Pendulums were introduced... if you did not want to run them, no problem... the only change you would have to suffer through is that players can't draw during turn 1 (which wasn't even tied to Pendulums). When Links were introduced... if you didn't want to run them.... then to bad. If your deck used the extra deck, you HAD to play them else your deck could not function. When Links were introduced, True Dracos and Monarchs became top tier not through their own advancements and new support, but because they were the ones that weren't hurt by Link monsters nuking all of the other decks to the ground. Grinder Golem went from being only usable in janky Inferno Tempest decks, to a 1 card combo that ended with an entire board of boss monsters and omni-negates, OVERNIGHT because links were introduced. With all of the other summoning mechanics, when there was a problem in the meta, you could (most of the time) focus it to just a few cards and say the real issue was bad card design.... a monster with all the abilities Drident had would have still been an issue even if it wasn't going to be an Xyz monster (provided it was still just as easy to pull out). But with Links, the mear introduction of Links as a MECHANIC caused massive sweeping changes no single card could do.
Nah nah nah Xyz were a huge mistake, making every single level-based card irrelevant and not effective, just because Komoney decided to use different terminology for "ranks" instead of levels. They did that on purpose to instantly powercreep Xyz outside of the realm of every single card that mentions a level, which were quite a few cards. And they were the first boss monsters that only needed one material through "full armor" rank-up xyz or cards like Dingirsu.
@Benzinilinguine I could point out some issues with your logic... But more importantly, you seem to be missing the point of my comment. Your issue with Xyz is mixed with power creep, something that isn't tied to just the mechanic, and requires the Xyz monsters to be ran, played, and do things in the game to be an issue. With Links, they didn't need to be played, the first decks that topped didn't even run any, they didn't need to do anything, they just existed and allowed the rule change to kill dozens, if not hundreds of decks. If you went to an official tournament at the start of the Xyz era and both you and your opponent were playing late Synchro era decks with no Xyz monsters... Your plays wouldn't have changed any. If you went to an official tournament at the start of the Link Era and played with a late Pendulum era deck, with no links, making the same plays you used to would have gotten you disqualified for making now illegal moves. Synchro, Xyz, and Pendulum's introduction made past plays suboptimal or bad at worse... Link's introduction made past plays flat out ILLEGAL.
@@TheMightyBattleSquidIt is though. Sure, the field was modified to now have two extra spell/trap zones because of the scales. But that only affected pendulums. You can still play, idk shaddoll or burning abyss (deck common when qliphort was around) and everything was fine. With links, you had to play any link card, even if it does nothing, to be able to play the game.
Thats not really true for XYZ. Deck that didnt run XYZ would usually had some of them as backup plan because they were at the time really easy to summon, unlike Synchro that were designed to play in a specific synchro deck Im talking XYZ like Exciton Knight and Big Eye for exemple. Even synchro deck played some of those because of their utility Now both card type were extremly good because both of them spawned two of the best yugioh format ever had, Edison for synchro (that shit is insane to play btw, every playstyle is viable) and HAT. (Didnt play that format but 8+ deck are viable with many different strategy)
link monsters are too easy to summon which is pretty much why I despise them, in my mind extra deck monsters are supposed to require some form of setup to summon, but link just throws that out of the window and ruins half of the game for me, at least fusion is still a good choice but hey, if you like link monsters, go ahead and have fun. I'm just a person ranting a lil so enjoy yourself with link monsters and keep winning those duels
The problem is that MR4 came out, in which a lot of decks suffered from the link arrow requirement. Konami then gave a lot of archetypes a broken link monster to remedy the problem. However, the rule then got reverted in MR 5, allowing those old decks to return at full power. However, all those broken link monsters that were given to the archetypes still exist.
explain how pendulums are broken their practically he most balanced thing in game cause atleast you don’t see us banishing your field while your having your turn or atleast you don’t see us banishing your deck when you active a simple card looking at every meta deck funny how pendulum was considered the worst mechanic now look at it really is the worst mechanic since normal monsters can swarm in full effect meanwhile pendulum got nerf because no reason at all hypocrites I say
@@lorenbrown7100 brother, pendulums lets you soul charge for 5 EVERY TURN. and lets face it, if pendulums didnt get the extra zone ruling, they will be the premier link deck due to how good they were in grind game
@@lorenbrown7100 I see endymion decks dropping a wall of negates, pendulum magicians dropping a wall of negates, vaylantz wasting five minutes just to drop a pachy, SHS FTKing... In fact it's harder to name pendulum decks which aren't go first to win FTK's and lockouts. You pendulum players just want someone else to watch you play solitaire you're not healthy for the game.
Main problem with Links imo is that there isn’t really a downside to playing Links. Unless Links utilises specific attributes of the games restrictions (Link Rating, Co-Linked, Linked, Column, Rows, Zones), I don’t they’ll be fixed. To start off with an idea to fix Links, change their requirements to be a lot more specific and zone/summon heavy.
@ Fusion: Fusion Spell, though some Decks entirely ignore it. Synchro: Tuners/Non-Tuners, but Synchro specific decks don’t care. Xyz: Materials but Xyz Decks generate materials easily. Pendulums: Their Scales.
Link monsters are always in attack position and can't be in defense. It leaves an opening for battle damage. Sure, there is piercing damage and other forms of effect damage in YGO. However, not every deck runs cards with those effects.
Master Rule 4 together with link monsters really was the single biggest design mistake Konami has ever made with this game. Instead of using the banlist to ban the problem cards they decided to paywall the extra deck behing link monsters, a mechanic that filtered out any deck that could not afford the resources to summon a link monster before going into their own extra deck monsters, which was pretty much every single casual deck. It was supposed to curb the power of pendulums, but pendulums weren't that big of an issue competitively. It's the non-competitive decks that could not keep up with the pendulum summon, so the design of MR4 and link monsters makes no sense in regard to game balancing. All it achieved at that time was killing 95% of the decks. When it comes to the person responsible of the card design in Japan retiring from their function, I couldn't agree more. For quite a while I have been incredibly frustrated with the cards coming out of the OCG in particular. From their card design, overly relying on going first, and competitive boards overly relying on disruptions to stop the opponent from playing the game. Then there is their unwillingness to use the banlist to ban problem cards and print band-aid fixes instead. They introduce problems, but instead of fixing the problem, they sell you back the solution to that problem, or design archetypes that play around that problem. The most infuriating example can be seen when the TCG exclusives Nibiru, DRNM and Shifter were introduced to the OCG. With Nibiru adding as an additional check to combo decks, instead of banning Maxx C, they designed their combo archetypes to be able to play around Nibiru, and to prevent them from being broken my DRNM, they let them end a trap to stop DRNM, because they already have Maxx C to keep combo decks in check. It has greatly contributed to this game's power creep, and made combo decks absurd for the TCG, with Superheavy Samurai being a notorious example. They can't even design a decent going second deck without having it ignore any interaction from your opponent, I'm of course talking about Tenpai. They should learn to design archetypes that are good going first, but better going second. But most important of all, they REALLY need to use their banlist more aggressively to kill problem cards, including those who cause design issues.
The problem Is: how do you do that? In the deluge of build-a-board negate going first decks or floodgates, how do you make a going second deck good? It either plusses anyway when negated, is an unresponsive mess like tenpai, or has so many one card starters that anything short of 6 negates is confirmed full combo. Handtraps and negates in combination have created this weird meta state where even half built boards still kill you anyway, so it's always all or nothing. Unless we actually, genuinely, start realizing that generic omni negation should not be printed on anything short of a shooting quasar-like card that requires jumping through several hoops to get to, and start banning A LOT of cards, the problems will always return.
@@starbound100 1: Ban the generic extra deck monsters that needlessly increase the ceiling of combo decks, which the TCG has been doing 2: Make hand traps that only work as disruption for the player that goes second while they control no cards. This prevents them from being additional interruptions for the player that goes first, also reducing the ceiling of the player that goes first. 3: Give archetypes in-archetype hand trap-like monsters that allow the player to set-up turn 1 when they go second. Think the Lab Furtinure or R-ACE Airlifter, but not full combo like Havnis. 4: Give archetype cards bonus effects designed for going second, making it easier for them to play through an established board. Think adding a special summon while your opponent controls a monster, or adding an additional search, or destroying an opponent's card to bait a negate. 5: With point 4 in mind, also have archetypes be able to beat the board they themselves can establish when you design them. When you apply these 5 changes you should be able to make go second decks viable again, as you are creating archetypes that are not designed purely as a go first or a go second deck, but as decks that are both. That's the main change in core archetype design that this game needs imo.
Thing is; it's been confirmed by an Ex-Konami card designer that both English and Japanese card designers all work on new cards at the same time. As in, even though Japan gets cards first, English designers HELPED create those cards to begin with. Both teams will sit on video calls and go through mechanics of new cards and new archetypes for months to a year ahead of it's release in Japan and this person had worked on Yugioh up until like... 2016 or something. He has been featured on one of the Yugituber channels ranting modern cards on kf their banned or not. Forgot which one. Will have to dig. Therefore, the issue isn't Japan and their play style/methods, it's Konami's design philosophy as a whole that's the problem.
Question what are you thought on where pendulums stand in the latter of the game and by pendulums I mean only a singular pendulum archetype that being odd eyes and I don’t wanna here anything about z-arc cause it for one doesn’t have odd eye in it’s name nor do I want to hear anything about arc ray cause that thing barely qualifies for odd eyes support one last bit to you think odd eyes should get it’s gate cards from the anime and a new odd eye link monster pendulink sounds nice and would actually be a good way to deal with the sole banishing problem of odd eyes
@@lorenbrown7100 So you're asking me with a lot of words what I think about Odd-Eyes. I'm not familiar with the Arc-V anime, though Odd-Eyes Pendulum Magicians was my favorite deck during MR3. As for Odd-Eyes itself as a deck, it need way more than just cards from the anime to be good, as it's being held back because it's a pendulum archetype, and pendulum archetypes that rely on the pendulum summon to do anything are just straight up bad under MR5. What I think about Pendulums in general though? That the mechanic is awful right now. The MR4 restriction on it can easily be reverted with the amount of power creep that has happened since their introduction, save for giving them back their own pendulum zones. It's a 3 card combo mechanic at minimum in a game where 1-2 card combos have become the standard. Games no longer last long enough either for the pendulum summon to matter in a grind game either. The risk vs reward with this mechanic is completely off right now. That said, there is a lot of space for create card design when it comes to pendulum monsters, something Konami tried to tackle with Vaalmonica. In Superheavy Samurai and Melodious we have also seen Konami use pendulum monsters to improve non-pendulum decks with success. There's a lot of design space left with the mechanics, and with a good amount of creativity we can see pendulum archetypes that don't rely on the pendulum summon, or are at risk of becoming part of a pendulum pile.
Konami: "Oh? Links made it unbearable for every other mechanic to play because it's now too slow compared to Link Summoning? Alright, let's learn from this." Also Konami: "We gave it 5 seconds to think about and came to the conclusion to ACCELERATE! GAS GAS GAS! SPEED UP! WOOOOOO! LET'S SUMMON EVERYTHING! AND WE MEAN EVERYTHING! WE CAN MILK THIS HIGH BABYYYYYYYYY!"
Every extra deck mechanic is basically contact fusing with extra steps except for pendulum. That is the only truly unique summing mechanic. Everything else can be explained like a contact fusion just with the materials required being hyper specific case in point like two monsters with the same level or two monsters with a specific level 2. Mi is whose levels is equal, a certain amount and all that can still be worked into Contact fusing. Which is basically what they did. Instead of riding the claws on the fusion card that you contribute monsters that meet certain conditions to special selling this car from the extra day they just took that clause, made a game mechanic so they didn't have to write it on the card. And then they just gave each card a special material requirements and change the color of the card.
I'd say it's more like Contact Fusion was primitive Synchro Summoning and isn't really justified to be supported outside of legacy strategies in the context of a game where Synchros exist. Synchro decks were very much distinct during their era for how they built the deck and the extra deck - even to this day when the summoning mechanics are more similar than ever, there are Synchro Decks where they build their strategy around what levels they are able to hit and in what specific order they hit those levels. Xyz decks also are distinct both in how they build the deck and the Overlay mechanic isn't as noticeable now (though it is still relevant) but giving the monsters "ammo" on their effects makes for more versatile card design. Link monsters, for all their faults, do have the arrow mechanic which is distinct enough to be used in interesting ways. If any mechanic "doesn't need to exist" it'd be Contact Fusion. Cards like Thunder Dragon Colossus or Runicks are just "Purple Link 1s" or there are a handful of LINK-0 monsters like ABC Dragon Buster.
They promote efficiency to an almost uncompromising degree due to how flexible they are. At some point you have to argue why link 1s even exist. Today into Fiendsmith requiem, yesterday it was striker dragon. They just allow decks to be so tight and then people fill up on hand traps making thjngs just feel so cringe.
@@SoraBell I really like that about Links. I don't find bricking or inconsistency to be fun. So link monsters being really flexible allows for you to have a gameplan you can execute every game while playing around hand traps. I like the direction yugioh is going personally.
A combination of: - Konami twisting players arms to play them at the start with Master Rule 4. - Being so jokingly easy to summon that they almost invalidate the older summoning mechanics anyway. - Having a horrible trend of being horrifically overpowered which continues to this day (just check the banlist and count the number of Links compared to any other extra deck cards) does not breed a positive relationship with the playerbase.
I only like Links that expand an archetypes Playstyle but aren't the center of it. For example Protector Whelp of the Destruction Sword. Its just an in archetype foolish and gives you a effect damage option if your opponent has no monsters on the field and you control a buster blader monsterthat hasn't attacked by the end of the battle phase. That has saved me vs RDA decks running Red Screen many times. But stuff like for a recent example Promethean Princess completely changing fire link decks forever. I never see Salamangreat players not running her generic link 3 arse. Or S:P Little Knight as a generic link 2 that is in EVERYONEs extra deck. I like Links but don't like them at the same time.
My biggest problem is that cards like SP Little Knight are in every single decklist I see. Personally I’ve always thought that card should be banned for that reason. Force people to get more creative.
Only think it should need is a Summon restriction (like any other generic card that is too good) Also in terms of Decklist viarety Hand traps are thousand times worse You can't show me a single list that has less then the same 20+ Handtraps in it these days
I feel like the initial launch of link monsters was quite possibly the worst rule change simply because it basically turned off most old decks. If you wanted to play any old deck, your options would've basically been settle for one extra deck summon at a time unless you could move it to a normal monster zone somehow, hope there was either a generic link monster that suited the deck well or a retroactive link monster support card given for it, or just play a new deck.
My hot take Links were NEVER meant to slow rhe game down, they were meant to take it over the way Pendulums didn't like Synchro or Xyz did before it where they were just the most dominant mechanic during their generation If their goal was to slow the game down it makes zero sense to print any of them with extension effects they would a barrier that requires you to build into an extra deck summon And imo Pendulum is the one mechanic that DOESN'T deserve the Link nerf the others just do
The reason that pendulum is nerfed is because its the most obtuse mechanic in the game. Modern pendulum is basically a design space where Konami can design and test a bunch of quirky shit like Vaalmonicas. Its not too dissimilar to the sort of stuff Konami does with ritual archetypes, except unlike pendulums, Konami actually figured out how tf to streamline ritual summons.
I dislike the how generic many of the link monsters are and I hate that engine requirements were moved into the extra deck. These two changes have removed risks from deck building and removed the toolbox utility found in the extra decks of older formats.
@@Knightmare0259 You have the Knightmares and more recently SP little Knight and decks still play Accesscode Talker. Id say that Links have that Toolbox property. Plus decks like snake still have to play engine bricks like ogre and flamberg.
I mean, we know what has to be done to make link monsters fair and balanced. Konami KNOWS how to make link monsters with proper summoning material restrictions, and they KNOW how to print busted bullshit that sells. The problem is that fair and balanced cards don't move product, at least not under the game's current infrastructure. This is what happens when sales are reliant on a single format. If we supported multiple formats, then cards that are bad in Advanced could maybe have a use case and monetary worth in other formats. And that could help sell product as opposed to simply relying on powercreep. And i'm not talking about time wizard. I'm talking about stuff like Domain or Junior Format.
@@four-en-tee the very least they could go is allow them to be in Defense Position but simply get destroyed by battle without calculating damage since they have no DEF stat. Links enjoy being automatically immune to all Position manipulation effects for no good reason. No other summon type has that kind of absurd immunity based into the mechanic itself.
Yeah Konami could do with adding more formats, with only a single eternal format, the game has no other choice but to powercreep itself into oblivion.if they introduced a couple lowpower formats while keeping this one alot of their unused cards woud actually see play. Also i aggree with the other reply, Links inherently ignoring battlepositions urks me the most about them (moreso than the more important powercreep) as it ignores a mechanic that makes yugioh unique
I rejoined the game during 2018, and to this day I wonder how the hell I’m still here. Between the gumblar loop, trickstar burn, several ftks, and sky striker. And the center of most of them, link monsters. Now in hindsight links went from a lesser of evil made to slow down the game. To a mechanic that’s so maddeningly hard to balance it eventually revealed itself as a half baked idea it was. While the link era did give us toss format, and in hindsight I am grateful that it gave us sky striker. I just wish I didn’t have to experience the piles of BS that came with it.
Atleast you got something pendulum barely got anything per usually you know how bad we got nerfed let’s see we can’t do what our mechanic was intended to do without a link and even still that’s limited every other deck can do what pendulums did in the past with little to no restriction maxxx c is our best friend solely because more cards in hand and scales not to mention as I said every deck just swarms the field with monsters yet he we are unable to do that because one duster and look our scales are gone Konami fix your game and while your at it throw in some love for odd eyes cause arc ray really was not intended in any way for odd eyes also also odd eye gate cards from the anime I need fusion synchro and xyz those boss monster are nearly impossible 1 of them atleast
@@connermorgan9223 I mean I was there when toss format was going down. In hindsight it was good that banlist did nothing because it was fun. I was just a dumbass that never appreciated. And through the progression series I got to know Edison format. And I never had so much fun with this game since then And I got more decks that I like than I can count. And witness iconic figures like Jeff Lenard. the bad was bad I will stress it. Gumblar is basically my confront character. He’s like Paul from the Spider-Man comics. But I can say with full certainty. When it’s great. It’s Absolutely amazing
The modern game is so not fun that i went back to playing with the cards released between 02 and 07 with my friends. So much so creative and fun. I even use ritual monsters like Paladin, BLS and Masked Beast. Fun combos like Skill Drain with Fusilier Dragon and Behemoth King of Beasts. Inflicting 1000 to my opponent anytime a monster is flip summoned using Exodd. Using Level Limit, United We Stand and Mataza the Zapper to get a easily searchable, super high ATK level 3 that can attack twice a turn. Soo many great strategies to come up with and try. Thats what makes the game fun, seeing potential connections in the cards to make new decks not waiting 15 minutes for your opponent to end their first turn while they activate a bunch of affects to summon 3 level 8s and use them to Xyz summon a card that cant be destroyed except by battle.
("You have allowed this dark lord to twist your mind) until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy". I appreciate that opening Cali 💪🏽
Truly informing, this style of video is beyond helpful for new or returning players like myself from back before when it was just called a fusion deck. Getting into it now and even getting my friend to get back into is sometimes difficult because of all the mechanics added. Love this style of video Cali keep up the good work big dawg
i can confirm that myself, i was enjoying the zoodiac format while playing galaxy-eyes but the moment i saw the master rule changes and how they force every deck to play links i just quit the game for years until mr5 came out
Relevant thing I feel I can add, as someone who followed the game at the time: needle fiber (Halq) came out near the start of the link era in the OCG, and completely dominated that format, every, so people would comment that many ban lists felt like preemptive bans for potential interactions with needle fiber.
Hypothetically, if the rules on needing link arrows to summon to main monster zones stayed. Then they'd be no reason to play anything BUT link spam. On the opposite end, you have what the game is now. No matter how you look at it, Link monsters kinda broke the game.
Not ruin, but kill A LOT of decks during MR4, which is THE worst MR era, create an unholy amount of FTK decks, the TCG side become worse than before during this era (banning Electrumite but letting Halqifibrax and Mine between others free for more time), not to mention that how there were a war between fans, with Drains and Links fans shaming Arc-V and Pendulum fans, how this double down the "buy new decks leave old decks" mentality that is anything but right, among other things, makes me wish I could assume control of Konami and make Links absolutely illegal to play and delete Drains from the franchise.
Honestly Links were not advertised as reigning in power creep and slowing down the game, people simply assumed that based on how they gatekept the Extra Deck, so that's probably another reason why they're hated. Not only for all the power creep and the homogenization of deck feel, but also that people's gut feeling on the intent of the mechanic makes it seem like it completely failed at that.
I played a bit more serious around the Synchro era as a casual player. I only played against AIs in the games like Tag Force. I thought Synchro was a good idea since it felt like a variant of Ritual. Also math. XYZ was alright in its mechanic. After XYZ, all hell broke lose with Pendulum and Link. I already saw and thiught how broken Link is because how easy Link summon is.
I hated that Konami made a master rule where you are coerced into playing link monsters. Plus for budget players extra deck means extra money. Gone where days where playing with an extra deck was optional. Now playing with a extra full of staples is a must
Me having a blast in early 2010s with amorphage and qli. Me not having any fun slightly afterwards because you can't special summon "non-amorphage" and they had no links, and their pendulums needed tributes which you could no longer recycle as well. Qli was still pretty strong but a new summon mechanic bypassed Towers which was probably a generally good thing for balance.
the biggest offense of the Link mechanic are the existence of generic Link 1's. having the ability to turn 1 monster OR token into an effect monster while at the same time loading the grave is the now standard of a good starter and has no business being somethnig that can be done generically without any limitations. it's not random that most link 1's that have somewhat generic materials have a history of being in the F/L list. then you have a handful of cards that should have never been printed, like Halq(who single handedly crippled the single mechanic), Verte(which forever limited the deisng space for fusion support) and eletrumite(which has no business being generic and should have been printed with a restirction to its archtype.)
At the risk of sounding selfish, the introduction of link monsters alone killed my favorite deck of all time, dark synchro. I was finally able to play at a moderately high level and was having fun doing so. That was peak yugioh for me. Nothing about the game has been even half as exciting as my dark synchro days. Links really killed the vibe for me. Even tearzero format didn't feel as bad (but it came close) because I had already experienced the darkest timeline possible in yugioh. Screw 2018 yugioh..
I came back in to Yugioh just before Link Summoning was introduced and I was absolutely PISSED that the decks I just built couldn’t summon its monsters. I had JUST completed a high rarity super quant deck only to be told my boss monster just cant be summoned under the new rules it was horse shit
Best and possibly an interesting way to slow the game would be card type limits per deck. players can only use say:5 card types meaning youd have to choose from spell, traps, normal, sycnhro ECT. Would certainly give more deck variety and allow archtypes to stand out more I think
I just wish we got a ritual pendulum deck. Pendulum basically solves all of the issues that Rituals have. If they had ritual monsters that could also be pendulums and their pendulum effects could search their ritual spells/ ritual monsters from various places.
Although I quit playing the game many years ago, I've been waiting over 10 years for a ritual pendulum deck. Ever since it was first revealed, this and fusing monsters were the first 2 things I thought of.
I told some friends i feel tokens need specific text stating what they can be used for. For example the swordsoul tokens are tuners so they can be synchro material. So on so forth. Or if they dont want to errata all cards. Only make them useable as materials for their archetype
Problem is some tokens don’t have an exact archetype, things like scape goat tokens or one time passcode, it basically turns them into glorified paper weights.
Hey, man. New subscriber here. I'd love to see you talk about old school Yu-Gi-Oh, specifically anything from the OG era up to GX since I fell out of the game when 5Ds came along with its Synchros. I personally don't like Pendulums, Links, Xyzs and even Synchros because it just overcomplicates the game way too much. I've just recently started playing Master Duel and even then I find it extremely unfair when both the AI and myself are setting up these long, drawn-out main phase 1s with Pendulums and Links, quickly wasting card after card all the summon ONE monster, then go to your battle phase for an OTK or even an FTK. In my brutally honest opinion, it just takes away from the heart of the game. I like having a competitive back-and-forth duel with someone. I like taking my time to strategise, almost like a game of Poker. All these new mechanics and a rushed sense of play just cheapens the game in a way. I've come to accept power creeping and eventual change in the game but having it be THAT drastically quick is just terrible and it doesn't make it fun for me nor does it make it educational as someone trying to get back into the game and understand everything going on.
I love these videos of yours that go over the history of yugioh. Although I watched a bit of the show growing up, I didn’t get into the game until I was an adult. Thanks Cali :)
Can you please talk about old school Yugioh? I sometimes miss the older mechanics of the game. I picked up a Novellas deck which has pendulum and ritual gameplay. I am looking forward to playing it as I never tried a ritual deck before. Also do you think we can see a comeback of Tributes,Rituals and Fusions? Thank you and you have a good day!
Will you cover the red eyes line? Like breakdown how many options there are depending how you build it. I've got numerous of them and they're all fun, but not meta. Closest to meta is dragoon
The second you said TOSS format a tear came to my eye. That was probably one of the best formats I have ever played in the game and look at it for the standard modern yugioh should be played like but probably won’t happen again.
Link monsters were the reason I dropped Yugioh. My decks ran fine without link monsters, but current rules required their use so I can use multiple xyz and synchros in a turn. I had already spent a good deal of money building my decks and didn’t want to spend $300+ to build a deck that can keep up with other decks. I could get back into yugioh now, but it feels like a hassle since I have to study about ~2000+ cards.
Its not the link monster is the problem, it just that they fasten the game and somehow konami make a long ass combo deck where they forget its actually 2 Players who play the game. Its already a big warning when during the xyz era, where they started to make OTK become more popular if where you can summon 3 monsters with 2700 in 1 turn and the end result with OTK if there no monster or trap guard your field, you will got otk-ed. There are other TH-cam video that i found said how yugioh problem is "don't have resources" which is actually not. In before when we play yugioh, because we know the existence of harpie feather duster, heavy storm, raigeki, dark hole, torrential tribute, we try to plan how many set card or summon because we want to have follow up next turn. Synchro era give a chance to get our mid boss monster come easily and most of populer mid boss monster are have a good defense and protection, and how Stardust Dragon, Starlight Road and My Body as Shield become a game changing. Xyz era probably become the best part where the speed is really good but not that really broken. When pendulum come, combo deck become more popular as if you see magician pendulum and entermate where you have to "destroy" in order to search and stack your pendulum card in your extra deck. And some of them become like a meme. And then before link era, probably Mayakashi is the one the start of "climb" combo deck. End of pendulum and the start of link era i stopped playing because how the limitation block the way we playing. But i still know the concept of link monster, because i watch VRAINS, and laugh how each player doing solo talk summoning by himself doing a climb combo, which is really stupid at all😂 despite the story, art and mechanism are great. When master duel come, i come back play and want to see, what change in the game, and suprised how fast the game come and somehow "combo deck" become a meme. The yugioh i know where you prepare each turn for the next turn already gone, and become the Solitaire game we are know now. Also they release so many "Omni negate" since Quasar Dragon and somehow all of them are really easy be summoned, its kinda hilarious.
Love the videos. I play YGOpro when not religiously working on music. My favorite decks have always been the generic waifu decks However my most proud deck was an Odd Eyes Rocket link deck BEFORE dragon link was a thing. When dragon link became meta I just went back to the waifu archetypes as I felt personally insulted by Konami for even attempting to be relatively creative
The reason most people hate them is because they didn't exist 20 years ago. I personally find them uninteresting, I like the concept with the arrows pointing to cards but they don't seem to work properly in case you want to win or at least have a decent match. The most useful link monsters are those that just negate everything so I don't even see the reason of bothering summoning them while I have other cards that do the same.
could you make a video on why zoodiac was so powerful i hear horror stories about it but i wasnt playing competitvly at it's peak and dont know why it was so strong
I dont hate link monsters. I hate how komoney handled link monsters. Especially the first year of link monsters. Not everyone got a link monster, the change to the mechanic which they had to revise (fixed it but not much) and, let's be honest the first wave as a result of we didn't want the issues we cause (synchos).
@HarpiePlayerJoeHPJ I never played back then, so i cant say much about the release of links besides what ive heard, but I really like the state of the game currently except for cards like Shifter and Droll. I'm not a fan of blanket floodgate effects that shut off an entire mechanic of the game. If they removed that the game would be peak.
Also, FTR, I'm a degenerate and I love Link monsters. Yeah, some are obnoxious and suck and make not fun game states, but others are really great and make old decks more playable. So That's neat.
Eh. I play some pretty high level yugioh and solitaire was never an actual thing outside ACTUAL tier 0 formats (not the ones where the top decks are pretty good and not absolutely broken like SPYral).
My issue is that they have such independent reactions to every other mechanic. Flip decks straight up got disintegrated bc they can’t interact with links at all. You’ll see the occasional ninja deck here and there but without either lots of know how or the perfect draws, you’re already playing a losing game. I played Prediction Princess for a while and eventually put it down because it simply can’t compete without the perfect draws. I am of the mindset that the way they fix links is that any card special summoned by a link monster effect has to be to a zone a link monster points to. It would help to deal with the power creep links have had on modern yugioh as a whole. As you can see its a similar suggestion to how they “balanced” it before but this i feel is much better of a middle ground rather then basically eliminating ED play with the exception of links.
My two problems with the summoning type is that cyberse Monsters do nothing but link spam to create stupidly op boards and any new or non cyberse link monsters are made way to generically to be fair to other extra deck strategies
It sucks for me because cards like simorgh/wind barrier statue help out my harpie lady deck a lot but i cant have nice things because of other archetypes. I really wish we got some more support and an actual boss monster.😢
I feel as though Links are somewhat unbalanced in the sense that they don’t typically require specific materials like Synchros or XYZ which makes link climbing much more spam-able. They usually don’t need an extra card or effects like fusions to be summoned, either. If the monsters were far more restricted and locked you from doing stuff for example, I feel as though the mechanic would be much more balanced. Make them only usable in-archetype, but very powerful within. HERO is a good example of this. That is just my opinion, however. ( RDA BEST DECK!!!! )
tbf that was sorta the point of links; that they didnt require specific materials but they definitely should require at least adjacent specific stuff like at least 1 monster belonging to the specific archetype or has a similar trait as that of monsters in the archetype which is something more commonly seen in newer link monsters instead of simply being “effect monster” the majority of the time if not making the requirements more restrictive then at least the effects should be similar to how some rank up xyz works where some or all effects is locked unless they were made using specific materials like there would be less complaint about something like accesscode if at least 1 of its effects was locked behind needing to summon it using another code talker for example
I genuinely hate Link monsters, I have zero idea how to use them properly, and I refuse to touch any archetype that is Link focused. No matter how I try to incorporate them, 9/10x I'm not making the right play. What's sad is that I understand Pendulum decks better than Links. They are so needlessly confusing imo. I can run 3min plays on my turn with Xyz or Synchros, but I can't fathom the extra deck blue cards...
I happened to return to ygo after a hiatus back then, the zoodiac banlist was just announced along MR4, and i used to play ABC and cyber dragon at that moment. And not gonna lie, using monsters as a resource and "extending" plays back when it wasn't the norm was a blast, until stuff like gofu and scapegoat got overused and stagnated the system. Not gonna lie either, in toss format i was orcust, and to this day i haven't dropped the deck even if i quit ygo years ago lol. But precisely stuff like spyral, lunalight, orcust, knightmares, etc, (all of which i played back then) certainly made a lot of friends quit or dislike the game heavily. Truth be told, after MR5 i quit the game, returning that much power to decks while already having their "borken link" in archetype made some decks go ridiculously nuts. That and that time started the 1 card combos extenders deck the norm for the game, and it was a bore to see your opponent extra lock you or go full combo while you having no Handtrap. Sadly not missing the game, but missing those times, it was very fun for a bit testing with friends.
It's kind of a look into the future of Yugioh. Like why even make Halq generic instead of just being Crystron support that would make that deck stronger in modern formats?? Its an example of how a focus on powercreep really digs into the overall potential of the game.
I’ve been getting back into Yu Gi oh & all these links synchro summons have been tough on me. I don’t know how to do it. Is there anyway you can make a video of creating a powerful but easy deck that can take on synchro & links please
Linking is the easiest summon honestly its just basic addition one you really look at it. 1+1= a link 2. 1+ link 2 = link 3. Or 1+1+1= link 3. They are still dumb cards but its fairly simple to learn. Its almost the only summoning i use i just dont like the others.
Great video, when links were announced I stopped playing yugioh all togheter, because I saw how this mechanic would destroy everything. I only returned when they changed the rules. 6 Monsters zones are a mistake.
>incredibly generic >made all other decks obsolete overnight thanks to Masster Rule 4 >Firewall and Gumblar >link 1s (RIP Linkuriboh) I wonder why everyone hates them (rightfully so)
Tbh, I came back a little at this time because of Vrains and Trickstar, and I was pretty hyped about the new machanics because of the value of position. I thought this was good for a card game to have also a position based strategy and that it would make YGO a better game than the one I loved as a child. Unfortunately, I was a student so I could not afford a deck by this time and didn't play, but even now I'm back in the game, I still think that Konami made the right choices with this master rule, but should not have printed so many crazy link cards after that. I really think Link monsters should have been a position mechanics before everything else, and now they are mostly extenders to spam summons to link climb to a busted card. At that time, I was seing link summons as a chess game where you think about where you put your monsters. I feel like this mechanic is not really present now because, yes link summons still have to be on zone pointed by another link card to be on the main monster zone, but it's not about position anymore. I don't really know how to express this, but I wish Link monsters were still treated as a chess mechanic. I feel it would have been a really good turning point for YGO.
Surprised there wasn't a footnote on indirect harm links like halq caused to every other archetype. Halqi existing caused so many other cards to be banned, because of potential synergy. Links also greatly narrowed design opportunities of future cards, so a lot of players don't realize the potential cards Konami had to scrap in design phase, because "lol links exists, remember?"
I've noticed that whenever decks come out that aren't Link based but fusion, synchro or xyz based they are designed to get around their own summoning rules so they can keep up with Link monsters.
In turn invalidating the point of making them the aforementioned type. Yeah, it's a symptom that won't slow down anytime soon more or less.
To be fair, Fusion and Ritual summoning was bad day 1 and has always been trying to print cards that get around how inherently bad they are.
....The recent eldlich fusion does it but at least its other condition is kept in check by its board presence dependency that is in-line with the whole archetype.
and they all get invalidated really hard by dimensional barrier because that still hasn't been banned yet for some reason
@@casually_lurking
Pretty much hit the nail on the head, they were supposed to fix the game by nerfing the Extra Deck only to have its own bosses the rest had to compete with.
2017-2018 was probably the darkest time in the game's history. And Konami learned all the wrong lessons from it.
I´d argue that 2023/2024 was probably as bad if not worse than 2017/18. Except for the rarity collections, there was not much pro-player-orientated decision made by Konami.
And all the drama around competitive yugioh just made it even more of a burning pot.
I hope we will find balance in the future. Not expecting much from Konami though.
@ eh, modern yugioh is very much established at that recent point. We’re already accustomed to the break my board style of gameplay and 5 minute cutscene combos. 2017-2018 was a tumultuous time of change and if you weren’t on board with it you quit. 2023 onwards is just that acceptance phase of the 5 stages of grief.
@@connermorgan9223 I loved the MR4 changes back then, I don't know what you mean
@ The concept was a good idea as he pointed out early in the video, but in practice we had a period of tier 0/FTK competitive formats. And it was the Great Leap Forward into the sort of turn 1 hyper combo nonsense that is the present day game, although sure the environment is in a better state than it was in those years.
@@connermorgan9223 no it was not 😂😂. Dude if i broke a board after they spammed the field the game would pretty much always slow down and be in favor of me after punishing them. Now they got 1 card resets.
I miss when boss monsters were hard but really rewarding to summon. Now you can summon 10 boss monsters turn 1.
@@Chowder908 yeah why do you think every other card game has resources, archetype limits, and set rotation?
@yepyep86 because they attempt to be well designed? Most of them fail to be fair mtg has basically become yugioh with rotation
@@Chowder908 i feel the same.
@@Chowder908 that's another thing about links that bothers me. I hate seeing big boss monsters just drop into the GY for link summons XP
To me, Link monsters are essentially dumbed down synchro monsters. My issue with the Link mechanic as a whole is not only did it fail in setting out what it was meant to do (slowing down the game), but the loose restrictions combined with their powerful effects turned a gradual extra deck power creep into a massive spike.
Konami never said that was the goal
I have always compared Link monsters to lazy contact fusions. Doesn't need any other card requirement besides the monsters themselves. The only difference is the contact fusion monsters are a little more specific when it comes to materials. Besides that, they both are essentially just send two monsters on the field for an extra deck monster.
@ That’s actually a very good point. I like that comparison
Huh, no wonder I feel weird with Links as a synchro player
And a chunk of contact fusions shuffled the materials back into the deck rather than them ending up in graveyard so the GY wouldn't just instantly flood with tons of monsters. Maybe if some Links did that they wouldn't be the near universal "send on field monsters to the GY to activate their GY effects for a net positive" card pool that they are
I wish all Link monsters were required to use their Link markers in some way to activate their effects instead of just doing whatever they want.
I do agree, thats what made the Knightmares, World Chalice and Tri Gate Wizard more unique than others.
Agreed. It's like if xyz monsters stopped needing overlays
I wish pendulum summoning didn’t require links seriously if every deck nowadays can flood the field might as well remove the nerf from pendulums bring them back to their glory also a odd eyes link card would be nice
@@lorenbrown7100 Better start with bring back specific pen zone, so we can set our scale. Not random card(s) was/were put there by opponent.
Honestly that would be the best move look at what happened to Dark Steel a link 4 that has heavy restrictions on the cards it special summons ie you cannot link summon the turn you use its effect but is useless when linked summoned outside of the extra monster zone
It's a fallacy to believe that Konami cares about limiting power creep. Power creep is good for business.
Buy new cards
Until it's not good for business. See Ishizu Tear and compare hands snake eyes formats.
I HIGHLY doubt we’ll have a deck stronger than Tear in their full power for the next 5 or so years
They have to control the flow, though.
They have to know when to dripfeed power creep and when to implement "power leap".
you sure cause they sure nerfed pendulums remember when everyone was saying the game is doomed because of them ha as if they weren’t this destructive
I dislike them because they took the best of older extra deck mechanics with almost none of the downsides(ex. Synchros are explosive but they need tuners and they can use tokens as materials, xyz are easier to summon but they're not usually as explosive and can't use tokens as materials, links are easier to summon, more explosive than the other two and can even use tokens, dude are you like that little kid who claims he's immortal in the playground so he can win all the time?), making links objectively the best mechanic overall, plus their horrible introduction made more people quit than Chaos format + DAD format combined I would argue.
Don't forget xyzs not being able to make use of field to graveyard triggers because they immediately realized tour guide + sangan was broken as hell.
@TheMightyBattleSquid Exactly, even TCG went out of their way to make that interaction happen for a while because of how inferior Xyz were compared to synchros at the beginning, so they would sell better, eventually they adopted OCG ruling in that matter once xyz monsters got better names.
@@Exiled28 I'm confused what was the ocg and tcg ruling?
@launcherx2044 for about a year or so, when the first starter deck xyz was introduced here in tcg, we all knew the xyz rules from ocg which stated that monsters used as xyz material ain't treated as being on the field anymore, but Konami TCG made an exception so cards used as xyz materials were indeed treated as if they're on the field, in that period cards like Sangan and Reborn tengu which triggered from being sent from field to GY were clear to trigger their effects when detached, that rule exception made cards like Tour Guide sky rocket in price all of the sudden, as they can effectively turn Sangan into a generic Stratos like searcher when summoning leviair or leviathan dragon which in that period was broken asf, eventually Konami reverted this rule and I think it was accompanied with the priority on ignition effects no longer being possible, because back then cards like BLS, JD, Lonefire, etc abused said priority rule to dodge removal and interaction.
Have you never heard of Branded Despia, Swordsouls or Kashtira? Theyve made modern fusions/synchros/xyz that can keep up with links. Its just an all around power creep and everyone just blames it on Links
Really hate how you're taking your turn, then your opponent just says Nuh Uh then proceeds to take another whole freaking turn in the middle of yours!
And created "OUR TURN"
Started it with synchro and became the ugliest nightmare to surface blame tear!
I mean I would agree but I use a Labyrinth deck so I am part of the problem. It is like people that become bullies because they were bullied. It happened to me so I am going to make it everyone else's problem. I feel bad about it but also winning ranked in master duel is the best way to get free gems.
or when the duel starts and you can’t do anything til they attack/win with their first turn
When Synchros were introduced... if you didn't want to run them, no problem.... as unless you had more than 15 cards in your (back then) Fusion deck, you wouldn't need to have made any changes to your deck for it to function.
When Xyz was introduced... if you didn't want to run them, no problem... the only changes you would have to make were the cards that had to be put in or out depending on your opponent... no core element of your deck would need to change.
When Pendulums were introduced... if you did not want to run them, no problem... the only change you would have to suffer through is that players can't draw during turn 1 (which wasn't even tied to Pendulums).
When Links were introduced... if you didn't want to run them.... then to bad. If your deck used the extra deck, you HAD to play them else your deck could not function.
When Links were introduced, True Dracos and Monarchs became top tier not through their own advancements and new support, but because they were the ones that weren't hurt by Link monsters nuking all of the other decks to the ground.
Grinder Golem went from being only usable in janky Inferno Tempest decks, to a 1 card combo that ended with an entire board of boss monsters and omni-negates, OVERNIGHT because links were introduced.
With all of the other summoning mechanics, when there was a problem in the meta, you could (most of the time) focus it to just a few cards and say the real issue was bad card design.... a monster with all the abilities Drident had would have still been an issue even if it wasn't going to be an Xyz monster (provided it was still just as easy to pull out).
But with Links, the mear introduction of Links as a MECHANIC caused massive sweeping changes no single card could do.
Nah nah nah
Xyz were a huge mistake, making every single level-based card irrelevant and not effective, just because Komoney decided to use different terminology for "ranks" instead of levels. They did that on purpose to instantly powercreep Xyz outside of the realm of every single card that mentions a level, which were quite a few cards. And they were the first boss monsters that only needed one material through "full armor" rank-up xyz or cards like Dingirsu.
@Benzinilinguine
I could point out some issues with your logic... But more importantly, you seem to be missing the point of my comment.
Your issue with Xyz is mixed with power creep, something that isn't tied to just the mechanic, and requires the Xyz monsters to be ran, played, and do things in the game to be an issue.
With Links, they didn't need to be played, the first decks that topped didn't even run any, they didn't need to do anything, they just existed and allowed the rule change to kill dozens, if not hundreds of decks.
If you went to an official tournament at the start of the Xyz era and both you and your opponent were playing late Synchro era decks with no Xyz monsters... Your plays wouldn't have changed any.
If you went to an official tournament at the start of the Link Era and played with a late Pendulum era deck, with no links, making the same plays you used to would have gotten you disqualified for making now illegal moves.
Synchro, Xyz, and Pendulum's introduction made past plays suboptimal or bad at worse... Link's introduction made past plays flat out ILLEGAL.
That's definitely not how I heard the pendulum intro went lmao
@@TheMightyBattleSquidIt is though. Sure, the field was modified to now have two extra spell/trap zones because of the scales. But that only affected pendulums. You can still play, idk shaddoll or burning abyss (deck common when qliphort was around) and everything was fine. With links, you had to play any link card, even if it does nothing, to be able to play the game.
Thats not really true for XYZ. Deck that didnt run XYZ would usually had some of them as backup plan because they were at the time really easy to summon, unlike Synchro that were designed to play in a specific synchro deck
Im talking XYZ like Exciton Knight and Big Eye for exemple. Even synchro deck played some of those because of their utility
Now both card type were extremly good because both of them spawned two of the best yugioh format ever had, Edison for synchro (that shit is insane to play btw, every playstyle is viable) and HAT. (Didnt play that format but 8+ deck are viable with many different strategy)
link monsters are too easy to summon which is pretty much why I despise them, in my mind extra deck monsters are supposed to require some form of setup to summon, but link just throws that out of the window and ruins half of the game for me, at least fusion is still a good choice
but hey, if you like link monsters, go ahead and have fun. I'm just a person ranting a lil so enjoy yourself with link monsters and keep winning those duels
Apparently you could summon Firewall Dragon with just glowup bulb or scapegoat
they took level eater away from my synchrons
I’m glad lol
That card is dumb
That card is so stupid
Yes! Yes! Yeeess!
level eater might be poorly designed but literally nobody was abusing it at any level of competitive success at the time of its ban. Nobody...
The problem is that MR4 came out, in which a lot of decks suffered from the link arrow requirement.
Konami then gave a lot of archetypes a broken link monster to remedy the problem.
However, the rule then got reverted in MR 5, allowing those old decks to return at full power. However, all those broken link monsters that were given to the archetypes still exist.
explain how pendulums are broken their practically he most balanced thing in game cause atleast you don’t see us banishing your field while your having your turn or atleast you don’t see us banishing your deck when you active a simple card looking at every meta deck funny how pendulum was considered the worst mechanic now look at it really is the worst mechanic since normal monsters can swarm in full effect meanwhile pendulum got nerf because no reason at all hypocrites I say
@@lorenbrown7100 brother, pendulums lets you soul charge for 5 EVERY TURN. and lets face it, if pendulums didnt get the extra zone ruling, they will be the premier link deck due to how good they were in grind game
@@lorenbrown7100 I see endymion decks dropping a wall of negates, pendulum magicians dropping a wall of negates, vaylantz wasting five minutes just to drop a pachy, SHS FTKing... In fact it's harder to name pendulum decks which aren't go first to win FTK's and lockouts. You pendulum players just want someone else to watch you play solitaire you're not healthy for the game.
@@hurrdurrmurrgurrqlihorts are a control non ftk pendulum deck but its not viable due to the new mechanics anymore
Main problem with Links imo is that there isn’t really a downside to playing Links. Unless Links utilises specific attributes of the games restrictions (Link Rating, Co-Linked, Linked, Column, Rows, Zones), I don’t they’ll be fixed. To start off with an idea to fix Links, change their requirements to be a lot more specific and zone/summon heavy.
Is there a downside to playing any summoning mechanic? except maybe Rituals?
@ Fusion: Fusion Spell, though some Decks entirely ignore it.
Synchro: Tuners/Non-Tuners, but Synchro specific decks don’t care.
Xyz: Materials but Xyz Decks generate materials easily.
Pendulums: Their Scales.
Link monsters are always in attack position and can't be in defense. It leaves an opening for battle damage. Sure, there is piercing damage and other forms of effect damage in YGO. However, not every deck runs cards with those effects.
Master Rule 4 together with link monsters really was the single biggest design mistake Konami has ever made with this game. Instead of using the banlist to ban the problem cards they decided to paywall the extra deck behing link monsters, a mechanic that filtered out any deck that could not afford the resources to summon a link monster before going into their own extra deck monsters, which was pretty much every single casual deck. It was supposed to curb the power of pendulums, but pendulums weren't that big of an issue competitively. It's the non-competitive decks that could not keep up with the pendulum summon, so the design of MR4 and link monsters makes no sense in regard to game balancing. All it achieved at that time was killing 95% of the decks.
When it comes to the person responsible of the card design in Japan retiring from their function, I couldn't agree more. For quite a while I have been incredibly frustrated with the cards coming out of the OCG in particular. From their card design, overly relying on going first, and competitive boards overly relying on disruptions to stop the opponent from playing the game. Then there is their unwillingness to use the banlist to ban problem cards and print band-aid fixes instead. They introduce problems, but instead of fixing the problem, they sell you back the solution to that problem, or design archetypes that play around that problem. The most infuriating example can be seen when the TCG exclusives Nibiru, DRNM and Shifter were introduced to the OCG. With Nibiru adding as an additional check to combo decks, instead of banning Maxx C, they designed their combo archetypes to be able to play around Nibiru, and to prevent them from being broken my DRNM, they let them end a trap to stop DRNM, because they already have Maxx C to keep combo decks in check. It has greatly contributed to this game's power creep, and made combo decks absurd for the TCG, with Superheavy Samurai being a notorious example. They can't even design a decent going second deck without having it ignore any interaction from your opponent, I'm of course talking about Tenpai. They should learn to design archetypes that are good going first, but better going second. But most important of all, they REALLY need to use their banlist more aggressively to kill problem cards, including those who cause design issues.
The problem Is: how do you do that? In the deluge of build-a-board negate going first decks or floodgates, how do you make a going second deck good? It either plusses anyway when negated, is an unresponsive mess like tenpai, or has so many one card starters that anything short of 6 negates is confirmed full combo. Handtraps and negates in combination have created this weird meta state where even half built boards still kill you anyway, so it's always all or nothing.
Unless we actually, genuinely, start realizing that generic omni negation should not be printed on anything short of a shooting quasar-like card that requires jumping through several hoops to get to, and start banning A LOT of cards, the problems will always return.
@@starbound100
1: Ban the generic extra deck monsters that needlessly increase the ceiling of combo decks, which the TCG has been doing
2: Make hand traps that only work as disruption for the player that goes second while they control no cards. This prevents them from being additional interruptions for the player that goes first, also reducing the ceiling of the player that goes first.
3: Give archetypes in-archetype hand trap-like monsters that allow the player to set-up turn 1 when they go second. Think the Lab Furtinure or R-ACE Airlifter, but not full combo like Havnis.
4: Give archetype cards bonus effects designed for going second, making it easier for them to play through an established board. Think adding a special summon while your opponent controls a monster, or adding an additional search, or destroying an opponent's card to bait a negate.
5: With point 4 in mind, also have archetypes be able to beat the board they themselves can establish when you design them.
When you apply these 5 changes you should be able to make go second decks viable again, as you are creating archetypes that are not designed purely as a go first or a go second deck, but as decks that are both. That's the main change in core archetype design that this game needs imo.
Thing is; it's been confirmed by an Ex-Konami card designer that both English and Japanese card designers all work on new cards at the same time. As in, even though Japan gets cards first, English designers HELPED create those cards to begin with.
Both teams will sit on video calls and go through mechanics of new cards and new archetypes for months to a year ahead of it's release in Japan and this person had worked on Yugioh up until like... 2016 or something. He has been featured on one of the Yugituber channels ranting modern cards on kf their banned or not. Forgot which one. Will have to dig.
Therefore, the issue isn't Japan and their play style/methods, it's Konami's design philosophy as a whole that's the problem.
Question what are you thought on where pendulums stand in the latter of the game and by pendulums I mean only a singular pendulum archetype that being odd eyes and I don’t wanna here anything about z-arc cause it for one doesn’t have odd eye in it’s name nor do I want to hear anything about arc ray cause that thing barely qualifies for odd eyes support one last bit to you think odd eyes should get it’s gate cards from the anime and a new odd eye link monster pendulink sounds nice and would actually be a good way to deal with the sole banishing problem of odd eyes
@@lorenbrown7100 So you're asking me with a lot of words what I think about Odd-Eyes. I'm not familiar with the Arc-V anime, though Odd-Eyes Pendulum Magicians was my favorite deck during MR3. As for Odd-Eyes itself as a deck, it need way more than just cards from the anime to be good, as it's being held back because it's a pendulum archetype, and pendulum archetypes that rely on the pendulum summon to do anything are just straight up bad under MR5.
What I think about Pendulums in general though? That the mechanic is awful right now. The MR4 restriction on it can easily be reverted with the amount of power creep that has happened since their introduction, save for giving them back their own pendulum zones. It's a 3 card combo mechanic at minimum in a game where 1-2 card combos have become the standard. Games no longer last long enough either for the pendulum summon to matter in a grind game either. The risk vs reward with this mechanic is completely off right now. That said, there is a lot of space for create card design when it comes to pendulum monsters, something Konami tried to tackle with Vaalmonica. In Superheavy Samurai and Melodious we have also seen Konami use pendulum monsters to improve non-pendulum decks with success. There's a lot of design space left with the mechanics, and with a good amount of creativity we can see pendulum archetypes that don't rely on the pendulum summon, or are at risk of becoming part of a pendulum pile.
Konami: "Oh? Links made it unbearable for every other mechanic to play because it's now too slow compared to Link Summoning? Alright, let's learn from this."
Also Konami: "We gave it 5 seconds to think about and came to the conclusion to ACCELERATE! GAS GAS GAS! SPEED UP! WOOOOOO! LET'S SUMMON EVERYTHING! AND WE MEAN EVERYTHING! WE CAN MILK THIS HIGH BABYYYYYYYYY!"
Every extra deck mechanic is basically contact fusing with extra steps except for pendulum. That is the only truly unique summing mechanic. Everything else can be explained like a contact fusion just with the materials required being hyper specific case in point like two monsters with the same level or two monsters with a specific level 2. Mi is whose levels is equal, a certain amount and all that can still be worked into Contact fusing. Which is basically what they did.
Instead of riding the claws on the fusion card that you contribute monsters that meet certain conditions to special selling this car from the extra day they just took that clause, made a game mechanic so they didn't have to write it on the card. And then they just gave each card a special material requirements and change the color of the card.
Based take
I'd say it's more like Contact Fusion was primitive Synchro Summoning and isn't really justified to be supported outside of legacy strategies in the context of a game where Synchros exist.
Synchro decks were very much distinct during their era for how they built the deck and the extra deck - even to this day when the summoning mechanics are more similar than ever, there are Synchro Decks where they build their strategy around what levels they are able to hit and in what specific order they hit those levels. Xyz decks also are distinct both in how they build the deck and the Overlay mechanic isn't as noticeable now (though it is still relevant) but giving the monsters "ammo" on their effects makes for more versatile card design. Link monsters, for all their faults, do have the arrow mechanic which is distinct enough to be used in interesting ways.
If any mechanic "doesn't need to exist" it'd be Contact Fusion. Cards like Thunder Dragon Colossus or Runicks are just "Purple Link 1s" or there are a handful of LINK-0 monsters like ABC Dragon Buster.
Blame Gladiator beasts, they were the arctype which set the stage for all of this.
They promote efficiency to an almost uncompromising degree due to how flexible they are. At some point you have to argue why link 1s even exist. Today into Fiendsmith requiem, yesterday it was striker dragon.
They just allow decks to be so tight and then people fill up on hand traps making thjngs just feel so cringe.
Decks are tight because of overtuned card design, not links.
@@CyrusIsnt Links ARE overtuned card design.
@@tyranitararmaldo no, they arent
@@SoraBell I really like that about Links. I don't find bricking or inconsistency to be fun. So link monsters being really flexible allows for you to have a gameplan you can execute every game while playing around hand traps.
I like the direction yugioh is going personally.
A combination of:
- Konami twisting players arms to play them at the start with Master Rule 4.
- Being so jokingly easy to summon that they almost invalidate the older summoning mechanics anyway.
- Having a horrible trend of being horrifically overpowered which continues to this day (just check the banlist and count the number of Links compared to any other extra deck cards)
does not breed a positive relationship with the playerbase.
I only like Links that expand an archetypes Playstyle but aren't the center of it. For example Protector Whelp of the Destruction Sword. Its just an in archetype foolish and gives you a effect damage option if your opponent has no monsters on the field and you control a buster blader monsterthat hasn't attacked by the end of the battle phase. That has saved me vs RDA decks running Red Screen many times. But stuff like for a recent example Promethean Princess completely changing fire link decks forever. I never see Salamangreat players not running her generic link 3 arse.
Or S:P Little Knight as a generic link 2 that is in EVERYONEs extra deck.
I like Links but don't like them at the same time.
You forgot the abomination that is link 1s. And yes, they deserve a seperate entry
Me: Come on 2017 wasn't "Old scool" Yu-gi-ho
Me realising 2017 was 8 years ago : X_X
🤣🤣
My biggest problem is that cards like SP Little Knight are in every single decklist I see. Personally I’ve always thought that card should be banned for that reason. Force people to get more creative.
Yugioh has always had staple cards you play in every deck since the games creation.
@@Godzillagamr999Sure but I was speaking strictly from a Link monster standpoint.
@@marny129 I see. I dont really see an issue with a staple link monster personally.
Only think it should need is a Summon restriction (like any other generic card that is too good)
Also in terms of Decklist viarety
Hand traps are thousand times worse
You can't show me a single list that has less then the same 20+ Handtraps in it these days
I feel like the initial launch of link monsters was quite possibly the worst rule change simply because it basically turned off most old decks. If you wanted to play any old deck, your options would've basically been settle for one extra deck summon at a time unless you could move it to a normal monster zone somehow, hope there was either a generic link monster that suited the deck well or a retroactive link monster support card given for it, or just play a new deck.
My hot take
Links were NEVER meant to slow rhe game down, they were meant to take it over the way Pendulums didn't like Synchro or Xyz did before it where they were just the most dominant mechanic during their generation
If their goal was to slow the game down it makes zero sense to print any of them with extension effects they would a barrier that requires you to build into an extra deck summon
And imo Pendulum is the one mechanic that DOESN'T deserve the Link nerf the others just do
The reason that pendulum is nerfed is because its the most obtuse mechanic in the game.
Modern pendulum is basically a design space where Konami can design and test a bunch of quirky shit like Vaalmonicas. Its not too dissimilar to the sort of stuff Konami does with ritual archetypes, except unlike pendulums, Konami actually figured out how tf to streamline ritual summons.
@@four-en-teei wish they made trap monsters like pendulums
It’s so fun making link plays yourself but it sucks being on the receiving end
Nope. They just suck all around. A synchro climb had flavor. A link climb is lame af
@@Dinkbass A synchro climb's "flavor" is dying to an ash blossom.
Yes. Modern ygo is effectively solitaire.
@@christianmayonove6914post-modern*
@@AlexandreAtkinson indeed
I like this style of deep dive video 🤘 cool learning about the metas that have come before!
8:59 Just so you know, the set is called Extreme Force. We didn't get Flames of Destruction twice. XD
I dislike the how generic many of the link monsters are and I hate that engine requirements were moved into the extra deck. These two changes have removed risks from deck building and removed the toolbox utility found in the extra decks of older formats.
@@Knightmare0259 You have the Knightmares and more recently SP little Knight and decks still play Accesscode Talker. Id say that Links have that Toolbox property.
Plus decks like snake still have to play engine bricks like ogre and flamberg.
The fact the field had to be changed and new zones added to accommodate links is more impactful to the game then I ever hear people talking about.
I mean, we know what has to be done to make link monsters fair and balanced. Konami KNOWS how to make link monsters with proper summoning material restrictions, and they KNOW how to print busted bullshit that sells. The problem is that fair and balanced cards don't move product, at least not under the game's current infrastructure.
This is what happens when sales are reliant on a single format. If we supported multiple formats, then cards that are bad in Advanced could maybe have a use case and monetary worth in other formats. And that could help sell product as opposed to simply relying on powercreep.
And i'm not talking about time wizard. I'm talking about stuff like Domain or Junior Format.
@@four-en-tee the very least they could go is allow them to be in Defense Position but simply get destroyed by battle without calculating damage since they have no DEF stat.
Links enjoy being automatically immune to all Position manipulation effects for no good reason. No other summon type has that kind of absurd immunity based into the mechanic itself.
Yeah Konami could do with adding more formats, with only a single eternal format, the game has no other choice but to powercreep itself into oblivion.if they introduced a couple lowpower formats while keeping this one alot of their unused cards woud actually see play.
Also i aggree with the other reply, Links inherently ignoring battlepositions urks me the most about them (moreso than the more important powercreep) as it ignores a mechanic that makes yugioh unique
I rejoined the game during 2018, and to this day I wonder how the hell I’m still here. Between the gumblar loop, trickstar burn, several ftks, and sky striker.
And the center of most of them, link monsters. Now in hindsight links went from a lesser of evil made to slow down the game. To a mechanic that’s so maddeningly hard to balance it eventually revealed itself as a half baked idea it was.
While the link era did give us toss format, and in hindsight I am grateful that it gave us sky striker.
I just wish I didn’t have to experience the piles of BS that came with it.
Atleast you got something pendulum barely got anything per usually you know how bad we got nerfed let’s see we can’t do what our mechanic was intended to do without a link and even still that’s limited every other deck can do what pendulums did in the past with little to no restriction maxxx c is our best friend solely because more cards in hand and scales not to mention as I said every deck just swarms the field with monsters yet he we are unable to do that because one duster and look our scales are gone Konami fix your game and while your at it throw in some love for odd eyes cause arc ray really was not intended in any way for odd eyes also also odd eye gate cards from the anime I need fusion synchro and xyz those boss monster are nearly impossible 1 of them atleast
I’m sorry you missed what came before
@@connermorgan9223
I mean I was there when toss format was going down. In hindsight it was good that banlist did nothing because it was fun. I was just a dumbass that never appreciated.
And through the progression series I got to know Edison format. And I never had so much fun with this game since then
And I got more decks that I like than I can count. And witness iconic figures like Jeff Lenard.
the bad was bad I will stress it. Gumblar is basically my confront character. He’s like Paul from the Spider-Man comics.
But I can say with full certainty. When it’s great. It’s Absolutely amazing
The modern game is so not fun that i went back to playing with the cards released between 02 and 07 with my friends. So much so creative and fun. I even use ritual monsters like Paladin, BLS and Masked Beast. Fun combos like Skill Drain with Fusilier Dragon and Behemoth King of Beasts. Inflicting 1000 to my opponent anytime a monster is flip summoned using Exodd. Using Level Limit, United We Stand and Mataza the Zapper to get a easily searchable, super high ATK level 3 that can attack twice a turn. Soo many great strategies to come up with and try. Thats what makes the game fun, seeing potential connections in the cards to make new decks not waiting 15 minutes for your opponent to end their first turn while they activate a bunch of affects to summon 3 level 8s and use them to Xyz summon a card that cant be destroyed except by battle.
("You have allowed this dark lord to twist your mind) until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy".
I appreciate that opening Cali 💪🏽
@@PendBestDeck151 don't lecture me Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do
@@alonsoarana5307
I have brought peace, justice, and security to my new empire
Truly informing, this style of video is beyond helpful for new or returning players like myself from back before when it was just called a fusion deck. Getting into it now and even getting my friend to get back into is sometimes difficult because of all the mechanics added. Love this style of video Cali keep up the good work big dawg
Glad you're enjoying the content! 🙏
i can confirm that myself, i was enjoying the zoodiac format while playing galaxy-eyes but the moment i saw the master rule changes and how they force every deck to play links i just quit the game for years until mr5 came out
Relevant thing I feel I can add, as someone who followed the game at the time: needle fiber (Halq) came out near the start of the link era in the OCG, and completely dominated that format, every, so people would comment that many ban lists felt like preemptive bans for potential interactions with needle fiber.
Hypothetically, if the rules on needing link arrows to summon to main monster zones stayed. Then they'd be no reason to play anything BUT link spam. On the opposite end, you have what the game is now. No matter how you look at it, Link monsters kinda broke the game.
Not ruin, but kill A LOT of decks during MR4, which is THE worst MR era, create an unholy amount of FTK decks, the TCG side become worse than before during this era (banning Electrumite but letting Halqifibrax and Mine between others free for more time), not to mention that how there were a war between fans, with Drains and Links fans shaming Arc-V and Pendulum fans, how this double down the "buy new decks leave old decks" mentality that is anything but right, among other things, makes me wish I could assume control of Konami and make Links absolutely illegal to play and delete Drains from the franchise.
Bro why did I fell asleep to the luxury background sound. Felt like I listened to an audiobook, thank you Cali beautiful video!
Since it was brought up, I’d love to see a video about old school yugioh.
Merry Christmas Cali !!!!!
Would love to hear about your take on old formats.
A history and timeline of TOSS format would be awesome Cali!
I see that they took the idealogy of "if everything is overpowered, nothing is overpowered"
Honestly Links were not advertised as reigning in power creep and slowing down the game, people simply assumed that based on how they gatekept the Extra Deck, so that's probably another reason why they're hated. Not only for all the power creep and the homogenization of deck feel, but also that people's gut feeling on the intent of the mechanic makes it seem like it completely failed at that.
I played a bit more serious around the Synchro era as a casual player. I only played against AIs in the games like Tag Force. I thought Synchro was a good idea since it felt like a variant of Ritual. Also math. XYZ was alright in its mechanic. After XYZ, all hell broke lose with Pendulum and Link. I already saw and thiught how broken Link is because how easy Link summon is.
don't hate them now. Just hate how underused the arrows are.
One of my DB custom decks made co-linking apart of the strategy, the new Ignister and Codetalker support also helps
I hated that Konami made a master rule where you are coerced into playing link monsters. Plus for budget players extra deck means extra money. Gone where days where playing with an extra deck was optional. Now playing with a extra full of staples is a must
Never forget UFO Turtle
Love this vid. Great way to sum up Konami's mistakes and address what needs to change about card/mechanic design in the future.
Me having a blast in early 2010s with amorphage and qli. Me not having any fun slightly afterwards because you can't special summon "non-amorphage" and they had no links, and their pendulums needed tributes which you could no longer recycle as well.
Qli was still pretty strong but a new summon mechanic bypassed Towers which was probably a generally good thing for balance.
the biggest offense of the Link mechanic are the existence of generic Link 1's.
having the ability to turn 1 monster OR token into an effect monster while at the same time loading the grave is the now standard of a good starter and has no business being somethnig that can be done generically without any limitations.
it's not random that most link 1's that have somewhat generic materials have a history of being in the F/L list.
then you have a handful of cards that should have never been printed, like Halq(who single handedly crippled the single mechanic), Verte(which forever limited the deisng space for fusion support) and eletrumite(which has no business being generic and should have been printed with a restirction to its archtype.)
At the risk of sounding selfish, the introduction of link monsters alone killed my favorite deck of all time, dark synchro. I was finally able to play at a moderately high level and was having fun doing so. That was peak yugioh for me. Nothing about the game has been even half as exciting as my dark synchro days. Links really killed the vibe for me. Even tearzero format didn't feel as bad (but it came close) because I had already experienced the darkest timeline possible in yugioh. Screw 2018 yugioh..
Absolutely great video my guy!!!! Awesome job. Thanks. Super informative, and super awesome
This was an excellent video. Loved the music and the topic. Left me wanting more
I came back in to Yugioh just before Link Summoning was introduced and I was absolutely PISSED that the decks I just built couldn’t summon its monsters. I had JUST completed a high rarity super quant deck only to be told my boss monster just cant be summoned under the new rules it was horse shit
Best and possibly an interesting way to slow the game would be card type limits per deck. players can only use say:5 card types meaning youd have to choose from spell, traps, normal, sycnhro ECT. Would certainly give more deck variety and allow archtypes to stand out more I think
I just wish we got a ritual pendulum deck. Pendulum basically solves all of the issues that Rituals have. If they had ritual monsters that could also be pendulums and their pendulum effects could search their ritual spells/ ritual monsters from various places.
Although I quit playing the game many years ago, I've been waiting over 10 years for a ritual pendulum deck. Ever since it was first revealed, this and fusing monsters were the first 2 things I thought of.
We have 3 Ritual-Pendulum monsters in the game so far...
@ right?! So now… we just need an entire deck based around it.
Good explanation. Have you done any videos about Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links and specifically good existing strats for Speed Duels?
8:17
Sure, just glance over the most prevalent time Ghost Reaper was ever used. Not that generic yeah, but give it a mention at least.
I told some friends i feel tokens need specific text stating what they can be used for. For example the swordsoul tokens are tuners so they can be synchro material. So on so forth.
Or if they dont want to errata all cards. Only make them useable as materials for their archetype
Problem is some tokens don’t have an exact archetype, things like scape goat tokens or one time passcode, it basically turns them into glorified paper weights.
@tomsky4751 That is true
Links killed 80% of beloved decks and forced players to buy new cards just to play
Next Master rule: links only count as 1 towards other links :^)
Every now and then I look at Link monsters and think that the game didn't really need any more summoning methods after XYZ summoning.
Hey, man. New subscriber here. I'd love to see you talk about old school Yu-Gi-Oh, specifically anything from the OG era up to GX since I fell out of the game when 5Ds came along with its Synchros.
I personally don't like Pendulums, Links, Xyzs and even Synchros because it just overcomplicates the game way too much. I've just recently started playing Master Duel and even then I find it extremely unfair when both the AI and myself are setting up these long, drawn-out main phase 1s with Pendulums and Links, quickly wasting card after card all the summon ONE monster, then go to your battle phase for an OTK or even an FTK. In my brutally honest opinion, it just takes away from the heart of the game.
I like having a competitive back-and-forth duel with someone. I like taking my time to strategise, almost like a game of Poker. All these new mechanics and a rushed sense of play just cheapens the game in a way. I've come to accept power creeping and eventual change in the game but having it be THAT drastically quick is just terrible and it doesn't make it fun for me nor does it make it educational as someone trying to get back into the game and understand everything going on.
I love these videos of yours that go over the history of yugioh. Although I watched a bit of the show growing up, I didn’t get into the game until I was an adult. Thanks Cali :)
Synchro was my favorite summon mechanic before link came out, i think they're really fun, i mostly play Dragon-link and Salamangreat.
I like that this timeline correlates to the Zoodiac era, the game really took a big turn in '17, and we haven't looked the same since
TheCaliEffect ASMR is something i didnt know i needed but im now here for
Can you please talk about old school Yugioh? I sometimes miss the older mechanics of the game.
I picked up a Novellas deck which has pendulum and ritual gameplay.
I am looking forward to playing it as I never tried a ritual deck before.
Also do you think we can see a comeback of Tributes,Rituals and Fusions?
Thank you and you have a good day!
Will you cover the red eyes line? Like breakdown how many options there are depending how you build it. I've got numerous of them and they're all fun, but not meta. Closest to meta is dragoon
The second you said TOSS format a tear came to my eye. That was probably one of the best formats I have ever played in the game and look at it for the standard modern yugioh should be played like but probably won’t happen again.
Link monsters were the reason I dropped Yugioh. My decks ran fine without link monsters, but current rules required their use so I can use multiple xyz and synchros in a turn. I had already spent a good deal of money building my decks and didn’t want to spend $300+ to build a deck that can keep up with other decks. I could get back into yugioh now, but it feels like a hassle since I have to study about ~2000+ cards.
Its not the link monster is the problem, it just that they fasten the game and somehow konami make a long ass combo deck where they forget its actually 2 Players who play the game.
Its already a big warning when during the xyz era, where they started to make OTK become more popular if where you can summon 3 monsters with 2700 in 1 turn and the end result with OTK if there no monster or trap guard your field, you will got otk-ed.
There are other TH-cam video that i found said how yugioh problem is "don't have resources" which is actually not. In before when we play yugioh, because we know the existence of harpie feather duster, heavy storm, raigeki, dark hole, torrential tribute, we try to plan how many set card or summon because we want to have follow up next turn.
Synchro era give a chance to get our mid boss monster come easily and most of populer mid boss monster are have a good defense and protection, and how Stardust Dragon, Starlight Road and My Body as Shield become a game changing.
Xyz era probably become the best part where the speed is really good but not that really broken.
When pendulum come, combo deck become more popular as if you see magician pendulum and entermate where you have to "destroy" in order to search and stack your pendulum card in your extra deck. And some of them become like a meme.
And then before link era, probably Mayakashi is the one the start of "climb" combo deck.
End of pendulum and the start of link era i stopped playing because how the limitation block the way we playing. But i still know the concept of link monster, because i watch VRAINS, and laugh how each player doing solo talk summoning by himself doing a climb combo, which is really stupid at all😂 despite the story, art and mechanism are great.
When master duel come, i come back play and want to see, what change in the game, and suprised how fast the game come and somehow "combo deck" become a meme.
The yugioh i know where you prepare each turn for the next turn already gone, and become the Solitaire game we are know now.
Also they release so many "Omni negate" since Quasar Dragon and somehow all of them are really easy be summoned, its kinda hilarious.
love the new style of content keep it up brodie🤙👍👍
I'm still remembering Scapegoat in opponent's end phase for a firewall on the start of your turn :)
Love the videos. I play YGOpro when not religiously working on music.
My favorite decks have always been the generic waifu decks
However my most proud deck was an Odd Eyes Rocket link deck BEFORE dragon link was a thing. When dragon link became meta I just went back to the waifu archetypes as I felt personally insulted by Konami for even attempting to be relatively creative
I vaguely remembered when Firewall Dragon was at least $40 it first came out.
The reason most people hate them is because they didn't exist 20 years ago. I personally find them uninteresting, I like the concept with the arrows pointing to cards but they don't seem to work properly in case you want to win or at least have a decent match. The most useful link monsters are those that just negate everything so I don't even see the reason of bothering summoning them while I have other cards that do the same.
Well its the same end board every time what your trying to make utopia use this it make the other end board that cant be interacted
could you make a video on why zoodiac was so powerful i hear horror stories about it but i wasnt playing competitvly at it's peak and dont know why it was so strong
I dont hate link monsters. I hate how komoney handled link monsters. Especially the first year of link monsters. Not everyone got a link monster, the change to the mechanic which they had to revise (fixed it but not much) and, let's be honest the first wave as a result of we didn't want the issues we cause (synchos).
@HarpiePlayerJoeHPJ I never played back then, so i cant say much about the release of links besides what ive heard, but I really like the state of the game currently except for cards like Shifter and Droll. I'm not a fan of blanket floodgate effects that shut off an entire mechanic of the game. If they removed that the game would be peak.
Great if you like solitaire. Bad if it's your opponent and you wanna play Yu-Gi-Oh. But there's solitaire decks in all extra deck mechanics i feel.
Also, FTR, I'm a degenerate and I love Link monsters. Yeah, some are obnoxious and suck and make not fun game states, but others are really great and make old decks more playable. So That's neat.
Eh. I play some pretty high level yugioh and solitaire was never an actual thing outside ACTUAL tier 0 formats (not the ones where the top decks are pretty good and not absolutely broken like SPYral).
I remember I got back into the game as soon as MR 4.5 was applied. Thank god.
Thanks for the history lesson. I came back to yugioh after 7 years and links took a while to figure out.
My issue is that they have such independent reactions to every other mechanic. Flip decks straight up got disintegrated bc they can’t interact with links at all. You’ll see the occasional ninja deck here and there but without either lots of know how or the perfect draws, you’re already playing a losing game. I played Prediction Princess for a while and eventually put it down because it simply can’t compete without the perfect draws. I am of the mindset that the way they fix links is that any card special summoned by a link monster effect has to be to a zone a link monster points to. It would help to deal with the power creep links have had on modern yugioh as a whole. As you can see its a similar suggestion to how they “balanced” it before but this i feel is much better of a middle ground rather then basically eliminating ED play with the exception of links.
This video feels as though the history of link monsters.
As a HERO player I confirm it was not a fun time
My two problems with the summoning type is that cyberse Monsters do nothing but link spam to create stupidly op boards and any new or non cyberse link monsters are made way to generically to be fair to other extra deck strategies
It sucks for me because cards like simorgh/wind barrier statue help out my harpie lady deck a lot but i cant have nice things because of other archetypes. I really wish we got some more support and an actual boss monster.😢
I feel as though Links are somewhat unbalanced in the sense that they don’t typically require specific materials like Synchros or XYZ which makes link climbing much more spam-able. They usually don’t need an extra card or effects like fusions to be summoned, either.
If the monsters were far more restricted and locked you from doing stuff for example, I feel as though the mechanic would be much more balanced. Make them only usable in-archetype, but very powerful within. HERO is a good example of this. That is just my opinion, however.
( RDA BEST DECK!!!! )
tbf that was sorta the point of links; that they didnt require specific materials but they definitely should require at least adjacent specific stuff like at least 1 monster belonging to the specific archetype or has a similar trait as that of monsters in the archetype which is something more commonly seen in newer link monsters instead of simply being “effect monster” the majority of the time
if not making the requirements more restrictive then at least the effects should be similar to how some rank up xyz works where some or all effects is locked unless they were made using specific materials like there would be less complaint about something like accesscode if at least 1 of its effects was locked behind needing to summon it using another code talker for example
I genuinely hate Link monsters, I have zero idea how to use them properly, and I refuse to touch any archetype that is Link focused. No matter how I try to incorporate them, 9/10x I'm not making the right play. What's sad is that I understand Pendulum decks better than Links. They are so needlessly confusing imo. I can run 3min plays on my turn with Xyz or Synchros, but I can't fathom the extra deck blue cards...
I happened to return to ygo after a hiatus back then, the zoodiac banlist was just announced along MR4, and i used to play ABC and cyber dragon at that moment.
And not gonna lie, using monsters as a resource and "extending" plays back when it wasn't the norm was a blast, until stuff like gofu and scapegoat got overused and stagnated the system.
Not gonna lie either, in toss format i was orcust, and to this day i haven't dropped the deck even if i quit ygo years ago lol. But precisely stuff like spyral, lunalight, orcust, knightmares, etc, (all of which i played back then) certainly made a lot of friends quit or dislike the game heavily. Truth be told, after MR5 i quit the game, returning that much power to decks while already having their "borken link" in archetype made some decks go ridiculously nuts. That and that time started the 1 card combos extenders deck the norm for the game, and it was a bore to see your opponent extra lock you or go full combo while you having no Handtrap. Sadly not missing the game, but missing those times, it was very fun for a bit testing with friends.
It's kind of a look into the future of Yugioh. Like why even make Halq generic instead of just being Crystron support that would make that deck stronger in modern formats?? Its an example of how a focus on powercreep really digs into the overall potential of the game.
Thanks for reminding me why I hate Yugioh and quit playing. Just let me ban any cards I don't like and I'd be interested in playing again.
I’ve been getting back into Yu Gi oh & all these links synchro summons have been tough on me. I don’t know how to do it. Is there anyway you can make a video of creating a powerful but easy deck that can take on synchro & links please
Linking is the easiest summon honestly its just basic addition one you really look at it. 1+1= a link 2. 1+ link 2 = link 3. Or 1+1+1= link 3. They are still dumb cards but its fairly simple to learn. Its almost the only summoning i use i just dont like the others.
Merry Christmas big dawg
Great video, when links were announced I stopped playing yugioh all togheter, because I saw how this mechanic would destroy everything. I only returned when they changed the rules. 6 Monsters zones are a mistake.
The easy fix Konami forgot to think about it, was to pendulums monsters can only summon pendulums monsters.
>incredibly generic
>made all other decks obsolete overnight thanks to Masster Rule 4
>Firewall and Gumblar
>link 1s (RIP Linkuriboh)
I wonder why everyone hates them (rightfully so)
I’m down to hear you talk more about old school yugioh Cali
Tbh, I came back a little at this time because of Vrains and Trickstar, and I was pretty hyped about the new machanics because of the value of position. I thought this was good for a card game to have also a position based strategy and that it would make YGO a better game than the one I loved as a child. Unfortunately, I was a student so I could not afford a deck by this time and didn't play, but even now I'm back in the game, I still think that Konami made the right choices with this master rule, but should not have printed so many crazy link cards after that.
I really think Link monsters should have been a position mechanics before everything else, and now they are mostly extenders to spam summons to link climb to a busted card.
At that time, I was seing link summons as a chess game where you think about where you put your monsters. I feel like this mechanic is not really present now because, yes link summons still have to be on zone pointed by another link card to be on the main monster zone, but it's not about position anymore. I don't really know how to express this, but I wish Link monsters were still treated as a chess mechanic. I feel it would have been a really good turning point for YGO.
Happy holidays Cali! It sounds like you have a sore throat, hope you get well soon!
Surprised there wasn't a footnote on indirect harm links like halq caused to every other archetype.
Halqi existing caused so many other cards to be banned, because of potential synergy.
Links also greatly narrowed design opportunities of future cards, so a lot of players don't realize the potential cards Konami had to scrap in design phase, because "lol links exists, remember?"