Thanks Doug, I actually found your channel back then because of videos like this one and was able to pick up yugioh again after years of not playing it.
Every time i go to locals with pendulums at least half of my opponents say that they have no idea of how pend works and have never played against it. They dont even know D Barrier can call pend lmao
I'll be honest, OG Links were a far bigger mistake, yeah Pendulums look kinda funny and have a bad reputation and have some annoying rulings, but Links have had a far worse long term impact on the game in a design sense, and that's true even if you ignore early Link era where they just crammed the mechanic down everyone's throat and made several decks practically unplayable, not by power creep but by game mechanics.
The problem with links is that they're overpowered by design, being too simplistic, the problem with pendulum is that they're unnecessarily convoluted for no reason at all.
@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon I wouldn't say unnecessary. Going face up to the extra deck for recursive summons is almost a necessity for the mechanic to work. You couldn't have them go to grave cause that'd be busted being able to pend from grave. The only ruling I ever complained about was the scales. It should have been the numbers you scaled you could summon as well as in-between
@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon Links being introduced as a balance patch and being a mandatory gateway for using other ED summons in multiples made them need to be easy to put on board, especially for the sake of all the decks they would've needed to be retrofitted into, so when that was walked back the Links are just inexplicably easy to summon with little discernible reason. They are easy by design but it's more understandable why when in context of the rules they launched with. They have a similar issue with link arrows; Aside from Knightmares a whole lot of early Links don't have any effect text relating to link arrows/ linking/ colinking even when they read like they should, and part of that is because if those effects relate to summoning ED monsters then that would've been built into the rules at the time. E.g. Verte can fusion summon but in MR4 that would have to be to a linked zone, so now that's no longer the case if feels like there should've been at least something in the effect regarding that.
@@Jarjarfunk Honestly my only gripe with Pendulum is that most of them only work for the Archetype they are a Part of, while those that don't have mostly the same Scale. Be more playable if you didn't need to run a certain archetype to use them, (unless i just got unlucky with the Pendulums i have)
OG Links? Links to these day are a bigger problem than pendulum ever was. People cried summoning 5 once per turn was overpowered. But now we have had multiple 1 card combos that trigger a chain of literally a dozen summons and none of them use pendulums.
Over 10 years later and people still talk about a mechanic dead on arrival while nobody talks about how link monsters and MR4 massively accelerated powercreep.
@@Danlight1911I mean... A lot of people will tell you Konami should've stopped at Fusion. Or at Synchro. Or at XYZ. Or at pendulum. Or at Link. Every generation thinks they are better than the one that came before and the one that will come after.
@@gabrielferreira7550 I got back into Yugioh a little over a year ago after not playing since before Synchros were a thing. After a year I will admit XYZ and Synchros have grown on me but Pendulum and Links can go. Pendulum just feels so radically different than any other mechanic it feels like it genuinely does not belong in Yugioh, like you're playing a completely different card game. As for Links it's obvious the mechanic skyrocketed the power creep more than anything else causing meta decks to feel more oppressing than they ever have.
@@Danlight1911you are not getting rid of my odd eyes they are to fun and it’s imminent fest with them even though people constantly banishes them and bricks for a hand are just very painful
What I NEVER understood: why they never trapped into the design possibility of mismatched left and right scales. It seemed so obvious for me the first time I saw the card design. Why else have a red and blue scale taking up space instead of just having a single "scale" number somewhere?
100% was something they would've done if Pends hadn't flopped atrociously.. No reason to experiment with something no one likes, and definitely no reason to make something more complicated and harder to balance.
The rulebook actually used to state the left and right numbers mattered and could be different. I guess they just changed their minds early on before any cards with different scales mattered.
While we all anticipated that, by this point it would be highly difficult to implement. Just think, every card that mentions a pendulum scale would need an errata to include which scale it referred to instead of just both at the same time. Reprinting that many pendulum cards and pendulum support would be a financial death note for Konami because barely anyone would wanna buy all that product, hence Dzeef mentioning how these sets now have barely any pendulum cards.
@@Trekkie46 I don't see how there would need to be an errata to the cards, but granted Im not that familiar with pendulums. Wouldn't it just need to be specified in the rules?
The funny thing is that Pendulums never became that threat, but Links did. Links evolved into doing everything that people were terrified about Pendulums for 😂😂
I think instead of Pendulum Summoning being the mechanic, they should've gone harder on the whole "half monster half spell" thing, later on introducing Pendulum traps.
imgaine set a card and face up on opponent's turn and it's actual "pendulum monster but trap". You pen summon on opponent's turn and add something on it like this turn any cards pen summoned by this card can't be destroyed once.
Yeah the problem wasn't just that they are monster/spells but that they also have this huge special summoning mechanic with the extra deck. It's like they tried to make 2 different card mechanics and just jumbled them together.
I love Amazoness and the Pendulum monsters there are fascinating because the only time you will use them as monsters is for fusion material, then they go into the zones where their pendulum effects help you. It is really interesting card design because you don't use pendulum summoning as a mechanic, you use them as monsters and continuous spells essentially.
@MoskalMedia I hate to break it to you but this is pretty much how every Pendulum deck works nowadays. Superheavy Samurai, Speedroid, Predaplant, Lunalight, Crystal Beast none of them actually Pendulum Summon, they just use the cards for their effects. It's just that the cards are locked into your Pendulum Zones and that's just kinda really annoying because all you have to do to counter them is set imperm in either column.
The concept of putting cards face up on top of the extra deck seems weird at a glance until you consider the frightening alternative. Pendulum monsters were designed to be recursive, so if they went to the graveyard, you’d also need to be able to PENDULUM SUMMON FROM THE GRAVEYARD. With the amount of grave setup that exists in Yugioh it’s definitely smart that Konami gave Pendulum monsters their own little home on top of the extra deck.
They don't go to the graveyard they go to the extra deck instead. Because they're not monsters when you destroyed them in the spelling trap zone. However, if they were played as a monster, they'd go back to the graveyard **I never play pendulums in my lifetime. I only pay like cyberse even I know 😂**
@@nickypool415Pendulums only go to the graveyard if discarded from the hand, sent from the deck, returned from banishment, or detached from an XYZ monster (XYZ materials are not considered cards on the field.)
@@Raminator243 the problem is that reclusive mechanics are really bad for Yugioh, think about all the ftk and endboards self-perpetuating loops allow, pendulum was forced to be underpowered and convoluted, because it would be too unhealthy for the game otherwise.
I truly believe the reason Electrumite was banned was for marketing reasons. They want to keep pure pend decks as weak as possible to tell the Yugiboomers "please come back"
@Nerobyrne My brother had similar thoughts. "What are those?" "That seems complicated." "What's a scale?" Then I taught him Pend Magicians on Master duel and he had a blast. Even said it was one of his favorite decks. I think pendulum is a genuinely fun archetype to play, that seems a lot more complicated than it usually ends up being.
I love and hate how pendulum developed as a mechanic. Hated at its peak performance before being gutted as a mechanic. but the damage had been done already. We cooked too hard with pendulum soup and nirvana high paladin had already been printed and people (to this day) refused to read that much text.
The funniest thing about Nirvana High Paladin is that the card doesn’t actually have very complicated effects. The most confusing part about the card is the recycling effect. I’m pretty sure you can trigger it if you use a non tuner pendulum as the tuner (per its other effect), but it doesn’t quite make that clear.
@@Raminator243 it does work that way, since you can treat a non tuner as a tuner it also works the same for tne recycle effect, kinda weird but multiple synchros has have some effects like that, so it wouldn't even be a pendulum issue but a synchro one.
I quit Yugioh at a point in the game where the extra deck was still the “fusion deck zone”, early in the life of GX. I came back around 2017 because I watched the arc-v anime on a whim. Picked up D/D because it was a deck that used all those weird new summon mechanics at once, and figured it’d force me to get good at all of them… and promptly fell in love with Pendulum as a mechanic. The armchair game designer in me loves overly complex systems like that, and the flexibility was interesting.
Well hello there fellow D/D player , I also have pretty much the same experience , I'm not a returning player , but when i got into the game I chose this deck because of the cool design and because it has archetypal monsters of every type , I also fell in love with it !
Literally had the exact same experience as you, left the game during GX, came back around the time the Arc-V anime was ending. D/Ds were also my first deck in a long time that I built and learned to play. To this day I actually really liked the arc-v anime and love pendulums as an archetype. I left yugioh as a kid cuz I felt the game was getting too complex but now as an adult I love learning complex combos and decks. D/Ds are still my favorite deck to this day.
😮 oh Lord a chat filled with D/D/D mains! Im also a D/D/D player long ago in till this day it's my to go to deck o.o you guys have a specific favorite? For me it's just high king Alexander
I understand why Konami chose to address Pendulums the way that they did, however, I do think that it sucks that one of Yugiohs most unique summoning mechanics is treated more so as an archetype as a proper summoning mechanic, and I do hope that with the fast pace of play in today's Yugioh, we finally start getting decent Pendulum decks, Fortunately Konami does seem to be warming up to the idea of good pendulums, and I think introducing Pendulum cards into otherwise normal decks is a great start
Pendulums have only been introduced into Arc-V anime decks. As in. The anime where they were supposed to be the focus but took a wayside to every other mechanic lol.
Z-arc and odd eyes are my favorite I have one faint memory from when I was young and arc v was airing or nicktoons I remembered arc v when I found it was yugioh related years later after I first seen it when I was about 6 or 7 the mechanic didn’t seem that hard to learn either cut to 2017 I had no clue arc v had a season 3 I come to watch it and found out about z-arc and I fell in love with all 5 dragons till this day I forever use those 5!decks that’s reps each dragon long live the pendulum swing
People complained when pendulums "summoned 5 monsters per turn" from the ED but they have no problem with every tier 1-0 deck of modern day special summoning 5+ monsters from the hand and Gy per turn. Ah yes the issue has been solved
Yeah but Pendulums will do that EVERY TURN ad infinitum with no additional resources needed. (Before introduction of Links) The closest there is besides that is Horus monsters bringing themselves back every turn, if you have the Sarc. The issue of summoning a ton of ED monsters started with Fusions (less so til later) and Synchros(forever), and has been even more facilitated by introducing Links
@@LikeTheBirb You don't pend 5 every turn, it's near impossible after the rule changes. Besides, if everything goes right and you make it to turn 3 with your scales intact and a link 3 or higher in your EMZ, you're probably winning anyways so it doesn't matter.
@lucasalarcon3230 i think he talking about old pendulum before link zone a thing and they can just put monster from extra wherever they want Old Pendulum so stupid able to materialize resources out of nothing
@LikeTheBirb you do realize by the time your able to have the amount of resources required to pendulum 5 cards it would take you at least 3 turns and thats only if you got good search cards and ways to build up your ED especially when back in the day there were barely cards that did that. Assuming you go first and you draw all monsters that set 2 scales and you have 3 monsters. If one was a search(assuming op didn't have ash), that's summoning 1 normally and adding 1 more to make it still 3 pend summoned. If you went 2nd, then that's 4. Now here is the kicker if yoh went 2nd and your op set solemn or twin twisters you lose because either your zones get popped or you pendulum 4 and solemn send them all to the gy and you cant get them back and lose. Also, when pendulums came out, Zoo's, blazar/quasar spam, frightfurs otk, and many other non pendulum decks that spam summoned and filled their boards with ED cards existed. Also, pendulums can only be pendulum summoned 1 time a turn, and it still requires you to have proper level and scales. All of which made pendulums spamming 5 cards way less likely. Pendulums are just the scapegoats for people to complain about a mechanic that isn't even that bad. The only people who complained were people who didn't understand the mechanic and how balanced it actually was. Pendulums only become a problem if a duel lasts long enough for the face-up extra deck to build up. Only then do they become a major issue. Also, most pendulum decks that were good weren't ever good for their pendulum capabilities. It would just be because they were either floodgates(majespectors), had a bunch of negates(endymion), had good search and burn (performages and pendulum magician), everything else has been mediocre or decent at best. Pendulums aren't any more of an issue than any other method.
I learned the game with odd eyes as my first deck, I don't think it's too hard to learn how pendulum works especially compared to learning how to play any combo/midrange deck nowadays. I thought being able to summon a bunch of monsters at once was cool and I liked odd eyes raging dragon's design. Without pendulum I would not be playing this game
At this point there’s no excuse anymore, Pendulums decks on the banlist are doing absolutely nothing and no one can honestly argue that they would make Yugioh “too complicated and convoluted” given what the game looks like today. No yugiboomers who wouldn’t be deterred by the complexity of modern yugioh would quit or be mad about pendulums.
@@The_Story_Of_Us your defense of pendulums is that other modern cards have a lot of text and use link monsters ? a modern pendulum deck is is double the text and effects and an extra deck made up mostly of link monsters, so yes the average player hates them even more so
@ no, my point in spite of your nitpicking is that the game is already convoluted and has been overly convoluted for the layperson FOR AGES, Pendulums only heralded in the the era we’re still in right now, where every single card has multiple effects and walls of text. Twice as much? Who cares?! It’s still giant walls of texts and fundamentally pendulums are not more difficult to understand than link mechanics and modern yugioh archetypes and their intricacies. You’re gonna have to rewind history a LOT LONGER if you want the game to be understandable for the average joe.
@ that just ignores what a bad reputation pendulums have within the current player community and Konami itself, did you know not a single pendulum card was in any of the rarity collections, and no one cared
I still don't get why Konami never played around with putting different scales on the same card, could've been a great way not only to balance pendulum and make it less generic but also to make some interesting things with the mechanic. also even thought it's interesting to put face up cards on the extra it was just a bad idea to add so much to an already pretty convoluted mechanic.
Hmm. Multiple scales on one card, if one card had scale 1 red and scale 8 blue, drawing multiple copies of that card becomes less of a brick. No longer needing 2 different monsters to pendulum summon
Yugiohs biggest mistake was adding so many omni negates or negates in general. Too many of them floating around. Also too many cards that judt flat out prevent your opponent from playing the game they spent money to play. Until then the only fun possible on yugioh is fueling friends only.
Pendulum was unfun, but at least you could just not play a deck with them. MR4 Link era was the most blatant "you WILL play the new cards whether you like it or not" move imaginable, and I'm glad they walked it back a few years later.
It sounds more like the issue people have is the bizarre implementation that took 2 whole master rules to finally get the cards functioning in-game in a way that made any sense at all. I like the place theyre in now, I just wish they were stronger.
@RaineBans they can its just sadly becomes a thing of most pendulum decks that do become much more monster heavy due to it so they try to stick to theme more for ratios
Pendulum went from "Completely overpowered on paper, only held back because the card designers themselves fear what they created, Pepe is the only time the mechanic was actually somewhat used and still not to full extent and it required an emergency banlist" to "absolutely garbage, do not use under any circumstances" to "I guess it's alright. Would be cool if they had actual cards to play though" throughout the years, and I think that's both hilarious and sad
The thing is that many pend decks from when the mechanic was first made are still borderline unplayable just due to the changes to the mechanic. Igknight for instace is completely unplayable as the deck's whole gimmick was to destroy themselves to load up the ED for a mass pend summon, you cant do that now. Dinomists cant play their full backrow or make use of multiples of their continous trap, Majespecter has extremely limited options for how many backrow they can setup. The list goes on. As it stands the only 4 ish playable pend decks are pend magician, endymion/mythical beast, vaalmonica and arguably vaylantz. You'll notice that the majority of the decks mentioned are decks designed after the change to the rules. Abyss Actor and Majespecter both have gotten decent support but it doesnt fix the inherent design issues caused by the changes to the mechanic.
Worsd thing about pendulums gotta be how many times i have to explain to opponents all the hidden rules of pendulums while playing. Gotta say " well actually" way too many times playing abyss actors.
Like another have said :"They were hated in the begining, but now they're loved because either they bring something original, or they rescue your favorite archetype"
A Dzeeff discussion video? That's heavily edited at that? Doug, u already missed Christmas I appreciate that Konami's been exploring the pendulum mechanic in unique ways, not even necessarily for gameplay but purely for aesthetic reasons. For example, the two Vaalmonica monsters are literally only pendulums so they can sit in your scales, to form the image of an angel and devil sitting on your left and right shoulders. Or how Nemleria has exactly *one* pendulum monster so you can't even properly Pend summon with the deck, but they made her a Pendulum for the sole purpose of having her sleep in your ED until she runs out of her pillows. Decks like these that have a core thematic idea and the gameplay is made to perfectly complement it are some of my favorites, and they come from the dreaded Pend mechanic of all things
@@rodrigoandrade256 There's no way for Nemleria to work the way it does if pendulums were just a monster/spell hybrid, but I still agree that pendulums really should've been just a monster/spell hybrids, without the extra nonsense.
Melodius is also a deck about singing and so the pendulum monsters are the part of the choir that sits behind the ones in the front while the fusion summons are their leader, i thought it was neat :).
Right? For me Pendulum is the best mistake Konami ever made. It's still a mistake, but when they bring unique decks that are interesting mechanically, it always pends. Your example pretty much summed it up.
I remember when my friend showed pendulum cards, I thought he was lying about them being able to summon his whole hand at once. Upon learning it was true, I vehemently hated pends for a long time. Obviously nowadays they don’t do much anyways, and honestly I don’t mind them anymore.
The funny thing is I didn’t quit because of the pendulums I left because after links I realized due to the lack of nuances in game play options Konami locks you into playing the game the way they want it to be played and so you’ll spend that 500 dollars on a deck just to never be able to play it again once it gets banned in the single format you have to play so I switched to magic the gathering and have been happily playing commander ever since
@ a trend brought upon themselves my friend they need to create different formats of gameplay to attract more people because one all encompassing banlist is just a bottleneck proposal for the people playing the game as you won’t want to play the higher tiers of game play because you’ll have to make infinite purchases to remain even remotely competitive combined with the lack of balance in the power creep and games like MTG become a much better more developed option
So I didn't realize how few Pends were released early on. You go for almost a year and there's like... 30 of them, which isn't enough to make a deck. There's not even enough to supplement something else with in there, most of them are just awful, outside of *exactly* Qlis and those are Monarchs with a Pend gimmick. Also, Rituals have had a more profound meta impact than Pends. Let that sink in. I would still disagree and say that the biggest mistake was Links. Edit: Doug, to the people who hated Pend Yu-Gi-Oh *DID* go down the dark path, they hated Pend because it summoned 5, we now have a near-mandatory handtrap that triggers when someone Summons 5 times, *and people keep playing after.* The people who hated Pends will, at best, play Time Wizard, they are not coming back to endless Combo Fiesta.
I had quit around this time and came back for a brief moment after the pandemic. I played 5 duels and got OTK 4 times thanks to the endless links. I dont know how anyone plays this game.
I would say Rituals and Pendulums have had relatively similar impacts... which is honest pretty sad for Rituals, considering Pendulums have been around for half as long.
@@hawkticus_duel_shack haven't check in a while but there was a time when when we have more links and cyberse cards that pendulums not sure if this go worse or better
I like to imagine a world where pendulums were simply monsters that could be spells to help print "bad" extender monsters that could instead have spell effects, and as a result Konami never felt the need to print Mathmech Circular
no it’s new players like being braindead they’ll learn every single red dragon combo but when it comes to pendulum summon that’s the problem you literally pull off about 15 dragons from your extra deck and you complain when I summon my whole hand while sacrificing two zones that can easily be cancelled and then I’m the probably ironic
@@ant-onemusic444 For sure, i won't forgive konami TCG for banning and maintaining Electrumite banned in the TCG, while it was never banned in the OCG and hasn't done anything to any format, and would definitely do nothing in the current format other than be a bone thrown to one of the most neglected ygo mechanics.
I was a yugiboomer that hate pendulum. Yet in 2022, i came back to YGO because of learning Qliphort (and Towers is a sick art card). Now, I main Abyss Actor in MD. I probably hate Link more because they are technically accomodating Foolish Burials for GY spam, and their design just straight up mocks older card design like Bagooska, Book of Moon, and D Barrier. Even Pendulum is forcefully dependent on Links.
Pendulum is the perfect example of the disconect between casual and competitive players. Pendulum as a mechanic is the absolute worst summoning type in mldern yugioh requireing at least 3 cards to even perfom a pend summon pend summon 5 was such a rare thing that ever happend and if it happend to you,you were gong to lose that duel anyways. Yet explaining the pendulum mechanic to a casual player they act like its the most disgusting thing they have ever heard of. Theres really only ever been two incredibly powerful Pendulum decks that were format warping and one was hit on an emergency banlist. You will always have yugi boomers who refuse to learn a new summoning mechanic ehen its released buy at least in pendulums case not every player even needed to learn the ins and outs of it unlike link summoning that completely dominated the game because konami forced it on you Really though people quit during pend era specifically because of pendulums being in the game just dont make sense to me. Master rule 4 absolutely gutted the game and competely invalidated yesrs worth of decks AND forced you to play the new link mechanic it was absolutely the worst time to play yugioh. Yet yugiboomers still cry about pendulum because opening up the rulebook is just a little too difficult. Revert pend back to the old mechanic.
Ppl also tend to ignore you need to go -2 to set scales (and don't pretend most pend monsters spell effects do anything), your deck kinda dies to MST and playing pendulum puts a strain in deckbuilding as you need to draw multiple pendulums for them to do anything, and the right scales at that. Like, the avarage pendulum magician endboard requires a 3 card combo and gets significantly worse if hit by literaly any disruption, in a world where there's plenty of decks that have 1 card combos that play through interruptions.
Alternatively, as someone who left because of pendulums then came back with links and understands the mechanic... Pendulums are the most needlessly complex summoning mechanic in a game that already has a relatively high complexity issue these days.
And that's the problem, not enough people like you like pendulums. And their disdain for it isn't exactly unreasonable. I can count with one hand How many people I've met in my life that like playing pendulum decks.
As someone who quit in 2014 with the release of Duelist Alliance (though I have been playing the game again since MR5), I remember that what made me quit at the time wasn't directly tied to pendulum monnsters, but to the effect the mechanic had on other cards design (at least I suspect the design change was due to the pendulum mechanics). When we look at the idea of what pendulum decks would be able to do, special summon a whole board of monsters every turn, this would be an enourmous advantage in terms of available resources that non-pendulum decks might have difficulties matching. Thus it seems like the logical conclusion to give non-pendulum decks a form of resource sustain that allows them to compete with that idea. Within this context it doesn't matter that pendulum wasn't as successful as the idea behind it suggests, because the acompanying cards, designed to compete with that concept, were good enough to crowd out anything played before.
The one thing I appreciate about Pendulums is that it is the most unique summoning mechanic. Fusions, rituals, synchros, xyzs and links are basically tribute summons with extra steps, it may not be a good mechanic, but pendulum summoning was something different.
It honestly makes me sad hearing people don't like pendulums when its my favorite summoning mechanic. Even if the field was weird i liked having those extra zones but i can see why its just bad design at the end of the day
I have actually properly started getting into ygo around the end of Zexal and the beginning of Arc-V so I wasn't instantly put off by the pendulum mechanic. Tho over time I noticed that Pendulum felt really just like a weird way to have "balanced" special summons, which in the end just made them put out very weird rulings for the sake of said balance, which also didn't really prevent what pendulums would be capable of.
the mechanic also gave me a good perspective on players, since I knew if they complained about it, they'd likely just informed themselves to the bare minimum and basically have no real say when it comes to properly criticizing what is actually wrong with it. Over all I wouldn't ever listen to anyone who refused to even inform themselves correctly on the subject matter that they complain about.
Pendulums are my favorite mechanic ,no idea why they are just so unique Edit: Wish they would give us a good competitive pendulum deck again instead of worrying about the fear mongering
I came back to yigioh when pendulums released after a hiatus, it's one of my favourites, but not even close to being relevant since most decks were power crept out years ago.
every store that sold ygo in that time says that all sales on ygo pendulum droped heavy, in my country that really fked stores that was more heavy on ygo than others tcg, and pendulum not being popular in events literally means nothings, i strongly doubt that anything near than 50% of the player base even goes to events
It's worth noting that Vaylantz saw results in the OCG, but that was mainly due to their different cardpool. The deck also focused less on pendulums and more on columns.
Newer Pend decks like Vaylantz and Vaalmonica focus less on the summoning part of Pendulums and instead focus more on the monsters-as-spells part of Pendulums which is very nice to see imo, I hope Konami can actually make a pend deck that has a bit of both
I think Pen decks are genuinely one of the strangest and most overhated things in Yugioh. With the exception of Trif (The Pen God) basically no one was topping with them after Links in the TCG and even in the OCG when Magicians made a come back it still wasn't Meta warping. And after Apo, Baronne and Savage got taken to the chopping block you really are just playing a nib fodder deck. Honestly the most success I've had recently with Pendulum is just to use them as an engine in something else like Ryzeal. I remember seeing some dude by a Yuya starter set only to burn the Pen cards. Like dude... Performapal King Bear ain't all that I don't know what to tell you.
i appreciate that so many series later that you’ve upped the energy in how you speak, i still love the dry voice of the old videos but this is a cool change of pace
As someone passionate about game design, I greatly dislike pendulums. They literally warped the game around their existence, are still confusing to me despite having played Dinomists, Majespecters, and Igknights because they're so unintuitive to use. I also suspect if I played with physical cards, I wouldn't be able to properly read several of the cards due to the text cramming. Plus the design space for the pendulum scales is wasted by having all pendulums have the same left and right scale when there was a perfect opportunity to make positioning matter. To be clear, I'd have preferred the pendulum Scale to be a single area somewhere rather than taking up the margins. To me, it was never about the competitive viability, it was just a mostly-finished design rolled out poorly. For my money, Link Monsters are designed even WORSE. Once again literally warping the game (albeit in a less intrusive and more interesting way IMO), but this time having no DEF. Their level equivalent replaced their DEF for reasons that make sense (since it prevents you from changing arrows by changing battle positions, but I think that'd make them MORE interesting) but causes an actual existential issue with Yu-Gi-Oh card design. Having something replace a level is fine, but once you make a stat optional, things get brutal from a design perspective. So much future proofing is impossible simply because monsters are no longer guaranteed to have stats in the future. Levels can be future proofed with something like "level equivalent", monsters from the Extra Deck can be future proofed as stated in this segment, but I absolutely HATE the design choice to make monster stats optional with no replacement. Again, this is a design that had a lot of potential, but seems like it needed another year or so of design and testing. Again, this is mostly from a design perspective, but I dislike the existential design dread of links so much that I even try to avoid playing them in Master Duel/Duel Links, to my own detriment. And no, I don't think it's because I'm a Yugiboomer (I mean, I am. I think my first set was Metal Raiders). I think it's because I'm a perfectionist obsessed with game design who wants Yu-Gi-Oh to be the best designed game it can be and have my own preconceptions of what makes good design.
I love the playstyle of Pendulums and think they have so much room for skill expression and I would LOVE for more Pendulum monsters that synergize with other Pendulums. I want back Electrumite she's more than balanced in modern yugioh and would breath life back into the entire summoning mechanic. Pends havent been good for years and I think that bringing back the people who constantly complain about them ruining yugioh would make playing the game a worse experience. Like why do we think that pandering to people who continue to complain about a game they havent actually played for ten years would be a good thing.
@@mopanda81 question, genuinely: how is that any different from Dragon Link? I don't think Pend Soup is as much of a problem as people fearmonger about.
@@zexian9750 uh you mean when Pends weren't good because none of them existed? Like the only deck that actually ever did the things people complain about was PePe, and even then that's not possible anymore with the restrictions on Pend summons. Pends even at maximum power wouldn't be anywhere near busted in modern times because they would be limited entirely by only having one Pend summon that requires scales while your average deck is able to spin its wheels for eternity with a single spell card
Video on links next! Links at release would be just as hated as pendulums if they came first. New game mats needed, hidden mechanics, and ontop you were almost forced to play with them.
the specific master rule for non link and non pendulum monsters came out in 2020 also, i liked to play pendulum monsters in the last tag force game. my cousin never ever learned how pendulum summoning works
Pendulums to me are the most scapegoated mechanic, as you said they weren't all that strong at release and the one that was (That wasn't banned in 1 week in the tcg) was Pendulum Magician in 2017 and that one was strong!...Because of generic extra deck monsters, the mechanic itself just showed how many of them there were and hilariously most of them were xyz which meant you weren't abusing the face-up extra deck part of pendulums once you got going. And yet somehow there are people that still think they were a problem and people that complain about them being too complicated because they can't fathom reading two textboxes on a card in a card game where text is what mechanically defines a card
The, "Yu-Gi-Oh players can't read" debate that is just ultimately says they hate how complex the game has gotten when complexity is one unique thing about Yu-Gi-Oh! vs other card games.
The issue is that these days Pendulum is simply not like Fusion, Synchro, XYZ, and Link. Simply because of the fact that they are main deck cards that cannot be used as a generic toolbox in any deck. If you want to use Pendulum’s, you need to play a ‘Pendulum Deck’, which isn’t true for any other summoning mechanic whatsoever.
U can actually play pend in any deck nowadays, or at least pend engine with SHS and Melodious. Ostinato and Wakaushi can get u to almost anything as long as ur deck doesn't have summon lock.
I first got into Yugioh around 2018 when I was about 12 and my first deck was Performapal. I then fell in love with Odd-Eyes after that deck got stolen and people at my lgs helped me out. All this to say Pendulum is definitely my favorite mechanic and it's what got me into Yugioh. I don't know how many people have that story, but I wanted to share mine
Now that we hated on pendulums enough, how about we shine a light on the other side of the issue? How a lot of players who enjoy the mechanic to this day can't really play it, because a few people overreacted, refused to adapt, learn the rules and actually read in a card game full of text and decided to cry about it as loud as possible and for as long as possible. I just want a competent pend deck man, the mechanic is fun, it's not my problem you guys refuse to read your damn cards. Edit: Before anyone complains, I mainly talk about the people who hate on the mechanic until today. It was implemented badly and at the time seemed very strong, even tho that was kind off an overreaction.
Thank you, someone finally isn't just crying over it. There are alot of people that just seem to refuse to learn, instead of just reading the cards. Besides, the mechanic that followed it, Links, very quickly got MORE cards than Pendulums. Along with there being many mechanics that hurt the decks, and the mechanic is now at a point where it is very fragile. But Konami won't let them get any more of a power boost, cause, well, you'd have more people crying about "Too Ouch Text ;-;".
@@eldavid8774 valid stance to take honestly. On the other hand we're already in this mess, so I think we can just open the floodgates at this point. Can't really get worse after all we've had *Flashbacks to 16 chain tear combo*
@@LuciferGA counterpoint to that comment Kinda plays into the point You're not still learning to tie your shoes You can read a card And you've most likely got ways to pop scales
@GubbzYT of course a new pend deck would still lose to the usual things. I just understand the exhaustion that modern yugioh sometimes causes. Overall I agree of course, as per my inital point, everyone who actually plays this game should be able and willing to adapt and learn.
poor yuya, not only did he haft to deal with being 1/4th of a person and a surrogate for a multi dimensional demon, but he has to contend with yugioh players wishing he never invented the mechanic only to be overshadowed with a much worse mechanic a few years later.
Let's also not forget. When they showed off.. I forget the set. But it had to tip with popular cards released per anime, no pendulums to be seen. The games don't even give him a fully functional deck. Let alone one stuffed with pendulums.
Pendulums was the best thing ever happened in Yugioh... it made me come back to the game, plus a new perspective on the game is always nice! I can admit tho that it was a bit unfair to play against it... but other than that, this mechanic was very nice and interesting...
This is a topic I always wanted a good video on. I've quit yugioh when XYZs were released because as a young teen, keeping up even money whise for yugioh was tough. Came back with master duel and remember not understanding link / pend monsters, their summoning mechanic and everything else at all and a friend had to tell me multiple times how they work. Now my favourite decks are pendulum decks and I've always known about the "big upset" that pendulums brought because I've learned about the emergency banlist dropping at the time it happened (randomly through youtube). Thank you for this video!
I predict Rush Duel will do literally every mechanic except for Pendulum because while the mechanic isnt complicated to learn, it feels so weirdly xenophobic for what is ultimately a rogue playstyle. Like the main game could've gone from XYZ to Links with no big deal and I see why Konami is hesitant to do anything with them.
brother in christ pendulum cards are one of the most convoluted mechanics ever made. and I watch game mechanic breakdowns for fun. literally no other TCG has anything as convoluted as pendulums except for some MTG keywords that the design team basically blacklisted and games made to be overcomplicated on purpose.
@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz on paper they're only marginally more complicated than the others, in execution it's just summoning a ton with funny looking continuous spells
@@elae4051ironic that’s basically what links are except for you just need a single monsters or spel or trap that’s treated as a monster and look slink 5 I wonder how we got here not o emotions pend zone nah we got the link zone
@lorenbrown7100 Links feel like they could've come directly after XYZ (Synchros are adding levels with a tuner, XYZ are matching levels without the Tuner, and Links mostly get rid of the Level requirements). Pendulums feel too fanficy.
I actually like the half-monster/half-spell idea, but so much of the rest of pendulum seemed like too many ideas stapled together. A series of monsters that dodged the graveyard and went somewhere else could be a gimmick for an archetype all on its own. I mean, I'd argue it went down an entirely *different* dark path, but its fun to watch ya'll play it.
@@lucasalarcon3230 Yes, we all liked the idea of half-spell, half-beast. However, it also prevented trap and spell cards from being able to be set, which is pretty bad.
@@lucasalarcon3230 so even though pendulum is half magic, imagine that they haven't designed any card that can set these cards for 10 years. while there is such a concept in anime, there is none in real life
@@lucasalarcon3230 no the problem is that such rule concepts are not adopted in real life which prevents some of your cards from working properly. which means that the real playstyle of yu gi oh doesn't exactly apply all the rules of the anime and manga to real life? but why? why have we had the same rules for 25 years? these rules would make the game much more interesting. imagine if you managed to place a pendulum card face up in the pendulum zone and then it was negated by an opponent's card and set to face down, you wouldn't be able to do the pendulum mechanic? when you look at the all-eyes pendulum effect it should do exactly that but it can't. instead it negates and destroys.
I don't belive the competitiv aspect of pendulum is what worried people, but more so their concept as a whole. Yugioh is bad far the most beginner unfriendly of the 3 big card games, and a lot of people don't like every generation of cards getting more overwhelming. Pendulums are the most pure example of this, with double text boxes, unintuitive mechanics and a design that just looks like fanmade cards.
It always felt like Pendulums were doing too much and demanded too much attention on new mechanics and interactions. They got their own special zones, had their own rules of play, they didn't interact well with older design, they didn't interact with old mechanics, and they didn't respect established removal in the game. They felt like a different game compared to everything that came before it. Honestly Rush Duels feel like the game that Pendulums were trying to play. It was a waste of an entire season of Yugioh to introduce this wildly different mechanic when there were other options that people actually liked and could've blended well into the game kicking around in anime or game only formats like Skill cards or Deck Masters.
I can't imagine too many people will miss the pendulum combo slobs you run into on MD ladder every once in a while, but I think it would be sad if they stopped using the mechanic for more interesting card design like SHS and Melodious recently
SHS pendulums are not interesting at all, they do nothing but enable more summons. I think the most creative and best use of Pendulums was Vaalmonica and Vaylantz. Well, Vaylantz would've needed some real locks to avoid shit like make Gallant Granite, search Fossil Dyna & co, but their in-archetype design is really cool.
@@thenex2440 it might just be me, but honestly I find the pend slop infinitely more interesting than 90% of link combo decks. But that might be my biast as links are what got me out of competitive ygo
@@Daenijel Vaalmonica is the only actual Pendulum-focused deck that has ever looked interesting enough to almost make me want to play it. I still didn't play it, but I considered it, which is more than I can say for every other Pendulum deck ever.
Pendulums actually brought me back to the game. I know needle in haystack but I read about the concept and I was intrigued. And I started after they changed the scale locations. You telling me back in the day I not only had scale locations but also access to 5 spell/trap zones other than 3 when scaling? Bruh if only
I got back into the game with Duelist Alliance and embraced pendulums... But i never abused the mechanic like pepe did. I still think it was a good mechanic in all.
I'm more surprised there was never a dedicated ritual/pend deck. Main issue was needing a spell and a monster. Well now you have a card type that's both
I'd love to see a pendulum archetype focused on insects, reptiles, and/or plants to coincide with the Ragnaraika archetype. Making use of their recusrion to set up link zones to pendulum summon from the extra deck.
Konami's biggest mistake was regretting pendulum, actually cool and interesting mechanic relegated to doing nothing forever cuz they're just scared of the doomers
Pendulums have caused me to quit the game. But in the opposite direction. Konami lack of pendulum support and just general pend bashing is why I quit. It takes way more effort to play pendulums successfully than it does to play any other deck. If they finally gave us a good pendulum deck on the level of like Tear 0 then I'd care. Until then there's no point in playing pendulums and there's no point in playing yugioh if I can barely play my favorite mechanic when it's being outdated
z-arc is pretty good if your looking for a way to put down any other pends synchro xyz or fusion players just gotta put it in the pend zone first also their three z-arc now instead of the one
@@adamsherwani3971 Ain't no way you think it's healthy for the game to have a deck as oppresive as Tearlaments but with a pendulum skin, is a good think that people like you are no longer in the player base...
@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon the video literally explains how pendulum hate is over exaggerated and how the mechanic is historically treated. Saying I want a Tear 0 pendulum deck is a comparison. What i want is more and better pendulum archetypes to be made. The pendulum mechanic and its decks have been unjustly treated by the community
@@adamsherwani3971 There's a difference between competent and tier 0, I don't even care if it is pendulum, but any deck as powerful as pre-hit Tear should never, ever, be made again. And if that's too hard for you to understand, then I am glad you're no longer playing.
Great video and I hope to see more discussion videos from you going forward. I started watching your videos back in 2017 and your discussions were some of my favourites!
If modern Yu-Gi-Oh is two Battleships duking it out, pendulum decks are the Aircraft Carriers. I got into competitive Yu-Gi-Oh because of post-ftk-ban Pendulum Magicians. The idea that I could easily rebuild every turn was so attractive as I didn't have to worry about misplaying as I could always try again next turn. The exact opposite of something like "old school Yu-Gi-Oh" where you lost once your opponent started snowballing and you didn't draw the out. Almost 7 years later and I'm still playing competitive, just without the pendulums. Only due to Konami hating the mechanic so hard.
Playing performapal early in links was my favorite deck to play of all-time for the same reasons. Never outthe game if I could get my scales back! Too bad it's gone forever
What I find really annoying is the incorporation of the pendulum zones into the main spell & trap zones. This leaves you with only three zones for your spells and traps if you play pendulum. I really enjoyed Igknight pendulum when I played Duel Generation, but Igknight is not one of the strongest decks to play in the more intense Master Duel.
I really like the Pendulum mechanic and I still use it till this day in both Duel Links as well as Master Duel. I like using the Pendulum extra deck monsters
It's crazy that pendulums, outside of pepe for a tiny amount of time, have NEVER been good. Occasionally a deck hits rouge but the mechanic is just inherently bad with requiring a critical mass of pendulums to be run in order to insure you draw scales, hurting the amount of non-engine cards you can run, and then dumping two cards from your hand into the scales for what amounts to too little card advantage if you are even lucky enough to get rolling. Every pendulum card could come off the ban list today alongside electromite and you still wouldn't see pendulum in finals.
Qli's were a top deck for around a year. Metalfoes and Majespecter were good decks up through Zoo format. Pend magician was a top 5 deck until 2020 rule revision. Its absolutely untrue that pend was never good without pepe. There was a pend deck in the top 5 decks essentially continuously between 2015 and 2020.
@xdevo14 qli wasn't really based around the pendulum mechanic, as dzeef pointed out it was more of a stun deck that just happened to have pends in it. Those other decks tou mentioned were rouge, as in they were good enough to top events but never considered the best completive strat for any tourney. For instance no pend deck has ever won a ycs. The mechanic really needs overturned cards to carry it, such as magician pend being an ftk deck. Magispecters was probs pends best showing outside of stun and ftk.
@@xdevo14 top 5 is exageration endymion is the best 5 deck of toss if you ignore the variant of the real top decks, magician was decent into spyral on 2017, the best deck of 2018 for like 2/3 months and rogue start they we're like 2 players topping with deck nothing crazy. For the mr3 you have qli stun being 3rd best deck, pepe tier 0, pendulum soup being rogue a few times and metalfoes kirin being kinda the best deck before zoo release
@ Qli was based around the mechanic; the only reason DemiseQli worked was because the pend monsters were cards you could still place on field. The entire gimmick of Qli Scout was its pend effect. It certainly wasn't a combo deck (usually at least), but it definitely used the mechanic, more than say, Crystal Beast's pend monsters or the Speedroid pend monsters. Just because it isn't pendsoup (because it was literally the first viable pend archetype) doesn't mean that it doesn't like to set-up scales, use their effects and get several monsters on the field (to tribute or not depending on version) at once. Secondly, "good" does not mean "won a YCS". Pendulum decks have plenty of tops between 2015 and 2020, including YCS wins in Milan (Qli), 6 wins with Pepe, 2 for metalfoes, another 6 wins for Pend Magician. There's dozens of other tops in addition to premier wins. That is absolutely not "rouge". By that logic, Thunder Drag is a "rouge" deck for most of TOSS format. @lucasalarcon3230 Top 5 really isn't an exaggeration. A deck that uses the mechanic has a YCS win more or less every 6 months between 2015 and Zoo format (where a pend version was one of the popular variants) and Pend Magician was the best deck after that format until Spyral (where PendMag is still the second best deck). After Spyral, Pend wins a bunch of YCS in 2018 until Sky Striker. Most TOSS format people I've seen talk about Pend being the 5th best deck. The only times I can see that its not in the top 5 would be in certain parts of TOSS format (potentially including variant decks), and maybe Blue-Eyes format.
@@xdevo14 2 tops every other event is rogue they we're topping but not every event being the "second" best deck in 2 tier zeros formats doesn't really say a lot and spyral trickstar have like almost the same amount of top it wasn't really a clear second. Yes they are the 5th best decks of top if you if don't separate the different orcust, striker and thunder variants that is fine it like the same place mememto was a couple of months ago
Dzeeff, your old discussion videos brought me back into Yugioh around 2018, after not playing for a decade. Love and watch all of your series, but these just feel incredibly nostalgic to me. Please don’t stop with those!
A yugioh discussion video in 2025? It's more likely than you think!
Like the Yugioh discussion videos. It’s nice to see one again
Please make more!!!!
Thanks Douglas
Thanks Doug, I actually found your channel back then because of videos like this one and was able to pick up yugioh again after years of not playing it.
I want a video talking about Links being a mistake someday
Can you imagine if instead of swinging the pendulum, Konami spun a wheel?
oh gawd Master Rule 6 with some kind of wheel or spin mechanic 😭
Would make for a fun ycs
We've unlocked the ability to turn Link Monsters to defense mode!
They knew even back then that that’s farfa’s thing
Let’s roll into conflict.
Every time i go to locals with pendulums at least half of my opponents say that they have no idea of how pend works and have never played against it. They dont even know D Barrier can call pend lmao
Yeah I faced a pendulum player who was confused when I activated barrier and they said "you can't call pendulum"
I used pendulums once in Yugioh tag force special. I forggot how to use them. I will never bother tho re-learn how to use them
@exequielbreton4393 there are pendulum decks that are easy to play like dinomist or majespecters
@@JaxTheNekomata if u had sad dracoslayer those other do nothing dracoslayer does something atleast and is very easy to play
U are blessed with those people can i have some XD
I'll be honest,
OG Links were a far bigger mistake, yeah Pendulums look kinda funny and have a bad reputation and have some annoying rulings, but Links have had a far worse long term impact on the game in a design sense, and that's true even if you ignore early Link era where they just crammed the mechanic down everyone's throat and made several decks practically unplayable, not by power creep but by game mechanics.
The problem with links is that they're overpowered by design, being too simplistic, the problem with pendulum is that they're unnecessarily convoluted for no reason at all.
@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon I wouldn't say unnecessary. Going face up to the extra deck for recursive summons is almost a necessity for the mechanic to work. You couldn't have them go to grave cause that'd be busted being able to pend from grave. The only ruling I ever complained about was the scales. It should have been the numbers you scaled you could summon as well as in-between
@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon Links being introduced as a balance patch and being a mandatory gateway for using other ED summons in multiples made them need to be easy to put on board, especially for the sake of all the decks they would've needed to be retrofitted into, so when that was walked back the Links are just inexplicably easy to summon with little discernible reason. They are easy by design but it's more understandable why when in context of the rules they launched with.
They have a similar issue with link arrows; Aside from Knightmares a whole lot of early Links don't have any effect text relating to link arrows/ linking/ colinking even when they read like they should, and part of that is because if those effects relate to summoning ED monsters then that would've been built into the rules at the time. E.g. Verte can fusion summon but in MR4 that would have to be to a linked zone, so now that's no longer the case if feels like there should've been at least something in the effect regarding that.
@@Jarjarfunk Honestly my only gripe with Pendulum is that most of them only work for the Archetype they are a Part of, while those that don't have mostly the same Scale. Be more playable if you didn't need to run a certain archetype to use them, (unless i just got unlucky with the Pendulums i have)
OG Links?
Links to these day are a bigger problem than pendulum ever was.
People cried summoning 5 once per turn was overpowered. But now we have had multiple 1 card combos that trigger a chain of literally a dozen summons and none of them use pendulums.
Over 10 years later and people still talk about a mechanic dead on arrival while nobody talks about how link monsters and MR4 massively accelerated powercreep.
Konami should have stopped at XYZ.
@@Danlight1911I mean... A lot of people will tell you Konami should've stopped at Fusion. Or at Synchro. Or at XYZ. Or at pendulum. Or at Link. Every generation thinks they are better than the one that came before and the one that will come after.
Yeah. MR4 felt so out of place, they tried to slow the game down and god did that backfire
@@gabrielferreira7550 I got back into Yugioh a little over a year ago after not playing since before Synchros were a thing. After a year I will admit XYZ and Synchros have grown on me but Pendulum and Links can go. Pendulum just feels so radically different than any other mechanic it feels like it genuinely does not belong in Yugioh, like you're playing a completely different card game. As for Links it's obvious the mechanic skyrocketed the power creep more than anything else causing meta decks to feel more oppressing than they ever have.
@@Danlight1911you are not getting rid of my odd eyes they are to fun and it’s imminent fest with them even though people constantly banishes them and bricks for a hand are just very painful
What I NEVER understood: why they never trapped into the design possibility of mismatched left and right scales. It seemed so obvious for me the first time I saw the card design. Why else have a red and blue scale taking up space instead of just having a single "scale" number somewhere?
100% was something they would've done if Pends hadn't flopped atrociously.. No reason to experiment with something no one likes, and definitely no reason to make something more complicated and harder to balance.
@@SeisoYabai Yeah but that should have just been how they were from the start. I think it could have made them more awesome.
The rulebook actually used to state the left and right numbers mattered and could be different. I guess they just changed their minds early on before any cards with different scales mattered.
While we all anticipated that, by this point it would be highly difficult to implement. Just think, every card that mentions a pendulum scale would need an errata to include which scale it referred to instead of just both at the same time. Reprinting that many pendulum cards and pendulum support would be a financial death note for Konami because barely anyone would wanna buy all that product, hence Dzeef mentioning how these sets now have barely any pendulum cards.
@@Trekkie46 I don't see how there would need to be an errata to the cards, but granted Im not that familiar with pendulums. Wouldn't it just need to be specified in the rules?
The funny thing is that Pendulums never became that threat, but Links did. Links evolved into doing everything that people were terrified about Pendulums for 😂😂
I think instead of Pendulum Summoning being the mechanic, they should've gone harder on the whole "half monster half spell" thing, later on introducing Pendulum traps.
I like the idea of extra deck trap cards
imgaine set a card and face up on opponent's turn and it's actual "pendulum monster but trap". You pen summon on opponent's turn and add something on it like this turn any cards pen summoned by this card can't be destroyed once.
Yeah the problem wasn't just that they are monster/spells but that they also have this huge special summoning mechanic with the extra deck. It's like they tried to make 2 different card mechanics and just jumbled them together.
I love Amazoness and the Pendulum monsters there are fascinating because the only time you will use them as monsters is for fusion material, then they go into the zones where their pendulum effects help you. It is really interesting card design because you don't use pendulum summoning as a mechanic, you use them as monsters and continuous spells essentially.
@MoskalMedia I hate to break it to you but this is pretty much how every Pendulum deck works nowadays. Superheavy Samurai, Speedroid, Predaplant, Lunalight, Crystal Beast none of them actually Pendulum Summon, they just use the cards for their effects. It's just that the cards are locked into your Pendulum Zones and that's just kinda really annoying because all you have to do to counter them is set imperm in either column.
The concept of putting cards face up on top of the extra deck seems weird at a glance until you consider the frightening alternative.
Pendulum monsters were designed to be recursive, so if they went to the graveyard, you’d also need to be able to PENDULUM SUMMON FROM THE GRAVEYARD.
With the amount of grave setup that exists in Yugioh it’s definitely smart that Konami gave Pendulum monsters their own little home on top of the extra deck.
They don't go to the graveyard they go to the extra deck instead. Because they're not monsters when you destroyed them in the spelling trap zone. However, if they were played as a monster, they'd go back to the graveyard
**I never play pendulums in my lifetime. I only pay like cyberse even I know 😂**
@@nickypool415pendulums dont Go to grave. Even not, if they are played as monsters.
@@nickypool415Pendulums only go to the graveyard if discarded from the hand, sent from the deck, returned from banishment, or detached from an XYZ monster (XYZ materials are not considered cards on the field.)
@Raminator243 Oh yeah, thanks for clarification! I rechecked and found out that you were right. At least I got certain elements, right?
@@Raminator243 the problem is that reclusive mechanics are really bad for Yugioh, think about all the ftk and endboards self-perpetuating loops allow, pendulum was forced to be underpowered and convoluted, because it would be too unhealthy for the game otherwise.
I truly believe the reason Electrumite was banned was for marketing reasons. They want to keep pure pend decks as weak as possible to tell the Yugiboomers "please come back"
This here…
I'm a Yugiboomer and I hated Pendulum when I first heard about it.
Now I love it lol
As they should.
@Nerobyrne My brother had similar thoughts. "What are those?" "That seems complicated." "What's a scale?" Then I taught him Pend Magicians on Master duel and he had a blast. Even said it was one of his favorite decks.
I think pendulum is a genuinely fun archetype to play, that seems a lot more complicated than it usually ends up being.
Good.
I love and hate how pendulum developed as a mechanic. Hated at its peak performance before being gutted as a mechanic. but the damage had been done already. We cooked too hard with pendulum soup and nirvana high paladin had already been printed and people (to this day) refused to read that much text.
scientists were stumped!
The funniest thing about Nirvana High Paladin is that the card doesn’t actually have very complicated effects. The most confusing part about the card is the recycling effect. I’m pretty sure you can trigger it if you use a non tuner pendulum as the tuner (per its other effect), but it doesn’t quite make that clear.
@@Raminator243 it does work that way, since you can treat a non tuner as a tuner it also works the same for tne recycle effect, kinda weird but multiple synchros has have some effects like that, so it wouldn't even be a pendulum issue but a synchro one.
They definitely added too much text to a new mechanic.
Why even read it like 70% of it doesn't even matter
I quit Yugioh at a point in the game where the extra deck was still the “fusion deck zone”, early in the life of GX. I came back around 2017 because I watched the arc-v anime on a whim.
Picked up D/D because it was a deck that used all those weird new summon mechanics at once, and figured it’d force me to get good at all of them… and promptly fell in love with Pendulum as a mechanic. The armchair game designer in me loves overly complex systems like that, and the flexibility was interesting.
I feel exactly the same.
Well hello there fellow D/D player , I also have pretty much the same experience , I'm not a returning player , but when i got into the game I chose this deck because of the cool design and because it has archetypal monsters of every type , I also fell in love with it !
Literally had the exact same experience as you, left the game during GX, came back around the time the Arc-V anime was ending. D/Ds were also my first deck in a long time that I built and learned to play. To this day I actually really liked the arc-v anime and love pendulums as an archetype. I left yugioh as a kid cuz I felt the game was getting too complex but now as an adult I love learning complex combos and decks. D/Ds are still my favorite deck to this day.
😮 oh Lord a chat filled with D/D/D mains! Im also a D/D/D player long ago in till this day it's my to go to deck o.o you guys have a specific favorite? For me it's just high king Alexander
@ I love all of them lol, my favorite has always been Kali Yuga though.
You know, I didn't even mind Pendulum at release, it was Link that pissed me off and made me quit
Why’s that?
Yeah, but you don't represent a sizable number of the customer base.
Agree link climbing is so ass for gameplay
@@megaspacewaffleswhen link first released, it heavily restricted extra deck monsters. Konami quickly fixed it
@@pink_plasticbag That restriction (Master Rule 4) nearly lasted three years and it was the worst time in YGO.
I understand why Konami chose to address Pendulums the way that they did, however, I do think that it sucks that one of Yugiohs most unique summoning mechanics is treated more so as an archetype as a proper summoning mechanic, and I do hope that with the fast pace of play in today's Yugioh, we finally start getting decent Pendulum decks,
Fortunately Konami does seem to be warming up to the idea of good pendulums, and I think introducing Pendulum cards into otherwise normal decks is a great start
Pendulums have only been introduced into Arc-V anime decks. As in. The anime where they were supposed to be the focus but took a wayside to every other mechanic lol.
It funny Konami went form having pendulums being connected to much to their archetypes then then made links that problem is the complete opposite
Ngl, I still love some pendulum decks, like vaylenz
Z-arc and odd eyes are my favorite I have one faint memory from when I was young and arc v was airing or nicktoons I remembered arc v when I found it was yugioh related years later after I first seen it when I was about 6 or 7 the mechanic didn’t seem that hard to learn either cut to 2017 I had no clue arc v had a season 3 I come to watch it and found out about z-arc and I fell in love with all 5 dragons till this day I forever use those 5!decks that’s reps each dragon long live the pendulum swing
People complained when pendulums "summoned 5 monsters per turn" from the ED but they have no problem with every tier 1-0 deck of modern day special summoning 5+ monsters from the hand and Gy per turn. Ah yes the issue has been solved
Yeah but Pendulums will do that EVERY TURN ad infinitum with no additional resources needed. (Before introduction of Links)
The closest there is besides that is Horus monsters bringing themselves back every turn, if you have the Sarc.
The issue of summoning a ton of ED monsters started with Fusions (less so til later) and Synchros(forever), and has been even more facilitated by introducing Links
@@LikeTheBirb 2 scales is a resources is more expensive that Horus that only needs one card
@@LikeTheBirb You don't pend 5 every turn, it's near impossible after the rule changes. Besides, if everything goes right and you make it to turn 3 with your scales intact and a link 3 or higher in your EMZ, you're probably winning anyways so it doesn't matter.
@lucasalarcon3230 i think he talking about old pendulum before link zone a thing and they can just put monster from extra wherever they want
Old Pendulum so stupid able to materialize resources out of nothing
@LikeTheBirb you do realize by the time your able to have the amount of resources required to pendulum 5 cards it would take you at least 3 turns and thats only if you got good search cards and ways to build up your ED especially when back in the day there were barely cards that did that. Assuming you go first and you draw all monsters that set 2 scales and you have 3 monsters. If one was a search(assuming op didn't have ash), that's summoning 1 normally and adding 1 more to make it still 3 pend summoned. If you went 2nd, then that's 4. Now here is the kicker if yoh went 2nd and your op set solemn or twin twisters you lose because either your zones get popped or you pendulum 4 and solemn send them all to the gy and you cant get them back and lose. Also, when pendulums came out, Zoo's, blazar/quasar spam, frightfurs otk, and many other non pendulum decks that spam summoned and filled their boards with ED cards existed. Also, pendulums can only be pendulum summoned 1 time a turn, and it still requires you to have proper level and scales. All of which made pendulums spamming 5 cards way less likely. Pendulums are just the scapegoats for people to complain about a mechanic that isn't even that bad. The only people who complained were people who didn't understand the mechanic and how balanced it actually was. Pendulums only become a problem if a duel lasts long enough for the face-up extra deck to build up. Only then do they become a major issue. Also, most pendulum decks that were good weren't ever good for their pendulum capabilities. It would just be because they were either floodgates(majespectors), had a bunch of negates(endymion), had good search and burn (performages and pendulum magician), everything else has been mediocre or decent at best. Pendulums aren't any more of an issue than any other method.
I learned the game with odd eyes as my first deck, I don't think it's too hard to learn how pendulum works especially compared to learning how to play any combo/midrange deck nowadays. I thought being able to summon a bunch of monsters at once was cool and I liked odd eyes raging dragon's design. Without pendulum I would not be playing this game
A fellow odd eyes enjoyer I open my doors for you
Odd-eyes users unite!
That's still the deck i use every week playing with my friends at the local card store
At this point there’s no excuse anymore, Pendulums decks on the banlist are doing absolutely nothing and no one can honestly argue that they would make Yugioh “too complicated and convoluted” given what the game looks like today. No yugiboomers who wouldn’t be deterred by the complexity of modern yugioh would quit or be mad about pendulums.
I think your average player dislikes them as well, so it makes sense to keep them as secluded as possible
@ Ah yes, the average player hates Pendulums, but they LOOOOVE Link monsters and modern archetypes that all have 400 lines of text and 3 effects each…
@@The_Story_Of_Us your defense of pendulums is that other modern cards have a lot of text and use link monsters ? a modern pendulum deck is is double the text and effects and an extra deck made up mostly of link monsters, so yes the average player hates them even more so
@ no, my point in spite of your nitpicking is that the game is already convoluted and has been overly convoluted for the layperson FOR AGES, Pendulums only heralded in the the era we’re still in right now, where every single card has multiple effects and walls of text. Twice as much? Who cares?! It’s still giant walls of texts and fundamentally pendulums are not more difficult to understand than link mechanics and modern yugioh archetypes and their intricacies. You’re gonna have to rewind history a LOT LONGER if you want the game to be understandable for the average joe.
@ that just ignores what a bad reputation pendulums have within the current player community and Konami itself, did you know not a single pendulum card was in any of the rarity collections, and no one cared
I still don't get why Konami never played around with putting different scales on the same card, could've been a great way not only to balance pendulum and make it less generic but also to make some interesting things with the mechanic. also even thought it's interesting to put face up cards on the extra it was just a bad idea to add so much to an already pretty convoluted mechanic.
Hmm. Multiple scales on one card, if one card had scale 1 red and scale 8 blue, drawing multiple copies of that card becomes less of a brick. No longer needing 2 different monsters to pendulum summon
I think Links were a bigger mistake (this comes from a person who's primary decks are link focused)
Links basically did what Pendulums were feared to do
Links pretty much extended the heck out of almost every single deck in the top of the tournament
Yugiohs biggest mistake was adding so many omni negates or negates in general. Too many of them floating around. Also too many cards that judt flat out prevent your opponent from playing the game they spent money to play. Until then the only fun possible on yugioh is fueling friends only.
It's like these players are willfully ignoring the real issue.
For all the crimes of pendulum. I will still stand on the hill that initial link rules were infinitely worse
Absolutely, not to mention how powerful link summoning is inherently
Such a brave take that nobody disagrees with bud. 😂
@Zenbon111 what can I say. Someone has to be brave and speak the truth XD
Pendulum was unfun, but at least you could just not play a deck with them. MR4 Link era was the most blatant "you WILL play the new cards whether you like it or not" move imaginable, and I'm glad they walked it back a few years later.
I actually miss it a little because I’m tired of combo decks playing solitaire and building absurd advantage because the extra deck is so cracked
Pendulums being able to summon in extra monster zone or link zones only was overkill, made is already incredibly hard to play them
I love the idea someone quit because pendulums then comes back to see every deck pen summoning as part as there normal combo.
Imagine every deck gets a searchable generic monkeyboard. Some decks still wouldnt use it
It sounds more like the issue people have is the bizarre implementation that took 2 whole master rules to finally get the cards functioning in-game in a way that made any sense at all.
I like the place theyre in now, I just wish they were stronger.
problem is that pend decks cant play as many handtraps and boardbreakers as they need while still having scales and monsters to summon
@RaineBans they can its just sadly becomes a thing of most pendulum decks that do become much more monster heavy due to it so they try to stick to theme more for ratios
Pendulum went from "Completely overpowered on paper, only held back because the card designers themselves fear what they created, Pepe is the only time the mechanic was actually somewhat used and still not to full extent and it required an emergency banlist" to "absolutely garbage, do not use under any circumstances" to "I guess it's alright. Would be cool if they had actual cards to play though" throughout the years, and I think that's both hilarious and sad
The thing is that many pend decks from when the mechanic was first made are still borderline unplayable just due to the changes to the mechanic. Igknight for instace is completely unplayable as the deck's whole gimmick was to destroy themselves to load up the ED for a mass pend summon, you cant do that now. Dinomists cant play their full backrow or make use of multiples of their continous trap, Majespecter has extremely limited options for how many backrow they can setup. The list goes on.
As it stands the only 4 ish playable pend decks are pend magician, endymion/mythical beast, vaalmonica and arguably vaylantz. You'll notice that the majority of the decks mentioned are decks designed after the change to the rules. Abyss Actor and Majespecter both have gotten decent support but it doesnt fix the inherent design issues caused by the changes to the mechanic.
@@LowTier4Life majespecter support introduced a new problem while fixing all the previous ones
Worsd thing about pendulums gotta be how many times i have to explain to opponents all the hidden rules of pendulums while playing. Gotta say " well actually" way too many times playing abyss actors.
Like another have said :"They were hated in the begining, but now they're loved because either they bring something original, or they rescue your favorite archetype"
A Dzeeff discussion video? That's heavily edited at that? Doug, u already missed Christmas
I appreciate that Konami's been exploring the pendulum mechanic in unique ways, not even necessarily for gameplay but purely for aesthetic reasons. For example, the two Vaalmonica monsters are literally only pendulums so they can sit in your scales, to form the image of an angel and devil sitting on your left and right shoulders.
Or how Nemleria has exactly *one* pendulum monster so you can't even properly Pend summon with the deck, but they made her a Pendulum for the sole purpose of having her sleep in your ED until she runs out of her pillows.
Decks like these that have a core thematic idea and the gameplay is made to perfectly complement it are some of my favorites, and they come from the dreaded Pend mechanic of all things
I agree with your point and examples, but I feel like both could be possible as "monster-spells" without the pendulum extra rules
@@rodrigoandrade256 There's no way for Nemleria to work the way it does if pendulums were just a monster/spell hybrid, but I still agree that pendulums really should've been just a monster/spell hybrids, without the extra nonsense.
Melodius is also a deck about singing and so the pendulum monsters are the part of the choir that sits behind the ones in the front while the fusion summons are their leader, i thought it was neat :).
Right? For me Pendulum is the best mistake Konami ever made.
It's still a mistake, but when they bring unique decks that are interesting mechanically, it always pends. Your example pretty much summed it up.
What about performapals and odd eyes we all know what z-arc does tactical nuke incoming
OMG A DZEEFF DISCUSSION VIDEO WE’RE SO BACK
I remember when my friend showed pendulum cards, I thought he was lying about them being able to summon his whole hand at once. Upon learning it was true, I vehemently hated pends for a long time. Obviously nowadays they don’t do much anyways, and honestly I don’t mind them anymore.
pends r overhated change my mind
You could not be more right
Nah fairly hated
@@sr8919 you're just one of em accept it 🤷
Yugioh players doesn't read and you're gonna give em another Text Box 😂
The funny thing is I didn’t quit because of the pendulums I left because after links I realized due to the lack of nuances in game play options Konami locks you into playing the game the way they want it to be played and so you’ll spend that 500 dollars on a deck just to never be able to play it again once it gets banned in the single format you have to play so I switched to magic the gathering and have been happily playing commander ever since
Seems to be a trend
@ a trend brought upon themselves my friend they need to create different formats of gameplay to attract more people because one all encompassing banlist is just a bottleneck proposal for the people playing the game as you won’t want to play the higher tiers of game play because you’ll have to make infinite purchases to remain even remotely competitive combined with the lack of balance in the power creep and games like MTG become a much better more developed option
Same here, was in a draft and after the draft I did a unofficial match with another person who wanted to play his deck got ftked
Now everyone pend summons from their deck instead of from their hand!
So I didn't realize how few Pends were released early on. You go for almost a year and there's like... 30 of them, which isn't enough to make a deck. There's not even enough to supplement something else with in there, most of them are just awful, outside of *exactly* Qlis and those are Monarchs with a Pend gimmick.
Also, Rituals have had a more profound meta impact than Pends. Let that sink in.
I would still disagree and say that the biggest mistake was Links.
Edit: Doug, to the people who hated Pend Yu-Gi-Oh *DID* go down the dark path, they hated Pend because it summoned 5, we now have a near-mandatory handtrap that triggers when someone Summons 5 times, *and people keep playing after.* The people who hated Pends will, at best, play Time Wizard, they are not coming back to endless Combo Fiesta.
I had quit around this time and came back for a brief moment after the pandemic. I played 5 duels and got OTK 4 times thanks to the endless links. I dont know how anyone plays this game.
I would say Rituals and Pendulums have had relatively similar impacts... which is honest pretty sad for Rituals, considering Pendulums have been around for half as long.
@@hawkticus_duel_shack haven't check in a while but there was a time when when we have more links and cyberse cards that pendulums not sure if this go worse or better
I quit a while ago due to pends, links are way more straightforward. The problem isn't that it combos hard it's that it combos hard and isn't cool
@@KeshavKrishnanbro links are far worse then pendulums
I like to imagine a world where pendulums were simply monsters that could be spells to help print "bad" extender monsters that could instead have spell effects, and as a result Konami never felt the need to print Mathmech Circular
Ah yes, Pendulums, A.K.A: Yugiboomer Kryptonite
yeah cause new players love cards that that are 2 card types depending on what's happening and have 2 textboxes lol
Magic has those too@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz Me personally I did I was too scared to learn them though at the time.
Also new player kryptonite, really does push away new players.
no it’s new players like being braindead they’ll learn every single red dragon combo but when it comes to pendulum summon that’s the problem you literally pull off about 15 dragons from your extra deck and you complain when I summon my whole hand while sacrificing two zones that can easily be cancelled and then I’m the probably ironic
Electrumite still being banned to this very day is a konami TCG Abomination.
Some mistakes are better left unforgiven
@@ant-onemusic444 For sure, i won't forgive konami TCG for banning and maintaining Electrumite banned in the TCG, while it was never banned in the OCG and hasn't done anything to any format, and would definitely do nothing in the current format other than be a bone thrown to one of the most neglected ygo mechanics.
Its because of Electrimite that ocg refuse to make good pendulum
@@jamessunderlandseventh7410well you can’t really throw a bone to one of your nost hated mechanics, they are hated for a reason
@ The problem is that the "reason" for the hatred is unreasonable, even Dzeef made it quite clear on his vid
The only good thing about Pend is that it has given us the legend Trif Gaming.
I was a yugiboomer that hate pendulum. Yet in 2022, i came back to YGO because of learning Qliphort (and Towers is a sick art card).
Now, I main Abyss Actor in MD. I probably hate Link more because they are technically accomodating Foolish Burials for GY spam, and their design just straight up mocks older card design like Bagooska, Book of Moon, and D Barrier. Even Pendulum is forcefully dependent on Links.
Pendulum is the perfect example of the disconect between casual and competitive players.
Pendulum as a mechanic is the absolute worst summoning type in mldern yugioh requireing at least 3 cards to even perfom a pend summon pend summon 5 was such a rare thing that ever happend and if it happend to you,you were gong to lose that duel anyways.
Yet explaining the pendulum mechanic to a casual player they act like its the most disgusting thing they have ever heard of. Theres really only ever been two incredibly powerful Pendulum decks that were format warping and one was hit on an emergency banlist.
You will always have yugi boomers who refuse to learn a new summoning mechanic ehen its released buy at least in pendulums case not every player even needed to learn the ins and outs of it unlike link summoning that completely dominated the game because konami forced it on you
Really though people quit during pend era specifically because of pendulums being in the game just dont make sense to me. Master rule 4 absolutely gutted the game and competely invalidated yesrs worth of decks AND forced you to play the new link mechanic it was absolutely the worst time to play yugioh. Yet yugiboomers still cry about pendulum because opening up the rulebook is just a little too difficult. Revert pend back to the old mechanic.
Or it could just be that people in general didn't like pendulum...
Ppl also tend to ignore you need to go -2 to set scales (and don't pretend most pend monsters spell effects do anything), your deck kinda dies to MST and playing pendulum puts a strain in deckbuilding as you need to draw multiple pendulums for them to do anything, and the right scales at that.
Like, the avarage pendulum magician endboard requires a 3 card combo and gets significantly worse if hit by literaly any disruption, in a world where there's plenty of decks that have 1 card combos that play through interruptions.
Alternatively, as someone who left because of pendulums then came back with links and understands the mechanic... Pendulums are the most needlessly complex summoning mechanic in a game that already has a relatively high complexity issue these days.
@@daviddavis3939easy way to put that is okay master duel literally watch a pendulum player and you learn everything in the blink of an eye
@@daviddavis3939 Yugiboomers are actually out here saying "is this level between these numbers?" is too complex lmao
I just woke up and my favorite summoning mechanic has been attacked 😞
I’m so sorry dzeef went at tribute summon players like that totally uncalled for
😔 I'm with you
I am sorry, I am sorry that you like pendulum.
Im sorry you dont know how to count@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon
And that's the problem, not enough people like you like pendulums. And their disdain for it isn't exactly unreasonable. I can count with one hand How many people I've met in my life that like playing pendulum decks.
As someone who quit in 2014 with the release of Duelist Alliance (though I have been playing the game again since MR5), I remember that what made me quit at the time wasn't directly tied to pendulum monnsters, but to the effect the mechanic had on other cards design (at least I suspect the design change was due to the pendulum mechanics).
When we look at the idea of what pendulum decks would be able to do, special summon a whole board of monsters every turn, this would be an enourmous advantage in terms of available resources that non-pendulum decks might have difficulties matching. Thus it seems like the logical conclusion to give non-pendulum decks a form of resource sustain that allows them to compete with that idea. Within this context it doesn't matter that pendulum wasn't as successful as the idea behind it suggests, because the acompanying cards, designed to compete with that concept, were good enough to crowd out anything played before.
Triff wouldn’t appreciate the pendulum slander!
The one thing I appreciate about Pendulums is that it is the most unique summoning mechanic. Fusions, rituals, synchros, xyzs and links are basically tribute summons with extra steps, it may not be a good mechanic, but pendulum summoning was something different.
To me that's actually a downside. It feels so alien compared to every other mechanic in the game it doesn't feel like it belongs.
It honestly makes me sad hearing people don't like pendulums when its my favorite summoning mechanic. Even if the field was weird i liked having those extra zones but i can see why its just bad design at the end of the day
Not more Pendulum slander😢
I came back to the game thanks to Pendulums.
I have actually properly started getting into ygo around the end of Zexal and the beginning of Arc-V so I wasn't instantly put off by the pendulum mechanic. Tho over time I noticed that Pendulum felt really just like a weird way to have "balanced" special summons, which in the end just made them put out very weird rulings for the sake of said balance, which also didn't really prevent what pendulums would be capable of.
the mechanic also gave me a good perspective on players, since I knew if they complained about it, they'd likely just informed themselves to the bare minimum and basically have no real say when it comes to properly criticizing what is actually wrong with it. Over all I wouldn't ever listen to anyone who refused to even inform themselves correctly on the subject matter that they complain about.
Pendulums are my favorite mechanic ,no idea why they are just so unique
Edit: Wish they would give us a good competitive pendulum deck again instead of worrying about the fear mongering
The general direction of the game, power creep and the printing/rarity distribution is konami's true biggest mistake
Isnt that just the game since it’s inception ?
@eldavid8774 sad fax my dood. Sad fax.
I came back to yigioh when pendulums released after a hiatus, it's one of my favourites, but not even close to being relevant since most decks were power crept out years ago.
every store that sold ygo in that time says that all sales on ygo pendulum droped heavy, in my country that really fked stores that was more heavy on ygo than others tcg, and pendulum not being popular in events literally means nothings, i strongly doubt that anything near than 50% of the player base even goes to events
It's worth noting that Vaylantz saw results in the OCG, but that was mainly due to their different cardpool.
The deck also focused less on pendulums and more on columns.
Newer Pend decks like Vaylantz and Vaalmonica focus less on the summoning part of Pendulums and instead focus more on the monsters-as-spells part of Pendulums which is very nice to see imo, I hope Konami can actually make a pend deck that has a bit of both
I think Pen decks are genuinely one of the strangest and most overhated things in Yugioh.
With the exception of Trif (The Pen God) basically no one was topping with them after Links in the TCG and even in the OCG when Magicians made a come back it still wasn't Meta warping. And after Apo, Baronne and Savage got taken to the chopping block you really are just playing a nib fodder deck. Honestly the most success I've had recently with Pendulum is just to use them as an engine in something else like Ryzeal.
I remember seeing some dude by a Yuya starter set only to burn the Pen cards. Like dude... Performapal King Bear ain't all that I don't know what to tell you.
i appreciate that so many series later that you’ve upped the energy in how you speak, i still love the dry voice of the old videos but this is a cool change of pace
As someone passionate about game design, I greatly dislike pendulums. They literally warped the game around their existence, are still confusing to me despite having played Dinomists, Majespecters, and Igknights because they're so unintuitive to use. I also suspect if I played with physical cards, I wouldn't be able to properly read several of the cards due to the text cramming. Plus the design space for the pendulum scales is wasted by having all pendulums have the same left and right scale when there was a perfect opportunity to make positioning matter. To be clear, I'd have preferred the pendulum Scale to be a single area somewhere rather than taking up the margins. To me, it was never about the competitive viability, it was just a mostly-finished design rolled out poorly.
For my money, Link Monsters are designed even WORSE. Once again literally warping the game (albeit in a less intrusive and more interesting way IMO), but this time having no DEF. Their level equivalent replaced their DEF for reasons that make sense (since it prevents you from changing arrows by changing battle positions, but I think that'd make them MORE interesting) but causes an actual existential issue with Yu-Gi-Oh card design. Having something replace a level is fine, but once you make a stat optional, things get brutal from a design perspective. So much future proofing is impossible simply because monsters are no longer guaranteed to have stats in the future. Levels can be future proofed with something like "level equivalent", monsters from the Extra Deck can be future proofed as stated in this segment, but I absolutely HATE the design choice to make monster stats optional with no replacement. Again, this is a design that had a lot of potential, but seems like it needed another year or so of design and testing. Again, this is mostly from a design perspective, but I dislike the existential design dread of links so much that I even try to avoid playing them in Master Duel/Duel Links, to my own detriment.
And no, I don't think it's because I'm a Yugiboomer (I mean, I am. I think my first set was Metal Raiders). I think it's because I'm a perfectionist obsessed with game design who wants Yu-Gi-Oh to be the best designed game it can be and have my own preconceptions of what makes good design.
Link monsters are the worst thing ever introduced to the game and its not even close
I love the playstyle of Pendulums and think they have so much room for skill expression and I would LOVE for more Pendulum monsters that synergize with other Pendulums.
I want back Electrumite she's more than balanced in modern yugioh and would breath life back into the entire summoning mechanic.
Pends havent been good for years and I think that bringing back the people who constantly complain about them ruining yugioh would make playing the game a worse experience. Like why do we think that pandering to people who continue to complain about a game they havent actually played for ten years would be a good thing.
I love me some Vaylantz that completely break the mechanic of pendulum and is high skill😂 but I agree. Let's see electrumite back ti 3🗣
the real problem is pend has too much cross pend synergy so rather than making distinct decks it just makes pend soup too often
If Konami focused on pends again they probably would break the game and were back to 2014-2017 ygo again.
@@mopanda81 question, genuinely: how is that any different from Dragon Link? I don't think Pend Soup is as much of a problem as people fearmonger about.
@@zexian9750 uh you mean when Pends weren't good because none of them existed? Like the only deck that actually ever did the things people complain about was PePe, and even then that's not possible anymore with the restrictions on Pend summons. Pends even at maximum power wouldn't be anywhere near busted in modern times because they would be limited entirely by only having one Pend summon that requires scales while your average deck is able to spin its wheels for eternity with a single spell card
Video on links next! Links at release would be just as hated as pendulums if they came first. New game mats needed, hidden mechanics, and ontop you were almost forced to play with them.
Ah yes, the fear of my opponent special summoning 5 monsters is now gone. Oh wait.......
the specific master rule for non link and non pendulum monsters came out in 2020
also, i liked to play pendulum monsters in the last tag force game. my cousin never ever learned how pendulum summoning works
10 years later.... "Hey Squiddward i bet those pendulums are gonna kill the game any day now"
Pendulums to me are the most scapegoated mechanic, as you said they weren't all that strong at release and the one that was (That wasn't banned in 1 week in the tcg) was Pendulum Magician in 2017 and that one was strong!...Because of generic extra deck monsters, the mechanic itself just showed how many of them there were and hilariously most of them were xyz which meant you weren't abusing the face-up extra deck part of pendulums once you got going.
And yet somehow there are people that still think they were a problem and people that complain about them being too complicated because they can't fathom reading two textboxes on a card in a card game where text is what mechanically defines a card
The, "Yu-Gi-Oh players can't read" debate that is just ultimately says they hate how complex the game has gotten when complexity is one unique thing about Yu-Gi-Oh! vs other card games.
The issue is that these days Pendulum is simply not like Fusion, Synchro, XYZ, and Link. Simply because of the fact that they are main deck cards that cannot be used as a generic toolbox in any deck. If you want to use Pendulum’s, you need to play a ‘Pendulum Deck’, which isn’t true for any other summoning mechanic whatsoever.
U can actually play pend in any deck nowadays, or at least pend engine with SHS and Melodious. Ostinato and Wakaushi can get u to almost anything as long as ur deck doesn't have summon lock.
I first got into Yugioh around 2018 when I was about 12 and my first deck was Performapal. I then fell in love with Odd-Eyes after that deck got stolen and people at my lgs helped me out. All this to say Pendulum is definitely my favorite mechanic and it's what got me into Yugioh. I don't know how many people have that story, but I wanted to share mine
A Yu-Gi-Oh controversy timeline would be interesting (decks and mechanics that brought bad repercusions and how it was fixed
the change for the other extra deck monsters was april of 2020.
Now that we hated on pendulums enough, how about we shine a light on the other side of the issue? How a lot of players who enjoy the mechanic to this day can't really play it, because a few people overreacted, refused to adapt, learn the rules and actually read in a card game full of text and decided to cry about it as loud as possible and for as long as possible. I just want a competent pend deck man, the mechanic is fun, it's not my problem you guys refuse to read your damn cards.
Edit: Before anyone complains, I mainly talk about the people who hate on the mechanic until today. It was implemented badly and at the time seemed very strong, even tho that was kind off an overreaction.
Thank you, someone finally isn't just crying over it. There are alot of people that just seem to refuse to learn, instead of just reading the cards. Besides, the mechanic that followed it, Links, very quickly got MORE cards than Pendulums. Along with there being many mechanics that hurt the decks, and the mechanic is now at a point where it is very fragile. But Konami won't let them get any more of a power boost, cause, well, you'd have more people crying about "Too Ouch Text ;-;".
Sorry but having to deal with yet another wombo combo top tier deck but this has double the text and weird rulings sounds terrible
@@eldavid8774 valid stance to take honestly. On the other hand we're already in this mess, so I think we can just open the floodgates at this point. Can't really get worse after all we've had *Flashbacks to 16 chain tear combo*
@@LuciferGA counterpoint to that comment
Kinda plays into the point
You're not still learning to tie your shoes
You can read a card
And you've most likely got ways to pop scales
@GubbzYT of course a new pend deck would still lose to the usual things. I just understand the exhaustion that modern yugioh sometimes causes. Overall I agree of course, as per my inital point, everyone who actually plays this game should be able and willing to adapt and learn.
poor yuya, not only did he haft to deal with being 1/4th of a person and a surrogate for a multi dimensional demon, but he has to contend with yugioh players wishing he never invented the mechanic only to be overshadowed with a much worse mechanic a few years later.
It's really crazy how links get a pass despite clearly being significantly more unhealthy
@johnblunt6693 link easier to understand and got half the reading
@johnblunt6693 Yeah ikr. I wish they had kept the all extra decks must point to a link rule. Would have ballanced the game a bit more.
Let's also not forget. When they showed off.. I forget the set. But it had to tip with popular cards released per anime, no pendulums to be seen. The games don't even give him a fully functional deck. Let alone one stuffed with pendulums.
@@Goldenfire49 there were games based on arc v ?
Pendulums was the best thing ever happened in Yugioh... it made me come back to the game, plus a new perspective on the game is always nice! I can admit tho that it was a bit unfair to play against it... but other than that, this mechanic was very nice and interesting...
My favourite summoning mechanic has been reduced to ashes for all time
This is a topic I always wanted a good video on.
I've quit yugioh when XYZs were released because as a young teen, keeping up even money whise for yugioh was tough.
Came back with master duel and remember not understanding link / pend monsters, their summoning mechanic and everything else at all and a friend had to tell me multiple times how they work.
Now my favourite decks are pendulum decks and I've always known about the "big upset" that pendulums brought because I've learned about the emergency banlist dropping at the time it happened (randomly through youtube).
Thank you for this video!
i JUST ordered every Valyantz card yesterday. its "pendulum" time baby
the fact that even until now people prefer a 25 summon one monster per turn is still better than summon 5 monsters then get locked is crazy
I predict Rush Duel will do literally every mechanic except for Pendulum because while the mechanic isnt complicated to learn, it feels so weirdly xenophobic for what is ultimately a rogue playstyle. Like the main game could've gone from XYZ to Links with no big deal and I see why Konami is hesitant to do anything with them.
brother in christ pendulum cards are one of the most convoluted mechanics ever made. and I watch game mechanic breakdowns for fun.
literally no other TCG has anything as convoluted as pendulums except for some MTG keywords that the design team basically blacklisted and games made to be overcomplicated on purpose.
@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz on paper they're only marginally more complicated than the others, in execution it's just summoning a ton with funny looking continuous spells
They don't need to. Normal Summons have no limits.
@@elae4051ironic that’s basically what links are except for you just need a single monsters or spel or trap that’s treated as a monster and look slink 5 I wonder how we got here not o emotions pend zone nah we got the link zone
@lorenbrown7100 Links feel like they could've come directly after XYZ (Synchros are adding levels with a tuner, XYZ are matching levels without the Tuner, and Links mostly get rid of the Level requirements). Pendulums feel too fanficy.
So Konami is like Microsoft, they add stuff their customers don't like and only freak out after it becomes a problem.
I actually like the half-monster/half-spell idea, but so much of the rest of pendulum seemed like too many ideas stapled together. A series of monsters that dodged the graveyard and went somewhere else could be a gimmick for an archetype all on its own.
I mean, I'd argue it went down an entirely *different* dark path, but its fun to watch ya'll play it.
@@ryanjones_rheios dodging the gy was a downside going to the gy is much better that going to the face ED there is way more synergy with the gy
@@lucasalarcon3230 Yes, we all liked the idea of half-spell, half-beast. However, it also prevented trap and spell cards from being able to be set, which is pretty bad.
@@lucasalarcon3230 so even though pendulum is half magic, imagine that they haven't designed any card that can set these cards for 10 years. while there is such a concept in anime, there is none in real life
@servetsssozdemir there only magic cards when they face up on the pendulums zone and for reason some effect like flamberge don't count
@@lucasalarcon3230 no the problem is that such rule concepts are not adopted in real life which prevents some of your cards from working properly. which means that the real playstyle of yu gi oh doesn't exactly apply all the rules of the anime and manga to real life? but why? why have we had the same rules for 25 years? these rules would make the game much more interesting. imagine if you managed to place a pendulum card face up in the pendulum zone and then it was negated by an opponent's card and set to face down, you wouldn't be able to do the pendulum mechanic? when you look at the all-eyes pendulum effect it should do exactly that but it can't. instead it negates and destroys.
I love pendulums. It’s a beautifully soupy archetype full of wondrous possibilities.
I don't belive the competitiv aspect of pendulum is what worried people, but more so their concept as a whole. Yugioh is bad far the most beginner unfriendly of the 3 big card games, and a lot of people don't like every generation of cards getting more overwhelming. Pendulums are the most pure example of this, with double text boxes, unintuitive mechanics and a design that just looks like fanmade cards.
It always felt like Pendulums were doing too much and demanded too much attention on new mechanics and interactions. They got their own special zones, had their own rules of play, they didn't interact well with older design, they didn't interact with old mechanics, and they didn't respect established removal in the game. They felt like a different game compared to everything that came before it. Honestly Rush Duels feel like the game that Pendulums were trying to play. It was a waste of an entire season of Yugioh to introduce this wildly different mechanic when there were other options that people actually liked and could've blended well into the game kicking around in anime or game only formats like Skill cards or Deck Masters.
I can't imagine too many people will miss the pendulum combo slobs you run into on MD ladder every once in a while, but I think it would be sad if they stopped using the mechanic for more interesting card design like SHS and Melodious recently
SHS pendulums are not interesting at all, they do nothing but enable more summons. I think the most creative and best use of Pendulums was Vaalmonica and Vaylantz. Well, Vaylantz would've needed some real locks to avoid shit like make Gallant Granite, search Fossil Dyna & co, but their in-archetype design is really cool.
@@thenex2440 it might just be me, but honestly I find the pend slop infinitely more interesting than 90% of link combo decks. But that might be my biast as links are what got me out of competitive ygo
@@Daenijel Vaalmonica is the only actual Pendulum-focused deck that has ever looked interesting enough to almost make me want to play it. I still didn't play it, but I considered it, which is more than I can say for every other Pendulum deck ever.
@@calamelli209dreaming n e m l a r i a
@ I don't consider a deck like Nemleria with a single Pendulum monster that never actually Pendulum summons to be a "Pendulum-focused" deck.
Pendulums actually brought me back to the game. I know needle in haystack but I read about the concept and I was intrigued. And I started after they changed the scale locations. You telling me back in the day I not only had scale locations but also access to 5 spell/trap zones other than 3 when scaling? Bruh if only
I got back into the game with Duelist Alliance and embraced pendulums...
But i never abused the mechanic like pepe did. I still think it was a good mechanic in all.
I'm more surprised there was never a dedicated ritual/pend deck. Main issue was needing a spell and a monster. Well now you have a card type that's both
I frickin love the pendulum mechanic!
I'd love to see a pendulum archetype focused on insects, reptiles, and/or plants to coincide with the Ragnaraika archetype. Making use of their recusrion to set up link zones to pendulum summon from the extra deck.
Have you heard of predaplants
@lorenbrown7100 I have not
Konami's biggest mistake was regretting pendulum, actually cool and interesting mechanic relegated to doing nothing forever cuz they're just scared of the doomers
Preach sister
Cope
Still waiting for a pendulum monster with column dependent scales.
@@herlastborn it already exists. It’s called Clock Arc.
@@Kuricapitalist "..column dependent ORIGINAL scales" I would correct them on.
Great video Doug. I miss these videos from you
A card game can introduce a lot worse things than Pendulums.
They could introduce Universes Beyond.
universes beyond still hasnt given us griselbrand in companion form so pend is more toxic
Worse could be reverting back to MR 3 and buff Pendulums to be crazy again.
@@u.a.perfectace7786 mr3 will do nothing it would help to combo with some bad hands and help a little with the grind
@@u.a.perfectace7786 Pendulums weren't even crazy in MR3 lmao the most you got was Qli and also PePe for all of about a month
I love pendulum monsters.... I can't wait for a full pendulum ritual archetype...
Pendulums have caused me to quit the game. But in the opposite direction. Konami lack of pendulum support and just general pend bashing is why I quit. It takes way more effort to play pendulums successfully than it does to play any other deck. If they finally gave us a good pendulum deck on the level of like Tear 0 then I'd care. Until then there's no point in playing pendulums and there's no point in playing yugioh if I can barely play my favorite mechanic when it's being outdated
z-arc is pretty good if your looking for a way to put down any other pends synchro xyz or fusion players just gotta put it in the pend zone first also their three z-arc now instead of the one
@lorenbrown7100 and yet it's still a struggle just to play it in the tcg due to no electrumite. But yeah you're right about zarc
@@adamsherwani3971 Ain't no way you think it's healthy for the game to have a deck as oppresive as Tearlaments but with a pendulum skin, is a good think that people like you are no longer in the player base...
@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoon the video literally explains how pendulum hate is over exaggerated and how the mechanic is historically treated. Saying I want a Tear 0 pendulum deck is a comparison. What i want is more and better pendulum archetypes to be made. The pendulum mechanic and its decks have been unjustly treated by the community
@@adamsherwani3971 There's a difference between competent and tier 0, I don't even care if it is pendulum, but any deck as powerful as pre-hit Tear should never, ever, be made again. And if that's too hard for you to understand, then I am glad you're no longer playing.
Great video and I hope to see more discussion videos from you going forward. I started watching your videos back in 2017 and your discussions were some of my favourites!
If modern Yu-Gi-Oh is two Battleships duking it out, pendulum decks are the Aircraft Carriers.
I got into competitive Yu-Gi-Oh because of post-ftk-ban Pendulum Magicians. The idea that I could easily rebuild every turn was so attractive as I didn't have to worry about misplaying as I could always try again next turn. The exact opposite of something like "old school Yu-Gi-Oh" where you lost once your opponent started snowballing and you didn't draw the out.
Almost 7 years later and I'm still playing competitive, just without the pendulums. Only due to Konami hating the mechanic so hard.
Playing performapal early in links was my favorite deck to play of all-time for the same reasons. Never outthe game if I could get my scales back! Too bad it's gone forever
What I find really annoying is the incorporation of the pendulum zones into the main spell & trap zones. This leaves you with only three zones for your spells and traps if you play pendulum. I really enjoyed Igknight pendulum when I played Duel Generation, but Igknight is not one of the strongest decks to play in the more intense Master Duel.
I really like the Pendulum mechanic and I still use it till this day in both Duel Links as well as Master Duel. I like using the Pendulum extra deck monsters
Same here
Most of my time Playing master duel is just trying to make decks that pendulum extra deck monsters work well in 😂
@@Bandit77-fi8ur There’s some decks that make good use of the Pendulum extra deck monsters. You just need to find the one that’s right for you
I was just thinking about how much I missed your discussion videos! Excited for more throughout the year!
It's crazy that pendulums, outside of pepe for a tiny amount of time, have NEVER been good. Occasionally a deck hits rouge but the mechanic is just inherently bad with requiring a critical mass of pendulums to be run in order to insure you draw scales, hurting the amount of non-engine cards you can run, and then dumping two cards from your hand into the scales for what amounts to too little card advantage if you are even lucky enough to get rolling. Every pendulum card could come off the ban list today alongside electromite and you still wouldn't see pendulum in finals.
Qli's were a top deck for around a year. Metalfoes and Majespecter were good decks up through Zoo format. Pend magician was a top 5 deck until 2020 rule revision. Its absolutely untrue that pend was never good without pepe. There was a pend deck in the top 5 decks essentially continuously between 2015 and 2020.
@xdevo14 qli wasn't really based around the pendulum mechanic, as dzeef pointed out it was more of a stun deck that just happened to have pends in it. Those other decks tou mentioned were rouge, as in they were good enough to top events but never considered the best completive strat for any tourney. For instance no pend deck has ever won a ycs.
The mechanic really needs overturned cards to carry it, such as magician pend being an ftk deck. Magispecters was probs pends best showing outside of stun and ftk.
@@xdevo14 top 5 is exageration endymion is the best 5 deck of toss if you ignore the variant of the real top decks, magician was decent into spyral on 2017, the best deck of 2018 for like 2/3 months and rogue start they we're like 2 players topping with deck nothing crazy. For the mr3 you have qli stun being 3rd best deck, pepe tier 0, pendulum soup being rogue a few times and metalfoes kirin being kinda the best deck before zoo release
@ Qli was based around the mechanic; the only reason DemiseQli worked was because the pend monsters were cards you could still place on field. The entire gimmick of Qli Scout was its pend effect. It certainly wasn't a combo deck (usually at least), but it definitely used the mechanic, more than say, Crystal Beast's pend monsters or the Speedroid pend monsters. Just because it isn't pendsoup (because it was literally the first viable pend archetype) doesn't mean that it doesn't like to set-up scales, use their effects and get several monsters on the field (to tribute or not depending on version) at once.
Secondly, "good" does not mean "won a YCS". Pendulum decks have plenty of tops between 2015 and 2020, including YCS wins in Milan (Qli), 6 wins with Pepe, 2 for metalfoes, another 6 wins for Pend Magician. There's dozens of other tops in addition to premier wins. That is absolutely not "rouge". By that logic, Thunder Drag is a "rouge" deck for most of TOSS format.
@lucasalarcon3230 Top 5 really isn't an exaggeration. A deck that uses the mechanic has a YCS win more or less every 6 months between 2015 and Zoo format (where a pend version was one of the popular variants) and Pend Magician was the best deck after that format until Spyral (where PendMag is still the second best deck). After Spyral, Pend wins a bunch of YCS in 2018 until Sky Striker. Most TOSS format people I've seen talk about Pend being the 5th best deck. The only times I can see that its not in the top 5 would be in certain parts of TOSS format (potentially including variant decks), and maybe Blue-Eyes format.
@@xdevo14 2 tops every other event is rogue they we're topping but not every event being the "second" best deck in 2 tier zeros formats doesn't really say a lot and spyral trickstar have like almost the same amount of top it wasn't really a clear second. Yes they are the 5th best decks of top if you if don't separate the different orcust, striker and thunder variants that is fine it like the same place mememto was a couple of months ago
Who would've thought more text is bad
The fact pendulums need link monsters is such do-do card design, I miss mr3 pend decks.
Dzeeff, your old discussion videos brought me back into Yugioh around 2018, after not playing for a decade. Love and watch all of your series, but these just feel incredibly nostalgic to me. Please don’t stop with those!