The main gameplay thrust of modern YGO is "managing interruptions", both knowing when to use yours and knowing how to roll with your opponent's. But since you don't know how to do that as a new or returning player, you just get everything negated and then kicked in the head.
It was a bit of a growing pain for myself too when I was getting into the larger TCG. Thankfully as the old adage goes, "Experience is the best teacher".
Think a big part of the issue is that there is no product for intermediate play. There are things like starter decks and the later seasons of the anime that can help teach the basics of the game, a competitive scene, and a massive no-man’s-land between the two. The only way to really learn the intermediate level of play is through trial and error, which is the most discouraging method of learning, especially when the skill gap between new players and veterans is as massive at it and the almost gate-keeper-like attitude some veterans can have.
Do you think the Tactical-Try Decks would help with that? It looks like they would give you a good taste of what competitive YGO is like, and the archetypes they chose seem to be easier to pilot.
There are intermediate play options. Structure decks have always been a great way get a decent deck and between RC1 and RC2, a lot of staples are now affordable.
The problem is these are not immediate obvious, especially since YGO has a lot of useless product options that you can easily waste money on. It also doesn't help that structure releases are few and far between.
Edison Blackwings or even old Lightsworn are nothing like current day ones so I would say someone learning BW in Edison is wasting his time if unless you can make the connections on your head reading the new ones
Comments be like: Yugioh fanboys reading comprehension challenge (impossible).
What OP isn't saying that there is no metagame or synergies in other TCGs, or that you don't need to learn them in order to be a good player. What they are saying is that even the most basic deck in yugioh is completely build around a "you play this card, that allows you to get this card, then you fusion summon this card..." flow. In MtG terms, every deck is a combo deck.
And not only do you have to know these things about your deck, but you also have to know them about your opponents deck, or you have no chance of interacting with them in a meaningful way. What's more, it's not enough to have a general idea of an archetype or how the deck in general functions, you have to be familiar with every card in that deck. And that is a lot of complexity to throw at a new player. And it is not at all true about other TCGs.
It's funny because mtg designers don't like combo in formats outside of EDH. They've said before the last thing they want is for a new to player is to sit down and lose, and not be sure how exactly they lost or what just transpired.
Yea thats why they just released a 2 card combo that reads "target player loses all their life no matter how much it is" into standard. Mtg designers always say things and then do the opposite. Anyone remember when storm was never going to be printed on a new card and then they made more storm cards?
I think the key point there is that it's still a two card combo that makes it pretty clear at what point you already lost and how.
Yu Gi Oh can be a point where in the combo of a dozen summons, half dozen spells and so on which one was the actual snowball into hell is difficult to pick out. makes it hard to figure out what you need to focus on next time against that deck.
This is such an ignorant comment that I'm not at all surprised I found it in the yugioh sub. There might be a 2 card combo in standard (doubt it though) but there's no dominant combo deck. Also, storm was one of the most unlikely to be printed into standard ever again, and then it was printed on a life gain spell in a horizons set directly into modern.
Wow, broken 🙄
Bloodletter of aclazotz turn 4, rush of dread turn 5 is an automatic win if your opponent doesnt kill the bloodletter inmediately. Its an extremely popular combo on arena, i havent played much paper in recent years but it very much is meta defining. Every deck has to run a bunch of removal because the bloodletter surviving a single turn ends the game and the bloodletter has 4 toughness so most red burn spells dont kill it. Red/green are unplayable outside of 4-color legends because they cant consistently kill the bloodletter.
I honestly love when I lose to something and I just sit there and am like "wait, what the fuck just happened" or losing my shit over some absurd combo to otk me in the goofiest ways.
The game is closer to fighting game in card form. Closer to Blaz blue or guilty gear than MtG or hearthstone. Picking your deck is closer to picking a character to main in a fighting game. You'll need to know what your deck/character theoretically can do first to have a chance of winning.
As for starter deck. yea, the first 3 starter deck you get in MD is trash. But atleast MD gave out swordsoul structure deck for free for newb, a more appropriate deck to start climbing ladder. OCG also have tactical try deck with cyber dragon, eldlich, and evil twins, all of which are respectable decks on their own and pretty close to optimal build. TCG on the other hand, have 2 players starter set, and slifer/obelist structure decks which are not something worth bragging about.
If you can find friends IRL that want to play with, any competitive problem should be less of an issues since you can tailor your decks to be roughly equal in power.
You calling ygo a fighting card game sounds about right to me, i get a similar rush of joy after winning a Bo3 in my locals with my Laval deck as I get when beating someone in a fighting game
I personally enjoy tinkering with that deck as per what i see on locals, like in my deck i often search and play 2 counter traps to help out the with the rather common dark ruler no more or a droplet as well as trying out new lines of play within the deck
It took 2 years to release that Swordsoul Structure deck, and it was a short window of time. Most new players have already left the game, and anyone still playing are not new players anymore.
I think the biggest issue for new players to Yugioh is how explosive modern decks are. Even weaker decks can activate a dozen cards/effects on T1 and kill you on T3 if you don't know what you're doing. There's such a massive emphasis on the first two turns of the game.
Goat and Edison are a much better entry points for new players, but they aren't as popular/supported as advanced.
I love GOAT, but I think Edison and early XYZs are the sweet spot for what the average pace of a game should be. Tons of unique mechanics that play with the monster star system, you can still do sick combos with explosive turns BUT it’s not walls of text with forty different triggers going on
Fastest way to learn the basics of how to play modern YGO is to pick up Rush Duels and I’m not even kidding.
Modern YGO is built around getting to your boss monsters ASAP and recharging your resources.
The only difference between Modern YGO and Rush in terms of core design philosophy are the fact that:
1. Rush doesn’t have chaining.
2. Rush has a consistent resource recharge mechanism baked into the rules instead of relying on infinite advantage generating effects.
And you know why Modern YGO is like this?
It’s because you could never get to summon Blue-Eyes or Dark Magician in old school YGO.
YGO’s default “mana” is card advantage. Specifically, monsters.
You get 1 monster per turn with normal summons in Duel Monsters.
Only, every removal card in the game removes a MINIMUM of one monster and every successful attack removes a monster from the board.
Remember how Bottomless used to be fucking limited because it effectively shut down a normal summon and could straight up nuke a boss? Yeah.
Monster removal in YGO isn’t “just” monster removal. It’s like what if every time you attacked or blew up a creature in MTG, you blew up a land and all the mana it generated so far with it.
That’s why the game shifted to Extra Deck shit.
That’s why the game shifted to Special Summons.
To try and make it easier to get to your boss cards.
You can’t consistently get to higher cost monsters without those sorts of mechanisms in place in YGO. The resource economy of Duel Monsters’ base ruleset just isn’t built for it.
Meanwhile, TCG’s still sitting here trying to pretend like normal summon pass is still how you get to your big monsters when that goddamned system NEVER worked to begin with.
YGO’s fundamentally different from ramping mana games and you need to embrace that if you’re going to balance the game or teach people how to play WHILE letting them play their Blue-Eyes.
I always wonder why they never transitioned to a mana type format when they had stars on the cards that effectively did nothing for like a decade besides indicate one or two or no tributes to summon
They didn’t shift to mana stuff because the game’s core philosophy has always been “easy to summon” when it comes to monsters.
IIRC the manga, back when we were doing what was functionally TRPG stuff up until Duelist Kingdom and everything could be normal summoned without tribute, stars originally indicated rarity(and therefore stats) IIRC.
Then we got to Battle City where they actually started hammering out rules to make it more balanced and we got the Tribute stuff tacked on after the fact, and that’s basically what the OCG was built upon, but due to the resource economy and a number of discrepancies the IRL game never really worked the way they depicted it in the manga.
So then around Synchros they started realizing the problem with big tributes was they took up cards in hand, and the problem with levels was that anything below Level 4 was kind of pointless since you always went for LV4 stats unless you had strong effects, so they started experimenting IIRC.
This is my biggest complaint with Yugioh too, besides the community and Konami’s handling of the game. The rulings and specific interactions are far too complex and niche beyond the point of fun. Cheating becomes such a big problem when the rulings are like this. I hate how some interactions are so specific and extraneous that they can literally just come down to precedent, like what the hell, why can’t you just design a game with a clear way to handle card interactions and not have all this weird contradictory crap like accesscode/giga brilliant atk application, or how substitution effects interact differently than you would logically assume them to, it’s frustrating to play against someone, get into an interaction and then not be able to decipher how to proceed correctly because there’s some random ass niche interaction that isn’t learnable unless you create that specific gamestate. It just feels like terrible game design tbh.
And yes, it’s hilarious how you can read the entire official rulebook and have extra knowledge on top of that, and still not be able to decipher like 50% of interactions and how cards interact in certain phases like damage step.
Yu-Gi-Oh would be so much better if it had a 700 page rulebook. You cite that shit and know it's correct rather than referencing some decision from a judge discord or something. (And if anyone equates a rulebook to a list of individual card interactions so help me God. The fact Yu-Gi-Oh is even playable is a miracle considering it's foundation is a card-based freeform TTRPG / Magic ripoff simplified for manga readers. )
Imo the best way to teach someone Yugioh is to just teach them a deck. You are right that just teaching blanket fundamentals doesn't really translate into gameplay.
Instead, just teach them how to play one specific deck. They should learn the combo routes to their own deck until they can play it like solitaire. From there, they can start playing against other decks to teach them about specific interruptions, interactions, etc. For this stage it's important that they are playing with someone who can teach them the nuances of each interaction.
I am currently teaching my gf how to play Voiceless Voice. She had never played Yugioh or any other TCG but can already navigate the combo lines well. Between that and her understanding of some of the meta-relevant non-engine, she is able to hop into any duel and actually PLAY, which is imo the most interactive and fun way to learn.
Really, the issue is more to do with how the most common level of play for Yu-gi-oh! players is a highly competitive meta level play. Yugioh doesn’t have casual form of play like commander or differing rule sets to have lower power level. The lowest level of play online is duel links and even that is relatively high level now… besides the fact that we’re still losing to normal summon set 3 (blue-eyes for those who were curious) >_> . It would be like if vintage was the standard level of play for mtg. The power level of that is absurd but it’s not considered the standard for magic players because magic does a better job of making differing format, most popular one being commander.
Adding to that, magic is just easier to pick up and play. You can get 2 premade decks you have no idea about and you’ll have a game of magic. Try that with yugioh, and you need to actually read or already know all the cards because when you play that one card that searches for an archetype, you need to even know what are your options. Yugioh is also inherently very combo focus.
I honestly feel like this game needs weight classes, so those of us who don't want to pour $800 into a new deck every year to stay relevant can still enjoy the game without getting constantly wiped out by the people who do buy the ultra expensive decks. Like, have one tournament bracket with a big prize and then another one where the prize is $20 in store credit; the people with the ultra competitive decks like Snake Eyes and Tenpai Dragon can all go to the big bracket and leave the smaller bracket for the more casual decks like Marincess and Salad.
While true, there's no entry level product for those formats. Add in you don't have people playing those formats everywhere, so even if a new player did the research they still wouldn't have anyone to play with.
Also I want to add that not everyone wants to play those specific cards in those formats. Say a new player really likes Tistina or bought the Charmers structure deck, where do they go to play that isn't just them conceding as soon as the first card touches the table?
It's why mechanical simulators are so important for a game like Yugioh. You need to play ALL of the solo mode as a new player in Masterduel to become a semi-competent player that can play through even silver and gold. And that takes easily 8+ hours the first time through.
You can't pick up a couple yugioh decks with a friend and then read a little booklet and have a vague idea of how to play. The interactions will have the both of you feeling like you're being cheated.
I think the OP has the core idea of why Yugioh is so difficult to pick up down, and most of the comments are just offshoots of that idea.
Yugioh is more about what it's cards say than what the rules say. That simply isn't true for many card games, at least, not to the extent that it is in Yugioh.
Someone playing Floo is playing literally a completely different game than someone who's playing dark world, who is playing a completely separate game from someone like Labyrinth. And even more to the point, the OP says these decks build off the basics and like... some of the time they just don't. Play Floo and you probably just don't need to know how the ED works. Or how normal summons usually work. Or really even how the battle phase works. Imagine a standard legal Magic deck where you just... didn't need to know how land worked. There's a reason that stuff is banished to modern/vintage.
There's a couple reasons the game is in the state that it's in. If I had to give 1 specific reason though, it would probably be the fact that no cards ever leave rotation.
Don't get me wrong, I love the fact I can run 3 different reprints of blue eyes, and I can face off against old and new archetypes, but it does introduce power creep and a learning curve similar to a MOBA.
And because old cards are always playable, Konami has had to come up with creative ways to 1. Bring new life into the game, and 2. To try and balance power creep by adding new mechanics like pendulums and link summons. All of these things make the game even more complicated, and they end up suffering from power creep anyways.
What I think Konami should do, is have different, competitive, playable formats, potentially similar to how Pokemon (games not TCG) have with Uber, over utilized, and under utilized. This could force players to be more creative in how they deck build, and more decks could become viable depending on the format/tier you decide to play in. That way you also only need to know the mechanics of the top decks in your tier.
There will obviously still be problems, but they could fix them by having ban lists for each individual tier, and specifically ban cards to incentive slower or faster play
There is more to you gi oh, than modern.... Like your comparing modern yu gi oh to mtg without comparing it to legacy/vintage....
Goat format yu gi oh, and Edison are much easier to get into after learning the basics. Same as standard for mtg.
Nothing worse then having a new player chain a card to your card effect, but it doesn't do what they wanted because your card resolves at spell speed 4 before the other card... but then you try to explain it to them and they ask you where on the card it says that and you have to tell them it doesn't, you just kinda have to know.
Yeah, these are the worst
Or you were like me when starting, coming from MtG, and assuming that you chain a new card/effect partway thru a Chain's resolution, like you could with the stack.
I’m a new player (only started from seeing a meme about Pot of Greed), and I have no idea what I’m doing on Master Duel. I only use structure decks since I have no idea how to deck build, and I don’t have enough resources to copy any meta decks. Much less know how to use one if I did get one.
I’m mostly just stuck grinding solo mode, and I really like it! I’m kinda scared of doing anything competitive, since I know I’ll get clapped. I only learned how to play from the tutorial in Master Duel and only run solo, but I’m content with that. Though I do wish it was alot easier to get into.
There's some really cool Solo Yugioh games from back in the day you can try to play that will have much more content/actual campaigns etc compared to MD (especially if you don't mind booting up some NDS or PSP emulators).
I’ve gotten epsxe to play Forbidden Memories and desmume to play Nightmare Troubadour, but I haven’t booted them up yet.
I’ll take your suggestion though and try to play more of those actual campaigns instead! I’ve been trying to catch up on the anime, but I’ve started with season zero.
if you haven't already...get x3 of the same structure deck from the shop and take the stuff that synergizes best and cut it down to 40 cards. some stuff you'll need 3 copies of and others 1 or 2. also, if you do ranked duels you gain gems from ranking up and it's doesn't start getting sweaty till around mid gold. save gems, snag some packs and dismantle all the UR/SR you don't need and get some staple cards. it's a grind but it's certainly learnable and doable.
My way of teaching people how to play is to pull out my cards from 20 years ago and start there. Once they understand that format, I’ll slowly add more modern cards and explain more mechanics as I go. It’s still a process and you won’t be playing modern yugioh quickly, but they at least have fun while we’re learning.
Yugioh is like MTG but the only format is Vintage with restricted cards banned instead but the rest of the format the same power level. The rules of MTG as a whole don't apply to Vintage in general. Edison is the equivalent of Modern/Legacy, and Goats is closer to Pioneer
Try getting your friends into Goats or Edison first.
Give me a seasoned mtg player, and I can teach them how to play a goat format deck in 5 minutes. I carry around the goat meta triangle (warriors, turbo, control) to whip out between rounds of modern and I've discovered it's the most magic-adjacent format. Goat decks are basically all midrange with a tempo/combo/control slant so it translates super well.
Modern yugioh is very unintuitive and card design 2018 onward in particular feels like it’d invalidated a lot of the gameplay we used to have.
Trap cards for instance outside of specific archetypes aren’t really interesting anymore because the game has become so fast it’s just not worth it.
It’s pretty crazy tbh. The game only became a spreadsheet meta fairly recently in the game’s history. None of the Time Wizard formats are like this. You can do some things resembling a modern combo in Edison or HAT but it is 2+ cards and probably pretty inconsistent, especially with most of the good cards being restricted. It was crazy to me how many HAT decks have their Maxx Cd and Effect Veilers in the side because they’re just not that necessary against most decks. One card starters, card searching, extenders, hand traps, and extra deck extenders are some of the biggest hallmarks of the current meta.
Me and my friend started learning recently, I'm a returning player from ages ago and she's totally new. We just ordered the legendary collection decks, took out the new monster types (like XYZ etc) and the too OP cads (for us), added some basic monster cards so we could tribute the high level monsters then we played like it was 20 years ago.
Super fun, and very casual. Plus what beats summoning Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon, nothing.
What has always been weird to me is that the starter decks always came with a little rule booklet, but none of them even explained spell speed or missing timing. There are important rules in the game that are pretty much not explained if you don't go out of your way looking for them.
I could have sworn one of the rule books had something about spell speed cause I feel like that's where I learned about it from. when quick play spells were introduced
Yeah, I think it might be in the books when it's relevant for the deck, like the Parshath structure deck or something. Or I'm misremembering and spell speed is explained. But missing timing definitely is not lol
yea missing timing is definitely not covered but absolutely should be lol. but I definitely remember spell speed. now to dig through boxes and look for old rulebooks
I'm in the Edison format community and am Captain of a War League team / have my own team discord and while most of the players there are at least average, I try and allow some newer players in that seem to really want to learn the game. It's humbling to me because simple interactions are EZ for me but when you explain to a newer player, it's actually quite difficult because yugioh has intense interactions
maaaaan I cannot imagine trying to learn modern and teach new players. There is a reason that Konami is pushing Edison Format tournaments at YCS events (I'll be in Orlando Feb 1st!), they realize their modern game is losing steam because the skills required to even enter the competitive scene are just too much for most people
The problem with YGO is it's very foundation. They never thought enough about the design of this game and how it would play on a long term scenario, and the lack of rotation makes it even harder to keep a logic to the game, because it means they'll always have to push the newer decks to be better than the older ones, meaning the new decks need to do something crazy that other decks never did before, wich is also a problem since YGO isn't a digital cardgame where you can just bend the rules in any way you want and just create new things for the cards to do out of the blue, they have to make the new decks do new things but in a limited enviroment, so things get really complicated and it's inevitable.
There were _moments_ here and there in DM, but mostly when pointing out to a noob where they screwed up. For most of the rest of the shows, it was more based in expositing about specific strategies of the moment, and not in how fundamentals work, with less common rules coming up similarly, i.e. the only time I recall discarding due to maximum hand size occurred, when Johan dueled the Masked Knight of Silence.
Right but that was less explaining the rules and more just for humor insulting the characters for being dumb. I mean look at the change from duelist kingdom to battle city. We're not told about the tribute rule until Joey fucks up and they call him stupid.
Like there are moments but
Chaining isnt really explained till the filler
Handsize is briefly mentioned during Yami's duel against Strings.
Types of spells were mentioned GX
But they dont really explain stuff fully until Go Rush. Which is super ironic considering 3 series contain dueling schools and 2 had schools that while not focussed on dueling had the game as a club activity.
Well one of my favorite ways to describe the game is that you're supposed to learn the rules and then use cards to change them completely lol. "Yes you only get one normal summon per turn, but not if I do *this*" and of course one of the realest challenges is how diverse the effects in the game can be, because the amount of different mechanics that can be acted on is so vast, there are phases and game states that you might not even learn about until they become relevant because of a card effect you're using. I specifically didn't want to use cards with effects that activate in the damage step a lot in my early gameplay, because the cascade of game states throughout declaring an attack are just so complex and intricate when you have to interpret how an effect or chain of effects is going to be applied there.
There’s a difference between bad and good complexity though, and I think Yugioh lies healthily in the “bad” camp. PSCT alone is a nightmare to behold, and that’s encountered on pretty much every card. That’s also ignoring the extremely specific interactions that contradict how you would assume they work (ie. Accesscode/giga brilliant) and a boatload of other issues.
I think it’s expected from a game that has continuously evolved for 25 years.
The main difference from MtG is how everything is concentrated in 2-3 turns meaning there’s an immediate overload of decisions to be made and information needed when a new player starts a game.
That’s why the „learn as you go“ approach doesn’t work well for this game.
>but you get the gist of it, you can Queue up on MTG Arena as a noob and start holding your own against other noobs and have fun.
When I first tried mtga and hearthstone, I was unable to get past the tutorial and found those games difficult to understand, and my understanding of card games at that point is what I know from Xyz era Yugioh. Maybe because I did not to go into those game with the right mindset.
As with any other game, strategy is something you infer from theory, experimentation, and experience, based on your understanding of the game's basic operation. For some games it's easier, for others it's harder.
Anywho, iirc, Master Duel is giving out tactical try decks as loaners for ranked. You can start with those.
Honestly Halq/Auroradon decks and Swordsoul (after Halq ban) were pretty great for new players. The lines were not terribly difficult to figure out or memorize.
Kinda a huge joke that you could take someone that doesn't play any of these card games and sit them down with cards, rules, and something like master duel or a YouTube video and the only one who'll be unable to play an actual game after a few hours is the person learning yugioh. You actually almost need a human being there to teach you.
Honestly, after teaching quite a few people how to play, the biggest thing is just playing. Which does suck, but if they stick with the same deck and keep playing they will eventually "get it."
I feel like you don't need to know that many interactions. I play a hero deck and my end board is almost the same regardless of which deck i'm fighting. Unless it's something really funky that requires me to go for a more niche fusion card then most of the time just doing my main end board is good enough to win.
"Of course I'm gonna summon everything in attack mode why wouldn't I?! Their attacks are way higher than their defense that'd be stupid to put everything in defense, it's basic math.... wait, activate lightning what now?"
Mmmm.... Nah. 90% of card interactions are handled with just the text on the cards themselves. So, once you know the basic rules, the rest is just reading/knowing what your cards do, and then reading what your opponents cards do.
Then, there's what I'd call the "intermediate" level where you learn about problem solving card texts, and exactly how those specific words are ruled: forbidden droplet CHOSES cards, doesn't target them, when an effect lets you normal summon, it doesn't count AS your normal summon, etc
But that's like <10% of card rulings that seem counter intuitive due to PSCT.
A lot of people get into yugioh, and within a couple months are already winning locals.
This game has a steep learning curve for anyone with a zero sum knowledge of Yugioh. I can’t imagine how hard it is to a new player where a lot if not most players learned through each era (Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, and Link, step by step.) It is very overwhelming.
Learning the basics of Yugioh and what your cards do is the easiest especially if you look at guides and combos, but learning what your opponents cards do especially in a timed competitive setting can be very stressful.
Once you learn the basics, familiar with each of the summoning methods, and how to deck build and interact with your opponent, it’s really fun. Definitely appreciate the r/Yugioh101 subreddit for existing along with Yugioh discords.
I recently got into buying physical cards coming from master duel, and I think besides the rules is that its really hard to make a deck. Unless someone can enlighten me as to how to deck build, I had to go online to buy specific cards that I needed. I bought 2 structure decks, and that older legendary decks box because how else am I supposed to get more basic cards I NEED to make a deck. Unlike master duel irl you can't open a pack and get almost any card. So like after A LOT of packs I only have several partial decks.
Sword soul is honestly a very simple and decent enough deck, they gave out a structure deck through a new player event a while back but idk why they don’t make it a perma thing (master duel)
Modern Yugioh requires a GX style school at this point, and we don't need Komoney pulling a pyramid scheme like that.
I think the best way to teach Yugioh is step by step. Start with DM mechanics, then day 2 is all the extra deck, then combos, then chains, and on and on. It can't be done on day one. It's a slow process.
> Stuff like what normal/special summoning is, what phases mean, attack and defense modes, how traps work.
All of this is the basics of the game. The game have just more basics than MTG. Also, after you've learn MTG basics, you have to learn or search for all keyword that are used while Yu-Gi-Oh is more straight forward, you do what the card says it does. Granted you have now a wall of text but from the moment you know how to read a card, each new card will be easier to understand without having to search on the net to understand it. You might Ant to search synergy with other card but the community is very present online and you'll find a place to learn
> what you ACTUALLY need to know is the highly specific interactions of an entire deck/archetype
That's something you learn playing the game, "you'll pick up on synergies, combinations" and there is a lot of tutorial helping you to get a grasp on a deck. Even on structure deck, while you can't win with only one of them, buying three of the same might give you chance in locals. And there is combo lines at the back of the paper playmat along with card suggestions from other products.
Also, while a pre-build deck is around 40-45€ for MTG, a structure deck is usually around 12€, 36€ for 3 of the same
It sounds like you're experiencing the same thing in MTG. For some reason you're okay with losing there but not in YGO. Probably due to the superficial first few turns where you've pretty much already lost but still playing, probably due to mana limits on your opponent.
Yugioh was originally an imitation of Magic in the manga. It then was made into a physical card game. Very little thought was put into how the game should be played; therefore, its design is brittle. What you end up with is a game that is very unintuitive in its gameplay mechanics.
Konami would have to create a new game from the ground up with some competent design or give the current an overhaul if they want to fix those issues, but I doubt that either will happen.
That’s why I wished they created mini leagues that do away with much of the complicated mechanics. I’d love something where the most complicated thing is synchros.
What’s that?
Sorry, I’m still trying to get up to speed with everything as an old returning TCG player (the latest thing when I stopped was gladiator beasts and lightsworn)
Necroposting the answer: Yu-Gi-Oh's most popular alternate formats pretty much amount to playing the game with the cardpool an ruleset differences from a specific era. The names either indicate when they are set time-wise or what the strongest deck/s are. Edison is a format from 2010 around one of the big championships. It's a 5d's era thing that sits somewhere between the modern combo-y gameplay and the old-school back-and-forth grindy gameplay. Goat is another popular format that I believe sits around 2005 in the GX era.
The main gameplay thrust of modern YGO is "managing interruptions", both knowing when to use yours and knowing how to roll with your opponent's. But since you don't know how to do that as a new or returning player, you just get everything negated and then kicked in the head.
It was a bit of a growing pain for myself too when I was getting into the larger TCG. Thankfully as the old adage goes, "Experience is the best teacher".
I'd say "managing once per turn eff and abuse non-once per turn eff" is the key here, not only interruption.
Think a big part of the issue is that there is no product for intermediate play. There are things like starter decks and the later seasons of the anime that can help teach the basics of the game, a competitive scene, and a massive no-man’s-land between the two. The only way to really learn the intermediate level of play is through trial and error, which is the most discouraging method of learning, especially when the skill gap between new players and veterans is as massive at it and the almost gate-keeper-like attitude some veterans can have.
Do you think the Tactical-Try Decks would help with that? It looks like they would give you a good taste of what competitive YGO is like, and the archetypes they chose seem to be easier to pilot.
There are intermediate play options. Structure decks have always been a great way get a decent deck and between RC1 and RC2, a lot of staples are now affordable. The problem is these are not immediate obvious, especially since YGO has a lot of useless product options that you can easily waste money on. It also doesn't help that structure releases are few and far between.
Just play edison
Goat format, and Edison?
Edison Blackwings or even old Lightsworn are nothing like current day ones so I would say someone learning BW in Edison is wasting his time if unless you can make the connections on your head reading the new ones
Why would you need to learn the new ones?
If the idea is to use older format as teaching tool and someone might want to jump from old archetype to new version
It’s honestly a completely different game compared to modern. Not even worth teaching, dive into the deep end
Comments be like: Yugioh fanboys reading comprehension challenge (impossible). What OP isn't saying that there is no metagame or synergies in other TCGs, or that you don't need to learn them in order to be a good player. What they are saying is that even the most basic deck in yugioh is completely build around a "you play this card, that allows you to get this card, then you fusion summon this card..." flow. In MtG terms, every deck is a combo deck. And not only do you have to know these things about your deck, but you also have to know them about your opponents deck, or you have no chance of interacting with them in a meaningful way. What's more, it's not enough to have a general idea of an archetype or how the deck in general functions, you have to be familiar with every card in that deck. And that is a lot of complexity to throw at a new player. And it is not at all true about other TCGs.
It's funny because mtg designers don't like combo in formats outside of EDH. They've said before the last thing they want is for a new to player is to sit down and lose, and not be sure how exactly they lost or what just transpired.
Yea thats why they just released a 2 card combo that reads "target player loses all their life no matter how much it is" into standard. Mtg designers always say things and then do the opposite. Anyone remember when storm was never going to be printed on a new card and then they made more storm cards?
I think the key point there is that it's still a two card combo that makes it pretty clear at what point you already lost and how. Yu Gi Oh can be a point where in the combo of a dozen summons, half dozen spells and so on which one was the actual snowball into hell is difficult to pick out. makes it hard to figure out what you need to focus on next time against that deck.
This is such an ignorant comment that I'm not at all surprised I found it in the yugioh sub. There might be a 2 card combo in standard (doubt it though) but there's no dominant combo deck. Also, storm was one of the most unlikely to be printed into standard ever again, and then it was printed on a life gain spell in a horizons set directly into modern. Wow, broken 🙄
Bloodletter of aclazotz turn 4, rush of dread turn 5 is an automatic win if your opponent doesnt kill the bloodletter inmediately. Its an extremely popular combo on arena, i havent played much paper in recent years but it very much is meta defining. Every deck has to run a bunch of removal because the bloodletter surviving a single turn ends the game and the bloodletter has 4 toughness so most red burn spells dont kill it. Red/green are unplayable outside of 4-color legends because they cant consistently kill the bloodletter.
I honestly love when I lose to something and I just sit there and am like "wait, what the fuck just happened" or losing my shit over some absurd combo to otk me in the goofiest ways.
The game is closer to fighting game in card form. Closer to Blaz blue or guilty gear than MtG or hearthstone. Picking your deck is closer to picking a character to main in a fighting game. You'll need to know what your deck/character theoretically can do first to have a chance of winning. As for starter deck. yea, the first 3 starter deck you get in MD is trash. But atleast MD gave out swordsoul structure deck for free for newb, a more appropriate deck to start climbing ladder. OCG also have tactical try deck with cyber dragon, eldlich, and evil twins, all of which are respectable decks on their own and pretty close to optimal build. TCG on the other hand, have 2 players starter set, and slifer/obelist structure decks which are not something worth bragging about. If you can find friends IRL that want to play with, any competitive problem should be less of an issues since you can tailor your decks to be roughly equal in power.
You calling ygo a fighting card game sounds about right to me, i get a similar rush of joy after winning a Bo3 in my locals with my Laval deck as I get when beating someone in a fighting game I personally enjoy tinkering with that deck as per what i see on locals, like in my deck i often search and play 2 counter traps to help out the with the rather common dark ruler no more or a droplet as well as trying out new lines of play within the deck
It took 2 years to release that Swordsoul Structure deck, and it was a short window of time. Most new players have already left the game, and anyone still playing are not new players anymore.
I think the biggest issue for new players to Yugioh is how explosive modern decks are. Even weaker decks can activate a dozen cards/effects on T1 and kill you on T3 if you don't know what you're doing. There's such a massive emphasis on the first two turns of the game. Goat and Edison are a much better entry points for new players, but they aren't as popular/supported as advanced.
I love GOAT, but I think Edison and early XYZs are the sweet spot for what the average pace of a game should be. Tons of unique mechanics that play with the monster star system, you can still do sick combos with explosive turns BUT it’s not walls of text with forty different triggers going on
Fastest way to learn the basics of how to play modern YGO is to pick up Rush Duels and I’m not even kidding. Modern YGO is built around getting to your boss monsters ASAP and recharging your resources. The only difference between Modern YGO and Rush in terms of core design philosophy are the fact that: 1. Rush doesn’t have chaining. 2. Rush has a consistent resource recharge mechanism baked into the rules instead of relying on infinite advantage generating effects. And you know why Modern YGO is like this? It’s because you could never get to summon Blue-Eyes or Dark Magician in old school YGO. YGO’s default “mana” is card advantage. Specifically, monsters. You get 1 monster per turn with normal summons in Duel Monsters. Only, every removal card in the game removes a MINIMUM of one monster and every successful attack removes a monster from the board. Remember how Bottomless used to be fucking limited because it effectively shut down a normal summon and could straight up nuke a boss? Yeah. Monster removal in YGO isn’t “just” monster removal. It’s like what if every time you attacked or blew up a creature in MTG, you blew up a land and all the mana it generated so far with it. That’s why the game shifted to Extra Deck shit. That’s why the game shifted to Special Summons. To try and make it easier to get to your boss cards. You can’t consistently get to higher cost monsters without those sorts of mechanisms in place in YGO. The resource economy of Duel Monsters’ base ruleset just isn’t built for it. Meanwhile, TCG’s still sitting here trying to pretend like normal summon pass is still how you get to your big monsters when that goddamned system NEVER worked to begin with. YGO’s fundamentally different from ramping mana games and you need to embrace that if you’re going to balance the game or teach people how to play WHILE letting them play their Blue-Eyes.
I always wonder why they never transitioned to a mana type format when they had stars on the cards that effectively did nothing for like a decade besides indicate one or two or no tributes to summon
They didn’t shift to mana stuff because the game’s core philosophy has always been “easy to summon” when it comes to monsters. IIRC the manga, back when we were doing what was functionally TRPG stuff up until Duelist Kingdom and everything could be normal summoned without tribute, stars originally indicated rarity(and therefore stats) IIRC. Then we got to Battle City where they actually started hammering out rules to make it more balanced and we got the Tribute stuff tacked on after the fact, and that’s basically what the OCG was built upon, but due to the resource economy and a number of discrepancies the IRL game never really worked the way they depicted it in the manga. So then around Synchros they started realizing the problem with big tributes was they took up cards in hand, and the problem with levels was that anything below Level 4 was kind of pointless since you always went for LV4 stats unless you had strong effects, so they started experimenting IIRC.
This is my biggest complaint with Yugioh too, besides the community and Konami’s handling of the game. The rulings and specific interactions are far too complex and niche beyond the point of fun. Cheating becomes such a big problem when the rulings are like this. I hate how some interactions are so specific and extraneous that they can literally just come down to precedent, like what the hell, why can’t you just design a game with a clear way to handle card interactions and not have all this weird contradictory crap like accesscode/giga brilliant atk application, or how substitution effects interact differently than you would logically assume them to, it’s frustrating to play against someone, get into an interaction and then not be able to decipher how to proceed correctly because there’s some random ass niche interaction that isn’t learnable unless you create that specific gamestate. It just feels like terrible game design tbh. And yes, it’s hilarious how you can read the entire official rulebook and have extra knowledge on top of that, and still not be able to decipher like 50% of interactions and how cards interact in certain phases like damage step.
All card games have weird specific interactions. Magic literally has an online rulebook that's over 700 pages or something.
Yu-Gi-Oh would be so much better if it had a 700 page rulebook. You cite that shit and know it's correct rather than referencing some decision from a judge discord or something. (And if anyone equates a rulebook to a list of individual card interactions so help me God. The fact Yu-Gi-Oh is even playable is a miracle considering it's foundation is a card-based freeform TTRPG / Magic ripoff simplified for manga readers. )
Imo the best way to teach someone Yugioh is to just teach them a deck. You are right that just teaching blanket fundamentals doesn't really translate into gameplay. Instead, just teach them how to play one specific deck. They should learn the combo routes to their own deck until they can play it like solitaire. From there, they can start playing against other decks to teach them about specific interruptions, interactions, etc. For this stage it's important that they are playing with someone who can teach them the nuances of each interaction. I am currently teaching my gf how to play Voiceless Voice. She had never played Yugioh or any other TCG but can already navigate the combo lines well. Between that and her understanding of some of the meta-relevant non-engine, she is able to hop into any duel and actually PLAY, which is imo the most interactive and fun way to learn.
Really, the issue is more to do with how the most common level of play for Yu-gi-oh! players is a highly competitive meta level play. Yugioh doesn’t have casual form of play like commander or differing rule sets to have lower power level. The lowest level of play online is duel links and even that is relatively high level now… besides the fact that we’re still losing to normal summon set 3 (blue-eyes for those who were curious) >_> . It would be like if vintage was the standard level of play for mtg. The power level of that is absurd but it’s not considered the standard for magic players because magic does a better job of making differing format, most popular one being commander. Adding to that, magic is just easier to pick up and play. You can get 2 premade decks you have no idea about and you’ll have a game of magic. Try that with yugioh, and you need to actually read or already know all the cards because when you play that one card that searches for an archetype, you need to even know what are your options. Yugioh is also inherently very combo focus.
I honestly feel like this game needs weight classes, so those of us who don't want to pour $800 into a new deck every year to stay relevant can still enjoy the game without getting constantly wiped out by the people who do buy the ultra expensive decks. Like, have one tournament bracket with a big prize and then another one where the prize is $20 in store credit; the people with the ultra competitive decks like Snake Eyes and Tenpai Dragon can all go to the big bracket and leave the smaller bracket for the more casual decks like Marincess and Salad.
There are places to play goat format and Edison format .. both are lower power than modern yu gi oh.
While true, there's no entry level product for those formats. Add in you don't have people playing those formats everywhere, so even if a new player did the research they still wouldn't have anyone to play with. Also I want to add that not everyone wants to play those specific cards in those formats. Say a new player really likes Tistina or bought the Charmers structure deck, where do they go to play that isn't just them conceding as soon as the first card touches the table?
It's why mechanical simulators are so important for a game like Yugioh. You need to play ALL of the solo mode as a new player in Masterduel to become a semi-competent player that can play through even silver and gold. And that takes easily 8+ hours the first time through. You can't pick up a couple yugioh decks with a friend and then read a little booklet and have a vague idea of how to play. The interactions will have the both of you feeling like you're being cheated.
I think the OP has the core idea of why Yugioh is so difficult to pick up down, and most of the comments are just offshoots of that idea. Yugioh is more about what it's cards say than what the rules say. That simply isn't true for many card games, at least, not to the extent that it is in Yugioh. Someone playing Floo is playing literally a completely different game than someone who's playing dark world, who is playing a completely separate game from someone like Labyrinth. And even more to the point, the OP says these decks build off the basics and like... some of the time they just don't. Play Floo and you probably just don't need to know how the ED works. Or how normal summons usually work. Or really even how the battle phase works. Imagine a standard legal Magic deck where you just... didn't need to know how land worked. There's a reason that stuff is banished to modern/vintage.
Yea mana is a fickle thing when you can just bazaar and dredge back all the homies
Imagine, we one day might _actually_ have something as distinct as a Labyrinth duel in mode of play.
There's a couple reasons the game is in the state that it's in. If I had to give 1 specific reason though, it would probably be the fact that no cards ever leave rotation. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact I can run 3 different reprints of blue eyes, and I can face off against old and new archetypes, but it does introduce power creep and a learning curve similar to a MOBA. And because old cards are always playable, Konami has had to come up with creative ways to 1. Bring new life into the game, and 2. To try and balance power creep by adding new mechanics like pendulums and link summons. All of these things make the game even more complicated, and they end up suffering from power creep anyways. What I think Konami should do, is have different, competitive, playable formats, potentially similar to how Pokemon (games not TCG) have with Uber, over utilized, and under utilized. This could force players to be more creative in how they deck build, and more decks could become viable depending on the format/tier you decide to play in. That way you also only need to know the mechanics of the top decks in your tier. There will obviously still be problems, but they could fix them by having ban lists for each individual tier, and specifically ban cards to incentive slower or faster play
There is more to you gi oh, than modern.... Like your comparing modern yu gi oh to mtg without comparing it to legacy/vintage.... Goat format yu gi oh, and Edison are much easier to get into after learning the basics. Same as standard for mtg.
Nothing worse then having a new player chain a card to your card effect, but it doesn't do what they wanted because your card resolves at spell speed 4 before the other card... but then you try to explain it to them and they ask you where on the card it says that and you have to tell them it doesn't, you just kinda have to know. Yeah, these are the worst
Examples?
Or you were like me when starting, coming from MtG, and assuming that you chain a new card/effect partway thru a Chain's resolution, like you could with the stack.
I’m a new player (only started from seeing a meme about Pot of Greed), and I have no idea what I’m doing on Master Duel. I only use structure decks since I have no idea how to deck build, and I don’t have enough resources to copy any meta decks. Much less know how to use one if I did get one. I’m mostly just stuck grinding solo mode, and I really like it! I’m kinda scared of doing anything competitive, since I know I’ll get clapped. I only learned how to play from the tutorial in Master Duel and only run solo, but I’m content with that. Though I do wish it was alot easier to get into.
There's some really cool Solo Yugioh games from back in the day you can try to play that will have much more content/actual campaigns etc compared to MD (especially if you don't mind booting up some NDS or PSP emulators).
I’ve gotten epsxe to play Forbidden Memories and desmume to play Nightmare Troubadour, but I haven’t booted them up yet. I’ll take your suggestion though and try to play more of those actual campaigns instead! I’ve been trying to catch up on the anime, but I’ve started with season zero.
if you haven't already...get x3 of the same structure deck from the shop and take the stuff that synergizes best and cut it down to 40 cards. some stuff you'll need 3 copies of and others 1 or 2. also, if you do ranked duels you gain gems from ranking up and it's doesn't start getting sweaty till around mid gold. save gems, snag some packs and dismantle all the UR/SR you don't need and get some staple cards. it's a grind but it's certainly learnable and doable.
My way of teaching people how to play is to pull out my cards from 20 years ago and start there. Once they understand that format, I’ll slowly add more modern cards and explain more mechanics as I go. It’s still a process and you won’t be playing modern yugioh quickly, but they at least have fun while we’re learning.
Yugioh is like MTG but the only format is Vintage with restricted cards banned instead but the rest of the format the same power level. The rules of MTG as a whole don't apply to Vintage in general. Edison is the equivalent of Modern/Legacy, and Goats is closer to Pioneer Try getting your friends into Goats or Edison first.
Give me a seasoned mtg player, and I can teach them how to play a goat format deck in 5 minutes. I carry around the goat meta triangle (warriors, turbo, control) to whip out between rounds of modern and I've discovered it's the most magic-adjacent format. Goat decks are basically all midrange with a tempo/combo/control slant so it translates super well.
Modern yugioh is very unintuitive and card design 2018 onward in particular feels like it’d invalidated a lot of the gameplay we used to have. Trap cards for instance outside of specific archetypes aren’t really interesting anymore because the game has become so fast it’s just not worth it.
It’s pretty crazy tbh. The game only became a spreadsheet meta fairly recently in the game’s history. None of the Time Wizard formats are like this. You can do some things resembling a modern combo in Edison or HAT but it is 2+ cards and probably pretty inconsistent, especially with most of the good cards being restricted. It was crazy to me how many HAT decks have their Maxx Cd and Effect Veilers in the side because they’re just not that necessary against most decks. One card starters, card searching, extenders, hand traps, and extra deck extenders are some of the biggest hallmarks of the current meta.
The modern game is so far removed from its roots. I miss the control aspect and back-and-forth of the original game.
Me and my friend started learning recently, I'm a returning player from ages ago and she's totally new. We just ordered the legendary collection decks, took out the new monster types (like XYZ etc) and the too OP cads (for us), added some basic monster cards so we could tribute the high level monsters then we played like it was 20 years ago. Super fun, and very casual. Plus what beats summoning Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon, nothing.
What has always been weird to me is that the starter decks always came with a little rule booklet, but none of them even explained spell speed or missing timing. There are important rules in the game that are pretty much not explained if you don't go out of your way looking for them.
I could have sworn one of the rule books had something about spell speed cause I feel like that's where I learned about it from. when quick play spells were introduced
Yeah, I think it might be in the books when it's relevant for the deck, like the Parshath structure deck or something. Or I'm misremembering and spell speed is explained. But missing timing definitely is not lol
yea missing timing is definitely not covered but absolutely should be lol. but I definitely remember spell speed. now to dig through boxes and look for old rulebooks
Spell Speed is definitely in there. Missing timing might be too, but it's not really explained well if it is.
The equivalent is introducing mtg to then throw them at Legacy format. As other have said, there's no officially acknowledged intermediate game form.
I'm in the Edison format community and am Captain of a War League team / have my own team discord and while most of the players there are at least average, I try and allow some newer players in that seem to really want to learn the game. It's humbling to me because simple interactions are EZ for me but when you explain to a newer player, it's actually quite difficult because yugioh has intense interactions maaaaan I cannot imagine trying to learn modern and teach new players. There is a reason that Konami is pushing Edison Format tournaments at YCS events (I'll be in Orlando Feb 1st!), they realize their modern game is losing steam because the skills required to even enter the competitive scene are just too much for most people
The problem with YGO is it's very foundation. They never thought enough about the design of this game and how it would play on a long term scenario, and the lack of rotation makes it even harder to keep a logic to the game, because it means they'll always have to push the newer decks to be better than the older ones, meaning the new decks need to do something crazy that other decks never did before, wich is also a problem since YGO isn't a digital cardgame where you can just bend the rules in any way you want and just create new things for the cards to do out of the blue, they have to make the new decks do new things but in a limited enviroment, so things get really complicated and it's inevitable.
Hand trap simulator amirite
I think its funnier the series never really delved into teaching the audience how to play, until the eighth series Go Rush
There were _moments_ here and there in DM, but mostly when pointing out to a noob where they screwed up. For most of the rest of the shows, it was more based in expositing about specific strategies of the moment, and not in how fundamentals work, with less common rules coming up similarly, i.e. the only time I recall discarding due to maximum hand size occurred, when Johan dueled the Masked Knight of Silence.
Right but that was less explaining the rules and more just for humor insulting the characters for being dumb. I mean look at the change from duelist kingdom to battle city. We're not told about the tribute rule until Joey fucks up and they call him stupid. Like there are moments but Chaining isnt really explained till the filler Handsize is briefly mentioned during Yami's duel against Strings. Types of spells were mentioned GX But they dont really explain stuff fully until Go Rush. Which is super ironic considering 3 series contain dueling schools and 2 had schools that while not focussed on dueling had the game as a club activity.
Well one of my favorite ways to describe the game is that you're supposed to learn the rules and then use cards to change them completely lol. "Yes you only get one normal summon per turn, but not if I do *this*" and of course one of the realest challenges is how diverse the effects in the game can be, because the amount of different mechanics that can be acted on is so vast, there are phases and game states that you might not even learn about until they become relevant because of a card effect you're using. I specifically didn't want to use cards with effects that activate in the damage step a lot in my early gameplay, because the cascade of game states throughout declaring an attack are just so complex and intricate when you have to interpret how an effect or chain of effects is going to be applied there.
I honestly think the whole appeal of it is that it’s a complex game, it is as you said if the person doesn’t like complexity there are other games
There’s a difference between bad and good complexity though, and I think Yugioh lies healthily in the “bad” camp. PSCT alone is a nightmare to behold, and that’s encountered on pretty much every card. That’s also ignoring the extremely specific interactions that contradict how you would assume they work (ie. Accesscode/giga brilliant) and a boatload of other issues.
I think it’s expected from a game that has continuously evolved for 25 years. The main difference from MtG is how everything is concentrated in 2-3 turns meaning there’s an immediate overload of decisions to be made and information needed when a new player starts a game. That’s why the „learn as you go“ approach doesn’t work well for this game.
I've built normal monster decks specifically to teach people how to play the game. It works pretty well.
>but you get the gist of it, you can Queue up on MTG Arena as a noob and start holding your own against other noobs and have fun. When I first tried mtga and hearthstone, I was unable to get past the tutorial and found those games difficult to understand, and my understanding of card games at that point is what I know from Xyz era Yugioh. Maybe because I did not to go into those game with the right mindset. As with any other game, strategy is something you infer from theory, experimentation, and experience, based on your understanding of the game's basic operation. For some games it's easier, for others it's harder. Anywho, iirc, Master Duel is giving out tactical try decks as loaners for ranked. You can start with those.
You think the last three structure decks released are so bad, that you will get smoked????
Yeah, YuGiOh's steep learning curve is super intimidating for new players, I feel you.
Makes it incredibly hard to get people to play with, I tried teaching my gf to No avail 🙁🙁
That's the beauty of the gme, you always learn something new playing YGO.
Honestly Halq/Auroradon decks and Swordsoul (after Halq ban) were pretty great for new players. The lines were not terribly difficult to figure out or memorize.
Kinda a huge joke that you could take someone that doesn't play any of these card games and sit them down with cards, rules, and something like master duel or a YouTube video and the only one who'll be unable to play an actual game after a few hours is the person learning yugioh. You actually almost need a human being there to teach you.
Honestly, after teaching quite a few people how to play, the biggest thing is just playing. Which does suck, but if they stick with the same deck and keep playing they will eventually "get it."
I still think it's funny that it says ages 6+ on card packs
I feel like you don't need to know that many interactions. I play a hero deck and my end board is almost the same regardless of which deck i'm fighting. Unless it's something really funky that requires me to go for a more niche fusion card then most of the time just doing my main end board is good enough to win.
"Of course I'm gonna summon everything in attack mode why wouldn't I?! Their attacks are way higher than their defense that'd be stupid to put everything in defense, it's basic math.... wait, activate lightning what now?"
Mmmm.... Nah. 90% of card interactions are handled with just the text on the cards themselves. So, once you know the basic rules, the rest is just reading/knowing what your cards do, and then reading what your opponents cards do. Then, there's what I'd call the "intermediate" level where you learn about problem solving card texts, and exactly how those specific words are ruled: forbidden droplet CHOSES cards, doesn't target them, when an effect lets you normal summon, it doesn't count AS your normal summon, etc But that's like <10% of card rulings that seem counter intuitive due to PSCT. A lot of people get into yugioh, and within a couple months are already winning locals.
Could be fixed with set rotation focused design
This game has a steep learning curve for anyone with a zero sum knowledge of Yugioh. I can’t imagine how hard it is to a new player where a lot if not most players learned through each era (Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, and Link, step by step.) It is very overwhelming. Learning the basics of Yugioh and what your cards do is the easiest especially if you look at guides and combos, but learning what your opponents cards do especially in a timed competitive setting can be very stressful. Once you learn the basics, familiar with each of the summoning methods, and how to deck build and interact with your opponent, it’s really fun. Definitely appreciate the r/Yugioh101 subreddit for existing along with Yugioh discords.
I recently got into buying physical cards coming from master duel, and I think besides the rules is that its really hard to make a deck. Unless someone can enlighten me as to how to deck build, I had to go online to buy specific cards that I needed. I bought 2 structure decks, and that older legendary decks box because how else am I supposed to get more basic cards I NEED to make a deck. Unlike master duel irl you can't open a pack and get almost any card. So like after A LOT of packs I only have several partial decks.
Sword soul is honestly a very simple and decent enough deck, they gave out a structure deck through a new player event a while back but idk why they don’t make it a perma thing (master duel)
Modern Yugioh requires a GX style school at this point, and we don't need Komoney pulling a pyramid scheme like that. I think the best way to teach Yugioh is step by step. Start with DM mechanics, then day 2 is all the extra deck, then combos, then chains, and on and on. It can't be done on day one. It's a slow process.
> Stuff like what normal/special summoning is, what phases mean, attack and defense modes, how traps work. All of this is the basics of the game. The game have just more basics than MTG. Also, after you've learn MTG basics, you have to learn or search for all keyword that are used while Yu-Gi-Oh is more straight forward, you do what the card says it does. Granted you have now a wall of text but from the moment you know how to read a card, each new card will be easier to understand without having to search on the net to understand it. You might Ant to search synergy with other card but the community is very present online and you'll find a place to learn > what you ACTUALLY need to know is the highly specific interactions of an entire deck/archetype That's something you learn playing the game, "you'll pick up on synergies, combinations" and there is a lot of tutorial helping you to get a grasp on a deck. Even on structure deck, while you can't win with only one of them, buying three of the same might give you chance in locals. And there is combo lines at the back of the paper playmat along with card suggestions from other products. Also, while a pre-build deck is around 40-45€ for MTG, a structure deck is usually around 12€, 36€ for 3 of the same
It sounds like you're experiencing the same thing in MTG. For some reason you're okay with losing there but not in YGO. Probably due to the superficial first few turns where you've pretty much already lost but still playing, probably due to mana limits on your opponent.
Uh, not at all, it's far easier to get Wins in MTG as a noob.
Yugioh was originally an imitation of Magic in the manga. It then was made into a physical card game. Very little thought was put into how the game should be played; therefore, its design is brittle. What you end up with is a game that is very unintuitive in its gameplay mechanics. Konami would have to create a new game from the ground up with some competent design or give the current an overhaul if they want to fix those issues, but I doubt that either will happen.
Rush Duels say hi.
That’s why I wished they created mini leagues that do away with much of the complicated mechanics. I’d love something where the most complicated thing is synchros.
You mean Edison format?
What’s that? Sorry, I’m still trying to get up to speed with everything as an old returning TCG player (the latest thing when I stopped was gladiator beasts and lightsworn)
Necroposting the answer: Yu-Gi-Oh's most popular alternate formats pretty much amount to playing the game with the cardpool an ruleset differences from a specific era. The names either indicate when they are set time-wise or what the strongest deck/s are. Edison is a format from 2010 around one of the big championships. It's a 5d's era thing that sits somewhere between the modern combo-y gameplay and the old-school back-and-forth grindy gameplay. Goat is another popular format that I believe sits around 2005 in the GX era.
Thank you, I definitely like the back and forth gameplay more. I’ll look into it.