I remember when the only worry you had when it came to hand traps was: "Please don't be holding honest, please don't be holding honest! Please don't be- He's holding honest!" Now its: "Please let me complete my normal summon without 15 different effects going off"
@@Xodreev you're thinking too small. imagine a card that doesn't have to be in your deck, side deck or extra deck, so long as you have a copy of it you can pull it out at any time and use it to do something.
dean if you split Ash Blossom's effects into stop op adding to gy, stop op adding to hand, and stop op draw effect and gave each to a single different card all of them would see play in one format or another, Ash does it all
This is why most card games have a "standard" format where new cards can only be played for 2 years. Also this keeps cards from limiting design in the future. Yugioh could do with something like this now, as the cards have only gotten stronger over the years to maintain relevance.
theres nothing wrong with making a full board with 1 or 2 cards if the second turn player can actually break it with 1 or 2 cards. they can't, so hand traps take over because they prevent the board from being built in the first place with 1 or 2 cards
I personally don't like hand traps for a few reasons. 1. Acts as an excuse for overpowered card design. A lot of meta decks and even casual decks tend to focus on solitaire-play until they have this unbreakable board that just prevents you from making a turn. If you're playing a deck reliant on a normal summon and they have two firewalls on the field you might as well scoop because you can't come back from it. 2. Expensive. As I commented in another video I like that Konami is making a lot more powerful staples like cosmic cyclone and dimensional barrier more accessible but this doesn't extend to a lot of hand traps. Ash Blossom is by far the worst offender as a 3-of staple that costs like $300 without any consideration for the rest of the deck. Brings me to my last point. 3. They feel like a necessity to play. They are almost like a new type of main deck card at this point on a similar level to Pendulums. It's okay to say that they don't mean much on a casual level but as soon as that one person decides to throw down and get these hand traps you've already lost. It's essentially a pay-to-compete on a basic level. I would say pay-to-win, but to be fair, they can brick quite easily too.
Just because Mind Drain exists doesn't mean that it's always- or ever- a good option. It's an unsearchable Continuous Trap that will probably be activated far too late to actually matter, because your opponent already got you with Ash Blossom or Ghost Ogre. Then, you've got to keep it up because your opponent is probably playing Cosmic Cyclone/Twin Twisters, and thus they can out your out to their handtraps. Tl;dr Running Mind Drain to stop handtraps is just as bad as bringing a copy of Discord to a tournament when a new powerful Synchro archetype comes out.
Coming back to this 3-4 years later and... I still agree. Hand Traps hold too much power and now the way they try to compensate for it with being able to drop more negates just makes it worse. There are times where I just don’t want to play competitive anymore because I’m sick of the “break my board” concept Konami does now. I enjoyed the back and forth of YGO back in 5D’s and even Zexal... kinda wish we could go back to that...
I think the main reason that handtraps are so common is the fact that if your opponent goes first with a meta combo deck, 99% of the time they are going to end with one or two negates which disrupt your turn. It's extremely frustrating to be going second and having to watch your opponent set up a good board while you have no way to stop them on your turn because of all their negates.
This is true and I feel it could have been fixed without hand traps. Maybe the first turn player starts with 3 or 4 cards instead of 5? Or maybe there is some kind of system in place alongside life points which limits the ability to build a board on the first turn. Like maybe on the first turn you can't add cards to your hand or there is a limit on how much you can special summon. IDK but anything is more fun than just having someone drop a Maxx "C" before they even know what deck you're playing lol.
@@WilliamReginaldLucas I honestly feel like many of the hypotheical fixes people come up with would be very hard to list in the rulebook and thats why it hasn't happened. Otherwise some of these solutions such as no adding cards would be a huge handicap since a large chunk of a player's starters are searchers. Its a very complex problem for yugioh that hand traps do well to solve. And now in our current meta the game is slowing down to the point where a huge board of negates is not always the way to play. So as this progression naturally happens hand traps will slowly lose relevance although I can never imagine it becoming obscure
@@akarilight6331 yeah I pretty much agree with all of this, it’s a very difficult problem to solve with a game that has over 10,000 cards (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Yu-Gi-Oh! but sometimes we can see the flaws in things we love 😂) personally I run Nibiru but it feels like a bit of a cheap win when I just happen to have it in my opening hand going second and my opponent just surrenders… doesn’t feel like I won through skill but through luck aha
Konami continually proves that they put themselves in a position where they are forced to print some more stupid broken shit to solve a problem they created before. The powercreep of Hand Traps is one such thing because Konami decided to print decks that do all this bullshit in one turn at a more consistent basis than any deck before and the only way to prevent that is : Let's introduce broke ass cards to fix this problem for us with complete disregard for the problems that such actions may have. Look at Master Rule 4. A thing that should not have been. Yeah, I said it. Master Rule 4 restricts all but Links in the extra deck. Which puts a lot of decks out of play or severely crippled. It warrants the use of supplements that have really no synergy with a deck just so you can use the decks' main point. (Gofu(Or really any standalone card that puts more than 1 monster on board)). So to counter that bad design choice they are forcing themselves to print insanely powercrept cards (That Link V-rains pack... DUUUUDE WTF...). We already know that a rank 4 foolish burial was too damn strong, but now we are getting essentially the same deal AGAIN. A link monster that summons any tuner from the deck??? AND can tribute itself to summon a synchro tuner from the extra deck. (And that coming from a Synchro fan). A Link monster that can tribute a monster linked to it to summon ANY plant monster from the deck?! WHAT! That is busted. Master Rule 4 wouldn't even have been needed in the first place. What does it actually accomplish besides forcing Konami to make some more dumb shit? From my experience, Link monsters are fun to use by themselves already because it promoted the clever use of monster zones and provokes thought about what to place where, which is an aspect that Yugioh hasn't ever had before. Which is a great and unique way to spark some creativity from the players. But instead they shove it down your throat and force some bullshit rules upon you because they are affraid and underconfident in their design. And the worst thing about it is: The players. This game has become so filled with people who have grown to swallow every little bit of garbage Konami throws at them. It's one thing to adapt to a situation, but it's another thing to notice when you are in an abusive relationship which is where I feel the game is at right now. Sometimes it's just perfect to start ranting. Keep on ranting Dzeeff! I will join in.
+Paladin Leeroy Let's face it. Yu-Gi-Oh is on it's way out. The game is gonna collapse from the overwhelming power creep. At least the game had a good run.
I will not let the game die that easily. It's a great game and I know it's on it's way out the door. However, my love for the game trumps my hate for Konami's horrible design. I have been working on making a custom banlist and get people interested in playing the game without Master Rule 4. (My locals is like 8 people and there are no tournaments etc. no supported store etc. etc. etc.)
I'm playing devil's advocate here and say it: YGO needs either a set rotation or it will die! I don't mean a set rotation like Magic has it, but more of a long-lasting thing. Like 5 years. For example: Let's reset the game to the power and speed of the year 2010-2012 and go onwards from there for 5 years until the next set rotation hits and resets it all again. 5 years are a long time and enough to comfort the playerbase. All mechanics we have today in decks from the Year 2010-2012? Sounds fun, I say. Also, Links need a rework. The mechanic is great, but it restricts every other extra deck mechanic. Without the power creep there is no need for a link restriction. Just design decks for Links specifically and let the other extra-deck-dependent decks do their thing.
I really want the new stuff Konami is making to just stop this. I am a casual player, but I have gone to a few tourneys. I see these damn annoying decks that are EXACTLY the same, and it's just these decks that go through like half their deck, and I see all these damn Ash Blossoms EVERYWHERE and it pisses me off. I can't really explain what I'm saying well, but it's just all the things they play are ANNOYING.
What bothers me most about hand traps are the situations where my opponent goes first, I open with no hand traps, so my opponent proceeds to search A LOT of their deck, they make a pretty tough board then pass turn, I start, I play one card, and THEY USE A HAND TRAP ON ME when they already have a pretty ridiculous board. I'm down on resources trying to storm a minefield.
There should be an errara for some of the handtraps that require you to have no board in order to activate them from the hand. Then there should be a way to set them when you do have a board, similar to how red reboot works. That would make them slower for the winning player
@@hinamiravenroot7162 I wholeheartedly agree with this. How is it fair for my opponent to have an insane board, and be able to stop any action I attempt to do. They already searched/played the majority of their deck on the first turn, so they'll be able to bounce back next turn if you are by some miracle able to interact with their board. Tbh the game has just gotten very boring and stagnant with the constant negates. Like I would enjoy being able to PLAY THE GAME, and not just watch my opponent practice his combos. Imagine playing a card game where YOU DONT GET TO PLAY THE GAME.
Maxx “C”, Effect Veiler, and Ghost Ogre are overall fine cards. Although, nowadays I dispute the balance of Maxx “C”. The biggest thing is that they disrupt your opponent, and they can be put into the category of “Hah, you activated my trap card!” sorta thing, because they're actual traps. Nowadays, shit got out of hand. Reaper is just like “Hah, you fool! You summoned a monster, now you lose your Extra Deck!” Okay...? And Ash is just like “Hah, you attempted to play the game! You idiot!” Ogre and Veiler don't do this; Ogre doesn't negate face-up cards, and only reacts to stuff that's face-up already, so you can play around it. Veiler has the awkward restriction of only being usable during your opponent's Main Phase whereas something like Breakthrough Skill is usable at any time, and Forbidden Chalice can even be used during the damage step. What Rivals Ash? What contents with Reaper? Nothing.
Droll & Lock kinda hit that same spot as Maxx, imo; Droll has always been fine, but now that most decks need multiple searches to even do anything it may have gotten too strong. That being said, Droll is a much bigger risk as it is a -1 whereas Ash goes +0 straight off the bat, assuming that card wouldn't have led to massive plusses, such as Brilliant Fusion, Pendulum Call, Desires, and Card of Demise. Reaper was heavily played even in a diverse meta that had 3 to 4 good, playable decks, and the only thing it does is that it punishes someone for summoning a monster and playing a particular deck, which isn't a fair thing to me. Additionally, it again has a hard time being used by rogue strategies as they cannot afford drawing this card turn 2, 3, or 4.
True, and I've never particularly stated that I find Reaper to be broken, because even in its prime the card still wasn't disgustingly busted. And even now that we've got decks who can play it without sacrificing consistency, I'd still say that the card isn't busted in the slightest. However, I find the card to be extremely poorly designed, so I'd like it to just go.
A lot of these hand traps have another side to the coin. Ash only stops one thing and is really only good in a specific situation (if a card requires a cost or something). Reaper is very powerful, but considering its only good versus a specific deck, requires you to devote space in your side/extra deck for the target, and is practically a huge dead draw if you don't open up with it, it has to have a busted effect.
GrandmistressD Maxx c is only good because if you give modern decks a couple cards and set up your board you've given them enough to play through your board and kill you next turn, and if you stop you haven't established a board so they're able to kill you freely next turn. Decks are too powerful and hand traps just let people know about it
True, but Ash is very powerful in general, considering it can stop approximately anything that attempts to look at your main deck, so it's a card you can safely main deck and it will be useful in literally any matchup. Even a deck that's old as balls and hails from the era during which searching wasn't the norm, like GK or Goat Control, does stuff, important stuff, that Ash can stop. Ash is no longer a meta call, or a tactical card, it's a card you can splash into anything and it'll work out. Reaper does indeed require more dedication, but that doesn't make its effect okay. Terrortop required you to put in Taketomborg, Brilliant Fusion requires Garnet, PSY-Framegear Gamma requires Driver, Ariadne requires at least 3 counter traps, and so on. Reaper requires no tactical skill, it just benefits decks that have more space, more consistency, and can do more with less cards; you cannot play around Reaper in the slightest either, which makes it poor card design.
The major issue is that decks can do so much with so little; Zoo and SPYRAL are examples of decks that need very little cards to build gigantic boards. Zoo can go into multiple Xyzs with 1 card, and SPYRAL can spam a field filled with powerful Link monsters such as Trigate and Firewall with just a mere 2 cards. As a result, you can play tons of (hand)traps and hand traps also function on your opponent's turn, so you can easily go second, too. Older decks have bigger engines, so they can't play this many hand trap because it'd hurt their consistency. BA was an example of such a deck too, especially in the beginning; the engine was really small, but equated a massive amount of advantage and resilience, so you can play 20 traps in the deck and not give a damn.
Zoo pretty much never built gigantic boards unless they were in hybrid decks, like seriously right before Zoo you had ABC making Buster + CDI + backrow & Metalfoes making Kirin + denglong with pillars + alkhahest & D/D/D making CW + Seig + 38 & right after you've got Spyral making double firewall + sleeper + wire, Zoo was largely a 1 monster control deck that went +1 every turn not a combo lockdown deck like all these others
Yes, they never built gigantic boards, but they made an insane amount of advantage turn one, and they could recover from nearly anything with just one card. And the engine was small, so lots of room for traps and hand traps.
Exactly. I wanted to build a fun to play, but still competitive hero deck, but more than half of the cards I’m playing, are either hand traps, or for countering hand traps
Jack Casey Some of these handtraps quite literraly stop decks from playing. Winter Cherries, Ash Blossom, Droll and Lock Bird are insane. How dare the opponent try and create advantage?
Jhawk2711 advantage shouldn't be created that easily, it should be gained through correct play holding resources & playing interactions to minus the opponent, not I go +7 now because derp my deck just does that
Broadbull, Enabler of Uncounted Combos any non tier 1 deck insta loses if they get drolled or ashes. And the free plus 7 decks are obviously a problem but the solution to them fucks everything else
Hand traps that prevent consistency are a big no-no. You make your deck based on consistency and they decided to make a card that is so easy to use which prevents that. It doesn't have to be set, sent to the grave, on the field, etc. Veiler and other hand traps like Ghost Ogre or D.D. Crow that negate effects, destroy, or banish from the grave are cool but not Ash Blossom. Your deck is your main resource which Ash Blossom prevents you from using. Your hand, field, grave, and banished zone are secondary.
The year is 2050. Hand traps have become so overpowered that decks no longer run anything else. In fact, they're so strong, that whoever loses rock- paper- scissors immediately surrenders
I have been trying to tell everyone this since before ash blossom even released. It breaks the game so hard. If everyone just ran 15 hand traps, its not even yugioh anymore. Just a card game of who can afford the hand traps and who can get luckiest.
I've barely played any yugioh with link monsters yet because I quit in early 2017 due to the prevalence of stupid big boards that prevented playing actual yugioh. Then, I started playing online last week, trying out link format, and I just consistently ran into ash blossom (in particular) and other nutty hand traps that prevented me from playing in essentially the same way that stupid huge boards did a year ago. It turned me off so hard from new yugioh that I'm honestly not going to play anything other than silly character deck duels until the hand traps are checked.
Wait so turn one full board Is a problem but then hand traps to counter that is still a problem you can't win lol think is time for a hard reset from the game or soft.
So you're saying they made a remedy for the problem that made you quit, and that made you quit again? You basically just want a format where you can play insane combos but nobody else can, very smart and sensible 👌
@@Howardax C isnt' broken. Your opponent can play around it, and it's effectiveness is directly linked to your opponents plays. THEY decide how many cards you get to draw, and thus your opponent has too think. Ash Blossom is just a straight up "No, you don't play." C is interactive, Ash Blossom is ANTI-interactive.
I agree the hand trap does break the game. The weakness of the regular trap is the necessary component in order for the game to feel fun. Hand traps take away the idea of losing fairly. While normal traps even if you lose to it knowing that you saw it beforehand you can eat the loss and still feel confident about the game
youtube's algorithm has directed me this way. I got out of Yugioh in like... 2011? 2012? I remember the big decks of the time being Spellbook of judgement and something about a Dragon Deck getting big in the OCG? I think Return of the Duelist might be the last set I bought packs for. A lot of the things I hear about Yugioh makes me sad when I hear them. people don't play Traps any more? :C crazy errata that effectively destroys the identity of the cards? these are things that make me never want to come back. I still have one deck, in the form of Herald of Perfection/Archlord Krystia. I also was playing Lightsworn and played a fair bit of Blackwings when they were a thing... and yeah, even then, dropping things like Honest, Kalut the Moonshadow, or D.D. Crow out of your hand caused some real havok that your opponent didn't really have recourse for. I think the chance of me ever returning to Yugioh is next to none. if I already wasn't against Konami's questionable business practices in the video game space, I think the direction this game has taken sounds honestly unappealing to me.
Old video, but my take as a returning player is that hand traps actually make the game interesting again. It creates a whole other layer of mind games, and punishes hyper-consistency, which I think creates interesting stressors in deck-building and help level the playing field in some ways.
Nevermind not knowing which hand traps the opponent has - most of the time, you can't tell how many hand traps your opponent has, or even IF they have any at all. With set traps, you know exactly how many there are, and you also have plenty of tools to remove them. Sure, your opponent can bluff by setting extra spells/traps they can't use, but they still need to commit resources to the bluff. But if my opponent ends their turn with 4 cards in the hand, I have no idea how much disruption (if any) I can expect, nor do I have many tools to get rid of them.
i completely agree. when you have to have three copies of everything in your deck how can that be considered a deck? in reality, a forty card deck is really 20 or less. it wouldn't be so bad if everyone wasn't playing with the same 5 decks using the same 10 cards. im all for competition but when everyone is using the same thing how can that be competitive
I honestly think that all the major hand traps (Maxx C, Ghost Ogre, Ash Blossom, and Droll) should be banned. They completely go against the fundamental idea of YGO without any downside. #BringBackTraps
I think ash blossom and droll and lock bird need to go. Everybody wants to talk bad about maxx c, but look at ash and droll, they make it to where you can't even play your deck.
Yeah, I think Nymnihm (at least I think it was him) put it best, Hand Traps don't work in Yugioh but do work in Magic, because unlike Magic, we don't have any kind of resource management, whereas in Magic there's Land to worry about, so while the opponent might have an Instant (Same idea as Hand Traps) in their hand, they still need to pay the Mana cost that might be taken up by summoning more Creatures or casting Spells, and there are a few cards that can downright out their Lands by destroying them, but in Yugioh it's just discarding a handtrap to activate its effect while passive aggressively yelling "NO" at the opponent
It’s also bad that not only u have to play hand traps but they are also some of the most expensive cards in the game so the roge and budget players can’t get them
Jon Adams mind drain is a terrible counter to them as u firstly have to set it, you have to go first to get the most out of it and even then it’s bad because u have to go first, set it, wait till your next turn to activate to do your plays which by then then would have made there own board and got rid of your set mind drain so u are now in a worse spot than you were before so no mind drain is not a good counter to hand traps and solves nothing.
i feel like pokemon allows the player to be far more consistent than yugioh, hence its long history of players starting with massive swathes of stage 2s and donking, however running out of cards is the bottleneck. another bottleneck is having to interact with your opponent to access your whole deck, but generally, yugioh doesn't allow people to draw 3 cards from one card, much less six. but yeah, i agree with you on this video, back when i was more into yugioh, each hand trap had a limited-nondestruction effect and there were only two that mattered, veiler was mainboarded, crow was side boarded (and every light deck used honest). traps also well outdid them when it came down to it. nowadays things seem to have gotten unhinged.
Master Duel has fixed this dilemma seeing as now you can tell when someone has a quick effect in their hand. I still agree with these points though, the board should just be the field, the graveyard and the banished zone. Once cards are banished they should be removed from the game completely, and you should only be able to activate cards from your hand on your own turn such as quick play spells.
It gets kinda annoying when every deck build in Yu-Gi-Oh consists of Ash Blossom, Droll and Ghost Ogre. I think hand traps are great!...but not when they're soo generic that they can literally be put into any deck and work.
Handtraps are a nice indicator about the current format. Well, they were, before Ash Blossom rolled around which is appicable in any and all situations against pretty much every deck ever. Talking about Handtraps besides Ash, you can tell how powerful or problematic the best deck(s) at the moment is, by the amount and kind of handtraps played against it. If by any miracle a format arises again that doesn't rely on vomiting a bunch of monsters onto the field in 30 or 40 steps with the hopes of "something will stick", too many handtraps become a liability that just decrease your deck's consistency. But the main factor of this is how easy a deck can combo off. Extremely powerful 1-card or 2-card combos make playing 15 handtraps possible in the first place, because you can afford the space both in your deck when building, and in your hand when playing. There's also no real way to get rid of handtraps really. One crazy idea would be the introduction of a turn 0, in which one player is exclusively allowed to set Spells/Traps before the actual player proceeds with turn 1. In which case playing handtraps becomes obsolete for the most part, but would make things entirely more complicated in other parts, lol. Tl;dr Yugioh sucks, I'll just learn chess.
This was something that kept me from coming back to Yu Gi Oh. I had a disinterest in hand traps way back, however they were specific situations that usually lead to telegraphed plays. More and more of them became universal to run without any need to optimize the card's full potential outside its primary role.
SHURIT, STRATEGIST OF THE NEKROZ I mean ghost ogre, ghost reaper are okay. But the ones i miss seeing is stuff like battlin boxer veil, tragodia, gorz, effect veiler since they didn't altered the gameplay to much
SHURIT, STRATEGIST OF THE NEKROZ maxx c isn't bad, its been out since 2011, the problem is the speed of the game. maxx c slows ur opponent from attempting to otk
We now live in a world of MR5, where rogue decks aren’t limited by link arrows. But still, one big thing holding them back is handtraps. Plenty of rogue decks are literal one trick ponies and are incapable of bouncing back from a nibiru or even an ash. That said, because we lack many alternatives, hand traps are still very important to make sure meta decks aren’t able to go full combo and build their ideal board. It’s an unfortunate situation we’re in, because now there’s like no way to replace hand traps easily. For example, just making spells/traps immune to other card effects for each player’s second turn probably isn’t enough to get rid of hand traps and will just lead to new problems and gimmicks. There’s still mindgames with hand traps, like keeping track of your opponents hand, and as they combo off, calculating the chances of their last card being a hand trap. (Although that strategy falls apart against hand trap heavy/slow decks that don’t search/empty their hand that much) There is counterplay to handtraps like negates (that only certain combo decks have access to), and called by the grave. But unlike normal trap counterplay, that is reactive rather than proactive, and the only way to mess it up is by bricking rather than by destroying the wrong trap. Hand traps have made forceful discarding effects and hand revealing effects extra valuable, but konami has made those effects exceptionally rare. (and for good reason)
I think hand traps are okay for the most part. The only 3 big ones that everyone is mainly complaining about is Ash Forehead, Maxx C, and Droll&Lock Bird. Ghost reaper and ogre are mostly the healthiest form of handtraps in recent days because it alters the gameplay but still allows interaction.
I think what is really the problem is that handtraps become a problem as a result of decks being able to consistently make ubreakable boards turn 1. Spyral is a perfect example of this because they can make these huge boards with only a few cards required to start the combo which makes it so they can do it almost every single turn 1. If you are going second, then chances are that you aren't going to be able to break that board unless you drew the God hand to play around the negates. So your only other viable option is to run 40 handtraps in your deck to stop the other person from making those unbreakable boards so you can actually play Yugioh turn 2. I wish we could go back to duels that were grind games that would take always take like 6 or 7 turns to complete with relatively short turns instead of what we have now where the duel ends on turn 2 or 3 with each turn taking an hour to do.
i think the main problem is that you can do to much in one go which leads to boards which are very hard to out, as such the only way to counter this is to make sure they cant make a board. this is why trap cards don't work as they cant interrupt turn one which often decides who wins of the first turn. ultimately hand traps are popular as the game has become to fast with you being able to play the rest of the game solely off your first turn, to solve hand traps the game needs to be slower so traps are viable.
Hand traps literally make Yu-Gi-Oh unplayable. It’s legit just “who draws ash blossom first the game.” Almost any engine is instantly shut down by it alone. It’s magic, but every deck is a blue deck that takes no skill to play in terms of calculating your opponents moves and mana management. Because that would require good game design.
@@MrHwilRRR And then that will become mega and then non-negation counters would be put in place. Trap-holes aren’t negates, disrupters aren’t negates, tech isn’t necessarily a negate. There are counters that could exist and would also keep the game in check and imo I think it would yield a more diverse meta *when I say negates, I’m also including lock-out clauses bc those are dumb af
I played a lot of tcg's and ccgs over the years of playing card games. Recently I have started playing yugioh duel links, and I have appreciated your content because it allows me to see and understand things in the game since it's been a long time since I played actual card game. You said one thing in this video though that kind of bugged me, you said that you was more consistent because it lacks draws like manna or land cards. That does not make the game more consistent, it just makes it faster. When I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh when it first came out, the one normal summon per turn rule was the thing that was supposed to properly Pace the game. Because of power creep this is going out the window. MTG pace of the game is controlled by mana. While it is possible to get mana screwed, this does not happen to often with a properly built deck. The big difference is not consistency, it the playing style of game. To me Yu Gi Oh! is like checkers, and MTG is like Chess. Both are great games, but totally different. However, Yu Gi Oh! Instead of playing by the limitations the rules provided players are allowed to move pieces more freely and can move multiple pieces a turn.
5:19 I don't think that's the case, I think they don't really have a design philosophy for the game. I think Yu-Gi-Oh! Being much faster was on accident and the natural step up from power creep. I'm sure that was on accident from making the game dynamic and because power creep hit the ceiling without being too broken yet, they had to add more mechanics to make it not hit the ceiling for power creep.
You are such a master, dude; I don't plan on playing Yu-Gi-Oh! but I recently ran into your channel and like learning about it from you. I think that Konami should hire players like you to participate in gameplay balance design; because I'd be totally interested in playing the ideal game you're describing.
An idea to solve the problem with MR5: Forbid any interaction (battle, negates etc.) between the players in the first TWO turns. That would allow both players to build there board, set backrow and then start dueling properly. Just like a "preperation phase".
I have actually wondered about a master rule like this. the way the game has gone lately its all about setting up a board on turn 1 and preventing your opponent from playing the game (not fun at all). The main concern with this is the ability of the player going first to be able to attack first and wipe the board through battle and the second player then has to try and rebuild again after this preparation phase. the only way I can see (for now) to stop that from happening (or prevent decks starting out as 15 mirror forces) is if an attack is declared the opponent gets a chance to declare an attack with the monster being attacked or block the attack with another monster, or something similar, that way there is still back and forth and no chance to set up the current mentality of "I go first, I still have my board, and now you cannot play". it is definitely a difficult one to try and solve.
You are right. Of course, it's way more complicated to balance YGO. The question is how we can restore the balance without changing the rules too much since I don't want the basic feeling of YGO to be changed. It's not optimal, I prefer a mirror force meta to a "break my board" meta though. There should be more discussion about this topic.
Eih.... that creates a whole new problem honestly. Quite a bit of traps are quite strong at the moment and you would have to throw solemn judgement onto the banlist once again. Not to mention that you would have an even stronger emphasis on your first turn hand, with now the amount of traps instead of monsters.
Just as an example: yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7117 runs 5 traps; 3 that practically are actually activated as spells (lol evenly matched is a balance rant by itself) 1 archetypal one 1 out to everything dot trap yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7193 none yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7198 is a bit of a weird deck, but does run an ok amount of traps yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7195 runs 9, 4 of them are from the archetype itself and quite necessary 2 of them are a literal counter against pendulums yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7197 lol 60 card and even no traps I think I got the point across
Another point I find interesting coming from a MtG perspective: normally, a creature's stat line is a lever one can use to balance having more powerful effects: ie in Magic your 4 mana (mid range) creature only has 1/1 or 1/2 (basically turn 1 monster stats) in exchange for powerful effects on the field. So it sucks in battle and dies to burn easily (a meaningful weakness in Magic, burn is quite strong except at the very top levels of play) but does it's special thing very well, and it's at least not seen as strictly better than a 4/4 for 4 that can attack right after being summoned. But in YGO, weak stat lnes aren't actually a weakness due to the plethora of summoning mechanics where smaller creatures serve as some sort of fodder to summon bigger beatsticks or win-cons. You can't do this in Magic very easily (outside of black sac effects). So you have a situation where Konami can't use stats to balance a creature with strong hand trappy effects. IMO they should have made hand traps literally traps so that you actuallty need to make a deck building concession to get the effect (fewer attackers / frontline monsters).
The moment they created traps that could be activated from the hand, that's when the designers officially choose they didn't want to create cards for yugioh.
I really think that these kinds of decisions show one of two things about Konami. 1) They don't understand what their game actually plays like, and have no idea what any of the changes that they are making will do to the game as a result. 2) They actually know full well what they are doing, and just want you to buy more $50 cards from their officially approved vendors, or buy boxes and boxes of cards looking for that elusive ash blossom. After all of these years of following the game and trying to figure it out, and I still have no idea. Because, at some point, you get things like emergency ban lists for things like Dragon Rulers and Sixth Sense, but then you also get archetypes like Burning Abyss that have been topping for years as far as I've heard, and it doesn't look like Konami is doing a damn thing about it besides releasing stronger shit and hoping they just get phased out so you spend more money on buying a new deck because the old one is a pile of absolute trash now.
I've just recently gotten back into Yu-Gi-Oh (stopped around the time Zexal started) but I don't have that much knowledge concerning effect interactions. I started playing Duel Links a couple of weeks ago and when building a Dark World Deck I noticed that there are cards that make you Discard a card as a sort of effect and other cards that make you discard as a cost. The thing is that Dark World effects don't apply when the Dark World monster is discarded as a cost (like with Dark Core) but do apply when discarded by a neutral effect (like with Dark World Lightning). My question here (which came to mind upon seeing Graceful Charity) is if this kind of differentiation of effects applies in the TGC/OCG as well.
the easiest way to solve the hand trap dilemma (without banning every single card) is to remake board wipes such as raigeki, dark hole, evenly matched, kaiju slumber etc, as spell speed 4 cards (your opponent cannot respond to the activation and effect of this card) so that your opponent can still play their huge "unbreakable" boards going first, but you still have a way to play going second by outing that board. They can throw restrictions on these upgraded cards such as: - your opponent takes no damage till their next end phase (prevent otk) - you cannot special summon (or limit to 3-5 special summons) for the rest of this turn / the turn you use this card (prevent your own big boards and otk so your opponent can still play on their next turn) something like this (if designed properly) should work as it will allow the going second player to actually play the game, or at the very least it will even out the advantages between going first and second. where your opponent can still make their massive boards, but they will likely be punished for over extending and this should bring a lot of skill / back and forth, back into yugioh, which it has been missing, over the last year especially. An example would be something like: Black Hole Normal Spell Destroy all monsters on the field. Your opponent cannot respond to this cards activation with cards or effects. You cannot special summon more than 4 times during the turn you use this card and any damage inflicted to your opponent this turn is halved. You can only activate 1 "Black Hole" per turn. TL/DR: make board wipes unable to be negated, so that players going second have outs to huge unbreakable boards and they can play the game as well, to prevent dice roll formats. (konami seems to be looking into something like this with evenly matched, but it can still be negated so it still doesn't truly allow for a fair game when going second against these tier 0 unbreakable board decks.)
My problem with hand traps is it screws rogue decks that need their engine to function. I run chaos ancient gear golem just so I don't have to worry about counters but get shutdown due to hand traps. Also spyrals get shut down by skyaphon prison
They're their own check and balance. You don't see a lot of ghost reaper(for obvious reasons) but you do see a lot of ghost ogre, Maxx c, ash and droll just because most of those excluding Ash are affordable and have effects that can turn a losing match into a winning match or make an unbreakable board even more difficult to dismantle. So while they add more difficulty they by themselves aren't impossible to work around.
i wonder why ash blossom doesn't get hit every deck is running it at 3, i would understand if there are more counter cards to it so it doesn't get hit but other than called by the grave there is nothing
I think the idea of hand traps is bad in general due to the fact it creates scenarios where either you or the opponent have no way to interact with them leaving you at the mercy of your opponents hand.
yeah I played the Link Evolution game completely without hand traps, save for archetype specific ones, so mostly just Subterror Fiendess. I found it much more interesting than what you describe in this video. Salamangreats were particularly challenging, but I ended up winning against them with a Monarch deck which more or less disables your opponent forever, but you have to have the cards actually on the field. That imo is much better game design, because while it is very powerful, it's also vulnerable.
3 years later: nothing changed, every deck full of handtraps and every deck can consistent pull out a full board within 1 turn. it baffles me how there are still people who play this game. I dont see the fun in going second and watching my opponent playing solitaire for 10 min or to play solitaire and then my opponent just surrenders before playing a single card
What deck were you trying to beat meta with? I know its super ultra mega casual deck with 0 modern cards that are designed to fix that thing ( like nibiru the primal being, droll &lock bird, dark ruler no more, forbidden droplets, super polymerization or triple tactics talents).
Yugioh is broken because of all the OTKs and FTKs. You even said it in point 3, "If you're going second, MAN do you want hand traps". Decks are so fast that if you don't run them, you lose. So if you ban the hand traps, ban all of broken engines as well.
Back before all of the cards in the turn one triple Quasar deck got restricted. (One Day of Peace, T.G. Hyper Librarian, etc.) The deck had no traps. I played that deck and started to realize that my friends didn't want to play with me as much because I nearly matched the way they would play with Supreme Kings, spending at least 5 minutes to get through our turns even when we knew what we were doing the whole time. Yugioh began to feel like a game of who got better luck and could flex their side of the field more. I finally invested in Frightfurs because I felt like it made a medium between a game of solitaire and a tcg. The power level of Yugioh cards keeps getting bigger and bigger, and that's one of the reasons that I went to Magic. The sets have weaker power levels than they would 6 years ago, and yet they still wield profitable results. I wish Konami would finally be content with the speed of the game, because when you make a card game with 3 essential card types and one is rendered useless, it's horrid game design to kill off it's original diversity.
Non yugioh player here. Is it possible that a trap with an effect where it does something if destroyed by an opponents effect could help bring traps back into the game? This would obviously be in addition to a normal, non destroyed by opponent effect. Even the idea that this COULD be in the opponents deck could cause a bit of hesitation when it comes to destroying traps
This is basically what Artifacts did; all of them are unlimited, they don't matter anymore. Also, there's nondestruction removal and other stuff like that... but yeah, floating traps would definitelly be a good solution. Too bad that Konami are thinking with their heads up their asses and are too busy making shit like Links and decks that can +7 in one turn and their excuse is handtraps. While my favorite decks aren't affected by Ash or Droll & Lock, i would still much rather have traps that float
for a about a week I ran 'eye of truth' in my monarch deck with 'thestalos the firestorm monarch', which allowed me to see my opponents hand and destroy a card from it...recycle 'thestalos' with 'erebus the underworld monarch' and you can keep deleting whatever you want from their hand, but overall it was too much effort to base my gamestyle around, and came with other issues so I stopped playing it. But it might be quite effective against hand traps. Have a look at 'eye of truth'. I don't know if it'd be worth playing, but it is a powerful card.
The biggest issue with Hand Traps is that, even if you are able to correctly identify how many hand traps there are in between the cards in your opponent's opening hand, what can you do about it? What outs can you potentially have? If my opponent sets a Solemn and a D-Barrier for example, you can have a chance of not even having to play around if you draw Twin Twisters. But, aside from the banned card Delinquent Duo, what would be the equivalent of Twin Twisters for Hand Traps? Which is why I hate them to the point of not putting any in the deck unless it has some synergy in it (like, I will play the 2 LIGHT Hand Traps in Red-Eys, because I run Lightpulsar Dragon, but no other Hand Trap).
Dzeef do you think it would be good if link monsters could be put face down cards like book of moon and quaking mirror could work but when they are face down they are just in face down atk position also if there were link monster that could only be special in def position
The only thing you didn’t mention about hand traps is that the best ones always seems to have some amount of proactive utility. Why does it have to be a tuner too?
IMO,Yugioh is byond repair. Theres no fix to the damage Konami has made. I played you for more than ten years since its release . They made the movies sequel mistake, more and bigger. The handtrap is just a symptom. Endless combos and powerfull cards arent always the answer. A 4 turns game isnt always fun. Konami spoiled players and trashed its own game. I quitted coz i got enough.
you know I have this card called red-eyes retro dragon and I guess its a hand trap sense it has an effect that interacts with what your opponent does and I like what it does
“Staple” cards are a blessing and a curse. Some cards, like MST, are generic enough to overcome shortcomings of a deck. I feel Hand traps could have been designed better. For example, the “herald” monsters cost you another specific card in your hand to block a crucial play. If the ash blossoms, etc, added “Discard this card and 1 spell card to x” for example could have balanced them a bit more. You’d save them for big play stoppers, not just for total domination lest you disadvantage yourself. I also feel it limits creation of new tech cards to have a generic sort of play set for most decks.
I miss the battle hand traps like gorz tragodia and honest so much. It's tough to play around modern handtraps due to their much easier activation conditions
Hey dzeeff, I was wondering if you're planning on making another Shinobird decklist. I've been loving your videos but am hoping you're working on an updated one for the current meta.
The way I see it, there are two kinds of Yu-Gi-Oh! players. Those who build decks with fun in mind, and those who build a deck with winning in mind. If you just have one or two decks, you buy a meta deck identical to everyone else’s with all the meta cards including the prohibitively expensive hand traps. If you have lots of decks with varied play styles, your money is basically stretched between them and so none of them can stand up to a deck that runs any cards that are remotely meta. Such budget decks are punished the most by hand traps because the number of player available is limited in a fun/casual deck. If you Ash or Ogre a normal summoned monster, then that lower tier deck doesn’t have alternative player max Hand traps serve to make the game as in-fun as possible for the players who value fun the most and that is why I hate hand traps.
Hey everyone! Thanks for watching Part 2 of my discussion on Hand Traps!
Inu San go to Cimooooooos comment section on his last video
my bad
lmao
Who's this dude? XD lmao
Cimoooooooo limit everything to 1 XD
I remember when the only worry you had when it came to hand traps was:
"Please don't be holding honest, please don't be holding honest! Please don't be- He's holding honest!"
Now its:
"Please let me complete my normal summon without 15 different effects going off"
Jack Ream please don’t be holding Gorz
I used to say please don't be holding a Kuriboh.
Us OG's only had kuriboh to worry about.
😂😂 good times hated those sacky lightsworn shaddoll decks of 2016 with effect veiler and maxx c everywhere
Please don't be holding a Battle Fader...
Remember how in og yugioh, kuriboh was about the extent of what a hand trap could do?
mrkisukes Like the older ones like Honest, But Handtraps that are essentially free negations with no outside cost should be limited or banned.
i still attack lowest to highest cuz of Gorz
@@darthdrake3095 that same reason could be applied with Ogre of Scarlet Sorrow
I’m playing a deck where 80% of the monsters are hand traps.
It’s kuribohs
Yeah
Next format: *D E C K T R A P S*
Imagine side deck traps, though.
*crush card deck*
@@Xodreev you're thinking too small. imagine a card that doesn't have to be in your deck, side deck or extra deck, so long as you have a copy of it you can pull it out at any time and use it to do something.
Oh god please no!!
@@HollyWarlocknow imagine it's generic as well.
Ash Blossom could have been 3 cards and they still would've been played
best comment
That part
of course they would ant card you can drop turn 1 that interrupts is the norm in Yugayoh
HomecominX im confused by this comment sounds like weird english
dean if you split Ash Blossom's effects into stop op adding to gy, stop op adding to hand, and stop op draw effect and gave each to a single different card all of them would see play in one format or another, Ash does it all
The power creep is real. Overpowered hand traps exist because overpowered archetypes exist that can make a full board with 1 or 2 cards.
This is why most card games have a "standard" format where new cards can only be played for 2 years. Also this keeps cards from limiting design in the future.
Yugioh could do with something like this now, as the cards have only gotten stronger over the years to maintain relevance.
theres nothing wrong with making a full board with 1 or 2 cards if the second turn player can actually break it with 1 or 2 cards. they can't, so hand traps take over because they prevent the board from being built in the first place with 1 or 2 cards
@@syndan9245 NO, if I can't Play galaxy eyes I will never play this game.
How about "let's not make broken archetypes that make a full board in 1 turn"?
Which is why crap like Lava Golem and Kaijus exist. Hand Traps except for a few of them are bullshit and a very, very stupid idea.
I personally don't like hand traps for a few reasons.
1. Acts as an excuse for overpowered card design. A lot of meta decks and even casual decks tend to focus on solitaire-play until they have this unbreakable board that just prevents you from making a turn. If you're playing a deck reliant on a normal summon and they have two firewalls on the field you might as well scoop because you can't come back from it.
2. Expensive. As I commented in another video I like that Konami is making a lot more powerful staples like cosmic cyclone and dimensional barrier more accessible but this doesn't extend to a lot of hand traps. Ash Blossom is by far the worst offender as a 3-of staple that costs like $300 without any consideration for the rest of the deck. Brings me to my last point.
3. They feel like a necessity to play. They are almost like a new type of main deck card at this point on a similar level to Pendulums. It's okay to say that they don't mean much on a casual level but as soon as that one person decides to throw down and get these hand traps you've already lost. It's essentially a pay-to-compete on a basic level. I would say pay-to-win, but to be fair, they can brick quite easily too.
dude play mind drain
Just because Mind Drain exists doesn't mean that it's always- or ever- a good option. It's an unsearchable Continuous Trap that will probably be activated far too late to actually matter, because your opponent already got you with Ash Blossom or Ghost Ogre. Then, you've got to keep it up because your opponent is probably playing Cosmic Cyclone/Twin Twisters, and thus they can out your out to their handtraps.
Tl;dr Running Mind Drain to stop handtraps is just as bad as bringing a copy of Discord to a tournament when a new powerful Synchro archetype comes out.
Jon Adams Jon just delete all your comments
They make you look dumb
He probably is dumb.
So much of 1& 3, they're oppressive to play but required to deal with solitaire decks.
Coming back to this 3-4 years later and... I still agree. Hand Traps hold too much power and now the way they try to compensate for it with being able to drop more negates just makes it worse. There are times where I just don’t want to play competitive anymore because I’m sick of the “break my board” concept Konami does now. I enjoyed the back and forth of YGO back in 5D’s and even Zexal... kinda wish we could go back to that...
I think the main reason that handtraps are so common is the fact that if your opponent goes first with a meta combo deck, 99% of the time they are going to end with one or two negates which disrupt your turn. It's extremely frustrating to be going second and having to watch your opponent set up a good board while you have no way to stop them on your turn because of all their negates.
This is true and I feel it could have been fixed without hand traps. Maybe the first turn player starts with 3 or 4 cards instead of 5? Or maybe there is some kind of system in place alongside life points which limits the ability to build a board on the first turn. Like maybe on the first turn you can't add cards to your hand or there is a limit on how much you can special summon. IDK but anything is more fun than just having someone drop a Maxx "C" before they even know what deck you're playing lol.
@@WilliamReginaldLucas
I honestly feel like many of the hypotheical fixes people come up with would be very hard to list in the rulebook and thats why it hasn't happened. Otherwise some of these solutions such as no adding cards would be a huge handicap since a large chunk of a player's starters are searchers. Its a very complex problem for yugioh that hand traps do well to solve. And now in our current meta the game is slowing down to the point where a huge board of negates is not always the way to play. So as this progression naturally happens hand traps will slowly lose relevance although I can never imagine it becoming obscure
@@akarilight6331 yeah I pretty much agree with all of this, it’s a very difficult problem to solve with a game that has over 10,000 cards (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Yu-Gi-Oh! but sometimes we can see the flaws in things we love 😂) personally I run Nibiru but it feels like a bit of a cheap win when I just happen to have it in my opening hand going second and my opponent just surrenders… doesn’t feel like I won through skill but through luck aha
Konami continually proves that they put themselves in a position where they are forced to print some more stupid broken shit to solve a problem they created before.
The powercreep of Hand Traps is one such thing because Konami decided to print decks that do all this bullshit in one turn at a more consistent basis than any deck before and the only way to prevent that is : Let's introduce broke ass cards to fix this problem for us with complete disregard for the problems that such actions may have.
Look at Master Rule 4.
A thing that should not have been.
Yeah, I said it.
Master Rule 4 restricts all but Links in the extra deck. Which puts a lot of decks out of play or severely crippled. It warrants the use of supplements that have really no synergy with a deck just so you can use the decks' main point. (Gofu(Or really any standalone card that puts more than 1 monster on board)).
So to counter that bad design choice they are forcing themselves to print insanely powercrept cards (That Link V-rains pack... DUUUUDE WTF...). We already know that a rank 4 foolish burial was too damn strong, but now we are getting essentially the same deal AGAIN. A link monster that summons any tuner from the deck??? AND can tribute itself to summon a synchro tuner from the extra deck. (And that coming from a Synchro fan). A Link monster that can tribute a monster linked to it to summon ANY plant monster from the deck?! WHAT! That is busted.
Master Rule 4 wouldn't even have been needed in the first place.
What does it actually accomplish besides forcing Konami to make some more dumb shit?
From my experience, Link monsters are fun to use by themselves already because it promoted the clever use of monster zones and provokes thought about what to place where, which is an aspect that Yugioh hasn't ever had before. Which is a great and unique way to spark some creativity from the players.
But instead they shove it down your throat and force some bullshit rules upon you because they are affraid and underconfident in their design.
And the worst thing about it is:
The players.
This game has become so filled with people who have grown to swallow every little bit of garbage Konami throws at them. It's one thing to adapt to a situation, but it's another thing to notice when you are in an abusive relationship which is where I feel the game is at right now.
Sometimes it's just perfect to start ranting. Keep on ranting Dzeeff! I will join in.
+Paladin Leeroy Let's face it. Yu-Gi-Oh is on it's way out. The game is gonna collapse from the overwhelming power creep. At least the game had a good run.
I will not let the game die that easily.
It's a great game and I know it's on it's way out the door.
However, my love for the game trumps my hate for Konami's horrible design.
I have been working on making a custom banlist and get people interested in playing the game without Master Rule 4. (My locals is like 8 people and there are no tournaments etc. no supported store etc. etc. etc.)
I'm playing devil's advocate here and say it: YGO needs either a set rotation or it will die! I don't mean a set rotation like Magic has it, but more of a long-lasting thing. Like 5 years. For example: Let's reset the game to the power and speed of the year 2010-2012 and go onwards from there for 5 years until the next set rotation hits and resets it all again. 5 years are a long time and enough to comfort the playerbase. All mechanics we have today in decks from the Year 2010-2012? Sounds fun, I say.
Also, Links need a rework. The mechanic is great, but it restricts every other extra deck mechanic. Without the power creep there is no need for a link restriction. Just design decks for Links specifically and let the other extra-deck-dependent decks do their thing.
I really want the new stuff Konami is making to just stop this. I am a casual player, but I have gone to a few tourneys. I see these damn annoying decks that are EXACTLY the same, and it's just these decks that go through like half their deck, and I see all these damn Ash Blossoms EVERYWHERE and it pisses me off. I can't really explain what I'm saying well, but it's just all the things they play are ANNOYING.
Welcome to competitive nature lesson Nr.1:
People play what works and eventually they will end up on the same decks. Until something changes.
What bothers me most about hand traps are the situations where my opponent goes first, I open with no hand traps, so my opponent proceeds to search A LOT of their deck, they make a pretty tough board then pass turn, I start, I play one card, and THEY USE A HAND TRAP ON ME when they already have a pretty ridiculous board. I'm down on resources trying to storm a minefield.
There should be an errara for some of the handtraps that require you to have no board in order to activate them from the hand. Then there should be a way to set them when you do have a board, similar to how red reboot works. That would make them slower for the winning player
@@hinamiravenroot7162 Basically all of them should have this. Ash, Veiler, Ogre n so on.
@@hinamiravenroot7162 I wholeheartedly agree with this. How is it fair for my opponent to have an insane board, and be able to stop any action I attempt to do. They already searched/played the majority of their deck on the first turn, so they'll be able to bounce back next turn if you are by some miracle able to interact with their board. Tbh the game has just gotten very boring and stagnant with the constant negates. Like I would enjoy being able to PLAY THE GAME, and not just watch my opponent practice his combos. Imagine playing a card game where YOU DONT GET TO PLAY THE GAME.
Maxx “C”, Effect Veiler, and Ghost Ogre are overall fine cards. Although, nowadays I dispute the balance of Maxx “C”. The biggest thing is that they disrupt your opponent, and they can be put into the category of “Hah, you activated my trap card!” sorta thing, because they're actual traps. Nowadays, shit got out of hand. Reaper is just like “Hah, you fool! You summoned a monster, now you lose your Extra Deck!” Okay...? And Ash is just like “Hah, you attempted to play the game! You idiot!” Ogre and Veiler don't do this; Ogre doesn't negate face-up cards, and only reacts to stuff that's face-up already, so you can play around it. Veiler has the awkward restriction of only being usable during your opponent's Main Phase whereas something like Breakthrough Skill is usable at any time, and Forbidden Chalice can even be used during the damage step. What Rivals Ash? What contents with Reaper? Nothing.
Droll & Lock kinda hit that same spot as Maxx, imo; Droll has always been fine, but now that most decks need multiple searches to even do anything it may have gotten too strong. That being said, Droll is a much bigger risk as it is a -1 whereas Ash goes +0 straight off the bat, assuming that card wouldn't have led to massive plusses, such as Brilliant Fusion, Pendulum Call, Desires, and Card of Demise. Reaper was heavily played even in a diverse meta that had 3 to 4 good, playable decks, and the only thing it does is that it punishes someone for summoning a monster and playing a particular deck, which isn't a fair thing to me. Additionally, it again has a hard time being used by rogue strategies as they cannot afford drawing this card turn 2, 3, or 4.
True, and I've never particularly stated that I find Reaper to be broken, because even in its prime the card still wasn't disgustingly busted. And even now that we've got decks who can play it without sacrificing consistency, I'd still say that the card isn't busted in the slightest. However, I find the card to be extremely poorly designed, so I'd like it to just go.
A lot of these hand traps have another side to the coin. Ash only stops one thing and is really only good in a specific situation (if a card requires a cost or something). Reaper is very powerful, but considering its only good versus a specific deck, requires you to devote space in your side/extra deck for the target, and is practically a huge dead draw if you don't open up with it, it has to have a busted effect.
GrandmistressD Maxx c is only good because if you give modern decks a couple cards and set up your board you've given them enough to play through your board and kill you next turn, and if you stop you haven't established a board so they're able to kill you freely next turn. Decks are too powerful and hand traps just let people know about it
True, but Ash is very powerful in general, considering it can stop approximately anything that attempts to look at your main deck, so it's a card you can safely main deck and it will be useful in literally any matchup. Even a deck that's old as balls and hails from the era during which searching wasn't the norm, like GK or Goat Control, does stuff, important stuff, that Ash can stop. Ash is no longer a meta call, or a tactical card, it's a card you can splash into anything and it'll work out.
Reaper does indeed require more dedication, but that doesn't make its effect okay. Terrortop required you to put in Taketomborg, Brilliant Fusion requires Garnet, PSY-Framegear Gamma requires Driver, Ariadne requires at least 3 counter traps, and so on. Reaper requires no tactical skill, it just benefits decks that have more space, more consistency, and can do more with less cards; you cannot play around Reaper in the slightest either, which makes it poor card design.
Veiler is fine. Skull Meister is fine too. Maxx C is borderline okay too. Ash Blossom? Droll and Lock?
You out yo god damn mind.
Veiler is so obsolete now nobody plays it.
Droll and lock is dumb, ash blossom is fine. It’s only OPT. droll and lock should just say “end your opponents turn”
Mr FirmTeacher ash blossom is too powerful
It’s too powerful VS rogue.
Also, people wouldn’t be saying that if everyone had access to her.
Mr FirmTeacher true on the last part. And its too powerful to begin with. You can basically end any decks turn with that good ash timing.
The major issue is that decks can do so much with so little; Zoo and SPYRAL are examples of decks that need very little cards to build gigantic boards. Zoo can go into multiple Xyzs with 1 card, and SPYRAL can spam a field filled with powerful Link monsters such as Trigate and Firewall with just a mere 2 cards. As a result, you can play tons of (hand)traps and hand traps also function on your opponent's turn, so you can easily go second, too. Older decks have bigger engines, so they can't play this many hand trap because it'd hurt their consistency. BA was an example of such a deck too, especially in the beginning; the engine was really small, but equated a massive amount of advantage and resilience, so you can play 20 traps in the deck and not give a damn.
GrandmistressD finally someone who actually gets it,lol!!!
Zoo pretty much never built gigantic boards unless they were in hybrid decks, like seriously right before Zoo you had ABC making Buster + CDI + backrow & Metalfoes making Kirin + denglong with pillars + alkhahest & D/D/D making CW + Seig + 38 & right after you've got Spyral making double firewall + sleeper + wire, Zoo was largely a 1 monster control deck that went +1 every turn not a combo lockdown deck like all these others
Yes, they never built gigantic boards, but they made an insane amount of advantage turn one, and they could recover from nearly anything with just one card. And the engine was small, so lots of room for traps and hand traps.
The problem with hand traps is that they make the game much harder to play, and by extension, a lot less fun.
Exactly. I wanted to build a fun to play, but still competitive hero deck, but more than half of the cards I’m playing, are either hand traps, or for countering hand traps
I think the game broke when "special" summoning half a dozen monsters in the first turn became commonplace.
The good ol' set one and pass is only for rogue decks. XD
Only have a dozen those are rookie numbers
I’d say Kaijus break Yugioh. Hand Traps *prevent* yugioh.
By “yugioh” we mean “degenerate boards,” right?
Jack Casey Some of these handtraps quite literraly stop decks from playing. Winter Cherries, Ash Blossom, Droll and Lock Bird are insane. How dare the opponent try and create advantage?
kek
Jhawk2711 advantage shouldn't be created that easily, it should be gained through correct play holding resources & playing interactions to minus the opponent, not I go +7 now because derp my deck just does that
^ This.
Broadbull, Enabler of Uncounted Combos any non tier 1 deck insta loses if they get drolled or ashes. And the free plus 7 decks are obviously a problem but the solution to them fucks everything else
Hand traps that prevent consistency are a big no-no. You make your deck based on consistency and they decided to make a card that is so easy to use which prevents that. It doesn't have to be set, sent to the grave, on the field, etc. Veiler and other hand traps like Ghost Ogre or D.D. Crow that negate effects, destroy, or banish from the grave are cool but not Ash Blossom. Your deck is your main resource which Ash Blossom prevents you from using. Your hand, field, grave, and banished zone are secondary.
cant wait until they release deck traps!
I remember the good old days when yugioh was about what card art you like the best.
Just an update from the future. One card puts all hand traps into check, so it gets limited.
The year is 2050. Hand traps have become so overpowered that decks no longer run anything else. In fact, they're so strong, that whoever loses rock- paper- scissors immediately surrenders
I have been trying to tell everyone this since before ash blossom even released. It breaks the game so hard. If everyone just ran 15 hand traps, its not even yugioh anymore. Just a card game of who can afford the hand traps and who can get luckiest.
Eddie V it turns out the most important card in yugioh is your debit card.
I've barely played any yugioh with link monsters yet because I quit in early 2017 due to the prevalence of stupid big boards that prevented playing actual yugioh. Then, I started playing online last week, trying out link format, and I just consistently ran into ash blossom (in particular) and other nutty hand traps that prevented me from playing in essentially the same way that stupid huge boards did a year ago. It turned me off so hard from new yugioh that I'm honestly not going to play anything other than silly character deck duels until the hand traps are checked.
So you're still not playing right?
Wait so turn one full board Is a problem but then hand traps to counter that is still a problem you can't win lol think is time for a hard reset from the game or soft.
So you're saying they made a remedy for the problem that made you quit, and that made you quit again?
You basically just want a format where you can play insane combos but nobody else can, very smart and sensible 👌
i hate hand traps, veiler and C were good but Ash is ridiculous, btw they make the game a lot more pay to win.
And enable OP decks since they are still 'beatable'
Same
> Ash is ridiculous
> Maxx C is good
Lolwut. C is absolutely broken, why is ash ridiculous?
All the Hand traps you mentioned are budget and not pay2win
@@Howardax C isnt' broken. Your opponent can play around it, and it's effectiveness is directly linked to your opponents plays. THEY decide how many cards you get to draw, and thus your opponent has too think. Ash Blossom is just a straight up "No, you don't play." C is interactive, Ash Blossom is ANTI-interactive.
I agree the hand trap does break the game. The weakness of the regular trap is the necessary component in order for the game to feel fun. Hand traps take away the idea of losing fairly. While normal traps even if you lose to it knowing that you saw it beforehand you can eat the loss and still feel confident about the game
This has aged quite well. Anyone else watching this 2020, the year of wrath.
Almost at the end of 2021, still super relevant lol
youtube's algorithm has directed me this way. I got out of Yugioh in like... 2011? 2012? I remember the big decks of the time being Spellbook of judgement and something about a Dragon Deck getting big in the OCG? I think Return of the Duelist might be the last set I bought packs for.
A lot of the things I hear about Yugioh makes me sad when I hear them. people don't play Traps any more? :C crazy errata that effectively destroys the identity of the cards? these are things that make me never want to come back.
I still have one deck, in the form of Herald of Perfection/Archlord Krystia. I also was playing Lightsworn and played a fair bit of Blackwings when they were a thing... and yeah, even then, dropping things like Honest, Kalut the Moonshadow, or D.D. Crow out of your hand caused some real havok that your opponent didn't really have recourse for.
I think the chance of me ever returning to Yugioh is next to none. if I already wasn't against Konami's questionable business practices in the video game space, I think the direction this game has taken sounds honestly unappealing to me.
Old video, but my take as a returning player is that hand traps actually make the game interesting again. It creates a whole other layer of mind games, and punishes hyper-consistency, which I think creates interesting stressors in deck-building and help level the playing field in some ways.
Nevermind not knowing which hand traps the opponent has - most of the time, you can't tell how many hand traps your opponent has, or even IF they have any at all.
With set traps, you know exactly how many there are, and you also have plenty of tools to remove them. Sure, your opponent can bluff by setting extra spells/traps they can't use, but they still need to commit resources to the bluff. But if my opponent ends their turn with 4 cards in the hand, I have no idea how much disruption (if any) I can expect, nor do I have many tools to get rid of them.
Honestly I don’t think Ash should still be at 3 and this logic that you HAVE to run 3 to play competitively is ridiculous
mind drain
#banallhandtraps
i completely agree. when you have to have three copies of everything in your deck how can that be considered a deck? in reality, a forty card deck is really 20 or less. it wouldn't be so bad if everyone wasn't playing with the same 5 decks using the same 10 cards. im all for competition but when everyone is using the same thing how can that be competitive
That Street Team Kid Give this man a country to rule.
@@crystalqueen9711 ban all the LOLU hand traps, shit like honest neos is nowhere as good as something like ash blossom
I honestly think that all the major hand traps (Maxx C, Ghost Ogre, Ash Blossom, and Droll) should be banned. They completely go against the fundamental idea of YGO without any downside. #BringBackTraps
mind drain google it
Lazy Lee Trap cards the past Hand traps are future get over it.
Learn grammar.
Yugioh has broken itself
smith frank again...
I think ash blossom and droll and lock bird need to go. Everybody wants to talk bad about maxx c, but look at ash and droll, they make it to where you can't even play your deck.
Droll needs to be limited and ash should be put to two (komoney lol)
#banallhandtraps
Yeah, I think Nymnihm (at least I think it was him) put it best, Hand Traps don't work in Yugioh but do work in Magic, because unlike Magic, we don't have any kind of resource management, whereas in Magic there's Land to worry about, so while the opponent might have an Instant (Same idea as Hand Traps) in their hand, they still need to pay the Mana cost that might be taken up by summoning more Creatures or casting Spells, and there are a few cards that can downright out their Lands by destroying them, but in Yugioh it's just discarding a handtrap to activate its effect while passive aggressively yelling "NO" at the opponent
It’s also bad that not only u have to play hand traps but they are also some of the most expensive cards in the game so the roge and budget players can’t get them
3 copies of mind drain 25 cent a pop google it
Jon Adams mind drain is a terrible counter to them as u firstly have to set it, you have to go first to get the most out of it and even then it’s bad because u have to go first, set it, wait till your next turn to activate to do your plays which by then then would have made there own board and got rid of your set mind drain so u are now in a worse spot than you were before so no mind drain is not a good counter to hand traps and solves nothing.
temple of the kings ,
fossil dyna
Jon Adams Jon you aren't as clever as you think you are
i feel like pokemon allows the player to be far more consistent than yugioh, hence its long history of players starting with massive swathes of stage 2s and donking, however running out of cards is the bottleneck. another bottleneck is having to interact with your opponent to access your whole deck, but generally, yugioh doesn't allow people to draw 3 cards from one card, much less six.
but yeah, i agree with you on this video, back when i was more into yugioh, each hand trap had a limited-nondestruction effect and there were only two that mattered, veiler was mainboarded, crow was side boarded (and every light deck used honest). traps also well outdid them when it came down to it. nowadays things seem to have gotten unhinged.
kira angle Also, in Pokemon 6 cards are removed from your deck at all times
Master Duel has fixed this dilemma seeing as now you can tell when someone has a quick effect in their hand. I still agree with these points though, the board should just be the field, the graveyard and the banished zone. Once cards are banished they should be removed from the game completely, and you should only be able to activate cards from your hand on your own turn such as quick play spells.
It gets kinda annoying when every deck build in Yu-Gi-Oh consists of Ash Blossom, Droll and Ghost Ogre. I think hand traps are great!...but not when they're soo generic that they can literally be put into any deck and work.
Handtraps are a nice indicator about the current format. Well, they were, before Ash Blossom rolled around which is appicable in any and all situations against pretty much every deck ever. Talking about Handtraps besides Ash, you can tell how powerful or problematic the best deck(s) at the moment is, by the amount and kind of handtraps played against it. If by any miracle a format arises again that doesn't rely on vomiting a bunch of monsters onto the field in 30 or 40 steps with the hopes of "something will stick", too many handtraps become a liability that just decrease your deck's consistency. But the main factor of this is how easy a deck can combo off. Extremely powerful 1-card or 2-card combos make playing 15 handtraps possible in the first place, because you can afford the space both in your deck when building, and in your hand when playing.
There's also no real way to get rid of handtraps really. One crazy idea would be the introduction of a turn 0, in which one player is exclusively allowed to set Spells/Traps before the actual player proceeds with turn 1. In which case playing handtraps becomes obsolete for the most part, but would make things entirely more complicated in other parts, lol.
Tl;dr Yugioh sucks, I'll just learn chess.
This was something that kept me from coming back to Yu Gi Oh. I had a disinterest in hand traps way back, however they were specific situations that usually lead to telegraphed plays. More and more of them became universal to run without any need to optimize the card's full potential outside its primary role.
Lmao 6 years later and people are playing 40 card decks with 50-60% hand traps. Wonder if things will ever change.
Hand traps break, burn and kill yugioh :(
SHURIT, STRATEGIST OF THE NEKROZ
I mean ghost ogre, ghost reaper are okay. But the ones i miss seeing is stuff like battlin boxer veil, tragodia, gorz, effect veiler since they didn't altered the gameplay to much
MachineEmperor Yeah I suppose negation Hans traps or hand traps like maxx are bad for the game
SHURIT, STRATEGIST OF THE NEKROZ maxx c isn't bad, its been out since 2011, the problem is the speed of the game. maxx c slows ur opponent from attempting to otk
SHURIT, STRATEGIST OF THE NEKROZ or build an unbeatable board
Oh what’s that I hear? A salty Nekroz player in 2017? Naw I must be getting old
We now live in a world of MR5, where rogue decks aren’t limited by link arrows. But still, one big thing holding them back is handtraps. Plenty of rogue decks are literal one trick ponies and are incapable of bouncing back from a nibiru or even an ash.
That said, because we lack many alternatives, hand traps are still very important to make sure meta decks aren’t able to go full combo and build their ideal board. It’s an unfortunate situation we’re in, because now there’s like no way to replace hand traps easily.
For example, just making spells/traps immune to other card effects for each player’s second turn probably isn’t enough to get rid of hand traps and will just lead to new problems and gimmicks.
There’s still mindgames with hand traps, like keeping track of your opponents hand, and as they combo off, calculating the chances of their last card being a hand trap. (Although that strategy falls apart against hand trap heavy/slow decks that don’t search/empty their hand that much)
There is counterplay to handtraps like negates (that only certain combo decks have access to), and called by the grave. But unlike normal trap counterplay, that is reactive rather than proactive, and the only way to mess it up is by bricking rather than by destroying the wrong trap.
Hand traps have made forceful discarding effects and hand revealing effects extra valuable, but konami has made those effects exceptionally rare. (and for good reason)
I think hand traps are okay for the most part. The only 3 big ones that everyone is mainly complaining about is Ash Forehead, Maxx C, and Droll&Lock Bird.
Ghost reaper and ogre are mostly the healthiest form of handtraps in recent days because it alters the gameplay but still allows interaction.
whats an Ash Forehead? lol
I think what is really the problem is that handtraps become a problem as a result of decks being able to consistently make ubreakable boards turn 1. Spyral is a perfect example of this because they can make these huge boards with only a few cards required to start the combo which makes it so they can do it almost every single turn 1.
If you are going second, then chances are that you aren't going to be able to break that board unless you drew the God hand to play around the negates. So your only other viable option is to run 40 handtraps in your deck to stop the other person from making those unbreakable boards so you can actually play Yugioh turn 2.
I wish we could go back to duels that were grind games that would take always take like 6 or 7 turns to complete with relatively short turns instead of what we have now where the duel ends on turn 2 or 3 with each turn taking an hour to do.
i think the main problem is that you can do to much in one go which leads to boards which are very hard to out, as such the only way to counter this is to make sure they cant make a board. this is why trap cards don't work as they cant interrupt turn one which often decides who wins of the first turn. ultimately hand traps are popular as the game has become to fast with you being able to play the rest of the game solely off your first turn, to solve hand traps the game needs to be slower so traps are viable.
This is something that is still really good about dual links- very few hand traps
Hand traps literally make Yu-Gi-Oh unplayable. It’s legit just “who draws ash blossom first the game.” Almost any engine is instantly shut down by it alone. It’s magic, but every deck is a blue deck that takes no skill to play in terms of calculating your opponents moves and mana management. Because that would require good game design.
Your deck dies soo bad to a single ash that you would surrender? What is the name of that deck?
I feel like negation itself is the reason that going first is so broken. What would yugioh be like with no negates?
Bruh... no negates, and it's pure madness. My rogue decks will simply perform as well as the meta decks.
@@MrHwilRRR And then that will become mega and then non-negation counters would be put in place. Trap-holes aren’t negates, disrupters aren’t negates, tech isn’t necessarily a negate. There are counters that could exist and would also keep the game in check and imo I think it would yield a more diverse meta
*when I say negates, I’m also including lock-out clauses bc those are dumb af
I played a lot of tcg's and ccgs over the years of playing card games. Recently I have started playing yugioh duel links, and I have appreciated your content because it allows me to see and understand things in the game since it's been a long time since I played actual card game.
You said one thing in this video though that kind of bugged me, you said that you was more consistent because it lacks draws like manna or land cards. That does not make the game more consistent, it just makes it faster.
When I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh when it first came out, the one normal summon per turn rule was the thing that was supposed to properly Pace the game. Because of power creep this is going out the window. MTG pace of the game is controlled by mana. While it is possible to get mana screwed, this does not happen to often with a properly built deck.
The big difference is not consistency, it the playing style of game. To me Yu Gi Oh! is like checkers, and MTG is like Chess. Both are great games, but totally different. However, Yu Gi Oh! Instead of playing by the limitations the rules provided players are allowed to move pieces more freely and can move multiple pieces a turn.
*Mind drain for em. easy*
Is what i should say if this happened 4 years ago
Imagine if your opponent sets a card and it could anything from an ash blossom to a watapon, that’s basically hand traps
5:19 I don't think that's the case, I think they don't really have a design philosophy for the game. I think Yu-Gi-Oh! Being much faster was on accident and the natural step up from power creep. I'm sure that was on accident from making the game dynamic and because power creep hit the ceiling without being too broken yet, they had to add more mechanics to make it not hit the ceiling for power creep.
Oh hey, part 2 finally
You are such a master, dude; I don't plan on playing Yu-Gi-Oh! but I recently ran into your channel and like learning about it from you. I think that Konami should hire players like you to participate in gameplay balance design; because I'd be totally interested in playing the ideal game you're describing.
How do you interact whit opponent turn 0 without handtraps???
Going 1rst becomes broken if we don't have handtraps.
An idea to solve the problem with MR5: Forbid any interaction (battle, negates etc.) between the players in the first TWO turns. That would allow both players to build there board, set backrow and then start dueling properly. Just like a "preperation phase".
I have actually wondered about a master rule like this. the way the game has gone lately its all about setting up a board on turn 1 and preventing your opponent from playing the game (not fun at all).
The main concern with this is the ability of the player going first to be able to attack first and wipe the board through battle and the second player then has to try and rebuild again after this preparation phase. the only way I can see (for now) to stop that from happening (or prevent decks starting out as 15 mirror forces) is if an attack is declared the opponent gets a chance to declare an attack with the monster being attacked or block the attack with another monster, or something similar, that way there is still back and forth and no chance to set up the current mentality of "I go first, I still have my board, and now you cannot play". it is definitely a difficult one to try and solve.
You are right. Of course, it's way more complicated to balance YGO. The question is how we can restore the balance without changing the rules too much since I don't want the basic feeling of YGO to be changed.
It's not optimal, I prefer a mirror force meta to a "break my board" meta though. There should be more discussion about this topic.
tbh, that would be like Coin Flip the Game though
Eih.... that creates a whole new problem honestly.
Quite a bit of traps are quite strong at the moment and you would have to throw solemn judgement onto the banlist once again.
Not to mention that you would have an even stronger emphasis on your first turn hand, with now the amount of traps instead of monsters.
2:28 - decks topping haven't played a lot of traps? Paleo? True Draco? OG ABC builds?
Just as an example:
yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7117
runs 5 traps; 3 that practically are actually activated as spells (lol evenly matched is a balance rant by itself)
1 archetypal one
1 out to everything dot trap
yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7193
none
yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7198
is a bit of a weird deck, but does run an ok amount of traps
yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7195
runs 9, 4 of them are from the archetype itself and quite necessary
2 of them are a literal counter against pendulums
yugiohtopdecks.com/deck/7197
lol 60 card and even no traps
I think I got the point across
I'm confused as to what the difference between a hand trap and a quick play spell is.
Not even Fred is into those kind of traps
Another point I find interesting coming from a MtG perspective: normally, a creature's stat line is a lever one can use to balance having more powerful effects: ie in Magic your 4 mana (mid range) creature only has 1/1 or 1/2 (basically turn 1 monster stats) in exchange for powerful effects on the field. So it sucks in battle and dies to burn easily (a meaningful weakness in Magic, burn is quite strong except at the very top levels of play) but does it's special thing very well, and it's at least not seen as strictly better than a 4/4 for 4 that can attack right after being summoned.
But in YGO, weak stat lnes aren't actually a weakness due to the plethora of summoning mechanics where smaller creatures serve as some sort of fodder to summon bigger beatsticks or win-cons. You can't do this in Magic very easily (outside of black sac effects). So you have a situation where Konami can't use stats to balance a creature with strong hand trappy effects. IMO they should have made hand traps literally traps so that you actuallty need to make a deck building concession to get the effect (fewer attackers / frontline monsters).
The moment they created traps that could be activated from the hand, that's when the designers officially choose they didn't want to create cards for yugioh.
Cimoooooo, haven't you already uploaded this video?
I really think that these kinds of decisions show one of two things about Konami.
1) They don't understand what their game actually plays like, and have no idea what any of the changes that they are making will do to the game as a result.
2) They actually know full well what they are doing, and just want you to buy more $50 cards from their officially approved vendors, or buy boxes and boxes of cards looking for that elusive ash blossom.
After all of these years of following the game and trying to figure it out, and I still have no idea. Because, at some point, you get things like emergency ban lists for things like Dragon Rulers and Sixth Sense, but then you also get archetypes like Burning Abyss that have been topping for years as far as I've heard, and it doesn't look like Konami is doing a damn thing about it besides releasing stronger shit and hoping they just get phased out so you spend more money on buying a new deck because the old one is a pile of absolute trash now.
The problem isn't the hand traps, it's the fact that if you get interrupted turn one the game is so fast that you die turn two.
I've just recently gotten back into Yu-Gi-Oh (stopped around the time Zexal started) but I don't have that much knowledge concerning effect interactions.
I started playing Duel Links a couple of weeks ago and when building a Dark World Deck I noticed that there are cards that make you Discard a card as a sort of effect and other cards that make you discard as a cost.
The thing is that Dark World effects don't apply when the Dark World monster is discarded as a cost (like with Dark Core) but do apply when discarded by a neutral effect (like with Dark World Lightning).
My question here (which came to mind upon seeing Graceful Charity) is if this kind of differentiation of effects applies in the TGC/OCG as well.
the easiest way to solve the hand trap dilemma (without banning every single card) is to remake board wipes such as raigeki, dark hole, evenly matched, kaiju slumber etc, as spell speed 4 cards (your opponent cannot respond to the activation and effect of this card) so that your opponent can still play their huge "unbreakable" boards going first, but you still have a way to play going second by outing that board.
They can throw restrictions on these upgraded cards such as:
- your opponent takes no damage till their next end phase (prevent otk)
- you cannot special summon (or limit to 3-5 special summons) for the rest of this turn / the turn you use this card (prevent your own big boards and otk so your opponent can still play on their next turn)
something like this (if designed properly) should work as it will allow the going second player to actually play the game, or at the very least it will even out the advantages between going first and second. where your opponent can still make their massive boards, but they will likely be punished for over extending and this should bring a lot of skill / back and forth, back into yugioh, which it has been missing, over the last year especially.
An example would be something like:
Black Hole
Normal Spell
Destroy all monsters on the field. Your opponent cannot respond to this cards activation with cards or effects. You cannot special summon more than 4 times during the turn you use this card and any damage inflicted to your opponent this turn is halved. You can only activate 1 "Black Hole" per turn.
TL/DR: make board wipes unable to be negated, so that players going second have outs to huge unbreakable boards and they can play the game as well, to prevent dice roll formats. (konami seems to be looking into something like this with evenly matched, but it can still be negated so it still doesn't truly allow for a fair game when going second against these tier 0 unbreakable board decks.)
My problem with hand traps is it screws rogue decks that need their engine to function. I run chaos ancient gear golem just so I don't have to worry about counters but get shutdown due to hand traps. Also spyrals get shut down by skyaphon prison
They're their own check and balance. You don't see a lot of ghost reaper(for obvious reasons) but you do see a lot of ghost ogre, Maxx c, ash and droll just because most of those excluding Ash are affordable and have effects that can turn a losing match into a winning match or make an unbreakable board even more difficult to dismantle. So while they add more difficulty they by themselves aren't impossible to work around.
they could make hand-traps that are actual trap cards...? that way they cant be "searched" and stuff so easily with other monster effects.
"what's your favourite hand tra-"
"kuriboh"
"but tha-"
"kuriboh"
"it isn't even-"
"i SAID *kuriboh* "
i wonder why ash blossom doesn't get hit every deck is running it at 3, i would understand if there are more counter cards to it so it doesn't get hit but other than called by the grave there is nothing
I think the idea of hand traps is bad in general due to the fact it creates scenarios where either you or the opponent have no way to interact with them leaving you at the mercy of your opponents hand.
yeah I played the Link Evolution game completely without hand traps, save for archetype specific ones, so mostly just Subterror Fiendess.
I found it much more interesting than what you describe in this video. Salamangreats were particularly challenging, but I ended up winning against them with a Monarch deck which more or less disables your opponent forever, but you have to have the cards actually on the field.
That imo is much better game design, because while it is very powerful, it's also vulnerable.
3 years later: nothing changed, every deck full of handtraps and every deck can consistent pull out a full board within 1 turn. it baffles me how there are still people who play this game. I dont see the fun in going second and watching my opponent playing solitaire for 10 min or to play solitaire and then my opponent just surrenders before playing a single card
What deck were you trying to beat meta with? I know its super ultra mega casual deck with 0 modern cards that are designed to fix that thing ( like nibiru the primal being, droll &lock bird, dark ruler no more, forbidden droplets, super polymerization or triple tactics talents).
*12 handtraps in the deck break Yugioh.
Yugioh is broken because of all the OTKs and FTKs. You even said it in point 3, "If you're going second, MAN do you want hand traps".
Decks are so fast that if you don't run them, you lose. So if you ban the hand traps, ban all of broken engines as well.
I concur, they should be hitting ftk engines and at least limit handtraps.
Back before all of the cards in the turn one triple Quasar deck got restricted. (One Day of Peace, T.G. Hyper Librarian, etc.) The deck had no traps. I played that deck and started to realize that my friends didn't want to play with me as much because I nearly matched the way they would play with Supreme Kings, spending at least 5 minutes to get through our turns even when we knew what we were doing the whole time. Yugioh began to feel like a game of who got better luck and could flex their side of the field more. I finally invested in Frightfurs because I felt like it made a medium between a game of solitaire and a tcg. The power level of Yugioh cards keeps getting bigger and bigger, and that's one of the reasons that I went to Magic. The sets have weaker power levels than they would 6 years ago, and yet they still wield profitable results. I wish Konami would finally be content with the speed of the game, because when you make a card game with 3 essential card types and one is rendered useless, it's horrid game design to kill off it's original diversity.
Non yugioh player here. Is it possible that a trap with an effect where it does something if destroyed by an opponents effect could help bring traps back into the game? This would obviously be in addition to a normal, non destroyed by opponent effect. Even the idea that this COULD be in the opponents deck could cause a bit of hesitation when it comes to destroying traps
This is basically what Artifacts did; all of them are unlimited, they don't matter anymore. Also, there's nondestruction removal and other stuff like that... but yeah, floating traps would definitelly be a good solution. Too bad that Konami are thinking with their heads up their asses and are too busy making shit like Links and decks that can +7 in one turn and their excuse is handtraps. While my favorite decks aren't affected by Ash or Droll & Lock, i would still much rather have traps that float
for a about a week I ran 'eye of truth' in my monarch deck with 'thestalos the firestorm monarch', which allowed me to see my opponents hand and destroy a card from it...recycle 'thestalos' with 'erebus the underworld monarch' and you can keep deleting whatever you want from their hand, but overall it was too much effort to base my gamestyle around, and came with other issues so I stopped playing it. But it might be quite effective against hand traps. Have a look at 'eye of truth'. I don't know if it'd be worth playing, but it is a powerful card.
I think they really overcompensated with handtraps. Like ash, if ash were three seperate cards, or had a cost, it would be more balanced.
Anything that cheats a core mechanic like hand traps or 1 card xyz like zodiac will break yugioh
The biggest issue with Hand Traps is that, even if you are able to correctly identify how many hand traps there are in between the cards in your opponent's opening hand, what can you do about it? What outs can you potentially have?
If my opponent sets a Solemn and a D-Barrier for example, you can have a chance of not even having to play around if you draw Twin Twisters. But, aside from the banned card Delinquent Duo, what would be the equivalent of Twin Twisters for Hand Traps?
Which is why I hate them to the point of not putting any in the deck unless it has some synergy in it (like, I will play the 2 LIGHT Hand Traps in Red-Eys, because I run Lightpulsar Dragon, but no other Hand Trap).
Dzeef do you think it would be good if link monsters could be put face down cards like book of moon and quaking mirror could work but when they are face down they are just in face down atk position also if there were link monster that could only be special in def position
The only thing you didn’t mention about hand traps is that the best ones always seems to have some amount of proactive utility. Why does it have to be a tuner too?
IMO,Yugioh is byond repair. Theres no fix to the damage Konami has made. I played you for more than ten years since its release . They made the movies sequel mistake, more and bigger. The handtrap is just a symptom. Endless combos and powerfull cards arent always the answer. A 4 turns game isnt always fun. Konami spoiled players and trashed its own game. I quitted coz i got enough.
Personally, I like the "Kaiju", but I might be biased because I've loved giant monster movies since I was a kid.
Hand traps need to be limited. Especially fucking ash. Why was she printed to begin with?
+Brother Bear Money my friend
Or better yet: Banned
Zero Ace I absolutely hate them, but all but droll would be ok at 1
you know I have this card called red-eyes retro dragon and I guess its a hand trap sense it has an effect that interacts with what your opponent does and I like what it does
yugioh is meant to be played on the field. this was how the game was designed from conception. hand traps defy this in every way.
What happened to the origins of hand traps? What where the first hand traps? I really wanted to hear about that
Man... this is so true I still remember when I was playing synchron deck and everything I do is counterd from hand
“Staple” cards are a blessing and a curse. Some cards, like MST, are generic enough to overcome shortcomings of a deck. I feel Hand traps could have been designed better. For example, the “herald” monsters cost you another specific card in your hand to block a crucial play. If the ash blossoms, etc, added “Discard this card and 1 spell card to x” for example could have balanced them a bit more. You’d save them for big play stoppers, not just for total domination lest you disadvantage yourself. I also feel it limits creation of new tech cards to have a generic sort of play set for most decks.
I miss the battle hand traps like gorz tragodia and honest so much. It's tough to play around modern handtraps due to their much easier activation conditions
Hey dzeeff, I was wondering if you're planning on making another Shinobird decklist. I've been loving your videos but am hoping you're working on an updated one for the current meta.
Last reason is they are almost impossible to stop. Since they aren't on the field cards like fiendish chain that stop monster effects can't stop them.
The way I see it, there are two kinds of Yu-Gi-Oh! players. Those who build decks with fun in mind, and those who build a deck with winning in mind.
If you just have one or two decks, you buy a meta deck identical to everyone else’s with all the meta cards including the prohibitively expensive hand traps.
If you have lots of decks with varied play styles, your money is basically stretched between them and so none of them can stand up to a deck that runs any cards that are remotely meta.
Such budget decks are punished the most by hand traps because the number of player available is limited in a fun/casual deck. If you Ash or Ogre a normal summoned monster, then that lower tier deck doesn’t have alternative player max
Hand traps serve to make the game as in-fun as possible for the players who value fun the most and that is why I hate hand traps.
I tought you were going to speak about that card that allows you to use traps from your hand for one turn, making reckless greed and jar of greed OP
7:21
Konami making better card design is more of an accident, honestly in this video your giving the company a little too much credit.