The closest thing to a boss monster I can think of are big, flashy planeswalkers. While big monsters tend to end the game too quickly, or be absolutely underwhelming, a big planeswaller can be a powerful threat that wins over time as opposed to immediately, and can form the centerpiece of a deck.
@@MechanicusTV They have the same issue as other expensive, powerful cards. Either they are like emerkul and win the game, or the more forgettable ones just underwhelming. Not to say that they're not bosses, just that they feel different to me specifically than an appo or a baron.
Perfect example of this is Karn Liberated in Modern Tron. Comes down early, grinds your ass out and is big and splashy. Always felt right that the deck existed in that form, using urza lands to cast Karn ad the boss "monster"
One could argue this is part of why people enjoy the Commander format of MTG so much. Basically, your commander is "the boss" as the deck is built around it and what the 99/98 allows you to do becomes more dependent on what your "boss" can do for you and no matter what your opponents do it's the one/two card(s) that you always have access to.
Wouldn't it be arguable that boss monsters in MtG are just generally more generic than YGO? MtG isn't a stranger to deck strategies that build around a singular creature or card like putting down Amalia and using Explore triggers to board wipe or searching out specifically something like Blightsteel to swing for an almost instant win or summoning / cheating one of the many Eldrazi and oppressing the board so much that you win no matter what. It's not that boss monsters don't exist in MtG, it's that they're not as integral to the deck building concept as they are in YGO.
I'm inclined to agree. I pretty much exclusively play commander, but even there my commander isn't always the main reason someone loses or the game ends. I usually need a few pieces and in a lot of games my other creatures in the deck pull a lot of weight or end up being more integral to victory than the card the deck is technically built around. I think it's more down to the game speeds and the way yugioh is constructed vs the way magic is constructed. Magic has a lot of big strong nasty creatures you can use to cause pain, but between the resource system and slower pace it's more likely that either an answer comes out or you might need more to clench the win. Meanwhile with my more limited experience with modern yugioh, my boss monster is there to say out me, play around me, or die. I've actually managed some scary things despite playing a relatively weak archetype and all my boss monster really does is say "once per turn, someone picks up something and either puts it in their hand or back in the murder stack" and can only do that twice before he's completely out of gas and needs to be remade.
no, logs here gave the wrong idea in this video that a boss monster is restricted to archetypes in yugioh when its anything but, though the sentiment remains in fact 1 of yugioh’s biggest problems is other decks using another deck’s boss monster better then them like how VFD got itself banned because virtual world deck were summoning it faster and easier then intended in its actual archetype, red dragon archfiend king calamity got itself banned because of centur-ion abusing it in ways it was never intended to be used as the final straw that broke the camel’s back as this has already happen prior in another completely different archetype and everyone’s favorite synchro monster baronne de fleur… most people dont even realize it is a part of an archetype at all because of how irrelevant that is and simply see it as the de facto lvl 10 synchro monster yugioh has enough of a critical mass of generic boss monster that many people is clamoring for them to actually be locked to archetypes that konami has actually started banning some of them since last year
@@YukiFubuki.Only in tcg, you know that the solution of that is making in archetype boss monster stronger than the generic ones, like phantom of yubel. The generic ones are meant for weaker deck that need them, which means banning them is against the actual direction of the game which made for ocg format.
Being integral to your deck is entire point of boss monsters. If you can win without summoning your boss monster (outside of niche scenarios), then it's not a boss monster.
To add: The commander is not always considered the 'Boss' since some decks only use the cmdr. for the color identity, as a enabler or as a 'Bait' to the real cmdr. (the true card the deck is built around)
No it's just not. Commanders usually aren't like Chaos Emperor Dragon Envoy of the End. Emrakul the Aeons Torn is like Chaos Emperor Dragon Envoy of the End.
MTG always has boss monsters. From the early days with Shivan Dragon, through the crazy Eldrazi years with Emrakul, The Aeons Torn, to the crazy Planewalkers printed today.
One reason i think is how monsters and combat work differently in the two games. In Yugioh 1 Blues Eyes 3000 atk 2500 def could hold off an infinite number of Summoned Skull 2500 atk 1200 def. The attack stat when Blu eyes is in attack mode is all that matters. Also each Skull has to attack through Blu eyes. Im MTG Blu eyes would be a 6/5 facing off a S. Skull thats a 5/3. Blu eyes' defense, in this case toughness, matters as each Skull can trade with them. Now having just a couple more Skulls on the field puts massive pressure on the Blu eyes player. Yugioh allows you to ride one big creature to glory, MTG has had very few creatures that you cloud plop down and then procede to take them from 20 to 0.
theres also the fact that in ygo you HAVE to deal with the big boss monster to attack your opp directly, while in magic if you can summon more creatures you can just go around them
To be completely honest, I did end up getting into YuGiOh way more than MtG because of the monsters. Having something like Ultimate Conductor Tyranno or Thunder Dragon Colossus and building decks around them is pretty cool. Seeing a cool monster and building a deck around them, meta or not, is the big appeal of YuGiOh to me. Although I am slightly miffed that Master Duel banned Number 86 soon after I made a deck for it but hey.
A thing to mention about Magic's "combo" decks: In Yu Gi Oh the equivalent would be FTKs. And they are called FTKs because they literally win in the first turn, due to the different speed of the game. These decks are almost always banned or restricted, because it's something that neither Konami nor the players want to deal with
By all appearances from where I'm sitting, MtG doesn't have boss monsters because the boss monsters tend to get banned. :P See: Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
the closest Magic comes to flirting with Boss monster design is sets that introduce a new supported Kindred type for the limited environment and out of the lack of playables, you jsut throw it all into your Gishath, Sun's Avatar deck in 2018 and cross your fingers that you're not about to start the table breaking out in meme when you have to cast colossal dreadmaw.
Well, to be short... we kinda have that in MtG. Pretty much anything above 5 mana might be considered a Boss monster. Trying to deal with Progenitus or Emrakul? Its probably harder than dealing with most yugioh- Bossmonster. Even Yugioh-mechanics like Contact Fusion (chimeras), or special summoning the Bossmonster from your Deck (Spirit of the Night summoned through the three nightstalkers) has already existed in Mirage in 1996 (before the Yugioh cardgame even existed, they got the Copyright that year). And in the very first years of magic, Shivan dragons, Serra Angels or Sengir Vampires clearly had Iconic Boss-Monster energy. MtG-Cards are just less overhyped because there is no Anime to it.
The argument made in this video is that magic doesn't have boss monsters in the sense that yugioh has them. Ultimately hype or summoning mechanic isn't integral to the boss monster concept, as that can change a lot between examples, but magic doesn't tend to have decks built around one big creature that you can sit on to bring the victory. As another commenter pointed out, I think the cause of this is the combat rules; in magic you'd need multiple creatures to block multiple attacks, but in yugioh if you have one monster with bigger stats than anything your opponent has, they can't deal any damage to you or to the boss monster.
I argue that magic cards do have an equivalent of cards referencing cards by partial name: the card type. It's perfectly normal to say "Target goblin gains flying until end of turn" in MTG, because goblin is a card type. Yugioh tried to do that, but they've mostly given up on it.
I was thinking the same but specifically the more insular ones like slivers. Unlike goblins, who change drastically from plane to plane, slivers have always had ONE game plan. Amass enough slivers on board that their shared abilities good stuff their way to victory. Meanwhile goblins might go tall, wide, aristocrats, etc. to win.
Except that yugioh has that too, and it's not as irrelevant as you think. It was still appearing relatively recently in the tri-type decks and in shark and probably others I'm forgetting
Technically true but they just don't really feel THAT special, at least nowadays. Like they are "special" yet common. Not sure if this makes sense but that's how i feel lol
@ZEDEX252 well nowadays they do because wotc decided that they would try to get commander players more interested in packs if they just made 20 legendaries a set rather than 2 lol
Even if i slam ur-dragon or eldrazi it just doesn't reach that oomph like a boss monster in yugioh has. It feels like i just put yet another creature but this one's bigger
The mentality is definitely different. Magic's mana system bends removal to the question of "is this scary enough that I need to get rid of now." With YGO, "removal" is either a stifle effect that negates a tutor to disrupt the value train, a specific type of removal that gets around a boss monster's protections like using an effect to sacrifice it for your own summon, or forcing your opponent to banish it, or the classic board wipe if the meta's boss monsters don't have powerful death effects or Indestructible.
There are certainly cards that could count as boss monsters in MtG even if they are rare. I would say both Ormendahls or Withengar always felt fery yugioh-esque to me in their design - absurdly powerful, but only when you fully commit to their gameplay, and if we dilude the definition a bit, I would say cards like Tovolar, Bloodline Keeper or Voldaren pariah could count as well.
As someone who started in Yugioh and has been slowly working his way into Magic, I would say there's a reason I have gravitated towards relatively Kindred-based Commander decks. It feels enough like a balance of home and the new territory.
Magic tried boss monsters back in the day. Spirit of the Night could be summoned by sacrificing three specific monsters. We saw similar monsters with strange "summoning conditions" in Invasion and later Kamigawa, not to mention Phage as the nigh-ultimate "boss monster" in that it automatically kills someone when it hits them.
The closest thing to boss monsters in Magic I can think of was "champion a [thing]", but even then those cards only require you to play a certain type, and didn't require you to go all-in
Well technically a boss monster can be any big dude that is very hard to dealt with in certain decks. Like Dragoon was a Generic boss mosnter for example or Zeus is "kindof" a boss monster. We have some cards like that in magic but we dont use the term because our monsters are not as "hard to dealt with" like they are mean to be in YGO they are just big guys with great effects that are better if they sticky on board for 1 more turn of value or two.
Disclaimer: I've played Yu-Gi-Oh, but only looked up MTG. The closest thing I can see to boss monsters in MTG is Planeswalkers (as others have said) While you don't need many resources to put Planeswalkers on the board, you do need several turns to build up counters for their ultimate loyalty abilities, some of which look incredible powerful (I believe Jace can either make you win by decking yourself out, or deck your opponent out). Also Commanders could possibly be called boss monsters, since their effects must be potent enough to be chosen.
I would argue that the closest thing Magic has to boss monsters would be commanders especially in high synergy decks where the Commander is what makes the whole deck function
Constructed play, besides commander, in magic is rarely so centered on cards printed specifically to form a certain deck it seems. Limited I think gets much closer to having “boss monsters” than anything else because decks are usually centered around the best cards you open and what archetype printed into the set they best enable
For me, the difference has always been mechanical. In yugioh, if you're uninterrupted, your boss will come out, everytime. Mirrojade will hit the board. Thats by design. In magic, you can win the game quite easily without even seeing your big card. Cant count how many games ive won with UR murktide without having seen a single copy of murktide. Also by design. So im less attached to magic cards, but i have a bunch of favourite yugioh cards.
It does. Every card game does, Yugioh just has a show that it draws from to emphasize which ones are "important", but I'm pretty sure nobody will argue that things like the Eldrazi or Nico Bolas aren't
@@YukiFubuki. I think you are being obtuse on purpose. yugioh originally stemmed from from decks being centered around characters and their boss monster in the manga and show, and with time this is seeped into archetype design so that most archetypes have a "boss" that either is the payoff or further enables it.
@@YukiFubuki. It actually does, you forget its an japanese card game and anime series. We just didn't get the last 2 due to them not being confident it'll preform decently over here. That said, they're actively going out of their way to print more Blue-Eyes, Exodia, Yubel, and Metal Morph support so they clearly do intend to draw from the shows
@@ashemabahumat4173 rush duel is essentially a differnt game though and there has been more archetypes within the last couple years that has nothing to do with the anime
@@naiustheyetti sure but that doesnt change how that the last couple years has saw many more major archetypes and meta decks that has nothing to do with the anime
YGO goes for boss monsters and end boards, but on the opposite side of it, Magic has the concept of building around multiple, sometimes flexible, wincons, which doesn't exist in YGO.
modern yugioh bossmonster: needing multiple different cards to combo into a big monster. magics technically "boss monsters" are just single cards that have high mana costs and therefore time gated. (lets not talk about vintage first turn 8mana creature combos or stuff...)
I think one main difference with magic is how much resource you need to play a second copy of your "boss monster" Like let's say that Siege Rhino is your "boss monster". To play the first copy you need to draw 4 lands and the Siege Rhino. To play your second copy of it, you just need to draw it.
Yugioh has one monster I can think of that acts similarly : Dreaming Nemleria. To get the first one, you need to get it face-up in your Extra Deck (which usually involves getting it in your hand), then banish your entire Extra Deck (usually 15 cards) face-down, which would be kinda like using 15 mana over multiple turns. To get the second one, well you just reuse the first one (cause it was likely sent to your Extra Deck), and now your Extra Deck is likely only 5 cards.
Because our gamestate is a lot more healthy and sustainable, even though it may sacrifice some flashiness now and then. We did have boss monsters. Usually entire competetive seasons are named after them. Nobody actually wants an entire game based around turn 1 hogaks. Or you know, if they do, they go play yugioh instead. Different priorities at play here, all of them very valid
Can only agree with what others have mentioned. If you want boss monsters in MtG, play Commander - which due to being a multiplayer can be a fun format anyways. Another reason why MtG never had boss monsters the way Yu-Gi-Oh has is probably because in MtG, instead of being built around one specific monster, decks are built around a specific strat, which not always has to include monsters / your commander. Like infinite combos. Which I don't ever heard being a thing in Yu-Gi-Oh, except for that one famous scene where Yami used an infinite combo against that one rare hunter and his Slifer...? Never played it, am a MtG player. Oh, and another problem that might be why where are no boss monsters is the rotation. In the Standard format, sets rotate out of the current format. So, yeah, without reprints, you can play your boss monster maybe 2 years, then it rotates out. And most monsters that would be boss monsters would not be reprinted in any new set, and if they were, they'd have new effects, are basically new cards anyways. If I understand correctly, Yu-Gi-Oh does not have rotation, right? But rotation is another reason why I love Commander, cause for Commander, rotation does not count. You can play a card no matter how old it is. And in casual games, people aren't mad either if you play cards that may be banned for tournaments.
Infinite loops aren't inexistant in yugioh, but they are rare and usually both inconsistant and fragile. It's just more efficient to win in other ways. A fairly well known infinite loop in Yugioh is the Telefon loop, which can basically summon another Telefon from the grave (can technically summon other stuff, but that implies actually playing Morphtronics). There indeed is not rotation in Yugioh (even though it'd be convenient because that'd mean that archetypes get reprinted when support drops) There are decks in Yugioh built around certain strats, mostly Stun decks (known as Stax decks in mtg), combo decks that vomit as many generic boss monsters as possible and various FTK decks.
I personally think that the prevalence of Boss monsters and Archetypes are intrinsically linked. If you limit deck design to only function with a certain group of buddies, and one of those buddies is quite clearly **the boss** , then of course that boss is going to see a lot of play. There are a few points that allude to this in both the video and the comments, but it’s not as if magic is **without** set-defining creatures. The Elder Dragons from Tarkir, the Eldrazi Titans, the Gods of Theros and Amonket, to name a few. But you’re not obligated to play them, and sometimes, playing them in the groups that they represent in lore is a handicap.
Sometimes, but not always. Some people have commanders that are just value machines or combo enablers, and some players don't even use the commander for anything more than the colors it provides.
@@rickmel-q7m i guess if you look at from the perspective of "thing you want to play a lot" it's not ich different, but commanders aren't always game enders. Most of the time they sit in play for turns on end and are more a synergy piece rather than a closer
the reason is quite simple, "boss monster" or the proper term should be "summoned on field creatures that are win conditions" are rare in MtG due to a few reason 1) MTG has multiple different win cons to every colour arctype ie: mill, burn, beatdown, control, combo, alt win cons on the other hand YGO especially mordern are heavily skewed towards combo decks that are either OTK, FTK, bunch of negates tha might as well be called stun and when other strategies comes up he community becomes a bunch of bish baby and cry for the stratagy to be gutted (runick and sky striker comes to mind) or just isn't good enough but a gimmick (rip burn) 2) evry meta deck LITERALLY has in in arctype better pot of greed that get you the piece that you need and i'm not even talking about SS engage because the arctype is a control deck they should have draw engines, i'm talking about things like tear, poplar, kash, yubel, drytron, tri etc etc like WTF why the hell are combo arctype that can make a board with more then 2 interaction off 1 card starter give you at minimum +2 in board/card advantage doesn't have any restriction that arctype locks ???? 3) the boss monsters for the meta decks (and non meta decks) are all too easy to get out in YGO unless you're playing something like vylon, to put it simply in MTG terms YGO boss monster are all archbound ravager that not only a huge beat stick that's easy to summon but also have some kind of protection/disruption/removal/recurrence sometimes multiple abilities on it
WAT!?! no boss monsters? Have u not seen big creatures like "kozilek, the butcher of truth" "Ulamog, the lost gyre", "Emrakul, the aeons torn", "Iona, shield of emeria", "Progenitus", "Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant", "Sheoldred, the whispering one", Or even just a "Stormtide Leviathan"
So in a nutshell, monsters/creatures are far more important to one game than the other. "Small" monsters in Yugioh are usually going to either be interaction of some kind, like hand traps, or combo starters/pieces to try and help you get to the big monsters you want to bring out. I'm not saying small creatures in Magic aren't important, but they serve a very different purpose, and it's not to get that person to a 15/15 Eldrazi or something.
Magic ABSOLUTELY has boss monsters. You're telling me you look at a card like Sauron or Void Winnower and the board doesnt revolve around them until they get removed? And besides, anything that pushes you to win the game is a boss - Trident and Transcendent Dragion don't stop being the Tenpai bosses just because they only sticks around for a few seconds before the duel is won. That makes any board piece that enables a combo a boss, too, like Nadu.
It's not that MtG doesn't have boss monsters, its just YGO has Good monsters, and Monsters that are Mana with extra steps. Most monsters are just mechanical permission to play the actually impactful things, they're mana with extra steps.
Without having watched the video yet and having dabbled into Master Duel for about a month now my guess would be because Magic has way more and way stronger spot removal available, rendering any big scary monster useless unless it has a crazy etb effect or hexproof. Yugioh Boss Monsters on top of that also often have inbuilt protection either from battle or card effects or sometimes both. So really, removal in magic is too good and creatures too easy too remove at the moment.
nah a lot of the more recent boss monsters that debuted the last couple years dont have protection but simply retaliatory abilities or forms of recursion instead making them much more harder to get rid of or you dont want to get rid of them immediately because of the backlash to the game state it can cause
"Magic has way more and way stronger spot removal available" completly wrong. There is nothing more common than removal in YUGIOH that's why boss monsters, usually tribute one were considered bad until they added protection way later in the life of the game. If you tried to summon a blue eyes back in the days it just die to a miror force, sakuretsu armor or any other battle trap, might even get it stolen by a snatch steal. That never stopped casual from trying to use them.
Hum I'm not sure I'd say boss monsters are hard to summon. They could have been 15 years ago but modern yugioh facilitates boss monster sumoning in basically one turn.
True, but who actually played fusions back then outside of Magical Scientist FTK or cheating them out with the likes of Cyber-Stein or Instant Fusion or Future Fusion?
@@assasin096 Heros players, which a lot of casual liked because of jaden, cyber dragon/machine were the strongest type for years and played the extra deck. Fusion were played a bit in gx and a lot on a casual level because fusion are cool
I think Nadu is the total opposite. He wasn't the thing you ended your turn with. He was a combo piece that made you get all your lands out. That's not really the same thing.
Removal are insanely common in Yugioh too, the reason is most likely that peoples want to use big monster like the manga/anime, boss monsters were considered bad in yugioh until they added tons of protection, didnt stopped casual from playing them, even if it get popped by sakuretsu armor, miror force or any battle traps
So, to answer your question, "Magic doesn't have boss monsters, because the term boss monster is subjective and no one chooses to use it when playing magic". Probably because it's dumb. Lots of decks are focused around a single big ass monster with a game breaking mechanic. Your fault if you don't count them as "boss monsters".
because it does? what have you been smoking eldrazzi, progenitus, arguably phyrexians are villains not monsters but i'd sttill count them as bosses.... there are a lot... gearhulks.... i can go on for a dozen cycles or so of boss level monsters
combo decks that (for example that make one large guy and then puts an extra 10 auras on that card) in magic have boss monsters wtf are you talking about
far from it, 1 of yugioh’s biggest problem atm is how generic and accessible practically everything is that people actually want for “parasitic design” just so anything that came before or after isnt synergistic all the time
the reason that boss monsters dont exist in mtg is because you have chosen a definition where they do not exist in MTG. If you use archetype to define it, of course they dont exist. MTG doesn't have archetypes. if you instead define it by a card that the deck revolves around, then yes, MTG decks have boss monsters. Commander decks are the prime example, but other things exist
"If you're a Magic player who hangs out with people-"
Is that legal, can they do that?
i'm not playing card games to play against other *people* , what is this blasphemy
real magic players play against themselves
Magic the Gathering.
Gathering.
I be at my lgs playing every Friday and Wednesday
The closest thing to a boss monster I can think of are big, flashy planeswalkers. While big monsters tend to end the game too quickly, or be absolutely underwhelming, a big planeswaller can be a powerful threat that wins over time as opposed to immediately, and can form the centerpiece of a deck.
eldrazzi
@@MechanicusTV They have the same issue as other expensive, powerful cards. Either they are like emerkul and win the game, or the more forgettable ones just underwhelming.
Not to say that they're not bosses, just that they feel different to me specifically than an appo or a baron.
commander
Perfect example of this is Karn Liberated in Modern Tron. Comes down early, grinds your ass out and is big and splashy. Always felt right that the deck existed in that form, using urza lands to cast Karn ad the boss "monster"
I would count any of the 5 color Slivers as boss monsters.
One could argue this is part of why people enjoy the Commander format of MTG so much. Basically, your commander is "the boss" as the deck is built around it and what the 99/98 allows you to do becomes more dependent on what your "boss" can do for you and no matter what your opponents do it's the one/two card(s) that you always have access to.
don't forget companions. Most Commanders tend to be an engine or "do the thing" rather than an end board/win the game piece from my experience.
@@wickederebus in other words: most commanders are the card that wins the game for their decks :)
Wouldn't it be arguable that boss monsters in MtG are just generally more generic than YGO? MtG isn't a stranger to deck strategies that build around a singular creature or card like putting down Amalia and using Explore triggers to board wipe or searching out specifically something like Blightsteel to swing for an almost instant win or summoning / cheating one of the many Eldrazi and oppressing the board so much that you win no matter what.
It's not that boss monsters don't exist in MtG, it's that they're not as integral to the deck building concept as they are in YGO.
I'm inclined to agree. I pretty much exclusively play commander, but even there my commander isn't always the main reason someone loses or the game ends. I usually need a few pieces and in a lot of games my other creatures in the deck pull a lot of weight or end up being more integral to victory than the card the deck is technically built around.
I think it's more down to the game speeds and the way yugioh is constructed vs the way magic is constructed. Magic has a lot of big strong nasty creatures you can use to cause pain, but between the resource system and slower pace it's more likely that either an answer comes out or you might need more to clench the win.
Meanwhile with my more limited experience with modern yugioh, my boss monster is there to say out me, play around me, or die. I've actually managed some scary things despite playing a relatively weak archetype and all my boss monster really does is say "once per turn, someone picks up something and either puts it in their hand or back in the murder stack" and can only do that twice before he's completely out of gas and needs to be remade.
no, logs here gave the wrong idea in this video that a boss monster is restricted to archetypes in yugioh when its anything but, though the sentiment remains
in fact 1 of yugioh’s biggest problems is other decks using another deck’s boss monster better then them like how VFD got itself banned because virtual world deck were summoning it faster and easier then intended in its actual archetype, red dragon archfiend king calamity got itself banned because of centur-ion abusing it in ways it was never intended to be used as the final straw that broke the camel’s back as this has already happen prior in another completely different archetype and everyone’s favorite synchro monster baronne de fleur… most people dont even realize it is a part of an archetype at all because of how irrelevant that is and simply see it as the de facto lvl 10 synchro monster
yugioh has enough of a critical mass of generic boss monster that many people is clamoring for them to actually be locked to archetypes that konami has actually started banning some of them since last year
@@YukiFubuki.Only in tcg, you know that the solution of that is making in archetype boss monster stronger than the generic ones, like phantom of yubel. The generic ones are meant for weaker deck that need them, which means banning them is against the actual direction of the game which made for ocg format.
@@r3zaful citations needed
Being integral to your deck is entire point of boss monsters. If you can win without summoning your boss monster (outside of niche scenarios), then it's not a boss monster.
In Magic's Commander format, it usually is VERY fitting to call the Commander as the deck's boss monster as the deck can revolve around it.
To add: The commander is not always considered the 'Boss' since some decks only use the cmdr. for the color identity, as a enabler or as a 'Bait' to the real cmdr. (the true card the deck is built around)
Can't agree to with this assessment.
Even the commander isn't the boss necessarily and could be just the engine in the deck or be a value enabler.
Ahh yes my boss monster Frodo Baggins
No it's just not. Commanders usually aren't like Chaos Emperor Dragon Envoy of the End.
Emrakul the Aeons Torn is like Chaos Emperor Dragon Envoy of the End.
MTG always has boss monsters. From the early days with Shivan Dragon, through the crazy Eldrazi years with Emrakul, The Aeons Torn, to the crazy Planewalkers printed today.
One reason i think is how monsters and combat work differently in the two games.
In Yugioh 1 Blues Eyes 3000 atk 2500 def could hold off an infinite number of Summoned Skull 2500 atk 1200 def. The attack stat when Blu eyes is in attack mode is all that matters. Also each Skull has to attack through Blu eyes.
Im MTG Blu eyes would be a 6/5 facing off a S. Skull thats a 5/3. Blu eyes' defense, in this case toughness, matters as each Skull can trade with them. Now having just a couple more Skulls on the field puts massive pressure on the Blu eyes player.
Yugioh allows you to ride one big creature to glory, MTG has had very few creatures that you cloud plop down and then procede to take them from 20 to 0.
theres also the fact that in ygo you HAVE to deal with the big boss monster to attack your opp directly, while in magic if you can summon more creatures you can just go around them
To be completely honest, I did end up getting into YuGiOh way more than MtG because of the monsters. Having something like Ultimate Conductor Tyranno or Thunder Dragon Colossus and building decks around them is pretty cool.
Seeing a cool monster and building a deck around them, meta or not, is the big appeal of YuGiOh to me.
Although I am slightly miffed that Master Duel banned Number 86 soon after I made a deck for it but hey.
It needed it.
On the contrary: one thing that I really liked about magic is that you could even have decks without creatures and that spells were so good
A thing to mention about Magic's "combo" decks: In Yu Gi Oh the equivalent would be FTKs. And they are called FTKs because they literally win in the first turn, due to the different speed of the game. These decks are almost always banned or restricted, because it's something that neither Konami nor the players want to deal with
MtG also has FTK or even 0TK, where you win on your opponent's first turn.
yeah combo in mtg is essentially magical library exodia, and combo in yugioh is essentially nondeterministic storm, if it was deterministic
@@awesumsauce24 "nondeterministic storm if it was deterministic", so, deterministic storm ?
I really like the seeings videos like this with comparison between to dirent tcgs and have both fandons interact
Depending on the in MTG limited format perspective, sign post cards tend to be the boss cards. They provide the idea of what to build around.
Have you forgotten about BFM?
I feel like Craterhoof Behemoth fits the description very well.
It gives the same vibes as borrelend did. It’s a generic finisher but it forces people to do some cool stuff to get to it
By all appearances from where I'm sitting, MtG doesn't have boss monsters because the boss monsters tend to get banned. :P
See: Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
the closest Magic comes to flirting with Boss monster design is sets that introduce a new supported Kindred type for the limited environment and out of the lack of playables, you jsut throw it all into your Gishath, Sun's Avatar deck in 2018 and cross your fingers that you're not about to start the table breaking out in meme when you have to cast colossal dreadmaw.
Is Craterhoof Behemoth not a boss monster?
Is Marit Lage not a boss monster?
Well, to be short... we kinda have that in MtG. Pretty much anything above 5 mana might be considered a Boss monster. Trying to deal with Progenitus or Emrakul? Its probably harder than dealing with most yugioh- Bossmonster. Even Yugioh-mechanics like Contact Fusion (chimeras), or special summoning the Bossmonster from your Deck (Spirit of the Night summoned through the three nightstalkers) has already existed in Mirage in 1996 (before the Yugioh cardgame even existed, they got the Copyright that year). And in the very first years of magic, Shivan dragons, Serra Angels or Sengir Vampires clearly had Iconic Boss-Monster energy. MtG-Cards are just less overhyped because there is no Anime to it.
The argument made in this video is that magic doesn't have boss monsters in the sense that yugioh has them. Ultimately hype or summoning mechanic isn't integral to the boss monster concept, as that can change a lot between examples, but magic doesn't tend to have decks built around one big creature that you can sit on to bring the victory. As another commenter pointed out, I think the cause of this is the combat rules; in magic you'd need multiple creatures to block multiple attacks, but in yugioh if you have one monster with bigger stats than anything your opponent has, they can't deal any damage to you or to the boss monster.
9:50 technically, the first extra deck summoning method were fusion monsters
I always call the card Atraxa, Grand Unifier a YGO boss monster due to the length of text and power on one card
I argue that magic cards do have an equivalent of cards referencing cards by partial name: the card type. It's perfectly normal to say "Target goblin gains flying until end of turn" in MTG, because goblin is a card type. Yugioh tried to do that, but they've mostly given up on it.
I was thinking the same but specifically the more insular ones like slivers. Unlike goblins, who change drastically from plane to plane, slivers have always had ONE game plan. Amass enough slivers on board that their shared abilities good stuff their way to victory. Meanwhile goblins might go tall, wide, aristocrats, etc. to win.
Except that yugioh has that too, and it's not as irrelevant as you think. It was still appearing relatively recently in the tri-type decks and in shark and probably others I'm forgetting
technically legendary creatures kind of count as boss monsters because you can only have creature with that name on the field
Technically true but they just don't really feel THAT special, at least nowadays. Like they are "special" yet common. Not sure if this makes sense but that's how i feel lol
@@ZEDEX252 facts
@@ZEDEX252 just like yugioh's normal summon and special summon
@ZEDEX252 well nowadays they do because wotc decided that they would try to get commander players more interested in packs if they just made 20 legendaries a set rather than 2 lol
Well, you could have made multiple Apollousa's, Baronne's, and Savage Dragon's in one turn, but they are all banned now.
Even if i slam ur-dragon or eldrazi it just doesn't reach that oomph like a boss monster in yugioh has. It feels like i just put yet another creature but this one's bigger
The mentality is definitely different. Magic's mana system bends removal to the question of "is this scary enough that I need to get rid of now." With YGO, "removal" is either a stifle effect that negates a tutor to disrupt the value train, a specific type of removal that gets around a boss monster's protections like using an effect to sacrifice it for your own summon, or forcing your opponent to banish it, or the classic board wipe if the meta's boss monsters don't have powerful death effects or Indestructible.
There are certainly cards that could count as boss monsters in MtG even if they are rare. I would say both Ormendahls or Withengar always felt fery yugioh-esque to me in their design - absurdly powerful, but only when you fully commit to their gameplay, and if we dilude the definition a bit, I would say cards like Tovolar, Bloodline Keeper or Voldaren pariah could count as well.
@@tratanlightbreaker6029My first idea of a boss monster in MtG is Progenitus
Okay, but Avacyn
Haven't watched the video yet but the thumbnail made Emrakul cry
Fizzles to spell exile, dies to Doom Blade. Unplayable trash.
As someone who started in Yugioh and has been slowly working his way into Magic, I would say there's a reason I have gravitated towards relatively Kindred-based Commander decks. It feels enough like a balance of home and the new territory.
My takeaway from this is Commander players would like Yu-Gi-Oh more than they'd think.
I literally left yugioh for commander and didn't look back. It's not a matter of having not tried it. Modern yugioh is the pits. 😅
Pretty sure commander player want to play more than 2 turns
Pretty much, the extra deck and the commander mechanics tickle the same kind of gameplay fantasy
Valgavoth terror eater wants to know your location
I was expecting something like the raid mechanic from the old Warcraft tcg or the thing they’re doing with lorcana where there’s a boss to defeat
In Magic the closest concept to a boss monster is either a commander or a Big cost creature spell that have requirements to cast.
Magic tried boss monsters back in the day. Spirit of the Night could be summoned by sacrificing three specific monsters. We saw similar monsters with strange "summoning conditions" in Invasion and later Kamigawa, not to mention Phage as the nigh-ultimate "boss monster" in that it automatically kills someone when it hits them.
I would say Vein Ripper was a boss monster in pioneer, but it was so busted that they had to ban the only way to play it efficiently.
Craterhoof Behemoth: "Am I a joke to you?"
The closest thing to boss monsters in Magic I can think of was "champion a [thing]", but even then those cards only require you to play a certain type, and didn't require you to go all-in
because why have a boss monster 13/13 Emrakul, the Promised End when you can have 13 1/1 squirrels?
Well technically a boss monster can be any big dude that is very hard to dealt with in certain decks. Like Dragoon was a Generic boss mosnter for example or Zeus is "kindof" a boss monster. We have some cards like that in magic but we dont use the term because our monsters are not as "hard to dealt with" like they are mean to be in YGO they are just big guys with great effects that are better if they sticky on board for 1 more turn of value or two.
Disclaimer: I've played Yu-Gi-Oh, but only looked up MTG.
The closest thing I can see to boss monsters in MTG is Planeswalkers (as others have said)
While you don't need many resources to put Planeswalkers on the board, you do need several turns to build up counters for their ultimate loyalty abilities, some of which look incredible powerful (I believe Jace can either make you win by decking yourself out, or deck your opponent out).
Also Commanders could possibly be called boss monsters, since their effects must be potent enough to be chosen.
Angel, Sphinx, Demon. Dragon, Beast. Those in the range of 5ish mana are what id consider boss-like.
I would argue that the closest thing Magic has to boss monsters would be commanders especially in high synergy decks where the Commander is what makes the whole deck function
Constructed play, besides commander, in magic is rarely so centered on cards printed specifically to form a certain deck it seems. Limited I think gets much closer to having “boss monsters” than anything else because decks are usually centered around the best cards you open and what archetype printed into the set they best enable
just want to clarify that i dont really play modern but....
psychic boss frog kinda fits the bill
ngl, "psychic boss frog" goes hard as a name.
@@dudono1744there's a ton of good band names in Magic, though there are even more in Yugioh. Man-Eater Bug would rip.
For me, the difference has always been mechanical. In yugioh, if you're uninterrupted, your boss will come out, everytime. Mirrojade will hit the board. Thats by design.
In magic, you can win the game quite easily without even seeing your big card. Cant count how many games ive won with UR murktide without having seen a single copy of murktide. Also by design. So im less attached to magic cards, but i have a bunch of favourite yugioh cards.
It does. Every card game does, Yugioh just has a show that it draws from to emphasize which ones are "important", but I'm pretty sure nobody will argue that things like the Eldrazi or Nico Bolas aren't
yugioh hasnt had a ‘show’ to draw from for half a decade already and the current meta decks barely even has anything to do with the show or at all
@@YukiFubuki. I think you are being obtuse on purpose. yugioh originally stemmed from from decks being centered around characters and their boss monster in the manga and show, and with time this is seeped into archetype design so that most archetypes have a "boss" that either is the payoff or further enables it.
@@YukiFubuki. It actually does, you forget its an japanese card game and anime series. We just didn't get the last 2 due to them not being confident it'll preform decently over here. That said, they're actively going out of their way to print more Blue-Eyes, Exodia, Yubel, and Metal Morph support so they clearly do intend to draw from the shows
@@ashemabahumat4173 rush duel is essentially a differnt game though and there has been more archetypes within the last couple years that has nothing to do with the anime
@@naiustheyetti sure but that doesnt change how that the last couple years has saw many more major archetypes and meta decks that has nothing to do with the anime
Oh this video is perfect. I just started learning magic after playing yugioh for so long and it’s so strange. I’m still trying to figure stuff out
Ah yes, the old Azorious control deck. aka, beating people down with brute force card advantage.
YGO goes for boss monsters and end boards, but on the opposite side of it, Magic has the concept of building around multiple, sometimes flexible, wincons, which doesn't exist in YGO.
modern yugioh bossmonster: needing multiple different cards to combo into a big monster.
magics technically "boss monsters" are just single cards that have high mana costs and therefore time gated. (lets not talk about vintage first turn 8mana creature combos or stuff...)
The one ring is the boss monster
Closest thing that comes to mind for me at least are Eldrazi, but even those are manageable.
I think one main difference with magic is how much resource you need to play a second copy of your "boss monster"
Like let's say that Siege Rhino is your "boss monster". To play the first copy you need to draw 4 lands and the Siege Rhino. To play your second copy of it, you just need to draw it.
Yugioh has one monster I can think of that acts similarly : Dreaming Nemleria. To get the first one, you need to get it face-up in your Extra Deck (which usually involves getting it in your hand), then banish your entire Extra Deck (usually 15 cards) face-down, which would be kinda like using 15 mana over multiple turns. To get the second one, well you just reuse the first one (cause it was likely sent to your Extra Deck), and now your Extra Deck is likely only 5 cards.
counterpoint: TRON
Meld cards are bascially the boss monsters, they're just not insanely powerful making them seem weak by comparison.
Because our gamestate is a lot more healthy and sustainable, even though it may sacrifice some flashiness now and then.
We did have boss monsters. Usually entire competetive seasons are named after them.
Nobody actually wants an entire game based around turn 1 hogaks.
Or you know, if they do, they go play yugioh instead.
Different priorities at play here, all of them very valid
Can only agree with what others have mentioned. If you want boss monsters in MtG, play Commander - which due to being a multiplayer can be a fun format anyways. Another reason why MtG never had boss monsters the way Yu-Gi-Oh has is probably because in MtG, instead of being built around one specific monster, decks are built around a specific strat, which not always has to include monsters / your commander. Like infinite combos. Which I don't ever heard being a thing in Yu-Gi-Oh, except for that one famous scene where Yami used an infinite combo against that one rare hunter and his Slifer...? Never played it, am a MtG player. Oh, and another problem that might be why where are no boss monsters is the rotation. In the Standard format, sets rotate out of the current format. So, yeah, without reprints, you can play your boss monster maybe 2 years, then it rotates out. And most monsters that would be boss monsters would not be reprinted in any new set, and if they were, they'd have new effects, are basically new cards anyways. If I understand correctly, Yu-Gi-Oh does not have rotation, right? But rotation is another reason why I love Commander, cause for Commander, rotation does not count. You can play a card no matter how old it is. And in casual games, people aren't mad either if you play cards that may be banned for tournaments.
Infinite loops aren't inexistant in yugioh, but they are rare and usually both inconsistant and fragile. It's just more efficient to win in other ways. A fairly well known infinite loop in Yugioh is the Telefon loop, which can basically summon another Telefon from the grave (can technically summon other stuff, but that implies actually playing Morphtronics).
There indeed is not rotation in Yugioh (even though it'd be convenient because that'd mean that archetypes get reprinted when support drops)
There are decks in Yugioh built around certain strats, mostly Stun decks (known as Stax decks in mtg), combo decks that vomit as many generic boss monsters as possible and various FTK decks.
There's a couple eldrazi adjacent creatures that merge together into a bigger monster
I personally think that the prevalence of Boss monsters and Archetypes are intrinsically linked. If you limit deck design to only function with a certain group of buddies, and one of those buddies is quite clearly **the boss** , then of course that boss is going to see a lot of play. There are a few points that allude to this in both the video and the comments, but it’s not as if magic is **without** set-defining creatures. The Elder Dragons from Tarkir, the Eldrazi Titans, the Gods of Theros and Amonket, to name a few. But you’re not obligated to play them, and sometimes, playing them in the groups that they represent in lore is a handicap.
Wouldn't that be a commander? The Boss of the deck?
Sometimes, but not always. Some people have commanders that are just value machines or combo enablers, and some players don't even use the commander for anything more than the colors it provides.
@@zakbrooks7354 so how is that different from yugioh?
@@rickmel-q7m i guess if you look at from the perspective of "thing you want to play a lot" it's not ich different, but commanders aren't always game enders. Most of the time they sit in play for turns on end and are more a synergy piece rather than a closer
@@zakbrooks7354 i don't think you know much about yugioh boss monsters if you think they're "game enders"
I hear "mtg boss monster" and think "Emrakul, the Eons Torn"
It's your commander. You're welcome.
Back when I played magic Aetherling was my boss monster, if that thing resolved it was over
Emrakul the Aeons Torn.
THE boss monster.
the reason is quite simple, "boss monster" or the proper term should be "summoned on field creatures that are win conditions" are rare in MtG due to a few reason
1) MTG has multiple different win cons to every colour arctype ie: mill, burn, beatdown, control, combo, alt win cons on the other hand YGO especially mordern are heavily skewed towards combo decks that are either OTK, FTK, bunch of negates tha might as well be called stun
and when other strategies comes up he community becomes a bunch of bish baby and cry for the stratagy to be gutted (runick and sky striker comes to mind) or just isn't good enough but a gimmick (rip burn)
2) evry meta deck LITERALLY has in in arctype better pot of greed that get you the piece that you need and i'm not even talking about SS engage because the arctype is a control deck they should have draw engines, i'm talking about things like tear, poplar, kash, yubel, drytron, tri etc etc
like WTF why the hell are combo arctype that can make a board with more then 2 interaction off 1 card starter give you at minimum +2 in board/card advantage doesn't have any restriction that arctype locks ????
3) the boss monsters for the meta decks (and non meta decks) are all too easy to get out in YGO unless you're playing something like vylon, to put it simply in MTG terms YGO boss monster are all archbound ravager that not only a huge beat stick that's easy to summon but also have some kind of protection/disruption/removal/recurrence sometimes multiple abilities on it
If Etali isn't a boss monster, I don't know what is.
from the outside looking in it feels like commanders are the closest thing to boss monsters in magic. Granted that is specific to commander format.
WAT!?! no boss monsters?
Have u not seen big creatures like
"kozilek, the butcher of truth"
"Ulamog, the lost gyre",
"Emrakul, the aeons torn",
"Iona, shield of emeria",
"Progenitus",
"Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant",
"Sheoldred, the whispering one",
Or even just a "Stormtide Leviathan"
The Eldrazi Titans disagree
Ansalask from duskmorne feels very bossmonster-y
So in a nutshell, monsters/creatures are far more important to one game than the other. "Small" monsters in Yugioh are usually going to either be interaction of some kind, like hand traps, or combo starters/pieces to try and help you get to the big monsters you want to bring out. I'm not saying small creatures in Magic aren't important, but they serve a very different purpose, and it's not to get that person to a 15/15 Eldrazi or something.
Depends on the creature. Like there are those elves that tap for mana equal to their power
@@TheMightyBattleSquid Oh yeah, I forgot about "mana dorks".
Meld is also kind of like "boss monsters"
Magic ABSOLUTELY has boss monsters. You're telling me you look at a card like Sauron or Void Winnower and the board doesnt revolve around them until they get removed? And besides, anything that pushes you to win the game is a boss - Trident and Transcendent Dragion don't stop being the Tenpai bosses just because they only sticks around for a few seconds before the duel is won. That makes any board piece that enables a combo a boss, too, like Nadu.
Now a days the boss monsters are more like the stakeholders instead of being a single CEO of the company.
It's not that MtG doesn't have boss monsters, its just YGO has Good monsters, and Monsters that are Mana with extra steps. Most monsters are just mechanical permission to play the actually impactful things, they're mana with extra steps.
The real boss monsters in magic are probably control finishers like Aetherling.
Our boss monsters are called "win cons"
the closest thing to a boss monster is a game of Archenemy
Yes we do, we call them Archenemy and turn 0-5 players or anyone with infinite combos.
The Unspeakable: “Am I a joke to you?”
Without having watched the video yet and having dabbled into Master Duel for about a month now my guess would be because Magic has way more and way stronger spot removal available, rendering any big scary monster useless unless it has a crazy etb effect or hexproof. Yugioh Boss Monsters on top of that also often have inbuilt protection either from battle or card effects or sometimes both. So really, removal in magic is too good and creatures too easy too remove at the moment.
nah a lot of the more recent boss monsters that debuted the last couple years dont have protection but simply retaliatory abilities or forms of recursion instead making them much more harder to get rid of or you dont want to get rid of them immediately because of the backlash to the game state it can cause
"Magic has way more and way stronger spot removal available" completly wrong. There is nothing more common than removal in YUGIOH that's why boss monsters, usually tribute one were considered bad until they added protection way later in the life of the game. If you tried to summon a blue eyes back in the days it just die to a miror force, sakuretsu armor or any other battle trap, might even get it stolen by a snatch steal. That never stopped casual from trying to use them.
Hum I'm not sure I'd say boss monsters are hard to summon. They could have been 15 years ago but modern yugioh facilitates boss monster sumoning in basically one turn.
Progenitus, Eldrazi titans and God cards are boss monsters though
meld creatures. I would argue misra lost to phyrexia is a boss monster
What format do you play most, Manalogs?
Also I think Emrakul is the closest thing to a boss monster. It ends the game.
you can't convince ulamog isn't a boss monster
It's because Magic doesn't summon monsters. They have creature spells instead.
Um... the FIRST extra deck summoning mechanic was Fusions, not Synchros 😅
It was literally called the Fusion deck until Synchros were added.
True, but who actually played fusions back then outside of Magical Scientist FTK or cheating them out with the likes of Cyber-Stein or Instant Fusion or Future Fusion?
@@assasin096 Heros players, which a lot of casual liked because of jaden, cyber dragon/machine were the strongest type for years and played the extra deck. Fusion were played a bit in gx and a lot on a casual level because fusion are cool
@@assasin096 "who played fusions aside from the ones playing fusions?"
@@axelt6312 don't forget future fusion + dragon mirror shenanigans with FGD/Five Headed Dragon
Because the player is the boss monster
I thought the boss monsters were the commander
Tell that to when someone slams down emrakul
wasn't nadu the boss mosnter of nadu decks in modern a few months ago? why wasn't the blue djinn a boss monster in mono blue tempo like a year ago?
I think Nadu is the total opposite. He wasn't the thing you ended your turn with. He was a combo piece that made you get all your lands out. That's not really the same thing.
I just call them "win cons"
Three words: Dies to Removal
Removal are insanely common in Yugioh too, the reason is most likely that peoples want to use big monster like the manga/anime, boss monsters were considered bad in yugioh until they added tons of protection, didnt stopped casual from playing them, even if it get popped by sakuretsu armor, miror force or any battle traps
So, to answer your question, "Magic doesn't have boss monsters, because the term boss monster is subjective and no one chooses to use it when playing magic". Probably because it's dumb. Lots of decks are focused around a single big ass monster with a game breaking mechanic. Your fault if you don't count them as "boss monsters".
emrakul: am i a joke to you?
because it does? what have you been smoking eldrazzi, progenitus, arguably phyrexians are villains not monsters but i'd sttill count them as bosses.... there are a lot... gearhulks.... i can go on for a dozen cycles or so of boss level monsters
Dies to Doom Blade
combo decks that (for example that make one large guy and then puts an extra 10 auras on that card) in magic have boss monsters wtf are you talking about
Amazing!!!
Archetypes in Yugioh are what magic designers call "parasitic mechanics" and are considered bad game design.
far from it, 1 of yugioh’s biggest problem atm is how generic and accessible practically everything is that people actually want for “parasitic design” just so anything that came before or after isnt synergistic all the time
the bosses of MTG are commanders
Planeswalkers...
Magic players barely hang out with other magic players
Commander is the boss monster
the reason that boss monsters dont exist in mtg is because you have chosen a definition where they do not exist in MTG.
If you use archetype to define it, of course they dont exist. MTG doesn't have archetypes.
if you instead define it by a card that the deck revolves around, then yes, MTG decks have boss monsters. Commander decks are the prime example, but other things exist