Hot Take: I don't hate hand traps. I think that the ability to have a deck that has 20+ hand traps due to having 8+ 1 card starters is what I don't like. I had no problems with kuriboh, Effect Veiler, Gorz, battle fader, DD Crow, etc when decks weren't going full stupid with 8+ 1 card full combo options.
@samuelgonzalez-tovar3936 I agree 100% that's what differentiates yugioh from other TCGs. I do wish Konami prints more cards similar to called by and crossout designator to help and try and find a balance between the 2.
@@kingscourge6031 Magic had a card named Force of Will. You could counter a spell by paying 1 life and exiling another blue card from the hand. But this is wiki trivia TBH.
@@PurpleWarlock dam so what if there was a rule or card where you pay half your points skip your next draw phase your opponent can’t activate any effect for the rest of your turn
Hand traps are fine when you have space for like 9 of them. The problem is that people often get to spend HALF their deck space if not MORE on non-engine and hand traps. The problem is that deck engines are so small now because EVERYTHING is a 1 card starter so people have SPACE to run 18+ non-engine.
Yup the problem is the speed of Yugioh 3.0 not hand traps. When decks had 1 and half and 2 card combos running 9 handtraps or all gas was viable. Now top decks run 5 1 card starters allowing them to run 12 - 15 handtraps leading to 2 handtraps in hand on average which feels sacky.
I think most people don't hate handtraps, they just hate they have to play them. Half your deck isn't even your deck, it's just a bunch of shit that you shouldn't need to play that you have to play regardless if you ever want to have a snowball's chance in hell at winning if you lose the die roll.
yeah, having half of your deck be nothing but hand traps is what I dislike about them, and being able to side in more hand traps is also a big no from me.
you do understand most people already left the game and only the meta toxic sheep player stayed to see another day and handtraps and pece off shit banlist is the reason
@@RyuherzI stay. Was playing rogues for months. Now I try to complete my stun deck. I even shove some floodgates and stun on my harpies, atlantean and more rogue deck that I had played earlier before. For the sake of giving middle f to all combo SC UM.
Hand Traps as a mechanic are cool. I just hate that the best hand traps are negates (by definition anti-interaction) and floodgates. I also hate that decks do so much that if left unchecked, they'll create unbreakable boards - which makes Hand Traps necessary. Game design team should focus on other more fun interactions and generally lower the ceiling of endboards. Going Second should not be a death sentence.
How are negates anti-interaction, you are literally interacting with your opponent to shut down a specific play. It's not like there isn't counter play to ash either, baiting it out, called by, having general negates, building a deck that can survive one negate, etc.
@@applebabbleextra5099This. A one for one trade with Ash for a searcher is a perfectly fine interaction. Its even more fine when you realize the player with Ash actually goes minus if they tried to Ash a normal summon because the opponent still has a monster. Ghost Ogre = interaction Ghost Mourner = by definition anti-interaction 😂😂😂 I agree that the ceiling of endboards should be much lower. But the take on handtraps is just bizarre.
@@Goldenfire49 what is funny is that a lot of people say it's because of Maxx C, but in truth Ash is the modern day equal to Mystical space typhoon. Every deck is going to run it because it's that good.
No offense intended here, however I feel like if you can't play through an ash blossom, you might want to reconsider what you're doing with your deck. It's not really that big a deal. You got this Broseph
Welcome to Modern YGO. No handtrap? GG opponent combos off, FTK's me or sets up 6 negate board. If your pet deck that's far from meta and has what, little modern support? gets handtrapped and your 1-2 card starter gets stopped? GG. I'm dead next turn.
I would love to see a deck construction restriction. Like Cardfight Vanguard, certain triggers you can only have a certain number to balance the game play. Having 12 to 15 hand traps is just crazy
@@itfigurescomics6704forced to run out gas. Hand trap needed because now you can play 1 cards into 20+ cards and 10 minutes combo with end board including banish, negates, immune to destruction etc. It forced you to think what best or effective moves instead of spamming nonstop summoning to get your boss monsters on your board. If the game stop to 4-6 combos per turn. 0 hand trap needed. But since 1 cards can pull 20+ combos today. Hand trap is not only needed, but a must have.
@purewhiteloverbizarrejelly tbf vanguard only got the energy system last year. It was still perfectly fine and balanced before that. It just added another fun layer of complexity to the game once added in.
5:00 Kuriboh crawled so that love/hate moments like this can walk, then run, then go full blown sprinting, fleeing as if they think something is encroaching in distance, wanting to end it. AAAAAHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
handtraps are just a bad problem solving plan: the problem: too powerful combo and monsters effect, especially negates “”solution”” konami came to: leaving combos untouched BUT make your opponent able to interrupt them with generic cards that everyone will need to play in order to have a chance (and that will end up even composing most of your main deck, leaving personal takes and spicy techs even more impossibile to play seriously). the REAL (and simpler, direct) solution konami should’ve came to: just fix the damn broken omni negate effects and infinite combos 🤦🏻♂️
The power creep in yugioh and the rate is actually insane. I stopped playing around 2023, a friend still plays competitively and she will tell me/show me the meta of formats. The speed and amount of 1 card starts now compared to just 2 years ago is crazy
i have 2 problems with the current design philosophy of hand traps 1: aside from discarding themselves, they have no cost. no additonal discards, life point costs, or skipped draw/battle phases. 2: they should only be usable if you have no cards on the field. if you have an established board full of negates and a 6k atk Nutbuster Assault Charge Dragon on the board, you dont need Ash Blossom.
Honestly, I don't see Hand-Traps as a unique problem, just another byproduct that circles back around to the ongoing core issue, that being the growing craziness of the game and what decks/strategies are capable of when left unchecked
@@SoraBell 100% I don't care about hand traps up until my opponents has 5 of them in their starting hand. Like going up against a single Gorz/1-3 veilers is 100% fine but 20 or so hand traps is not.
The real reason people don't like them usually is because we'll get a format we're a deck only needs less than 20 cards for an engine and people just fill the rest of their deck with hand traps
Once tenpai came out I stopped playing till the end of the year the amount of people at my locals that played snake eyes and tenpai were trying so hard to play less engine just to make sure their opponents wouldn't be able to play a single card only for them to draw their one engine piece that gave them access to their whole deck
I love handtraps and the utility of them. I also hate handtraps because Yugioh has become too dependent on needing to play them. I've played in a tournament last year where every non archetype handtrap was banned. Gamma was still legal because it was part of an archetype. It was the most fun I ever had. Snake-Eyes Fire King without handtraps is nuts.
Hand traps are a bad solution to a worse problem. Yugioh's 2 biggest problems are how quickly you can get a board up and running, and how invincible a proper board is. You either stop the setup or you just lose. The worst part is, if you are setting up, and the opponent blocks you in a particularly bad moment, you might not have the ability to try anything else. The fact come-back moments are actually rare nowadays is absurd. So you run into these absurd moments where your entire hand is extenders and hand traps and you can just break the opponent and render them unable to actually combo into a win condition, while you have yet to actually draw a starter so you can't win condition yet, because your 8 starters happened to end up at the bottom of the deck. So you just each pass until you draw your starter (which will then be negated by hand-traps), or the opponent forfeits because they lack a win condition.
They're hated because there is no indicator of whether or not they're present. In other games, resources are a tell for whether or not the opponent has a response and the colors usually determine the type of response. In MtG, Counterspell costs two blue mana so if the opponent has two untapped islands in a format where Counterspell exists, then there is a chance the opponent has Counterspell and it'd be safer to play lower mana or safer spells before playing something more expensive. In One Piece, Leaders color lock decks and said colors contain particular events that can be manuevered around or force the opponent to use more resources to defent. In modern Yugioh? The only indicator you're given in physical is if the opponent has any cards in hand. MD has a tell in the fact that the client opens a prompt for the opponent to respond when there's a window.
@casbalt7763 I think it'd be interesting if Konami started to experiment with more cards that peaked your opponent's hand for information so you can better navigate hand traps at some cost like typal locking
@@otterfire4712 It's not just a matter of knowing when your opponent has handtraps, but rather the simple fact that it's much harder to interact with handtraps than cards on the field, and another problem I see with handtraps is that they're generally very versatile defensive cards going first or second (board breakers are traditionally only good going second, while traps are better going first). In an ideal scenario, board breakers would be the cards used when you're going second (the problem is that the game is already at such a fast stage that board breakers generally can't handle the interactions on the board anymore, in addition to the possibility of OTK, which should never exist).
@@gamerbg294 having game knowledge like what hand traps the opponent has gives you better confidence in how you approach a turn. If you know your opponent has droll and Mulcharmy Fuwalos, then you can play your combo line without worrying about Nibiru interrupting your combo line. Conversely if your opponent does have Nibiru, you can pivot your strategy to accommodate such a threat.
@@otterfire4712 Knowing about handtraps can potentially help you (in the case of decks that have the possibility of playing around certain handtraps), but for example, handtraps like dimensional shifter, lancea or even droll (obviously when they are effective against the opponent's deck) are not impacted by the opponent's knowledge or not, since basically they can prevent the player from taking certain actions that compromise their game plan, so the only advantage in having knowledge about such handtraps is for damage control and not wasting resources. However, you talk about adjusting the game plan according to the knowledge of handtraps, but the thing is that basically only modern decks are capable of this (I remember that until a certain time after the release of Nibiru it was very difficult to play around it, but basically today almost every deck has a game plan to avoid or get around Nibiru and in a way today handtraps are initially released so that they are difficult to get around, but Konami ends up releasing decks that by the very nature of the engine can deal with these handtraps and things just get worse).
GENERIC handtraps that are functional in a pile are an issue. Archetype relevant ones that covered a hole were good; limited ones were too. Much like GENERIC Engines, it's an issue of lacking the right restrictions or requirements, not the tech itself.
I hate the fact that these would be so much more interesting if there were archetypes built around their own hand traps as opposed to jsut printing new short print secret chase card
I don't mind hand traps as a concept, they've been around since the DM era, what I can't stand is the fact that if you aren't running between 5-10 of them (at least 3 of them being Ash Blossoms) then your deck will likely not be powerful enough to win especially if you go second. Every game needs balance and right now hand traps are not balanced. I'm not saying we need to completely get rid of them but they shouldn't be mandatory for every deck and strategy. Really, I think the game itself needs to be reworked and in particular going second shouldn't cost you the game unless half your deck is hand traps. I don't think we need a resource system like Mana in MTG but I think maybe a rule like "For both players first turns only 5 special summons can be made" or maybe "The player who goes second gets an additional Normal Summon" or something like that.
....Nah, 5ds shows that its possible to have a resource system. And it works well if it only applies to spells & traps. And the best way to make the resource more unique is it affects the speed spell of that given non-monster card so you can smoothly integrate some og anime rules like spell cards being played as quick spell if set during battle phase.
I wouldn't say everyone hates handtraps. Just outright bad players. They're just modern day MST or Bottomless or Torrential. Staples. And bad players hate them because their bad decks need 4-5 cards to do a single terrible play. And I'd put Maxx C on an entirely different category. Ash and Imperm are 1 for 1 trades. Maxx C just says end your turn or give your opponent free card advantage. The card is not fair by today's standards when every deck special summons. It should've been banned ages ago in OCG and MD. But OCG players just got too used to dealing with low ceiling decks because Maxx C allegedly kept them in check. There's also the terrible players that want Maxx C because it's a free win if they resolve it. I can say that getting Ashed ever since Maximum Crisis has gotten old. But that's a problem that can get fixed with set rotation. Which would also fix power creep.
@Honest_Mids_Masher I've been playing for a long time. I was at the DREV sneak peek when Veiler came out lmao Staples come and go, back then our staples where Warning, Duality, Bottomless and Torrential. Nowadays they are Ash, Imperm, Veiler and Fuwalos. Complaining about them is just outright dumb. You don't want your opponent to combo off for 15 minutes uninterrupted. Your opponent does not want you to do the same. If your deck is not terrible, you can fit 15 handtraps to keep them in check. Of course, the more handtraps are needed, the worse the format is, for sure. 1 card combos are for sure not good for the game. But that's just the result of Konami continuously power creeping the game. This game needs set rotation. You can only power creep so much before we get cards that activate themselves from the deck smh
Seems like the GX-5Ds era handeled HTs well This is why like Speed Duel and older formats. No Bystials. No Shifter. No Ash. No Maxx C No Mulcharmies. No Dominus or Imperm. Decent chunk of your deck shouldn't be non engine like it is now.
I really liked speed duels cause you could tell that whoever was in charge of the card pool paid close attention to balancing. The amount of old cards that didn't get printed in speed duels that would have been meta defining was really telling
I would say the reason I hate handtraps are because it was a pivotal decision that Konami had to make: searching, special summoning, and monster effects became overwhelmingly powerful and PePe was a big testament to that. Konami's decision was either tone down all the searching, monster effects, and special summon spam or create a throttle in game. Toning down the design would be a chore and then limits power ceilings. From a design perspective, throttling as you said was intended to slow down the game but all it did to the power ceiling is create a wider gap: if your strategy relied on a normal summon to get going, the deck wasn't viable since an ash, imperm, veiler, or nibiru could stuff the player in that situation their next turn. So now you get pile decks which have no core or identity and there can be fun ones but it tends to just be 1 card engines which goes into counter intuitive design (high consistency and high ceiling.) So the game design is a fast pace game with so many convoluted steps so it's like marvel snap but with MTG commander levels of steps to get to that. And because every deck essentially plays out like that, the handtraps ruin those strategies or are ineffective which means it's a failure of design. From the gameside perspective, it's not fun to be shut out because of a single card, and it is especially not fun a game is lost because you didn't "just simply draw the out bro." Try building a deck without handtraps that aren't maindecked and you are asking to get combo'ed on and then have to play through mountains of negations before they switched it to interruptions (which while not as braindead, is still irritating.) So it limits the creativity of decks because you HAVE to play ash, nib, imperm and that devours a good amount of deckspace. And all that deckspace that could've been for investing into other strategies or pathlines into a deck are lost because you have to draw the out. At least in boomer yugioh, pot of greed felt like a tempo swing, dark hole and raigeki had both a defensive and offensive use which again were able to have tempo. You could use premature Burial as a way to get a body on the field to either get a big monster out or to have something block your opponent while you fished for something. The idea was that it wasn't just telling the opponent "no" and there was a versatility in the usage. Were there cards that had universal usage that were broken? Absolutely, Graceful Charity, Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, the Forceful Sentry, Solemn Judgement, plus depending on your tastes of style, other cards could fall into where they didn't have any balance at all but those tended to be limited and you could still opt not to play them because it means you have extra space for maybe call of the haunted, creature swap, or something else. Handtraps don't have that versatility barring a few auxiliary items like veiler being link 1 of selene, or ash being used to make Baronne. It's not about making a play that extends your board, it's just about halting the pace Konami is telling everyone to play at. So handtraps fail from the fun perspective since it hampers creativity and a game can be decided by who drew the out instead of who played their turns right. Lastly, on a personal note for me: the financial side of handtraps are dog feces from a dog that ate another dogs diarrhea. The TCG went about it in the most unabashedly greedy way possible: Maximum Crisis short-printed a secret rare in Ash Blossom and it became a $60 card you ran at 3 and if you weren't playing it, you were hampering your ability to win. Same with Infinite Impermanence, and now the Mulcharmy cards. So already, it creates a point of contempt for the people playing them because they are dumping $200 in what's effectively paying to win. You wanna create contempt for playerbases, this is how you do it. The only and I mean ONLY game with a higher cost of play is MTG but MTG can sorta reimburse the costs of those cards: yugioh doesn't and Pokemon, Digimon, One Piece, and Lorcana will let you buy an entire competitive deck for what the handtraps cost. I would say losing because your opponent has so much spare money to dump on 3 cards and the recurring theme tends to be it's either a new pot card or a new hand trap, hand traps gain the reputation of what that rich asshole brings because the obsession with winning takes precedent and everyone else just has to sit and watch. So yeah: counterintuitive to the game design of the pace rather than reinforcing resulting in gamestates that are counterintuitive, ruining creativity by forcing them to be played because if you don't you lose, and being associated with the most expensive cards that you have to buy in sets make it where it doesn't require a PhD in dueling to see why they are hated.
In order to do that, the game would kind of have to devolve, the battle phase is just a victim of evolution. Even with tenpai, they were not good BECAUSE of the battle phase, they were good because they stopped all interaction, and the battle phase was just a cherry on top to make it even more menacing.
Every single card game at some point in its evolution begins to de-emphasize their combat system. It's an unavoidable phenomenon caused by not just power creep; but also by complexity creep, diversity creep, synergy creep, and consistency creep. Want to play a card game where combat is the most important? Then always look out for newer card games and ditch them once they inevitably reach that point, or go play time wizard formats instead. Because that's really the only way
It is a bad fix for a continous problem. It does not fix the problem of growing power if you don't draw it. If we limit all floodgates. Semi limt at least all handtraps.
To me it's the failure of the Banlist. Every omni negate monster, and multiple negate monster is at 0. Every floodgate is at 1. Why aren't all hand traps now at 1, or 2? I'm fine with every board breaker being at 3, bc that means I got to play the game. Too many handtraps eliminate that ability and eliminate ALL the FUN! Decks playing 15 handtraps, means I don't get to play. So here's the question. WHY should I play? Why Should I buy product and help keep you in business? It's supposed to be FUN! But your not hitting cards that are too powerful that allow FUN. There's a reason Ash has been at 1 before, Gamma too, Maxx C etc. Then start doing that again. Start limiting or semi limiting cards that are too powerful. Like if the next Banlist had Ash, Gamma, Droll at 1. Veiler, Imperm, Ogre, Lightning Storm, TTT at 2. Would the game actually be worse for it? Or would it allow more decks to be played? If more decks are played, more money is made, possibly more players come back or join the game. The FUN is gone, and we wonder why doesn't anyone new join the game. Well think about it, when's the last time you said "this is a fun format to play in" and how often does that happen? Not very often, that's why.
I never play hand traps, but as a casual player I feel like it's not such a big deal. I want my decks to run their strats, not be filled with generic cards anyone uses that have nothing to do with the spirit of the deck and are meant not to synergise with your deck, but to ruin the opponent's stategy. But sadly there are so many one cards combos now that for competitive players I can see why you can't afford not to play hand traps : you actually NEED to stop your opponent so that you can play the game, or he will cancel anything you try to do. This is such a sorry state for this game. :/
I seriously believe that people talk too much shit about hand traps personally I think they’re one of the best parts of Yugioh because it doesn’t feel like I’m sitting on my ass waiting for my opponent to be done
The complaint i think more so has to do with the power gap between newer and older archetypes. Older decks can't often play through more than 1 handtrap, whereas their opponent's deck is just designed with lines in mind after being hit by certain handtraps. Its not always a skill issue, sometimes decks just lack recovery. This would be less annoying if we just had other popular formats where people could play those decks on a more even playing field. Time Wizard partly solves this issue, but i think we need to be more open to formats like Domain and Junior. >insert obligatory self-promo for the alt format i've been working on since Ariseheart Format
Frankly, it's all dependent on who wins the coin toss, if anyone sided correctly against their opponents: (most of us do), and smart playing for hand traps to dominate and negate boards to be set up. Whoever's first takes first priority, but that doesn't always mean that it's gonna BE a priority then. It is a love/hate relationship, but it's more along the lines of "Hate the player, not the game" cuz... seriously, most of us pre-test cards in decks BEFORE they come out and come up with disgusting combos and strategies. S'why i only play fun decks (without adhearing to a banlist), it's more fun that way.
Current tier 2-3 decks should be the top tier decks in terms of power, but power creep is the main issue and the tools to counter turn one boards only exist to mitigate the poorly handled issue of power creep.
@@MrMichaelisaacs1 I can argue about shifter but droll and nib are fine, as a whole i think yugioh teaches something with each card you gotta face, droll teaches you to not rely too much in deck search types of decks and try to versify your strategies, nib teaches even more than droll since nib teaches the most important lesson you can learn in yugioh, STOP READING THE SPREADSHEET, if you follow the same combos for your deck blindly nib is going to destroy you, but if you play creative you can juke your oponent by playing baits, doing custom combos or setting in a more safe bet
@@MrMichaelisaacs1 Nib and droll are mandatory in this game, if they go uninterrupted with combo boards and you don't have nib, you will never beat it turn 2. As for droll, they stop gas decks that needs a lot of searches that will otherwise create a similar board like I earlier said and as well to stop decks like dark world that will handloop you. As for shifter, yeah that card can go
@@lz9275That's not true. There's so many super strong boards that a regular deck with its own concept can overcome if you didn't get hand trapped randomly in the middle of you trying to outplay their board. Example I act like Mimighoul can break a strong board, but if your aearch gets negated by a handtrap then you dont even get to try
I don't hate hand traps, I just feel there's not enough answers for them without committing space for the limited counters, while inhibiting your initial engines ....
Unless you have a one card combo deck, the negate hand traps are pretty decisive. One Ash Blossom is enough to make me surrender if i can't play through it that turn.
Bro just play it out and watch them set Called By and their second Ash Blossom because they bricked on non-engine. Dont assume the opponent always opened with the nuts.
i only like the ones encouraging trades and utility hand traps. mulcharmies and floodgate handtraps are mistakes I am sick of seing. like they didn't learn from theyr best formats that have the most exchange of resource trades.
I didn't realize hand traps are balanced, I guess it's fair that your opponent cant play the game. Honestly, hand traps ruin the games diversity. Droll and shifter are the biggest turn destroyers.
Droll would be balanced if it lingered for two turns, sure you can stop your opponent from searching, but you also can't search next turn, you both lose a turn that way. And Shifter is just unfair and should be banned, I play Kashtira pretty often and even I'll agree that Shifter is cancer (Arise-Heart is fine tho, overpowered but a necessary evil in modern ygo)
Its honestly just maxx c and ash. If those two cards didn't exist I think hand traps would be much more balanced, they just just do everything all the time and have created a need for super combos in order to actually play the game
The main solution is to add in-archetype handtraps . Cards like Tearlament Havnis , Arias the lab buttler or Rescue Ace Impulse which helps you make something on turn 0 .
from whatve seen, Ash is more problematic than Maxx C, Maxx c : opponent gets +++ but you still can do your play or have a chance to win, at least both players have fun and can throw strategies etc on turn 2 and after. Ash: shuts down your play and shuts down many old decks. and on turn 2 your OTK'ed if you dont have an Ash. huge difference. and from what iv seen its mostly Meta players who hated Maxx c. while other players who play for fun or budget dont care about Maxx c. honestly cards like Ash take the fun out of the game. at least when you play against a floodgate or negate boards you might have options. against an Ash you dont unless you do the same to them. which turns the game into RNG who has this specific card wins. so ye im not against Maxx C but im 100% against Ash and similar cards like Ash.
also Konami can literally Limit powercreep etc by adding few rules like limiting searching/special summoning for each player every turn, or something close to that. but what do they do ? add new cards that your forced to run in any deck youv built. by forced i do mean forced otherwise youll lose 100% by coin toss.
Wouldn't call drawing a hand full of handtraps, board breakers and combo starters/extenders to where your opponent wouldn't be able to have enough interruptions to stop you fun. At least with ash you can y'know actually be good at the game and bait it out or play around it through stuff like chain blocking or setting up a negate before the chokepoint. Being against ash but supporting a card that effectively makes passing your turn on almost nothing the wiser strategy shows you really don't understand the game and before you start calling me a meta player or a competitive player i have 90+ decks in MD most of which are unplayable garbage or rogue and casual decks.
@@TieMMKSpecial summon limit is the dumbest solution to the game btw. You got decks like branded, swordsoul, Voiceless Voice, Labrynth which can all make a boss monster in 3 or less special summons meanwhile ask the Hero or galaxy eyes player how many summons it takes just to get 1 boss monster. The number of summons a deck does in no way tells you how strong it is.
@Honest_Mids_Masher I prefer "less is more". I dislike waiting times for long combos both performing them and spectating them. They bore me and make me feel like my time is being wasted. Imo a balenced duel consists of both duelists having a decent ratio between time taken per turn, actions per turn, and total turns in the duel. Solitaire is to be avoided like a plague to increase the true speed of the game (the aforementioned ratio) So I personally welcome a new master rule limiting the number of special summons to 5. It would reduce pressure to use ubiquitous hand traps in decks that stop long combos and force duelists to be more creative and concise with their plays and deck building.
Hand effects that draw are the problem, along with 1 card combos that have consistency effects built in(think snake eyes) because otherwise you would be punished for having no starters and all handtraps as long as a Maxx C type effect exists, you can just replenish more interruptions until the opponent no longer can play.
Hot Take: I'm glad that hand traps exist. Especially Ash Blossom. Hear me out. One of my favorite decks was Thunder Dragon. This is a deck that had multiple one card starters in it, and if uninterrupted it could end every first turn with a Titan, Appollousa and Solumn on board. It was amazing to play, it was awful to play against. Mirror matches were entirely down to a coin flip. Even with the modern banlist, Thunder Dragon can absolutely pop off, although without Colossus it isn't nearly as toxic. But all of that is irrelevant, because Ash Blossom destroys it instantly. It is exactly the kind of deck Ash Blossom was designed to shut down. That is why I love hand traps. It makes a game where you don't just have to scoop the moment your opponent drops an Aloof Lupine and unleashes the storm on your adorable Lunalights.
I'd rather have hand traps that give you some kind of benefit advancing your gamestate, like Mulcharmies, Ghost Ogre, or D.D. Crow than ones that just tell your opponent "no" like Ash, Belle, Imperm, Veiler, Droll, etc. Fewer negates. If we do, like the Dominus cards, then there's some massive trade-off, or it's only able to be played in certain decks.
Has anyone taken the Maxx "C" Challenge and decked their opponent out because of the draw effect being mandatory? It's ridiculous, but lets be honest, it's not exactly impossible in current era Yugioh.
Many people try it in Master Duel, It's really difficult and can often be stopped with a single Droll or Nibiru, but it is doable, not often but it happens. It's happened to me once, and I've done it to someone who had the genius idea of activating Maxx "C" and Fuwalos against me when i was playing Cyberse.
Its so much fun to play a game where if you're not playing the ter zero meta of metas then you just get all your plays and counters negated Yesterday I played Melffy and tried summoning four monsters Every single summon and effect were negated by my opponents monsters and handtraps The next game I was summoning rescue cat to start my play and it got negated, now since I didn't have 4 other one card solitaire starters there's nothing I can do It's not fun to be literally told you can't play cards in a card game but your opponent can and be rewarded with 6 boss monsters = 5 omni negates,4 completely invincible cards,two 4k beaters, and two effects that banish your cards face down There needs to be the largest rule change in yugioh history or more people will just quit Its gotten to the point my Walmart doesn't even sell yugioh anymore and local game shop doesn't buy any individual yugioh cards
Honestly Hand Traps to a returning player is interesting & in some aspects welcomed. Like Kuriboh is an emergency Focus Band, My Boy Commandent helps get me Necrovalley much easier, or even the likes of Ash Blossom & Maxx C is fine to me. My issues come from the frequency or my main complaint with Modern Yugioh: you are watching someone play Solitaire.
Finally someone with a good take and yeah handtraps should be limited to 1-1 interaction. Floodgate handtraps require no skillful play, deck knowledge and is impossible to play around.
Because they're too disruptive to the flow of the game. Is still better than summoning from deck. If you ask me, handtraps are at their best when they meet either of these conditions. A) They're better on side-deck or archetype, because their utility is niche and are useless otherwise. D.D. Crow comes to mind. B) They only work on the volatile battle phase. Stuff like Gorz, Kaluf or Honest, The first problematic handtrap in that sense is indeed Maxx C once special summon became prominent. Before it was just a conditional pot of greed the opponent had control of and actually was making the game healthier (Less combo decks like infernity because it autoloses to Maxx C is a good thing in my book).
Like I said before I actually like Handtraps like the ghost girls. I think they're all relatively balanced. Only Handtraps I have problems with are: Niberu, Droll, D-Shifter, and the Mulcharmies. While the Mulcharmies are arguably more balanced than Maxx C and I prefer them to having C (Thank god for MD's semi-limit of the earth insect) I still think they were a bad decision because like the other 3 they can just completely stop some decks. A common joke is that rogue decks like Heroes lose to Niberu, Droll and even shifter. (Honestly really surprised Shifter isn't banned at this point) I mainly hate Niberu as it feels like Konami made handtraps to stop a problem and then proceeded to use them to power screep certain decks to function even after running into that handtrap. And that sucks. I think the game is really fun and by far the best card game out there. Konami just need to relax the power creep a bit. Honestly the game has so many archetypes just having future sets support the old ones for a little while with retrains or new support while trying to figure out how to properly balance the game would be smart to me. Instead of avoiding problems and band-aiding over them, actually addressing them is infinitely better to me. I don't know if they will though but I really hope they do. ALIN seems to be a step in this direction but then again mot really sure.
Great video Broseph. You almost didn't say "big dawg"... 🤣... At least it was down to once, and it was quick. 🤣. (You know I got to haze you for it). Keepmup the great work G unit.
I feel handtraps have the potential to be the coolest cards in the game. Maybe they could make some that let you play the game along the adversary, helping you with summons and protection. At least for me, the most frustrating part of today's yugioh is getting negated and board wiped too easily, even if it is fair at some degree.
I use Mind Drain to balance out using Time tearing morganite in my preferred(currently incomplete) IRL deck. I also use a small Labrynth package with Trap Tracks to get my normal traps faster, so monsters, spells and counter traps are really all I intend to draw outside of my opening hand. I don't really bother with hand traps because I've got alternative negations and methods of mass destroying cards, so hand traps can be clunky and often useless in my deck. If a Monster/Spell isn't sticking around long enough to provide value beyond an alternatively negatable search, why bother using Ash blossom or ghost ogre? Stop the key card in a combo involving multiple summons and Nibiru is just a brick in your hand. The ONLY handtrap I run is a single copy of Ghost Mourner & Moonlit Chill and that's ONLY because she works well with Unchained Abomination. Literally just because of synergy.(She negates a monster's effects, Unchained Abomination blows it up and opponent takes a chunk of effect damage.)
I’m not the biggest fan of hand traps. I think the biggest problem is that many don’t have cost and you can fit like 20 in a deck. I acknowledge that hand traps aren’t the problem but a symptom. Seems like Konami decided to change the design philosophy and now everything is messed up.
I was fine back then when it's around 9-12 per deck. There's a weight between brick and playable but open with no hand traps. Until I found 1 card combo/engine in every corner that let you play half of your deck hand traps.
A simple way to fix this game honestly is to make every archetype have a few hand traps and they help out their specific decks and they allow them to play on turn 0 to so that way both players can play and it doesn't really feel like you're watching your opponent do whatever they want but you can actually interact with them too a good example would be something like Souls of dark magic Lvl 1 100def/500atk You can only use each effect once per turn If your opponent controls two or more monsters special summon this and one dark magician from your deck then fusion summon using monsters you control as material Something like this where makes Yu-Gi-Oh fun because you're not just sitting and watching somebody combo off mean while you can't do anything but making it to where you're limited into what you can do turn one
Konami should come back with deck cost power rating, just like they did in Duelist of the Roses. With meta decks having a higher rating and with the two options: 1) Duel similar DC rating 2) All welcome That way you can choose when you get into casual duels, if you want them to pair you to similar level decks. Also gives you a superficial idea of how weak/strong your deck is compare to other decks around.
Duelists of the Roses is a closed system with no expansion so the relative power level of cards does not change over time or in relation to the context of new releases. you're talking about adding an entire new rating system to a card pool that within two months in TCG will break 13,000 cards using an additional metric not printed on the cards that will have to be examined regularly for adjustments and monitored using more outside resources, and you're also expecting an accurate reading on how strong decks actually are, which is an entirely different can of worms. if you want a deckbuild cost system, you have to bake it into the cards and rules from the start and deal with all the nightmares for that system that new releases then bring with them.
@TenebraeXVII I'm not expecting an accurate just a good enough approximation, and don't have to constantly monitor the cards. Konami already has metrics in place to let the players know which cards are played the most, from there you can safely say those are the strongest cards (I.e Maxx C for a lot of people). You can just start of simple and as time goes you can adjust, start by giving all rarity an arbitrary number say N10 R20 S30 U40. Cards that are played the most get an extra 5. Example: Maxx C is an UR card 40 points, And also the most played card plus 5, therefore Maxx C has a deck cost of 45. Nothing is perfect from the beginning so a bit of tweaking here and there it should reflect nicely when building a deck. Edit: as with most things you can just add a bell curve calculation of which card is being used the most in every rarity and give points accordingly. All in all this is something that can be done in a week. A tweaked as time goes on to be better This will help new players and returning players to get a better gauge of how things are. Also a good way to avoid having someone super new going up against a tenpai deck or snake eyes fire king.
I think it's a pretty good idea in some form. They don't even have to assign value to specific cards, since most cards are written in a formulaic way with consistent phrases and key words. You just have to figure out the relative power of an effect, like "when this card does x, send one y to the graveyard" being worth a set amount of points and modifying it based on costs and restrictions and such. You could then make leagues where a complete deck has to be above or below certain thresholds, which could be an interesting way to have formats like goat where the restrictions are the power of the decks and not just a print date.
Here´s a bit of an unusual take. I think negates should have an inherent life point cost. Like the solem cards. Maybe 1000-1500 per negate of any kind. It would make life points relevant again and add a new strategy level to both hand traps as well as generic end board cards. I personally don´t use hand traps because I'm a filthy Umi player but since they will never leave. Might as well think of ways to make them more... Maybe not fun. But at least strategic.
I love hand traps. Very high skill ceiling. I can instantly tell how familiar someone is at a particular matchup by hand trap usage. However, i dislike hand trap usage for going 1st decks that have full board setup. Impossible to break. Full power Yubel for example.
One max two should be fine if this isn't a board wipe/ grave destroyer as Nibiru and dim shifter. The problem to me is those ones and the too many on the first turn because a third or hald the new decks are handtraps. Like going first you deal with 2-3 negates/nib Goind second it's the same + stupidly strong board
Some cards like Tachyon Transmigration is fine as you need on field requirements to use it as a hand trap and is archetype specific, Ash Blossom and ghost ogre aren’t the ones but are probably the biggest reasons I hate hand traps
It's a symptom of the fact that Yugioh doesn't follow a set rotation format. Since Yugioh only has a single eternal format, Konami's only way of making the playerbase purchase new cards is to keep adding more and more powercreep into every new set they release. Why would anyone spend hundreds of dollars on new cards when the cards they released 20 years ago still worked in the meta? The powercreep is so bad now that the only way to give whoever is going second a chance at winning is to give them broken handtraps that are meant to put an end to that player's turn. People say that Maxx C is imbalanced, but so are all the combos that let you make an unbreakable board with only a single starter in hand. Considering how consistent decks are becoming with them being able to play through multiple hand traps now, Maxx C might need to come off the ban list for the TCG as a necessity in the near future.
They really should’ve kept making archetypal handtraps that get people’s gameplays online faster rather than more handtraps that try to stop the opponent.
The way I see it, hand traps are necessary to prevent overpowered cards from dominating the game....but at the same time, that only emboldened Konami to make even more overpowered cards because "the hand traps will counter them", which just makes the problem worse at both ends.
Handtraps can and should exist in yugioh. BUT they are currently far too powerful, far too consistent, and most dreaded of all generic. Bring back archetype hand traps, shit guru control worked cause they had an on theme omni negate, that required a flip facedown and discarding fiendess. Sure, frustrating to go against. But you know thats just part of their strategy every turn. With generic hand traps, you could be imperm'd from hand or it could be droll, or gnome, or phant, or ash, etc etc etc. And they wont be something you know about being in the gamestate until your opponents stop you. Which creates a metagame to play around, but also kicks players in the teeth for not considering generic old handtraps or other less played handtraps. I dont like this system, make a ghost sister archetype or something. Im sick of generic 30 card decks and 10 card extras. Make our decks unique!!!!
Love hand traps against meta, hate it against my low tier low power decks. Its a weird necessary evil. If handtraps gave you an option to discard to negate that negation then i wouldnt be so salty. As an Ice Barrier player, Raioh is a good card because it forces choice interaction either you negate your card or you discard to keep playing. Giving advantage to your opponent or giving up advantage to save resources.
Hand traps exist as a bandaid for the way the game is designed now. I’m not saying bring back the “t-set and pass” days, but these multi-minute turns full of incomprehensible combos is a bit absurd. And it’s too late to bring the game back a few steps, so out come the hand traps to help mitigate the issue they created. For me, the most frustrating thing is, once I have all my hand traps and staples in the deck, I have about 20 or so cards that are archetype specific that I can run. Or I can forego hand traps entirely and get combo’d into oblivion. Personally, I’d love to see the game slowed down a bit. Set a cap on summons you can make per turn. If not, I think we’ll just get to a point where every archetype moving forward will have to have its own ash or maxx c.
Imo the only handtraps that should exist are the battle phase ones, PURELY defensive as a last resort to protect YOURSELF not damage your opponent that should exclusively be in the domain of actual trap cards same with Negation Having to play around your opponent having cards in their hand is INSANE
With synchro and link and xyz summons my armed dragon deck gets trashed usually, 1 at turn my opponent already has everything they need then if I'm lucky and my deck gives me a good hand as soon as I use the 1st armed dragon effect, ash blossom, existence is pain
I remember my co-worker effect veiler my Exodia and he was like he negated it. I have to beat some sense to him(literally beating him up) and tell him it's not gonna do anything to Exodia. Good times.
literally all these big-tier handtraps like ash and imperm and maxx c needed was one line of text. "You cannot activate this effect on your opponent's first turn unless it is the first turn of the game", or, alternative writing of it, "You cannot activate this effect during the second turn of the game unless it is your turn". That's... literally all they needed. All they needed to fix this problem was that. The powercreep we knew was coming, it is a GIVEN, but now? With this line of text in mind? Now there's no major advantage, later turns become a lot more deadly so you have to shut down their strategy fairly as soon as possible, and it's still available going second to slow down extremely fast one-card combos. Literally. All. They needed. Was this.
Or a discard cost, because having every single play you try to do get handtrapped, just for your opponent to summon Circular, Snake-Eye Ash, Chundra, or any other one of the hundreds of one card combos in ygo and destroy you is miserable.
Handtraps aren’t the problem. The real issue is 1-card combos with small engines that lead to overly powerful payoffs. These 1-card combos are the core problem in Yu-Gi-Oh! as a whole. Handtraps could actually add an interesting dynamic to the game if Konami prioritized the health of the game over quick profits. Powerful combos should require more resources to execute, which would naturally limit the number of handtraps those decks can run. On the other hand, simpler or more efficient decks could use handtraps to compensate for their weaknesses.
I don’t hate handtraps. I hate one card enablers and cards that so much that they allow room for multiple hand traps. To the point where a deck is just a small engine and all handtraps at 3 copies. To me it circles back to these cards that do way too much for an archetype that should be split between different cards. To summarize the gap between these new cards and older archetypes makes handtraps more oppressive because they don’t close the gap
Handtraps were only created to stop combo decks from going into the Infinite Negate board. If we just ban all monster cards that Omni-negate or even soft Omni-negate cards (like Phantom of Yubel), combo decks would never be as powerful. Hell, they’re not even pure combo decks if their end board is 10 different ways to stop your opponent. They’re more like Combo Control.
The number-one thing they exist to stop isn't even infinite negates, it's FTKs that either burn you for 8000+ or draw their entire Deck to immediately assemble the 5 pieces of Exodia.
I actually think Phantom of Yubel is fine and all monster "negates" should be designed like that and Fusion Grapha, giving you a for most situations a negative effect that prevents them from being lumped together in an end board For example having Savage Dragon change the effect to "destroy a Dark Dragon your opponent controls"
Complaining about infinite negate boards when nowadays that's hardly the meta is hilarious tbh. Let me guess, you still think adamancipator and synchrons are meta?
To quote the legendary James May:
"It's an ingenious solution to a problem that should have never existed in the first place!"
That is a great Quote
Trying to account for power creep is always a losing battle.
....B-but we can't sell the solution that will sell new problems.
- Komoney
To quote the legendary jingle: “James May sumimasen (ends on 7th chord)”
Hot Take: I don't hate hand traps. I think that the ability to have a deck that has 20+ hand traps due to having 8+ 1 card starters is what I don't like. I had no problems with kuriboh, Effect Veiler, Gorz, battle fader, DD Crow, etc when decks weren't going full stupid with 8+ 1 card full combo options.
Couldn't have said it better myself
You're not wrong. True
Say it louder for those in the back
@@tonyshoeball7759 this is why I hate tenpai so much
I card starters are fine if they set 2-3 interruptions not 10+ or not easy OTK that I cant interact with
It’s a love hate thing because one if turn one goes uninterrupted you basically have nothing to do on your turn
@samuelgonzalez-tovar3936 I agree 100% that's what differentiates yugioh from other TCGs. I do wish Konami prints more cards similar to called by and crossout designator to help and try and find a balance between the 2.
@@kingscourge6031 Magic had a card named Force of Will. You could counter a spell by paying 1 life and exiling another blue card from the hand.
But this is wiki trivia TBH.
@@PurpleWarlock dam so what if there was a rule or card where you pay half your points skip your next draw phase your opponent can’t activate any effect for the rest of your turn
@@samuelgonzalez-tovar3936
Shyytttt on face, that would be a great card if limited to one. Do u trust Konami to do some shyt like that? Naw lol
@samuelgonzalez-tovar3936 this is just sangen summoning all over again, this is a terrible idea.
Hand traps are fine when you have space for like 9 of them.
The problem is that people often get to spend HALF their deck space if not MORE on non-engine and hand traps.
The problem is that deck engines are so small now because EVERYTHING is a 1 card starter so people have SPACE to run 18+ non-engine.
Literally this. It annoys me that deck engines have gotten so small
Yup the problem is the speed of Yugioh 3.0 not hand traps. When decks had 1 and half and 2 card combos running 9 handtraps or all gas was viable. Now top decks run 5 1 card starters allowing them to run 12 - 15 handtraps leading to 2 handtraps in hand on average which feels sacky.
All decks are the same now it’s just about who can goes first and who has their handtraps in their hand
the dual engine format is upon us though, its 30 starters now fam with a few hand trap you just so happen to like.
I think most people don't hate handtraps, they just hate they have to play them. Half your deck isn't even your deck, it's just a bunch of shit that you shouldn't need to play that you have to play regardless if you ever want to have a snowball's chance in hell at winning if you lose the die roll.
yeah, having half of your deck be nothing but hand traps is what I dislike about them, and being able to side in more hand traps is also a big no from me.
you do understand most people already left the game and only the meta toxic sheep player stayed to see another day and handtraps and pece off shit banlist is the reason
@@Ryuherz idk I play the game cause it’s fun
@@RyuherzI stay. Was playing rogues for months. Now I try to complete my stun deck. I even shove some floodgates and stun on my harpies, atlantean and more rogue deck that I had played earlier before. For the sake of giving middle f to all combo SC UM.
I hate handtraps because they either clogged up my opening hand going first, or they were nowhere to be found if I went second.
@@JohnDoeAnon Ikr?
Hand Traps as a mechanic are cool.
I just hate that the best hand traps are negates (by definition anti-interaction) and floodgates.
I also hate that decks do so much that if left unchecked, they'll create unbreakable boards - which makes Hand Traps necessary.
Game design team should focus on other more fun interactions and generally lower the ceiling of endboards. Going Second should not be a death sentence.
How are negates anti-interaction, you are literally interacting with your opponent to shut down a specific play. It's not like there isn't counter play to ash either, baiting it out, called by, having general negates, building a deck that can survive one negate, etc.
@@applebabbleextra5099This. A one for one trade with Ash for a searcher is a perfectly fine interaction. Its even more fine when you realize the player with Ash actually goes minus if they tried to Ash a normal summon because the opponent still has a monster.
Ghost Ogre = interaction
Ghost Mourner = by definition anti-interaction 😂😂😂
I agree that the ceiling of endboards should be much lower. But the take on handtraps is just bizarre.
hey guys, what’s a negate?
@@applebabbleextra5099Negates are " counter action " . Handtraps like Phantasmay , Impulse or Havnis are "Interaction" .
@ the ability to say "no" to the opponent
My issue with hand traps. They limit what decks you can run. One format. So if my deck can't play through one ash? It's now considered a bad deck.
@@Goldenfire49 what is funny is that a lot of people say it's because of Maxx C, but in truth Ash is the modern day equal to Mystical space typhoon. Every deck is going to run it because it's that good.
And most people are running 3 ash and maxx c 😂
I used this exact thing to breakdown why Ash in particular is dumb.
No offense intended here, however I feel like if you can't play through an ash blossom, you might want to reconsider what you're doing with your deck. It's not really that big a deal. You got this Broseph
Welcome to Modern YGO.
No handtrap? GG opponent combos off, FTK's me or sets up 6 negate board.
If your pet deck that's far from meta and has what, little modern support? gets handtrapped and your 1-2 card starter gets stopped? GG. I'm dead next turn.
I would love to see a deck construction restriction. Like Cardfight Vanguard, certain triggers you can only have a certain number to balance the game play.
Having 12 to 15 hand traps is just crazy
If Yugioh had a mana system like Vangaurd or all the other card games, hand traps wouldn’t even be necessary
Elaborate? 😮
@@itfigurescomics6704forced to run out gas. Hand trap needed because now you can play 1 cards into 20+ cards and 10 minutes combo with end board including banish, negates, immune to destruction etc.
It forced you to think what best or effective moves instead of spamming nonstop summoning to get your boss monsters on your board.
If the game stop to 4-6 combos per turn.
0 hand trap needed.
But since 1 cards can pull 20+ combos today. Hand trap is not only needed, but a must have.
@purewhiteloverbizarrejelly tbf vanguard only got the energy system last year. It was still perfectly fine and balanced before that. It just added another fun layer of complexity to the game once added in.
5:00 Kuriboh crawled so that love/hate moments like this can walk, then run, then go full blown sprinting, fleeing as if they think something is encroaching in distance, wanting to end it. AAAAAHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
handtraps are just a bad problem solving plan:
the problem: too powerful combo and monsters effect, especially negates
“”solution”” konami came to:
leaving combos untouched BUT make your opponent able to interrupt them with generic cards that everyone will need to play in order to have a chance (and that will end up even composing most of your main deck, leaving personal takes and spicy techs even more impossibile to play seriously).
the REAL (and simpler, direct) solution konami should’ve came to:
just fix the damn broken omni negate effects and infinite combos 🤦🏻♂️
The power creep in yugioh and the rate is actually insane. I stopped playing around 2023, a friend still plays competitively and she will tell me/show me the meta of formats. The speed and amount of 1 card starts now compared to just 2 years ago is crazy
that’s terribly true.
i adore ygo as a game itself for how it is built, but measuring it with today’s reality makes it lose every fun value.
i have 2 problems with the current design philosophy of hand traps
1: aside from discarding themselves, they have no cost.
no additonal discards, life point costs, or skipped draw/battle phases.
2: they should only be usable if you have no cards on the field. if you have an established board full of negates and a 6k atk Nutbuster Assault Charge Dragon on the board, you dont need Ash Blossom.
Honestly, I don't see Hand-Traps as a unique problem, just another byproduct that circles back around to the ongoing core issue, that being the growing craziness of the game and what decks/strategies are capable of when left unchecked
Yeah, I think they have a quantity issue now though. There are way too many and the amount of answers to them is still extremely low
@SoraBell You know what? That's fair. Tbh, it wouldn't surprise me if Called By The Grave was brought off the limited list at some point in the future
@@SoraBell 100% I don't care about hand traps up until my opponents has 5 of them in their starting hand. Like going up against a single Gorz/1-3 veilers is 100% fine but 20 or so hand traps is not.
The real reason people don't like them usually is because we'll get a format we're a deck only needs less than 20 cards for an engine and people just fill the rest of their deck with hand traps
Agreed. If people had to make their deck more inconsistent to run more hand traps, then it would be better.
Doing the math, 12 starters, 8-12 extenders, ED Endboard, 16-20 HT/BB is now just... ridiculous. But meta.
Once tenpai came out I stopped playing till the end of the year the amount of people at my locals that played snake eyes and tenpai were trying so hard to play less engine just to make sure their opponents wouldn't be able to play a single card only for them to draw their one engine piece that gave them access to their whole deck
I love handtraps and the utility of them. I also hate handtraps because Yugioh has become too dependent on needing to play them. I've played in a tournament last year where every non archetype handtrap was banned. Gamma was still legal because it was part of an archetype. It was the most fun I ever had. Snake-Eyes Fire King without handtraps is nuts.
Hand traps are a bad solution to a worse problem. Yugioh's 2 biggest problems are how quickly you can get a board up and running, and how invincible a proper board is. You either stop the setup or you just lose. The worst part is, if you are setting up, and the opponent blocks you in a particularly bad moment, you might not have the ability to try anything else. The fact come-back moments are actually rare nowadays is absurd. So you run into these absurd moments where your entire hand is extenders and hand traps and you can just break the opponent and render them unable to actually combo into a win condition, while you have yet to actually draw a starter so you can't win condition yet, because your 8 starters happened to end up at the bottom of the deck. So you just each pass until you draw your starter (which will then be negated by hand-traps), or the opponent forfeits because they lack a win condition.
They're hated because there is no indicator of whether or not they're present. In other games, resources are a tell for whether or not the opponent has a response and the colors usually determine the type of response. In MtG, Counterspell costs two blue mana so if the opponent has two untapped islands in a format where Counterspell exists, then there is a chance the opponent has Counterspell and it'd be safer to play lower mana or safer spells before playing something more expensive. In One Piece, Leaders color lock decks and said colors contain particular events that can be manuevered around or force the opponent to use more resources to defent. In modern Yugioh? The only indicator you're given in physical is if the opponent has any cards in hand. MD has a tell in the fact that the client opens a prompt for the opponent to respond when there's a window.
Exactly this actual trap cards and quick spells had to sit on the field and force you to make a judgment call.
@casbalt7763 I think it'd be interesting if Konami started to experiment with more cards that peaked your opponent's hand for information so you can better navigate hand traps at some cost like typal locking
@@otterfire4712 It's not just a matter of knowing when your opponent has handtraps, but rather the simple fact that it's much harder to interact with handtraps than cards on the field, and another problem I see with handtraps is that they're generally very versatile defensive cards going first or second (board breakers are traditionally only good going second, while traps are better going first). In an ideal scenario, board breakers would be the cards used when you're going second (the problem is that the game is already at such a fast stage that board breakers generally can't handle the interactions on the board anymore, in addition to the possibility of OTK, which should never exist).
@@gamerbg294 having game knowledge like what hand traps the opponent has gives you better confidence in how you approach a turn. If you know your opponent has droll and Mulcharmy Fuwalos, then you can play your combo line without worrying about Nibiru interrupting your combo line. Conversely if your opponent does have Nibiru, you can pivot your strategy to accommodate such a threat.
@@otterfire4712 Knowing about handtraps can potentially help you (in the case of decks that have the possibility of playing around certain handtraps), but for example, handtraps like dimensional shifter, lancea or even droll (obviously when they are effective against the opponent's deck) are not impacted by the opponent's knowledge or not, since basically they can prevent the player from taking certain actions that compromise their game plan, so the only advantage in having knowledge about such handtraps is for damage control and not wasting resources. However, you talk about adjusting the game plan according to the knowledge of handtraps, but the thing is that basically only modern decks are capable of this (I remember that until a certain time after the release of Nibiru it was very difficult to play around it, but basically today almost every deck has a game plan to avoid or get around Nibiru and in a way today handtraps are initially released so that they are difficult to get around, but Konami ends up releasing decks that by the very nature of the engine can deal with these handtraps and things just get worse).
GENERIC handtraps that are functional in a pile are an issue. Archetype relevant ones that covered a hole were good; limited ones were too.
Much like GENERIC Engines, it's an issue of lacking the right restrictions or requirements, not the tech itself.
I hate the fact that these would be so much more interesting if there were archetypes built around their own hand traps as opposed to jsut printing new short print secret chase card
I don't mind hand traps as a concept, they've been around since the DM era, what I can't stand is the fact that if you aren't running between 5-10 of them (at least 3 of them being Ash Blossoms) then your deck will likely not be powerful enough to win especially if you go second.
Every game needs balance and right now hand traps are not balanced. I'm not saying we need to completely get rid of them but they shouldn't be mandatory for every deck and strategy.
Really, I think the game itself needs to be reworked and in particular going second shouldn't cost you the game unless half your deck is hand traps. I don't think we need a resource system like Mana in MTG but I think maybe a rule like "For both players first turns only 5 special summons can be made" or maybe "The player who goes second gets an additional Normal Summon" or something like that.
....Nah, 5ds shows that its possible to have a resource system. And it works well if it only applies to spells & traps. And the best way to make the resource more unique is it affects the speed spell of that given non-monster card so you can smoothly integrate some og anime rules like spell cards being played as quick spell if set during battle phase.
I don't hate hand traps themselves. I just hate hand trap decks with a fiendsmith engine carrying everything honestly.
I wouldn't say everyone hates handtraps.
Just outright bad players.
They're just modern day MST or Bottomless or Torrential.
Staples.
And bad players hate them because their bad decks need 4-5 cards to do a single terrible play.
And I'd put Maxx C on an entirely different category.
Ash and Imperm are 1 for 1 trades.
Maxx C just says end your turn or give your opponent free card advantage.
The card is not fair by today's standards when every deck special summons. It should've been banned ages ago in OCG and MD.
But OCG players just got too used to dealing with low ceiling decks because Maxx C allegedly kept them in check. There's also the terrible players that want Maxx C because it's a free win if they resolve it.
I can say that getting Ashed ever since Maximum Crisis has gotten old.
But that's a problem that can get fixed with set rotation. Which would also fix power creep.
Didn't realize there were people with brains in this reply section, good on you.
@Honest_Mids_Masher I've been playing for a long time.
I was at the DREV sneak peek when Veiler came out lmao
Staples come and go, back then our staples where Warning, Duality, Bottomless and Torrential. Nowadays they are Ash, Imperm, Veiler and Fuwalos. Complaining about them is just outright dumb. You don't want your opponent to combo off for 15 minutes uninterrupted. Your opponent does not want you to do the same. If your deck is not terrible, you can fit 15 handtraps to keep them in check.
Of course, the more handtraps are needed, the worse the format is, for sure.
1 card combos are for sure not good for the game. But that's just the result of Konami continuously power creeping the game.
This game needs set rotation.
You can only power creep so much before we get cards that activate themselves from the deck smh
Kuriboh is the og hand trap
Seems like the GX-5Ds era handeled HTs well
This is why like Speed Duel and older formats. No Bystials. No Shifter. No Ash. No Maxx C
No Mulcharmies. No Dominus or Imperm.
Decent chunk of your deck shouldn't be non engine like it is now.
💯💯💯
I really liked speed duels cause you could tell that whoever was in charge of the card pool paid close attention to balancing. The amount of old cards that didn't get printed in speed duels that would have been meta defining was really telling
Maturing is realizing that hand traps are needed in yugioh
I would say the reason I hate handtraps are because it was a pivotal decision that Konami had to make: searching, special summoning, and monster effects became overwhelmingly powerful and PePe was a big testament to that. Konami's decision was either tone down all the searching, monster effects, and special summon spam or create a throttle in game. Toning down the design would be a chore and then limits power ceilings.
From a design perspective, throttling as you said was intended to slow down the game but all it did to the power ceiling is create a wider gap: if your strategy relied on a normal summon to get going, the deck wasn't viable since an ash, imperm, veiler, or nibiru could stuff the player in that situation their next turn. So now you get pile decks which have no core or identity and there can be fun ones but it tends to just be 1 card engines which goes into counter intuitive design (high consistency and high ceiling.) So the game design is a fast pace game with so many convoluted steps so it's like marvel snap but with MTG commander levels of steps to get to that. And because every deck essentially plays out like that, the handtraps ruin those strategies or are ineffective which means it's a failure of design.
From the gameside perspective, it's not fun to be shut out because of a single card, and it is especially not fun a game is lost because you didn't "just simply draw the out bro." Try building a deck without handtraps that aren't maindecked and you are asking to get combo'ed on and then have to play through mountains of negations before they switched it to interruptions (which while not as braindead, is still irritating.) So it limits the creativity of decks because you HAVE to play ash, nib, imperm and that devours a good amount of deckspace. And all that deckspace that could've been for investing into other strategies or pathlines into a deck are lost because you have to draw the out. At least in boomer yugioh, pot of greed felt like a tempo swing, dark hole and raigeki had both a defensive and offensive use which again were able to have tempo. You could use premature Burial as a way to get a body on the field to either get a big monster out or to have something block your opponent while you fished for something. The idea was that it wasn't just telling the opponent "no" and there was a versatility in the usage. Were there cards that had universal usage that were broken? Absolutely, Graceful Charity, Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, the Forceful Sentry, Solemn Judgement, plus depending on your tastes of style, other cards could fall into where they didn't have any balance at all but those tended to be limited and you could still opt not to play them because it means you have extra space for maybe call of the haunted, creature swap, or something else. Handtraps don't have that versatility barring a few auxiliary items like veiler being link 1 of selene, or ash being used to make Baronne. It's not about making a play that extends your board, it's just about halting the pace Konami is telling everyone to play at. So handtraps fail from the fun perspective since it hampers creativity and a game can be decided by who drew the out instead of who played their turns right.
Lastly, on a personal note for me: the financial side of handtraps are dog feces from a dog that ate another dogs diarrhea. The TCG went about it in the most unabashedly greedy way possible: Maximum Crisis short-printed a secret rare in Ash Blossom and it became a $60 card you ran at 3 and if you weren't playing it, you were hampering your ability to win. Same with Infinite Impermanence, and now the Mulcharmy cards. So already, it creates a point of contempt for the people playing them because they are dumping $200 in what's effectively paying to win. You wanna create contempt for playerbases, this is how you do it. The only and I mean ONLY game with a higher cost of play is MTG but MTG can sorta reimburse the costs of those cards: yugioh doesn't and Pokemon, Digimon, One Piece, and Lorcana will let you buy an entire competitive deck for what the handtraps cost. I would say losing because your opponent has so much spare money to dump on 3 cards and the recurring theme tends to be it's either a new pot card or a new hand trap, hand traps gain the reputation of what that rich asshole brings because the obsession with winning takes precedent and everyone else just has to sit and watch.
So yeah: counterintuitive to the game design of the pace rather than reinforcing resulting in gamestates that are counterintuitive, ruining creativity by forcing them to be played because if you don't you lose, and being associated with the most expensive cards that you have to buy in sets make it where it doesn't require a PhD in dueling to see why they are hated.
bla bla wall off text sinopsis you play handtraps becuse evryone does it and konami practicly force on you
The first handtrap Is Kuriboh, what you mean "Honorary"
Honorary
@grumpykoopa481 Thanks
Definitely a hand trap
Make the battle phase great again. I miss when that was the most important phase. Now it’s the least and yugioh just isn’t the same game anymore 😢
That might be hard, tenpai made the BP good again and ppl hate tenpai haha
In order to do that, the game would kind of have to devolve, the battle phase is just a victim of evolution. Even with tenpai, they were not good BECAUSE of the battle phase, they were good because they stopped all interaction, and the battle phase was just a cherry on top to make it even more menacing.
Every single card game at some point in its evolution begins to de-emphasize their combat system. It's an unavoidable phenomenon caused by not just power creep; but also by complexity creep, diversity creep, synergy creep, and consistency creep.
Want to play a card game where combat is the most important? Then always look out for newer card games and ditch them once they inevitably reach that point, or go play time wizard formats instead. Because that's really the only way
And then Tenpai happened and made the concept of play so stupid.
Just attack once and you will the game. GTFOH!
@@mementomori2365 you do understand that tenpai would by totaly ok if they didnt put a text on the monster during battle phase you cant aktivate shit
Love this style of video *video essay style*
Right!?!. Agreed 💯
It is a bad fix for a continous problem.
It does not fix the problem of growing power if you don't draw it.
If we limit all floodgates. Semi limt at least all handtraps.
To me it's the failure of the Banlist. Every omni negate monster, and multiple negate monster is at 0. Every floodgate is at 1. Why aren't all hand traps now at 1, or 2? I'm fine with every board breaker being at 3, bc that means I got to play the game. Too many handtraps eliminate that ability and eliminate ALL the FUN! Decks playing 15 handtraps, means I don't get to play. So here's the question. WHY should I play? Why Should I buy product and help keep you in business? It's supposed to be FUN!
But your not hitting cards that are too powerful that allow FUN. There's a reason Ash has been at 1 before, Gamma too, Maxx C etc. Then start doing that again. Start limiting or semi limiting cards that are too powerful. Like if the next Banlist had Ash, Gamma, Droll at 1. Veiler, Imperm, Ogre, Lightning Storm, TTT at 2. Would the game actually be worse for it? Or would it allow more decks to be played?
If more decks are played, more money is made, possibly more players come back or join the game. The FUN is gone, and we wonder why doesn't anyone new join the game. Well think about it, when's the last time you said "this is a fun format to play in" and how often does that happen? Not very often, that's why.
I never play hand traps, but as a casual player I feel like it's not such a big deal. I want my decks to run their strats, not be filled with generic cards anyone uses that have nothing to do with the spirit of the deck and are meant not to synergise with your deck, but to ruin the opponent's stategy.
But sadly there are so many one cards combos now that for competitive players I can see why you can't afford not to play hand traps : you actually NEED to stop your opponent so that you can play the game, or he will cancel anything you try to do. This is such a sorry state for this game. :/
It's nice that you toned it down and have a chill vibe on this vid
Exactly 💯.. I concur!!!
I seriously believe that people talk too much shit about hand traps personally I think they’re one of the best parts of Yugioh because it doesn’t feel like I’m sitting on my ass waiting for my opponent to be done
Thank you! The game NEEDS interaction.
The complaint i think more so has to do with the power gap between newer and older archetypes. Older decks can't often play through more than 1 handtrap, whereas their opponent's deck is just designed with lines in mind after being hit by certain handtraps.
Its not always a skill issue, sometimes decks just lack recovery. This would be less annoying if we just had other popular formats where people could play those decks on a more even playing field. Time Wizard partly solves this issue, but i think we need to be more open to formats like Domain and Junior.
>insert obligatory self-promo for the alt format i've been working on since Ariseheart Format
@@four-en-teeidk what shitty old deck can only play one hand trap that’s sad 💀
Fun fact: Most card games don’t usually have a "waiting" mechanic. What you’re saying is basically, "make a problem, then sell the solution."
@@ultraboost489Battlin' Boxers when promoter gets ashed (Konami gave the deck the worst support in all of mankind)
Frankly, it's all dependent on who wins the coin toss, if anyone sided correctly against their opponents: (most of us do), and smart playing for hand traps to dominate and negate boards to be set up. Whoever's first takes first priority, but that doesn't always mean that it's gonna BE a priority then. It is a love/hate relationship, but it's more along the lines of "Hate the player, not the game" cuz... seriously, most of us pre-test cards in decks BEFORE they come out and come up with disgusting combos and strategies. S'why i only play fun decks (without adhearing to a banlist), it's more fun that way.
Current tier 2-3 decks should be the top tier decks in terms of power, but power creep is the main issue and the tools to counter turn one boards only exist to mitigate the poorly handled issue of power creep.
Hand traps are a problem because their un intractable until activated and you don't know how many your opponent has
Why are you making ash blossom cry? You villain.
Ash is fine. Shifter, Nib, and droll are to strong and need to be banned. The rest are absolutely fine.
@@MrMichaelisaacs1 I can argue about shifter but droll and nib are fine, as a whole i think yugioh teaches something with each card you gotta face, droll teaches you to not rely too much in deck search types of decks and try to versify your strategies, nib teaches even more than droll since nib teaches the most important lesson you can learn in yugioh, STOP READING THE SPREADSHEET, if you follow the same combos for your deck blindly nib is going to destroy you, but if you play creative you can juke your oponent by playing baits, doing custom combos or setting in a more safe bet
@@MrMichaelisaacs1 Nib and droll are mandatory in this game, if they go uninterrupted with combo boards and you don't have nib, you will never beat it turn 2. As for droll, they stop gas decks that needs a lot of searches that will otherwise create a similar board like I earlier said and as well to stop decks like dark world that will handloop you.
As for shifter, yeah that card can go
@@lz9275That's not true. There's so many super strong boards that a regular deck with its own concept can overcome if you didn't get hand trapped randomly in the middle of you trying to outplay their board.
Example I act like Mimighoul can break a strong board, but if your aearch gets negated by a handtrap then you dont even get to try
@@lz9275no they not 😭
I don't hate hand traps, I just feel there's not enough answers for them without committing space for the limited counters, while inhibiting your initial engines ....
With one hand trap and maybe two on a good day, I’m fine, but when we get too 3+ or a hand trap from them on both turn? Imma crash out.
Unless you have a one card combo deck, the negate hand traps are pretty decisive. One Ash Blossom is enough to make me surrender if i can't play through it that turn.
Bro just play it out and watch them set Called By and their second Ash Blossom because they bricked on non-engine.
Dont assume the opponent always opened with the nuts.
i only like the ones encouraging trades and utility hand traps. mulcharmies and floodgate handtraps are mistakes I am sick of seing. like they didn't learn from theyr best formats that have the most exchange of resource trades.
We need them i Like them
I didn't realize hand traps are balanced, I guess it's fair that your opponent cant play the game. Honestly, hand traps ruin the games diversity. Droll and shifter are the biggest turn destroyers.
Droll would be balanced if it lingered for two turns, sure you can stop your opponent from searching, but you also can't search next turn, you both lose a turn that way. And Shifter is just unfair and should be banned, I play Kashtira pretty often and even I'll agree that Shifter is cancer (Arise-Heart is fine tho, overpowered but a necessary evil in modern ygo)
They balanced the game around handtraps which made modern cards more resisted, now its a mess
Its honestly just maxx c and ash. If those two cards didn't exist I think hand traps would be much more balanced, they just just do everything all the time and have created a need for super combos in order to actually play the game
The main solution is to add in-archetype handtraps . Cards like Tearlament Havnis , Arias the lab buttler or Rescue Ace Impulse which helps you make something on turn 0 .
Acknowledged as a probalem is debatable lol. Dudes never cease to amaze with the grift. Yugitubers are masters at it lol
We NEED desperately a NEW MASTER RULE!
I remember when veiler came out and that was the beginning of the end for my decks
from whatve seen, Ash is more problematic than Maxx C,
Maxx c : opponent gets +++ but you still can do your play or have a chance to win, at least both players have fun and can throw strategies etc on turn 2 and after.
Ash: shuts down your play and shuts down many old decks. and on turn 2 your OTK'ed if you dont have an Ash.
huge difference. and from what iv seen its mostly Meta players who hated Maxx c. while other players who play for fun or budget dont care about Maxx c.
honestly cards like Ash take the fun out of the game.
at least when you play against a floodgate or negate boards you might have options. against an Ash you dont unless you do the same to them.
which turns the game into RNG who has this specific card wins.
so ye im not against Maxx C but im 100% against Ash and similar cards like Ash.
also Konami can literally Limit powercreep etc by adding few rules like limiting searching/special summoning for each player every turn, or something close to that. but what do they do ? add new cards that your forced to run in any deck youv built. by forced i do mean forced otherwise youll lose 100% by coin toss.
Wouldn't call drawing a hand full of handtraps, board breakers and combo starters/extenders to where your opponent wouldn't be able to have enough interruptions to stop you fun.
At least with ash you can y'know actually be good at the game and bait it out or play around it through stuff like chain blocking or setting up a negate before the chokepoint.
Being against ash but supporting a card that effectively makes passing your turn on almost nothing the wiser strategy shows you really don't understand the game and before you start calling me a meta player or a competitive player i have 90+ decks in MD most of which are unplayable garbage or rogue and casual decks.
@@TieMMKSpecial summon limit is the dumbest solution to the game btw. You got decks like branded, swordsoul, Voiceless Voice, Labrynth which can all make a boss monster in 3 or less special summons meanwhile ask the Hero or galaxy eyes player how many summons it takes just to get 1 boss monster. The number of summons a deck does in no way tells you how strong it is.
@Honest_Mids_Masher I prefer "less is more". I dislike waiting times for long combos both performing them and spectating them. They bore me and make me feel like my time is being wasted.
Imo a balenced duel consists of both duelists having a decent ratio between time taken per turn, actions per turn, and total turns in the duel. Solitaire is to be avoided like a plague to increase the true speed of the game (the aforementioned ratio)
So I personally welcome a new master rule limiting the number of special summons to 5. It would reduce pressure to use ubiquitous hand traps in decks that stop long combos and force duelists to be more creative and concise with their plays and deck building.
@@Sigmaairav So you care less about balance but instead the time taken for each turns, got it.
Hand traps are okay, with the exception of rurn edning hand traps or max c
Hand effects that draw are the problem, along with 1 card combos that have consistency effects built in(think snake eyes) because otherwise you would be punished for having no starters and all handtraps
as long as a Maxx C type effect exists, you can just replenish more interruptions until the opponent no longer can play.
Hot Take: I'm glad that hand traps exist. Especially Ash Blossom.
Hear me out. One of my favorite decks was Thunder Dragon. This is a deck that had multiple one card starters in it, and if uninterrupted it could end every first turn with a Titan, Appollousa and Solumn on board. It was amazing to play, it was awful to play against. Mirror matches were entirely down to a coin flip.
Even with the modern banlist, Thunder Dragon can absolutely pop off, although without Colossus it isn't nearly as toxic. But all of that is irrelevant, because Ash Blossom destroys it instantly. It is exactly the kind of deck Ash Blossom was designed to shut down.
That is why I love hand traps. It makes a game where you don't just have to scoop the moment your opponent drops an Aloof Lupine and unleashes the storm on your adorable Lunalights.
Max c makes md unplayable
I'd rather have hand traps that give you some kind of benefit advancing your gamestate, like Mulcharmies, Ghost Ogre, or D.D. Crow than ones that just tell your opponent "no" like Ash, Belle, Imperm, Veiler, Droll, etc. Fewer negates. If we do, like the Dominus cards, then there's some massive trade-off, or it's only able to be played in certain decks.
Has anyone taken the Maxx "C" Challenge and decked their opponent out because of the draw effect being mandatory? It's ridiculous, but lets be honest, it's not exactly impossible in current era Yugioh.
Many people try it in Master Duel, It's really difficult and can often be stopped with a single Droll or Nibiru, but it is doable, not often but it happens. It's happened to me once, and I've done it to someone who had the genius idea of activating Maxx "C" and Fuwalos against me when i was playing Cyberse.
Would u say the new mulcarmys are steps in the right direction? As well as the dominus traps?
Its so much fun to play a game where if you're not playing the ter zero meta of metas then you just get all your plays and counters negated
Yesterday I played Melffy and tried summoning four monsters
Every single summon and effect were negated by my opponents monsters and handtraps
The next game I was summoning rescue cat to start my play and it got negated, now since I didn't have 4 other one card solitaire starters there's nothing I can do
It's not fun to be literally told you can't play cards in a card game but your opponent can and be rewarded with 6 boss monsters = 5 omni negates,4 completely invincible cards,two 4k beaters, and two effects that banish your cards face down
There needs to be the largest rule change in yugioh history or more people will just quit
Its gotten to the point my Walmart doesn't even sell yugioh anymore and local game shop doesn't buy any individual yugioh cards
Honestly Hand Traps to a returning player is interesting & in some aspects welcomed. Like Kuriboh is an emergency Focus Band, My Boy Commandent helps get me Necrovalley much easier, or even the likes of Ash Blossom & Maxx C is fine to me. My issues come from the frequency or my main complaint with Modern Yugioh: you are watching someone play Solitaire.
ash for me aint a problem anymore. droll and lock bird and shifter on the other hand.. those can f up all the way where the sun doesnt shine
Finally someone with a good take and yeah handtraps should be limited to 1-1 interaction. Floodgate handtraps require no skillful play, deck knowledge and is impossible to play around.
They help put combo in check; but depending on the deck you play either you get negated enough or you can play right through them
Because they're too disruptive to the flow of the game. Is still better than summoning from deck.
If you ask me, handtraps are at their best when they meet either of these conditions.
A) They're better on side-deck or archetype, because their utility is niche and are useless otherwise. D.D. Crow comes to mind.
B) They only work on the volatile battle phase. Stuff like Gorz, Kaluf or Honest,
The first problematic handtrap in that sense is indeed Maxx C once special summon became prominent. Before it was just a conditional pot of greed the opponent had control of and actually was making the game healthier (Less combo decks like infernity because it autoloses to Maxx C is a good thing in my book).
Like I said before I actually like Handtraps like the ghost girls. I think they're all relatively balanced. Only Handtraps I have problems with are: Niberu, Droll, D-Shifter, and the Mulcharmies.
While the Mulcharmies are arguably more balanced than Maxx C and I prefer them to having C (Thank god for MD's semi-limit of the earth insect) I still think they were a bad decision because like the other 3 they can just completely stop some decks. A common joke is that rogue decks like Heroes lose to Niberu, Droll and even shifter. (Honestly really surprised Shifter isn't banned at this point) I mainly hate Niberu as it feels like Konami made handtraps to stop a problem and then proceeded to use them to power screep certain decks to function even after running into that handtrap.
And that sucks. I think the game is really fun and by far the best card game out there. Konami just need to relax the power creep a bit. Honestly the game has so many archetypes just having future sets support the old ones for a little while with retrains or new support while trying to figure out how to properly balance the game would be smart to me. Instead of avoiding problems and band-aiding over them, actually addressing them is infinitely better to me.
I don't know if they will though but I really hope they do. ALIN seems to be a step in this direction but then again mot really sure.
Great video Broseph. You almost didn't say "big dawg"... 🤣... At least it was down to once, and it was quick. 🤣. (You know I got to haze you for it). Keepmup the great work G unit.
I feel handtraps have the potential to be the coolest cards in the game. Maybe they could make some that let you play the game along the adversary, helping you with summons and protection. At least for me, the most frustrating part of today's yugioh is getting negated and board wiped too easily, even if it is fair at some degree.
I use Mind Drain to balance out using Time tearing morganite in my preferred(currently incomplete) IRL deck. I also use a small Labrynth package with Trap Tracks to get my normal traps faster, so monsters, spells and counter traps are really all I intend to draw outside of my opening hand. I don't really bother with hand traps because I've got alternative negations and methods of mass destroying cards, so hand traps can be clunky and often useless in my deck. If a Monster/Spell isn't sticking around long enough to provide value beyond an alternatively negatable search, why bother using Ash blossom or ghost ogre? Stop the key card in a combo involving multiple summons and Nibiru is just a brick in your hand. The ONLY handtrap I run is a single copy of Ghost Mourner & Moonlit Chill and that's ONLY because she works well with Unchained Abomination. Literally just because of synergy.(She negates a monster's effects, Unchained Abomination blows it up and opponent takes a chunk of effect damage.)
Because they shut down bad decks while doing nothing to good decks.
Do you really need a 12 minute video on this?
I’m not the biggest fan of hand traps. I think the biggest problem is that many don’t have cost and you can fit like 20 in a deck. I acknowledge that hand traps aren’t the problem but a symptom. Seems like Konami decided to change the design philosophy and now everything is messed up.
I was fine back then when it's around 9-12 per deck. There's a weight between brick and playable but open with no hand traps. Until I found 1 card combo/engine in every corner that let you play half of your deck hand traps.
A simple way to fix this game honestly is to make every archetype have a few hand traps and they help out their specific decks and they allow them to play on turn 0 to so that way both players can play and it doesn't really feel like you're watching your opponent do whatever they want but you can actually interact with them too a good example would be something like
Souls of dark magic
Lvl 1 100def/500atk
You can only use each effect once per turn
If your opponent controls two or more monsters special summon this and one dark magician from your deck then fusion summon using monsters you control as material
Something like this where makes Yu-Gi-Oh fun because you're not just sitting and watching somebody combo off mean while you can't do anything but making it to where you're limited into what you can do turn one
Konami should come back with deck cost power rating, just like they did in Duelist of the Roses. With meta decks having a higher rating and with the two options:
1) Duel similar DC rating
2) All welcome
That way you can choose when you get into casual duels, if you want them to pair you to similar level decks. Also gives you a superficial idea of how weak/strong your deck is compare to other decks around.
Duelists of the Roses is a closed system with no expansion so the relative power level of cards does not change over time or in relation to the context of new releases. you're talking about adding an entire new rating system to a card pool that within two months in TCG will break 13,000 cards using an additional metric not printed on the cards that will have to be examined regularly for adjustments and monitored using more outside resources, and you're also expecting an accurate reading on how strong decks actually are, which is an entirely different can of worms. if you want a deckbuild cost system, you have to bake it into the cards and rules from the start and deal with all the nightmares for that system that new releases then bring with them.
@TenebraeXVII I'm not expecting an accurate just a good enough approximation, and don't have to constantly monitor the cards. Konami already has metrics in place to let the players know which cards are played the most, from there you can safely say those are the strongest cards (I.e Maxx C for a lot of people). You can just start of simple and as time goes you can adjust, start by giving all rarity an arbitrary number say N10 R20 S30 U40. Cards that are played the most get an extra 5. Example: Maxx C is an UR card 40 points, And also the most played card plus 5, therefore Maxx C has a deck cost of 45. Nothing is perfect from the beginning so a bit of tweaking here and there it should reflect nicely when building a deck.
Edit: as with most things you can just add a bell curve calculation of which card is being used the most in every rarity and give points accordingly. All in all this is something that can be done in a week. A tweaked as time goes on to be better
This will help new players and returning players to get a better gauge of how things are. Also a good way to avoid having someone super new going up against a tenpai deck or snake eyes fire king.
I think it's a pretty good idea in some form. They don't even have to assign value to specific cards, since most cards are written in a formulaic way with consistent phrases and key words. You just have to figure out the relative power of an effect, like "when this card does x, send one y to the graveyard" being worth a set amount of points and modifying it based on costs and restrictions and such.
You could then make leagues where a complete deck has to be above or below certain thresholds, which could be an interesting way to have formats like goat where the restrictions are the power of the decks and not just a print date.
….. someone needs to debate u, because youll talk about 1 topic but then back pedal on your stance
Here´s a bit of an unusual take. I think negates should have an inherent life point cost. Like the solem cards. Maybe 1000-1500 per negate of any kind. It would make life points relevant again and add a new strategy level to both hand traps as well as generic end board cards. I personally don´t use hand traps because I'm a filthy Umi player but since they will never leave. Might as well think of ways to make them more... Maybe not fun. But at least strategic.
I love hand traps. Very high skill ceiling. I can instantly tell how familiar someone is at a particular matchup by hand trap usage.
However, i dislike hand trap usage for going 1st decks that have full board setup. Impossible to break. Full power Yubel for example.
Stop one card combos
One max two should be fine if this isn't a board wipe/ grave destroyer as Nibiru and dim shifter.
The problem to me is those ones and the too many on the first turn because a third or hald the new decks are handtraps.
Like going first you deal with 2-3 negates/nib
Goind second it's the same + stupidly strong board
Some cards like Tachyon Transmigration is fine as you need on field requirements to use it as a hand trap and is archetype specific, Ash Blossom and ghost ogre aren’t the ones but are probably the biggest reasons I hate hand traps
It's a symptom of the fact that Yugioh doesn't follow a set rotation format. Since Yugioh only has a single eternal format, Konami's only way of making the playerbase purchase new cards is to keep adding more and more powercreep into every new set they release. Why would anyone spend hundreds of dollars on new cards when the cards they released 20 years ago still worked in the meta? The powercreep is so bad now that the only way to give whoever is going second a chance at winning is to give them broken handtraps that are meant to put an end to that player's turn.
People say that Maxx C is imbalanced, but so are all the combos that let you make an unbreakable board with only a single starter in hand. Considering how consistent decks are becoming with them being able to play through multiple hand traps now, Maxx C might need to come off the ban list for the TCG as a necessity in the near future.
They really should’ve kept making archetypal handtraps that get people’s gameplays online faster rather than more handtraps that try to stop the opponent.
The way I see it, hand traps are necessary to prevent overpowered cards from dominating the game....but at the same time, that only emboldened Konami to make even more overpowered cards because "the hand traps will counter them", which just makes the problem worse at both ends.
Handtraps can and should exist in yugioh. BUT they are currently far too powerful, far too consistent, and most dreaded of all generic. Bring back archetype hand traps, shit guru control worked cause they had an on theme omni negate, that required a flip facedown and discarding fiendess. Sure, frustrating to go against. But you know thats just part of their strategy every turn. With generic hand traps, you could be imperm'd from hand or it could be droll, or gnome, or phant, or ash, etc etc etc. And they wont be something you know about being in the gamestate until your opponents stop you. Which creates a metagame to play around, but also kicks players in the teeth for not considering generic old handtraps or other less played handtraps. I dont like this system, make a ghost sister archetype or something. Im sick of generic 30 card decks and 10 card extras. Make our decks unique!!!!
Love hand traps against meta, hate it against my low tier low power decks. Its a weird necessary evil.
If handtraps gave you an option to discard to negate that negation then i wouldnt be so salty. As an Ice Barrier player, Raioh is a good card because it forces choice interaction either you negate your card or you discard to keep playing. Giving advantage to your opponent or giving up advantage to save resources.
Hand traps exist as a bandaid for the way the game is designed now. I’m not saying bring back the “t-set and pass” days, but these multi-minute turns full of incomprehensible combos is a bit absurd. And it’s too late to bring the game back a few steps, so out come the hand traps to help mitigate the issue they created.
For me, the most frustrating thing is, once I have all my hand traps and staples in the deck, I have about 20 or so cards that are archetype specific that I can run. Or I can forego hand traps entirely and get combo’d into oblivion. Personally, I’d love to see the game slowed down a bit. Set a cap on summons you can make per turn. If not, I think we’ll just get to a point where every archetype moving forward will have to have its own ash or maxx c.
Add a rule that gives players 1 or 2 minutes max per turn would make it more exciting and adds challenge
Me doing full voiceless voice/ Labrynth combo anyways while the Galaxy Eyes player cant do anything:
Handtraps led to Yugiohs volatility. If they never existed promise you decks wouldn't be so toxic
I hate hand traps with a burning passion, but we do need them just not so many. We have wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much hand traps now
I love winning duels with generic cards instead of the deck I actually wanted to play
Imo the only handtraps that should exist are the battle phase ones, PURELY defensive as a last resort to protect YOURSELF not damage your opponent that should exclusively be in the domain of actual trap cards same with Negation
Having to play around your opponent having cards in their hand is INSANE
I don't hate hand traps, I just hate Ash Blossom.
With synchro and link and xyz summons my armed dragon deck gets trashed usually, 1 at turn my opponent already has everything they need then if I'm lucky and my deck gives me a good hand as soon as I use the 1st armed dragon effect, ash blossom, existence is pain
I remember my co-worker effect veiler my Exodia and he was like he negated it. I have to beat some sense to him(literally beating him up) and tell him it's not gonna do anything to Exodia. Good times.
It's nice to get to interact with my opponent's combo, but it really is a double-edged sword for the game.
literally all these big-tier handtraps like ash and imperm and maxx c needed was one line of text. "You cannot activate this effect on your opponent's first turn unless it is the first turn of the game", or, alternative writing of it, "You cannot activate this effect during the second turn of the game unless it is your turn".
That's... literally all they needed. All they needed to fix this problem was that. The powercreep we knew was coming, it is a GIVEN, but now? With this line of text in mind? Now there's no major advantage, later turns become a lot more deadly so you have to shut down their strategy fairly as soon as possible, and it's still available going second to slow down extremely fast one-card combos.
Literally. All. They needed. Was this.
Or a discard cost, because having every single play you try to do get handtrapped, just for your opponent to summon Circular, Snake-Eye Ash, Chundra, or any other one of the hundreds of one card combos in ygo and destroy you is miserable.
@@M1A2C. Ah, that could help... but a lot of cards like being discarded regardless.
Still doesn't fix Maxx C
The history of hand traps. Impressive video. 👍👍👍👍
Handtraps aren’t the problem. The real issue is 1-card combos with small engines that lead to overly powerful payoffs. These 1-card combos are the core problem in Yu-Gi-Oh! as a whole. Handtraps could actually add an interesting dynamic to the game if Konami prioritized the health of the game over quick profits. Powerful combos should require more resources to execute, which would naturally limit the number of handtraps those decks can run. On the other hand, simpler or more efficient decks could use handtraps to compensate for their weaknesses.
Man... Why is the thumbnail a cute ash blossom crying? Got me fuckin crying before we even begin the video.
I don’t hate handtraps. I hate one card enablers and cards that so much that they allow room for multiple hand traps. To the point where a deck is just a small engine and all handtraps at 3 copies. To me it circles back to these cards that do way too much for an archetype that should be split between different cards.
To summarize the gap between these new cards and older archetypes makes handtraps more oppressive because they don’t close the gap
Handtraps were only created to stop combo decks from going into the Infinite Negate board. If we just ban all monster cards that Omni-negate or even soft Omni-negate cards (like Phantom of Yubel), combo decks would never be as powerful. Hell, they’re not even pure combo decks if their end board is 10 different ways to stop your opponent. They’re more like Combo Control.
The number-one thing they exist to stop isn't even infinite negates, it's FTKs that either burn you for 8000+ or draw their entire Deck to immediately assemble the 5 pieces of Exodia.
@ no i think infinite negate boards were more common than FTKs
I actually think Phantom of Yubel is fine and all monster "negates" should be designed like that and Fusion Grapha, giving you a for most situations a negative effect that prevents them from being lumped together in an end board
For example having Savage Dragon change the effect to "destroy a Dark Dragon your opponent controls"
Complaining about infinite negate boards when nowadays that's hardly the meta is hilarious tbh.
Let me guess, you still think adamancipator and synchrons are meta?
MAXX 'C' Video for sure!🔥🔥🔥