I hope one takeaway people have from this series is that Tier 0 doesn't necessarily equal "the worst formats of all time." I have fond memories of Nekroz and Zoodiac and thoroughly unpleasant ones of Gouki/Striker or Adamancipator/Combo Lich. Sometimes a single beatable deck that's just better than everything else is worlds more interesting than four or five decks all aiming to FTK.
Zoodiac format was horrible, basically halq + auroradon on steroids. 99% of the decks playing the same combo line because of how much card advantage it was able to generate.
Its kind of wild to think about how the deck was basically just this HUGE advantage engine that just put up whatever flavor a dumb ED monster was available, which is basically the core of what decks are now. Power creep kind of flew off the handle around the end of Vrains.
It's wild to think about all the decks that were oppressive enough to be tier 0 but didn't get played enough. Gouki was the most oppressive deck I ever played with U-lock and Gumblar rip being easy 1st turn. Pen Magicians at their height were also close if I remember correctly.
Because they were not good enough to see enough play, people will play the best decks they can if they want to win, so gouki would only be tier 0 if it was good enough to beat everything else with ease
@@rosewarrior706 pretty sure Gouki won NA YCS championship and maybe worlds? Lots of people really hated the way the deck played a refused to play it if I remember correctly. People would call it “playing solitaire” because it was basically a 1 player game.
16:40 or you know, just make a Pyro Archetype. Damn near no generic support, about 120 cards total with many originating from GX and OG eras, only one pure Pyro archetype in the form of Volcanic. This is a golden way to make a refreshing archetype that doesn't have to worry about older cards due to how neglected the type has been for so long.
There are just so many types and attributes that Konami doesn't even really care to work with. Rush Duel has more Aqua-based archetypes than the main game.
@@Zetact_ yeah Aqua at least piggybacks off generic water support most of the time. Pyro and fire attributes in general have like no good generic support.
Such an awesome series thanks for your work! Just to add my 2 cents on the topic: the reason we never got another tier 0 formats through vrains until now was the development of more and better hand traps and board breakers,particularly dark ruler and Nibiru changed the math of what combo decks needed to be truly great... But then some like Adams and spright showed we still need more
Adamancipator didn't have real competiton and spright never reached tier 0, not even in the ocg Also konami stopped creating archetypes and engines that go like +3 or +5 for no reason, except for when they released the adventurer engine Which did have tier 0 representation at ycs bogota so going +3 off of one card is still as strong as ever
@@andrejv.2834 While Adamancipator weren't that dominant they certainly had one of the strongest competition. Synchro Eldlich wasn't a good deck in a vacuum but was an amazing meta call, DLink, Infernoble and Dogmatika were insane.
@@nnnp634 syncho eldlich loses to any form of interaction on halq or auroradon, that type of deck wouldn't even be rogue in a normal meta without years worth of rogue or better decks being banned in an instant, which is what the january 2020 banlist started and the april one completed Infernoble is also very fragile, although they can occasionally play through disruption, but they also came towards the end of ada's lifespan Dlink stood the test of time, but the early version of the deck was pretty janky, people only came up with good versions towards the end of the year as well
Boss monsters nowadays should always be restricted to their own archetype, or, if they are generic they shouldn't be too impactful, because even tho we don't have a tier 0 deck at the moment, we have a bunch of decks running the same engines and generic boss monsters and imo that's just as bad for the game as a tier 0 environment.
That moment when seemingly every deck was running either Dragoon, Zeus or Phoenix Enforcer or Accesscode and more. Thank God at least Phoenix and Dragoon dropped off a lot since Anaconda was axed, but those two were definitely not the most fun card to play with
What's wild is that while there wasn't a tier 0 format after Spyral we did have a full year and a 1/2 of ftks and hand loops from mid 2018 to 2019 because of firewall, gumblar, and Psy-framelord Omega
@@rafaelbrites3607 Spright Tearlamenet format is funnier that those handloop FTK formtas, is weird that the format has 2 decks and those 2 decks are good at fighting each other, but we don't know if Sproght is goign to be as dominant as in the OCG seeing how different the play style is we need like 2 weeks of tourney to see how the format is going to go.
arguably we've had a number of teir 0 level of power decks enter the format (especially in 2018 IE year of the FTK) but due to the fact that there were other decks that were just as powerful they didn't become "teir 0". The only iteration I'd argue could be said was a teir 0 deck (It was being formulated and kept on the dl by a number of top players until a certain ycs and led to the banning of Firewall shortly after) would be Danger Dark World FTK. Probably the most consistent FTK deck we've ever had in yugioh and with despite a very small number of people playing it in a (I believe) 3k man ycs it managed to take the majority of the tops..... And then firewall got banned (thank god).
Kinda true but sky striker pure was like 20% of the meta and sky striker/trickstar was 40% of the meta and combo decks we're running drones+kagari+engage meaning that like 70% of the meta was running sky stricker cards
I love you foreverr for using duelist of the roses ost, the script is very tight and well researched too, honestly I was expecting some low effort top ten list kinda content *cough* duel logs *cough* but was pleasantly surprised to find a neatly edited well put together video, time to binge the rest of your channel :D
@@rafaelbrites3607 that’s somewhat true. Swordsoul don’t really use them though. Nor do edlich. Its deck dependent. Heroes tbh don’t need it either. Can name a few that don’t need tjem. But look at the meta rn. How many decks are link focused only. Rn it’s all a mix of different summoning types which is good
@@rafaelbrites3607 Tearlaments need 0 links to work, the only 2 links that us use is Dharc because it you can use it is decent, and Trouble Sunny but that's only for side decking 3 Ultimate Slayer and Ki-Sikil & Lil-La so you can out the Spright Link and then use the grave effect of Trouble Sunny to send Toadally Awesome to the grave.
I randomly went to my first European Nationals during Tier 0 Zoo and True Draco's peak for fun - with Flower Cardian. That Deck had a perfect matchup against all relevant Decks, thanks to their targeting protection. Wildest event ever.
14:15 We know this is partially not true now since Souls does everything Helix does but more efficiently. Link Summoning and MR4 are the reason why this deck was T0.
What? It was the first link 2 that said “special from deck”. That was it. What does Magicians Souls have to do with anything? If you’re comparing to Master Plan, Master Plan is a combo enabler, not a random extender you have to hard draw.
@@meathir4921 Yeah, and Souls gets Master Plan into play better than Helix ever did. Now, Helix is only good for searching Sleeper. Let’s do some math: For Helix, you need: 2 SPYRAL monsters, and a way to resolve Drone’s stack effect. All of this produces a single Double Helix + MP. With Souls + Quik-Fix: You get Souls (a free extender), Master Plan in the GY, and Quik-Fix searching Big Red to bring it back. Search Rescue with MP and then use Souls to send Big Red+ Rescue to Draw 2. Next, Link Summon Barricadeborg Blocker with Souls + MP. MP searches Resort + 1 SPYRAL as CL1 and BB effect as CL2 (completely insulated from Ash AND Called By btw). Do you see the difference now? One guaranteed a +3 with MP, the other could not. One was able to put up 2 Link-2s (+ QF SS effect and Rescue SS MP for more link shenanigans), the other was left with a simple Double Helix + MP. We know now that Double Helix is not the sole reason the deck was good back in 2018. MR4 completely destroyed 95% of meta decks (there’s a reason why decks that don’t use the Extra Deck like Trickstar and Altergeist was so popular in this era), SPYRAL just happened to lend itself well to the kind of playstyle that Link Summoning demands. While everyone else was struggling to summon Missus Radiant and Decode Talker, this deck was out here summoning 3 Firewall Dragons. I wish I could say Master Plan was the reason the deck is good, but that wasn’t the case between Resort getting limited and Souls coming out. Master Plan makes the deck functional. Don’t believe me? Cool, just try to resolve Master Plan’s second effect in MR3. Or even have a look at how little play it saw after Resort got limited. The most overpowered things about this deck was everything that wasn’t SPYRAL.
@@OoXLR8oO So… we’re in agreement? That Double Helix being ahead of its time and Firewall being at 3 are the main factors? So what does Magicians Souls have to do with anything? Master Plan is still an important part of the deck regardless…
@@meathir4921 Magicians Souls literally does Helix’s job but better in every way? Also my point here was that the most broken thing about SPYRAL over the years was never the actual SPYRAL cards. It’s everything else.
@@OoXLR8oO Nono, Double Helix and Machine Dupe Quik Fix is busted, don’t downplay SPYRAL cards. Resort is an insane field spell. They lacked finishers and a major play starter and link format gave them both.
I really do love how you narrate your videos. Simple, clear and engaging. I genuinely feel like I was there for these tier 0 formats even though I really only got into Yu-Gi-Oh! within the past year and a half.
Hey I have a question: When do you think can we expect the next part of the History of Duel Links? Do you still work on them and want to do a Zexal Part 2 etc. or do you work on other stuff at the moment?
This series has been insightful for understanding deck building. The ideas for plenty Tier 0 and probably plenty Tier 1 decks has been experimenting with weird combos. An archetype can seem weak but when paired with the right generic support can become oppressive. It makes me wonder how many potential Tier 0s are waiting to be discovered!
17:00 funny how ishizu tear is tear 0 with entirely in-engine cards, with old cards (herald fairy enablers) being a bonus and known quantities for a while now through drytron.
This video was highly enjoyable for me. Bringing back memories of all these tier zero formats in the tcg in this part 2 vid. Most enjoyable one was the zoo format for me as I played pale frog with teched water barrier statue to counter zoodiacs till the variant of tru draco zoo came to terrorize me and forced me to innovate a hybrid of true pale frogs. A mixture of true draco and paleo frogs lol. Spyral format was a format some players in my country took a break and I an all contemplated to take a break till the deck was put in check cause spyral was that powerful and dominant that i felt hopeless cause i couldnt afford it to stay in the game but I stayed and played with my paleo frogs which was basically dice roll game for me with luck. All in all. That was my fav and least times of tier zero formats. Love the vid.
Ocg meta now has 2 tier 0,5 decks like back then with the dragon rulers and spellbook format . The other decks in the format like exosister, floo and eldlich are just situational choices to counter either spright or tear . A few weeks ago a madlad even mixed spright with tear and it was absolutely insane
Cool videos, really nostalgic! I did miss the mention of the emergency banlist in the TeleDAD format, limiting Return from a Different Dimension, and banning Dimension Fusion. I really remember this time, as I was the head judge for my nationals back then, and the emergency ban hit us just 2-3 days beforehand.
Off topic but recently decided to try playing with an older deck with tweaks and been finding alot of fun in the shenanigans. Within it. I did a Fire King/Yubel deck but also put DPE, Kaiser Colosseum, and Heart of Clear water into the deck to counter play decks that are heavily relient on swarming the field to forcefully control it or use card effects to negate Yubels effect. Its been alot of fun so far and made me really appreciate alot of older cards that are likely obsolete or just unorthodox due to not aging well compared to more recent additions. Really the only thing im having a rougher time playing against is Floowandereez decks due to Dimensional Shifter into Barrier Statue. Evil☆Twin, and the Adventure combo of Aramesir into Gryphon Rider and Dracoback. But then again having something that can play against me at leasts lets me know my deck isn't 100% cheese and just fun shenanigans. Played against Zoodiac alot and its definitely frustrating especially when I know im either going to end up with ZEUS or Numeron Dragon smacked on the field against me if I survive the shenanigans of Drident.
For me who just learned to play pendulum recently, it is so unbelievable to know that pendulum had been a tier 0 at certain point. But right now, even if monkeyboard limiting at one, pendulum can't really compete with others meta decks. Most of decks using one-card combo, whereas pendulum can't do that. I hope konami will at least put a few new support to pendulum which making extra deck can be floats as the GY usage of other decks
Pendulums were never broken tbh. Their issue is the high resource commitment that is easily countered by most disruption. PePe was only viable because other decks at the time didn't have the tools to deal with them. I'm pretty positive that if PePe came back full power even with electrumite at 3 they would barely see any tops. It's super easy to side hate for them and they kind of hard lose going second even though they kind of need the 6th card to make most of their most powerful boards. They were just the first instance of "4 negate" boards in the game.
@@sofarsogood8680 Pendulums haven't been relevant since PePe and PePe was the only meta relevant pendulum deck that actually mattered. Electrumite was only banned cause of an FTK that it supposedly enabled even though it wasn't the main problem with the FTK (that being the lyrulisc fusion/supreme king starving venom) and also because every pend deck used him probably because they had no other link monster options in most pendulum decks and electrumite was made specifically so pendulum decks could function in MR4.
Wonder if you'd ever thing of doing a series on the evolution of 'lore' archetypes, from the mixed at best early Duel Terminal to the constant meta relevance of the Albaz storyline, with multiple tier 1 decks along the way
The sheer advantage and number of plusses created by Zoo in their prime was comical. The fact that you could draw 5+ cards was insane all by itself, but this was also the period of time where hand traps were getting more serious, so you would be drawing into Kaijus to deal with problems, Ghost Ogre for S/T removal (usually field spells or your opponent's own Tenki), and Ash Blossom to stop the opponent's plays.
Decks name is pepe because its peformapal and performage. In ocg its entermage and entermate. Abreviated em em. Spells meme backwards. Archtype has a frog. Really makes you think.
It really says something that five out of the six tier 0 decks basically don't see play anymore--you can sometimes see pendulum decks with the spirit of PePe, but that's about it. But Zoodiac's STILL a threat, it's just not format-warping anymore.
Yup. This is basically what happens, depending on the format: Competitive, complex Tier 1 format; New players can choose from 5-6 really powerful decks that can gain ground on other powerful decks, but won't completely overpower any of them. Extreme, 1 dimensional Tier 0 format; New players have 1 deck to use, and can only play that single deck, or risk losing interaction altogether.
never really played the TCG of yugioh but I still have to praise the video not just for the great work in the research but mostly for the Duelist of the Roses fire soundtrack in the background. truly a man of culture 👏🏽
This is actually really cool, thank you for this. I was wondering if you could make a (video/series?) of how Tier 0 decks impacted card design going forward. Also on how the meta of future decks changed and evolved to a point where the older tier 0 decks were powercrept?
Thia videos summarise well how things took a turn for the worst after Edison, which is perhaps why people have such fond memories of that format. The power creep just seemed to accelerate away.
Surprised you didn't mention Spyral's resurgence and further bans when Magicians Souls was released. Wasn't exactly tier 0, but was ridiculous enough for Konami to hit it more.
I would say spyrals weren't actually that strong. My view is that it's because mr4 crippled lots of meta decks and spyrals got a very good link card they did well. Also triple grinder golem and firewall dragon were cards that made any rogue deck meta. So adding those to an already strong meta deck would make it tier 0. Adamancipator, Pepe, zoodiacs can beat spyrals. Those decks were stronger and had more competition to be a tier 0/tier 0.5 deck
Adamancipator also had weak competition because of the january and april 2020 banlists, and pepe isn't stronger either 2017 spyral wasn't better than modern decks because they're lacking modern staples, in a way 2020 spyral with a way weaker main deck was better than the tier 0 counterpart
I have no idea if it's good or bad luck but each time I duel a really annoying high teir deck I somehow manage to pull the best cards of that deck from packs on my first try. I pulled a Dark Dragoon when all I wanted was the tin
Same, I was huge fan of the deck before it was meta. Drone was the first card ever that let's you look the top 5 cards and shuffle it in any order. It was crazy.
if gigantic spright didnt restrict the summoning of using the effect of after just summoning level/rank/link 2 than it could be used for more than just its deck
The only thing you got wrong here that the SPYRAL link was actually not an OCG import. It was part of the main set core of CIBR. This means we would have always gotten it when it came over to the TCG and not up to Konami TCG to decide if and when we would get it as some import.
This is strictly incorrect. At the time, TCG core sets were structured with slots 1-80 being identical between TCG and OCG, slots 0 and 81-89 reserved for TCG Premieres, and slots 90-99 reserved for OCG Imports. SPYRAL Double Helix was released in Extra Pack 2017 in the OCG, similarly to how they released Beatrice prior, being an import set of TCG Exclusives with new support for those archetypes occasionally. We were never receiving that set in the TCG. We instead received the card in Circuit Break’s imports as set code CIBR-EN099, being the final of the allotted 10 import slots.
Spright is tier 0 rn in ocg ,sharing the same tier with tearalament Not sure about how spright goes in tcg without grass, but spright definitely would stomp the meta
@@annaxuldraugworc7832 you can't have two tier 0 decks at the same time And tearlament doesn't even come close Ocg spright at their peak did come very close though, having around 60% representation for like one week, but they also couldn't actually reach it
Eversince MasterPeace was released. Every single one of my friends stopped playing Yugioh for years. The card was busted and have no counterplay once its on the field. That card for me was not intended to be named Master Peace as it brought frustration in all locals
Never paid for yugioh cards and after this never will its a massive scam to think that Konami didn’t know this would happen. They release broken cards on purpose to make money.
I know you're reading this comment, and I know you haven't clicked the subscribe button yet.
Sike! I already subscribe before read your comment
Wrong! I clicked both immediately!
I hope one takeaway people have from this series is that Tier 0 doesn't necessarily equal "the worst formats of all time." I have fond memories of Nekroz and Zoodiac and thoroughly unpleasant ones of Gouki/Striker or Adamancipator/Combo Lich. Sometimes a single beatable deck that's just better than everything else is worlds more interesting than four or five decks all aiming to FTK.
Wonder if the same applies to right now
I hope it's for the better
FTK in general is bullshit. Modern Yugioh is just a more expensive multiplayer solitaire.
Zoodiac format was horrible, basically halq + auroradon on steroids. 99% of the decks playing the same combo line because of how much card advantage it was able to generate.
playing against the same exact deck endlessly sure is interesting
Finally mbt having a solid take
I’d always heard about PePe’s dominance, but could never fully wrap my head around how it worked. This vid helped that a bit, good stuff, man.
Now imagine the OCG's version of PePe when they had Shock Master legal. That's 💀
Its kind of wild to think about how the deck was basically just this HUGE advantage engine that just put up whatever flavor a dumb ED monster was available, which is basically the core of what decks are now. Power creep kind of flew off the handle around the end of Vrains.
One thing is for sure, PePe dominated thanks to a banlist that was specifically tailored to sell pendulums.
And the monkeyboard,guitartle,and lizardraw chain was infinite and could be done over and over again consistently
@@traplover6357well its same thing, you just couldnt play at all with shock
It's wild to think about all the decks that were oppressive enough to be tier 0 but didn't get played enough. Gouki was the most oppressive deck I ever played with U-lock and Gumblar rip being easy 1st turn. Pen Magicians at their height were also close if I remember correctly.
Because they were not good enough to see enough play, people will play the best decks they can if they want to win, so gouki would only be tier 0 if it was good enough to beat everything else with ease
@@rosewarrior706 pretty sure Gouki won NA YCS championship and maybe worlds? Lots of people really hated the way the deck played a refused to play it if I remember correctly. People would call it “playing solitaire” because it was basically a 1 player game.
Drytron at its prime could have been considered “tier zero” but representation wise it wasn’t, I think the same can be said for spright as well
Gouki has to be one of, if not, the most oppressive meta decks ever.
Gouki wasn't due to people not wanting to play mirrors. The deck would have easily been tier 0 otherwise
16:40 or you know, just make a Pyro Archetype. Damn near no generic support, about 120 cards total with many originating from GX and OG eras, only one pure Pyro archetype in the form of Volcanic. This is a golden way to make a refreshing archetype that doesn't have to worry about older cards due to how neglected the type has been for so long.
There are just so many types and attributes that Konami doesn't even really care to work with.
Rush Duel has more Aqua-based archetypes than the main game.
@@Zetact_ at least Aqua has more than one archetype in the game to work with.
@@Zetact_ yeah Aqua at least piggybacks off generic water support most of the time. Pyro and fire attributes in general have like no good generic support.
Like I get they’re scared of Rekindling, but they don’t need to make every FIRE archetype scared of it. They could even make non-FIRE Pyro monsters!
or you know make them have more than 200 Def so they just don't work with the spell.
Love your videos. Super fun to hear about the history of the game summarized like this.
Such an awesome series thanks for your work!
Just to add my 2 cents on the topic: the reason we never got another tier 0 formats through vrains until now was the development of more and better hand traps and board breakers,particularly dark ruler and Nibiru changed the math of what combo decks needed to be truly great... But then some like Adams and spright showed we still need more
Adamancipator didn't have real competiton and spright never reached tier 0, not even in the ocg
Also konami stopped creating archetypes and engines that go like +3 or +5 for no reason, except for when they released the adventurer engine
Which did have tier 0 representation at ycs bogota so going +3 off of one card is still as strong as ever
@@andrejv.2834 While Adamancipator weren't that dominant they certainly had one of the strongest competition. Synchro Eldlich wasn't a good deck in a vacuum but was an amazing meta call, DLink, Infernoble and Dogmatika were insane.
@@nnnp634 syncho eldlich loses to any form of interaction on halq or auroradon, that type of deck wouldn't even be rogue in a normal meta without years worth of rogue or better decks being banned in an instant, which is what the january 2020 banlist started and the april one completed
Infernoble is also very fragile, although they can occasionally play through disruption, but they also came towards the end of ada's lifespan
Dlink stood the test of time, but the early version of the deck was pretty janky, people only came up with good versions towards the end of the year as well
do you guys forget the sky striker orcust meta? it was 2019
Striker Orcust format had the deck at like low 60s percent wise of top cut. It’s very much possible.
Boss monsters nowadays should always be restricted to their own archetype, or, if they are generic they shouldn't be too impactful, because even tho we don't have a tier 0 deck at the moment, we have a bunch of decks running the same engines and generic boss monsters and imo that's just as bad for the game as a tier 0 environment.
Yeah the days when every deck was playing adventure dpe scythe were probably the worst days of my yugioh career
Splights and Tears are totally teir 0 right now. It's so stupid.
@@EeveeShadowBacon They will perhaps share a T0 spot, but it's to be seen if one of them is actually gonna become T0 in the tcg.
I'm a fan of designing them like Photon Lord, where it's USABLE generically but gets more powerful in it's own deck
That moment when seemingly every deck was running either Dragoon, Zeus or Phoenix Enforcer or Accesscode and more.
Thank God at least Phoenix and Dragoon dropped off a lot since Anaconda was axed, but those two were definitely not the most fun card to play with
Love the duelist of the roses ost. Honestly the GOAT of Yu-Gi-Oh game OSTs
What's wild is that while there wasn't a tier 0 format after Spyral we did have a full year and a 1/2 of ftks and hand loops from mid 2018 to 2019 because of firewall, gumblar, and Psy-framelord Omega
But we have recently with the spotlghts.
@@rafaelbrites3607 Spright Tearlamenet format is funnier that those handloop FTK formtas, is weird that the format has 2 decks and those 2 decks are good at fighting each other, but we don't know if Sproght is goign to be as dominant as in the OCG seeing how different the play style is we need like 2 weeks of tourney to see how the format is going to go.
arguably we've had a number of teir 0 level of power decks enter the format (especially in 2018 IE year of the FTK) but due to the fact that there were other decks that were just as powerful they didn't become "teir 0". The only iteration I'd argue could be said was a teir 0 deck (It was being formulated and kept on the dl by a number of top players until a certain ycs and led to the banning of Firewall shortly after) would be Danger Dark World FTK. Probably the most consistent FTK deck we've ever had in yugioh and with despite a very small number of people playing it in a (I believe) 3k man ycs it managed to take the majority of the tops..... And then firewall got banned (thank god).
Kinda true but sky striker pure was like 20% of the meta and sky striker/trickstar was 40% of the meta and combo decks we're running drones+kagari+engage meaning that like 70% of the meta was running sky stricker cards
Greatly appreciate the exceptional duelist of the roses sound track bytes, nothing says yugioh more than that sound track
What music did you use starting at 13:45?
I love you foreverr for using duelist of the roses ost, the script is very tight and well researched too, honestly I was expecting some low effort top ten list kinda content *cough* duel logs *cough* but was pleasantly surprised to find a neatly edited well put together video, time to binge the rest of your channel :D
15:00. That's why i say link summon is the most broken summon in the game. Because it's too generic. It made tokens been to powerfull.
But look at the decks rn.
Link spam is not good anymore
@@megaspacewaffles but every meta deck needs a link monsters to work.
@@rafaelbrites3607 that’s somewhat true.
Swordsoul don’t really use them though. Nor do edlich.
Its deck dependent. Heroes tbh don’t need it either. Can name a few that don’t need tjem.
But look at the meta rn. How many decks are link focused only. Rn it’s all a mix of different summoning types which is good
@@rafaelbrites3607 Tearlaments need 0 links to work, the only 2 links that us use is Dharc because it you can use it is decent, and Trouble Sunny but that's only for side decking 3 Ultimate Slayer and Ki-Sikil & Lil-La so you can out the Spright Link and then use the grave effect of Trouble Sunny to send Toadally Awesome to the grave.
I randomly went to my first European Nationals during Tier 0 Zoo and True Draco's peak for fun - with Flower Cardian. That Deck had a perfect matchup against all relevant Decks, thanks to their targeting protection. Wildest event ever.
Ariadne non-OPT eff was missing a mention off PePe. Adding 2-3 Counter traps was insane for PePe.
Yeah. from memory strike came out in the same set as rafllesia
I'd love to see a dive into why banlists hit certain cards.
duellogs has this exact series on his channel
or why ocg and tcg differ in some of their bans
@@zaqareemalcolm or even master duel and tcg
@@kajin807 master duel is based on a modified ver of a older ocg list irrc
14:15 We know this is partially not true now since Souls does everything Helix does but more efficiently. Link Summoning and MR4 are the reason why this deck was T0.
What? It was the first link 2 that said “special from deck”. That was it. What does Magicians Souls have to do with anything? If you’re comparing to Master Plan, Master Plan is a combo enabler, not a random extender you have to hard draw.
@@meathir4921 Yeah, and Souls gets Master Plan into play better than Helix ever did. Now, Helix is only good for searching Sleeper.
Let’s do some math:
For Helix, you need:
2 SPYRAL monsters, and a way to resolve Drone’s stack effect. All of this produces a single Double Helix + MP.
With Souls + Quik-Fix:
You get Souls (a free extender), Master Plan in the GY, and Quik-Fix searching Big Red to bring it back. Search Rescue with MP and then use Souls to send Big Red+ Rescue to Draw 2.
Next, Link Summon Barricadeborg Blocker with Souls + MP. MP searches Resort + 1 SPYRAL as CL1 and BB effect as CL2 (completely insulated from Ash AND Called By btw).
Do you see the difference now? One guaranteed a +3 with MP, the other could not. One was able to put up 2 Link-2s (+ QF SS effect and Rescue SS MP for more link shenanigans), the other was left with a simple Double Helix + MP.
We know now that Double Helix is not the sole reason the deck was good back in 2018. MR4 completely destroyed 95% of meta decks (there’s a reason why decks that don’t use the Extra Deck like Trickstar and Altergeist was so popular in this era), SPYRAL just happened to lend itself well to the kind of playstyle that Link Summoning demands.
While everyone else was struggling to summon Missus Radiant and Decode Talker, this deck was out here summoning 3 Firewall Dragons.
I wish I could say Master Plan was the reason the deck is good, but that wasn’t the case between Resort getting limited and Souls coming out. Master Plan makes the deck functional. Don’t believe me? Cool, just try to resolve Master Plan’s second effect in MR3. Or even have a look at how little play it saw after Resort got limited.
The most overpowered things about this deck was everything that wasn’t SPYRAL.
@@OoXLR8oO So… we’re in agreement? That Double Helix being ahead of its time and Firewall being at 3 are the main factors? So what does Magicians Souls have to do with anything? Master Plan is still an important part of the deck regardless…
@@meathir4921 Magicians Souls literally does Helix’s job but better in every way? Also my point here was that the most broken thing about SPYRAL over the years was never the actual SPYRAL cards. It’s everything else.
@@OoXLR8oO Nono, Double Helix and Machine Dupe Quik Fix is busted, don’t downplay SPYRAL cards. Resort is an insane field spell. They lacked finishers and a major play starter and link format gave them both.
I really do love how you narrate your videos. Simple, clear and engaging.
I genuinely feel like I was there for these tier 0 formats even though I really only got into Yu-Gi-Oh! within the past year and a half.
AMAZING AS ALWAYS KING I FELL ASLEEP DURING THIS SO YOU KNOW ITS A GOOD VIDEO
Just watching this video for the first time a year later. Your use of the DOTR soundtrack is amazing! Thank you lol
Hey I have a question: When do you think can we expect the next part of the History of Duel Links? Do you still work on them and want to do a Zexal Part 2 etc. or do you work on other stuff at the moment?
He is probably waiting for the arc-v era to end when Vrains world releases
This series has been insightful for understanding deck building. The ideas for plenty Tier 0 and probably plenty Tier 1 decks has been experimenting with weird combos. An archetype can seem weak but when paired with the right generic support can become oppressive. It makes me wonder how many potential Tier 0s are waiting to be discovered!
I love this series especially since my retrospective series on my channel covers these decks and the history of the format they were in as a whole
17:00 funny how ishizu tear is tear 0 with entirely in-engine cards, with old cards (herald fairy enablers) being a bonus and known quantities for a while now through drytron.
i love how the player base thought they had the power to beat zoo, so they unbanned drident but 2 formats later had to ban it again lmao
Your story telling is elite. Others have done this kind of video you put your touch on it and it’s refreshing/amazing. Big fan
This video was highly enjoyable for me. Bringing back memories of all these tier zero formats in the tcg in this part 2 vid. Most enjoyable one was the zoo format for me as I played pale frog with teched water barrier statue to counter zoodiacs till the variant of tru draco zoo came to terrorize me and forced me to innovate a hybrid of true pale frogs. A mixture of true draco and paleo frogs lol. Spyral format was a format some players in my country took a break and I an all contemplated to take a break till the deck was put in check cause spyral was that powerful and dominant that i felt hopeless cause i couldnt afford it to stay in the game but I stayed and played with my paleo frogs which was basically dice roll game for me with luck. All in all. That was my fav and least times of tier zero formats. Love the vid.
PePe was the bane of my existence on Dueling Network back in the day, it was almost impossible to run a rogue deck in the rated playlist.
Ocg meta now has 2 tier 0,5 decks like back then with the dragon rulers and spellbook format . The other decks in the format like exosister, floo and eldlich are just situational choices to counter either spright or tear . A few weeks ago a madlad even mixed spright with tear and it was absolutely insane
Mixing 2 amazing archetype with no synergy together what a madlad
I topped regionals with Pepe back then and can barely claim it since it was just a pure sackfest.
Need a part 3 with tearlaments now lol
Cool videos, really nostalgic! I did miss the mention of the emergency banlist in the TeleDAD format, limiting Return from a Different Dimension, and banning Dimension Fusion. I really remember this time, as I was the head judge for my nationals back then, and the emergency ban hit us just 2-3 days beforehand.
Yugioh has some of the most convoluted card names and art I have ever seen, not to mention the effect chains just get absurd
Awesome work law keep up the good work these videos are very very good can't wait to see what you have in store for us in the future
Off topic but recently decided to try playing with an older deck with tweaks and been finding alot of fun in the shenanigans. Within it. I did a Fire King/Yubel deck but also put DPE, Kaiser Colosseum, and Heart of Clear water into the deck to counter play decks that are heavily relient on swarming the field to forcefully control it or use card effects to negate Yubels effect. Its been alot of fun so far and made me really appreciate alot of older cards that are likely obsolete or just unorthodox due to not aging well compared to more recent additions.
Really the only thing im having a rougher time playing against is Floowandereez decks due to Dimensional Shifter into Barrier Statue. Evil☆Twin, and the Adventure combo of Aramesir into Gryphon Rider and Dracoback. But then again having something that can play against me at leasts lets me know my deck isn't 100% cheese and just fun shenanigans. Played against Zoodiac alot and its definitely frustrating especially when I know im either going to end up with ZEUS or Numeron Dragon smacked on the field against me if I survive the shenanigans of Drident.
For me who just learned to play pendulum recently, it is so unbelievable to know that pendulum had been a tier 0 at certain point. But right now, even if monkeyboard limiting at one, pendulum can't really compete with others meta decks. Most of decks using one-card combo, whereas pendulum can't do that. I hope konami will at least put a few new support to pendulum which making extra deck can be floats as the GY usage of other decks
Master rules were different at the time, pendulum strategies were a lot more viable
Pendulums were never broken tbh. Their issue is the high resource commitment that is easily countered by most disruption. PePe was only viable because other decks at the time didn't have the tools to deal with them. I'm pretty positive that if PePe came back full power even with electrumite at 3 they would barely see any tops. It's super easy to side hate for them and they kind of hard lose going second even though they kind of need the 6th card to make most of their most powerful boards. They were just the first instance of "4 negate" boards in the game.
MR3 allowed to summon as many monsters as possible from the extra deck.
@@JudojugsVtuber But it seems like konami still afraid of pendlum eventhough it's not a threat anymore .
@@sofarsogood8680 Pendulums haven't been relevant since PePe and PePe was the only meta relevant pendulum deck that actually mattered. Electrumite was only banned cause of an FTK that it supposedly enabled even though it wasn't the main problem with the FTK (that being the lyrulisc fusion/supreme king starving venom) and also because every pend deck used him probably because they had no other link monster options in most pendulum decks and electrumite was made specifically so pendulum decks could function in MR4.
Yay ! Another masterpiece !
It was
I love the fact that you use duelist of roses music! Keep up the good work! ^•^
Yes omg. This music is so good
Wonder if you'd ever thing of doing a series on the evolution of 'lore' archetypes, from the mixed at best early Duel Terminal to the constant meta relevance of the Albaz storyline, with multiple tier 1 decks along the way
Can't wait to see tearlaments ishizu on here :D
Really cool channel that reviews historical formats
The sheer advantage and number of plusses created by Zoo in their prime was comical. The fact that you could draw 5+ cards was insane all by itself, but this was also the period of time where hand traps were getting more serious, so you would be drawing into Kaijus to deal with problems, Ghost Ogre for S/T removal (usually field spells or your opponent's own Tenki), and Ash Blossom to stop the opponent's plays.
Ogre doesn't stop tenki
This is mostly correct, but you cant ogre tenki
Decks name is pepe because its peformapal and performage. In ocg its entermage and entermate. Abreviated em em. Spells meme backwards. Archtype has a frog. Really makes you think.
Zoodiacs has to be one of the most poorly designed archetypes ever printed.
Cry
@@animationtv426 That's just an objective observation, why the salt
@@baconsir1159 cuz he is a generic zoodiac player, Metasheep
It really says something that five out of the six tier 0 decks basically don't see play anymore--you can sometimes see pendulum decks with the spirit of PePe, but that's about it.
But Zoodiac's STILL a threat, it's just not format-warping anymore.
@@EinDose To be fair, PEPE was before Master Rule 4. Electrumite is also banned.
These are so great keep em up!
Problem with tier zero is that the game shuts itself off from new players.
Yup. This is basically what happens, depending on the format:
Competitive, complex Tier 1 format;
New players can choose from 5-6 really powerful decks that can gain ground on other powerful decks, but won't completely overpower any of them.
Extreme, 1 dimensional Tier 0 format;
New players have 1 deck to use, and can only play that single deck, or risk losing interaction altogether.
never really played the TCG of yugioh but I still have to praise the video not just for the great work in the research but mostly for the Duelist of the Roses fire soundtrack in the background. truly a man of culture 👏🏽
Nice video, and you have to love the duelist of the roses ost
This is actually really cool, thank you for this. I was wondering if you could make a (video/series?) of how Tier 0 decks impacted card design going forward. Also on how the meta of future decks changed and evolved to a point where the older tier 0 decks were powercrept?
17:10 Couch Cough Ishizu Tear at the end of 2022 cough cough......
Loved this - you should do an OCG tier 0 video
i thought spellbook of judgement was the worst printed card ever, but firewall dragon is making a case
Wasn't striker orcust tier 0 at the end of 2019 or start of 2020? Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought it was
Amazing how mentioning Monkeyboard still invokes bitter hatred in me.
What music did you use starting at 13:45?
Nice, now you can make the 3rd video and talking about spright, tearalament and probably locust after isuzu release
I love that the music is from duelist of the roses
Thia videos summarise well how things took a turn for the worst after Edison, which is perhaps why people have such fond memories of that format. The power creep just seemed to accelerate away.
Is there video gameplay of Pepe deck? Like seeing the moves that made this deck so broken?
Underrated Duelist of the Roses soundtrack.
damn, i have been waiting for this ;)
Just found your channel and love your videos!
Surprised you didn't mention Spyral's resurgence and further bans when Magicians Souls was released. Wasn't exactly tier 0, but was ridiculous enough for Konami to hit it more.
Is that duelist of the roses soundtrack that I’m being distracted by? Such a lovely tune
That conclusion aged like milk (thanks tear 0)
Cool vid that hopefully wont be outdated with regional seasong starting today also what song plays at 2:49
Love your vids feep on the good work
You should do a tier 0.5 history, cause some of them were almost as bad lol, gouki, kashtira, triple super poly shaddoll, etc
Lmao like half decks? There 3 possibles tiers tier 0, tier 1 and tier 2 not tier 0,52222 or 0,53444
And then there was the deck to end all decks. All hail Tear 0
I would say spyrals weren't actually that strong. My view is that it's because mr4 crippled lots of meta decks and spyrals got a very good link card they did well. Also triple grinder golem and firewall dragon were cards that made any rogue deck meta. So adding those to an already strong meta deck would make it tier 0.
Adamancipator, Pepe, zoodiacs can beat spyrals. Those decks were stronger and had more competition to be a tier 0/tier 0.5 deck
Adamancipator also had weak competition because of the january and april 2020 banlists, and pepe isn't stronger either
2017 spyral wasn't better than modern decks because they're lacking modern staples, in a way 2020 spyral with a way weaker main deck was better than the tier 0 counterpart
I have no idea if it's good or bad luck but each time I duel a really annoying high teir deck I somehow manage to pull the best cards of that deck from packs on my first try. I pulled a Dark Dragoon when all I wanted was the tin
Spyral was my favorite deck because nobody saw the potential in the beginning but I did, ofcourse the support was crazy but still
Same, I was huge fan of the deck before it was meta. Drone was the first card ever that let's you look the top 5 cards and shuffle it in any order. It was crazy.
Part 3 of this please
if gigantic spright didnt restrict the summoning of using the effect of after just summoning level/rank/link 2 than it could be used for more than just its deck
Does anyone know the name of the song that plays aroud 2:30?
The only thing you got wrong here that the SPYRAL link was actually not an OCG import. It was part of the main set core of CIBR. This means we would have always gotten it when it came over to the TCG and not up to Konami TCG to decide if and when we would get it as some import.
This is strictly incorrect. At the time, TCG core sets were structured with slots 1-80 being identical between TCG and OCG, slots 0 and 81-89 reserved for TCG Premieres, and slots 90-99 reserved for OCG Imports.
SPYRAL Double Helix was released in Extra Pack 2017 in the OCG, similarly to how they released Beatrice prior, being an import set of TCG Exclusives with new support for those archetypes occasionally. We were never receiving that set in the TCG. We instead received the card in Circuit Break’s imports as set code CIBR-EN099, being the final of the allotted 10 import slots.
@TheLawYGO Oops. My mistake. I could have sworn it was part of the core of CIBR. Thanks for correcting me.
Great video 👍
Been waiting for this cause… zoo haha
What's the song that plays at 7:13?
Still got my pendulum magician deck baby
Looks like we need a part 3. Because Tears is the new teir 0 lol
I have returned from the future to announce the new tier, or rather, Tear 0 format
Is pepe (full power) a good deck in master rule 4 or 5 ?
No
You should make a 3rd part about Tear.
If I had to guess, the Albaz series of cards will be the next Tier 0 threat, mostly due to how diverse they are
Spright is tier 0 rn in ocg ,sharing the same tier with tearalament
Not sure about how spright goes in tcg without grass, but spright definitely would stomp the meta
@@annaxuldraugworc7832 you can't have two tier 0 decks at the same time
And tearlament doesn't even come close
Ocg spright at their peak did come very close though, having around 60% representation for like one week, but they also couldn't actually reach it
Expecting the next tier 0 format now with Ishizu Tearlaments
Already is. A few YCS already have 65%+ rep.
I like just finished watching the 1st part and the 2nd part was uploaded 40min ago🤩🤩
Oh yeah ai think a bunch of dracoslayer cards got re printed in genesis impact. Pendulums got a lot of support and reprints in that set
A upload from you is always good can’t wait to watch!
splight vs tearlament are gonna be like dragon ruler vs spellbook, do you remember? peperidge farm remembers.
Thanks you kind video man
Well done.
Looking back right before the pendulum monsters is when I quit yugioh. I tried to get back into it but things look a little too fast for me
Honorable mention: Volcanic Burn YCS Charleston, SC, USA and Batteryman.
Eversince MasterPeace was released. Every single one of my friends stopped playing Yugioh for years. The card was busted and have no counterplay once its on the field. That card for me was not intended to be named Master Peace as it brought frustration in all locals
Was Glad Beast classified as T0 or have you talked about them?
Never paid for yugioh cards and after this never will its a massive scam to think that Konami didn’t know this would happen. They release broken cards on purpose to make money.
So this video was made before Ishizu Tear then?
Thank you.
13:44 why tf was that clean as shit