Game Designer Plays Yu-Gi-Oh For The First Time... And Likes It?

An Indie Dev and a AAA Dev play Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel for the first time. Then give their reactions on the design of Yu-Gi-Oh and discuss what may have led to it being the highest grossing card game of all time.
Hosts:
Forrest Imel forrestimel.com/
Gavin Valentine www.gavinvalen...
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[@relevantusername3342]

Every deck in Yu-Gi-Oh is a control and combo deck at the same time.

[@elle0441]

Blue eyes just summoning dragons and Attack

[@The_Strange_Cat]

@elle0441 more like summoning brick and Attack

[@artemisharpin2279]

In true YGO fashion, immediately doesn't read any cards. 10/10, no notes.

[@distractionmakers]

Just vibes. 😆

[@Liliana_the_ghost_cat]

Yeah. I only read new cards. These days I personally just memorize what they do and look at the pictures to tell them apart ngl.

[@younasdar5572]

Isn't that what every player in any TCG does? Ok I guess in Yu-Gi-Oh you probably don't have the entire rules text for all your cards memorized and could recite all cards in your deck by only getting the artwork or name, but other than that it's the same as the rest of us I think.

[@Liliana_the_ghost_cat]

@@younasdar5572 that is true. Yes

[@mattahlschwede4810]

Wide screen was the right call to capture this most epic episode.

[@bad-people6510]

It's driving me crazy. I constantly want to scroll up.

[@CaptainMarvel4Ever]

Yu-Gi-Oh had an interesting development. Kazuki Takahashi (Kaz as we called him) made a manga in Shonen Jump (one of the hardest things you can do) which was originally a horror series about violent games being played. Eventually a card game was introduced and somehow in a beautiful back and forth between fans, himself, and editors it ended up focusing more on the cards as several companies made their own versions of the cardgame. Eventually Konami just simply called their version the "Official" Yu-Gi-Oh card game and fans just assumed that was the truth, so they got the full license and production rights over anyone else. Problem is while the layout of the cards was more professional than most and they had some rules, they didn't actually plan that far ahead. The first few years of Yu-Gi-Oh were a beautiful mess where the creators just made it up along as they went. The whole time Kaz would offer input and have back and froths between himself and the devs. He'd incorporate their ideas into the manga, and vice versa. Eventually he'd start incorporating real world meta decks and tournament plays into his series, bringing things full circle. It was ironically Konami charging in head first that gave Yu-Gi-Oh an odd advantage when crafting the game since the fact that there were no rules to begin with let them tread new ground. This lead to archetypal design, the thing most fans today love the game for, and that other Japanese TCGs started to emulate. Summoning being the key mechanic meant needing to think how to grow that, and monsters designed to work with and help each other started giving decks and players identities they could mesh with the identities of the cards themselves. I'm no different, I picked Ancient Gears since they reminded me of my grandfather and his war stories, and I've stuck by them and their aggressive battlefield strategy ever since. This caries onto the highest level as pros of the game have found interactions that nobody else has thought of and build that towards a winning strategy in some of the most hype moments imaginable. You should try Cardfight Vanguard sometime. It's the most high octane game you could ever pick up. You make use of your hand, field, deck, grave, and life zone all at the same time. I think if I had one attention grabbing phrase to describe it, it's like somebody turned a c*mshot into a cardgame. It's got a free demo game on Switch.... and then the most greedy rampant DLC you've ever seen. Outside of that though, very pro-consumer game. Great vid!

[@eduardoserpa1682]

Modern Yu-Gi-Oh feels like Marvel vs Capcom to me. It's messy, it's explosive, and deckbuilding is a lot like picking a couple characters with pre-defined movesets, and then executing the strategy. Sometimes you get randomed out, and you don't know why unless you know the matchup. The advantage with MvC is that matches take at most a couple minutes, even if you're getting timerscammed with an infinite, so there's that. YGO can take a while if you're waiting for the opponent to drop their combo. They're both kinda fun to mess with on a casual level, though. Some of the archetypes feel like you're solving a puzzle.

[@distractionmakers]

Haha yeah, the cards having such specific interactions does feel a bit baked in. Cards referring to specific other cards and being quite strong does leave a lot of room for deck building.

[@liviousgameplay1755]

This is a great comment. I've heard the "YGO is fighting game" comment a lot but this is specific in the right way.

[@PensFan96]

Brb bout to go DHC into Quasar

[@dennisvogel5982]

MVC as reference is actually really goooooood - explosive one touch combos, swingy as hell, everything is over the top and flashy, but if you loose you just play the next one.... =) genious

[@TheShatteredskys]

As a long time Yu-Gi-Oh player, hearing someone excited to play and enjoying the concept of just punching and exploding all over the field rather than lamenting the complexity is so refreshing and pleasant. I really enjoyed the post play commentary.

[@distractionmakers]

Really feels like you’re both throwing haymakers until someone gets knocked out haha

[@blacktea1210]

you guys should look at edison format, its the ygo format from 2010 and its wayyyyy slower than modern day ygo but maintains some of the combo potential. release of duelist alliance in 2014 was the sort of start of modern ygo with shaddoll and burning abyss really increasing the speed of the game. nowadays games are decided in 1 or 2 turns but the number of actions taken by each player per game is around the same, just that each player plays more cards per turn to do more things to win faster. it is genuinely worth looking at the current format though its really deep in terms of the deckbuilding and such even if the gameplay can be very samey at times.its the best and the worst tcg

[@ForrestImel]

I've heard good things about the edison format and it seems to use more cards around the time that I fell off the game back in 2008 so I'm interested in giving it a shot!

[@DuckFanny]

Edison format is legitimately the greatest card game ever

[@connorclarke1708]

Tengu plant is better imo

[@HaxDotCombo]

Old monster effect priority is the elephant in the room for me trying older formats tbh. The new rule is so much more intuitive.

[@stuckmeister7750]

I like the 2014 and 2015 formats (minus soul charge) if you like yugioh for the archetypes, it really doesn't have that feel back in edison. Still mostly just good card turbo (which is fun, but not what I like about yugioh)

[@ZD-rm3gh]

Yugioh is the only "fast" card game while every other card game is "slow". This makes it unique and draws people in

[@chibiraptor]

Yugioh is the best card game ever made, except its too hard to get into and the developers do a spotty job of making sure the meta is fun

[@pascalsimioli6777]

And except it's not because its fundamentals are broken and the majority of the mechanics aren't used anymore.

[@MrTwenty6point2]

Best card game ever made….bit of a stretch

[@epthopper]

@@pascalsimioli6777its fundamentals are totally fine, if anything they’re pretty mundane which is why old yugioh is just absurdly boring

[@chibiraptor]

@pascalsimioli6777 "the majority of the mechanics aren't used anymore." LOL. Lmao. What are you possibly referring to? Basically every game mechanic is relevant.

[@mushroom_goblinkaok4377]

​@@chibiraptorokay so i like yugioh, but when was the last time you saw someone gemini summon?

[@aniessays]

So excited to watch this! I have been playing so much yugioh lately and been loving it!

[@farfetchdideas695]

The most appealing part of Yugioh is how varied every archetype is. The are hundreds of deck archetypes, and each one plays like it's own minigame in the game. Some really push the limits of what the game mechamics allow; especially the one's themed around the gameplay of other games. Such as the 'Cardians' being themed around Hanafuda, 'Vaylantz' playing like a tabletop strategy game, and the 'Tenpai' archetype being based on Mahjong. Even the Toon monsters are intended to function on the same mechanics as Magic. They can only be played with Toon World on the field (their land card), have summoning sickness for a turn before they can attack, and attack directly unless your opponent also has a Toon monster to block with.

[@distractionmakers]

That is interesting! We’ll have to look into how specific decks play.

[@isidoreaerys8745]

Learning to play Vaylantz is harder than advanced organic chemistry. But once you do, you can make a turn one board that is literally unbreakable.

[@Duskstone89]

I think a lot of current Yu-Gi-Oh players are running on pure nostalgia and years of experience too. There are not a lot of brand new players picking up the game, because quite frankly it's daunting. The rules language feels unintuitive if you play Magic or Hearthstone or almost anything else for that matter, and you need to kinda have it downloaded into your brain in order to parse a card effect quick enough to not feel like you're wasting time. We half-joke half-complain in Magic about how cards are becoming so wordy with Questing Beast and DFCs being the prime examples, but it's leagues worse in modern Yu-Gi-Oh. Older Yu-Gi-Oh was great with fairly simple card effects you could read and understand quickly, and gameplay that had more back-and-forth trading of resources. Newer Yu-Gi-Oh is still great, but it's almost unapproachable, and it's not what anyone would expect from watching the anime or doing the Master Duel tutorial.

[@distractionmakers]

Haha I think the strategy, if you REALLY wanted to learn it, is to just focus on what your cards do and not worry about you opponent until you’ve got your own stuff down haha.

[@zigeif777]

​@@distractionmakers That's how I did it! got in around mid-2022 off a Cyber Dragon structure deck I found at Target, and learned that if I can read all my cards, chunk their effects in my brain so I don't have to read them all the time, and have a basic sense of my combo lines, I can play 70% accurately 😂 From there it's just a matter of getting trashed by other decks and learning where you are supposed to interact over time. With how combo oriented the modern game is, and how quickly you can shut someone down with a single disruption effect from hand, I like to refer to the game as "competitive shoelace tying." Who can make the biggest, tightest knot faster?

[@Duskstone89]

@@distractionmakers Yeah this is exactly how I've approached Master Duel whenever I open it once every half-year or so. I have my Lightsworn and my Dangers and I know how I win and then I just don't care about what my opponent does until I have to The old-school format Edison lets me be a bit more deliberate though, since cards don't have a novel's worth of text on them and I greatly prefer that personally Like I don't wanna flame the game too hard, it's good all in all and its fans seem to love it. I just cannot imagine it would ever see any success if it was released today in its current state

[@younasdar5572]

In my circle we literally call cards with 4+ paragraphs of text, if a line is only a keyword it doesn't count, Yu-Gi-Oh cards derogatorily. And boy does MTG release a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh cards these days. And it has the power creep to match, at this point MTG has only so many set releases worth of time until they can't credibly mock Yu-Gi-Ohs speed and power anymore.

[@hexi9595]

Yugioh has always been BS, from Magical Scientist FTK, to Yatalock, even old YGO had its fair share of BS. (Reminder that my PFP is Longirsu and i love this game)

[@Zithee]

This is a really fun video, and I hope you'll make another one because one of the best parts about YuGiOh is how different archetypes play wildly differently. For example, Aromages (aroma mages) triggering their effect off of gaining lifepoints once per turn. So you set up your board and then on your opponent's turn you use a quick effect to gain lifepoints and then immediately trigger a chain (stack) with like 5 different effects on it right off the bat. Paleozoic is an archetype completely made of trap cards that when expired, can summon themselves from the graveyard as monsters in response to other trap card activations (thematically, they're arthropods that burrow out of the sand after they catch you!). The deck is usually played with self-mill cards like 'Needlebug Nest' in order to put Paleozoics (and other cards with graveyard effects) into the graveyard in order to summon them faster. Phantasm Spiral is a control deck centered around a field spell card that summons a monster token when your opponent activates any effect, which then triggers it to search out a trap card from your deck that you can play from your hand. You can trigger the search/tutor effect once each turn so you constantly gain card advantage. Combine this with spells like Time-Tearing Morganite that lets you draw twice in your draw phase for the rest of the duel, and you end up with tons of card advantage in a deck that can slow the game down to play at its own pace. Orcust consists of monster cards that can banish (exile) themselves from the graveyard in order to summon another Orcust from somewhere (Harp Horror summons one from deck, Cymbal Skeleton summons one from graveyard, etcetera). You then use the monsters you just summoned to link summon 'Galatea, the Orcust Automaton' that can recycle your banished monsters to put more resources on your field. Such as their field spell that makes all Orcust monster effects into quick effects (meaning you can use them on your opponent's turn and in response to other effects). It's slightly dated but the deck is so much fun to play.

[@Zithee]

If you struggle to find a deck to try, you can always go into Solo Mode and it will teach you a few different decks. Certain solo modes are also more story-heavy. For example "Legend of the Star Heroes" is almost like a full-on visual novel (with a pretty cool story) and also teaches you how to play the decks included in the story. Would really recommend reading/playing that one if you want a yugioh story that isn't based around the card game itself and is instead based around the characters on the cards.

[@warpsterdash5420]

"Mystical typho-" annnnnd its gone hahahaha just reminds me of that south park episode

[@SeaHorseOfYoutube]

This legendary dragon is a powerful engine of destruction. Virtually invincible, very few have faced this awesome creature and lived to tell the tale.

[@crittermoder]

I think that if you're a game designer, investing time into yugioh and probably some fighting games will do a lot for you. Wonderful games. As much as I like magic and board games there is such a small amount of execution involved, the most complex sequencing in decks like manual storm do not hold a torch to comboing through multiple handtraps played in killer situations. In yugioh, with how complex and faceted the game is once you know what is going on, you learn how to make little interactions and player choices make significant differences to the end result of the game. tons of nuance. It'll also do a wonderful job of teaching you what not to do, the player onboarding experience is miserably bad and unlike magic, which also doesn't do a fantastic job of teaching its players how to engage in paper play, there is a skill floor! Gives you lots to think about when it comes to deciding how you want to avoid people that aren't good at learning saying your game sucks.

[@tonysmith9905]

This is SOOOOOOOOO untrue. Ex: Yesterday I played a monored against an opponent playing green rampy. I had him down to two life with a shock variant in hand and a 3 power creature on board. Any casual would just shock the opponent and think they'd won the game. But they had open a lot of green mana and I suspected they had a card that would allow them to put two creatures onto the battlefield at instant speed. So what? The shock would kill them after right? Not if both of those creatures are this thing that gains you 3 life, so 6 life all together. Shocking at that point would lose you the game, but not attacking first. So I attacked, they did cast the card that puts two things in to play, but in response I cast shock and won. If I didn't sequence it that way they would had absolutely won the game because I had nothing left. tldr: even "dumb aggro" decks require brain to pilot successfully.

[@Giogiost1001]

@@tonysmith9905 nobody said that other card games don't have nuance ofc they do (as somebody who has played many including ygo) but that example is so basic compared to yugioh nuance that it's funny. This is absolutely not to say that yugioh is more nuanced and takes more skill than other games like magic, but then again the original commenter wasn't trying to say that either.

[@tonysmith9905]

@@Giogiost1001 The original commenter literally said that ygo is the most nuanced tcg. It's in their post. And ya know why it's not true? Because yugioh can't even support multiplayer, some thing mtg has baked into the very bones of it. Regardless of that, mtg is extremely more interactive than yugioh ever will be. In fact my time with yugioh just shows the game is actually fairly brain dead compared to other games. The game consists of spitting out 20 or more cards turn one and setting up impossible to kill boss monsters with support cards making it impossible for your opponent to do any thing. Games rarely last longer than 3-4 turns, and no I don't mean complete turn cycles, I mean individual player turns. And yet a single turn can take forever, especially if you're playing digitally. You can sit here and talk about trying to play around what ever hand traps are hot nowadays but let's face it, most games really are a coin flip because p2 is at a huge disadvantage with all the resources p1 can generate, while the opponent only has 5 cards to attempt to interact with. p2 has to draw a hand that not only will win them the game but also stop their opponent from winning the game while also being able to fuel itself through what ever negates p1 set up. The game doesn't have the length to it to be nuanced beyond "stop the card the player uses to chain off"

[@joshuatran6526]

It’s always a joy watching a non-linear combo deck like Dragon Link go off where the pilot’s ability to make optimal plays and navigate interruption sets the difference between a casual player and a pro.

[@mimik2098]

​@@tonysmith9905in Ygo every deck is different, there are incredibly nuanced decks like vaylantz that can do a lot and there are braindead archetypes like runick, your entire comment reeks of stereotypes since you believe skill doesn't matter in ygo

[@joshuatran6526]

Yugioh is like Magic but Omniscience is always on and everyone has 18 copies of Force of Will in their deck.

[@StormEcho]

Yugioh is such a unique game, I think EVERYone needs to play it at least a few times! It's fast, EXTREMELY interactive, and has strong tactical and strategic elements that permeate the experience

[@ZackeroniAndCheese]

I played Magic competitively until 2016 when the powercreep alienated me from being able to play the cards I loved in non-rotating formats. These days I attend Yugioh tournament frequently and play historical formats and cubes in both Magic and Yugioh.

[@pascalsimioli6777]

You are quite literally irrational, then. Poweercreep is at the basis of ygo.

[@einargs]

I can't believe he won the second game. Genuinely beautiful.

[@tldreview]

Yu gi oh is a game I love the idea of and have started playing many many times on many many different platforms. However I always burnout extremely fast and drop it in basically no time. Wonder why also: holy aspect ratio

[@Always.Smarter]

I find the game is much more interesting in theory than in practice.

[@Level_1_Frog]

Yugioh is a really fun game. The problem is the standard format has SO many cards in it dating back to the inception of the game that, unless you just sit down and memorise every card in the current meta including rogue decks, you basically don't have a chance to naturally learn the game. There's basically no restrictions on how many cards you can play since monsters just combo themselves into more monsters, and spell & trap cards pluck monsters out of your deck and slap them into play (or are themselves mosnters), and if you don't know the archetype you do NOT have an opportunity to read all the card effects and understand the gameplan. Its a fun game, but after playing a few different archetypes a new bevvy of cards entered the format and it got too hard to keep up with it all. It also doesn't help that the game completely lacks a limited format where you build a deck on the fly, which arguably wouldn't really be possible with the way the game is designed.

[@GeargianoXG]

I did some cube drafting in Yu-Gi-Oh and it worked really nicely. The draft format just needs to be curated with some effort and reading the cards while drafting takes Soo much time, but then you have some really fun games where you don't just slap your combo on the field the first opportunity you have but have to pace yourself a bit Edit: Though I do wish Konami would officially support limited again in some way. Either making the deck build packs less starved for Ultra Rares or a return of Battle Packs

[@Level_1_Frog]

@@GeargianoXG I would LOVE an official yugioh limited format, maybe they could sell a 'cube' (an EGYPTIAN CUBE!) and have different themes, power levels, archetypes, eras of the game's history, or even totally unique cards that can't be played anywhere else. That would absolutely get new players into the game I think, and established players could get it for playing with friends that aren't invested. I dunno, I can totally see it working but it's just not something they've ever focused on.

[@GeargianoXG]

@@Level_1_Frog Thinking of it, the speed duel boxes were somewhat of a limited box. They had 8 pre made deck so you could do a house tournament and they came with rules to also do a draft. Though I never tried to do one with them. Egyptian Cube sounds dope though, it would also be an opportunity to reprint some older banned cards 😅

[@Level_1_Frog]

@@GeargianoXG yeah definitely! Fan formats are fun but some real input from konami would give it a lot of validity

[@isidoreaerys8745]

I totally disagree. I got into Yugioh with no history playing the game since it was first released and I was in middle school. You really quickly learn what the main decks are and what extra deck monsters you should be expecting in any given match up. What’s exhausting about Yugioh is the release schedule and pacing of the meta. There’s always a new busted series of cards which completely upends the way each deck is played and the totally chaotic unpredictable release schedule between Japan. Global and Master duel makes the constant “spoilers season” buildup absolutely miserable.

[@Serjohn]

The deck you played was meta in 2016. The deck was so easy to play there were the most amount of middle schoolers in worlds ever. Summon big creature attack with big creature. Why the deck isn't good today, is because it has too many bricks and it's not very consistent.

[@Gaussprimeizcool]

“There’s a million words on the cards” exactly why we don’t read em

[@nesterpilgrim]

Thank you for playing Yu-Gi-Oh so I don't have to. I learned some things!

[@SirBranDon24]

"did you read it?" "Nope!" Already a king of games contestant

[@daveclarke1990]

I also played a bunch of master duel to see what it was doing from a game design perspective and my take away was that it would get a failing grade if handed in as a first year university assignment. I also tried pokemon tcg (B-), marvel snap (A), team fight tactics (B) and Super Auto Pets (B+)

[@dillonkaseysmith]

playing a game and not reading the game pieces probably makes it pretty hard to understand

[@moncala7787]

Tbf I still do this as experienced yugioh player sometimes. If I don't know the archetype and I don't have disruption I sometimes won't bother to read the opponents cards on master duel until they're done comboing. There really are too many words on most of the cards to read them with the timer ticking down on you

[@distractionmakers]

Turns out reading them doesn’t help much either.

[@matiaspereyra9392]

I mean true but also Yugioh requires a reading investment that I wouldn't ask anyone that's new to the game to do, and I say this not because I think each card has too much text, but if you're new and grab a structure deck you have to read about 45 cards (bc those often don't have complete extra decks) and you're going to have to read them multiple times, which doesn't feel really good when you're playing against a real person and you don't want to waste their time and look like an idiot. Also a new player might make the mistake of trying to learn what the opponent is doing when you're still not sure of what you're doing that just adds more word to the word count and if the opponent is playing at a normal speed, now get frustrated bc you don't have the skill to keep up developed and then you check out of the game As opposed to other games with clients like magic where if you're new they'll just give you a deck with mostly intuitive keywords that you can just read as you draw them

[@Frogleeoh]

I personally forgot what rage with eyes of blue did before you played it. I assumed it was a big payoff card for when blue-eyes was already on the field, but I got really excited wondering what was about to happen when you got to activate the card as it was about to be wiped. It's just a shame the deck doesn't give you the full playset of blue-eyes, but that was hype nonetheless!

[@liviousgameplay1755]

First time seeing this channel, I'll def be checking out some other videos. I was going to make a longer than necessary comment, but to say only one thing that I personally like about YGO is the swinginess you described. I don't know how it is in Magic (maybe someone can reply?) but YGO duels are really fun when you are trying to figure out the uknowns (cards you can't see in your oppnent's hand or face-down), leading to multiple reveals throughout a duel. Some reveals are bigger than others, but they all create the potential for duels where I fooled/get fooled by my opponent or draw exactly the card I needed it to be (all heart-of-the cards no luck smile). I think that those reveals have even MORE impact now as opposed to older "slower" yugioh (it's been "fast" for like 15 years and I've played for 7) because they have more weight in the outcome of the duel. The consequence is that sometimes you get duels where I drew 5 bangers and I went first so you have no hope of winning, but that's how gambling be sometimes.

[@distractionmakers]

For sure! This is also a key part of Magic. The most famous being if your opponent has two untapped blue mana, they either have a counterspell or are bluffing one.

[@DreaWaldron]

Hahaha I love this one!! 😂 more episodes like this pleez

[@RobMattsson]

Master Duel is a lot of fun. Tbh i dont think we stood a chance here because it seems like neither of these fellas know how to play Yu-Gi-Oh.

[@basty_gaming5750]

Okay, the best deck for new players in MASTER DUEL Salamangreat, Swordsoul, Galaxy-Eyes, and Black-Wings are some of the best entry points to the game with Snake-Eyes, with or without Fire Kings as a close second for now, so get them if you can do it

[@samuelheddle]

I think rescue-ACE isn't too bad for new players either. Basically anything without really long combo lines is good because long combo lines you have to memorize are really intimidating for new players.

[@Majinken]

I think the biggest problem with master duel is that they give you the worst starter decks imaginable. No staples like Ash Blossom or Imperm, and the cards you do get feel like they make up an incomplete deck. Why the hell does the swordsoul structure deck have normal monsters and only 2 synchros? The tactical try decks were a good idea and actually got me excited to play evil twin in paper Yu-Gi-Oh so they should do more of that.

[@simplegarak]

One might say you're the... KING OF CARD GAMES? Forget the game, dive into the YuGiOh memes where the real power is. 😁

[@shadowgam3]

There are 4 types of Extra deck Monsters. There are Fusion (Purple), Snycro (White), Exceed (XYZ) (Black) and then Links (Blue). There are 2 type of Special Summons Conditions. The 1st Special Summon condition is a Special Summon by another card effect. The 2nd Special Summon is a Special Summon by there own effect (Which is also know as a Inheirent Special Summon.) Special summoning Monsters do not start a chain. Konamia never expand the differents, It was never in the Game Manueal or the any of there websites. The differents is that Syncro, Exceed (XYZ), and Links are all Inheirent Special Summoning. Fusion are Special Summon by another card effect, but there are some fusion that do not need Polymerzation, so they are also know as an Inheirent Special Summon. Another way to tell the differents is, if It does not start a Chain, then the Special Summon is an Inheirent. Remember: That Inheirent Special Summoning are monsters that Special Summon by there own effect. Quiz Time: What type is Special Summon does Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning have. Is it an Inheirent, or not?

[@Big_Dai]

Diving into YuGiOh TODAY must me even more dauting than Magic. Knowing what I know about both.. it feels like a nightmare

[@dennisvogel5982]

i am a long time magic player but i love the digital games from yugioh - especially the single player campaign games - i also have the feeling like playing it in paper, its a nightmare - you have to read everything 3 times to execute the correct actions and have to figure out the interactions and stuff - but i think its a great digital game - Back in the day when i watched the anime i always laughed about the protagonist pulling the right card at the right time to start some ridicolous combo and win the match, but they actually managed to put that swingy-ness into the game and somewhat balance around it and it made you feel like you where the protagonist of the show. I can totally understand the appeal and think its a great game - i just dont like it as much in physical form and i think tournaments would be a bit too counflippy for me compared to magic.

[@Aceragematt]

You guys need to try Caller's Bane/Scrolls. It had interesting some systems. EX: in the early form of the game they had no graveyard, cards you played would just go on the bottom of your deck. This allowed for a unique deck style that used cantrips to stack your deck. Knowing the order of your entire deck allowed for an interesting control deck.

[@distractionmakers]

That sounds crazy! Haha

[@HaxDotCombo]

Was Gavin trying Yu-Gi-Oh in paper an off-screen thing, or do you guys have content in other places?

[@distractionmakers]

It wasn’t on video. It was a few weeks before recording this

[@ZackeroniAndCheese]

My favorite way to play yugioh is Edison format! Right now the only way to play online is a simulator called Duelingbook (but it's manual actions like cockatrice for MTG) In a few weeks there will be a 2010 3-day event in master duel. It will not be Edison format, but it will be close enough to have fun. And it will have loaner decks to jump right in with. It may be fun to see a follow up video during that event.

[@distractionmakers]

We’ll have to check out Edison. Lots of comments have mentioned it!

[@ketchumall8243]

"Its a 0/0?" "Yup. Did you read it?" "Nope" *ends turn still not reading it* Look, you're already like a seasoned Yugioh player

[@Dimitar_Tsanev]

Based on what you're saying about the way Yu-Gi-Oh feels I think you'll absolutely love Cardfight!! Vanguard. You can try Cardfight Vanguard Dear Days and see how you feel.

[@distractionmakers]

We’ll check it out!

[@matiaspereyra9392]

Clicking the yellow card IS a vibe, on paper you can't click yes turbo sadly

[@MasouShizuka]

Ah yes modern yugioh feels like a puzzle game if the puzzle is the same 3-5 puzzles for every match. Or it can just boil down to "Can you break my board in Turn 2?" And figuring out if it's a 'yes' or 'no' answer to that means congratulations that's the outcome of the match. Honestly it's less of a card game nowadays.

[@F1llm0reSl1m]

Love this episode. I wish there was a little more explanation of how the game works (I know nothing about yugioh), but I loved the game designers perspective discussion and just the fun you guys have together!

[@greenhillmario]

First game in ranked is against fucking ancient warriors, the cards that are based on romance of the three kingdoms and has card text length rivaling that. Don’t worry even YGO players don’t remember any ancient warrior cards except the link and that only because of it being used in a non ancient warrior deck

[@9clawtiger]

Lamenting that they nerfed Ring of Destruction into the dirt, because pre-errata that would've easily been game. but effect that can cause a tie are "problematic".

[@lit_wick]

Yugioh is a power fantasy turned into a card game. I recently switched over to magic, but once the yugioh format fixes itself, there's room in my life for both. I would say yugioh is like a game of magic, where you start at turn 15, after a farewell blew everything up and both players have 5 cards in hand. Also, everyone has 15 creatures in their "command zone"(extra deck) they can summon with different requirements. Everyone has full mana, anything and everything is possible. So yes, it's faster, but because it skips the build up that magic games have. Yugioh doesn't have those very important decisions magic games have, where you're debating playing a rampent growth over Summoning a creature on turn 2. Or debating if it's worth keeping open mana to counterspell, etc. Those choices do not exist.

[@distractionmakers]

Great points!

[@remixtheidiot5771]

at least you didn't end up like rarran who had his first fight be against a rikka combo lol.

[@samuelheddle]

this was cool to watch. it's always a frustration to me that ygo and mtg players rarely interact, and when they do, the interactions are almost always negative, and almost always involve trashing each other's playerbase. like there are a lot of "generic tcg" podcasts where "generic tcg" is "everything except ygo" and ygo stuff is kinda in its own ecosystem

[@distractionmakers]

We’re very much of the opinion there is always something to learn from any game. Millions of people love yugioh, to assume it’s just bad is foolish.

[@Big_Dai]

Diving into YuGiOh must me even more dauting than Magic. Knowing what I know about both.. it feels like a nightmare

[@dudeweedlmao8519]

Guys is this podcast on Spotify? I cant find it

[@distractionmakers]

Currently we’re only on KZbin

[@dudeweedlmao8519]

@@distractionmakers your content is great I'm sure you have you reasons but it would be great to have it on the go

[@e_ighth]

i get its neat but this video has black bars on my 20:9 aspect ratio phone... like come on...

[@westish]

he's a real yugioh player

[@ashemabahumat4173]

Wait, the first time? I think that means you've probably been playing with an incomplete deck(pun intended) when you talk about design philosophy. Its one of the biggest card games there is, one of those things you _should_ have experience with when talking about the subject as a whole

[@simplegarak]

LoL our game does have a "minion" card type. 😅

[@LunaDachi]

“It’s a 0/0?” “Did you read it?” “Nope!” He’s already a real Yugioh player

[@Cqlr-q4l]

The huge problem of yuguioh is banlist really stupid banlists cards that are ridicuolus are legal for years just to sell the new cards that combo with them

[@YTDan]

🤓☝️Well when you had Ring of Destruction set you had already…

[@distractionmakers]

What did I miss? 😆

[@StormEcho]

Funny to see someone who has on occasion trash talked yugioh go "I'm not reading these" lol, you lose all license to complain about the gameplay if you don't even try to read! xD

[@distractionmakers]

Look… would reading the cards actually help me understand what’s happening? I’m not sure it really mattered. I got the gist. XD

[@7itemstone]

Should’ve watched the first episode right before.

[@zengamer321]

yugioh has the absolute WORST new player experience in any tcg like ever. i know this because i play yugioh and i went in raw by myself no hand holding blind and i learned the game so i know exactly what to expect when learning and how much crap you have to wade through to get to the payoff once you know how to play the game. which isnt to say this game gets better at in masters no it gets worse but you can get some really high highs. this game is ridiculous and terrible and you should keep playing it because god damn it's so damn cool once you learn the game. it is a highly unintuitive. the cards have terrible design. the meta is more often bad than it is good. the game is excessively zero sum in terms of fun. yugioh is literally all about playing your awesome high octane wombo combo mtg turns but like you try to do it every single game. the game starts and it STARTS. rarran has a series where they tried out yugioh and learned the game and climbed on master duel to diamond rank and identifies both what is fun about the game and why the game is terrible. edit: i think 2 games with blue eyes starter was not enough to understand what yugioh is about like at all. you misjudged the game completely at the end of this video. it is NOT intuitive. doing the coolest thing is NOT what wins you games. the game demands you know what you are doing even at the lowest levels because unlike magic, you have 1000 options right at the start of the game and you don't have any intuitive lines like play land play small creature pass turn. instead right out of the gate u have to play a legacy combo deck and turn 1 is ur wombo combo turn and the game will likely end either turn 2 or turn 3. if you go 2nd you have a very high chance of not playing the game if you don't know what ur doing. in yugioh we count 1 (first player) 2 (second player) 3(third player) and the most of games end here and anything that goes beyond that is the grind game.

[@ohmsford94]

That's why i play only goat

[@ajh22895]

Yeah, also in the big numbers there can be small differences. 3000 beating 2900 for instance, but similar to MTG, there can be battle boosting cards.

[@Rodrigo-ly3pg]

Hello there! I've played both semi-competitively and I can assure you Magic is way way WAY better and will outlive Yugioh

[@kindlingking]

Are you aware of the current state of MtG? Have you already forgotten the anniversary proxies fiasco?

[@Rodrigo-ly3pg]

@@kindlingking Small stuff compared to the yugioh is facing. too expensive, game complexity, no new players, tiny deck diversity, no real tournament prices, only one real format (edison is bullshit common), etc

[@IGNEUS1607]

​@@Rodrigo-ly3pg you cannot state that magic is better than yugioh and then say one of the problems with yugioh is it is too expensive 😂

[@tonysmith9905]

@@IGNEUS1607 So they share a common fault? That doesn't disprove magic is better ya know. Thing is you can tell how popular a game is by how pricey their cards are. So if you want your game to live then you actually want high priced cards. It means your game is thriving.

[@Rodrigo-ly3pg]

@@IGNEUS1607 It is way more expensive than playing modern, and close to prices of vintage format. The difference in this case is you can choose a cheaper format like pioneer or standard. In Yugioh you can only choose to play one of like three (sometimes you have no choice but to play the best or you just cannot compete) decks that go obsolete within a year or less

[@MechanizedMinionMTG]

yugioh the game where costs don't exists and games are a coin toss.

[@Liliana_the_ghost_cat]

Costs exist but the coin toss statement is pretty accurate.

[@geek593]

Unfortunately the resource system was very easily broken. Originally the resources were simply cards in play and in hand. It's why something as simple as Pot of Greed snapped the resource game in half since the user would be in a commanding position having another card over the opponent's count. Back in 2015 the game design shifted from cards in play to cards you can search and hard once per turn clauses as a limiter. So now your entire deck is a resource only limited by how easily you can crack it open like a book and play whatever you want from it. Since every new archetype is designed to crack their deck open like a book that's just how the game is balanced now and it's much, MUCH worse than the simple cards = resource gameplay we had from the start of the game until mid 2014.

[@Liliana_the_ghost_cat]

@@geek593 yugioh currently has 3 main resources systems: The normal summon Hard once per turns Extra deck slots

[@MechanizedMinionMTG]

@@geek593 That's the issue though, tutors are powerhouses in card games and yugioh prints them for every archetype. Many have multiple tutors and ways to special summon the entire deck.

[@mimik2098]

"Costs don't exist" cards do have costs, it's literally written on the cards.. the pot retrains all have different costs and the pot retrains are just the very first example out of many 2: games are a coin toss, that's a skill issue most decks can reliably go second, handtraps exist and act like counter spells to stop the opponent during their first turns, there are several decks that really want to go second and are really good like tenpai

[@cameronmoore136]

Just because he likes it doesn't mean it's good. I like doritos and we all know those are garbage.

[@sorry987654321]

why is yu gi oh not printing its text a bit bigger or at least centered or something? this is just so weird... ^^'

[@dreicortezdotcom]

Hope you play Flesh and Blood next. :)