Goat Format Origins: Who Revived This Old Yugioh Format?

[@infusionscap]

It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of this video. Shoutouts to ACP for putting this together, to Slashtap and V0id for the interviews, to my teammates at home, and to the entire community. The community is what holds it all together. Goat is life, Goat is love. Keep having fun with it everyone!

[@gregoryberrycone]

for someone just getting back into yugioh (mostly for the cards themselves) this format seems like when the game was at its peak, especially with regards to the card art

[@RyanAtlus]

We used to have quite an active Goat community at our locals in like 2015-2017, which slowly died out as many players of that community quit Advanced format, and thus would stop coming to locals. Last weekend, we held our first Goat event in years, and both old players from that era came by to play, as well as some players playing the format for the first time. Needless to say, we're gonna be making Time Wizard a regular thing!

[@dm4life579]

My group and I just got back into yugioh. We are enjoying GOAT immensely.

[@540YGO]

This is when I started playing yugioh back in 2005 and to this day I still love this format and will continue to play it. I prefer GOAT over modern day yugioh 100 percent.

[@ferdikadatu687]

hey i play yugioh since 2003 and thank goodness i found this format.

[@Miir]

I remember interacting with Kevin at the 2006 Nationals. I asked him to sign my White Magician Pikeru because it was a card I sided to counter burn during actual goat format and it allowed me to defeat both burn decks I faced in top 8 top win a regional. For some reason Kevin refused to sign it and said they would never print that card again. Unknown what the story was about this, he was right until 2022 when it got reprinted in Speed Duel :D

[@blackmagick77]

Goat is so much fun. It revived my love for yugioh. I don't care that you know all the cards and decks. Ever game is epic and tense and it makes me feel like a better player. Modern yugioh feels like, I throw up my hand and deck onto the field and win unless they have a hand trap. Providence and tengu plant was very fun too. Pendulums broke the game. From there everything went downhill

[@thesmilingvagrants]

yeah pendulums are whack

[@UTgohan]

2006-late 2007 was my favorite it I love goat as well anything is better then modern yugioh watching your opponent play his turn for 10 plus minutes

[@bobthebuilder9416]

Dude I love long format videos thank you so much

[@connermorgan9223]

What's amazing to me is the outcry against this kind of unfair, turn 1 gameplay was so immense in 2012, yet pretty much all the decks of the modern era play to soft ftk their opponents in the same vein in 2023 and it's just accepted as normal

[@GoatDuels]

If you play Yugioh today, you know what you've signed up for.

[@brittdaniels3150]

great Idya goat format I holp at become big😄

[@DK-ZERO]

soild documentary, good job, praised be KT!

[@gearhead6042]

Kinda funny how history repeated itself recently with Edison format becoming popular.

[@ArroganceClause]

Doesn’t Kevin Tewart HATE the card Scapegoat? If so that’s hilarious

[@YGO_Renaissance]

The YCS Toronto/YCS Columbus Tengu Plant is in my personal opinion the greatest deck this game has ever seen

[@thesmilingvagrants]

I played during 2010-2012. There were lots of splashable small "engines". Wind ups were the last straw for me. No creativity, just a pre built OP deck that konami already put together for everyone. Compare that to tele dad. It was OP and needed to be nerfed of course, but at least it was put together by a human being. Destiny heros (which on their own weren't good) mixed with E hero stratos and the krebons/emergency teleport engine was a creative combo.

[@starshkr46]

As someone that managed to interact with Kevin Tewart back in the day in Pojo, I will give him credit. He was open to player feedback and - somewhat - willing to answer questions here and there. He was very sassy though, I remember getting pissed at him once over some smart-ass non-answer he gave me. But you know what, the man was funny, and I appreciate that he spent some time chatting with us, even if he usually didn't say what we wanted. Call me naïve but I do think he and other Konami employees were trying their best for the game, even if they had their hands tied having to juggle between listening to players, shilling and damage controlling for Konami. Also I re-read the articles, and to be honest they are well written and I agree with almost everything they say. Game balance was indeed trash back then though so I can see how some players might have been upset, but I think that was more of an issue with power creep in general than with the banlist itself.

[@marklowery8193]

I feel like there was at least 150 spells and traps alone that were broken or powerful between 02 and 06. If you play World Championship Ultimate Masters 2006 you can find so many different styles of of play using cards that aren’t just pot of greed, raigeki, solemn judgment or anything like that. Seems like today you gotta buy 3 structures decks and take the best 15 cards and it gets samey cause the rest of the cards are very filler. Zombie Madness has 3x pyramid turtle but if that deck was realised today they’d only have it at 1 so you gotta buy 3 for example. The creatively and the ability to use each card without archetype tie in was what created the magic of old yugioh.

[@prentiscool]

22:33 if you'd like to skip the history lesson.

[@tylerpendergast7899]

I also quit when order of chaos was released. Cool to hear that other people felt the same about the game at that time

[@jameswilliams2269]

Obviously Yugioh players wanted to revive an old Yugioh format, but I'd like to hear a greater explanation as to what other retro formats they considered and their ultimate reasons for picking this one.

[@GoatDuels]

DuelistGroundz really liked Goat Format in particular because many of their respected players did well during the 2005 era. I touched on this a bit during the video with the example of Max Suffridge. He's not the only one, though.

[@mrrandomassduck]

I flipped to MTG at this point. (Like I’d been playing both MTG and Yugioh on and off since 2002 (Yugioh)/2003 (MTG)) I didn’t really get into playing Goat at the time but am picking it up now. (It’s not like I don’t already own a large portion of the cards anyway. 😂)

[@Fadedglory14081]

This tells exactly why I also stopped playing current format. Duelingnetwork was nothing bud windup loop, inzektors, or Dino rabbit. It got old, and was only getting worse. I had a good time up until then. When you started seeing people pop up with “goatformat only” on DN is peaked my interest. I was a lurker on dgz and have been a fan of goat until this day. Accurate video imo.

[@kiliankrautler4662]

very underrated interesting content. Thank you ACP :)

[@MysticVee]

Kevin Tewart had a habit of trolling and ripping on any lay person on Pojo for a long time, his articles were written well, but definitely had the aura of "i have the big chair, I make the rules". As much as he helped create the game for what it is and was at the time, its still tough to defend his ban list articles on the whole. Plus, you know, dude holds the Seal of Orichalcos. Overall, I left the game during Order. The death of every deck i owned, and the inane ugliness of the game, everyone rapidly trying to rip eachother off via trades, it was a sign that XYZ era yugioh was where i needed to leave. I came back during Duelist Alliance, the advent of Burning Abyss and Tellarknights. Completely dodged Dragon Ruler Format.

[@dmoc2524]

Great video really beat, reminds me of the history of the yugioh meta by swagkage which is cool keep it up👍

[@jamescumblidge3064]

Great video Allen. The one thing I will add is that (at least irl) Edison seems to be overtaking Goats in popularity. At YCS Pasadena last month, they ran 5-6 flights of side event Goats, and nearly 50 flights of Edison format. That's only one weekend though, could just be an outlier. On the plus side, there is a ton of interest in playing older formats at major events and konami even introduced an exclusive playmat for winners of these retro events. Hopefully that only grows and maybe one day we'll see a YCS main event played under an old format. Also, is dgz still a thing? I tried logging in a few months ago but couldn't remember my credentials.

[@GoatDuels]

I can't speak for what happened at any particular YCS, but Goat Format is significantly more popular online. Bigger tournaments, more KZbin content, and also more search traffic (according to Google Trends).

[@dfag2311]

Cool video ACP, but there is a slight historical inaccuracy that i want to address. This video and the interview with slashtap within the video seem to imply that the banlist was created after YCS atlanta where TGs won. While it was IN EFFECT after TGs won, the banlist was already posted prior to YCS atlanta. If you watch the deck profile with prowinston, he talks to marquis henderson about the banlist hitting his cards in his deck. As someone who was deep in the yugioh scene at the time, everyone already knew about the march banlist going into YCS atlanta.

[@GoatDuels]

This is not really the case. The banlist actually came out on Sunday February 19, while the final day of YCS Atlanta was in progress. You can use web archive and forum posts to confirm this. It was certainly not "posted prior to YCS Atlanta." However, Kevin Tewart's banlist article does it clear that the list was at least created in advance of the event.

[@dfag2311]

@@GoatDuels At that point in yugioh history, the TCG had always used the OCG banlist. So while there could have been some speculation that we were getting a different banlist than OCG (which to be fair, I remember some people thinking this could be the first time or first time in a while that we would get a different banlist), I remember it being consensus that we were most likely (if not pretty much guaranteed) getting the OCG banlist with the plant tuners banned, trishula banned, etc.

[@GoatDuels]

Yes, I was referring to the OCG banlist. It was leaked on February 19th. Again, you can go back and see for yourself.

[@dfag2311]

@@GoatDuels Fair enough! I believe you ACP, in any case, the results of YCS atlanta could not have affected the banlist at the time because: 1) we used the banlist from OCG, 2) YCS atlanta hadn't concluded yet

[@jackcarraway4707]

I find it strange we call it Gost Control when TER is the main control mechanism.

[@Slashtap]

The earliest known mockery of anime profile pictures was submitted ...by user mmf. Lmao Matt is immortalized.

[@GoatDuels]

Yeah I absolutely lost my shit when I first read it. Dude's famous now.

[@yoshortyb]

Kevin Tewart is one of the biggest stains on Yugioh's history. Incompetence mixed with arrogance really destroyed the game for so many players.

[@darastakid88]

Long live the goats

[@scen45]

Do you think there's any chance the trinity could be banned in goat? or at least pot/duo i feel like the format would so much better if that happened.

[@infusionscap]

I see this asked a lot, and there are a couple of things to consider. First of all, making any changes to the list would mean this isn't truly Goat Format anymore, it's something else, which isn't necessarily a problem at its core, but it does mean you're basically talking about two different formats at that point. The other thing to note is that "no trinity" tournaments do take place online. If you look at the top cut of the most recent of those tournaments you will see that the deck diversity goes down quite a bit. If you're a fan of Warriors and Burn then you may like no trinity events more, but I personally feel like taking options off of the table does not really promote the healthier environment that banning the trinity is likely aimed at achieving. The only way to really be okay with the trinity is to accept that it's part of the game, sometimes you will benefit from it more, sometimes the opponent will benefit from it more. It's just variance, and card games really need to have that anyway. If you start taking away all of the luck and all of the variance then it may as well be a game of chess.

[@GoatDuels]

Honestly, my main problem with banning cards in Goat Format is that it becomes a slippery slope. You agree to ban one card, and soon the community is fighting amongst themselves about what to ban next. To some extent, there is also a conflict of interest when the people who create a custom format also play that format competitively.

[@scen45]

@@infusionscap Hey thanks for taking the time to reply in depth using reasoning. I'll try to respond to all your points and comments in sequence. You're right that it wouldn't technically be goat format anymore but goat format has already metamorphosed from it's original form. Goat control isn't even technically considered the best deck of the format anymore if the tournament results are considered and that literally what the format was named after. You say that without them then warrior and burn are rewarded but like goat format itself that could change over time with meta shifts. I think when you're defending pot of greed you're defending something that fundentally is indefensible. It's technically the perfect card that has never been power creeped. Lately people have been talking about what the power 9 cards of yugioh are and i think the only one that can be universally agreed on is pot of greed. There has never been a deck that wouldn't play it and there is no thought, downside or restriction on the card. I can accept that it's easier to unite the playerbase by playing under the original list instead of creating a custom format and potentially splitting or lowering the playerbase. However is it not correct to say that it is just varience. If each game would be decided by a simple dice roll it would be fair and balanced but it would not be skillful, competitive or interactive. It also lowers vareince because every deck has to run these cards. To simply say you just have to accept it as part of the game is a wrong reasoning call as you are playing a different format entirely because you didn't want accept the current state of the game. If konami was to run and promote more of this format without the problematic cards would you still defend them? The ocg version of goat would be very different with a lot more cards we did't get for whatever reason. Improvements can always be made but unfortunately konami appears to prioritse profit over the health of the game. It's also not fair to compare a card game like yu-gi-oh to chess as chess has no randomness with this game will always have. Poker is a better analogy and that game is still going strong. Also being compared to chess shouldn't be considered bad. What it really comes down to is do you prefer the nostalgia or would you prefer a more improved game? Tl'dr not hating on goat. I like it and hope it gains popularity and prefer it over the current meta's but it does have some problems.

[@infusionscap]

@scen45 You make some good points, but I want to clarify a couple of things from my previous post. The comment about Chess was not meant to be a dig at Chess, I like Chess personally, it was simply meant to illustrate that card games are going to have a luck factor and, even if we could completely remove that (which I personally think is impossible) it may not be better for the game as a whole. I mean, just imagine a world where a lesser known player could never upset a "pro" because there was no luck to close the skill gap. It's not really good for newer players. The road is already an uphill climb, it doesn't need to go from tough to virtually impossible. There are a couple of cards in the format that I personally can't stand, most notably Cyber Stein and Return, but at the end of the day that's just my personal bias and I don't think they need to be banned, regardless of how cheesy they feel to me sometimes, because I think deck variety is more important for the success of the format. Removing power cards, or any cards for that matter simply takes options off of the table. I think most people would agree with me in saying that, there is no "perfect" format. Let's take Pot and Duo as the example. In the format right after Goat, both of those cards are banned. If you like Bazoo Return format then more power to you, but based on what I've seen it isn't that popular of a format. I think people like Goats because it's the closest thing to balanced that we have, and there is good deck variety as well. The last thing I want to address is the statement you made about Konami prioritizing profits over player concerns. While this is a sentiment I've agreed with a couple of times over the years, I don't see how that relates to Goat Format specifically. Maybe I'm missing something on that, but I don't see how leaving the banlist as is, or altering it any way would affect Konamis sales. Thanks for taking the time to discuss. I always appreciate thoughtful feedback, and I push for the idea that it's okay to respectfully disagree and have these discussions. My suggestion is to check out some no trinity tournaments, it sounds like you would enjoy that, and at the end of the day that's really the point of all of this.

[@scen45]

@@infusionscap There's always chance at beginners luck in a game like poker, sometimes they can catch the seasoned better player off guard by playing so badly that the better player can't predict them correctly (imagine some just going all in with a terrible hand or misunderstanding something and then winning through that mistake). There's also the chance of one player drawing the worst possible hand for their deck and the other player drawing their best possible hand. The more skillful player that is more prepared and knowledgable should win the majority of the time though. I think it's fair to say that there's no perfect format (I think my favourite was perfect circle or around when gorz was played). The format you mentioned from what I can find of it has a form of power creep that invalidates most decks and still has some specific problem cards. The game appears to also increase drastically in speed at around that point. I think at the time it was actually played GOAT format was probably cost prohibitive, it's not currently (unless you want to bling out your deck with max rarity) and that is the way i'd like the game to be. This is what I meant by Konami prioritising profit over health. Imagine if konami fully supported goat format but didn't increase the power creep (like adding some of the early speed duel cards but stopping at before cyber dragons power level and updating the banlist for example). I think speed duel cards with GOAT and a regularly updated banlist to promote purely game health would be ideal as they are both are around the same power level with a similar playerbase and official support. Thanks for discussing with me I love talking about balance, skill and fairness. I could argue for eternity about it. Think about this, if there was one player that always won every single game with the exact same cards that everyone has access to purely due that persons skill and decision making. Would you do some do something about that deck? (This isn't a trick question or anything just a hypothetical. The deck couldn't be something stupid like a 1st turn ftk it would have to be highly interactive and a variety of other decks would have to have a fair chance to beat it.) Then imagine that player was then the only person playing that exact deck and the rest of the top decks were wildly varied.

[@Dinowrestler]

Finish this later

[@prestonbeaulieu4379]

Literally just a lucky hand. Substitoad cheese is strong, but it usually wont work against better players. Averice is strong, but nowhere near PoG. I've seen people lose bc averice was bricking their hand. Show me a game where PoG was a brick lmao

[@cketcham1217]

Goat is cool but it is definitely not the most popular retro format

[@KaloKross]

i love yugioh

[@rhystictomato5635]

this is straight up wrong. First turn draw ended on July 14, 2014 with Master Rule 3, the inception of pendulum as a mechanic, and the release of DUEA, long after ORCS.

[@KaloKross]

@@rhystictomato5635 oh ok i heard wrong then and me dumb, never played that gay pendulum shit lol

[@AzIgaziMakk]

I tried something similar in 2008 but was no interest at all unfortanately. What people talk about in i felt the same with Phantom Darkness the Dark Armed Dragon was just insanely OP and being unlimited and they did not touched the card for long and later just being semi limited and Judgment Dragon arrived. And these cards were insanely expensive aswell. The power creep started at this point how i feel.

[@GoatDuels]

You're right. The power creep really ramped up with Dark Armed, but the prior few years had been good enough that most people were willing to give Konami the benefit of the doubt at that time. After awhile though, people began to lose their patience.

[@andreatorriglia8010]

i think the first time we experienced power creep was with crv, which was, indeed, a revolution :)

[@yoshortyb]

This is precisely the time when I quit Yugioh for the first time. This was the most egregious money grab ever.

[@banish4cost]

Magic Ruler has entered the chat

[@thesmilingvagrants]

Once they hit tele dad and lightsworn things got back to normal. Well, at least for a while...

[@deruneldembal5048]

Hey hey, no need to shit talk other yugitubers. Cap g is not known for his bad takes..

[@GoatDuels]

It wasn't so much of a shit-talk so much as it was statement regarding Yugioh's history. In 2012, MegaCapitalG was basically a meme throughout the Yugioh community. I can't speak for what his opinions or content is like today, but I would presume that it has gotten better over the course of 10+ years.

[@deruneldembal5048]

@@GoatDuels Man don't defend the garbage u say at times. No need to mention that, makes u way less likeable.

[@AveCaesar2112]

@@deruneldembal5048 You’re a fool

[@Slashtap]

That is very much what he was known for when he was known. He had a disastrously poor understanding of the game.

[@DustyGlandon]

CapG is a conglomerate of bad takes. lol

[@UTgohan]

2006-late 2007 was my favorite it I love goat as well anything is better then modern yugioh watching your opponent play his turn for 10 plus minutes