Why do BAD Yu-Gi-Oh cards exist?
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- Опубліковано 15 бер 2024
- Another ramble!
Edited by Hypnocorn:
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#YuGiOh #MBT #Discussion - Ігри
I will say that at least a lot of pack filler YuGiOh cards feel like they do something interesting and unique, even if it isn't good. Like, would I ever willingly use Linear Equation Cannon? Of course not. Am I glad a card like that exists? Absolutely.
That card should've been the effect of mathmech equation
Fuckin' do some math instead of xyz
the fact that card exists baffles me. like i could think of over a dozen cards that do what it does without you having to do math. we barely read as it
This is an absolute lie, over 99% of pack filler in Yugioh do NOT do anything interesting, that's why people can only point to Lionear Equation Cannon and maybe like 3 other cards
@@meteordmsyu6298 I mean I can think of dozens of cool but not very practical cards that make me go "hu that's neat" and even more cards that are "wow this is so strong, but is limited by the deck around it"
Yajiro Invader, Superancient Deepsea King Coelacanth, Treasure Panda, Iron Dragon Tiamaton, Thunderclap Skywolf, Unending Nightmare, Tri-Wight, First of the Dragons, Last Warrior from Another Planet and I could keep going for a while.
There's jsut so much cool stuff in this game that begs of you to do somethign cool/funny with it.
@@pedrodarosamello64 dont forget the new carnot the eternal machine
As someone working at a card shop, there is no product so hard for us to push (outside of complete flops like the final MetaZoo set) as random ass YGO sets. For months now, we have been selling product for the game in a really sporadic way.
There are two types of packs
1. Packs so broken that they are gone in a week (AGOV and PHNI being prime examples), leading to upset customers who can't get the product after a short time, or
2. Packs so underwhelming in the sea of product that they rot on the shelves for literal months. Seeing DUNE and anniversary reprint boxes lying around that are rapidly approaching a year old (and have like $20 card cap for normal cards in them) is horrible to see.
Konami isn't the only offender (looking at you, WotC/Hasbro), but keeping up with the sets from the store side is really rough. I've seen plenty of other LGS's that look like the product hasn't been updated in almost half a year.
Really sad how these release schedules are killing the businesses that sell the product
And then, as businesses continue to get frustrated to the point of no longer carrying product on a regular basis, the sets that are actually good get under-ordered. Then the secondary market explodes for singles of said product, frustrating the playerbase
I know this is random as fuck... but what advice would you give someone who is in the process of opening their own small LGS in regards to the YGO set problem? I do a lot of research into these sets as a player myself, but I was floored when Valiant Smashers didn't take off. Duelist sets make sense not selling, but then you have shit like DUNE that just feels wrong not making a splash.
I'm leaning on making my main product Yugioh because we have 5-6 MTG stores in the area, is this just a bad investment then? (Haven't settled on a place to rent yet so I still have time to pay loans off instead!)
As a fellow card shop employee, i agree with this entirely. Many sets are often treated as a waste of time and effort due to how low the quality of the set is from a monetary standpoint. LGS's often don't have a choice however, as distributors force LGS's into buying a minimum amount of each new product in order to make sure they get a minimum return for poor product sales.
This reminds me of a now closed card shop I went to primarily focused on Magic where I picked up their last box of Primal Origin in late 2017. Primal Origin was released in May of 2014.
Bosh was so wanted the set was off the shelves by the end of the release day. We couldn't get them ANYWHERE
Regarding bad cards in Yu-Gi-Oh, I feel like 50% are failed test subjects, 20% are anime fan bait, 15% is a Konami oversight that they already made another card that does the same thing but better, and 15% are deliberately bad or intended to be a worse analog to an actual good card.
I think sometimes it isn’t as easy as making a good vs. bad card. Obviously, it’s easy enough to follow the formula of “Special Summon” or “Negate” to print a good card, but copying and pasting the same mechanics of good stuff leads to derision as well. With bad cards, it isn’t as cut and dry (just remember how much people hyped up Witch’s Strike)
I appreciate the cards that fail in an attempt to be good, because it makes it that much more rewarding when they hit on a playstyle that is both good at a high level, and fun to play with. Sometimes it’s important to have stuff that doesn’t work to act as a stepping stone for the stuff that does
That being said, I have no clue how Ally of Justice ever made it out of the board room. An archetype that does nothing against 90% of the attributes, and very little against the attribute it’s supposed to counter? Sounds like a banger!
i would wager the % of deliberately bad is far higher than 15%
@@erikreeds3836yeah there's deliberately bad as in Pot of Generosity and then there's deliberately bad as in that Ghoti trap that hypothetically helps your resource loop but is so slow and so underwhelming, in a deck that already has a low ceiling, that you know they put it in there just to make sure that you had to buy more product to get good cards instead.
the alley of justice effects are for dual terminal wyrm lore
I think when they made ally of Justice, an archetype that very specifically targets light attribute, they were too afraid of blasting some of their most ubiquitous strategies into non-existence.
@@twinkiesmaster69 And Worms don't care about like... 80% of what Allies do. The deck is bad, full stop, probably one of the worst full archetypes simply cuz it doesn't work right. They needed a Synchro that made things Lights or something.
For LukeVonKarma to have a career
True
If bad cards weren't a thing we wouldn't have sub replay friday, and the world would be infinitely worse off
I think a big missing piece here in the discussion is (unsurprising considering I'm talking about it) the Pokemon TCG. MTG has a wild amount of product that's very daunting to delve into if you're a new player, Yugioh has the same problem along with the chaff that locks up store shelves and OTSes that seemingly comes out every 2-3 weeks, at most a month between products. However, Pokemon TCG has 4 core sets a year, with 1 or 2 side sets a year, with 2-3 months between sets, but is supplemented by promo boxes, tins, and whatnot that have a specific card with alternate artwork, as well as core booster sets on the inside.
I think if Konami wants to capitalize on the demand of cards in the second-hand market, as well as reduce chaff and bad cards that are constantly getting printed, while also reducing the costs of paying artists and the balancing team for extra nonsense, this is the route to go for the game. Imagine a tin that had the Forbidden Droplet reprint from Duels from the Deep on a store shelf for $20, and it also contained 2 packs of Dimension Force and 2 packs of Battles of Chaos, giving players access to the only card worth opening for, or a Soulburner Premium Collection, containing the new Salamangreat support from Soulburning Volcano for $50 with 8 packs of various sets, which you can even pull back older sets onto store shelves like Soul Fusion, Savage Strike, and sets containing the surrounding link monsters like Eternity Code. I think this would fix EVERYTHING regarding the game, but considering we're sort of bound by the OCG printing all of this stuff, I don't know if the TCG can really fix the problem.
Pokemon also has a perfect excuse to print bad cards, that unfortunetly doesn't translate to most other cards games: evolutions. If there's a good enough Charizard, it doesn't matter how bad the charmander and charmeleon are (yes I know rare candy exists, that complicates things.) they need to be in the pack as well.
Pokemon's a weird case for me because they ALSO have bad cards in boosters - and a lot of them (think how many unplayable "normal" evo lines they print per set). But this criticism really doesn't work for Pokemon because there's already a market for "opening packs no matter what's inside them" because of a younger fanbase (and UA-cam personalities). They can print a terrible Charizard and expect some kids are going to actively WANT to open that awful card. There's no YGO analogue for that.
Oddly enough@@MBTYuGiOh now with the Gym Leader Challenge format being held as side-events at Pokemon TCG Regionals, the chaff that's in those sets like single-prize Stage 2s that wouldn't otherwise see play sometimes end up being there as rule box Pokemon (Radiants and multi-prizers) are not allowed in GLC. It's kind of shocking how little chaff there is in PTCG sets because of it outside of Items and Supporters that are just put in there as references to characters and items in the games.
But yeah, there's definitely the point of "pre-established IP that people will buy for the pictures and because they like the other media surrounding it" when Yugioh's Advanced format no longer has an anime or video games outside of the simulator that's for the card game.
@@ChaoticMeatballTV yugiohs problems pop up everywhere. not having alternative formats hurts the booster chaff
@@MBTYuGiOh I mean... Legacy Archerypes like Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon basically fill those role don't they? People love the old anime cards and monsters and want to play decks around them even when they simply aren't meta. Like, I used to love Synchron and Odd-Eyes respectively, but Synchron has lost its identity as a Synchro Toolbox and just became a combo deck while Odd-eyes basically doesn't feel like an Odd-Eyes deck with how little they use their unique boss monsters anymore.
Centur-Ion might not be meta, but at least I can run their boss-monsters and do well with their playstyle.
One thing of note that kind of infuriates me as someone trying to get into paper is that even if I buy a box, I will not be able to make a deck, even a bad one. You never get multiple copies of rare cards. And even if you want to make a cheap/bad deck, some of the most important cards are in high rarity. If I wanted to play goblins, I would probably need just as many ur and sr cards as snake-eye
The Deck Build sets irritate me with this. I think I got enough stuff with Vaelmonica in one box, definitely with 2, but that's cuz they had like... 2 cards at high rarity worth running. I didn't get a single Angewitch for Mementos in 2 boxes (which is absurd) and so I still needed to buy singles.
Remember, its a *deck build* set. One box should get me a full playset of the high rarity stuff for at least *one* of them.
7:06 okay, that's unironically a pretty strong argument for why certain cards are still banned in the modern game. Using the banlist as one of many teaching tools is kind of smart.
It really is disheartening watching my friends open packs, skip all the way to the rare slot without even stopping to look at anything before or after, and then just putting all of the commons into a box never to be looked at again, or sometimes even just thrown out. Unusable cards, and the sheer volume of them printed, creates so much waste. If the commons are just going to be ignored or thrown out, and they can't reasonably be used for any form of play, then just stop printing them. This is why I've started advocating for Yugioh sets to just stop designing worthless cards altogether. Cut the size of every set in half, at least. Make it so booster packs only contain like 3 or 4 cards. Every pack can still contain a guaranteed super with the chance of bumping up to ultras, secrets, or better, but you just make each pack have 2 or 3 commons instead of 8 and you are achieving the same exact result that people are opening packs for, while also cutting down on wasted paper, ink, and foiling. You can design a set so that the chase cards still drop at the rate you want them to; if you want S:P Little Knight to only be pulled once every 200 packs, you can still make that happen. I know people probably won't like the idea of opening a pack and only finding like 4 cards, but realistically, nobody cares about anything outside of the rare slot anyway so it does not actually change much.
I agree. I've seen way too many pack opening videos where, even if they go through the first few commons to get to the rare card, as soon as they get to the rare card, the rest goes into the pile without even a glance. This sucks, because there are so many examples in the game of commons or rares being utterly busted, either upon release or sometime after, that should necessitate making sure you look through all of the cards to see which ones would be good or not; Vanity's Emptiness, Pankratops, the Kaijus, Heat Wave, Kaiser Colosseum, etc. Hell, most of the time, these people don't even dwell much on the supers, either, because they think the money cards for the set is the Ultras and Secrets, and again, there are so many examples of supers in the game that are busted out the ass. It's disheartening to see this pack filler not given even a cursory glance until a big name in the tournaments uses one to top the tournaments, because it's like... yeah, it was always good, or even good in a niche consideration, but you dumbasses didn't look hard enough to be critical about your thinking of how to apply them, the first time.
Also, how many Ultras and Secrets end up with bloated price tags despite being just as pack-fillery as the commons and supers? Let's look at a famous example in Egyptian God Slime; it was featured in one of MBT's twitter thread videos of cards that aren't being used at all but are dummy thicc in its price range, and even now that we got a bunch of easy-to-get rarities of it that brought the price way down... I don't think people use it, still. It's good that we got it so cheap, now... but shouldn't it have been cheap from the beginnin, in this case?
This is basically the philosophy that the OCG runs on. The packs are smaller in size and cheaper (and their sets are smaller than ours). However, one thing to remember is that some *core* cards for meta archetypes *are* printed at Common - just look at all of the Spright and Tear cards which were Commons in POTE, for example. That doesn't mean that there aren't stinkers in the Commons, far from it, but that there are "valuable" cards in those slots... just not ones with monetary value attached to them.
@@jeremyadkins9665 I agree that people seem to just get tunnel vision and only look at certain cards over and over again
I do agree on this. One day I decided to make room in my boxes, only to realise how many cards I accumulated through out the years. Many of them I didnt even remember I had. Basicaly donated like 9/10 boxes of common/rare to Kids
@@vladvsplara yeah I have a lot of bulk I'm trying to think of how to give away or sell - I got rid of most of my GX era rares years ago
Regarding Magic Sealed play, they recently announced a change in philosophy for bad cards in sets. Basically they are going to avoid printing cards that would be considered unplayable or traps.
They already did this though. They've always done things like avoided putting archetypal cards into colours they didn't belong to in the sealed environment. Rosewater's go to example goes back to Lorwyn. Goblins were a tribal archetype which were in red and black. Rosewater's example of a "trap" is if that set had only a single green mana goblin. The exact scenario they want to avoid is someone drafting the green goblin early, missing out on a ton of other goblins and good green cards because they're waiting for cards that synergize with the green goblin, which don't exist.
I'll believe it when I see it
hearthstone did this too
Magic good was peak during Eldrazi when it was still 60 card decks. The game fell off so hard.
@@traincore1955....the rules never changed its still 60 card decks lmao. The only non 60 card format is commander, the other like 10 official formats are 60 card decks.
Speaking from an LGS perspective, the thing that *really* sucks the most is the ordering timeline for card games - we have to place our orders with our distributors months and months out from a product's release (Bandai is the worst with this, sitting at *6 months* lead time at present). Most companies producing card games wait until around 1 month before a product's release to even start sharing information about the contents of those sets. Which means, by that point, everyone has already bitten the bullet on taking a chance on whether the set is going to be good or bad - discounting any early reveals or information that can be intuited from, in Yu-Gi-Oh!'s case, the OCG set(s) which may have their contents drawn upon for the release in the TCG. This is, of course, a universal issue that isn't restricted to Konami - it's easy enough to give the same chaff to WotC over Magic sets, though Pokemon is at least *mostly* easy to line up as their core sets are usually just the two smaller sets that Japan received plus the previous booster's expansion set (if there was one).
The lead time being involved makes it such a risky proposition for LGS locations to order heavy on something even with committed preorders from players/customers - if the set is bad and the value tanks, then they're either going to have heavily over charged their players if they took money down before release or the players are going to back out and not want the product any longer, leading to the aforementioned issues of product rotting on store shelves. If the set is *good* however, then the store's supply is going to be immediately outstripped by demand, leading to players unable to get the packs, boxes, or singles that they want from their local community. And, because Konami rarely reprints booster sets these days barring very specific circumstances (see Toon Chaos, etc. - though these Unlimited edition prints usually have even *less* supply available to them than the 1st Ed print run), it means that most shops can't even get a restock of the product to plug the demand from their players because the distributors have long since sold out and even Konami doesn't have it available direct either. It's a double edged sword, and it sucks, because LGS locations *want* to be able to provide for their players, but the companies producing these sets throw no bones to their partners at all by revealing contents about the products in advance of the *ordering* deadlines. Sometimes we don't even get word that there will be an event corresponding to a set's release that we'll need to have extra stock for until after an order deadline has passed, meaning that we may not have ample enough product to *hold* that event for players!
The previous point about low ordering from an LGS's perspective does lead to a few other points, namely getting to that situation in the first place as well as the repercussions of it. Too many middling and bad sets in a row or even in a given year may (obviously) lead to trust issues - the store may not want to take a chance on a set (even if it ends up being a *banger* like Rarity Collection!) if they're worried about having surplus just sitting around that they can't even sell for the cost they paid for it (let alone MSRP or some discounted rate above cost). And that will ultimately lead to the store not ordering as much, which can blow back as a problem when the set has even something of value to it... leading into the other issue: buying singles.
Sure, some sets will have *such* a powerful card in them that people will buy the product anyway just to chase it (see Maze of Millennia), but other sets don't have that, and players will often say "I'll just buy the singles I need." Which, to be fair, I can understand and am not directing my ire at anyone that does this for doing so. But, it does have unintended consequences which I feel are not discussed much at all, namely that doing so can be one of the triggers of forcing/leading LGSes down the road of pruning back their orders in the first place - sure, it's the company's fault for releasing a set that gets a pass from the players, but it does put a strain on the stores that do stock the products. If that were to happen enough and stores collectively drop their numbers across the board for fear of *another* bad set, then the available stock (assuming Konami doesn't have a mighty reserve of it or that distributors aren't saddled with it in their warehouses) is going to be limited and, if people aren't buying the set, then that pool of singles because significantly smaller in scope for the people who only wanted to pick up what they needed. Now, this hasn't happened yet and, if the sets are that bad, maybe the lowered supply wouldn't matter with only a small portion of players actively wanting cards from that set anyway, but it does present a *possible* scenario which would have a negative impact on the players if things ever got to that point. So, the be-all, end-all message on that front is to please support your LGS when you can - if a set stinks, we know that it does, but we need your support to make it so that we can keep carrying the games and products that you want, even if you might have to buy some packs of a dogshit set to make that happen.
Well said- Its an unfortunate situation... sealed product is risky and even when the product is good the margins suck but when product is bad the lgs are the ones left holding the bag, and thats before the ever looming threat of wotc&friends realizing they can sell direct and cut out the lgs entirely
At this point it feels like the future of lgs is more in food&bev and pushing anime merch&miniatures over tcg product
To quote a wise man "nobody ever opened a card shop to get rich"
I'd also like to add a 4th reason to that list that is a little more out of the designers control;
Designers can't always know a card will be bad. Sometimes they do genuinely design with the idea that those cards will change a format (MTG, YGO, even Pokemon and other card games) and when the player base or meta doesn't allow for a card(s) to function as intended they sometimes do just become bad by mistake.
A good example would be original release Raidraptors, a good archetype that got overshadowed by the meta and then later other sets taking them years to even see relevant meta discussion
I wanna mention that, in core sets, there are always 10 to 20 cards that feel like they are designed to be played in a draft or common charity format. And some of them are really cool ! I find myself checking those pack filler commons much more than competitive shiny cards that I won't be able to afford anyways.
This is the thing that drives me crazy with yugioh, if we had a format for one cards ORIGINALLY printed as Commons so many "unplayables" with wild effects would suddenly be really neat. Most Common Charity formats break down because they include reprints and so you get decks that are either meta viable or die to some structure deck reprint.
I think one thing that no a lot of people considerate when talking about the bad cards is that not everyone is playing this game in a competitive sense. When i use to play in a locals, a lot of people where on stuff like... Dinomist, lunalight, cubic, cryston, stuff that was definitely not meta or even that strong, but fun and cheap.
The problem isn't with somewhat coherent archetypes, the problem is more with those random commons that fill core sets and that no one ever is gonna play. As for LEDs and the like, it's that there's only two or three decent cards and the rest is filler.
True, Memento might be far from competitive but it's a playable deck.
Archetypes like that add easily accessible variety to more casual play.
Honestly, maybe they print many cards just for fun. Pot of Generosity is not just a worse alternative but literally detrimental to the goal of winning the game.
That doesn't keep people from playing some sort of custom format where such self-harming cards may be mandatory (MBT himself has ventured into playing YGO like that in his latest series, the Pegasus Challenge, to at least some success).
@@ctusiard9755 well that's true. Anyway, those random commons can be pretty funny too, like haha i can use this card to start a fire.
I feel like that's kind of MBT's point though. People do want to be able to use these cards, but there isn't really much opportunity to do so. MTG gives that opportunity with drafting, which is what he mostly focused on. But the problem could just as easily be solved by giving more support to alternate formats like Common Charity and Heart of the Underdog.
If your locals does support those formats, or is just pretty casual in general, or if you have some friends who will play low power decks with you, that's great. But most players don't have those opportunities. They certainly aren't as common as drafting is in MTG.
@@TheLetterJ0 You can create such opportunities as you play with friends or acquaintances.
Does a local card shop not, in addition to staging official events, provide rooms for YGO players to meet and play casually?
Such an opportunity needs to be seized.
(Depending on how playful you keep it, official tournament policy or the competitiveness that comes with prizing might even ruin the fun).
Draft Boosters and Set Boosters were alamgamated into "Play Boosters". The move has been widely criticized as "WotC flailing to solve a problem they created".
Oh no! We made a popular product!
As a limited player play boosters are interesting, but we currently have a grand total of 1 set with this layout released so whether they've improved the limited environment by printing a higher proportion of good cards but less cards total just in this set or whether this is a positive change going forward.
and essentially doubled the price for any limited event in the process.
More info: They took a card out of the pack when merging AND made it cost as much as a set booster (the more expensive of the two) making drafts cost significantly more
@@SoulsOnly Doubled? idk where you're going, but every store I've been to has been $5-$7 USD more at max for Play Booster drafts vs. standard Draft Booster drafts. Now "premium" sets on the other hand...
I think regarding that Ben Brode example, I don't know if he's referencing his explanation of why Purifier was made as a card. But another reason he mentioned from that Purifier response, was the fun factor involved with winning with bad or silly cards. Cards should entice players to tinker with them and see if they can get a certain strategy of theirs to work. And, with the right minds on the right cards, it can potentially become a really strong strategy as well. It's sometimes hard to gauge whether or not an audience will be interested in whatever archetype or dekc that you want them to build, and sometimes it just falls to the wayside. Product is also designed and made way in advance, so if a meta shifts a certain way, it takes time to course correct or to print more cards to try and help enable earlier released cards.
Yeah, a lot of bad Hearthstone cards (at least in the middle years) facilitate a weird, niche, goofy playstyle, like Pogo-Hopper. Part of the reason I stopped playing almost 2 years ago now is because bad cards started to just be...bad, like demonstrably worse than other cards dominating the meta to the point that you don't even really get the basic satisfaction from playing them.
I mean, if you think about it that's basically the premise of Luke von Karma's Sub Replay Fridays.
I don’t have an OTS store near me, but the card shop near me has some of those bad sets, but is sold out of Valiant Smashers.
Someone somewhere is going to make the most demonic deck out of that set. 16 interrupts through every handtrap plus being calamity locked and isn't even going to include Centur-Ion
I truly hope Valmonica gets expanded on and can become at least a rogue archetype, it's an interesting concept and a nuanced use of the pendulum zones, and most importantly the art is adorable.
All the support in the world will amount to it just being cuter Endymion.
3 new card in legacy of destruction
I still remember Purrely being bad before the Cybernetic Asault support was announced. With Legacy of Destruction support, Vaalmonica became very consistent at doing what they are supposed to. Also, they don't restrict what you can play. IMO, it's not that they are bad, we just didn't figure them out yet. XD
prerelease events are some of the most fun ive had in yugioh ngl
can only imagine how much more id play the game irl if there was a proper draft format
Me too
There is an article from Mark Rosewater from 2002 why bad cards exist, amazing read
because it's funny
Hello fellow YuGiOh card profile picture. Can you guess which card I am?
@ExtremelyCringePretzel looks unfamiliar to me I'd have to guess. I nearly forgot I also fall into this category
@@Spright_Carrot I only know Amanokujaki cause someone said to use it as a tech in Lab
@@AznYunHou LETS GO
but dont all yugioh players say every card is bad depending on how they feel that day??
No Not really
SHADOWVERSE MENTION!!!! LETS GOOOOOOO
SHADOWVERSE MENTIONED LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I play Yugioh draft with friends and it amazes me sometimes what pack chaff is actually good in lower powered environments. I really hope Konami gives us some formats where cards like that can shine
I think a factor to consider is that not everyone wants to play good cards. I don't remember on what video I heard this, but basically in fighting games and other competitive games is importat to make characters with differents power levels because there will be persons that only want to play bad characters because they are bad characters, people who will refuse to even touch a good characters because they are meta, and the rogue heroes who will play competitive using not optimal characters because they like the extra challenge, or because they thrive when the audience is in their side, or because they are character loyalist that will play their favorites at a competitive level regardless of their perceived power level. And, you know, also those that just will do it for the memes or disrespect
On TCGs in general and Yu-Gi-Oh! specifically you also have to consider the mad scientist, those who live for appearing on Luke Von Karma's Sub Replays to do the most complicated, weirdest and absurd combo you'll ever seen for the most creative, annoying and jaw dropping pay off only a schizoprenic mind could think off. YuGiOh has a lot of card for those kind of people.
For the record, I LOVED when you started the last one with a metaphor. I'd like to see more stuff like that in the future!
5:18 SHADOWVERSE MENTIONED
HEAR THE DRAGON'S ROAR
THIS ONE'S FOR MY FAMILY
DON'T LET IT GET TO YOU
A LITTLE BLOOD WON'T STOP ME
These are some of my favorite videos you make. You have such a unique pov on Yu-Gi-Oh so hearing your thoughts on the fundamental philosophies of product, deck building or just anything related to the game is such a treat. Hope to see more of these down the road 🙏
So it is basically filler episodes in those long anime that release episodes every week for decades
One day we will come to a point where they start printing archetypes that have similar effects to Fusion Grapha
Aka "Once per turn if your opponent activates a card effect (Quick Effect): Banish 1 Spell Card in your GY, that card's effect becomes that of the banished Spell"
There can be another reason, and it kind of fits with the different formats argument.
Many bad cards are not good right now, but become busted due to newly printed interactions down the line.
My mtg example of this is deaths shadow. Card existed for ages. So did the rest of the cards for the deck. But the card was considered bad until out of nowhere, it started pulling results in modern. Sometimes, its a result of new cards. Sometimes, its finding stuff after the fact.
Yugioh also has a go to example, even if i havent played in years outside master duel. If you went back 10 years, and told yourself to invest in smoke grenade of the theif, and that the card would one day break a yugioh format, to the point it was put on the limited list, past you would have likely asked what drugs he went on in the future.
You would likely answer "the fun ones" but thats beside the point
I feel like it's probably really hard for Konami to evaluate individual cards as well. Sometimes you see something like Thunderclap Skywolf and you can just imagine a designer making this and saying "IDK if this is good, I'm just going to toss this to the players and see if they can do something with it".
I think from a game design perspective, there is the scenario where some cards arent “designed to be bad” but are sometimes unfortunate misses that didnt pan out the way the designer intended.
I do think it’d be a good thing regardless to refocus the efforts of yugioh’s product construction to make things that are more worthwhile and compelling to pick up
One element of card design being bad is that, sometimes card concepts are more fun to look at and think about than they are to play. The most extreme example of this is stuff like the "story cards" MBT mentioned which literally are vanillas with cool art and flavor text, but there are also a lot of other interesting designs that exist in MtG that are fun and interesting to read but are purposely undertuned. Something like Void Winnower for example, is a card that would be fucking MISERABLE if it's effect was put on an aggressively statted card, but because it's unplayable in most competitive formats is a memorable little curiosity. I think Yugioh does this too, with cards like Linear Equation Cannon and Flying Elephant (Imagine the world where Linear Equation Cannon was a meta staple lmao.) The issue is that, Yugioh cards as a whole are a SLOG to read, so it never really reaches that same resonance. The Valmonica cards for example, have a really interesting concept and flavor but because its spread across like a dozen different cards in paragraphs of tiny text, you don't really have that "Aha!" moment unless your carefully reading them one after the other. Too many Yugioh cards are fun to look at in an organized YGOrganization article and not fun to read thumbing through a freshly opened pack.
My store, that's still really new to stocking yugioh, stocked an entire case of Duelist Pack Yugi Kaiba. I feel so bad for them cause it hasn't sold a single box since that box released
Where the hell did they even get that lmao
Those cards are over a decade old lol. It would be better to either get them graded or put onto ebay.
a bit unrelated but there's this really great video about "one with nothing" from Magic by Rhystic Studies, he basically talks about how obviously bad cards are meant to be for the deck builders looking for ways to break "bad" cards.
Minus the parts analyzing Konami's specific business decisions, this is basically just an incomplete summary of the Magic article "When Cards Go Bad", which came out just before the original TCG boosters of LOB were released over two decades ago. Even the stuff MBT attributes to Hearthstone instead, and the video you mentioned by Rhystic Studies (which directly quotes the main points from the article), all of it was in there from the start. Most critically, it starts by establishing the premise that bad cards must exist for the sustainability of a TCG with regular new releases, and much of the rest of the article covers various ways those bad cards can still serve roles in player experience to justify the cardboard they are printed on.
@@Metallicity The deisgn philosophy is the same but the execution is much different. Ivory Tower design has a subtle but important difference from Brode's philosophy of teaching card analysis: the cards (or options, as D&D 3.5 was infested with a similar brainrot, and coined the name) were designed as an explicit punishment for new players.
Brode's approach is to establish a baseline of card that should be considered subpar. These are mostly in the Core set, which was (at the time) perennial and always available to new players for free. This meant that card analysis started from a simple point of "is this new card better than one I already own?".
Magic's design, especially after a standard expansion cycle had settled in, was more malicious. A lot of cards were designed to be ambiguously bad and "trap" players into using them.
Both, in a sense, are designed to "teach the player a lesson" but one does so like your favorite science teacher and the other does it like your abusive dad.
@@RynjinivarI won't deny there are some genuinely bad cards that continued to see print specifically because new players overvalued them, but the example in the video of "base creature" and "base creature for the same cost but better" goes all the way back to Alpha for MTG, with various creatures with worse vanilla counterparts for the exact same mana cost. E.g., paying 3R could get you a 3/3 or a 3/3 with flying, 2R had three different 2/2 creatures that were all better than the 2/2 Gray Ogre, R had two different 1/1 Goblins (one of which could optionally fly by paying an extra red). This wasn't an accident, Richard Garfield had ~300 card slots in total to work with, strictly worse creatures were there because they were important enough to include over other designs, despite being outclassed in the very same set.
I feel like pot of generosity was supposed to be 'Shuffle 2 cards from your hand into the Deck. Draw 2 cards' but they just forgot the last line then never bothered to fix it.
But that's already reload's effect. I think they genuinely wanted that effect to be like that, especially as generosity is the opposite of the other pots, like greed, avarice etc.
pot of generosity can be explained as a bad card made for the funny
this kind of bad is fine the problem is cards that are bad and not interesting or fun
@@omegacxv8344 I'd say it's closer to magical mallet than reload, since reload does your whole hand, while magical mallet lets you pick the number. There's plenty of cards that have similar effects to each other, so I don't see that as an issue.
I can *kind* of see what they were cooking? Looks to me like they were trying to make a card that lets you un-draw a Garnet. Which they technically did, they just failed to make it playable.
god, imagine if one day they errata Generosity to have that text AND THEN imagine the ensuing price spike as people pog out of their minds at the fact that it now draws you two cards. Chaos.
They could design around Common Charity. But that would require everyone to remember an official format with multiple viable decks that is very cheap, which we seem to have a bit of a problem with.
That requires Konami to actually put the barest effort into it. Which they didn't. Hell, they mentioned it existed, once in that original pamphlet, and that's it. We don't even know if its supposed to follow the Advanced banlist, we just do it so everyone isn't running Pot.
@hawkticus_duel_shack Yeah, it's the same problem with Heart Of The Underdog format. It's a format that Konami developed for slower paced games and said, "Here, you figure out the rules" with no other support.
Yugioh actually has like 10 official alternate formats that you can play the game with that are tucked away on a hard to find page on the game's official website. But if you contact Konami customer support and request promo material for these formats like their supposed to have, the customer reps no idea what you're talking about.
If it's not the modern game, Konami just throws it to the waste.
@@sable8716 Like, Heart at least makes sense since what each store considers "the meta" is kind of different, but some basic guidelines on how to do that would be nice. Not every store is like my LGS where we all work on it together.
A good excuse for bad archetypes is that releasing more archetypes in general with more themes lets people find their favorite, Yugioh is based on an anime in which each charecter play a different deck, and playing the physical card game is for some people, a way to role-play as your own anime protagonist, and sometimes anime charecters play none-optimal decks that match their personality.
i think yugioh being so archetype focused is a big part of this problem. It's hard to print "simple" or draftable cards in a deck build pack because those cards are meant to build a deck ya know. Like i don't know if the only way to make deckbuild packs sell is "one of the decks has to be tier 1" but if it is i think that kinda also sucks for everyone.
Like I think kaiju are some of the best designed cards in yugioh both in how they effected the game, and how they are designed thematically, but I don't think there is enough design space to make all bad decks also be like that even in a small draft environment, which I feel is kinda the only way you could make modern yugioh draftable.
7:30 Seeing this after all the memento support and seeing MBT excited to play memento in MD is kinda ironic lol
2 things are certain in life MBT mentioning MTG every discussion video and Joshua Schmidth making an example using runick cards
Shadowverse mentioned!
For me ygo's biggest strength has, and continues to be; playstyle variety. The ability to pick different stuff and borderline play a different game past similarities in deck, hand, and zone optimization, is part of what keeps the game fresh for me. And having this style of printing tons of semi-splashable archetypes and strategies that are super different from each other helps ensure there will be *something* I really like!
A lot of the archetypes they're making are also deliberately pretty open in how you build them outside of the core package. I can see some of them becoming stronger because of non-direct support as well. (Modern Contuinuous Trap Monster support with a Centurion Package would be sick, for example, all the new Fiend Fusion stuff, etc.)
Related; The True Sky God is imo the most fun single yugioh card ever printed. It involves setup that's a little tricky but has a lot of flexible approaches, it has very high payoff but the more consistency stuff you run for the setup the lower it becomes, its gy effect can be used in isolation, the opponent can play around it not just by removing slifer but also by emptying their hand as much as possible in response. Super duper cool all around.
But competitively it saw a brief stint of play in branded for a short time and then that was it.
Still though, I'm super happy it got made.
No views in 26 seconds? MBT fell off
this joke is everywhere and is less funny each time
real
@@IishPotato 🤓
What is happening? Is this a new trend?
This is just the gen z equivalent of "First"
The card effects and rules are so complex that no one can be sure if a card is good or not before they're played
I unironically used pot of generosity in madolche before we got teacher
It is an interesting situation, because it it Japan that is making all these decisions.
For most of these packs, you can find them on the shelves for 25-50% off and no one buys them. They’re too niche.
Also, the wind duelist pack: I thought it had value because it had baron but they reprinted that to the ground here so that even worthless (Japan)
So you can pay your rent, thats why! Duh
I think part of the issue is inherent to the current nature of Yugioh being archtype focused that generic good cards are rare and far between printings most of them being back breakers that become part of the staple pool really yugioh doesn't have the design space at present to change much really
Draft and/or other formats is the best answer.
I think my favourite kind of bad cards are the ones made on purpose to challenge players.
Like One with Nothing in Magic. It's like the Broken Straight Sword in Dark Souls, an intentionally bad option there for skilled players to challenge themselves.
New players may use them by accident, experienced players will avoid them, but master players will play for hours to try and make these objectively terrible cards work.
Hi Joseph! I would love to see you tackle this “contextual” cases angle. Your take on a format that spins on a different axis other than time wizard would be really fun to see and maybe would give players inspiration on how this could be implemented.
It's kinda wild the difference is just of having multiple rotating formats, or not.
Also, seeing Pot of Generosity reminds me of a pretty unexplored mechanic of the game: effects that activate in the deck.
Cards like Dark Sage and the Charmers that, while terrible, are kinda unique, mechanically.
I wonder how a series of monsters that could special themselves from your deck by hard-locking you into an archetype may work. Kinda like the GX spirit monsters, or something. If whatever restriction they came with was worthwhile, something like Pot of Generosity might be usable.
Maybe.
Well if every card was good, no card would be good.
Current Marvel Snap meta be like
Id love to hear your thoughts on what an alternative Yugioh format could look like that is NOT just a time capsule meta like Goat, Edison, etc.
Personally I think an interesting place to start could be zero extra deck. With a lot of the most powerful combo tools and negate-on-a-stick living in the extra deck, I think there could genuinely be something interesting there. Heck, it could even breath some life back into some older cards like Gravity Bind which doesn't effect XYZ and Link monsters.
Eh, but there's so much removal and ways to Special from Deck with certain 1-card enablers that would feel like you're still playing modern YGO like with a Valyantz deck for an example, any Tribute Summon dot deck with floodgates like Monarchs, Mekk-Knights (have searchable linger negates as Continuous Spell/Traps), Rescue-Ace, Vanquish Soul, Zombies as we know Balerdroch and Eldlich exists as well as Zombie World, recently with Snake-Eyes and/or Fire King can still cause trouble, etc. Basically anything that can stop your opponent from playing the game or go over their board and have free bodies with at least decent stats without ever needing the Extra Deck. Also, there's still the insane amount of staples and generic engines that are crazy impactful and at a playset, or 3-of, legally. Also with the way YuGiOh players are, I don't think a "start" is going to bring an appeal for them to move on over towards.
Edit: I forgot to include the insane amount of Ritual payoffs and their support as well.
Yugioh not having alternative formats just compounds this issue tenfold.
In MtG my in was Amonkhet, I didn't know shit about MtG, nor do I really know much now but I was at least able to play games where I didn't feel like I was constantly behind the times because everyone else was playing either the same cards I was playing or cards that had a reasonably similar power level and degree of simplicity, I could actually enjoy the game, even when I was playing cards even my eyes, new to the game, could tell were not great.
In Yugioh, there must be like...two dozen archetypes and strategies I would enjoy playing in a similar fashion to how I played with the Amonkhet cards however because there is only one format anyone gives a crap about, advanced, and the only environment that format truly allows is the most recent, powerful archetypes, there is no incentive to get interested in a 'bad' archetype or bad cards.
It's just a bad time for everyone, but because Konami takes to market strategy is akin to a bull in a chinashop, it won't ever change, if it stagnates as is, Konami will ignore it, if it gets worse, well YuGiOh's life will be in danger of being axed because this card game we love and hate is in the palms of a company who has proven time and again it will kill any intellectual property under it's wing if it doesn't meet their expectations.
As someone who loves both mento and vaal I can confidently say there are no valiant smashers packs in the general vicinity of where I reside
Some Master Duel events at least have the potential to give bad archetypes a temporary home.
When SHS and Gold Pride released we had an event where Gold Pride was a meta deck.
Sadly these events are only short-lived and not all of them hit the spot when it comes to giving weaker decks a place in their own meta.
I personally enjoy the variety of cards konami prints because the most interesting part of yugioh to me is reading and trying to understand what every card does on duelingbook
Pot of Generosity was used in a Duel Links farm deck
I actually liked the metaphor at the beginning of the last video. It really tied the whole thing together, and gave it this clean, video essay structure, instead just rambling at a camera.
In this video the main reason why pack filler and bad cards exsist seems to have been missed, though, which is simply to make money. Shoveling out heaps of cardboard for people to buy at an exorbitant price to potentially pull the chase card they are looking for is borderline gambling, just legal to push on minors (and thus parents with disposable income that would otherwise not consider it).
That might be a bit cynical, but it is truly the reason. It is simply easier to print bad cards than niche cards that might fulfill a certain role in a certain strategy without being entirely too situational or universally good. Sometimes cards are printed like this, but more often bad cards just exist to fill out the pack.
Pokémon actually seems to be a bit better to pull product from, even though there are bad cards in it of course, you still always have a chance of getting a common that is your favorite Pokémon and the collection angle is definitely there, which Yu-Gi-Oh! seems to lack on anything that is not Duelist Kingdom related.
The Panini DBZ TCG (which was a remake of the Score DBZ CCG) did a really good job making most of the cards feel impactful or have a use, aside from a few outliers of devs under-tuning staple cards in certain styles for balance reasons apparently. Decks that topped would often have commons in them, even as the limited card pool expanded, simply because those cards filled a role that they needed. It was refreshing to not feel like opening a pack was a waste.
The problem is mechanically, Yu-Gi-Oh! is just not really able to do this as easily, and so they will not do it, unfortunately. Konami seems stuck in this older mindset that I hope a lot more TCGs move away from.
pokemon is worse to buy product from because all of the singles are so crazy cheap. with YGO you can at least conceivably plus off of some product if you get really lucky. but i mean this is a good thing, i would rather have a tcg that is affordable than one which has the chance of pulling some $120 card and the rest of the set is garbage.
@@erikreeds3836 You are definitely right, overall Pokémon singles are way cheaper. Personally though, I have just always had really good pulls with Pokémon, often getting my money back or more, with promo card boxes and the like, where as Yu-Gi-Oh! I have never pulled well enough to justify buying a box and have regretted the few times I have.
I think one of the other core reasons for bad cards (especially in a game like YuGiOh where individual cards can do so much and are so meta dependent) is that card designers are human, and occasionally make cards that during set design will seem interesting and potentially strong. However the current landscape might require different tools, or they just had an interesting idea and it didn't work out, so it just ends up being an unplayable card. I think it's also important that it's pretty much impossible to design a set or game of purely "good" cards. Even if you try, some cards will be inevitably relegated to "not good enough" status. Not that there shouldn't be an attempt at making said product good, and it's unfortunate the pain that LGS's have to endure because of bad product drops.
i think that to a degree, i completely agree with you. a lot of forgotten yugioh archetypes don't exactly have a reason to exist in terms of viability (and ESPECIALLY not to anyone looking to sell these things), but yugioh has always been a game about appealing to petdeckers with cute artwork and thematics- i mean, it's LITERALLY what the entire yugioh anime is.
i think there is an argument to look at "why a deck exists" not just from the perspective of a competitive player, but from the perspective of incredibly casual players who just want to play the funny deck with cool art and a quirky mechanic. even decks like tistina, icejade, and vaalmonica have their fans out there.
......but i 100% agree that yugioh needs a better way to ship these "bad cards" that isn't going to bankrupt every card shop in the midwest. there's definitely something wrong with this game's release schedule, but i think that subpar, uncompetitive archetypes do have a place in being alluring to more casual players (because if every archetype was competitive anyway keeping up with competitive yugioh would be Torture.)
Whilst I agree with the points made in the video, I do feel like it fails to take into account the appeal to the casual player base. Sure, archetypes like Valmonica and Memento aren't going to be performing well at tournaments or even locals, there will be plenty of people who play casually with their friends/siblings and to a lower powerlevel who will see archetypes like these, really vibe with them and will want to pick them up, regardless of whether they're competitively viable. Ben Brode also said himself at one point when responding to "bad card" criticism for hearthstone: "Some people like playing (and winning) with bad cards"
A lot of cards, or rather archetypes are bad but doesn't mean no one's gonna play it. Reason is because there are always 2 types of person when playing a game, one is a competitive player who just wanted to win, another is a player who plays for fun. Most of bad archetypes (and cards) have that value, they are fun to play for certain peoples, whether because of other source influence (like manga or anime archetype) or because they play around a unique playstyle or do something weird, say for example Vaylantz, pend deck who summon themself and goes around the zone and actually can't do pend summon unless they get their ED monster in pend zone; Ninja and Tistina who just like flipping cards and do something weird or cool with them, etc.
There's a card called relay soul and it makes you lose if your special monster has left the field for any reason
the white corners on Sylvan Primordial made me cringe. It takes maybe a minute to clean that up in GIMP.
I love these discussion videos.
With the vast and obvious gap in power level between archetypes that get released recently, im convinced Konami has been disigning Yugioh around the existance of a Heart of the Underdog Format that they just forgot to give is.
Konami never really learned from MTG's mistakes. But Bandai, the guys who hsd it first, totally did. They're opting for similar strategy in Battle Spirits Saga.
I love these discussion videos ❤
Isn't this the same thing people said about Amazing Defenders? Remember when both Rescue ACE and Purrely were thought to be trash, Mikanko said to be the best from the set. One new card releases and both Purrely and RescueACE become top tier threats before getting banned. Remember when people said Runick was a low tier gimmick deck, now its one of the strongest splashable engines, and a new card didn't even release for that to be true it was and always has been since release. Took people about a year to realize it.
YGO players in general don't understand the value of their cards not just new players. I think this extends to konami as well. They're throwing darts on a board to see what sticks. Albeit, they are trying to aim for certain gimmicks to counter current threats.
I'm not denying that there is a problem with konami current system, but these cards aren't made to be bad. They are made to fill niche holes in the games playstyle. Konami takes great care to make its cards unique from each other, very rarely do they straight up powercreep cards. And I love that.
I feel like there's a few other reasons.
1) Experimentation. A lot of times it's hard to tell what will actually be good or bad beyond a generic level. They have to try new things to try and figure out what will and won't work and, sometimes, that means archtypes that aren't too strong.
2) Playstyle variation. A lot of meta players tend to forget that not everyone plays to the meta. My favorite deck is a Vampire Fraulein deck. Will it ever be top tier? Unlikely. But it's what I like playing. Some people don't want to play god decks; they want to play fun decks whose playstyle makes sense to them.
3) Manga/anime relevance. The manga/anime exist and has a ton of characters in it playing themed decks. Each one needs a bit of uniqueness to it. If they were all meta-viable that would cut what they could do down by an immense amount.
4) Keeping the power curve down a bit. In a set X amount of cards need to be released. If all of them are above curve that means the curve creeps upwards and a lot of older cards simply cease to be relevant. But by printing a bad card, said card is effectively negated. So if a new set has, say, 50 cards, if 40 of them are bad, that means the curve only creeps up by 10 cards worth as opposed to 50.
5) Fun. Sure, bad cards are bad, but people have *fun* with them. For example, Frog the Jam. He's a meme and people have enjoyed finding ways to make it relevant for no reason other than the lulz. People still try to do stuff like make Exodia viable and whatnot and, well, have *FUN* doing so.
"Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites." Not every card should be good. That would result in insane power inflation and ruin the game for a ton of people who just want to have fun.
There's a huge missing piece of the design impetus for bad MTG cards, which is to facilitate player expression and emergent play. It's fun for a lot of specific types of players to look at a card that is, on its face, terrible, and try to make it work anyway. Usually that ends in "yeah, it was exactly as terrible as we thought," which can be satisfying in its own way, but occasionally it ends in like, One With Nothing getting sided against Howling Mine and seeing actual success. By printing cards that aren't good, you can evaluate why they're not good on a more granular level, refining your understanding of what is good when your assumptions are proven correct and expanding your understanding of what is good when they're proven incorrect.
To that I have two words. Hammer Time.
I am kinda surprised people talk so poorly about valliant smashers.
Where i live my local store keeps restocking it cause it sells out quite quickly.
Imagine if Konami made a new card that gives your bad cards to your opponent and then forces them to activate. Think of the possibilities.
Gold Moon Coin lol
@@thatguyyouhatealot Gold Moon Coin doesn’t force your opponent to use it tho.
@@noahts-kearney True, but otherwise you load their hand and field with bricks. I imagine you would also be playing cards that let you guess what is in their hand or field like Suppression Pluto or something
it wasn't the focus of the video, but I loved how you touched on how fundamentally different yugioh's cards are as game pieces. I think yugioh cards sometimes feel almost like they're shifting the rules of the game itself over just. putting a piece into play and I think it's what drew me into the game so much. Yugioh is genuinely so unique among card games and as much as it can stumble i love getting to see modern yugioh exist as something really hard to replicate or explain, even within the context of other card games
Good question. On a different note, how is your rotation format going? Thinking about doing any cubes in the near future? Some low-powered Sealed formats perhaps?
weird, i remember getting the impression that memento was considered the "best" archetype out of VS and centurion was relegated to a meme that could maybe king calamity lock your opponent through 0 handtraps
Something I realized a while back is that since YuGiOh doesn't do set rotation, the only time someone would want to purchase new cards if if they're better than something they already have. That and the banlist are the only way to change up the metagame in any way. I was just reminded of that when hearing about sets full of cards nobody wants to play.
I really liked the analogy with the "murder your darlings" you did on your last video like this. I wish you had done it again. I quite liked that saying. Maybe I am party of the few
I will add sometimes the bad cards also just exist for callbacks to other cards or as fail-safes.... Or because the show...
We have quite a few "bad" hand traps that aren't actually bad but exist for a meta that didn't end up happening. And sometimes years later they finally get their time to shine.
I do hate it with every fibre of my body how true your observation about paper magic becoming commander slop is.
I play a "makes the enemy feel bad about themselves" deck in Pokemon ocg. It's a prime example that just because cards are bad doesn't mean they can't be used effectively. It's primary win condition is just having radiant jirachi in the active zone. For a single turbo energy (2 colorless for -20atk) you can flip 2 coins and if they're both head, the opponents Pokemon is knocked out (not dmg). It's ability is that when it is knocked out you can select up to three cards from your deck and add them to your hand.. imagine the best card in your deck that you've spent 4+ turns attaching energies to gets pulled out into the active spot and one hit KO by dumb luck. 50% chance the opponent concedes on the spot. And if you knock it out? Well I can bring it back with the turbo on it with those three cards.. or play practically any other strategy off those three cards alone.. it's less pungent than it used to be with blisseyV attaching energies from the discard isn't available. That includes double turbo energies up to 3 energies per turn :o
Great video, very thought provoking.
From what I remember about Ben Brode's video he talked about how a lot of people like playing with bad cards and I think that translates really well to YuGiOh.
Cuz they give me a lil’ chuckle
To be fair the stores can run sealed tournaments in an effort to try and move them. I hammered my store to host a battle pack tournament and it had a lot of people show up. Super fun.
Honestly it's needed since you can just watch the best deck online and buy the cards as singles. Kinda sucked the life out of the game for me
I really like Valmonica! I really like Suship! I think the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! would be worse without them. They’re interesting and fun to collect.
Bad cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! are honestly often really fun because they have interesting and strange effects that make it fun to build around them.
That or work at finishing archetype sets with semi updated gimmick. Like the GX arcane deck where they make a deck based on the Tarot and like half the Tarot are represented.
Another important reason why bad cards exist, especially in MtG but also in yugioh, is to help players be able to identify what a good card looks like. If you go through a pack of cards of which each have a keyword, or one line of text, and then you see a card that has two or three keywords, or a keyword and a written ability (or beyond), that's an easy indication that that card is worth a closer look and may be more useful, regardless of rarity. The same principle can apply in yugioh, though because of other issues with the game's barrier to entry re: intuitiveness of card interactions, it isn't always as easy to parse. Nevertheless, this is an important aspect of TCGs: some cards are intentionally bad so that you can learn how to assess cards, period.
EDIT: Got too excited and typed this up right after the three numbered reasons but before you got into Hearthstone, whoops!
I used pot of generosity with surprise present skill in dl was fun for a gimmick lol.
Saving so i can use this in reference to the card game I'm making.
Shadowverse counts. The physical game is also killer.
I think that a solid chunk of that is experimentation. This seems more obvious if you look at the game from a historical perspective. You gotta see YGO communities as groups of lab rats. Konami wants to know what kind of aesthetics (both in and outside card design) people dig, but it also has no idea if x set of cards is really going to impact the meta and/or wider playerbase as they expect it will (remember that article on Sea Monster of Theseus?). I don't think that they JUST throw shit at a wall and have 0 clues about anything at all, obviously, but it's also true that any relatively sizeable playerbase is going to figure out stuff that you didn't know before releasing that very thing to the world. In a sense, we're more than lab rats, we're more akin to a supercomputer and they have nothing that can entirely replace such computational power ante factum
I feel like a lot of the recent anime focused sets are more a result of a rift between the Ocg and tcg with both in terms to appeal and price we’re it’s way easier to get someone who grew up with the anime to buy a box of cards or even a few boosters at ocg prices compared to the tcg we’re if it’s not og yugioh or some times gx pepole will just ignore it outright vs ocg where zexal is probably one of the most popular series there
Shadowverse mentioned! Evolve is taking off!
5:08 definitely just skipped ahead because I thought you were hitting us with some kind of ad lmao
this is seriously the most spot-on commentary I've heard from MBT in a while. I usually don't like him but the man is solidly right all-around in this vid.
This video just shows we need more sealed or cubed formats.